Archive of Our Own ^beta

It wasn’t his fault.

It was just a game. 

It was not like Evo.

It was just a game.

The thoughts circled in Grian’s head in time with the flapping of his wings as he approached Pearl’s base. 

Xisuma was wrong. 

He hadn’t done this.

He hadn’t caused this. 

It was nothing like Evo.

It was just a game. 

The moon cast his shadow down onto the sculpted terrain below as he glided down towards the same front door he had paced in front of earlier that day. Anxiety bubbled in Grian’s gut as he looked up at the building towering above him. 

(Impulse is outside when you arrive. 

You head towards the door but he stops you from entering. 

From seeing her. 

“She’s not good. I think she’s confused or something. Gem’s calmed her down but we shouldn’t overwhelm her.” 

He’s concerned. You know he is. 

But he doesn’t understand. 

He doesn’t know what you and Pearl have faced together.

He doesn’t know about what you’ve done.

You need to know she’s ok. 

That killing Impulse was just a joke. 

That she wasn’t ignoring your DMs, she just didn’t see her comm. 

That those errors you saw on the console were nothing: just harmless little hiccups in your coding. 

That you haven’t caused further harm to the people you love .

You need to know.)

The shrieker sounded as he opened the door to start his search. 

Cleo and Gem had found Pearl a few hours ago, so she should be here. He was going to see her. Xisuma hadn’t said he couldn’t see her when he left. Sure, he hadn’t been allowed to be in the search party, but the search party was over. She’d been found. She was safe, and back home. She was ok. He was going to see her and tell her he was sorry for scaring her, and she would admit her memory was fine, and they would laugh, and it would be ok. It was just another game: a little joke that she was playing on them all, and she would be fine. 

(“Grian, her code is a mess!”)

It wasn’t his fault.

It was not like Evo.

It was just a game.

Her bed was empty. In fact, all the rooms in the lower section of the building were empty: not a single Hermit in sight. Which left the meeting room. It wouldn’t be too weird for her to be up there. She was often up at weird hours. Grian would joke about her being on a different sleep schedule than the rest of them. She was practically nocturnal sometimes. Whenever he brought it up she would just smile and joke about it being the lunar-moth hybrid in her. 

(Both of them knew it wasn’t that.

She was like that before Evo.

But it was nice to pretend.)

The stairs creaked as he made his way up to the top of the base. There was definitely someone up there. There were people talking, though the sound stopped when a particularly loud creak came from under his foot. As he rounded the corner at the top of the stairs, he definitely heard someone sigh. He looked up to see two pairs of eyes watching him. Or rather, one pair of shades, and one set of mismatched eyes. Ren and Doc were sitting next to each other at the table. 

There was no sign of Pearl. 

“She’s not here my dude.” Grian stopped looking around the room and focused back on the two occupants. 

Ren’s voice sounded rough. It was difficult to see from behind the shades, but it seemed like he might have been crying before; what was visible of his eyes looked a little bloodshot and red. He had stopped looking at Grian once he’d gotten into the room, instead sitting with his hands on either side of his head and his elbows on the table, hunched over a little. His royal cloak was sitting discarded in the chair next to him. 

“Is she not back yet?” He tried to keep the nerves from slipping into his voice. 

There was nothing to be nervous about. Pearl was fine. He knew it. 

(“How could you do this to her?”)

It was just a game. 

“She’s over at Gem’s base. She refused to come back in here after what happened earlier. Hopefully, she’s resting now. She was exhausted.” If looks could kill, then Grian would have another death in Pearl’s base under his belt. He wasn’t sure how Doc was managing to glare at him. Both his hybrid genetics and his cybernetic implants made it hard to tell what the man was feeling a lot of the time: creeper face and robot parts don’t lend well to emoting. But Grian could almost feel his redstone eye boring into his soul as he glared at him from where he sat. 

“Do you think I could go over there?” Doc shook his head at him. 

“No. She was exhausted. She needs to sleep. Today was too much for anyone to handle.” Grian shuffled back and forth on his feet under the weight of Doc’s gaze. He glanced over at Ren but the man hadn’t moved at all. 

“I’m sure she’d be ok if I woke he-”

He jumped backwards as Doc suddenly stood up, slamming both hands into the table as he did so. Ren barely startled at the noise: the only sign he had heard it was his ears folding flat against his head. Despite this, Doc glanced at him and then slowly lowered himself back into the chair, patting Ren’s back a few times before placing his hands back on the table and looking back at Grian. The redstone glint of his eye seemed dimmed when it focused back on him. 

“Xisuma stopped by here after he took Pearl to Gem’s base. He said you’d put a lock on her hybrid code. Is that true?” 

“Yes. But I did it to myself too. And Jimmy.” 

(“Do you have any idea what kind of dama-”)

Doc kept his eyes on the table in front of him before looking back up at Grian. 

“Go home, Grian.” There was no heat, no fire, no anger in Doc’s voice. 

He just sounded tired. 

The quiet words still felt like a sonic shriek to the heart. 

Ren hadn’t moved the entire time.

Doc turned his back to him, returning to rubbing circles on Ren’s back.

Neither of them watched Grian leave.  

You whisper to PearlescentMoon: You awake?

The message was going to burn itself into Grian’s comm screen if he looked at it any longer. And yet, he couldn’t find it in himself to look away from it. 

The chat had barely moved at all since the day started. He would know, he hadn’t slept, watching the sun creep up in the sky instead. Trying to judge when it was socially acceptable to send to try to message Pearl. He’d still probably sent it far earlier than he should have. 

Not that it had changed anything. She hadn’t responded. 

(“How could you do-”)

It was fine. She was probably still just asleep. Doc had said she was exhausted. She would wake up and message him and it would be fine. 

He hadn’t done anything wrong. 

It was just a game. 

For the fourth (fifth? Sixth? Who knows, he’d lost count) time that hour, he weighed up his options.

Option one: Message again. The least drastic but also the least likely to get a result.

Option two: Message Gem or Impulse. The two were likely to be the closest to Pearl right now, given Pearl had slept in Gem’s base that night and Impulse lived right under it. Unfortunately, neither of the two had been exactly friendly yesterday; one had sounded like he wanted to kill him and the other actually had. So they weren’t likely to respond to him.

Option three: Go to Gem’s base on his own to look for Pearl. Highly likely to get a result but also highly likely to end up on the wrong side of GeminiSlay again. 

Option four: Go to Gem’s base with other people to look for Pearl. Sure he would be less likely to be able to talk to Pearl one-on-one but it seemed like the most viable option in terms of actually getting to see her. 

And he needed to see her. 

The message hovered in the chat like an anvil on a string. 

(“Grian, her code is-”)

He slapped his comm to turn the screen off (Mumbo kept telling him not to do that but oh well, old habits die hard). 

Ok. Option four it was. 

A quick flyover and a look around Mumbo and Scar’s bases had him coming up empty-handed: neither Hermit seemed to be around. Which was odd. 

Especially after yesterday. 

(“Did you learn nothi-”)

They had probably just gone to the shopping district. 

Yeah, that was it. Mumbo had said something about needing way more redstone when he’d last spoken to him before the game (seriously, that man had been so involved in his latest redstone project. It was like he wasn’t even around a lot of the time). They’d probably just gone to the shopping district together.

It was fine. 

He should probably go find them though. Yeah. He should do that. 

Flying felt different today. 

Grian had come to love flying fairly quickly after he got his wings. The wind rushing passed, the views of the world below. The freedom. 

Today it felt like breaking some unspoken rule. 

(“You deleted her w-”)

He landed a lot sooner than he normally would. 

The shopping district was eerily quiet. Sure, it was still early but there was usually someone about at this hour. Working on building their shop or spending some hard-earned diamonds. It was never this…lonely. 

There! Person!

His brain barely registered which Hermit he was heading towards with the speed at which he rushed over to them. He was already landing by the time his mind caught up with the image of the white hair and ninja gear. 

It took another moment to realise what he was standing staring at. 

The shadow cast by the early morning sun hitting off of Twinkly Trash loomed over the pair. 

“Hey Etho”. Grian could feel his wings twitching on his back. It was just Etho. They’d literally just played a game together for two weeks. Why did he feel nervous?

(“YOU’VE BEEN LUCKY NO ONE’S BEEN PERMA-”)

“Hey.” Etho didn’t turn to look at him as he spoke, still staring up at the building before him. 

The silence that followed felt deafening. 

“Have you spoken to her?” The question comes as a surprise to both of them. It’s enough to make Etho turn and look at him. Even with his mask, Grian can see the tightening of his expression. 

“No.” 

“Oh.” 

“Why do you think she would even want to speak to me?” The bite in Etho’s tone felt foreign and unexpected. “She only knows me as the soulmate of the guy who killed her. Twice, technically.”

Why was everyone taking this so seriously? Pearl was fine. She just needed to sleep it off. He was going to find someone to go with him, and he would talk to her, and it was going to be fine.

It would be fine. 

“It was just a game, Etho.” 

Etho’s eyes widened before what was visible of his face hardened. 

“Do you seriously still think this is some sort of joke?” 

(“Do you have any idea wh-”)

“She’s fine. Tim and I are fine! Why wouldn’t she be?” 

Grian didn’t think it was possible for Etho to get paler than he normally was but apparently, he was wrong. 

“So what X said to the rest of us was true. You messed with her code.”

“It was a temporary lock. It couldn’t have caused anything to happen. It was perfectly harmless! It would have come off when she logged out, same as mine and Tim’s.”

Etho’s eyes filled with more and more anger as Grian spoke. 

(“YOU HAVE NO IDEA OF THE FORC-”)

“That kind of code manipulation can get people killed, Grian.”

“It was just for the game!”

Grian watched as Etho fell completely still. 

“So our lives are just games to you, huh?”

(“Did you learn nothing from Evo?”)

He didn’t actually think that.

He couldn’t…right?

“Wha- No! Of- of course no-” 

Etho turned and started walking away.

“Etho! Wait, pleas-” Grian tried to grab his shoulder but Etho just yanked it forward, out of his grasp.

“I trusted you. We all did. I guess we were wrong to.” 

(“Trust me, it’ll be fine!” You grin at Pearl as she sits next to you in the world hub. 

“I dunno Grian, you said those things keep causing you problems there.” 

“Nah, they’re pretty harmless. It’s honestly part of the fun at this point.” She still seems a little uneasy, but you can tell you’re wearing her down. 

“What did you say you’d called the world again?” 

“Well, the full name is Evolution. But we just call it Evo.

There’s a moment or so before you see her reach her decision. 

“Fineeeee.”

“Really?!” Oh, this is going to be so good! 

“Sure. I don’t see any downsides to this. And besides.” She nudges your shoulder, a smile slowly spreading across her face.

“I trust you.”)

It wasn't until Etho was gone that Grian noticed how cold it was in Twinkly Trash’s shadow. 

He didn’t message Pearl for the rest of the day. Or try to go see her. 

He didn’t message anyone.

He wasn’t sure why. 

(“I trusted yo-”)

It was just a game…right?

He’d done everything correctly. He’d made sure the world was protected. He’d checked and triple-checked the game codes to make sure there wouldn’t be any glitches there. Hels, that’s how he had spotted the golden apple issue and made sure the rules were in place to avoid it. 

And yes, he had applied the hybrid code lock to himself first to make sure it was safe for the others. The exact same way he had done it for the last two games.

If something was going to go wrong, it should have affected him first. 

So nothing should be wrong. Pearl should be fine. 

Pearl was fine. 

(“Do you want to die!?” 

“Yes!” 

“What?!” The genuine sounding joy in her voice startles you.

“I love this! Come on, do it! Do it!” You can only just see the unhinged grin on her face from the height of the pillar you’re standing on.

“What’s wrong with you!?” You’ve known Pearl long enough to know she’s a little crazy, sure, but this seems stronger than last game. More intense. She’s really getting into character this time.

“NOW YOU KNOW WHY I’M NOT LIVING WITH HER!” Scott yells up at you and Pearl just seems to ignore him, more bothered by the water someone’s tried to place down on her to stop her being damaged. 

“Tilly’s on yellow life, I get to be even with Tilly!” 

“Wait, aren't you two friends?” She’s not trying to lose a life just to be even with her dog, right? That’s a bit of an extreme move to do for the purposes of playing a part. And it hurts her and Scott’s chances of winning. You know she’s not living with him this game but surely they’re still friendly, right?

“No” Her tone is incredulous like she’s actually confused why you would even think that. Wow, really burning her bridges from last game. Bold move but then she’s always been a bit like you.

You both love a bit of chaos.

You reel in the fishing rod.)

She was fine...right?

The moon was high in the sky. 

He didn’t sleep.

Grian wasn’t avoiding people. He wasn’t. He’d just been super busy. Sure, his base had barely progressed. Sure, he’d not really spoken to anyone but Scar and Mumbo, and both of them only briefly before he went back to building. Sure, he wasn’t sleeping at all that well. 

He was fine. 

And he was sure Pearl was fine. 

He’d just been really busy and that’s why he hadn’t checked on her. 

But she was fine. 

He was sure of it. 

It was just a game. 

So he was a little surprised to see Doc sitting at the entrance of his base.

(He was more surprised that Doc was bothering to check on him.)

“Hello Grian.” His tone was neutral. Lukewarm. 

“Hi, Doc.” Grian tugged at the edge of his jumper. It was looking a little worse for wear at the moment. He hadn’t bothered to change it for a few days. Because he’d been busy. 

Yeah. Busy.

“I had a talk with Etho today. He said he’d talked to you about Pearl the other day.” 

Oh. So that’s what this was about.

“Yeah.” Grian didn’t say anything more than that. Doc would have heard it all from Etho. What else was there to say?

(“I guess we were wro-”)

Doc’s face was as blank as usual: nothing on it to tell Grian what he was thinking as his eyes skimmed across his face, but he was clearly looking for something. It was unclear if he found what he was looking for, but when he next spoke it was the gentlest Grian had heard him speak in a while.  

“Did Xisuma show you what her code looks like now?”

(“Grian, her code is-”)

“No.” 

He didn’t need to- 

He shouldn’t- 

He didn’t want t-

She’s fi-

Doc was already nodding before he’d finished speaking, like he had already known the answer before he’d asked Grian the question. The buttons on his comm barely made any sounds as he tapped at it, before gesturing Grian over. 

There’s a moment when a player first enters The End; a second or so where all the air is gone; a moment or so before the server protections kick in to provide the player the ability to breathe in the void; a portion of time where there is nothing to prevent that player from suffocating. It’s one of those unspoken rules, passed from person to person until it’s just instinct; until it’s applied to every area of life without people really remembering why: take a deep breath before you jump. 

Grian should have taken a breath. 

Air refused to enter his lungs as he looked at the screen before him. The code in front of him was wrong. He didn’t need to be an expert to see that. There weren't any errors. There weren’t any glitches. But it was just…mangled. 

(“How could you do this to-”)

He’s not sure how long he was staring at the screen when it disappeared from his view. All he knew was he was lightheaded when he tried to speak.

“That can’t be right. It can’t. I didn’t cause that. It was…”

There was a beat of silence. Nothing but the thumping of his own heart in his chest as he was forced to accept the truth.

A truth he had known from the minute he had seen the errors on the Life server console. 

A truth he had known when she hadn’t answered his messages. 

A truth he had known when she had sat in the meeting and cried, and he had laughed because it couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t .

A truth he had known when Gem killed him, when Impulse refused to let him near her, when Xisuma had yelled at him. 

A truth he had been avoiding for as long as he could.

But the truth was there.

("Grian, her code is a mess!")

Pearl was not ok. 

("How could you do this to her?”)

And it was his fault. 

(“Did you learn nothing from Evo?")

“It was supposed to be just a game.” 

"It's all fun and games until it has real consequences." Doc didn't look at Grian as he spoke, staring down at his own hands before he clenched both flesh and metal into fists and looked back up at him. 

“I know you didn’t mean for this to happen.” His voice was still incredibly soft but the words felt like jabs all the same. 

“But it has.” He stood up and placed his hand on Grian’s shoulder. 

“It’s time to accept that.”

It was his fault.

It wasn’t just a game. 

It was like Evo.

It wasn’t just a game.

The thoughts circled in his head in time with his tired footsteps as he approached Xisuma’s base. 

Xisuma was right. 

He had done this.

He had caused this. 

It was exactly like Evo.

It was not just a game. 

His muscles ached with exhaustion from the long walk over as he reached up to knock on the door. 

He would not hide from this. He could not hide from this. 

He needed to fix this. 

They had trusted him.

The Lifers. 

The Hermits.

The Evolutionists.

Pearl.

He would not fail them.

Not again.

“Let me help.”