Beyond the Pages: Adventures Across Fandoms

Revelations and Reunions (HC, ft. Grian, EX, Xisuma and Mumbo Jumbo)

Or: The sun and his Xelqua get reunited

(tw: Trauma, Angst)

Hermitcraft was full of mysteries, the players on it were full of secrets. But no one kept their full backstory a secret as protectively as Xisuma. Even Grian sometimes dropped a bit of backstory here and there, but X's backstory remained a full mystery. His mask, what was it for? They didn't even know his race. They knew his name, age, personality and a few small hobbies, nothing else.

What was his eye color? They didn't know. Did he have any hidden hybrid features? No clue.

Well, except for Grian. But X didn't know that of course. They thought the only one that fully knew them was dead, that their mentor and brother figure was gone. Taken by those who watch only to be tortured out of his mind and killed.

But little did he know he was still watching, having escaped from the watchers and taken on a new identity to protect all of the Hermits and his sun. It was ironic, his new name meant sun in Irish. Grian translates to sun, which is what he called X all those years ago when his name was still Charles.

Grian doesn't remember what he was called in his youth and highschool anymore. He knows that his watcher and witness protection name was Xelqua, his name on EVO was Charles and that his name now is Grian. But his original name, just like X's, had been lost to the darkness of the void.

X still remembered his original name, somewhere deep in his mind. He had told Charles his name, one or two forevers before he had lost him to the ones that watched.

Grian knew everything about who he was, yet so little about who he is now. Setting out to change that, he one day knocked on X's door to ask to do some building together. Just for fun he had said, he couldn't just say he wanted to get to know his sun as well as he did before now, could he?

They had a great time together, and Grian learned some cool things about how X saw him when both were-, well he was younger. EVO was a time travel server after all. He sang the praises of the admin who had taught him so much and formed him to what he was today.

To say Grian had a hard time keeping it together, that would be an understatement. As soon as X left he broke down into cries, he had left his sun all on his own and he still sang his praises. He didn't feel like he deserved it.

Running to Pearl's house the Younger cried in her shirt explaining what went down and how he felt through muffled sobs. Pearl had thought of a plan to help Grian reconnect with X as 'Charles', not 'Grian'. As a mentor and brother figure, instead of just a friend. And it all started with music.

Music was something both Grian and X enjoyed. He had taught Grian Guitar and in the past, Grian had taught him drums.

Pearl's plan was to do a musical talent show thing where people either sing, play an instrument or both.

Grian would then go on the drum's and do one of the songs he sang to X all the time, not saying anything else, just that. It would give X a sense of familiarity she predicted, that would cause him to grow closer to Grian because of how the brain works.

So it was time, Grian knew this song by heart. 'Welcome to my life' by Simple Plan. It encapsulated his rollercoaster of a life perfectly.

In the last chorus, X's voice joined in. Together they created a harmony, something that felt like home. X was confused why it felt so familiar and natural to sing with the younger hermit. It felt a bit like singing with Charles. X's head on his lap while sitting against a tree. It was always so fun to do things like that with him.

He felt like a big brother to X, but without the part where he was annoying. His little brother Exavian Void got that part of the bargain, even if EX would argue it was the other way around. The one and only thing they could agree on was that Charles was the best big brother in the whole wide world though.