“Well, this is the base,” Grian says. “Feel free to make yourself at home.”

Three stares down into the gaping hole beyond the birch floor of the entryway, then up into the cavernous space above, where the inner faces of the hollow rocks are dotted messily with torches to prevent mob spawns. “I see your habits regarding interiors appear to have remained consistent,” it notes.

Grian squawks, indignant. “I— okay, nice to know that I’m apparently the same everywhere, but also, hey!”

“It was not intended as judgment,” Three says judgmentally.

“Okay, listen,” Grian explains, doing his best to sound rational and not defensive, “the point of this build isn’t to be livable, it’s just to make a cool set piece! I don’t need a fancy interior when I’m happy keeping my storage and spawn outside.”

This logic does not seem to appease Three. “I do not see why you bother to build a base, if not to live in it.”

“Well, you know.” Grian waves a hand vaguely. “It’s just nice to have a big project going on in the background. Something to flex the building skills! Like I said, it’s mostly about making something that looks cool.”

“And if a day should come that you are no longer here?” Three asks. “If you were to somehow vanish from this world, and the only things left behind in your wake were empty set pieces, containing no traces of who you were, or how you lived. What then?”

And, well. Grian has no idea what to say to that.

He settles for changing the subject. “How about we find you somewhere else to stay?” he says weakly.

“That is probably for the best,” Three says.

Strange that even without visible eyes, the weight of its gaze still feels so heavy.

———

“Here we are,” Grian says as they touch down at their destination. “This is the Empires Christmas Village.”

Grian catches an odd motion ripple over Three’s skin, but it passes too quickly for him to make out any detail. “Are the players of Empires also on this server?” it asks.

“Well, not anymore. We had a crossover event where they came over to visit.” Grian gestures at the houses that ring the snowy basin. “They built this village while they were here, and I figured, hey, since it worked for the last otherworldly visitors...”

He leads them along the path around the Christmas tree, only for Three to come to a sudden stop. Grian follows its gaze to the scene on the hillside above, where various Hermits and Emperors mingle and play in the snow.

“It’s all posable armor stands,” he explains. “Do you have ZombieCleo on your Hermitcraft?”

“I know Cleo, yes,” Three says, “and I recognize their work.” It climbs up the hill towards the statues in the back corner of the scene, where it then crouches down to be level with their miniaturized faces.

Grian follows, bemused. He squints at the statues, trying to look at them with fresh eyes. Joe and Jimmy’s tiny heads are tilted towards each other in a facsimile of conversation, and they share cocoa and cookies with bright, relaxed smiles. It’s cute, Grian thinks, but he can’t see why anyone who already knows Cleo would be so fascinated. Maybe Three is just an armor stand fan?

“She’s very good at what she does,” Grian says, mostly to fill the silence. “It is a bit uncanny though, the way the heads still look exactly like the Players she got them from.”

Three does not look away from Jimmy’s face.

“Uncanny,” it murmurs. “Agreed.”

———

After the initial hiccup of getting it settled, Three proves to be a shockingly elusive guest. Grian does not encounter it again until several days later, when he happens upon it in his basement lab, writing a message for Grumbot Prime.

“Checking on the Rift?” he asks.

Three shakes its head, but otherwise continues to write. “Only initially,” it says. “Now Grumbot is telling me about himself.”

Grian blinks. “Have you not seen Grumbot before? I thought you said you knew me?” His eyes widen as a horrifying scenario dawns on him. “Wait. Do you not have a Mumbo?”

This makes Three fix him with a sharp look. “Of course I have a Mumbo,” it says.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Grian sighs. “But then, if Mumbo and I are both there, how is there not a Grumbot?”

Three’s head tilts curiously. “Is it a given that if you and Mumbo exist together, the two of you will create a child?”

“Well, obviously.”

“I see,” Three says. “Perhaps for the best, then, that you never met. You are a terribly neglectful parent.”

Grian sputters. “I— Look, Grumbot can take care of himself just fine! It’s just, when you make a lovable robot son with your best friend, and then later you get stuck with an alternate version of your robot son who doesn’t like you very much, it doesn’t make for the best conversation!”

Grian catches that strange ripple along Three’s skin again, only now he realizes it’s not skin at all; it’s feathers, bristling and flaring with some unknown agitation.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” it says flatly, and before Grian can respond, it equips its borrowed elytra and rockets off, leaving Grian to blankly stare after it.

“Hang on!” he shouts. “What do you mean, Mumbo and I never met?”

———

“Can I ask you a weird question?” Grian asks.

“Sure,” Mumbo sighs, resigned. “Not like this build was getting done anyway.”

“What would you be doing if we never met?”

Mumbo frowns, considering. “Huh. I guess I’d still be on Hermitcraft, but— gosh. I can’t imagine what it’d be like, not ever knowing you.”

“See, that’s what I thought!” Grian says.

“A lot more productive, I bet.”

Grian laughs. “You know you need me distracting you from time to time.”

“Unfortunately,” Mumbo sighs. “Go on then. Any other existential questions while you’re here?”

Grian fidgets, thinking back on Three’s ominous hints. “If I were to disappear one day,” he asks, awkward and tentative, “what would you remember me by?”

Mumbo raises his eyebrows. “Wow, really pulling out the big guns.” He taps his chin thoughtfully. “Probably all the trouble you’ve caused, if I’m honest.”

“Hey!” Grian elbows him in the ribs. “I’m being heartfelt and vulnerable here!”

“Ow— No, I’m serious!” Mumbo says. “I mean, when I think ‘Grian’, I remember things like— like chickens in my message system, or breaking Sahara with a potato. All the different tag shenanigans. Your ridiculous death games. The way you’ll have an idea, and then suddenly half the server is having a grand time covering Doc’s perimeter in dirt.” He nods. “Yeah, that’s what I’d remember. You, pulling people together.”

Grian’s chest blooms with warmth. It’s really miraculous, he thinks, the way Mumbo so often melts his doubts away. “Aww!” he croons, dramatically throwing his arms around Mumbo’s waist. “You do like me!”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t let it get to your head.”

(As the conversation shifts to playful banter, Grian feels a prickle on the back of his neck fade, as if a pair of watching eyes chose that moment to look away.)

———

“Alright,” Grian says the next time he encounters Three, “I’ve decided I want to know. What happened to me in your universe?”

He knows enough now to spot the way Three’s feathers shift in response. “Are you certain?” it asks. “It is, as you’ve surmised, not pleasant.”

Grian shrugs. “Better to know than not? Especially if it’s something I can avoid.”

Three shakes its head. “I doubt it will be a concern for you,” it says. “Grumbot tells me you survived your time with the Watchers, and that they are no longer an active threat.”

This draws Grian up short. “How does Grumbot even know about— Right.” He sighs in annoyance. “Omniscient interdimensional hivemind. Just giving out my backstory to total strangers. Great.” He rubs his temples. Even now that he’s reached a sort of tentative peace with them, the Watchers still aren’t his favorite subject in the world. He much prefers to ignore them whenever possible.

“So,” he says, “I suppose that means in your universe they killed me instead of just, er.” He fidgets awkwardly with the hem of his sweater. “Taking me in and changing me, I guess? Is that it?”

Three visibly hesitates. “Yes,” it says slowly, “and no.” It squares its shoulders. “Perhaps it will be simpler to show you.”

And then it removes its mask.

Grian’s jaw slackens in shock. The hair is longer, the feathers that mimic skin are paler, and the eyes are squeezed firmly shut, but—

“You’re...me?” he stammers out. “I— How are you me?”

He sees Three’s mouth twist in a grimace before the mask is quickly replaced. “If I have learned anything from my time in this universe,” it says, “it is that I most definitively am not.”

Grian’s stomach feels cold. He swallows. “Explain.”

And Three does.

———

Grian feels himself trembling.

“After I left the Watchers,” he says, “I had to try very hard to remember that just because they changed me, it didn’t make me a different person. Even now, some days I forget.” He clenches his shaking hands into fists. “And you’re telling me there’s a world out there where I’m perfectly happy not being me at all?”

Three’s feathers flare. “I am not you,” it insists. “I had to try very hard to learn to become a person who was myself, and then had to try very hard again to remain that person, even when others wanted me to be you. Even now, when I sometimes suspect they would still prefer I was you.”

“Are you sure you’re not?” Grian asks, desperate. “I’m not in there at all?”

“I have been told we share similarities,” Three says, “but, meeting you, I have observed far more differences. You lack the commitment to complete projects—”

Grian sputters. “Hey!”

“—you avoid responsibility whenever possible—”

“Okay, that’s just—”

“—and, you have the ability to move people, in a way that I cannot fathom,” Three says. “I am glad that a world exists in which you are alive, and where your friends do not have to miss you. I understand more, now, why they would. But I am more certain than ever that I am not you, and that I do not want to be.”

Grian can almost envision his own face behind Three’s mask, and the resolute expression he would be wearing in its place.

He takes a shaky breath.

“It’s a bit unfair,” he says. “You spent this whole time learning things about me, while I know almost nothing about you.” He smiles tentatively. “Tell me about yourself?”

Three’s shoulders relax. “What would you like to know?”

———

The next day, the Rift reopens.

“Sure you don’t want to stay longer?” Grian jokes weakly. “You could build the interior to my base.”

Even with the mask, the look Three gives him feels scathing. “Far be it for me to diminish your lack of hard work,” it says.

“Ouch!” Grian laughs. “Probably for the best anyway. I, ah, imagine it’s probably been weird for you, being here, and you’ll want to be getting home.”

Three takes a moment to dutifully deposit all of its borrowed and scavenged items into an empty shulker box. Only when it’s done does it look up at Grian to respond.

“It was good,” it says, “to meet you. I had thought before, based on the way others remembered you, that I might have liked to be your friend. You are not quite what I expected, but I am glad, I think, to have had the chance to learn that.”

Grian’s smile wavers.

He considers being honest, considers saying, I can’t begrudge you who you’ve chosen to be, but all I can think about when I see you is the idea of being hollowed out so thoroughly that irrevocably that the only thing that’s left is a stranger walking around in my skin. You’re my worst case scenario, you’re everything I was scared I might become, and now I have to live with the knowledge that somewhere out there, in some other world, you’re real, and I don’t know what to do about that except add it to the list of things that keep me up at night.

Instead, he nods and says, “It was good to meet you too.”

She can feel her organs starting to shut down, and her breath leaves her in a weak, rasping whimper. I’m going to die, Pearl thinks, terrified and miserable.

And then, something long and thin is shoved into her mouth, almost choking her with the way it hits the back of her throat. Blindly, she bites down.

Ligaments tear beneath her teeth, and the rusty tang of blood bursts in her mouth and drips from her lips. Her molars crunch down on hard bone and somehow gnaw straight through it, grinding it down just as easily as the surrounding flesh. Maybe if she were in her right mind, she’d find it strange; as it is, she can’t think of anything besides desperate chewing.

All in all, it’s barely more than a couple swallows, even with the normally indigestible bone and keratin included, but somehow, just that much is enough to actually count for something, enough keep her heart beating and bring the world back into focus.

From beside her, she hears ragged breathing. When she looks over, she finds Scott, his back turned away from her, shoulders hunched.

“Lapis!” she hears Cleo shout. “Lapis is food!”

“Got it,” Scott replies. He turns back towards her, several pieces of lapis lazuli retrieved from his inventory and at the ready. “Pearl, eat this,” he insists, lifting one of the chunks for her to take.

The hand he uses is wrapped messily in a wool bandage. Pearl can see blood beginning to soak through it, in the gap where a left index finger ought to be.

Her eyes go wide. She opens her mouth to speak, but is interrupted by Scott pushing the lapis between her lips.

The taste is— well, it tastes like any ordinary hunk of rock tends to taste. But somehow when she bites down, her teeth don’t crack against the surface like they ordinarily might, and she can feel the saliva that’s gathered in her mouth softening it further, to the point where the hard mineral feels chalky in her mouth. It doesn’t take much effort at all to swallow it down.

The horrible ache in her belly finally, finally begins to subside, and she just about sobs with relief. She snatches the rest of the lapis from Scott and scarfs it down until she feels beautifully, blessedly full.

Afterwards, Pearl stares up at Scott, who has gotten back to his feet and is offering her a hand (the whole one, that is: the bandaged one hangs limply by his side) to hers.

She takes it.

“You saved my life,” she says, and the amount of feeling in that simple statement of fact is overwhelming. Gratitude, of course, and no small amount of wonder as well, alongside utter bafflement, and an old, aching bitterness from seasons past that makes her shiver with the memory of frostbite.

Scott says nothing, choosing instead to respond to something BigB is calling out about eating sticks.

(Later, Scott will wave off Joel’s questions about the missing finger and will claim he had a bad encounter with a baby zombie.)

(Pearl grinds her teeth and remembers the grit of meat and bone between them. The longing, she thinks, feels a lot like hunger.)

——————

Scott strips himself bare of armor and kneels in the shallow pool in the center of their storage room. He looks up at her, collected as ever as he waits to die.

Pearl looks down at his hands, folded patiently in front of him. The missing finger is long since regrown; between the regeneration they’d gained from various wild cards and the natural effect of respawn, the wound was never going to stick around for long.

She reaches down to grab the offending appendage, then makes Scott poke himself in the face.

“Ow!” He tugs his hand from her grip. “What was that for? Is your plan to just bother me to death?”

“We never got a chance to talk about it,” Pearl says.

Scott blinks. Pearl sees him fidget and rub at the knuckle where she knows she sank her teeth. “What, that?” He shrugs. “What is there to talk about? I wasn’t going to let you just starve to death.”

Pearl scoffs. “So what, you decide the best thing to do is shove a finger down my throat?”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it? At least it bought enough time to get you some real food.” Scott folds his arms. The finger that he fed her taps impatiently. “I don’t see why you’re so upset about it. It was the best choice at the time for keeping you alive.”

“The best choice, eh?” Pearl grins, wry and full of teeth. “Just like this right here is the best choice now? I take your life, it gets the target off your back, and you never have to worry about me betraying you again?”

Scott smiles back. “Exactly! See, you get it.”

And Pearl...doesn’t know what to say to that.

She wants to say that he always does this, and that giving away pieces of himself to the people he loves means nothing if he’s just going to frame it all in bargains and logic.

She wants to ask if it would kill him to just say that he cares for once.

She wants to tell him that she wishes it’d left a scar, so everyone could see that she marked him the same way he’s marked her forever.

Most of all, she thinks: I keep remembering how it felt, how in that moment your stupid finger was the best thing I’d ever tasted, and now every time my stomach rumbles a part of me wants to take a bite out of you, just tear a chunk out of the soft part of your arm, or rip out your throat and watch you choke on your own blood, or pop out one of your eyes to see how it bursts in my mouth. Maybe then, you’d be scared. Maybe then, you’d have to look at me like I fucking matter to you.

Instead, she empties a bucket of pufferfish into the water.