this is a hermit secret santa gift for @choco-bloop
hermitcraft season 10/empires season 2 post-canon
characters: falsesymmetry, geminitay
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Gem was dredging the river’s bottom when she spotted her.
Dredging was long, boring work, only rarely interspersed with the excitement of pulling something interesting out of the muck. She would have preferred building castles or breeding sea monsters - but a girl needed to eat, after all.
Even after she saw her, it took Gem a second to realise what she was seeing.
It was False - False in those same old clothes from Empires that she hadn’t worn in over a year. She was floating on the water clutching a piece of driftwood, short hair splayed out behind her head.
“H-help,” False called. “Please…”
Without hesitation, Gem grabbed a life preserver and dove right off the side of her boat.
She paddled over to False with the preserver held under her shoulder, rope spooling out across the surface of the water behind her. “Grab on,” she ordered, taking in False’s bedraggled appearance and the exhaustion writ plan on her face. “I can help carry you, but you need to grab on.”
False coughed, weakly craning her neck to look over at Gem. “...Thank… you…”
“Hold on, I’ll get you on board.”
Clambering up, Gem quickly winched False in. She leaned in as False flopped onto the deck like a fish, coughing up seawater.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
Gem held False up while she gasped and took in air. False’s eyes met Gem’s.
She looked scared.
“G… gem?”
“It’s me.”
“...how?”
“I saw you in the water,” Gem tried to explain. “Gods, you nearly drowned there.”
“No, how… how are you here?”
“False?” Gem blinked quizzically. “I live here, don’t you remember?”
“But this-” False looked around. “This isn’t Dawn?”
“Dawn?” Gem laid her hand on False’s forehead, feeling for a fever. “False, are you okay?”
She looked over her again. Suddenly, her sodden clothes seemed horribly familiar. A white shirt, dark brown suspenders, and copper-tinted goggles.
“Aren’t you the…” False floundered for a word, “Princess… of Dawn?”
Gem’s heart fell to her heels.
She’d thought False was just a good actor - like she herself was. False seemed to nearly disappear after a while, surely just returning to Hermitcraft when she’d had enough. Right?
‘Hey false’, Gem typed out carefully, ‘where r u rn?’
“Gem?” False asked cautiously. Her eyes were shifty, suspicious. “Where are we?”
And then Gem got a reply.
‘At my base o.O’
“You’re from Empires?” She asked.
False blinked, her expression befuddled. “...Yeah?”
No no no no no no.
On Empires, False had just been a good actor. She’d had fun for a while before returning to her friends on Hermitcraft. That had been it.
Gem had seen her again, time and again. Gem had checked that she wasn’t as scared, as alone as she seemed back then.
And when the fae came-
She’d been warned, right?
Gem didn’t-
-didn’t just leave her again in a crumbling world?
“Gem? Gem? Gem!”
Gem snapped out of her spiral, woozy from hyperventilating.
“You’re…” Gem swallowed uneasily. “You’re on Hermitcraft, False.”
For a second, it suddenly seemed like False wasn’t there anymore. Like she was looking at something far more distant than the nets and barrels of fish.
And then- “I remember her.”
“...uh huh?”
“I don’t remember much,” False explained. “But- I remember her.”
Remember- oh.
“You’re friends with her, aren’t you?”
“I thought I was,” Gem admitted. Before I left you in a dying world and she told me everything was fine.
“Can we go see her?”
She wished she could pretend it didn’t matter.
“I’ll take us right there.”
As her ship traveled up the rivers, Gem could barely focus on steering. Her gaze kept creeping back to False - who seemed nervous and withdrawn, fingers clenched as if around the handle of a sword.
“I’m sorry.”
False looked up at her with surprise. “Pardon me, what?”
Gem stopped the boat and walked over to her. “I’m sorry for leaving you, back when I was the princess of Dawn.”
“It’s okay.” False shrugged. “I think Sausage was the only one who thought about me back then.”
“That’s not true! I did care. I- I just didn’t ask the right person.”
False frowned. “You asked her, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.” False looked to the sky, closing her eyes in remembrance. “I’m sorry too.”
“Wait, what are you sorry for?”
“For leaving you when the moon fell.”
Gem looked at her with wide eyes. “What? That was you?”
“It was- well, it was us,” False explained. “Both of us. We traded places, and- we both promised to you that we’d stay in that bunker. We both wanted you to feel safe, but we didn’t think it would work, so we just- we left.”
Gem’s jaw fell. “You left as well?!”
“We- wait, what do you mean ‘as well’?”
“I felt so bad for leaving you!” Gem explained. “I didn’t think the bunker would work, but I wanted you to feel safe! I tried leaving on one of my deer, and then the deer couldn’t take me so I made a portal, and-”
They just looked at each other wordlessly.
Gem was the first to crack, breaking out into giggles.
False soon followed, and if she sounded a bit panicked, there was no mention made of it.
They ended up sitting side-to-side in bedraggled clothes, letting the boat gently bob on the river’s water. It felt good, like a fresh breeze after a long rain.
“Are we even now?” False asked.
“Of course we are!”
False sighed. “I… I still have to talk to her.”
Gem looked her in the eyes. “If you need to,” she began, “then I’ll be right by your side every step of the way. You got that?”
“Thank you.”