If Cleo hadn’t known Joe for longer than either of them have known Hermitcraft, she might be concerned about Joe having an argument with himself about which of his six contingency boltholes to hide the two of them in and discuss plans. She might be even more concerned about how blatantly questionable several of them are—she didn’t even know Etho had an attic, let alone one Joe knew how to break into and had hidden a bed in. However, Cleo’s known Joe since longer than either of them have known Hermitcraft, and frankly this is an impressively minimal amount of bafflingly designed anxiety-induced disaster prep for him, so she just lets him guide him into the room and sits cross-legged on the floor.
“No one ever remembers that the overworld smells different,” she says with a sigh.
“For example, here it smells like Etho’s socks,” Joe responds. “Why does he keep socks in the attic, Cleo? I still haven’t figured it out!”
Cleo snorts. “He’s a very strange little man.”
Joe shakes his head. “No, no, if he were a strange little man, I’d know. That’s what I am!”
“No, you’re a strange little puppet these days. Entirely different.”
“Oh, right.”
The two of them sit in silence for a bit after that. Cleo just breathes. They are supposed to be dead or exiled, and they are not. “Supposed to be dead but they’re not” is like, Cleo’s entire thing as a zombie, and Joe’s entire thing as a person, so that’s not what’s making Cleo’s heart race. Maybe Joe’s right; maybe it is the smell of socks. Maybe, though, it’s that the world is different colors. Everything isn’t the same awful grey and red, stretched out endlessly across the horizon.
A fuzzy puppet hand is placed on her own. Cleo looks down.
“Sorry I couldn’t talk to you the whole time. I was being hunted for sport,” Joe says.
“What? No, don’t answer that. Scar. That was obvious. Don’t know why I bothered asking.”
“Doc also kind of wanted to?” Joe says. “But as we both know, Doc’s really bad at making threats that are actually actionable. It’s sort of embarrassing. Cub, also, although Cub and I were mostly engaged in psychological warfare. It’s kind of a shame he exiled himself; who else has an appropriately complex relationship with fireworks and comic sans?”
Cleo snorts. “Never change, Joe.”
“I can’t promise that. To live is to change,” Joe says solemnly.
“Walked into that one,” Cleo says.
They both fall silent a little longer.
“The fact you called me at all, uh. Texted me. Kept me company. Fought a dragon? The drop shipping? I—”
“If my best friend goes mad from loneliness I’m not a very good friend,” Joe says.
“Still, thanks,” Cleo says. “Thank you. It was—thank you.”
“Anyone would have,” Joe says, and all at once Cleo is laughing and sobbing into their hands. Distantly, they can hear Joe panicking; he’s never been very good at other people’s emotions. It’s just—nothing, for days, and everything now, and the edges of their sleeves are still singed from Grian’s attempt to render it all pointless, and Joe’s right here, and Joe’s right here, saying:
“It’s alright, Cleo. I mean, it’s not, there’s an authoritarian government that isn’t letting me play Permitmaster. But it’s okay, for some definition of that, I think—”
“They really wouldn’t,” Cleo manages between choked breaths.
“What?” Joe says.
“You said it’s what anyone would do and they really wouldn’t,” Cleo says.
“…really?” Joe says, and he sounds so idiotically baffled and so exactly like Joe Hills, constant in Cleo’s life since before either of them knew what a Hermitcraft was, that she breaks down into sobs again. Distantly, she recognizes that this is a symptom of having ridden a horse across the nether roof for enough days in a row that her ability to emotionally regulate snapped a little. Immediately, though, she can’t stop thinking about how lucky she is.
Joe smiles, strangely kind for a puppet, and leans his entire felt body against her. He stops talking for the moment. Cleo knows it’s more that he’s probably panicking internally than out of any desire for silence, but…
She’s really, really lucky.
By some miracle stroke, they’re both left alone long enough for Cleo to pull herself together, and then, to the sound of distant fireworks and sirens, they escape Etho’s attic, laughing.
Together they really are going to be so annoyingly unstoppable.
