Chapter Text
The wounds are shallow and they don’t have anything to bandage them with. Scar offers to use his shirt, with a grin, and Grian calls him an idiot.
He looks for something to use as a rope, to tie his hands together, but doesn’t find anything. When they get into a thicker part of the woods maybe he’ll find some vines.
He doesn’t have a sword, so that’s not a problem. Scar has a sword, though, and Grian can imagine himself, lost in his mind, stealing through the night to snatch Scar’s sword from his hand and strike him in his sleep. But it’s better that Scar has a sword to defend himself, because he knows that Scar would lose in hand-to-hand combat. All he can do is hope that Scar would actually use the sword if he needed to, and not just let Grian kill him.
After Grian washes the blood away with lake water, they finish their breakfast of berries and start walking again. Grian expected Scar to at least question their destination, after all it’s not based on anything but a strange vision Grian half-remembers seeing. He should be asking why they’re wandering through the desert at all when they should be killing each other instead, to finally end the game.
But he remembers that the first time around, Scar had never wanted to fight. It was Grian who had listened to the ghosts, whispering in his ear, Grian who had built the ring of cactus, and Scar had tried to distract him from it with boat rides . But Grian had been so single-minded on just getting out, on going to sleep, and he hadn’t listened at all.
Either way it’s not something he’s going to bring up, if Scar’s not going to question it. He’s happy to just walk in silence for now. The rhythm of walking numbs his mind like a balm over the bad feelings that church beneath it. The only feeling that can’t be numbed is the itch. Sometimes it lessens, but it’s never gone. He finds his talons curling into a tight fist without realizing, and sometimes he catches himself looking at Scar’s weak points and imagining the best ways to take advantage of them. He’s sure that these slip-ups will just get worse with time. He really needs those vines.
“Hey Scar?” he breaks the silence, hoping that it’ll help distract him from the itching, but he’s also genuinely wondering. “What were you humming earlier?”
“Hm? Humming?” Scar’s not looking at him, focusing on the stick that he just picked up to use as a cane. He told Grian before that his legs get tired sometimes. That’s fine, Grian doesn’t mind the slower pace at all, he’s already tired too. “When was I humming?”
“When you came back from getting the berries. You were humming something and I almost thought I recognized it.”
Scar’s eyes flick over to him now. “Recognized it? Like—a memory?”
Grian nods. “Do you know what it was?”
“Well I—” Scar stops. “Well, I thought I knew it, but now I can’t remember. Damn, it was on the tip of my tongue just now. But that’s what it’s always like with memories. You always think that something will come back to you, but it never does.”
“Yeah, ‘spose not. I don’t know what it was either. Worth a try though.”
“Do you think it was from a past life or something?”
Grian kicks a pebble into the sand. “Maybe,” he says, for Scar’s sake. Some of the others—Jimmy and Scott, most notably—had been sort of obsessed with this idea of past lives. As if there had been something before they all woke up here. But Grian doesn’t see it as waking up. There was one moment when all fourteen stood in a circle at spawn, at the start of the game, and there was a moment before that when none of them existed at all. That’s what he thinks, but he doesn’t say that to Scar. Believing that there was a past life—one that they might return to after they die—must be easier for Scar, and he doesn’t want to take that away from him.
For Grian, it’s easier to think that after he dies there is nothing. He doesn’t really feel like he wants to be alive—it’s not worth much. If sleeping is similar to what death feels like, then he’ll take that. Death isn’t something he deserves to be afraid of after he tried so hard to die, anyway.
“I’d like a life where there’s music. Not just from the music discs, but songs with words in them. I could make one up, I guess, but I don’t think I’d be very good at it. That sounds like something you’d be better at.”
Grian squeezes his eyes shut. “Well, in our next life, I bet there’ll be plenty of music for you.”
Music for Scar, and for him, sweet silence, like melting honey. That’s all he’d want.
The path through the woods ends and they come out into the desert.
They’ve ended up bypassing a lot of what’s familiar. Grian didn’t exactly want to revisit the ruins of their home, or Pizza’s grave—he would feel his sins curling around his neck if he saw it.
He took them on a longer route through the woods and now they’ve come out onto a part of the desert that’s unfamiliar. No one ever came over here. It’s possible no one has ever even seen this place before.
It’s not too interesting. Barren sand dunes that stretch as far as the eye can see, and a few patches of dry desert grass but nothing else to speak of. It’s definitely not the best place to hike through and he’s sure food will become a problem. He probably should have stocked up beforehand but—if he dies here he can just wake up and start again, right?
The thought makes him want to sink into the sand. No, there’s got to be a better way.
“See any rabbits, Scar?” he asks, after they’ve been walking for a little while. Scar’s been humming that tune to himself again, but he stops now.
“Nope, just a whole lotta sand. Hey, Etho told me once that there’s juice inside of cactuses. He said you can just crack one open and drink from it! Wanna try that?”
“I wouldn’t put much faith in whatever Etho told you,” Grian says dryly. But he files that information away for later in case they get really desperate.
“Yeah I know he wasn’t the nicest guy but come on! It’s worth a shot. Okay, you stay here and I’ll try it.”
It’s no use fighting with Scar—the argument will just go in circles—so Grian stands aside while Scar has a fight with a cactus. And suddenly there’s a muffled “ow!” and the sight of blood in the corner of Grian’s eye, and his mind goes blank, out of his control.
There was blood in a ring of cactus. There was red, in Scar’s eyes, and red on the ground, and Grian sees red. Everything tangles together, everything is distorted and confusing.
There was blood in a ring of cactus. There was his heart pounding in his ears. There was the first impact of his fist. He remembers he kept apologizing. He remembers that he didn’t want to do it. But who fucking cares? How does that fucking matter?
There is blood on his knuckles, blood that roars in his ears. There is the impact of his fist, too many times to count. And then a blinding pain in the side of his head. Everything flips over, turning in dizzying circles. Suddenly he’s lying in the sand.
It hurts so much that he can’t move, much less open his eyes, and he doesn’t know how long that lasts until the pain starts to slowly subside. He blinks against the light as he comes back to himself. He’s lying on the ground with his face half in the sand. He looks up to see Scar crouching over him. His face looks bruised up, and when he notices that Grian’s looking at him, he gives him a nervous grin.
“Hey birdy. How many fingers am I holding up?”
“...three,” Grian mumbles, and ends up with a mouthful of sand. He grimaces and closes his eyes again. Someone needs to turn down the sun. “What the hell did I do.”
“You won’t like hearing it.”
“Just tell me.”
“Okay. Well. I was getting the cactus, and you kinda came up behind me, and started punching me. So I knocked you out with the flat end of my sword. And I’m really sorry.”
“Oh.” Grian knows that this is terrible, maybe the worst thing that’s happened so far, but… his head hurts too much to really think about it. “Okay,” he says.
“And the worst part about all of this is that cactuses don’t even have juice.”
Grian smiles a little. He would try to laugh, but it would probably hurt. “Told you so. You shouldn’t trust Etho. You should only trust me.”
“Okay, Mr Know-it-all. I trust you.”
Grian looks up at Scar’s smile, and it’s too confusing to wonder why Scar would ever say that after what he says just happened, so he ignores it. “Got any food?” he asks. He’s down to two hearts. If he could eat something, he would start to heal, and maybe this pounding headache would go away.
“No. You?”
“No.”
He tries to think over a solution. Scar can’t leave him to go hunt for food, because Grian would surely get killed by a spider or something, having no way to defend himself.
After a minute, Scar speaks up excitedly. “What if I just carry you?”
Grian scoffs. “Carry me?”
“Well yeah, or are you really gonna act like you can walk right now?”
Grian wants to argue, but he’s sure if he tried to stand he would just faceplant and embarrass himself. Besides, the fear of respawning is enough to make him agree with whatever Scar would offer. “Fine, let’s do it.”
There’s nothing tall around for Grian to climb up on, which would make this a lot easier, so instead Scar has to crouch down while Grian tries to climb onto his back. Any attempt to move makes his head pound even worse, but he does it, and closes his eyes as Scar starts to walk.
It doesn’t last long before Scar stops, probably to avoid the burning heat that comes around the middle of the day, and probably because his legs are already getting tired, having Grian on his back. “Didn’t see any food,” he says, apologetically. He crouches down to let Grian slide to the ground, where he lays there, staring up at the sky, feeling half-awake.
Scar had stopped near a desert well, so they huddle in the shade and wait for the blistering desert heat to pass. Grian lays down with his arm over his eyes because the sun is really much too bright. At some point, he vaguely feels Scar’s hands, lifting his head and setting something underneath—probably his shirt—for a pillow.
A rabbit comes over near the well. Scar murmurs a quick, “Wait here”, and goes out to catch it. He chases it around in circles, so stupid really, why doesn’t he just set a trap? Or why doesn’t he craft a bow?
He catches the thing with his hands and wrings its neck. He builds a fire and cooks it. He rips off little pieces and hands them to Grian, who is still lying there in the sand. He does all of this for him.
Doesn’t he know that he will be safer if Grian doesn’t eat? Doesn’t he know that he can’t trust Grian, because no matter how many times he apologizes and no matter how much he means it, he’s always lying, and he’ll always hurt him?
No, he clearly doesn’t—or just doesn’t care. He presses strips of rabbit meat into Grian’s hands. He sits there and watches as Grian’s hearts slowly go up by halves. The energy starts returning to him. Grian pushes Scar’s hand away.
“No, stop.” He turns his face away, he covers his eyes. It’s so much worse now, he thinks about what he did and he feels sick. He’s so sick. He could throw up, maybe, would that bring down his hunger? He could stab himself with that sword. He could just bleed to death on the ground.
He could wake up again, in that dirt room, and instantly kill himself again. That way Scar wouldn’t have to die. And then, once he woke up, he could do it again, and again, forever. He could.
Scar presses the rabbit meat into his hand, again. Grian takes it. His hands are shaking.
“We need something to tie my hands with,” he says. “So I can’t hurt you.”
“Okay,” Scar says. Grian looks at him.
His face is bruised. Grian can see each mark. He hit him on his nose and on his jaw. He hit him in a ring of cactus, until blood stained the sand, until he was unrecognizable, he—
He looks away, feeling frustrated and nauseous. He drops the rabbit meat and presses his hands over his eyes again.
"Please eat, at least before we start walking again," Scar says. He sounds exhausted, and Grian's heart twists with painful guilt. It's too much, he doesn't know what to do when he feels like this, he doesn't know what to do at all.
"Grian—"
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm really sorry. I promise I didn't mean to do that. I would never mean to hurt you—"
He stops. He's such a liar. His words are poisonous. He stops.
"I know."
"I'm sorry."
"I know. I forgive you."
Grian can't acknowledge that. Scar doesn't know what he's saying. He would never say that if—
"I promise," Scar says.
Grian makes an unhappy sound, and closes his eyes. The feelings are too much to sort through just then and he is tired. They settle over him, unbearably heavy, and just weigh him down.
He doesn’t fall asleep, the headache is still too bad for that. He lays there, drowsily, eventually turning over to press his face against Scar's knee. It's nice, it's not too warm. If he doesn't move a muscle then it doesn't hurt too bad and he can drift on the edge of sleep and not have to think, to feel, anything.
Distantly he feels Scar's hand start to card through his hair, gently, carefully, like he's precious, like glass that must be handled gently, like someone that needs to be protected, cared for.
Something cracks, a little bit, he’s too tired to really think, much less feel, but he does anyway. He thinks that this isn't right, that he’s sick and Scar shouldn’t touch him. He feels dirty, like his hands are soaked through in blood.
His head hurts. He presses his forehead against Scar's knee, and his eyes water, and it's painfully hot. He sniffs, and then he starts crying. And it's wrong. It's wrong and terrible for him to cry. He doesn't deserve to, not in front of Scar.
He sobs, and curls his talons against Scar's leg, curling in on himself.
He's sure Scar must have already noticed he was crying, but maybe that touch was like a signal, like permission, because instantly Scar is gathering him up, a hand on his elbow, one on his waist, pulling him closer. Grian is made of liquid that slips through his fingers, he keeps sliding down, his head falls against Scar's belly and his body is a dead weight across Scar's legs.
Scar holds him with his arms around him in a loose hug, humming softly. He doesn't say anything. He keeps hugging him though. He keeps carding his fingers through his hair.
It's nice, it's not too warm.