Chapter Text
Scar is losing it a little?
Maybe that's bold, but he isn't quite sure how else to put it- Drawers pulled open, empty pill bottles clacking like marbles on the floor. Begging for something to tell him who he was before he became wrong.
His pulse is steady. His temperature is normal. The sun is warm. The sky is gray. He longs for a soft place to bury his teeth. These are the unavoidable tenets of existence, and yet, Scar is wrong.
Luckily. Scar pivots from ideas as quickly as he always has. His journey outside of his train is a refreshing affair. Footbridges, distant horns, a symphony of colors and scents.
Like he always has, he finds himself drawn to Grian, like he's been waiting for him his entire life. He disappears into the unlocked window of his starter base- Inviting, well-built in a shade Scar can only call scaffolding teal, and a long needed rest. He's forgotten his cane, which he's made a worrying habit out of doing.
Scar falls asleep pretty much immediately, once he makes it onto the couch.
—
There are certain benefits to coming back from the other side. The Scar that arrives in Grian's base is one that has danced with something far greater than himself, again and again. The harvester butterfly that's freshly emerged from the cocoon.
Scar is tired in the way only a living creature can be.
"Good morning." A hand between his shoulder blades, tracing sweet little lines into his back. Scar stirs- One of the springs of the couch is jutting into some unknown part of his player model.
"'--orning," Scar says, low, and rolls his body over and onto the floor. His lip twitches upwards.
Grian looks down at him. There's no irritation in his gaze, nothing that tells Scar to leave- And if there is, then Scar has softened to it. He doesn't move, because Grian doesn't ask him to.
The way Grian looks at him, Scar realizes, eyes wide, is like pieces of him have gone missing.
"What... happened to your eyes?" Grian starts with, which isn't really polite, but neither is Scar arriving in his house like a high speed train.
To his credit, Scar blinks- sits up, takes a second to hold his eyelids open. Just to check they're still in his head and all.
Grian stares like he's grown a second head. Then, when he realizes Scar is waiting for an explanation, adds-
"They're blue." A pause. "Well, turquoise, if I was gonna get picky about it."
He frowns. "Really? I hope it isn't permanent. I'm gonna miss the green if it is."
"Oh, you'll be fine." Grian sighs, unimpressed. But something has piqued his interest, clearly, as he props his chin on his palm. There is a long moment, where it seems they're both waiting for each other to speak.
"Scar. Do you want me to help?" Grian asks more directly, finally. It's relieving and sudden, like a grand opera being drowned out with a garden hose.
"Hm!" Scar says, without any actual agreement, as one would use to comment on the weather. This seems to be the right response, he notes, as Grian presses into his space.
Grian handles him with the most touch he's given him since the desert. Grabs at him, fingers and eyes idling across valleys of flesh and lingering in every crevice. If he notices the blood caked under Scar's nails, he respects him enough not to mention it.
"What... happened?" He finally asks, leaning closer imperceptibly. And well. That's harder to answer, isn't it?
Scar doesn't mean to shudder. His muscles tense, one by one, and he feels the wings of a vex- His wings, tugging his own bones like marionette strings- tear through his back. He's paying in blood, it seems.
"Oh," Grian hisses, all at once recoiling on instinct, involuntarily- Like sticking a fork in an electrical socket and reeling from the burn. "Okay. Hm. Come here."
Instead, Scar stays still for him, and Grian approaches. His fingers twitch, his expression firms.
Grian presses two fingers to his throat. It speaks a lot to Scar's progress that he doesn't bite.
"... Okay. I can feel your pulse right here."
And that's true. The gentle pulse coming from Scar's veins is something he can't ignore, hasn't been able to for quite some time.
His breathing is audible.
“Here,” Grian says, voice heavy, “Let me see to it.” Pauses. Raised arm hovering as if he’s caught wind of some incision bigger than either of them. His resolve weakens.
“Let me try.” He closes his eyes, and Scar’s world lights on fire.
Grian unspools the outer layers of Scar’s player data like gauze on a wound. He feels the outer layer of his skin rearrange and flex, and then, nails dipping into the gaps.
This feels familiar enough. Hands where they don’t belong. The hum of a quiet, curious gaze.
Talons reach towards his chest and begin to disentangle him from within. Autumn, the residue of a past life. Grian spreads his fingers and Scar’s ribs outwards, flipping the fibers of his being and spreading them thinner. A scar, wide and dark enough to pass for the abyss. Eyes that open through him.
And the code snaps back together, like a rubber band.
When Scar heaves, a drowning man’s gasp for air, the air he breathes in is metallic, like gunpowder and smoke. Strings of light spark through the air, bright and heavy, and then shatter.
Grian falls back like he’s been shot. “I don’t understand,“ He gasps, presses his hands into his eyes so hard it makes Scar wince out loud, “—All of your lashing, burning hunger— I felt it.”
Scar, truly, does not understand either, but even he knows that's not the best thing to hear from a Watcher. He stumbles over his own body and finds himself searching to catch Grian's hands, a calling like an anesthetic.
Grian's gaze hardens on him- Not asking for an answer, but searching through the depths of memory and code. Scar reaches for him, stupidly. Kid-like. Blissful longing. His affection gets him nothing, a rock sinking into a wide lake. Yearning settles upon him like an underglaze.
"You're... so obvious with your emotion, I thought-" Grian hisses through his teeth. Rests his hands at his sides. "I don't know what I thought. Oh god. I don't know how to help you."
Scar frowns. Even Scar, naive and hopeful as he is, does not know what to do with that. It settles heavy in his throat like tar.
"I think I'm going to throw up." He says, with sudden clarity, then scrambles off to vomit in Grian's trash can.
—
"Player data has an odd way of reacting to stress,' Grian tells Scar, reaching out to steady him a bit better, and Scar must have a particularly nasty look on his face, because it makes him stall, "Er, eventually, it manifests itself physically." He shoots Scar a concerned look. "Not like I'd know. I swear, some of the Life players could start withering and avoid me for it..."
He gives him a stranger look, but huffs laughter nonetheless. He almost rolls his eyes- A braver man would've. It's not like Grian exactly leaves himself open to talk to. But Scar is dull, and a coward- Not any different than a cornered animal.
He misses how easy things used to be, before this animal took shelter in his head. He misses the Scar that joked away every problem he had, that vibrant person ready to use comedy and a winning smile to deflect against every little hint that things may not be what he said they were. If there was ever a Scar he'd like to be forever, it'd be that one.
But he isn't, and it's getting frustrating. He draws inward, all tense and angry, and seeing Grian makes him feel hollow. He can imagine it so clearly; Grian holding the scalpel, digging into his deepest parts and finding nothing to work with.
And that is what does it. Instead of Scar's world lighting on fire, this time? It explodes- Violent, scattered, fragile and volatile all in one as Grian watches the seams of Scar's self control rip apart.
"I don't want to do this anymore." Scar says, not screaming but certainly not controlled, his fingers gripping hard into Grian's couch.
"What are we doing?" He sobs, hard, "Why did we do any of this? What did it get us?"
"What-?" Grian hedges, voice as close to careful as he can be, "What are you talking about?"
"Ever since the desert," Oh, here it is, sudden rapture, Grian's eyes spiralling to look anywhere but at Scar as he blubbers, "Every time you're with me- You touch me so carefully and say 'we shouldn't be doing this'- But you still touch me!"
Grian grabs him by the wrists. "Can you stop- You're not making any sense!"
His voice warbles, chest heaving, "What am I supposed to think? I never- I don't-" Scar stutters over himself, face wet, before ending it with a frustrated shriek.
"I don't know." Grian whispers, voice cracked but still holding onto him. Scar's hands are calloused- There's blood still caked under his nails, and the tips are red, but he is otherwise unharmed. Every breath catches on these horrible, ugly sobs.
"What am I supposed to feel?" He asks, voice weakening in his throat.
"I don't know," Grian says a second time, pulling back to hold his face. Scar tries to breathe as he follows it up with, "Scar, I really don't know. I'm afraid. I know that I haven't been kind- I'm me, and you're you, and I wouldn't trust anyone else, but I don't want to make you into a slaughterhouse all over again." He's looking at him, finally, wide eyed. "I took everything from you. I can't do that again."
Grian wraps Scar up in his arms, and Scar folds against him. "Oh." He says, fond or stupefied, searching for words as he feels the wetness on his shoulder. He's never seen Grian cry.
"I get it," Scar says, rough and warbled, but finally starting to understand, "Just hold me. Please don't let me go."