Chapter Text
While Jimmy was the sun, coating everyone and everything he met in a warm glow full of care and kindness, Pearl was the moon. Colder and more subtle, yet still full of a shimmering light akin to the silver that bathed the clearing and cottage shared by the two of them at night. And though he had vague memories from a fleeting dream of loving Jimmy with all his heart, Scott had to admit that it was nice to live with someone who had more than an extremely basic knowledge of exterior design.
The early days of the new game – for that’s what it was, a game - were spent laughing and joking, the two telling stories and myths that they once knew but somehow remember well into the dark hours of the night. Those were the good days; when Scott would emerge from their mine dusty but hauling useful ores to Pearl sat on the edge of the sweeping roof, carefully pruning the plant growth there.
It all changed once the shadow of the boogeyman began to loom over them at all times, and could never be the way it was again once Joel turned red in an attack on him and Pearl, almost feral in his curse-addled state. Scott could barely remember a flash of Joel with red eyes, hordes of dogs running his feet along a misty dreamscape, though it didn’t matter now – the facts were Joel was dangerous, and the instant Grian joined him the reds became just as much of a threat than the boogeyman.
(Grian also occasionally made an appearance in his dreams, contorted and cackling; Scott decided to forget those ones. Especially since he woke up screaming from them, every time.)
Pearl never changed though, stalwart and steady though the tough weeks with a smile ever present on her weathered face. She kept her strength, tugging huge logs along the forest floor with little problem. She kept her ferocity, a wild thing that ripped though the hordes that terrorised them nightly yet kept her awake at night, quivering into her sheets from a dream where somebody got too close.
Scott comforted her, told her that it could never really happen, but deep down he knew that she absolutely could tear someone apart. He had to pray that it wouldn’t be him.
They stuck together, the pair clinging onto whatever peace they could snatch in the ever-devolving state of the server through thick and thin, through everything, through the world exploding and burning around them. Still they remained, mining and growing and still cooking dinner in the same way they did every night.
“Scott?” Pearl asked one day over her bread and stew, chewing absentmindedly but with a dull look in her brilliant sapphire eyes.
“Hmm?”
His formidable friend seemed to have shrunk, her broad shoulders tucked in underneath her worn but loved navy hoodie.
“What happens when it all ends?” She sighed, leaning back into her chair dejectedly. “What happens when they all inevitably come for us and everything comes crashing down?”
He sat in silence for a couple of moments. They both knew, they had both been thinking about it. Only Pearl was brave enough to bring the looming sense of dread that had chased the pair since the very beginning up.
“We- “
The words were trapped in his throat, heavy and sharp. Nothing to do except force them out.
“We fight.” He managed to breathe.
“We fight, and pray to all that is good that we don’t die.”
Because there is no such thing as winning a game like this. You can only survive, even if it means throwing all your morals out of the window, and Scott has no real intention of doing that. If he was going to win, going to survive- he would fight, honest and fair.
He wasn’t going to tell Pearl that, though. She could easily win if he let herself go, but would never forgive herself. She also wouldn’t forgive Scott for pretty much giving up in her eyes, so he kept his mouth shut.
His words thankfully seemed to work on Pearl at that moment, his partner tucking back into her stew.
To be honest, Scott was absolutely terrified that he wouldn’t know what to do when everything went to hell. But he kept it to himself, and tore off a bit of bread.
***
Eventually Joel and Grian blew up the cottage, forcing Scott and Pearl to shelter with whoever they could, only going back to their gaping crater that was once a lush clearing to grab the more valuable items they had stored in their bunker. Well, he says ‘whoever they could’- since half the server was red they teamed up with whoever wasn’t, simple as that. And when whoever wasn’t eventually bled as red as the eyes they woke up with, the survivors decided to rid themselves of Grian and Joel.
It was a natural step, really. Even as the red coated his mind in a viscous gloop that turned everything into shadowy and sharp versions of themselves he maintained his honour, and if anyone out of the lying scoundrels here was going to win it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the two original reds.
(Was a small part of him out for petty revenge? Maybe. But again, nobody had to know that.)
Only four remained by the time their bodies lay on the grass, eyes glassy and blood leaking around from where the shafts of Scott’s arrows protruded from them. Grian had gone first, yelling out in a fit of panic.
“JOEL!”
The red name was scrambling through the forest near spawn, wings battered and jumper soaking from a gash Scott had opened up in his cheek. It was almost strange to see the usually formidable foe hunched over and stumbling, cheeks soaked with… tears?
Grian was crying.
It wasn’t fair.
Grian didn’t cry when he blew up three people for fun.
Grian didn’t cry when Scott lost his husband in the desert.
And Scott didn’t cry when his arrow finally pierced Grian’s chest, bringing the small avian crashing onto the ground in a heap.
Scott didn’t cry when his arrow flew cleanly through Joel’s throat, the mad wizard’s knees buckling and the rest of his now limp frame collapsing onto Etho’s fresh corpse. Joel’s axe was still buried in the quiet man’s chest.
And then there were four.
Pearl didn’t have it in her to tear people apart, Scott thought. It was almost poetic how the preacher dismissed his own words while the listener followed them to the very end, letting her own body be torn to pieces in the hope she would never do that to anyone else.
Three turned to two as Martyn’s body was vapourised by his own end crystal.
And only Scott remained by the time the final arrow met its mark.
Scott had survived.
Yet the sky was not pleased.
His flame burned too bright.
Another roll. Another game.