Work Text:
“I may be the boy who cried wolf, but I will not cry for you.” He wasn’t certain of this. He was on the verge of tears at any moment but he knew he couldn’t cry. He had to do this, he had to be the challenge they had to pass to continue.
And yet, despite feeling betrayed by his brothers, he considered just giving up for a second. He didn’t want to fight them, he didn’t want to have to kill them if they couldn’t beat him, but he had to.
Maybe Condi and Bizly didn’t deserve death, but Charlie did. For wrongly exiling him, for hurting him over a diamond pickaxe, for being the catalyst to him breaking down.
Charlie brought him to this. To this isolation for 200 years, to this very moment where he stood up from his throne, held his sword out, and looked his brothers dead in the eyes, demanding them to fight him.
He wouldn’t lose, for his own sake.
---
He lost. That’s fine though.
It sounds sad in a way, but Grizzly almost prefers being dead. There’s not much to do, don’t get him wrong, but it’s quiet. He simply gets to float around, smelling the poppies, enjoying the breeze through his ghostly body, and watching what his brothers are up to.
He’s been hanging around by Charlie’s cabin a lot, simply to see how Charlie is holding up. He hasn’t been able to find Condi, he thinks he might be in the Nether but last time when he attempted to go through the portal, he couldn’t enter. Maybe it was because of the sins he made there, maybe it was because Condi locked him out, but either way, he couldn’t get in.
Bizly’s been traveling, based on what he heard Bizly say when talking to him(?) (technically it was his grave, but Grizzly replied, even if Bizly couldn’t hear him). And...Charlie stayed. He didn’t really know why, but he did know that Charlie was guilty about Grizzly’s death, and about him falling.
He knows he should be holding a grudge against Charlie, he should be upset, he should be killing him as revenge, but that was feelings that alive, and fallen Grizzly had, not ghost Grizzly.
Ghost Grizzly just missed seeing his brothers be united, and he missed them too. He couldn’t hug them or hand them poppies or anything, he was just a ghost.
Grizzly remembers a few things. Charlie, Condi and Bizly arguing after they defeated the game, Condi swiftly walking away without much more than a few sentences spoken. Bizly and Charlie argued for a while, before Bizly also left. And then Charlie was alone.
He’s watched Charlie deliver gifts to the grave nearly everyday, and occasionally spotted Bizly there as well.
And then he saw Charlie’s breakdown, in the thunderstorm, and Bizly coming to take care of him. And it warmed his heart, if he even still had one of those, to see him caring for his brother, even despite everything.
Now, with the storm cleared, a few weeks past, he isn’t expecting someone to approach the grave today, after all, Charlie’s been keeping himself busy and decided to go into the dark oak forest for a few days.
And so he thinks.
He feels terrible for what he did, even if it was Charlie’s fault that he fell in the first place. But, even then, he hurt them all so much. And, then he told Bizly to kill him. And he can see how much it hurt Bizly, to know that he held the glock to his head, and shot him,ending his life.
But...he’s grateful that Bizly was able to kill him. Because he’d rather be dead than be alive and hurt them further. He did a lot of damage, after he fell, but he’s just glad that even though they’re all crumbling somewhat, his brothers are beginning to figure out how to communicate again.
Yet, there is a few regrets as a ghost. For one, he knows that him being dead hurts them all so much, in so many different ways, even if he thinks that him being dead is a better option.
And, him being dead caused a lot of damage, damage that even though he has faith in them, he still doesn’t know that it could be fixed. But he prays that they’ll all try.
As he sits here, alone, in the setting sun, he suddenly feels really sad. No one has visited in a few days, and...he feels lonely. He misses them, so much.
Hot tears, one of the only things he can feel on his ghostly skin, roll down his face and he sits there, back against his grave, crying.
And then he heard it.
“Grizzly? Come on, please don’t cry. I want to talk with you.”
Grizzly looks up, and sees Condi. And he’s looking right at him, an odd smile on his face. Grizzly stands up, blinking in disbelief.
“You can see me? How?”
Condi just chuckles. “I have my ways. Anyways, Grizzly, I just wanted to visit to tell you that I have something planned, and in a few months, I’ll have a nice surprise for you.”
He hugs Grizzly, somehow embracing him as if he wasn’t a ghost, but Grizzly hugs back nonetheless. It feels nice to hug someone again, but wait- a surprise?!
Condi lets go, walking away back towards the direction of the portal, and Grizzly tilts his head.
“Wait, what’s the surprise?”
“Well...okay. I can’t tell you exactly how it’ll happen, but I’ll spoil a bit of it for you…”
“I’m gonna bring you back to life!”
And then he walks away, and leaves Grizzly in the nightfall, where he finds himself dumbfounded and uncertain.