Chapter Text
Scar and Grian are bad for each other. Scar knows it. Grian knows it. Everyone knows it. And yet the universe keeps drawing them back to each other, in some perverse imitation of true love.
Scar loves Grian. Loves him more than anything else in this thrice-doomed world. He would kill for him, and he would die if Grian asked it, would look him in the eyes as the stalactite dropped and not flinch. He follows at Grian’s heels, always one step behind.
He thinks Grian loves him too. He certainly says it often enough. But Grian would not die for him.
“I’ll leave that to you,” he says instead, laughter dancing in his eyes, and Scar laughs along, ignoring the way the invisible noose tightens around his throat.
Grian is busy more often than not, leaving Scar to his own devices with no instructions other than don’t die. Scar wanders the world, meets the others, watches their easy, unfailing companionship.
“You know, you should keep an eye on Grian.” Bdubs tells him. “He plays to win.” Scar’s heart aches in his throat. I know. I’ve always known.
When he returns, Grian is still building. Scar calls him down.
“I love you,” Scar says, drawing his hands to his heart. Grian stands, back turned, shoulders rigid.
“I love you too.” Breathe in, breathe out. “But that’s not enough.”
I know. “Why?”
Grian turns, and his eye is cold and dark and terribly loving.
“Listen to me, Scar. You are a pawn. You always have been, and you always will be. This time, though, you are a pawn I cannot sacrifice. I have to hold you back, keep you safe, and it is dragging me down.” He hisses the last words through gritted teeth, fists curling into his palms. Scar can feel the sting of his nails.
“Then why keep me here? You know as well as I do that you could stick me in some little box for the rest of our days, protected.”
“Because I love you.” It is quick and casual, and that is how Scar knows he’s lying. He draws another breath, but Grian has already turned his back, dismissing him readily.
Scar leaves. What else can he do?
He dips his fingers in the snow and shivers as his fingers burn, then go numb. See me, see me, see me, something in his heart chants. He hopes that Grian spares a thought for him, even if it is only to wonder at the frozen tingle in his own fingertips. He invites the other broken pairs– is that what we are now? Broken? -- to join him, to cause a little pain to their soulmates, revenge.
When he finally pulls his hands out, the tips of his fingers are blackened like he’s smeared coal dust over them, and he can no longer feel them. He hopes, savagely, that the nerve endings are burned forever. He hopes Grian’s are too. He hopes they ruin each other, bit by bit, until Scar’s body is painted by all the mistakes they’ve made.
(I hate you, he wants to say, I hate that I love you, and I hate that I can’t kill you, and I hate that I would die for you.)
He wants to twist their red thread of fate around his limbs until it cuts off his circulation, because his heart only beats Grian, Grian, Grian.
He hopes he dies. He hopes he lives, because if he dies Grian dies, and doesn’t think he could bear it.
Grian plays to win. But Scar plays to lose.