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It always goes like this:
Scar falls.
Grian doesn’t catch him.
It always goes like this:
Grian falls.
No one is there to catch him.
It goes like this: Grian shouldn’t trust Scar.
The heat of the desert day doesn’t leave when the sun sinks behind Monopoly Mountain; it lingers in Grian’s cheeks, in his bones, in the muscles and joints of his arms and wings, making him shiver and shake even as he burned.
It didn’t seem fair - catching a fever in the desert. Shouldn’t the heat burn it out of him?
There’s a deeper frustration lurking there, one that has to do with pinioned wings and Player flesh and being bound and trapped, but the practical reality before Grian is that he’s a green name alone with a red, and now he’s weak.
Weaker.
And Scar is watching him.
(He could hurt you.
Martyn had offered Grian his hand, his face open, his salesman’s persona discarded.)
Red eyes glint in the glow of the torchlight; Scar’s brow is furrowed in comical concentration on the pile of sticks and feathers before him, nominally making and fletching arrows, but he keeps glancing up and across the room.
This man is going to be the death of me.
Grian sniffles miserably, and shifts, trying to force himself to focus on the gunpowder and paper before him. TNT was delicate work; cut a fuse too short, and he would blow himself up instead of their enemies.
Scar’s enemies.
Scratch that, it would probably be Scar blowing himself up.
Grian scrubs his eyes with the back of his hand, trying to make the tangle of ropes dancing in his vision resolve back into his neatly-arranged rows, trying to soothe away the live-wire pain cutting through his head, trying to ignore the way Scar was looking at him.
It really was an accident, what happened to Scar; but everything since -
There was something about Scar, the fish-hook cleverness behind his easy smile, the way he wove a lie, the way he bent the server to his whim, the way he wanted . It fed the hungry parts of Grian’s soul, the code close-stitched to the Player he had once been, that liked nothing better than to bask in moments of conflagration.
The part that liked to Watch.
The thought is a lightning rod to the ache behind Grian’s eyes; he presses a hand to his temples with gritted teeth.
When he finally can take his hand away, he catches those red eyes on him. Again.
“Scar,” Grian says. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you manners?”
“Oh, lots. Any number of them,” Scar says, instantly all smiles. “Social graces are my best weapon.” He twirls a half-made arrow between his fingers, only to promptly knick himself on its point. “Ow.”
Grian snorts. “Says the man who won’t wear a shirt.”
“It’s part of my charm,” Scar says, absolutely unflustered. “That’s a social grace, Grian.”
“Use your social graces, then, and stop staring at me.”
Scar opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, and then closes it, and tips his head instead, doing his best impression of a kicked dog.
The next handful of minutes are full of significant silence. Scar is only making the most cursory efforts at his arrows; mostly, he’s still watching Grian.
“Scar.” Grian pointedly does not look up from the half-tied bundle of TNT. Someone had to stay focused on keeping them alive, after all. “What do you want?” The knots and loops of the bundle swim in his vision; he blinks, wiping sweat from his brow. The scrape of sand against his fever-sensitive skin is just this side of tolerable.
Sand. Useful, but irritating.
More jumbled thoughts crash around in his head; Scar at the edge of that damn ravine; protocol so that Scar wouldn’t lose his third life to either of their carelessness; a vague notion about sand and creeper-saltpeter and places hostile to life.
And then, as if Grian has lost a moment, Scar is in his space, kneeling in front of him. Grian hadn’t even heard him stand, which was impossible. Scar had probably never been stealthy in his life.
“Grian,” Scar is saying. “You’re not looking so good.” He’s so close; close enough Grian can smell the salt-leather-gunpowder scent that clings to him, close enough he could trace the lines of the scars on his chest.
“I know,” Grian snaps, just as Scar reaches out a hand. Grian flinches, and and the knot slips in his hands, the half-wrapped bundle of explosives falling into a useless disarray. “ Scar -!”
“Sorry!” Scar has the decency to look chastened. “I was only-”
All of a sudden, Grian realizes he’s wedged himself back against the corner of the room, as far away from Scar as he could, back to the wall to see all points of exit.
Scar is very still for a moment. “Grian,” he says. “We’re friends, remember?”
Friends. Grian nods.
Then, Scar lifts his hand; every Green instinct crawling under Grian’s skin screams for him to flee. “May I?”
There’s a strange hitch in his voice, and with a start Grian realizes Scar is shaking. His smile is intact, but there’s something cautious in his eyes.
(Scar’s hands had been shaking underneath the red and purple petals of his peace offering; he’d gathered the flowers so fast that the shock of respawn had still been resounding through him, Grian had reasoned.)
Grian swallows, and then coughs. “Sure.” The word comes out an undignified rasp. He forces himself to relax, to let his feathers lay flat.
This is the man whose first thought upon becoming Red was, can we still be friends?
And Grian knows something about defying destructive impulses.
Scar’s fingers are cool against Grian’s skin.
He tuts. “Grian .” There are more words, something about dehydration, and then there’s something cool and cold held up to his lips. Scar’s only parroting back what Grian shouted at him over the half-built walls of Monopoly Mountain, half-desperate to convince Scar to put some kind of sun covering on.
Honestly, he hardly trusts Scar to take care of himself; but he lets Scar slip a hand under his arms, and carry him back to the single bed. He lets Scar lift a cup to his lips, lets the cool liquid run down his throat without thinking of poison or potions; Scar’s scarred hands brush sand from his hair and wings as Grian drinks.
Scar’s hands are large, but surprisingly dexterous for a man who seemed to be forever fumbling things. He gets the rhythm of the movement quickly, gently carding and smoothing the feathers back into place, plucking gently at the ones loose enough to molt.
“Your wings-“ Scar begins.
“They’re useless,” Grian says, wishing Scar would be quiet for two seconds and keep doing what he was doing with his hands.
“Useless?”
“I can’t fly.” Grian’s tone dares Scar to ask further questions. Or you never would have fallen.
“I had guessed,” Scar says, very softly, and Grian doesn’t know if the ache in his throat is prompting him to strangle Scar or to give in to the sandpaper-pain and weep.
There’s a musing edge to Scar’s voice as he runs a hand down the length of Grian’s wings. Very gently, he tugs a loose primary free, and then his hands leave Grian’s wings.
“Scar-“ Grian lifts his head, a reprimand about leaving things half-finished on his lips.
Scar is turning over the feather in his hands, watching how its sheen caught the candlelight. The red of its sheen catches in his eyes, red reflected in red, and when he grins, it shows every inch of his canines.
The shiver that runs through Grian starts somewhere just behind his ribs, and feels nothing like a chill.
“Grian,” Scar says, picking up one of his half-made arrows. “I have ideas .”
(Three lifetimes ago, Scar came back gray and deathlike, fresh-cut flowers held gently in outstretched hands.)
(Two lifetimes ago, Grian reached into the heart of Scar’s code and twisted, to prove he could.)
(One lifetime ago, Grian said the world is kind, and reknit the code of the world so he could stay. And Scar still fell.)
(This lifetime-)
Scar is falling.
(again)
And Grian is reaching.
(again)
This time, Scar saves himself.
Hours later, Grian’s whole body is still vibrating from the adrenaline; Scar’s or his own, he can’t tell where one sensation ends and the next begins. It’s a strange feeling, the pulse of someone else’s fear in his throat; he tries not to think which of his own feelings are strong enough to carry through to Scar’s body.
(Tries not to think of Scar feeling the phantom ache of unused wings; the deja-vouz itch of being server-bound; the hole at the center of Grian’s being, the hole at the center of Grian’s being, hungry and always pushing, pushing, pushing at the edges of Grian’s self control.)
(Tries not to think of Scar feeling the other things, either; the live-wire excitement sparking through Grian’s chest when he caught sight of his soulmate from the corner of his eye and expected red-eyes recognition; the relief of familiarity, when Scar lays out his tools in the way he always has; the fear simmering in his gut, ever-present, ever-watchful of the hands that had taken his life before.)
It doesn’t bear thinking about.
But on the heels of unexpected survival, thinking is all Grian can seem to do; he can’t bear any more of Scar’s triumph, nor his suspicions.
One missed step.
After all the careful calculation, all the skin-of-his-teeth scrabbling and narrow misses with the Red Lives, after the triumph of seeing Scar still whole and green, one misstep, one moment of inattention, is all it takes.
His foot meets air where he expected stone, and for one brief, dizzying moment he hasn’t quite tipped. His wings flare out, but they can’t quite catch the air.
And then he’s falling.
The trembling of his single heart is an iron taste at the back of his throat and shiver that wracks through his body, and he cannot, will not survive the impact.
Sky blurs into earth, blurs into sky, head over head over head, and all Grian can think is that this time he’s killed both of them.
The fall is mercifully short; but it doesn’t end in stone and pain.
Strong arms encircle Grian.
“Gotcha,” the familiar voice crows, and Grian can hear the grin. “My, my, it’s raining Grians today, isn’t it?”
Grian opens his eyes. “Scar?”
There’s sunlight, shining down from the crevice of the ravine. It catches green in Scar’s eyes, dancing like Greek fire. His grin is the only thing bright enough to rival that glow.
“You caught me.”
“What was I supposed to do? Let you splat?” Scar’s lips twist into a mock-pout.
“No I- Scar! How did you even- Why-“ He looks up, up the sheer cliff face to the path he had been walking so carelessly. They were blocks and blocks from home; the last he had seen Scar, he’d been back at the Red Velvet Keep, adjusting the bamboo to mud ratio in the panda enclosure; apparently, proper Jelly husbandry required very particular ratios. Apparently, this was just as crucial as making sure they weren’t hunted down and killed.
“You were following me.”
“No!” Scar says, a tad too quickly. “I’m just very perceptive.”
“Perceptive.” A strangled laugh escapes Grian’s lips. “You.”
“Are you doubting me?”
Scar’s skin is sun-warm, startlingly real against the desert-sun shades and magicians that crowd Grian’s memories. But there’s an edge to his voice, a note of guilt that Grian can’t miss.
“Yes.” Grian says. “You were following me.”
Scar chuckles, and shifts slightly, as if he’s going to set Grian down. Grian’s hands tighten on his shoulders, a bolt of fear shooting through him.
The only sign that Scar noticed is the slight hitch in his step, the shift of his arms to accommodate Grian’s weight for a longer time, and Grian relaxes, daring to hope Scar will let this one slip.
“You know, Grian, you’re clinging awfully hard for someone whose doubting me.”
Too soon.
“I’m tired.” Grian forces his voice into a whine.
“Tired?” Scar says.
“I do all the work around here, while you’re off - off chasing Jellies and doing who knows what-“
“You gotta be more careful, G.”
The rasp of fondness in his voice, the admonishment, catches something in Grian. It’s as if Scar still can’t feel the thread running between them. There’s no echo of blame, no reflexive resentment of what Grian might have cost him.
What Grian has already cost him.
But then Scar has it easy, doesn’t he? He couldn’t remember the sum total, not the lines carved in sandy walls long left to crumble, nor the inner workings of the traps that had stolen his lives, nor the stores of diamond-eyed death’s respite.
All he had to measure Grian by was-
“G?” Scar’s hand curls at the back of Grian’s neck, his fingers rubbing circles against the cluster of muscles and featherdown at his hairline.
Grian buries his face in Scar’s chest, next to the steady thump, thump, thump of his heart. He can feel it, if he closes his eyes; an itch at the back of his hand, a phantom pulse matching his, a rooted anchor.
This time they wouldn’t lose each other.
(Couldn’t lose each other.)
(Grian bore Scar’s debt gladly; this was another sort of yoke, woven by stronger hands than Scar’s.)
Bound.
Scar’s eyes glitter in the sun, vibrant and green and clear.
(For now.)
This time. This time.
This time.
Grian mouths the words like a prayer.
Scar is saying something, but Grian’s head is swimming, so he screws his eyes shut and lets the steady flesh-and-blood beat drown out the itch of magic through his veins, the hunger pains, the cavalcade of moments bleeding into this one.
“G?” Scar says. Worry’s crept into his tone; it’s familiar, familiar as the reflexive leap of Grian’s chest whenever Scar reaches for something beyond his grasp.
A hand traces Grian’s cheek. “Grian?”
Scar’s face is blurred in his vision; the twisting pattern of burns-over-lacerations as familiar as Grian’s own featherpattern.
Grian rests his head on the arch of Scar’s cheekbone, his fingers meeting the burn scars there. The kiss of his first death, and Grian’s own carelessness. Somewhere in Scar’s code, he remembered , even if the memory was taken from him.
Bound.
Another chance, but not a choice. Not luck.
Grian fumbles for words.
“You’re better at falling, now,” Grian manages, a weak attempt at humor. Good at falling, is what he should have said. Good, not better.
“I am, aren’t I?” Scar says, with a gleam in his eyes. “You thought I was a goner, admit it.”
“I thought we were goners,” Grian says.
Scar laughs. “No trust in me,” he says. “I’m heartbroken, Grian. Heartbroken.”
“Yeah, well, you’ll get trust when you earn it,” Grian says.
“Haven’t I?”
Scar catches him, pinning him with those green, green eyes.
(Scar’s eyes are red, red, red as he tosses the fragment of paper into the breeze, and watches Grian’s blood spill across the dirt.)
(Grian leans in for a kiss, steals a life.)
But this is new; this is different.
Bound.
“Yeah,” Grian says, and leans against Scar’s chest again. “I suppose you have.”