Chapter Text
three times scar asks grian to look at the night-sky.
1.
The desert is too loud to sleep: the wind, the constant shifting and dancing of sand, the silent promise of an attack just beyond the border. The noise of temporary silence is louder than any battlefield. Knowing it’ll be just tonight. That it could be only tonight before everything falls apart when the sun comes back up.
Grian can’t sleep— he doesn’t dare to. There are things far more precious than a few meager diamonds and crops needing protecting. Things long lost in the ever-shifting dunes but persistent enough to not be forgotten. Not by Grian. Not on nights like these.
The quiet ones; the ones that deafen him, when it’s him atop their tower overlooking the sleepy glow of torches that blankets the desert in a warmth that rivals the night’s unforgiving chill. He doesn’t indulge himself in the sights: the glow of the land, the stars glittering across an untouched sky, the dusty sandstones they call a home. It’s too dangerous to turn his gaze away, to allow such distractions. Should he blink and risk losing it all.
Grian spends most nights like this. Perched atop the tower and watching until the day starts to break. And tonight, as he does most nights, Scar joins him. He sits silently beside Grian after a quiet climb up the ladder. His skin is warm next to Grian’s, despite the ashy gray hue. It’d be foolish to forget— Scar’s on his final life.
All the more reason to stay awake.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Scar says. It always is.
At least, that’s what Scar always says; Grian takes him at his word, his eyes never leaving the ring of cacti protecting their home. Grian’s long past trying to deny himself the word any longer. It may be temporary— there’s only one winner, after all. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t home. At least for now.
A finger under his chin makes his skin jump. The calloused hand guides his gaze to the night sky. “Don’t blink,” Scar warns him in a hushed tone. Then, he gasps and turns Grian’s head with a gentle prod. “There! Look.”
Grian almost misses it. A streak of light, so faint it’s nearly lost in the noisy mess of constellations. But then there’s another, and a second later, another. Flashes of shooting stars carving paths across the dark sky like they belong there— like torches in the sand.
“You gotta make a wish, G.” Scar’s hand slips from Grian’s chin. Grian forces himself not to chase after the warmth of it.
But he pauses. Because when Scar tells him to make a wish on these shooting stars, Grian can never think of anything fast enough. There’s a rush of panic, a frantic scrambling for something worthwhile to wish for. Because this one might be the last one. But before long, the star’s gone and so is Grian’s chance.
Maybe there’s nothing more he can wish for but this— their fragile here and now— so each time Scar commands it, Grian closes his eyes and pretends instead. He makes a wish-face, eyes and brows all scrunched up with concentration, until enough time passes that he could have made a wish if he had one.
And when he opens his eyes to look at Scar, he realizes Scar isn’t making a wish at all. Or if he is, he keeps his eyes open the entire time, staring at the shooting stars with the same kind of wonder with which Grian stares at him. A longing stare, one that screams just how desperate and wanting they are of the things they cannot reach.
It feels like nothing’s changed. It feels like everything’s changed. Grian, sleepless yet tired, on this roof with his own inability to admit it. And Scar next to him, with his sights set on everything bigger than himself.
Scar, with the idiotic courage to reach into the stars— and Grian, too afraid to hold what’s sitting right next to him. It feels cruel— to sit close enough that their thighs touch yet be separated by lightyears.
Grian hugs his knees to his chest and pillows his chin there. As if making himself small, a lesser target, will make any of this hurt less.
“What did you wish for?” Scar asks him without taking his eyes from the sky’s beauty.
And without taking his eyes off of Scar, Grian laughs, “Isn’t the whole point to keep it a secret? Or else it won’t come true?”
Scar hums in thought. “Oh, come on! You can tell me! I’m really good at keeping secrets.”
Grian raises an eyebrow, his smile something infectious he couldn’t wipe away even if he tried. Even if he wanted to. “Why don’t you tell me what you wished for then?”
“I wished for a good fight tomorrow,” Scar says without hesitation. He straightens his shoulders and smiles at the sky, a triumphant gesture meant for himself and the stars alone. Grian, his mere observer: a historian meant to memorize the fine lines of his face and copy down his victories as hymns.
“It could be our last,” Grian admits quietly. He could have left by now. It would have been your last night instead of ours. His bonds are broken, nothing to tie them together but the grooves the sand’s worn into their fingerprints and the shared sight of the stars in the desert sky. And even though Grian’s eyes are still green and Scar’s are red; Grian isn’t ready to let this go.
Scar’s body is warm next to his and Grian thinks that this is what understanding is like. What home can be, if broken in by the right person. A canyon carved by the river wearing away at its middle, the two different from who they were at the start, and unrecognizable if apart.
“Exactly,” Scar says. “I’d rather go out in a blaze of glory than by falling down some hole again. Or getting blown up by a creeper.”
Grian sinks further into himself, burying his face into his sleeves.
Finally, Scar peers at him, a teasing smirk on his lips. “You’re really not going to tell me what you wished for?”
“No,” Grain says. “It’s a really good one. I’ve got to keep it safe. Maybe ask me again when this is all over.”
He’ll let Scar believe it’s for superstition’s sake. That Grian’s afraid of losing precious wishes instead of afraid of conjuring them at all.
He tries to think of a few now, without the night sky or Scar’s silhouette to distract him. But he can’t. It’s desperate mutterings of don’t let me lose this buried beneath his own understanding that no amount of begging to uncaring stars will change what happens tomorrow. Nothing changes the fact that Scar’s name is red and Grian’s the one to blame. Their fate has already been drawn in the sand here, long lost beneath their footprints and the flattened foundations of their home.
There’s nothing left to do but wait. So if Grian decides to save up his wishes for Scar, it’s a secret well-kept between him and the stars.
2.
Tonight, the odds are even, as is the ground beneath their feet. Like calls to like when the game starts to wear thin. Two red names meeting beneath a full moon— or what would be had it not been for the snowy fog blanketing over the mountain’s crest. Still, Grian knows where he’s going. This little peak, nothing but a nagging reminder the entirety of this game, is impossible to miss.
Grian hauls himself over the top, feet firmly planted in the frozen soil. The hut is meager and familiar in ways that run bone-deep. But the cold up here is terrible. Grian’s not felt anything like it. Not in the empty desert, still cruel by the way of its unforgiving sun. Not in the Southlands either, not that he lives there any more.
It’s a difficult thing that drives him to the top of Magic Mountain— a stone’s throw from another familiar word, a place maybe the two of them called home. Maybe Scar hadn’t forgotten like Grian feared he had. Like Grian hoped he would.
He finds Scar outside, huddled over a chest of his belongings in the frosty lawn. He’s cloaked in deep purple fabric, his once-dark hair now sapped of all its color, leaving nothing but the starkness of snow in its wake. It deepens the angles of his face, as if he’s made from shadow itself.
Grian wonders if he looks like this too: a shell of the person who stepped out of the last game and into this one. A body buried only to crawl from the dirt changed. A red drained of everything that made him human. Grian certainly feels like it; the cold gnawing his fingers numb.
Scar doesn’t turn to face Grian as he approaches. He doesn’t need to; they both know by the tension in Scar’s shoulders that he knows what’s come for him.
“Weren’t you drowning in lives just this morning?” Grian says. “Talk about a fall from grace.”
“Mistakes were made,” Scar says. A gross understatement. Grian can’t help but chuckle, even when Scar looks at him over his shoulder with piercing red eyes. “On both sides.”
That night, there had been stars in the sky. Neither of them were quite sure where the other stood. Though Grian had laid the groundwork quickly. Fingers crossed behind his back. I’ll give it straight back. What else had Scar expected from him? Had he learned nothing from the desert? It wasn’t fair.
“Maybe if you spent more time building actual alliances instead of selling crystals and buying meaningless friendship, you wouldn’t be on death’s door,” Grian chides. Because it doesn’t have to be like this. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”
“Oh, that means so much coming from you. You’re red, too.” Scar’s face darkens under the rim of his hood. He looks older atop this mountain, with stark hair framing his ashy skin. Grian knows it doesn’t make any sense. Not much time has passed. But that hasn’t stopped it from taking its toll.
“I only started with two lives,” Grian argues. As if it matters who had more at the start. They’re in the same place in the end. Grian thinks he preferred it before, when he was green and Scar was red. When death felt more like a threat than an inevitability.
“Three if you count the one you stole from me.”
“I think apologies are meaningless at this point,” Grian says with his eyes on the frozen soil.
Nothing, not even grass, dares to grow atop a mountain as lonely and cold as this. Grian thinks maybe it suits Scar: the sharp, unforgiving cold. It makes its home in his skin, in his words, in his grin. It looks beautiful on him— in a violent way— the same way the desert had.
Extreme, harsh, lifeless. Snow settling in Grian’s hair just as the sand has after a kick of wind. Scar’s red eyes and pallid skin, drained to a near phantom beneath the sullen sky. The cold’s not too different, either, from those nights in the desert. When campfires and body heat hadn’t been enough.
Still, Grian finds himself longing to close the distance. To feel the warmth of Scar’s thigh against his as they sit upon the cold mountain and overlook the battle beneath them. Desperate for something familiar.
Scar’s fists curl at his sides and his shoulders tighten. He wants a fight. He needs it nearly as bad as Grian does; knuckles against teeth, tears, and sand-swept hair. A lick of the desert heat, if only for a moment. Any touch is better than nothing, the two of them stars burning up in each other’s destructive heat. No one to blame but themselves and each other.
“What did I do wrong?” Scar asks him, nearly pleading. “I just don’t understand.”
Grian wants to lie. He wants to tell Scar that this is his fault— that none of this would have happened if Scar just stayed away from him, stayed away from the desert. That way the sand wouldn’t be caught between their teeth and Scar’s blood staining Grian’s knuckles.
But that wasn’t true, was it?
That first death, the first step. A creeper led to Scar’s feet, green eyes fading to yellow. That had been Grian. A permanent place in the desert: Grian. A hole hollowed in his heart for Scar to fit: Grian. The sword resting in the crease of Scar’s neck, desperate for a reason to pull away. He didn’t have to stay. He could’ve left. Maybe this wouldn’t be so painful if he had.
Eyes on the starless sky, wishing Scar would ask him to make a wish, Grian tells the truth. “Nothing. You didn’t do anything.”
“But I deserve it anyway?”
There’s no proper answer for that. And if Grian’s learned anything about Scar through all of this, Scar doesn’t want one. He asks the question, and it rests in the cold silence between them. Nothing can be fixed— not tonight, not like this. Grian wants to reach for him, but keeps his hands planted firmly at his sides, over the sword sheathed on his hip.
He won’t kill Scar. He can’t. Not again.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Scar says when the silence grows too unbearable, his voice empty and fried. Like he wants to pretend too. He tilts his head back to the sky.
Beautiful certainly doesn’t seem the right word. Clouds clump together, low in the sky more like a hazy fog than anything else. So cold and dense that Grian feels he could reach above and touch them. Not a star in sight, either. Grian knows its because of the fog, but he imagines its because those desert stars had burned up already. All those lightyears away.
As if there’s no more wishes to make. That’s okay. Grian could never come up with any anyway. Better not to waste them.
3.
Their hideout smells of dirt more than anything— the wet kind that rises from the ground after a long night of rain. A small hole in the dirt above reveals the night sky and allows the cold night’s draft in. It’s far from secure, but it’s all they have. A single torch planted in the soil casts a warm glow upon them. Still it’s cold and damp, but Scar curled next to him with his head pillowed in his lap keeps him warm. Albeit slightly.
Rocks and tree roots dig into Grian’s back. He presses himself further into them. Anything to keep him awake and vigilant. He counts the loose threads on his sweater sleeve and pulls at them until they fray apart and there are more to count.
“Grian, seriously— you have to sleep.” Scar reaches for Grian’s hand and tugs.
“I can’t,” Grian says. He doesn’t need to explain why; the danger of their situation cannot be understated. The last greens. A greed hanging over their heads greater than any bounty. The others wanted their blood— nothing else— and they wouldn’t rest until they got it.
Not that Grian could blame them. It was the game, after all.
Restless, Grian pulls his hand free and continues pulling at loose threads until his left sleeve is discernibly shorter than the right. He figures it won’t matter much, anyway. They could very well be dead by morning.
Grian hates to admit more than once he’s thought about giving up— once they take their green names, maybe their hunger will be satiated. If only for a little while. It can afford them some kind of peace, something better than hiding away in a dark wet hole and counting the precious seconds with each breath. He wants something safe. For himself. For Scar.
“We’ve been running around all day,” Scar tries to reason with him, sitting up to properly to look Grian in the eye. “Even if they do find us, you won’t be able to fight.”
“I have to try.” Grian averts his eyes down to his lap. The knees of his pants are tacky with mud. His hands are pale, save for the reddened scratches to his knuckles from frantically digging. If he stares at them too long in the low torch-light, he mistakes his blood for someone else’s.
With a shaky breath, Grian shuts his eyes and balls his fists until his fingers turn white. He has to try. He’s failed so many times before. This is a chance— not the second he had never wanted, but the third he never deserved.
“Grian.” Calloused hands close over his clenched one. Scar tenderly works his fist open, slotting his rough palm against Grian’s. On instinct, Grian holds onto it. He doesn’t dare let go, not until he opens his eyes and memorizes the warmth of it and the curve of Scar’s smile.
It’s moments like this where Grian can’t forget the soulbond. With an invisible thread they’re tied, and Grian knows Scar can feel the anxious kicking of his heart, the breathless tightness of his chest. He knows and feels Grian in ways no one ever has and ever should. It’s invasive, it’s awful, it’s the only thing keeping Grian sane.
“C’mon. Lie with me for a second.” He leans in close, tugging on their intertwined hands until he manages to coax Grian into lying in the dirt with him, Grian’s head pillowed on Scar’s shoulder.
Grian can’t let himself relax. Not even with Scar next to him. He holds his own breath to better count Scar’s as they lie side by side. He coils his fists into the front of his worn sweater, trying hard not to remember what it felt like to stand on what felt like the top of the world. It’s bitter, now, to be buried beneath the earth they once stood so ignorantly on. Before they knew what the games were truly capable of.
Before Scar knew what Grian was truly capable of.
“Relax, G,” Scar whispers into his hair, then he points to the small break in the dirt above their heads. The sky is clear, stars peppering the sky like the freckles on Scar’s shoulders. “Look how pretty that is.”
“You think looking at the sky fixes everything,” Grian scolds breathlessly. “Hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t.”
“Maybe you’re just not looking at it the right way. There might not be any shooting stars, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth looking at.”
Grian tries. He really does, but all he sees is the midnight blue of the sky and the same stars that mock him each time. There’s nothing beautiful about them, there’s no wish they’d grant him because he’s built this grave for himself and he deserves to lie in it. What star would waste a wish on someone like him?
He can’t do this. He can’t breathe. A tightness seizes his chest. Grian’s fists shake as he tightens his hold on himself. He’s staring at the stars and he has nothing to give them. He has nothing to give Scar. Just a terrible night in a terrible hole, with nothing but their own death waiting for them above ground.
What was this: a third chance or a third punishment?
“Grian. Hey.” Scar’s voice sounds static through the rushing in Grian’s ears. “Did you ever play those connect-the-dot games when you were a kid? The ones that made all the fun pictures?”
Like sand slipping through his fingers, Grian grapples onto Scar’s words, onto the half-realized memory they elicit. He inhales, sharp and shaky. “With the numbers?”
“Exactly!” Scar points at the sky again, tracing an indistinguishable shape between the stars. “Constellations are kinda like that. But I don’t know any of them off the top of my head, so I like to just make them up. It’s a lot of fun when you’re bored.”
Grian thinks he’s caught Scar doing this before. Atop a mountain of sand, his chin tilted to the sky as he frames the stars between his hands with one eye closed, too focused to notice Grian watching him from the bottom of the hill.
Scar draws a new shape. “That’s a pizza slice,” he says, and Grian tries not to wince. “And… ooh! That one is a rabbit.”
Grian squints at the sky, the relentless hammering of his heart starting to settle. He hates that it’s working— that Scar can have such an effect on him. “I don’t see it.”
With a sigh, Scar drops his hand back at his side. He turns his face closer to Grian’s, his chin brushing the crown of his head. “Well then. Why don’t you tell me what you see?”
This is so stupid. Scar is so stupid. Not because he likes to lose himself in the stars and draw silly shapes in them, but because he’s here, lying with Grian: the biggest idiot of them all. His eyes burn as he studies the endless map of stars above his head, struggling to pick out the faintest of shapes among them.
“There.” Grian sniffs and points to a cluster of stars in the lower corner of the small window. With his finger, he traces a head and round body, outstretched wings, and a beak. He can only see it when he squints, with the unshed tears burning heavy in his eyes. “It’s a bird.”
Scar hums thoughtfully. Grian’s not sure if he wants to see the look on his face or not— if he’d be able to handle it.
“What kind of bird is it?” Scar asks.
Grian scoffs, the sound watery and broken. “Does it really matter? It’s just shapes and lines.”
“Of course it matters,” Scar says with a chuckle, the soft sound resonating through his entire chest and the ear Grian has pressed to it. “I gotta see your vision. Is it a parrot? A pigeon? A chicken? How else am I gonna see the whole picture?”
“A parrot then. It has its wings spread out, like it’s ready to take off.” Grian says it to appease him. Because if Scar keeps talking to him like this, he’s not sure he’ll be able to keep his tears at bay. His breath hitches as he fights for control.
“Where’s he flying to?” Scar asks.
Grian can’t answer. Instead, he turns his head into Scar’s shoulder, hiding his face in the crook of his neck. Scar holds him there, his arms wrapped around his back. It’s selfish; Grian knows as much. But he doesn’t want to watch it all happen again. He doesn’t want to be a responsible for it anymore.
“This is all my fault,” he mutters, a confession made to die with them in this hole. “I’m so sorry, Scar.”
Scar doesn’t tell Grian that it’s okay— because it isn’t, and it probably never will be. But his hand rests on the back of his head, cradling it like he’s something precious— something worth holding onto.
The steady beating of Scar’s heart beneath his ear does little for his resolve. He’s forced to listen to it, to memorize it, to learn how to say goodbye to it. Because even with the subtle tug of the soulbond between them, making two hearts beat as one, Grian knows it will stop.
The only mercy is that this time, Grian’s heart will stop alongside it.
and one time he doesn’t.
0.
The sun burns hot up here on Bread Bridge, sticking Grian’s hair to the back of his neck. Exhaustion pins him to the wood, despite the heat, baking him beneath the sun’s rays with the hot steel of minecart rails beneath his back. His fingers tremble from an arduous day of work. There’s still more to be done; the Bread Bridge is
far
from complete. But it’s time for a rest, at least.
Beneath the glare of the sun, Grian can imagine the bridge as something prettier: wheat stalks spools of golden thread stitching a brilliant tapestry. Something old and timeless, something someone put a lot of love and attention into, each stitch purposeful and agonized over. At least, indued with as much
love
and
attention
can exist in a game like this.
Grian’s no longer blinded by any sort of naïvety. He knows such things are null and void in the confines of this world border.
The bridge is far from loveable; rather, a rushed disaster of Joel and Jimmy’s troublesome efforts. A shoddy construction of badness that towers over the server as more of an eyesore than anything else.
That’s not to say Grian doesn’t hold any sort of fondness for it. It’s been fun. The smile is still on his face— the ghost of it anyway— and the dirt is still caked in his palms and beneath his fingernails.
The bridge stretches on for what feels like miles, nothing but rails and rows upon rows of ripe wheat. If Grian squints, it seems endless.
But it’s not. Grian knows this. At the opposite end stands a body. Scar.
His face turned toward away from the sun, a hand shielding his eyes as he stared at Grian all the way down the length of the bridge. And maybe it’s the heat, but there aren’t any rocky cliffs at his back. Instead, the air is hazy and provides a reflection of something much, much worse.
Sandy hills. Dunes that stretch to the sky, folding in one another
until Grian reconsiders his definition of the word
endless
.
A winding path to a rickety sandstone house, a banner flying in the wind. It’s faint, a mere reflection in the glare of the sun.
A sight familiar and unwelcome.
He shakes his head. It’s the heat. It has to be.
But Grian doesn’t dare move. Not when the wheat drifts in the wind like the shifting of sands.
Not when Scar turns his back and there’s blood on Grian’s hands— the same hands that itch to reach out and beg:
stay.
Grian’s heart leaps in his chest. He clenches the fabric there to make sure it stays where it is;
to remind himself that his hands are calloused with the hard days’ work of tilling rather than from digging a grave in the sand.
That this bridge is just that: a bridge.
And the ghost standing on the opposite end is just a man.
A man that had asked him to wish on the star; the one who promised he’d keep Grian’s wishes safe.
The one who insisted,
it’s okay.
Grain can’t help but feel like he’s been lied to.
The sun is high in the sky. Not a star in sight.
And Scar doesn’t ask him to look at them with him, because all at once the mirage of the desert is gone and Scar’s back is turned to him. For the first time, Grian wishes for a shooting star; he thinks he might have an idea of what to wish for.