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Hermie
When Hermie dies, no one notices.
Link prides himself on protecting his friends. He’s not a warrior, he never had been. But he is a protector. He covers Scary as she sets the world on fire. He lunges between Taylor and an arrow aimed for his heart. When Normal falls, Link is already there to heal him before their enemies can take a second breath. If anyone would fall first, he’d always assumed it would be him.
It’s not until the fires die and the sound of clashing metal silences that anyone notices something isn’t right.
“Has anyone seen Hermie?” Normal calls. His voice is light. They’re not worried. Not yet.
Scary calls out, “Did we even bring him?”
“Uh, yeah Scary!” Normal argues, as close as Normal can argue anything. “We did. And it’s kind of hurtful that you, you know, forgot?”
“Fine, then go find your stupid husband. It’s not like I care.”
Link knows she’s lying, and wisely chooses not to call her out on it.
They find Hermie’s body covered in ash. Cold. He’d died hours ago. Normal casts spell after spell. He screams until his throat is hoarse, and then begs until he can’t speak at all. His hands slam into Hermie’s chest again, and again, and again. Magic bleeds from his palms, gold and burning and angry. And when all else fails, when there is nothing left, Normal falls over his chest, too exhausted to even cry.
Link doesn’t stop him.
It’s Taylor who speaks first, but the words are so far away, and Link is moving before he can fully register them. He’s running, away, away from the burning ash and smell of bodies, just away.
He doesn’t get far. Stumbling, he falls against a tree, and then pukes. He can’t stop seeing the body. He can’t forget the pain in Normal’s eyes.
And he can’t help the guilt worming its way through his guts. Because he’s also relieved. It could have been one of the others. He could have failed to save Normal, or Taylor, or Scary .
He’s relieved it was Hermie and he hates himself.
When he has nothing left in his stomach to throw up, he turns to go back, and finds he’s not alone. Scary lingers in the trees. He’s too tired to feel embarrassed, but knows that will come later.
“Sorry.” He doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for.
“It’s okay.”
He doesn’t know what she’s forgiving either, but the fact she’s offering it is enough to make him go still. Scary does not forgive.
She takes a step towards him. And then another.
“It should have been me.” He has to say it. Has to let her know. He needs her to know. He’s failed. “I thought it would be.”
Scary snorts. It is an odd, broken sound to hear in this forest, under a sky dark with smoke.
“You’re not cool enough to die first. It should have been me. I was robbed.” Her voice cracks. Link can hear the tears threatening to spill. But she won’t cry in front of him. She never will. Not even now.
She won’t hug him either. He knows not to ask. But he wishes she would. He needs to know that it wasn’t her. He needs to be sure she won’t fall dead right in front of him.
“I- I’m glad it wasn’t.” He’s a terrible person because it’s true.
“And me. For you…Or whatever.”
They will mourn later. For now, they will rot in their relief and their guilt.
Taylor
“Taylor’s gone,” Scary announces the second she’s through Link’s door. “And, it’s like, whatever, I don’t even care, right? But he just fucking left!”
Link slips the door gently closed. Her words run through him like molasses. Taylor. Gone. She doesn’t care. He knows she’s lying. He won’t call her out. He never does. Taylor just fucking left.
“He said he needs space.”
“He fucking told you?”
“Yeah. He called me.” Link’s ushering her into his living room even as she rounds on him with fury in her eyes.
“Wh- what do you mean? Like, what space? I get Normal! Normal won’t even get out of bed, but that was his husband, and me - we - we’re his friends and we should be here. Right? Right ?”
Link nods. He’s not ready for a fight. He can’t match Scary’s anger. What he does want is tea. He has some, too. Earl gray for Scary. Chai for him. “I’m going to fill the kettle,” he tells her.
“Link!” But he’s moving towards the kitchen, his motions mechanical. She follows after him. “What did Taylor tell you?”
“He’s with his dad. He needs space. I don’t know. He’s just dealing with it, Scary. And we have to support him.”
“No, we don’t need to fucking support him. He needs to come back, and, and- Normal? Normal needs to get out of bed. And then we’re - we’ll just- just…”
She trails off. The fight leaves her, and she slumps over the counter, head in her hands.
“Scary…” Link says, voice low and soft. He sets two empty mugs between them. “I don’t know how to fix this. We’ll keep going eventually, but not right now.”
Scary doesn’t uncover her face. “Our parents hated each other.”
He blinks, taken aback by the change in subject. “Not… all of them.”
“I don’t want that to happen to us.”
“It won’t! Scary, it won’t!” But his words don’t sound certain, even to him. He doesn’t know what will happen. She’s right, no one can convince Normal to leave his bed. And now Taylor’s gone. He thinks they might be back, but he doesn’t know for sure.
For now its just the two of them, an earl gray, and a chai tea.
The kettle whistles and he fills their mugs in silence. Scary takes hers in her hands and cradles the warmth.
“Whatever. I don’t even care.”
“It’s okay to care.”
She rolls her eyes. But she doesn’t argue “Can I stay here tonight?”
“Sure.”
They watch TV for the rest of the evening and have tea and toast for dinner. Link offers to sleep on the couch, but in the end they both crawl into his bed, fingers brushing under the covers. He sleeps without waking to the smell of burning and the sound of Normal’s screams.
Normal
“Your place?” Scary asks. Everyone else had trickled out of the church over an hour ago, leaving just the two of them sat on opposite sides of the pew.
She’s wrapped in a bright yellow dress, small poppies dotted around the hems. It’s probably the only colorful piece of clothing she’s ever owned, and Linc knows she’s definitely going to burn it the second she gets home. He can’t blame her. The bright colors of his own shirt make his stomach churn.
“Yellow is not your color.”
She rolls her eyes, and his heart aches with the familiarity of it. He can pretend this is just their regular teasing. He can pretend Taylor’s going to say something incredibly cringy, and Hermie’s going to try to support him, and Normal’s going to try to jump between them because they’re friends, and friends shouldn’t fight, friends should-
His eyes burn with tears. He doesn’t let them fall.
“He was such a fucking idiot for this.” Scary plucks at the hem of her skirt, pulling a face as the poppies crumple under her fingers.
Linc has to nod his head in agreement. He can’t speak now. His throat is too tight.
“What’re you thinking?” She asks, when the silence weighs so thick Linc thinks he might start suffocating.
“I can’t say it.”
“Why?”
“We’re in a church.”
She rolls her eyes again. Linc knows how she feels about churches. He’d convinced her to come with him just once, years ago. She’d spent the entire ride home scribbling a song in her notebook about brainwashing and “sticking it to the man.”
Linc still isn’t entirely sure if “the man’s” supposed to be God or not, and how exactly she’s supposed to be sticking it to him.
But he’s also not entirely sure if god’s even real anyway these days. He’s seen a lot of things; met real gods, fought real monsters, and he’s starting to suspect these is no kindness lurking in the great beyond to greet them when this is over.
He’s lost enough friends as well.
Finally Scary seems to get tired of waiting for him to reply. She scoots down the pew, her thick black combat boots stomping under a flurry of yellow swirls. Because not even Normal could pry her boots away from her.
Come in bright colors. No black please.
It’d been his last request, scrawled on the last pages of a will found folded in his desk.
He doesn’t wait for her to ask again. She falls into the space beside him, closing the distance by leaning her head on his shoulder. It should surprise him, but for some reason it doesn’t.
“Fuck him,” Linc says. “Fuck Normal for thinking he could make this better with bright fucking colors. And for dying. And fuck… fuck everything else.”
“Fuck yeah,” she agrees. “Fuck him.”
Fuck Hermie for dying too soon and not being there for his husband. Fuck Taylor for disappearing into hell when things stared getting tough. And fuck their parents, their grandparents, and their great grandparents for leaving them in this fucked up world so, so alone.
Tears roll down Linc’s cheeks. “What the fuck do we do now?”
“We go back to your place. We make some tea. We burn these clothes.“
“I meant without them,” snaps Linc. She’d known what he meant. She knows what waits for them now, spread across two realms. Which of them will fall next? It’s just a matter of time now.
Scary doesn’t snap back. There’s no eye roll or muttered curse. And it takes Linc much too long to realize she’s shaking against him. Tears fall down her face too, dripping onto the tidy linoleum floor. She’s wracked with quiet sobs, lip between her teeth as if the noise is the real shame. As if emotions can be forgiven if they are silent.
Linc pulls her against him. His arms hold her tight, face hidden in her hair. He has no words of apology or of comfort. Their friends are dead and gone. The world is burning. They’re so, so alone.
So alone.
They sob together in a church with no god.
Link and Scary
No one else dies. That is the biggest shock of all. Link and Scary push on together. They save lives. They fight monsters. They live.
Eventually Taylor returns, but he’s not the same. He tries to pretend, and Link appreciates the attempt. But his trips back to his family last longer and longer, the time between shorter and shorter. Eventually he slips back into hell without a goodbye.
Link is sure they’ll see him again. But not in this lifetime. He’s had years to come to terms with it. Link has Scary. Taylor had to search for comfort elsewhere. He can forgive that, he thinks.
The years fall like dominoes. Scary complains about her aching bones. Link’s vision grows blurry, his hair streaked with gray. The monsters seem to grow stronger. Or maybe the two of them just grow weaker.
Age does that to a person.
But no one else dies.
It’s Scary who suggests an end to their fight. Link knows if it had been her who’d died, her who’d left, he would have never stopped fighting. He would have charged headfirst into every battle, searching for salvation.
But she’s here. She’s standing beside him. So he agrees.
Maybe it’s time to find out what they’ve been missing out on for all these years.
He doesn’t know when they start living together. It just seems natural. She’s over at his house every night anyway. They fall asleep side by side, fingers linked. They have tea and toast for dinner. They watch TV. One day Scary just doesn’t have an apartment anymore and Link never asks why.
They do normal people things. They go to a park. Link makes a picnic. Scary complains about the sun. She writes song lyrics under the shade of a tree, and Link watches her. Her hair is bone white, and wrinkles spread from the corners of her eyes like sunbursts. She is beautiful.
When he tells her he loves her, she just rolls her eyes. “Obviously.”
Days later, they go to a soccer game. She holds his hand the whole time, and screams so loudly he thinks she’s destroyed what’s left of his hearing. When its over she kisses his cheek with a bright, wide smile. “I love you.”
“Obviously,” he replies, and wipes a dollop of mustard on her nose.
No one else dies.
Not even them.
Not yet.