Chapter Text
Scar sat in his base blinking. Something felt wrong. Often times things felt wrong and he just ignored that feeling and carried on with his day. He glanced out the window at Grian flying around. The bird-boy got his wings back… The voice inside his head mocked, though the words weren’t tracking. Grian hadn’t lost his elytra recently.
He shivered as he rolled away from the window and carried on with his day. Things had been good recently. Scarland was really coming along and he was proud of that. His secret identity… the vigilante side gig was nothing but a success. People were pre-ordering his calendar and posters. He was becoming a household name and he loved that.
They are making you forget again, don’t let them! A voice was practically screaming in his head. He rubbed his eyes, wiping his head around as if he was being watched. Grian waved from down the street, running and flying toward the man.
“Scar, what are you doing today?”
The sound of Grian’s rockets made Scar jumpy, almost causing him to tip over his chair. Flashes of a creeper and Grian’s grimace crossed his mind, but he just pushed them down. Plenty of creepers had killed him over the years. He had some of the highest death count out of the Hermits, they joke that it would take a divine intervention to perma-kill him.
Months went by and Scar managed to shake off the feeling he was being watched until one night he was hanging out with Mumbo and Grian outside of Doc’s base. He was beginning to contemplate if they were the bad guys in all of this… As much as he hated to admit it, he was at fault here. He had destroyed the machine, but it was at Grian coaxing. He never would have been there if Grian would’ve just built the back of his base. He tried not to focus on that too much…
“What’s up, Buttercup?” Grian snuck up behind Scar. “Let’s just set up camp here?”
Scar looked around. They were awfully close to the edge of Doc’s perimeter, but they all could fly. A fall like that shouldn’t kill them. Sighing slightly, he nodded, placing his shovel in some powdered cement Grian placed.
“Seriously! Scar!”
The anger on the man’s face said it all… Scar messed up. He watched Grian basically pop out of existence. This wasn’t new. This was some mysterious thing that happened to him from time to time. The only thing is no one had any idea how long it would take him to get back. Sometimes he would be gone for days. Sometimes he would come back happier, other times he’d be more on edge. When it was really bad, he wouldn’t talk to anyone for days on end. Scar would want to work on a project with him and he’d decline… not even answer on occasion.
A purple strike of lightning struck in the distance. Mumbo shrugged and went back to putting up their tents. Scar didn’t move, frozen in memory.
Scar stared up at the sky, shooting arrows at the SkyNet ladders. He heard Grian’s voice behind him muttering something he couldn’t make out, ‘Ultimate betrayal…’ or something of the sort. Before he knew it there was a axe in his back and his vision started to fuzz around the edges. All his thoughts of the Clockers as his family started to get confusing and he wondered why he had spent the last twenty-four hours calling Cleo ‘mom’ and BDubs ‘brother’ and Etho ‘dad.’
It took a moment for the realization to hit. Grian had stabbed him in the back. A true coward move. He looked back as his vision faded, Grian had already moved on to his next target and Scar was left bleeding out on the ground.
Grian got back to the campsite, glaring at Scar. Mambo grumbled about how none of their behavior was buttercup-like… Which was kind of a lie, since they were now the buttercups as a form of threat to Doc. Shenanigans and tom-foolery were their purpose, at least it was his. The only reason he was in this mess was because of Grian’s tom-foolery. He felt like he had been in this situation before. Always with Grian. Always with little games taken too far. Always costing Scar.
He was in the deep dark. He of all people shouldn’t have been in the deep dark. No soulbound pairing should’ve been there together… He was leaving. He was leaving with Scott. He wasn’t sure where Grian was, but he wasn’t risking getting shot by the other groups. The other groups who were mad at them for stealing the enchanting table. Their home was destroyed. Most of the Jellie-Pandas were murdered. He was lost and alone. He was alone. Where was his soulbond? Where was Grian?
He felt a pang in his chest. His ears filled with ringing only the warden could produce but there was no darkness, other the regular night. Grian… It had to be… Why was he still down there? Why couldn’t he leave it be? Why couldn’t he be up here with Scar preparing for a battle?
Scar looked up at the night sky, wishing for a hand to hold, though feeling odd about that realization. He felt like this was more of a dream than a life. That he would wake up in a bed he barely recognized and Grian would be his neighbor and maybe not hate him… maybe he wouldn’t run off with someone else.
Scar tried not to stare at Grian sitting next to Mumbo, but he couldn’t help but think about the HotGuy poster hanging up in Grian’s tent. The pair was staring at the sniffer egg, waiting for it to hatch. Mambo had never done any harm. Everything wrong in the world was Scar’s fault… At least those were the thoughts that plagued his brain. He could blame Grian all he wanted but at the end of the day, he had pushed the button for the tunnel bore. He had told Grian to do it. He had… He had… He had! It was his fault!
“Scar, buttercap? It’s buttercup!”
He looked up at the sign in front of his tent. “Oh…”
Mambo let out a soft giggle. Normally he wouldn’t let something get to him, but he felt the shivers down his spine like he was being watched, like something more was going on… someone was playing around with him and he hated that. He stuck his fist into ground and picked up the sand just to let it drop. Grian disappeared again.
Mumbo lectured him but he was zoning out, thinking of the hundreds of times this happened that he was being forced to forget. Because he was starting to realize the truth. None of this was right… None of this was the first time they all met and got along and worked together. Grian had been his neighbor in four separate realms or universes or lifetimes… whatever you want to call it, it happened. Scar could hear his own voice echoing in his head and it was driving him mad.
“I just had a flashback to last time and seeing him I thought he would be mad at me…” Scar’s voice sounded so innocent as he help Cleo drag Grian’s unconscious body to a new location.
Cleo looked at him. “Last time? What last time?”
Scar blinked trying to remember, suddenly he felt dizzy and nauseous. “I don’t know what I was talking about.”
“You don’t want Grian mad at you,” Mumbo gestured toward the perimeter. “Look where it gets you.”
Scar rolled his eyes and rolled into his tent. “Grian has been mad at me plenty of times before. He still sticks around.”
“What will you do to repay him? He has to come all the way back here.”
Scar slowly took off his diamond armor and dismantled the elytra from his chair. Mumbo raised an eyebrow and stared at him. Without a word, Scar rolled toward the edge of the perimeter. Death here wasn’t permanent, but it still meant a lot. You lost all the power you built up fighting monsters and mining resources. It took a little bit of that light out of your life. Scar had died a lot, so it wasn’t that much of a consequence for his actions… But purposefully doing may have helped.
Grian sighed when he walked into the camp, propped against a walking stick and looking absolutely exhausted. Mumbo handed him a piece of bread and some water. The worn-out man looked to Scar with slight anger, but more curiosity.
“Where is your armor, Buttercup?” Grian walked closer, his words dripping with awareness. “You’re awfully close to the edge there.”
“Do you not feel good, Grian?” Scar stared straight into his eyes because this wasn’t just a punishment for him, but a message to Grian. “Do you feel ever so sorry?”
“Wh-” The man’s eyes went wide, and the air around them sparked purple, but only so slightly; quickly awareness turned to full realization. “Scar, don’t… Don’t say those things. Why don’t we talk?”
“I’m so sorry, Grian…” He said in the same tone he did when he died long ago, which seems to have triggered this mess of memories for him.
With that, he rolled himself off the cliff; lives that he only partly recognized flashed across his memory as he plummeted. He never remembered actually dying, never…
He just woke up in his bed, his wheelchair miraculously next to him, and rolled back out to where the other men stood. Grian wordlessly started planning the next steps and Scar decided it was time to install the toilet in Mumbo’s tent.