Chapter Text
Looking down, Grian unfolds his clenched fists. His hands are shaking violently, his knuckles are painted blue with bruises, and red with blood.
And there is blood, caked under the nails, and blood in the heartlines, and every cranny of the skin. His skin. And blood down his front, where it splattered. And blood on his lips where he bit them, and the iron taste burns down his throat. He spits onto the sand. There’s a trail of blood in the sand, but he doesn’t let his eyes follow.
His vision swims, but he can see the cliff’s edge a short walk away. Ten steps, maybe. Gathering his strength, he sucks in breaths of stale hot air, polluted by the sand that has been flung up by their heels.
One life to go… says one of the ghosts, their voice carried on the desert breeze, only a faint murmur before it’s gone.
One life to go, Grian thinks. His body sways, awaiting sleep. He breathes in deeply once more, and steps forward through the sand that sinks under his bare feet. His pulse pounds in his neck, louder and louder, and blood drums in his ears.
There, the sheer cliff’s edge. He balances on his toes, sighing. The wind in his hair makes him pause to listen, against all hope, for a familiar voice being carried along, but there are only the whispers of the impatient ghosts, and they are too distant to understand.
His mind is drowsy and ready for sleep. He steps out and lets the balance fall to the wrong side. The last thing he sees is the horizon, where, far past the edge of the world, the earth meets the sky.
His heart pounds frantically, his eyes shoot open again. Awake.
He looks blankly up at the ceiling. A dirt ceiling, nothing familiar. But he’s in a bed. Somehow, in a bed, chest rising and falling.
He lays there for a minute waiting for his heart to slow, but the waves of confusion and unease washing over him make that impossible. He thinks he was somewhere dark, he thinks he was finally able to rest. But now he’s here… where is he?
He sits up, slowly, and dares to look, and it’s… his secret bunker. He was here earlier today, or, he assumes it’s the same day, but he doesn’t know. He just died, and now he’s here again. He wants to lie back down again and pull the sheets over his head. But instead, he can only look at the dirt walls that are somehow here again. He doesn’t want to see them—he looks away, and happens to glance at his inventory.
A handful of arrows, and two potatoes.
A wave of nausea floods his throat. He holds his swimming head in his hands, and realizes there’s no blood in his hair or caked under his nails. He has his stolen armor back on. He… he’s gone back, again.
The concept doesn’t really register. What’s he to do now? He’s alive again… so what?
He stands up slowly, wiggling his fingers and his toes. Alive, again, the blood rushing under his skin and his knuckles free of bruising. He stares at them, then realizes he had been clenching his fists shut so tight that it started to hurt. Quickly, he opens his hands.
They are clean now. Wiped clean of his sins. He inhales a shuddering breath, on the verge of panic. Suddenly, he has to get out. He grabs all the items out of the chest and runs out of the hidden entrance onto the side of the small mountain.
A small patch of desert sand across a nearby river catches his eye, and it’s like the wind is knocked out of him. Of course, if he’s alive again, then that means…
His legs can’t carry him fast enough. It must have all been a terrible dream, he thinks, his mind trying to wrap around what’s happening. The blood in the sand, the blood on his hands, it was just a nightmare. He can fix it now. He can repent.
He runs until he hears a voice. Bdubs, beyond the trees. “It’s dawn now, by the way.”
He stops, the blood curdling. This is what happened before.
“Where’s Pizza?”
“I don’t know,” says Scar.
The blood rushes to a boil in his ears, drowning out all sound. He doesn’t know what to do. His red heart pounds, all the thoughts of blood making it hungry, and he knows this is the point when he had rushed out and started slicing at anyone close enough with his sword. But this time, he hangs back.
GoodTimeWithScar whispers to you: I have a plan.
He stares at the message. He hadn’t noticed it the first time. He stares at it blankly, not sure what to do. But he knows he has to prevent things from going the same way. He can’t let it happen again. Maybe if he hangs back and lets Scar do his plan, everything will turn out better this time.
“Hey, wait—”
BDoubleO100 was slain by GoodTimeWithScar.
Well, that wasn’t much different. He hears twigs and leaves crunching under Scar’s feet as he starts coming closer. “Grian?” Scar calls, just out of sight behind the trees. “Are you there?”
The wind starts to grow stronger. He hears whispers he can’t quite make out.
He steps out, and Scar’s eyes light up at the sight of him, although he looks wary, like his hand could jump to his sword at any second. Grian just stands there, he doesn’t know what to do this time around, how to stop that from happening. Adrenaline starts to pump through him, his hands twitch, because it’s the end of the game and he’s supposed to fight now, his red heart beats faster. Two people can’t win, not even the second time around.
But it’s Scar. He doesn’t want to hurt him like that again.
“Grian,” he says, with a relieved smile. “Did you see that? I told you I had a plan, and I did! He never even saw it coming. It was easy as a lemon. Or—lemon squeezy. Or whatever the phrase is.”
Despite being red, Grian’s heart melts a little more every time Scar smiles like that. “I saw it, Scar,” he lies.
“Yes! I’m turning into quite the fighter, aren’t I? I’m pretty sure I’ve killed three people! Not as many as you, but still, that’s pretty good!”
There’s blood on Scar’s hands. It drips from the hilt of his sword, down onto his shoes.
“Yeah,” Grian manages to force the words out, although he feels sick. “Pretty good.”
Nausea and bloodlust rise in waves that paralyze him. He just stands there trying to breathe through it—until he sees Scar bow his head.
“You can kill me,” he says. There’s… cheer in his voice, like he isn’t asking Grian to do the worst crime he’s ever committed, again. “After all you’ve done for me, you deserve to win.”
Grian’s breath catches. The words form on his lips: No, I won’t, I can’t, but they would be lies, because he has, he did. He will, again, because he’s red. His hand twitches for his sword against his will, and his head swims with nausea and terror and the urge to do it in one swing, and watch the blood fall in an arc onto the ground.
If he doesn’t do it now, he’ll do it later, in the cactus ring. And he won’t be able to stop himself, just like before, when he couldn’t stop, when he just kept hitting him, and Scar kept letting him.
He steps forward without realizing it. The sand sinks under his heels. He leans down and picks up his sword.
“I’m sorry, Scar,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
Scar has his eyes closed. “It’s okay, Grian,” he says, a smile curving on his lips.
Grian swings his sword.
GoodTimeWithScar was slain by Grian.
Scar’s body falls, and Grian, of course, catches him, laying him down gently. It’s not much blood this time. Gently seeping out of the wound and staining the sand. And Grian’s hands. They start to tremble again. How long has it been since the last time he watched Scar die? An hour? Maybe less?
He stands up, swaying a little from the quickly fading adrenaline. He steps over Scar’s body, and he thinks he did that the first time, too, but he’s not sure. Scar’s body wasn’t exactly… Scar’s body, the first time.
He begins the slow trek up to Pizza’s grave.
On the way, he stops to lean over and vomit. He wipes it off with the back of his hand. He feels a bit better then. He’s able to pick up his pace, a little, and it’s not too hard to climb the hill.
He closes his eyes this time. And falls.
When he hits the ground he loses six hearts, and he cracks his head on a rock, and rolls down the hill into the grass. He’s pretty sure he forgot something important before he fell, but he can’t remember because his mind feels sluggish, and it throbs so horribly. He reaches out with hands that shake uncontrollably, and feels for his sword. It sinks through his skin easily, cutting his red heart in two.
His vision goes dim on the edges, and eventually fades away to blackness.
Until it’s not blackness anymore. He blinks against the light, and looks up at a dirt ceiling. Slowly, he becomes aware of his body once more, and the fact that the pain he felt only moments before is gone. His heart thuds in his chest. He rests his hand over it. The rhythm is even and strong. His hand is steady, not even the slightest tremble.
Oh no, he thinks.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.