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‘She’s dead Scar. You won.’
The quiet, wispy voice of Scar’s deceased friend rings in his head.
She’s dead.
You won.
Scar stares into the ravine as the zombie continues to hit him and tries to take bites out of his human flesh.
“How’d that happen?” He asks to nothing but air.
His hearts continue to dwindle.
“How’d the guy with no friends win?”
Scar looks into oblivion. He’s been alone for…ever. He’s been a wanderer, a simple shop keeper. He never meant to be the villain, but here he is, standing on the ground where only he now lives.
All of the people he once knew are dead. The only one left alive is him.
Scar laughs. “How did- How did the- How did the guy with no friends win?”
When did he start crying?
“You’re telling me I’ve got a family?”
Only hours ago he had gained people to care for. Only hours ago, after being alone for so long, was he accepted to be part of a group.
And it only lasted for a few blissful hours. Hours, at least, of killing alongside his newfound family.
A family he had to kill at the end.
‘She’s dead Scar. You won.’
Grian’s voice haunts his mind. Pearl is dead. Gem is dead. Scott is dead. Bdubs, Joel, they’re all dead . Scar is the only survivor.
Scar turns around, stabbing his sword into the gut of the zombie, killing it instantly. He feels weak. Tired. Empty.
He makes the trek back out of the ravine and to the secret keeper. There’s only one thing left to do now—complete his task.
Scar looks around, imagining his…friends?...floating around, watching as he presses the succeed button. They used to do this in a circle all around each other, waiting to see what everyone had as a task.
There used to be so many more. Then Lizzi had died. And then Jimmy, and finally Mumbo. They had left from the beginning, but now…everyone else is gone too.
The feeling of eyes pressing into his neck strengthens as he gains a little bit of his life back from completing his task. Belatedly, Scar realizes he can live forever as his next task comes in. It’s the same one—the need for any new tasks being negated by the fact that the series is over.
Everyone can go home now. They’re all gone. They can leave now.
Scar stares into the Watcher’s symbol.
It stares back.
He wonders what he’s going to do now. He waits, for a moment, if Grian will smite him like he did with Scott, back during Last Life.
Huh.
Last life.
He—remembers it. He remembers all of it. He remembers…everything.
Scar rubs his temple, his head beginning to hurt at the influx of memories that come rushing in. It hurts , but there’s nothing he can do now. If anything, he just wants to sink into the Earth, where he belongs. Become one with it, return to nature. Maybe then he can go home.
But the Earth doesn’t open up to swallow him. No, time continues on as nothing happens. The feeling of being watched doesn’t go away.
Scar sighs, shaking away his thoughts and slowly making his way back to Trader Scar’s. It’s blown to smithereens—something he’s not at all surprised to see, though he is surprised that he gets to continue seeing it. Maybe he can fix it up to keep himself busy. Surely that will be better than sitting around, only company left being the ghosts that continue to haunt his every step.
He gathers some more acacia, carefully chopping it into planks and beginning the process of restoring the place he once called home.
Though, home is a strong word. He had always been a wanderer this past season. It seems he doesn’t even get the gift of a final resting place in death.
Scar doesn’t dwell on that thought for much longer, instead returning himself to his busy work. Maybe, if he focuses enough on rebuilding his shop, he can ignore the presence around him.
“Go home, Grian.” He finally speaks up, hours having gone by as Scar finishes up his reconstruction. “Your time came a long while ago. Please go home.”
“Not without you,” the air whispers to him. Scar can almost feel the pleading hands pulling at his own arm. Only, Grian is a ghost now and can’t truly interact with him anymore.
“I can’t go home. This is where I stay.”
“You’re supposed to go home, Scar. Please come home.”
Scar shakes his head. With his home now finished, he needs to find something else to occupy his mind before night comes and he can finally get some rest. He looks towards his window, taking a glance as to what’s left of the outside.
“Would you like to garden with me?”
Scar gets no response, but he knows Grian will follow him anyways.
He walks onto the patchy soil, feeling the effects of TNT blowing up beneath the ground.
The explosions had always seemed to rattle him far more than they should have. Like whenever the Earth cried out, his soul cried a bit too.
He sinks his hands into a new patch of dirt, carefully sifting through the soil before pulling out a few seeds and planting them. Scar repeats this process for a little bit until he deems his impromptu garden acceptable.
And then he lets himself cry.
It’s a horrible feeling to be left alone—especially after having just gained a family, only for them to be ripped away and being forced to kill the last one.
Why did he have to win? He didn’t want to win; he’s been the villain this whole time. The Watchers—they force him to play the bad guy and then let him succeed? Let all the others who were far kinder and far more deserving of the title of “winner” die? Why? Why is the world so cruel to him?
A phantom sensation of wings drooping over his back barely registers in Scar’s mind as he continues to shake. This is so unfair. Why can’t he die like everyone else? Why can’t he return to the Earth like he’s supposed to do? Why must he suffer like this?
The rain begins to pour only a few minutes after, mimicking the waterfall of tears falling onto the newly planted carrots.
💚💛💔
“Please kill me.”
No one responds.
Scar has lived alone for a few days. After his breakdown over his eternal life on this server, he found that he could no longer feel Grian’s ghost beside him. There were no more prying eyes trying to see inside him, no more scrutinizing gazes wondering what his next move will be.
Only silence and loneliness.
At least everyone else is together. Happy. At peace. At home.
He briefly wonders how they all are. Have Lizzi and Joel reunited? Did the Mounders find each other again?
Do they miss him?
“I’m doing good, thanks for asking.”
Scar jumps, yelping out as he tries to regain his senses. “Goodness, Grian, you scared the crap out of me man!”
Grian gives out a soft, high-pitched laugh.
It’s almost something normal. Like Scar isn’t stuck on a server with a missing-in-action Watcher as his only company.
Well, he’s not very missing in action anymore.
“What brings you back here, Gri?”
“Missed you.”
Scar hums. That’s one of his questions answered. “Flattering. But, you should probably stop doing that.”
“Why should I stop missing my best friend?”
“I thought that was Mumbo,” Scar murmurs. He can feel Grian deflate at the statement.
“I want you to come home.”
Scar bites the inside of his lip. “That’s not possible. I’m sorry, but I can’t . It’s better for you all to forget about me. Move on. Make more best friends. Live on without me nagging you at every moment.”
“Scar—”
“Of course, unless, you’ll finish me off yourself.”
Silence. Scar plunges his hands into dirt.
“I can’t kill you. Not again.”
Scar scoffs. “Yeah, again . You tend to have a habit of doing that.” Deeper into the soil.
The air around him drops in temperature. Scar begins to think he should be sorry, but he can’t find it in himself to care. He’s so tired .
“Please come home.”
Scar pushes his hands further in. If he does it enough, he might be able to lay himself to rest this way. “You know I can’t kill myself.”
“You can take damage.”
“And then I’ll succeed my task again. It’s an endless cycle, Grian. We both know. We’ve both tried.”
Sometimes Scar would will himself to walk into a cactus, hoping that maybe the world would finally let him die. Other times, a skeleton will sneak up on him, but continue to miss their shots. Shots that, no matter a skeleton’s reputation, should have hit.
“We just want you to come home.”
“We?” Scar barks out a laugh. “ We. As in everyone else has forgotten the horrible things I’ve done to them and only know that I’m missing, right? Tell me Grian—do they deserve that?”
The ghost remains silent.
“ Do they? Do they deserve to have a traitor walk among them as if nothing happened? As if I didn’t kill them the most, as if I didn’t break all of their hearts? Tell me, Grian, do they deserve to let someone like me back into their lives? Isn’t it worse when they don’t even remember what you did? ” Scar hisses out the last sentence. His mind is still scrambled, but he’s managed to put together the pieces.
The cactus ring. The final kills. The secret soulmate. The deception. The abandonment. He never knew of it before, but he remembers it now.
Silence follows Scar’s question. Of course, because how do you respond to something like that?
“I never could apologize to you.”
Scar startles, hands shooting up from the dirt, causing seeds to uproot and be scattered haphazardly across the uneven soil. He frowns at the sight.
“It’s difficult to say sorry when you didn’t know why I was.”
He sighs. Yes, that makes sense, but he’s thought about this for a while. Ever since he got his memories back, in fact. “But why do all that stuff in the first place?”
“I had no choice.”
Scar narrows his eyes towards the ghost of a Watcher. Then, he stands up without saying anything else.
The ghost seems to give up, too.
A distant ‘Please come home’ rings in his mind, but he pays it no attention.
💚💛💔
Scar feels weak. It’s the same sensation he felt after defeating Pearl and letting the zombie continue to take bites out of him.
An instinct that isn’t his own forces him to the Secret Keeper as he presses the succeed button. Just another cycle in the loop that his life has become.
The Watcher symbol glows for a moment before his “new” task enters his inventory. Scar doesn’t bother reading them anymore—they all read the same: “Win Secret Life”.
However, this book feels…different. It’s strange. It doesn’t feel like his normal task books—it doesn’t even feel like the ones he got when the series was still in session. It almost feels like Grian’s ghost.
Scar carefully opens the book but finds that the pages seem to be stuck together—as if it wasn’t meant to be read at all. He decides to keep trying at opening the book, though. Surely something must be important if it deviates from the monotonous week he’s had since everyone left.
Gently, Scar peels back each page, one by one, until he finally comes across a page with text scribbled on it.
Pulling it up closer to his face and squinting at it, he can tell that whoever wrote this didn’t write it in English. Is that…Galactic?
The small fire of hope that was beginning to burn in Scar’s heart extinguishes at the realization. Even if this is something important, he can’t read it . Damnit, this was his chance!
Frustration pricks at his eyes. This is so stupid—of course nothing’s going to change. This is Scar’s fate, his destiny . There was never going to be a way to escape it.
A hand takes his in their own. Scar looks up, tears still built up behind his eyes threatening to escape.
His hand is taken to the strange sentence in front of him.
⎓ᔑꖎꖎ ⎓∷𝙹ᒲ ᔑ ⊣∷ᒷᔑℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ╎⊣⍑ℸ ̣
The symbols taunt Scar.
The hand, however, begins to move in a gentle down stroke across the page. Then it’s brought back up before moving to the right in a straight line. His hand moves back to the original line, then moving down a little bit until it begins moving to the right again.
The hand continues to make this same motion until it finally clicks in Scar’s head
F. Grian’s spelling it out for him.
Scar wonders what happened to his ability to speak to him.
The next letter written is ‘a’, followed by an ‘l’ and then a second ‘l’. This continues until the phantom hand lets go of Scar’s.
“Fall from a great…height?”
A small tap from the hand.
The tears that had built up from frustration fall in relief at the sentence in front of him. Fall from a great height.
Die.
The whole of Grian’s ghostly body collides with Scar’s in a full-body hug. Scar shakes in the fragile show of affection. Clearly, the Watcher had done something against the wishes of his fellow Watchers to grant Scar the freedom from this damned server.
He wraps his own arms around his abdomen, trying his best not to fall to the ground in happiness.
“Thank you,” Scar whispers out between sobs.
“Let’s go home.” The phantom voice is quiet, almost too quiet for anyone to hear. Maybe that’s on purpose—all that seems to matter is that Scar hears it.
The ghost briefly lets go before phantom arms wrap around his shoulder and help Scar up. They begin to walk away from the Secret Keeper, wandering aimlessly.
Then, the arms seem to guide Scar in a certain direction. He doesn’t realize where they’re going until he finds himself a few steps away from a cliff. His hands are still curled around his stomach, but the cries have stopped. Grian steps aside, giving Scar full autonomy of his last actions.
He uncurls his arms and lets them fall to his side. He takes a deep breath, backing up a few steps before running to the edge and jumping off.
This is it—this is the end. He can finally go home.
Scar hits the ground.
And he’s one with the Earth once more.