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“I just want you to know,” Pearl tells Scar, casual, from where she’s tucked against his side, “if it comes down to it, I want you to kill me.”
They’re hiding behind a tree, pressed close together; there’s not enough cover, and they’ve lost track of Gem and Scott, momentarily. She can feel his heartbeat, feel the way it goes up a little when she speaks.
“What?” he says, and laughs, a nervous giggle escaping between his teeth, brushing the back of her neck. “I’m not going to kill you, Pearl.”
“I’m going to kill Scott,” says Pearl, and her palms itch at the thought of it, “and then I want you to kill me, so you can use my hearts to fight Gem.”
“But-“ he starts, and when she glances up at him he’s frowning, but then an arrow whizzes past his face and the next engagement has begun, and there isn’t any more time to talk about it.
—
“Gem, you have to kill me,” Scott says as soon as he finds her again. His hearts are so low. A skeleton or creeper could take him out right now, or, more disastrously, Pearl or Scar could, with one hit, easy, and he can’t have that. He can’t.
She jolts, leans away, looks sick. “What? Scott?”
“I’m on two hearts,” he says, voice tight, dropping everything she might need at her feet: armor, end crystals, food. “I want you to have the ten. Scar and Pearl can’t have them. I want you to win.”
This is, at least, familiar. He’s done this many times before. With Martyn, last season, blood streaming through the water; with Pearl, the season before, laying TNT around his own feet; again before that, standing on the castle ramparts, Cleo and Pearl, again, staring up at him. He’s an old hand at dying for someone else’s good.
And Gem needs to win.
“Scott,” Gem says, and her jaw trembles, then sets. She adjusts her grip on her sword. She looks like she’s about to cry.
He grins, reassuring. “You’ve got this.”
She sniffles, reaches out with her free hand and pulls him into a hug. He rests his head on her shoulder, closes his eyes.
The sword enters between his ribs.
—
“Scar, kill me,” Pearl says again, holding her diamond sword out, hilt-first, the thunder of Scott’s final death still echoing over the hills, and isn’t it a little funny, that after everything, he’s being given another one for free?
“No,” Scar says, rejecting the idea out of hand. It’s a stupid idea.
“Gem’s just gotten ten more hearts from Scott,” she says, matter-of-factly. He doesn’t like it, this cost-benefit analysis she’s run with her own life. “And she’s better than either of us in hand-to-hand. I’m not going to be much use to you.”
“No!” he says again, and he can see her face twist up a little, frustrated with him, clearly.
He’s been here before, Scar has. He remembers kneeling in shallow water, exposing his neck. Pearl’s eyes are red and unflinching, and she’s still holding the sword out to him, hilt first. He’s never been on this side of it before. He thinks he gets it now, why Grian had gone pale and taken those shaking steps back.
She’s serious. He doesn’t have a script for this. The situation is so unexpected he almost wants to laugh.
“I haven’t even done anything for you,” he says.
“I want you to win,” she says, like that makes any sense at all. It doesn’t. It makes sense for Gem and Scott, maybe, who’ve been allies this whole game. He’s not- they’re not- he didn’t even mean to end up on Pearl’s side at all. It was just the way the cards fell.
Scar wouldn’t think to do this for her, he knows. He’s out for himself. That’s how it’s been this whole time. And he’s been fine with that, but- what’s she doing? What’s she trying to do? He doesn’t get it. There’s no trick here, he doesn’t think.
“Why?” he asks.
She shrugs. “I’ve won before, Scott’s won before. I wanted it to be Bdubs or Joel, but they’re both gone now, and you’re still here.” She grins, looks tired. “And I don’t want Scott to get what he wants. He killed me last time, you know.”
He nods, slowly, and relief flickers across her face for a moment before he says, “I’m not going to kill you, Pearl. I’m not- it wouldn’t feel- it wouldn’t be fun. I don’t want to win like that.”
She groans theatrically, knocks her head against his shoulder. “You’re impossible,” she says. “I thought you were supposed to be the bad guy, you big lump.”
He laughs. “Hey, I haven’t been able to keep any allies this whole game! I’m not about to just kill the first one I’ve found.”
She takes a step back, studies him for a moment, runs her tongue over her teeth. “Alright,” she says eventually. “Fine. You don’t have to kill me. But you have to win.”
And he does.