Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Grian flips through the book as he starts casting the spell. Since the Watchers have only given him some power so far, he needs to be extremely precise in how he does this. Sure, he can wait until he gets more powers, but he’s suffered enough by their hands and can’t bear to wait any longer.

He carefully reaches out with his magic to start searching through different worlds, looking for one he can enter without issue or suspicion. Unfortunately, many are very secure or are just unwise to visit.

Grian flinches when the door to his room slams open and one of the Watchers bursts in, “Xelqua!”

With no other choice, Grian reaches out for the next world he can enter. If the Watchers realize what he’s doing and stops him, the punishment will be severe . Not to mention that they’ll stop Grian from trying to do it ever again.

Both of the Watcher’s hands glow purple, and they reach one of them out. Just before they can use their magic, Grian locates a world. Without even taking a look at what the world is, he forces his way into it. The world around him starts distorting and blurring, becoming uneven and wrong.

Barely a few seconds after the spell starts, it ends, with Grian finding himself in a very different place. In place of the dark emptiness of the void, he’s greeted by snowy plains. The moment his talons sink into the snow, he stumbles and falls, not used to feeling how physical the overworld is.

He lets out a groan as he lies in the snow, still disoriented and dizzy from traveling to a whole other world. While the chill seeping into his bones is uncomfortable, it also means that he’s out of the void and away from the Watchers.

After regaining his bearings, Grian pushes himself up to his taloned feet, shaking the snow off of his cloak. While he hates it, it does offer him some protection against the cold. He hopes the people of this world don’t know what Watchers are. Or, more importantly, what they look like. He shakes out his wings as well, even if they didn’t sink into the snow like the rest of him.

Grian looks around the area he landed in, realizing just how quiet it is. It’s so empty that it’s almost eerie. It’s surprising to see no trace of anyone, he can’t be that far from the origin point of this world. He takes a deep breath, and while he doesn’t like using these powers, he also really wants to meet someone else in this world.

He goes to focus his powers on searching, and stiffens when he realizes that he can’t use them. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t reach any bit of his power. Grian can feel that it still exists, but it’s just out of reach. Apparently, invading a random world is really magically draining.

He swallows down his worry and begins to walk in a random direction, he’ll just have to do things the old-fashioned way. It will be better to keep his power use to a minimum, anyways. Yet the worry still lingers.

Not too long after Grian begins his journey, he spots another person. As he goes to call out, a shiver goes down his spine. He slows down in his approach towards them, staring them down critically.

He freezes when he gets close enough to see, and smell, the decay. A zombie. Except it’s not like any zombie Grian has seen before, especially since it’s the middle of the day. This bodes even worse for Grian than he first thought. He can handle being in strange worlds, but being in a world that challenges what he already knows? It’s definitely not the most ideal place he can be in.

As he looks around again, wanting to avoid whatever this new kind of zombie is, he sees a horde of them in the distance. Well, clearly it’s time to shelve looking for people, he really should get something to defend himself for when they eventually notice him or if it becomes night before he finds some kind of shelter.

Thankfully it doesn’t take Grian too long to find a few trees, but before he can do anything, he spots a small building nearby. He lets out a relieved breath, glad to find some kind of life in this world. He forgoes his other plans and starts heading toward it. As he gets closer, he recognizes it as a house, a very small and simple one at that. Just as quickly as his relief came, it vanishes.

While it’s still standing, it’s starting to fall into disrepair, the building looking like no one has been there in months. He still sighs as he goes up to it, even if it is abandoned, it’s still a shelter he can use.

He peers cautiously into the ruined structure, it’s strange to see a building so in ruin like this. Grian hopes to find some food or other supplies here. He goes to step inside, glad to at least have some kind of shelter, only to be greeted by the barrel of a gun.

He sucks in a breath, body going deadly still while his wings fluff up. His eyes flick away from the gun to its wielder, a brown-haired man who seems to be around Grian’s age. His green eyes are hardened as he stares down at Grian.

While they don’t soften, they do widen in surprise. The gun doesn’t waver as he murmurs in a rough voice, “You’re alive?” There is something that’s both vulnerable and the complete opposite of it in his tone. Grian isn’t able to parse what exactly it means.

“Yes,” he eventually settles on, “I’m very much alive.”

“You’re not infected?” he asks, his focus unwavering, but Grian can hear the sliver of desperation in it.

“What?”

The stranger’s frown deepens, “Y’know, bitten, scratched, whatever.”

Grian is clearly missing a lot about this world, which will definitely make it hard to act normal, but he’s definitely going to have to try if he doesn’t want to get shot. “I’m as healthy as a horse,” he says, hoping that’s enough.

It seems to be as the other relaxes, although it’s only by a fraction, and the gun lowers just as much. Grian may not know him, but he can tell that he’s not seen as a danger. The stranger definitely doesn’t trust him, but at least he’s not considered an active threat anymore.

“Good,” he murmurs, “that’s good.” He stares at Grian for a long, silent moment, “It’s… been so long since I’ve seen another person.” And suddenly the hint of vulnerability makes sense.

“Same,” Grian answers just as quietly. He’s been trapped with the Watchers for so long that he’s grateful to see someone else again.

They share another quiet moment, neither knowing what else to say. That is until a deep groan interrupts them. Before he can blink, Grian is being pushed to the side as the stranger aims his gun at the open doorway. The gun makes a muffled noise as he fires at the zombie that was about to enter.

Grian stares at the still body of the zombie that was just moments away from attacking him, “Thanks.”

“Hate for you to be infected after we just meet,” is all he replies with.

With the gun finally no longer pointed at him, he holds out his hand, “I’m Grian.” He’s able to get his wings to flatten now that he’s no longer at a risk of being shot. 

The stranger stares at his hand for a while before reaching out and carefully shaking it, “I’m Scar.”

Grian breaks the handshake as soon as it’s socially acceptable, the skin on skin contact jarring to him. He trails a glance at Scar’s appearance, now taking note of just how many scars he has. He decides not to mention it. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” After a moment Scar steps past him, glancing around outside before leaving the building.

Grian cautiously follows him out, “What, uh, where are you going?”

Scar stops, casting a careful glance at him, “My base…”

He stops himself from blurting his first thought out, he should have realized that Scar wouldn’t live in such a ruined, and small, place. “Right,” Grian whispers, shifting awkwardly.

Hesitance flashes in Scar’s eyes before he speaks, “Do you not have a base? I would have noticed you around before.”

Grian swallows, deciding to let some of the truth filter into his answer, “No… it got destroyed a while ago. I’ve been wandering alone since.”

“I’ve been there before.”  There’s another brief pause before Scar says anything else, clearly debating something, “Want to stop by at mine? …For a bit.”

“Yes, please, that’d be great,” Grian rapidly accepts, the relief palpable in his voice. He probably shouldn’t trust a stranger so blindly, but he’s desperate for (maybe) human contact, not to mention he has no idea how to survive in a world like this.

Although he does believe that Scar won’t betray him, since the man clearly wants to spend time with someone else as well. Grian can’t imagine how horrible and lonely life was here. Well, he can imagine it, at least partially, since he had just been trapped in his own isolated hell.

They travel across the barren landscape in silence for a while. Any zombies that take notice of them are immediately taken care of by a bullet to the head from Scar’s unfaltering hand. After the third time Scar’s had to dispatch some zombies, he gives Grian a quizzical glance, eyes narrowed, “Do you not have any weapons at all?”

“I- uh-“ he stammers, “no, I don’t.”

Scar’s eyebrows furrow even more, “How are you even alive?”

“Well, um, I used to,” Grian hastily corrects, not wanting to be suspiciously out of place. “I just lost them during a recent… incident.”

That earns him a sympathetic wince, “It definitely sucks to have your weapon break.”

“Yeah,” Grian agrees, quickly rolling with the excuse, “I’m just glad that I managed to get out after it happened.”

Scar nods and stops walking, another debate happening in his mind. After a minute he reaches around behind him and unhooks a crowbar from his vest. He hands it out to Grian, “Here, this should work for now.” 

The avian takes it, surprised that the other is so easily handing him a weapon, “Thanks.”

Scar nods, “You’re welcome.” He looks forward again and perks up a little, “I haven’t been there before.”

“Huh?” Grian inquires, quickly continuing to follow Scar again as the other begins walking again at a quick pace. Scar doesn’t respond, just leads them up to the building he saw, entering it with his gun pointed forwards. “What is this place?” Grian asks instead.

Scar gives him another confused look, but answers anyways, “A medical shelter, which is basically a mini hospital. At the start of this apocalypse, many were built as a type of refuge, but they’re mostly abandoned now. A lot still have some medical supplies.”

Grian suppresses a wince, that’s yet another obvious thing of this world that he had no idea of. He’s not sure how many more of these he can get away with before it becomes obvious that he’s not from here.

“I’ll check upstairs, you go down that way,” Scar instructs, gesturing down the dark hallway.

Grian nods, clutching the crowbar tightly in his hands, wings puffing up as he walks away from Scar. He doesn’t understand a lot, but he does know that this world can be very dangerous. The way Scar carries himself is definitely a sign of how this world is.

Grian really needs to learn how this world works if he wants to survive here. From what he’s gathered, respawn either isn’t a thing or isn’t easily attainable, zombies are way worse news here, and then there’s the whole apocalypse thing too. Which may or may not be the explanation for everything here.

He opens the first door on his left, cautiously peering into it. Once he’s sure that it’s empty of any threat, he steps inside and investigates the cabinets and drawers. To Grian’s surprise, it’s not medical supplies he finds, but what seems to be various rations and protein bars. After another glance around the room, he spots a satchel he can use to carry what he finds. He quickly grabs it and fills it with the different kinds of food.

While Scar seems to be tolerating his presence for now, Grian knows that there’s no way he’ll be able to get much more from him. On that note, he looks around again, trying to find a weapon since he’s sure that Scar will want the crowbar back at some point. When he doesn’t find anything, he continues searching through other drawers.

Grian opens the last cabinet door to find a plastic container. Taking it out and examining it tells him that it’s a canteen, although it’s unfortunately empty. At least he now has a way to carry around water, since he’s not sure of the water quality in this world.

When Grian is sure that he’s taken everything of value, he exits the room and goes to the room on the opposite side of the hallway. It feels wrong to be taking all of this with no consideration of others, but with how abandoned this place is… Grian doubts anyone else will come here for a long time, besides, he’ll need this stuff to survive himself.

While the previous room seemed to have been where they stored food, this one seems to hold actual medical supplies. Grian doesn’t hesitate to start filling the bag with bandages, if this world doesn’t have respawns he’s going to need to take care of every injury he gets.

As he opens another drawer, a small bottle inside rolls to the front. Grian picks it up curiously, squinting at the mostly worn-off label, trying to read it in the dark. “What is this?” he murmurs.

“Morphine,” Scar says, almost directly behind him, “if I had to guess.”

Grian whirls around, barely catching the bottle after he lets go it in surprise. He easily suppresses a startled yell, having been taught to keep quiet. “Scar!” He quietly exclaims, “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“You learn to be quiet out here,” he replies, giving Grian the look he’s now realizing is the one Scar gives him when he points out something obvious about this world. He grabs the bottle from Grian’s hand, bringing it closer to his eyes, “Yup, this is morphine alright.”

Grian doesn’t reply immediately, not wanting to sound even more suspicious, but with how quickly Scar recognizes the bottle leaves him too curious to just ignore it. “Morphine…?”

That gets a deep frown from him again, causing Grian to wince, “You don’t know what morphine is?”

“No!” Grian quickly corrects, “I do. It’s just that”— screw it — “I’m surprised you identified it so quickly.”

Scar hums, seeming to accept his answer, “I’ve seen these around enough to realize. They’re very good pain relievers, having these on hand are really useful. It makes sense for this kind of place to keep a bunch.”

“Have you used any before?” Grian asks before he can stop himself, definitely too curious for his own good.

“You haven’t?” Scar asks back, before shrugging, “I guess you’re pretty careful.” He casts a critical gaze over Grian, “Or incredibly lucky.” Scar tucks the bottle into a small side pouch on his own bag. “I’ve only had to use it a couple of times, only when needed since it really affects my awareness.”

Grian slowly nods, a little overwhelmed with all of this information. He’s both surprised at it and at how easily Scar is giving it to him. “Right, yeah,” he whispers after a moment.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Scar abruptly changes the topic, “what’s with the weird cloak?”

Grian winces at the reminder, “It’s, um, it’s all I have to use against the chill. I’m not too fond of it though.” It seems that Scar doesn’t recognize it, at the very least.

“That explains nothing.”

“It’s a long story.”

Scar studies him silently for a moment before shrugging, “Alright, fine.” He  glances around the room, “Did you look through everything here?”

“Uh, yeah, I believe so,” Grian answers, thrown off by another topic change.

“Anything good?”

He hesitates a moment, studying Scar, unsure if he should lie or not. Scar is a complete stranger to him, and one with tall walls at that, speaking freely is something he should be smart enough to not do. But… Scar’s been giving him information and things with even fewer reasons. “Just some bandages here, but some protein bars and I think rations in the other room. I found a canteen too, although it’s empty.”

“Having a spare one of those is definitely helpful, once you fill it up at least,” Scar answers, casting a glance around the room.

Grian is glad that he’s no longer making eye contact with him when he cringes, since it’s very much not a spare. He doesn’t need more reason for Scar to be suspicious of him. “Yup, what did you find?” he asks, wanting to move on.

“Some more medical supplies, not much in the food category,” Scar replies, his answer intentionally vague, much to Grian’s curiosity. Before Grian can ask, Scar continues, “We should continue heading out, best to get to a secure place by nightfall.”

“Yeah, let’s go,” he agrees, fully aware of the danger of nighttime. Without another word, they hurriedly make their leave from the abandoned place and continue their journey.

Even as suspicious as Scar is of him, Grian’s glad that he found someone to help him out, even if it’s just for a little while.

Chapter Text

Now, Scar knows that Grian is very suspicious, there is just something so incredibly off with him, but Scar hasn’t spoken to anyone else in years, so it’s hard to not want to be around him. He can also figure out what the other is hiding if he sticks around too.

The way Grian acts is so out of place to Scar, especially when he asks a question about something very obvious. It’s almost as if Grian was some type of fallen angel, unused to how life works on Earth, but Scar doesn’t believe in that kind of stuff. Angels don’t exist but even if they do, they wouldn’t just be wandering around down here.

Scar casts a brief glance at Grian’s wings, their appearance not helping disprove that thought at all. They are almost completely white, becoming a gradient to purple at the very tips. Definitely too strange and unusual for him to be an ordinary avian. An Angel though? Unquestionably not. Well, Scar has time to figure this out, since Grian doesn’t seem too keen to go off on his own any time soon.

While bringing someone to his base makes him nervous, Scar craves companionship more than he fears betrayal. He’ll just have to keep an extra careful eye on Grian to make sure he doesn’t try anything. Although, with how Grian has been acting, he already seems to be leaning on Scar quite a bit, which gives him a hope that he’d continue doing that.

So long as Scar can make himself seem useful, Grian will probably stick around. Since Grian seems full of questions, he definitely knows of a good way to do that, just answer the questions in enough pieces to make him stick around in order to put it together.

Scar knows that this isn’t a healthy line of thought to go down, but is it so wrong for him to just want to spend more time with an actual living person? To not be alone even for a few days?

He pulls himself out of his thoughts as he sees a zombie approaching them. Seeing how it’s only one, he pulls out his axe and drives it deep into its flesh. He yanks it out before delivering another strong slash to finish it off.

Scar sighs as he pulls his axe back out, re-securing it in its position at his side. He turns to look back at Grian, who doesn't seem phased in the least, “We’re almost there.”

“That’s good,” Grian responds, “it will be nice to finally get out of the open and to some place safe.”

“Yup, no zombies can get past my defenses,” Scar declares, rather proudly. He put a lot of effort into securing his base. While nothing can be fully safe, he’s definitely made it as close as it can be to being completely safe.

He’s spent a good few years on it, and while he may tire of the scenery from time to time, being in one place is a comfort to him. Stability, it’s something he craves that belongs to the world from before everything went to hell. This world isn’t built for stability anymore, but he can at least try to keep the false comfort of it. To keep a hold of this place for a little while longer.

A complex look crosses Grian’s face, his voice going strange as he replies, “Glad to hear it.”

Scar quirks up an eyebrow, now intrigued about that. He decides not to press it, “Let’s hurry up then.” He turns back around to continue leading them away. He does pick up on a quiet sigh though, a breath of relief, well, he’s certainly more curious now.

Neither of them speak for the rest of the journey, but along the way Scar slows down to walk next to Grian, casually giving him a way to observe the other’s expression. Unfortunately it holds a carefully neutral look to it as Grian keeps a wary eye on their surroundings.

As out of place as Grian may seem, he does seem to fit in in some ways. The neutral look doesn’t fully fade, but it’s clear that Grian is relieved a little when they reach the gradual divide between the snowy plains and regular plains.

Scar casts a glance at the strange cloak Grian is wearing, and while he doesn’t have all the answers, some things start to click. He had already mentioned that he’s not fond of it, clearly something happened to him before they met, and was only wearing it for the cold.

It does bring up questions about why Grian was in the cold then in the first place, but that’s something to ask later. As it stands, he doesn’t think he’ll be seeing that cloak for much longer, if the impression he got is right.

“And we’re here!” Scar exclaims, gesturing at the building in front of them as they approach.

Grian makes a noise, seeming impressed, “Looks nice.”

“I put a lot of work into it. The entrance is over here,” Scar grabs Grian by his wrist without thinking, pulling him towards the entrance.

The contact is warm, hot in a way Scar wasn’t expecting. It burns, but in a strangely pleasant way. He lets go the moment he reaches the door, quickly removing the barricades acting as a lock, but the heat doesn’t fade. Scar isn’t sure what to make of that.

Once he and Grian enter, he secures the door back in place, trying not to think too deeply into what just happened. “There’s not much, but it’s secure.”

“That’s what really matters, right?” Grian asks, walking a little further inside, looking around curiously. There’s something strange in his tone, but Scar can’t place what it can mean.

“Yeah,” Scar agrees, walking down the hall, “it’s just mostly storage rooms and a small courtyard area.” He makes vague gestures at a few doors when mentioning the storage rooms. He’s not inclined to describe what is where in case bringing Grian here backfires on him. 

Scar isn’t sure if Grian not asking questions is a good thing or not. He quickly leads them outside of the small building, “This mostly just leads to the lookout towers and target range.”

Grian walks past him, eyes focusing on the outside, “What about that?”

“The other entrance, you can try it if you want,” Scar replies, a little cheekily. It’s not like it’s a lie, but it’s not exactly the most conventional entrance, which is why he basically doesn’t use it.

Grian steps closer towards the pit, frowning as he looks down, “Is this just barbed wire in a pit?”

“The zombies can be stupid sometimes and tend to walk right into it to try to get to me. It’s an effective defense,” Scar explains, feeling defensive over this.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he answers, stepping away and looking up at a tower. He whistles lowly, “Pretty impressive.”

Scar doesn’t preen exactly, but the compliment makes him feel warm inside. “I built it myself!”

The avian looks around the place again, “I can tell, you have a style different to the original architect of this place.” Grian meets Scar’s eyes, a little hesitant suddenly, “That is if you did just find this place and chose to fortify it.”

He takes a moment to respond, caught off guard by how observational Grian is, “Uh, yeah, I did. You got a pretty good eye for design, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I… I used to be a good builder,” he’s whispering by the end, a mournful look crossing his face. It’s clear he’s remembering something from before.

“Same, although I’d say I’m more partial towards terraforming,” Scar shares back, wanting to find some kind of common ground with someone who’s basically still a stranger.

Grian hums in acknowledgment, “I bet you don’t get much opportunity to do that now, huh?” He immediately winces, flinching as if bracing for something. “Sorry- that was-“ he swallows before speaking again, “that was blunt.”

“It’s fine,” Scar shrugs, “you’re not exactly wrong, but the knowledge does still come in use sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Grian whispers, staring into the distance and clearly lost in his own head.

Scar watches, unsure how to break this strange silence that fell between them. It’s been so long since he’s held a conversation with someone that he has no idea what to say, let alone how to break a tension like this. All he can do is just stay silent and hope something happens to break it. He looks around, hoping to find something to start a conversation with. A glance at the sky gives him that chance, “Ah, it’s almost night.”

Grian snaps out of his daze, looking up at the sky before facing Scar again. “Already?” he murmurs, a complicated expression on his face.

“Let’s head back inside and, uh,” Scar trails off, not knowing what else to say. While he wants to not be alone for once, he can’t bring himself to trust Grian to the point where he’d sleep around the other. But… as Scar studies him, he realizes how tired Grian looks. Just how completely exhausted he is. Scar can spare a night of sleep, “And get you something to sleep on,” he finishes after a way too long pause.

If Grian notices the strange break, he doesn’t mention it, “Right, thanks.”

“Yup!” Scar turns around, leading Grian back and towards the room where he keeps most of his supplies. He drops off his bag and his traveling gear to the side as he enters, making a note to sort it later.

It takes a good while of searching to find something even remotely nice to sleep on, which happens to be an actual sleeping bag. Scar had forgotten he even had it since he managed to make himself something closer to a bed a few years back.

He turns back around to show Grian, but falters, seeing the large wings on his back. He frowns, murmuring, “Well, there goes that idea.”

“It will be fine,” the avian replies, his tone dismissive and full of something that Scar can’t name. “I can just sleep on it, I don’t need a blanket or anything.”

Scar studies him for a moment longer before standing up again, “If you say so. There should be some room up there,” Scar says, gesturing to the nearby staircase. Grian nods so he leads them up to the second floor, handing the bag over to Grian when he joins him, “There aren’t really any rooms up here, so pick a spot?”

Scar steps away, closer towards where his room is while watching Grian set up the sleeping bag. He wants the other close enough to keep an eye on, but far enough away to keep safe. Not that he appears to be much of a threat, having had no weapon up until Scar gave him the crowbar. Which Scar should really take back soon, but he doesn’t want to strand Grian without any form of defense.

With a shake of the head, Scar turns around and goes to his room. He takes off his remaining gear, putting it on a table to the side, although he sets his gun in reach of his bed. He finally collapses into his bed, drained from the day’s activities. Even being as tired as he is, Scar can’t fall asleep, too hyper aware of his surroundings to be lulled into that temporary comfort.

~                    ~                    ~                    ~                    ~

As expected, he doesn’t get a wink of sleep, but at least he does get some rest. Once the sun has risen a decent way into the sky, Scar gets up and stretches out. He winces lightly as he feels the crick in his tail from keeping it tucked away for a full day and night.

He grimaces as he ignores it, it’s too vulnerable to leave out in the presence of someone he barely knows. Scar hopes he can change that soon, although he doesn’t want Grian to leave just yet. He’s finally gotten company after all these years and he’d be damned to lose it so soon.

Scar grabs his gear and exits his room, finding Grian to still be laying on the sleeping bag, wing wrapped around himself like a blanket. As he approaches him, Grian shoots upwards, wings flaring out and eyes wide. Scar stops and raises an eyebrow, “Good morning…?”

Grian flushes as he quickly pulls his wings back in, feathers returning to their natural positions. He clears his throat, “Morning.”

Scar decides not to ask any questions, having his own demons to face, “Time for breakfast!” Not waiting for a response, he makes his way down the stairs and to the kitchen. The quiet clicking of talons cue him into the fact that Grian is following him.

It takes a short amount of time to find a box of cereal and two bowls. He sets the bowls on the counter and pours the remaining amount of cereal into them. Scar passes one of the bowls to Grian, “I don’t have any milk, so it has to be dry.”

Grian stares into the bowl like someone who hasn’t eaten in days. That’s another thing to add to the strange behavior list, Scar thinks as he eats his own cereal. He’s found plenty of boxes of mostly rip-off cereal brands, so for Grian to be so transfixed by it? Scar has definitely found a really strange person.

Just as Scar goes to tell him that he should eat, Grian starts eating it. He eats it slowly, like he’s savoring each mouthful, and from the awe in his eyes, he probably is.

Once Scar is finished he sets his bowl on the counter before leaning against it. He silently watches Grian, studying the avian as he eats. Scar doesn’t exactly like openly staring, but he has so many questions about Grian that he needs answers to.

One thing he does notice is that Grian’s wings are pulled tightly to his back, as close to his back as possible. It doesn’t look comfortable in the slightest, but Scar can’t be the one to make that rebuttal. It does bring up the curiosity that Grian’s cloak didn’t cover the wings, instead having holes for them. Wings that size are definitely a hazard here, leaving them that out seems unwise.

Speaking of the cloak, Scar was right about him ditching it seeing as he is no longer wearing it. Leaving him with a simple white tee, which is definitely insufficient in the cold. Scar’s really going one step forwards two steps backwards in terms of answering all of his questions. This guy sure is an enigma.

Scar glances away when he notices that Grian is almost finished; it seems like he’s still exactly where he was before, pondering about what’s going on with Grian. He looks over when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye to see Grian holding the bowl towards him, looking hesitant.

Scar takes it with a smile, placing it on top of his. Normally when Scar crashes soon after arriving, he spends the following day sorting through what he found, but he doesn’t exactly enjoy organizing all too much. “So!” he starts brightly, “I’m a little curious about you.”

Grian tenses almost imperceptibly, wings puffing up, “You are?”

Scar shrugs, not wanting to push him past a breaking point and make him run, “Well, yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve seen another person, of course I’d be curious about what they’re like.”

Those were clearly the right words to say as Grian relaxes, “Well I’m certainly curious about you as well.”

“Oh?” Scar prompts, intrigued, “do tell.”

Grian huffs, “You said it first, so you answer me.”

He laughs, “Well, I want to know more about what you’re like. So tell me about yourself.”

It’s clear that that’s not what Grian expected by the way he hesitates to respond, “What about me?”

Scar pauses, not having planned that far into this conversation. “What do you like doing for fun?” He eventually settles on, “Before all of this, I mean.”

Grian takes a moment to consider the question before replying, “Well… I’ve always enjoyed playing pranks on my friends.” There’s a look in his eyes and Scar winces, maybe that wasn’t the best question to ask, considering how likely it was to involve people who were probably very much dead. Before Scar can say anything in response, Grian continues, “What about you? What do you like to do?”

“I already mentioned it earlier, but I always enjoyed terraforming work. I used to have a garden and spent a lot of time taking care of it. I put a lot of work into it,” he ends with a whisper, growing wistful. He put so much effort into his garden for it to so quickly come into ruin at the start of the apocalypse.

It’s shocking how fast greed and desperation takes over in the face of the end of the world. Everything had only just started falling apart and people were raiding homes. Scar doesn’t know if he was lucky or not to have been out when his house was raided. They had stolen and destroyed so much.

It should have been a harsh lesson to have learned, to not trust people in times like this, but Scar can’t help but reach out to other people. It’s a mistake to allow himself to be so vulnerable around another person, to let them into his space, yet Scar does it anyways.

Maybe there’s just something wrong with him, but Grian seems so different that it’s hard to not let him in. To want to know more about this strange avian that’s entered his life. It’s sudden, and new, and Scar can’t stop himself from wanting to know more.

“What kinds of things did you like to garden?” Grian asks after a long pause, looking curious.

“A wide variety of things; fruits, vegetables, and some flowers. It took up a lot of space, but I didn’t mind,” Scar explains, the fondness clear in his voice. He’d love to start up another garden, but with how things are now, it’s just not possible.

Not only is it hard to come by seeds for anything, the weather and land has become so screwed up that it’s extremely hard for anything to grow. It’s a miracle to even get a plant to grow above the soil, and even then it dies not long after. Scar knows from experience. A lot of experience.

He shakes the memories out of his head, “My turn now to ask a question,” he says, tone changing into something a little more light hearted.

Chapter Text

While Grian hated the idea of this strange question game at first, it was an easy and subtle way to learn more information. It tells him just how different this world is to his own. Grian struggles to imagine what this world was like before with how different it is now.

It does mean he has to be extremely careful in what he shares, since if he lets something strange slip it may add even more suspicion on his behavior to Scar’s observation of him. Which has got to be high already.

It’s Grian’s turn now, but he’s struggling to come up with a good question to ask that didn’t give himself away. He hums as he tries to wrack his mind for a question. Eventually he sighs, “I can’t think of another question.”

Scar cracks a grin, “Does this mean I win?”

Grian balks at his expression before realizing how forced of a cheer it is. Forcing humor in a stressful situation. “I didn’t realize we were playing for score,” he replies with a small smile of his own. Grian does have to admit that this was a nice distraction from everything going on around them.

“What can I say, I’m competitive,” his eyes glint with amusement, but deeper in there’s a tense kind of caution.

Grian’s smile quirks up a little more before a strong worry suddenly washes over him. Worry for his future here, he’s escaped one hell just to fall into another, without powers no less. He knows he still has them, he only has to be patient until they can return enough so he can get out of here and go to a better world.

Silence comes over Scar as well, something tense in the air. All amusement and fun they were having dissipated easily, leaving a somber and heavy mood in its wake.

“I- I should sort out what I gathered,” Scar mutters, clearly wanting an escape from the mood, from his mind. Grian only hums, understanding.

Scar makes his exit quickly, without another word or look at Grian. After waiting a few seconds Grian leaves himself, heading outside of the building. He spreads out his mostly white wings, taking flight to go onto the roof for complete privacy.

He sits down cross legged, and holds his hands out in front of him. He narrows his eyes down at them, trying to force some kind of power to his hands, just for some kind of magic.

With a reluctant breath and nervous swallow, he pulls his Watcher mask from where he’s put it in his pocket, not wanting to leave it around for anyone to take, but needing it to boost his power even when he loathes it so much. He feels the burst of magic within him, but it’s so much weaker than before. He holds out his hands again, palms up, and concentrates.

The magic comes to light at his fingertips, a purple glow surrounding just the tips of his fingers. It dies out quickly, but it was there. A mix of worry and hope shoots through Grian. Hope because it means his powers will return, worry because of how long it might take.

Surviving here will be a hard challenge as he works on getting his powers back strong enough. He really hopes that Scar won’t mind his presence during most of this. While Grian isn’t fond of taking advantage of someone after what the Watchers did to him and Evo, he needs Scar in order to survive here. He just hopes Scar doesn’t hold it against him, or kick him out too soon.

Grian takes off the mask and stores it away again, turning his head to look at his wings. He really wants them to go back to how they looked before, but that isn’t what he should focus on, not now at least. He sighs at their messy condition, spreading them out in front of him.

Grian begins carding his hand through them, straightening his feathers out and relaxing at the feeling. A bolt of pleasure shoots through him as he removes one particular broken and in-the-way feather.

He doesn’t realize just how much his messy wings were bothering him until the insides are all preened and feel so much better. He gently grabs his left wing and guides it in front of him, starting to go through the back of them. It’s a lot harder of a process, but a very necessary one.

While it’s slow going, Grian definitely needed it, feeling a lot better the more progress he makes. He swaps to his right wing when he finishes most of his left wing. It doesn’t take him much longer to finish most of it.

He grimaces as he tries to reach the parts of his wings closest to his spine. They’re bothering him the worst of all considering that they haven’t been properly preened in years. Just barely what he could reach when trapped with the Watchers. The last time he had a full preening was with Pearl and Jimmy the day before the end fight.

Thinking of his siblings startles him, and he pulls back from his wings. His siblings, who he had invited to join his new server. Who got trapped there by the watchers. He brought his friends and family into that cursed server and he failed to protect them, to save them.

Grian tries to choke back a sob at the realization that he led his friends to their deaths, basically. A server meant for fun twisted by beings with powers way beyond theirs. He joined the Watchers to protect his friends, but he should have known that the Watchers would stab him in the back, that they were lying.

 He fails to stop the next sob and it unleashes a wave of them to come out unrelentingly. Grian hasn’t cried since the first few weeks of being with the Watchers, having faced severe punishments when he was caught. He’s learned to bottle up all his feelings since then, no matter how much he wanted to break down some days.

Now that he’s finally free to cry he just can’t stop. Grian pulls his legs to his chest and clutches them, burying his head into his knees and arms and just lets it all out. Continues to let out gasping sobs, uncaring about anything around him. Years of suppressed emotions finally break free and just won’t stop.

It feels like hours by the time he can control them, just letting out small hiccups and gasping breaths. Somewhere along the way he’s wrapped his wings around himself in a cocoon. Grian slowly pulls them back, returning to awareness around him. To the stoney roof he’s sitting on, to the slightly cloudy sky.

He flushes as he fully realizes the situation he’s in. He quickly scrambles to his feet and jumps off the building, using his wings to lighten his fall.

Grian finds Scar in the makeshift kitchen, cleaning up the area and putting things away in the cabinet. He grins when he sees Grian enter, but his eyes are filled with compassion, “There you are! I was wondering where you went off to.”

Grian flushes in embarrassment, realizing that Scar is very much aware that he was crying, his probably red-rimmed eyes don’t help. He’s extremely grateful that Scar doesn’t point it out, doesn’t ask what’s bothering him or offering comfort.

Considering the dark bags under Scar’s eyes, it’s clear to him that Scar is going through stuff himself and probably has some level of understanding to what Grian’s dealing with, even if their situations are different. “Hey,” he replies, cringing when his voice cracks.

Scar’s eyes drop a little lower for a moment before meeting his eyes again, “I think I have some spare clothing in a chest somewhere if you want something. It gets pretty chilly here at night after all.”

Grian glances down at his simple tank top, remembering how cold it was at night but refusing to wear his Watcher cloak any longer, “Ah, yeah, that would be nice if you don’t mind.”

Scar gives him a soft smile, more real than the forced one from before, “I’m not using them anyway, so I don’t mind, follow me.” Grian follows Scar out of the kitchen this time as he leads him to the storage room he saw earlier. He stands to the side to let Grian enter, “They should be in the bottom chest to the left.”

Grian nods in response, going over and pulling the big container out. He silently searches through the box, surprised at the contents. There’s a variety of different forms of tactical and military gear, but also a lot of more casual clothing.

Grian glances back at Scar, taking in the clothes he’s wearing in more detail for once and noticing that he’s wearing a mix of the two. Having a tactical kind of vest over more casual clothes, although they seem more military in nature then standard clothing.

He turns back to look into the box again, shifting through the clothes. A bright red catches his eye and he pulls it out, revealing it to be a jacket. It’s just close enough to his sweater to send another ache through him. It’s not the same, it won’t ever be the same, but he can pretend at least. Grian buries those feelings down, way too used to doing that now.

He slips the jacket on, grimacing lightly as it traps his wings against his body. It feels comfortable despite that light pressure. It may be a little loose, but it feels a lot better than wearing that cloak, or just a tank top. Grian looks over at Scar, “how would you feel if I cut holes in this?”

Scar blinks, seeming too surprised to speak for a moment, “…what?”

“For my wings,” he explains patiently, “I need holes in the back to let them out.” A mix of confusion and curiosity crosses Scar’s face, a familiar mix associated with whenever Grian acts oddly to him. “What?” he asks defensively.

“Not to critique your choices, but that’s not exactly the safest thing to do,” Scar replies, voice carefully neutral.

Yeah, okay, Grian can see where he’s coming from now. Having big and extra limbs would definitely make an easier target for the zombies, which Grian has realized now that that means death, basically. Although that’s still not enough of a motivation to keep his wings hidden like that, not with how much they’ve been restricted already. “I don’t think the discomfort is worth that.”

“I beg to differ,” Scar replies with a shrug.

Grian frowns, confused, before something suddenly dawns on him. He glances at Scar’s ears, unnaturally pointed and very unnaturally reactive. He probably should have realized that Scar wasn’t human a long time ago. It’s rather obvious that he’s not.

Grian’s first observation would peg Scar as an elf, but with what they’re talking about, there’s clearly something more to him than that.  “I don’t think it’s worth it to restrict myself like that,” Grian eventually settles on.

Scar’s ears definitely twitch more than a human’s could as he realizes that Grian knows, “I wouldn’t say it’s too restrictive, not when it’s necessary.”

“Right,” Grian answers, realizing that this conversation isn’t going anywhere. “So, are you fine with me cutting holes in this or not?”

Scar looks surprised for a moment at the sudden topic change, before nodding, “go ahead, I don’t plan on wearing that. You can have it.”

“Thanks,” Grian gives him a genuine smile, more relaxed than he has been in years. He only hesitates a moment before continuing, giving up on subtlety, Scar already knows how weirdly suspicious he is, “Do you have scissors? Or a knife?” He takes off the jacket, as a show of intent.

Scar reaches into his pocket after only a brief hesitation and pulls out a knife, handing it over, “here.”

Grian lays the jacket front-side-down before cautiously taking the knife. It won’t be the best job, but it will work for now. He mentally measures out the locations before raising the back of the jacket up and slicing the knife through it. Neat, even, precise. He makes a parallel cut right next to it.

Grian studies his work for a moment before putting it back on, maneuvering his wings through the holes. He stretches his wings out a little as a test before pulling them close to his back again. Perfect. He holds the knife back out for Scar to take.

He does, a surprised look on his face, “you’re good at that.”

“I’ve had wings all my life, I better be.”

Scar lets out a quiet chuckle, “fair point.”

“What are you planning to do next?” Grian asks, curious but also worried that he’ll be kicked out soon.

“I was just finishing up on laps around this location to check if I missed anything before trekking out further,” he explains with a somewhat reluctant tone.

“Ah, that makes sense,” Grian replies, grateful that Scar seems okay with letting him hang out for just a little while longer.

Scar studies him for a long moment before speaking, a slight hesitancy in his quiet tone, “I… suppose you can join me if you want.”

“Really?” Grian can’t help but be shocked at the offer, they haven’t even known each other for a full 24 hours yet.

“Yeah, although you’ll definitely need a gun if you do join me,” his tone is back to being carefully neutral.

Grian stiffens, “I, uh, don’t know how to use a gun.” A bow? Yes. A gun? Definitely not. Having not even entertained the thought back then.

Scar’s eyebrows raise to a comedic degree, “You don’t?”

He tenses, feeling embarrassed and defensive over his tone, “No.”

Scar seems to realize how his tone came off and looks apologetic, “Sorry, that came out wrong. I was just surprised, that's all.” He pauses for a moment, before quietly offering, “Do you want me to teach you?”

Grian blinks at him in surprise, not expecting the offer. After all, why would Scar give him, basically a stranger, such a powerful weapon? “Y-yeah,” he replies, after realizing that he’s been silent for too long.

“Right,” Scar answers, “I’ll meet you in the courtyard.” Without another word, he exits the room, disappearing to somewhere else.

Grian looks at the empty space in surprise, “Alright then,” he murmurs, heading out of the storage room himself. He heads out to the courtyard, shifting back and forth on his taloned feet as he waits. It doesn’t take long for Scar to come back out, holding a gun in one of his hands, yet Grian can still see the other one where it rests at his hip.

Scar gestures towards the target range, “Ready?”

“I- I guess?” Grian replies, still thrown off by this whole thing.

He holds the gun out, “The safety is on,” a pause, “which means it can’t be fired.”

“I know what it means,” he says, taking the gun and holding it very carefully.

Scar clearly notices, “going over holding first.” He takes out the gun he’s kept at his side this entire time. He grips it in his right hand, holding it towards Grian, tilted. “Generally when you’re not ready to shoot something, and the safety is off, you keep your index finger straight along the barrel. Your other fingers are holding onto the gun.”

Grian adjusts his grip, glancing between the gun in his hands and the one Scar is holding. It’s such a foreign weight in his hands, it borders on uncomfortable, but he should probably learn how to use one if he wants to survive here. “Next?” he murmurs after a moment.

Scar raises the gun to point at the targets, “While you can use this kind of gun with one hand, it’s a lot easier to aim when supporting it with your other hand.” He wraps his left hand around his right, although a little lower down. “After that it’s just mostly a lot of practice with aim.”

Grian nods and grabs the gun with his other hand as well, raising it as he pictures aiming and firing. “Time for that practice?”

“If you want,” he says, and Grian nods. Scar brings the gun closer again, turning it to show Grian as he thumbs over a switch, “This is the safety switch, flick it and you can fire the gun. Do you want me to guide your aim or would you rather mirror me?”

Grian lightly touches the switch, uncertain. The last time they touched, the feeling was electric, so he’s not sure what will happen this time. He still thinks that it might be the best way to learn, “Guide, I guess.”

Scar nods and puts away his own gun, stepping a little closer to Grian, “turn off the safety and aim.” He nods and does as instructed, eyes laser-focused on the target. Scar steps closer towards him, leaving only just a small distance between them. “You’re aiming a little high,” he murmurs, gently wrapping his hands around Grian’s and lowering the gun.

Grian barely holds back a jolt at the touch, feeling that same kind of electricity, it’s exhilarating and nerve-wracking all at once. He wants it to never vanish while he also wants it to never happen again at the same time.

Before Grian can make up his mind on which one he wants more, Scar lets go, causing Grian to quickly refocus on what was going on. He takes a deep breath in as he stares at the target, pulling the trigger as he releases it.

Grian flinches at the recoil, but Scar is already there with a steady grip on his arm and hands. It’s hard to focus past the grip Scar has on him, but he does, looking towards the target.

He deflates, seeing just a nick on the top left edge from where the bullet hit. He relaxes his grip and goes to lower his arm, but Scar’s hold on him stops him. Grian makes a startled noise in complaint.

“Sorry,” Scar replies, loosening but not dropping his grip, “but the best way to improve is to take note of each shot you make and what that looks like.”

“Oh, right,” Grian murmurs, and Scar completely lets him go. He observes his aim and then looks at where the bullet hit. After mentally calculating it, he moves his aim down and to the right. He takes a deep breath in before releasing it with a pull of the trigger.

Now prepared for the recoil, he doesn’t flinch, only jolting slightly from the movement. Grian lets out a breath when he tracks where his bullet hit. It’s now inside the rings, just barely, but now too far to the bottom right.

“It takes practice,” Scar says with a quiet hum. He doesn’t touch Grian again, but he is still standing close by and in his space.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Grian replies. It’s just hard when he’s so used to being forced to learn things quickly, unused to patience and not being pressured.

He can’t believe that he’s already thinking about how he’ll miss being around Scar when the other eventually kicks him out. He should know better than to be getting attached to others.

Now that he’s come to this realization, focusing back on the target and ignoring how close Scar is to him is hard. He still tries though, adjusting his aim and firing the gun again, this time barely reacting to the recoil. Closer, but still too low.

He’s going to keep practicing until he can make it. It would be so much easier to do if he had all of his powers, but he doesn’t, not to mention that he also doesn’t want Scar to find out.

Grian just needs to focus on the goal and not grow attached. As if things ever went that easily.

Chapter Text

While Grian not knowing how to use a gun isn’t a complete red flag, it definitely raises a good amount of questions. Scar would understand if he was gun shy or opposed, but there was only a small amount of hesitance when Grian accepted the offer, which means he isn’t against learning.

So why wouldn’t he have tried to learn how to shoot before? Scar shakes his head, just another question to add to the growing pile. He pulls himself out of his thoughts to watch Grian again.

He will admit that Grian is a quick learner, getting the hang of shooting a gun a lot sooner than he expected. Although he is struggling a little with returning to the proper aim after losing it. It’s close, but still off by a good bit.

It’s clear that Grian is frustrated over that, and at not shooting a bullseye yet. Scar is resisting reaching out to try to correct Grian more, even while selfishly staying in his space. He just can’t help it, something about the warmth he feels when touching Grian being near addicting.

Scar knows that it’s probably because he hasn’t interacted with another person in years, so touching someone after so long would feel so stunning. Especially when he misses the contact so much. He was always a touchy person, but he’s never craved it to such a degree before.

While Scar can’t help but stay in close proximity to Grian, he resists touching him again, not knowing how Grian himself feels about touch. He hasn’t objected yet, but his reaction was definitely off when Scar touched him before.

He gives a small smile as he watches how focused Grian is, eyes narrowed in concentration and a very slight frown on his face. Scar can get used to this, just these small moments. His smile vanishes as quickly as it came, the reality of this situation coming back to him.

This isn’t permanent, Grian won’t be here for long. It’s clear how antsy the avian is, Scar can’t believe that he’ll stick around for long. He supposes he’ll just have to hold on to these moments for as long as he can. Maybe he can be a little more selfish while Grian is still here.

A click pulls him out of his thoughts, back to focusing on his surroundings. Grian is frowning at the gun, eyebrows furrowed. Then something seems to click, eyes flashing with guilt so briefly that Scar isn’t sure if he saw it correctly, “I, uh, think it’s out of bullets.”

Scar takes the gun from him, switches on the safety, and pulls out the clip. “Yeah, it’s empty,” he confirms, returning the now-empty clip. “I should have expected it sooner or later, I didn’t bring any extra bullets.”

Grian shrugs, glancing towards the target, “It’s fine, I don’t want to waste all of your ammo.”

Scar hesitates, but nods, “Yeah, alright.” He does have a limited supply of bullets after all. He hopes to find more, but they don’t have the freedom to spend a lot of supplies on this.

For now, Grian has the basics of knowing how to fire one with a decent amount of accuracy, which counts for something. “So, how would you feel about joining me on that trip? It would be a couple days long at least.”

Grian shifts on his talons, digging them into the gravel. “Yeah,” he eventually settles on, “that sounds good.”

“We’ll need to leave at the crack of dawn, it’s safer that way,” Scar explains, glancing into the sky to see that it’s midday.

He nods, “yeah, that makes sense.” He pauses, still avoiding Scar’s eyes, “what should we do for the rest of the day?”

“Pack up any supplies we’ll need for on the road, we’ll need to be ready in case we find nothing.”

“Right, that makes sense.”

“How about you head to the storage room I showed you before and find some bags, I need to grab a few things,” Scar asks, nodding his head towards the door. Grian hesitates but nods, walking back inside. Scar follows a couple steps behind.

As Grian goes to the primary storage room, Scar enters the room he uses to store weapons. He refills the clip to the gun Grian was using and grabs a holster for it, attaching it to his belt to free up his hands. He refills the clip for his own gun as well, before grabbing a new box of ammo, just to be ready in case they run low while out.

Scar looks towards the opposite wall, full of different melee weapons. He scans across them for a few moments before grabbing an axe. It’s smaller than the one he carries around with him, but it is still a good weapon nonetheless. He then grabs one of the clips he uses to secure it to his belt. Both axes are in good condition, so there shouldn’t be any issue with them while they’re out.

Scar exits the room to quickly meet up with Grian, not wanting to let the other out of his sight for long. He slows as he approaches, taking a moment to look into the room.

Grian is kneeling next to a box, carefully shifting through the items in it. There’s a backpack sitting right beside him. He pulls out a carefully covered roll of gauze which he puts into one of the side pockets, he’s taking his time with it, perhaps out of caution?

“Got what I needed,” Scar announces himself, stepping into the room.

Grian whirls around to face him, wings puffing up. He relaxes once he meets Scar’s eyes, “Ah, Scar.”

He flips the axe around so the handle is towards Grian, “I brought you this.”

Grian’s eyes widen, “What…?”

“I felt like you should have a more proper weapon in case we run into hordes, of course in exchange for the crowbar back.”

“Oh,” he reaches for where the crowbar sits besides him, still looking surprised. He grabs the axe from Scar’s hand and replaces it with the crowbar, “Here, and… thanks.”

Scar just shrugs in response, securing the crowbar back onto the back of his vest. “What’s on it is to hook it to your belt. And,” he holds out the holstered gun, “I refilled the ammo and got a holster for the gun.”

“Ah, right,” he replies, taking it, still looking surprised. “I started filling the bag with some medical supplies, while I waited.”

“Right, I appreciate it,” he nods, kneeling on the opposite side of the bag that Grian is.

“Sure,” he replies, moving back a bit, clearly to let Scar work.

Scar gives him a nod of appreciation, putting the spare ammo inside it. He begins to sort through what medical supplies he deems necessary to bring with them. He asks Grian to help get anything not right in reach, but otherwise Scar works alone and in silence.

Once Scar’s sure that he’s gotten everything, he gets up and slings the bag over his shoulder. He nods his head out the door as a signal to Grian and goes out to the kitchen. Once there, he starts packing up a good amount of food so they don’t run out on the journey.

Which is definitely something that needs more restocking, now that Scar is looking at the storage in this kind of way. With Grian here now, it’s effectively cut how many days these supplies will last in half. It’s still not drastic enough to worry about running out, but Scar does make a note of keeping an eye out for food most of all during this. I hope I don’t regret this.

Once he’s done packing everything he believes they need, he pulls out some rations for them to have for dinner. He hands half over to Grian, who has been watching Scar silently the whole time.

Grian startles, “Ah, thanks.” He takes it and quickly begins eating it, not seeming bothered at all about the taste.

Scar watches him as he eats as well, intrigued. These don’t have the worst flavor, but they don’t have much of it at all either. They’re horribly bland, but it’s filling which is what matters.

He looks out the barred windows at the slowly darkening sky, which is mostly just casting the world in light shadows now. Near eternal day, the first sign that the world was ending. Scar’s long since stopped being concerned about it, there are bigger things to worry about now.

He’s not sure if it’s a good thing that nighttime has returned to being distinguishable. Although it’s still brighter than night would normally be, even if everything gets darker again. Scar is still curious about what causes it, though, the scientists never finding a reason behind it before the broadcasts ended. Or they all died, either is possible.

Scar looks back at Grian, who hasn’t mentioned the non-pitch-black night yet, which makes sense. Yet part of Scar is surprised, having already decided that Grian is like a fish out of water here.

Grian startles a little as they make eye contact, having finished eating. Scar gestures outside, “It’s getting late, we should head to sleep so we’ll be completely rested for the journey.”

Grian looks outside and frowns, eyebrows furrowed in something akin to confusion. Whatever thought he had passes, and he looks back at Scar, “Yeah, right.”

He walks past the avian and leads them back up to the second floor, only casting a glance behind him before heading to the room where he sleeps. He needs to get some actual rest, which means he’ll have to risk leaving himself exposed.

Scar doesn’t have much of a choice, so he sets the bag to the side and removes his gear. He places a gun on the bedside table, in easy reach of his bed, ready to grab and use at a moment’s notice.

After a moment of hesitation, he pulls his tail out from where he’s tucked it away. Its new freedom is a relief, like a breath of fresh air. He dislikes having it tucked away like that, but he can’t deny the risk it poses to leave it exposed.

Scar climbs onto the bed and turns around, keeping his back to the wall. He curls the end of his tail around his ankle, the fluffy tip lightly tickling him. While he lets it free, he can’t help but worry about it still, wanting to keep it as close as possible.

Even as tense as he is, sleep soon drags him under, his exhaustion being even stronger. Scar lets it, falling into a deep sleep until dawn.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

It seems like falling asleep with Grian still here wasn’t a horrible idea, considering everything is where Scar left it when he fell asleep. Since they’ll be spending the night while out, he’d have to trust him while he sleeps anyways, although that is way more trust heavy then this. That’s future Scar’s problem to deal with though, since it’s the crack of dawn now.

Scar gets out of bed, securing his gear in preparation for the day. He glances back at where his tail is flicking back and forth behind him. It was nice to let it be free for the night, but it’s too risky to leave out, since it’s too much of a liability. He sighs, he can wait to do it, since it definitely won’t be safe to leave it out for the next few days.

Scar grabs the bag of gears for the trip and heads out of his room, spotting Grian still asleep on the ground. “It’s time to go,” he calls from a distance, recalling just how freaked out the other was the prior morning. Scar would rather not be at the opposite side of a freak out, especially since Grian has an actual weapon now.

Grian jolts awake, quickly scrambling to his feet. His movements are extremely rigid, almost robotic. Whatever habit the avian was following vanishes a moment later and he relaxes a fraction, “Ah, right.”

It’s not the most suspicious thing the other has done, but it’s definitely worrying. Just where did Grian come from? Scar shakes the thought away, now’s not the time to figure that out. “We need to eat breakfast fast before heading out, gotta take as much advantage of it being day as we can.”

Grian nods, but pauses, eyes flicking lower and past Scar, a curious look appearing in his eyes. It takes Scar probably too long to realize that he’s looking at his tail, where it’s still lightly flicking side to side.

Scar stills it directly behind himself, overly cautious about it. Grian pulls his gaze up and away at the stop in movement, looking a strange mix of guilty and awkward. “Yeah-“ he says, stilted, “we should go.”

Scar doesn’t waste time and turns around to head down stairs, keeping his tail close to his legs. Breakfast is a silent and quick affair, with them heading out the moment they’re both done eating. Scar only taking a moment to tuck his tail back into his pants before they leave.

Neither of them speak as Scar leads them away, not wanting to alert any zombies. Thankfully they don’t encounter many zombies, but those that they do come across easily die to a couple axe hits. Grian is a lot stronger than Scar gave him credit for. Very interesting.

The sun is just beginning its descent when they take shelter inside of a small tower to eat and rest. Grian looks around the place curiously, but doesn’t say anything and follows Scar to the back of it.

He sits down and pulls out some rations, handing one over to Grian as he joins him. Neither of them speak as they eat again. Even if it’s silent, Scar appreciates having company with him. After so long, even if it’s just temporary, the company is nice.

The silence ends soon after Grian finishes eating. He sets his canteen to the side as he looks above him, “have you been here before?”

“Huh?” Scar startles at the sudden break in quiet, “yeah, I have. There’s nothing useful here anymore.”

Grian hums in response, eventually bringing his gaze back down, a complex look flashing in his eyes before vanishing, “I see.”

Scar studies him for a moment, curious about what he’s thinking. He eventually puts the inquiry to the side, knowing he won’t get an answer. “If you’re ready, we should head out again. I want to get as far away as we can before we have to turn in for the night.”

Grian puts his canteen back in his bag and stands up, “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Scar nods, putting his own canteen and the remainder of the food back into his bag. He gets up and heads over to the barricaded door, unblocking it and, with a careful glance around, exits it. Grian easily falls into step beside him, warily looking around.

Scar pulls his own gaze away from the other, instead focusing it on the horizon, trying to spot any sign of civilization. They’ve almost reached the point where Scar hasn’t been, he’s always turned around not far after this point, not wanting to stay out long into the night.

Of course, he had taken care to look into the surroundings to not miss anything, so it will still take them time to find anything new. Scar doesn’t really mind the walking, it’s not that bad, what is bad is the tenseness he feels whenever his back is towards open air.

They continue walking in relative peace for almost an hour, the world around them eerily quiet. It puts Scar on edge. Things are never this quiet out here. Of course he’s not wishing to be attacked by zombies, but the lack of any usually only leads to bad things.

Grian seems to catch onto his tenseness, as he hesitantly murmurs, “it’s not supposed to be this quiet, is it?”

Scar nods, “it tends to mean something big is coming.” It’s definitely a curious question, since that was an important lesson Scar had to learn early on. He has got to learn where Grian is from before he leaves. He ignores how much that thought stings. Grian just hums in response before things fall into silence again.

Not even ten minutes later Scar’s fears are proven. They’re carefully skirting by a forest when way over a dozen zombies start stumbling out of it. Scar doesn’t hesitate to pull out his gun, firing shots into the horde. Scar’s almost tempted to just run, it would definitely be safer, but big hordes could mean a good few things. Unless this becomes a losing battle, Scar knows they should stick it out.

Whether or not Grian knows that, Scar can see him pull out his gun and start firing it from the corner of his eye. While Grian’s not the best shot yet, he’s still doing enough damage to them to slow them down at least.

Scar puts his gun away once they’ve thinned the horde down a lot, wanting to preserve ammo. He places a hand on Grian’s arm to indicate him to do the same. Which Scar reluctantly admits it’s mostly out of desire to feel the warmth from the contact again. Grian gives him a quizzical glance, but drops his gun as well.

Once Scar is sure Grian won’t shoot again, he pulls out his axe and closes the quickly dwindling gap between them and the zombies. While he’s basically playing with fire, he knows exactly where to strike to cause the most damage. He’s also fast enough to dodge the others as he finishes them off in a swing or two. While Scar keeps his focus in front of him, he can occasionally catch sight of Grian in the edges of his vision. He definitely has combat experience, even if it does seem more brute force in this case.

Scar can’t help but sag in relief as the last zombie falls, the only sound remaining is his and Grian’s heavy breathing. Of course he still keeps a close eye on the forest in case any other zombies decide to make an appearance. It’s been a while since Scar has encountered that big of a horde before, which can only mean a few things.

“So,” Grian manages between heavy breaths, “we’re going the opposite direction from those guys?”

“No,” he answers, staring towards where they came from, even if he can’t see anything past the forest.

“What!?” Grian exclaims, so quietly that it impresses Scar.

“Big hordes like that can mean a few things, following them back to where they came from is usually good.”

Grian sighs, but still nods after a moment, “alright, let’s go then, we’re running out of sunlight.”

Scar nods, adjusting his grip on his axe to keep it at the ready as he heads towards the forest. Grian keeps up with him, also looking ready to swing. Is he that easily adjustable or is something stranger going on here? Scar pushes that to the side once again, deciding to dwell on that at a better time.

Not long after traveling through the woods, they stumble across a road. It’s pretty ruined, telling of its disuse, although that’s not a surprise to Scar. He carefully looks in both directions before deciding to turn right and follow it, gesturing Grian to follow. They’re in tense territory here, silence is absolutely necessary at this moment. Thankfully it seems like they handled most of the zombies in the area as it’s dead quiet around them, save for their very quiet footfalls and breathing.

Scar’s instincts are rather shortly proven when the road leads them straight into a city. He does startle at the sight of it, still, having not expected it to be as big as it is. Certainly explains the size of the horde, though. It also means this place is almost guaranteed to be abandoned. It’s probably completely looted too, but he can hope for something.

“Wow,” Grian breaths, voice barely audible.

Scar hums in agreement before quietly responding, “we should find a good building to take shelter in, the sun will be setting soon.” If Grian responded, Scar doesn’t catch it, too focused on picking out a good spot. A lot of buildings are too in ruin to be a stable structure to reside it, which is definitely worrisome.

“There,” Grian murmurs after a minute, pointing towards what seems to be an apartment building.

Scar perks up as much as one can in this situation, it’s definitely one of the sturdiest looking buildings here. He doesn’t hesitate to head towards it, it’s a good place to check for food. Despite how sturdy the building appears outwardly, the lobby is in complete ruins. Which isn’t unexpected, of course, but it is often telling of how the rest of the building would be.

They don’t have much of an option either way, so Scar leads Grian towards the stairs and begins climbing up them. He winces at each creak and crack from them, both worried about the sound being heard and the possibility of the stairs crumbling completely. On the plus side, it means zombies won’t be able to climb up without making a noise either, not like they’re silent to begin with.

Scar continues climbing until he reaches the sixth floor, which doesn’t look that much better than the lower floors, but it’s also not the worst place Scar has spent the night at. “Let’s do a quick sweep,” he murmurs as he steps into the hall.

Grian nods, closing the door behind them, “I get right, you get left?”

Scar nods, heading down the hall, doing a quick scan into every room, making sure it’s clear of any zombie. They can do a more thorough search in the morning. While they are all empty, they’re also all a mess, which isn’t the most optimistic in terms of supplies. He sighs as he exits the last room, there aren’t any lingering zombies, thankfully, but none of the rooms seem particularly hospitable.

He quickly heads back towards the other end, hoping Grian’s found something better. Scar reaches the end just as Grian exits the final room. His eyes widen briefly in surprise before his expression turns neutral again. He puts his axe away, “Everything is clear. I found a good room to spend the night in. It’s,” he wrinkles his nose with some form of disgust or discomfort, “not the worst.”

“Better than nothing,” Scar replies, far too used to staying in bad places to be feel picky about it. “Lead the way.”

Grian nods, walking past him and towards where they came from, Scar quickly follows him. He doesn’t head too far down before stopping at a door, opening it and gesturing inside.

Scar peers in and, yeah, it was a complete mess, but it also wasn’t filthy. He enters it, looking around and checking to see what is still in it. To his surprise, there is a still standing bed and in a rather good condition. He sits down on it, testing the strength of it, it feels sturdy too.

Scar looks up to see Grian watching him, his expression neutral, “do you want first shift or second shift?”

Grian’s expression doesn’t change as he takes a moment to think, “second shift.”

He nods and gets off the bed, he gestures to it, “all yours.” Scar exits the room to keep an eye on the front door itself, freeing his tail as he does so. After a glance around, he catches sight of a bookshelf on the same wall as the door is. He goes over and pushes it along the wall until it blocks the door. There, extra safety.

With this place even more secured, he goes around, searching for anything useful. He comes up completely empty handed, sighing at the prospect that nothing useful will be found in this town.

Now that he’s done everything he can, he grabs a chair, brings it against a window and facing the door. Scar pulls the blinds up, revealing how night has completely fallen now. He sits down on the chair, faces the door, but with an eye outside to keep track of time, and keeps guard.

Chapter Text

Grian, thankfully, wakes up normally. As in he doesn’t try to attack Scar when the other gently shakes his shoulder. He can see Scar clearly despite how late at night it probably is, although night has always appeared brighter here than what Grian recalls from Evolutions. He wishes he can ask why.

“Your turn,” Scar murmurs gently, “wake me up around dawn.”

Grian nods, getting up off the bed and stretching, careful not to hit Scar with any of his limbs as he takes Grian’s place on the bed. Similarly to Grian, Scar keeps his back to the wall, facing outwards. Grian turns and begins to leave, but pauses in the doorway, glancing backwards.

Surprisingly Scar’s eyes were already closed, so Grian allows himself a moment to study the other. First glance is mostly what he’d expect, Scar still seems tense even as he falls asleep, and that he’s a side sleeper. Whether that’s just how he is, or if that’s from the apocalypse, Grian isn’t sure.

Grian then catches sight of something he couldn’t study for long, Scar’s tail. He has just the end wrapped around his leg, a gesture clearly meant to keep it close. It’s, well, it’s definitely not a tail Grian can use to figure out just what kind of hybrid Scar is. The majority of it is thin and long, with a light amount of fur, but towards the very end the fur grows longer and creates a kind of fluffy tip to his tail. Very strange.

Granted, Scar can still be a kind of elf, since Grian knows there are many kinds, and he might be one that he can’t name. Or he’s just a strange new hybrid, which also makes sense since this whole world is different, so why wouldn’t hybrids also be different?

Grian shakes his head, quietly backing up and exiting the room to leave Scar to sleep in peace. As he enters the other room, he quickly takes note of the changes. The bookshelf moved in front of the door, the curtains over one window drawn up, and a chair is against a wall facing both the bookshelf and the window. Grian takes a seat in the chair, as he figures Scar was doing before.

While he should focus on keeping guard, Grian figures they’re safe enough to not be hyper vigilant. So he reluctantly pulls his mask from his bag and secures it onto his face. The boost in his watcher powers is sudden and near addictive, making him grimace. He is happy to notice that it’s stronger than before. Maybe it won’t take as long to get out of here as he had feared.

Grian concentrates on his powers of Sight, summoning an eye in front of himself. He startles a little at the change in view to staring at himself, normal sight gone, but quickly shakes it off. He cautiously summons another eye, this one looking outside the window and towards the city below.

Upon both gazes being stable, Grian summons a third eye, this time aimed at the door. Immediately he feels a spike of pain and dizziness washes over him. He closes all of the eyes, gritting his teeth at the sudden headache. Apparently his powers aren’t that strong yet and using more than he has access to is a very bad idea.

Grian sighs, it’s still progress, that’s what matters right now. He takes off his mask and stuffs it back into the bag. He can’t force progress right now, if the persistent headache has anything to say about it, meaning the only option he has is to wait. Which he really isn’t happy about.

He gets up from the chair, searching around the room, there is something else Grian can do. To his surprise and relief, he does find a notebook and pencil amongst the wreckage. He tears out any pages that aren’t blank, stuffing them into a random drawer. Grian doesn’t want to see if there’s anything about the start of the apocalypse in there, living through this is enough.

He sits down in a chair at the table, one that faces the blocked door. He opens the journal to the first page and begins jotting down everything he can remember from the spell book about the spell he used to get here. Grian will be able to get out of here sooner if he can get the spell as accurate as he can to the original instead of a half baked version of it later on.

While he puts his full focus into recalling information about the spell and writing it down, he still keeps an eye out on the door, still wary about the world around him. He makes sure to write down anything he can remember, from the spell itself to all small details describing the spell.

When Grian has written what he can remember, he leans back, setting the pencil inside the journal and closing it. He turns his gaze towards the door, the only thing left to do is stand guard. It’s rather easy for Grian to tune out everything except the world around him, letting his mind go blank for anything not related to what’s going on right in this moment. It’s easy to not dwell on what They did to him, he wishes that it can always be that easy.

It’s completely silent the rest of the night, nothing breaking the peace that Grian has found himself in. He glances outside when the room starts growing brighter, the pale light slowly becoming a brighter one. He stands up, stretching out his limbs, stiff from sitting still for so long. Grian puts the journal into his bag before heading into the bedroom.

He approaches the bed, gently tapping Scar on the shoulder, “It’s morning.” Scar blinks awake, quickly sitting up. Grian takes a step back, “So, what’s the plan? Think we should search this whole building?”

Scar doesn’t reply right away, mulling the question over, “If this place is anything to go by, we won’t find much in this city. But, if we’re thorough, there’s probably something to find.”

Grian nods, “I would think that a lot of people would avoid the top floors, since it’s more of a risk, plus a lot of stairs to travel up for something that might not be worth it.”

Scar gives him a grin, “You read my mind. Are you up for the climb?”

He relaxes, that was clearly a good answer here, which should help with his lack of knowledge that he’s recently shown. “Yeah, it definitely seems like it could be worth it.” Grian pauses before continuing, “Think we should just skip the next few floors? Or maybe leave them to later?”

“I would hesitate to not search them all, but I don’t think we’ll find much this floor and down,” he replies. “Although you make a good point, searching top to bottom will give us a good estimate of if we’d find anything. Once we start consistently finding nothing, then it would probably be safe to call it.”

Another good answer, he internally sighs in relief, “I’m assuming the same deal as yesterday, eat fast and then begin the climb.”

“Yup, this isn’t ideal in terms of conserving energy, but the payout could be worth it.”

Grian nods, “Hopefully.” He heads back to the main room, where most of their supplies are. Scar seems to have shifted fully into a logical mindset, not that he minds all that much. It keeps them on track, after all.

They have yet another silent breakfast, more focused on eating than talking. While it’s weird to eat food that has little taste and to eat it sparingly, it’s not like Grian isn’t used to it. Since the Watchers were fond of starving him as punishment and all of their food was bland anyways. Considering how Watchers don’t even eat, Grian’s lucky that the food was edible to begin with.

Grian might not be able to understand Scar completely, but he’s slowly beginning to figure out how to read him. Well, read him enough to communicate with small gestures without words. Since being silent is so important, them being able to understand each other with gestures alone is important.

Even if they’re safe at the moment, they still communicate silently to pack everything up and move the bookshelf out of the way. Grian lets Scar take the lead as they head back to the staircase. He keeps taking cautious looks behind him, making sure that nothing is coming up behind them, even though he’ll probably hear it first.

As they near the top, Grian discovers that checking his back so often and completely isn’t the best idea considering he runs right into Scar’s back doing so. He makes a startled noise and stumbles back a step. Scar stumbles too, but catches himself quickly. Grian looks past him with a frown, wanting to see why he stopped. His frown deepens as he takes in the sight of a few stairs completely destroyed, enough to be higher than even Scar.

Grian glances at him to ask what the plan is, only to find Scar staring at him, eyebrows furrowed in question. “Ah, sorry,” Grian mumbles, “I was looking behind us.”

Scar nods, accepting the answer, before turning back around and carefully picking his way through the rubble. Once he reaches the other side, he reaches up towards the next stair, his fingers just barely brushing it. Grian can’t tell what’s going through his mind, so he just waits in silence. The other eventually sighs and turns to face him again, “We probably can climb up this, I’m just not sure if it’s worth the risk of it being more unstable then it appears.”

“Depending on when this happened, it changes how much could be left up here. That’s what you were thinking, right?” Grian asks, carefully making his way over to Scar.

He nods, “We’ve already come this far, so I’d rather not back down, but…” he trails off, turning back around to look up.

“It would be safer to help each other up,” Grian says, coming to stand right beside Scar and looking upwards as well. He would just fly, but they’re in too cramped of an area for it to be easy, or effective.

Scar hums in confirmation, “Want to boost me up?”

“Why you first?”

Scar shrugs lightly, “Mainly because I think I’d be able to pull you up more easily. Not to mention those talons of yours, I’m not a fan of how this will go with those,” he adds on.

Grian nods slowly, “Alright, just be careful.” He approaches the wall, turning to put his shoulder against it, facing Scar. Doing this reminds him of some of the mischief he used to get up to. Grian blocks those memories before they can fully form, very much not wanting to dwell on the past right now. He laces his fingers together and holds them out a little.

“I just need a small boost to be able to get a good grip up there,” Scar says in response and closes most of the small distance between them. With only a beat of hesitation, Scar places his left hand on Grian’s shoulder, and his left foot on Grian’s entwined hands. “On go,” he murmurs, “3, 2, 1, go.”

Grian grunts a little as he lifts all of Scar’s weight, but it quickly evens out as Scar throws his forearm onto the next step and digs his right foot into a divet into the wall. Once stable, he reaches up with his left hand to get a better grip and, with just a little more assistance from Grian, manages to pull himself up all the way.

Grian dusts the dirt off of his hands before looking up expectantly. He watches as Scar tugs at what remains of the handrail, which remains surprisingly sturdy. He wraps one arm around it and leans down, reaching his other hand down to Grian. It looks like an uncomfortable position to be in so he quickly grabs Scar’s hand, jumping to help the other pull him up better.

It’s a lot harder for his talons to get a grip on the rocky wall, but even with his scrambling, he is able to reach up and grab the next step. Scar grabs his other arm to help pull him up more, and he’s soon able to get both of his feet onto the next step.

They’re both a little out of breath, but they’re safely on the top of the steps. Scar also hasn’t let go of Grian, both of his hands still firmly gripping Grian’s hand and arm. He stares at where their hands are connected, feeling that electrifying warmth again. This time he knows that doesn’t want to let go.

Apparently he’s not just out of depth by just being around another person, but touching them as well. Although it makes sense for touch to be addicting, having lacked positive touch for years. Even as their breathing evens out and silence surrounds them, their hands stay connected. Grian doesn’t want to let go, but he knows that they can’t stay here forever.

He keeps holding Scar’s hand.

It feels like an eternity, but probably only a few minutes, when Scar clears his throat. He lets go, stepping backwards and up a couple steps. “We should be nearing the top, soon,” he whispers, tone off in a way Grian can’t figure out.

“Yeah,” he murmurs back, lowering his hand. Grian looks back up to Scar’s face to see the other looking away. Before he can say anything, Scar fully turns around and begins walking up the stairs again.

Grian follows a moment later, opening and closing his fist at the lingering warmth. He forces himself to keep a few steps back, staring at Scar’s back as he wonders how to handle this now. The desire to reach out and grab Scar's hand again is shockingly strong.

‘Don’t get attached to mortals.’

He flinches at the memory, stumbling a little. While he hates that ‘teaching,’ he knows that he has to follow it here. Grian can’t let himself get attached to Scar, not when he knows that this won’t last, which means keeping distance both physically and emotionally.

He takes a deep breath and continues going up the stairs, glad that Scar didn’t notice his fumble. Neither of them speak until they reach the highest floor. “We should split up to cover more ground again,” Scar says quietly, “and meet back here when we’re done.”

Grian nods, heading down the other hall. He opens the first door and grimaces as a rotten smell hits him. He enters despite how much he’d rather not, and begins his search through the apartment, it’s a lot bigger than the apartment they stayed in. Grian pointedly ignores the kitchen, having a good guess as to what the source of the smell is.

He searches through every other room to the extent that he can, just to be thorough. Grian doesn’t find much outside simple first aid items, even if they’re small he still takes them. Anything will probably prove useful here.

Once Grian’s sure that he’s found anything that can be useful, he returns to the dreadful kitchen. He searches through the cabinets first, finding a lot of things extremely out of date. While none of it smells pleasant, none of it is the source of the worst of the rotten smell, which Grian expected. He grabs anything that would probably be good, despite being many years since its creation.

Once he’s searched through everything else, he goes over to the fridge. While he can probably skip it without worry, he doesn’t want to leave something unchecked. Grian preemptively covers his nose any mouth with one hand, and he opens the fridge door with the other. Instantly the rotting smell increases tenfold, Grian’s attempt at blocking it out failing. He scans through what’s inside of it, looking for anything that’s not remotely rotten, but to no luck.

He closes the fridge door and quickly makes his way out of the apartment. He drops his hand only once he had left the apartment and closed the door behind him. While the air quality is definitely not the best in this world, it’s so much better than what was in that stuffy room.

After catching his breath, Grian goes down the hallway to the next room, dreading similar results. Nonetheless, there can also be something very useful in one of these apartments, so he has to press onwards.

As he steps inside he’s greeted by an equally rotten smell, making him grimace. He continues in, he just needs to grin and bear it and search through every apartment here.

~                    ~                    ~                    ~                    ~

Grian’s never been more relieved than when he exits the final apartment on that floor. He’s only come away with some supplies, but it’s better than nothing, and it will probably come in use later. He turns to go back to the stairs and startles a little when he sees Scar approaching him.

He gives Grian a smile, “did you finish searching these rooms?”

“Yup, although I only managed to find some stuff,” Grian replies. “It’s still something, at least.”

Scar nods, “Most people don’t have full on survival gear in their apartments, so I’m not expecting anything big. Every small bit counts, plus who knows what somebody could randomly have.”

“Yeah, hopefully.”

“Let’s head down to the next level, we need to cover as much ground as quickly as we can.”

“Lead the way,” Grian replies, gesturing behind Scar.

He gives him a smile and a slight incline of his head, a sort of a nod. Scar turns around and begins to head back towards the stairs and Grian follows close behind him. It’s still hard to adjust to this world, but he’s beginning to find a foothold, even if it’s a small one.

Chapter Text

They make it about half of the way back down the building before taking a break for lunch, taking shelter in one apartment which is thankfully not full of rotten food. Scar peers out of the window after he finishes eating, staring at the sky. He can see a large amount of clouds nearby, slowly crawling closer.

“There’s going to be a blackout,” he murmurs, frowning. The incoming clouds are thick, and dark enough to the point where Scar doesn’t know if it’ll be a storm or not. It does look like they’ll be safe until nightfall, unless the winds grow stronger, that is.

“Huh?”

Scar turns to look at Grian and gestures outside, “Clouds are coming in, we’re probably going to get a blackout tonight.”

Concern and confusion flashes across his face, but it’s quickly replaced with something neutral, “So we should hurry and get what we can done before then.”

Scar makes a brief note of the reaction before nodding, “I don’t think we’re going to find anything else that’s good from here on down. Finding a good supply store would be a better priority now.”

“Right, I’m ready to go when you are.”

“Let’s head out then,” Scar replies, casting a glance around the room to make sure that they’re not forgetting anything. Once certain, he heads out of the room, leading them back down the stairs.

Neither of them speak as they exit the building, both on guard. Scar leads them deeper into the town, looking around for the best place to search next.

The streets are eerily quiet as they walk along them, and Scar holds his axe tightly in his hands. After walking far along the street and down a different block, they come across a hardware store. A warehouse of hopefully useful supplies.

Scar gestures to it, and Grian nods, walking besides him as he walks up to it. He frowns as he takes in the sight of the doors, both having the glass shattered.

He hooks the edge of his axe around the handle, pulling on it in experimentation. The door opens easily, Scar catches it with his foot when it’s close enough to reach. Even if it’s unlikely, he doesn’t want to risk cutting himself on the glass.

Scar gestures for Grian to enter first, and he does so with a nod. Scar follows after him, peering into the darkness. It’s as dark as he’d expect, it being a windowless building, after all.

He pulls out his battery-free flashlight with a sigh, it’s tedious to use, but it works and that’s what matters. Grian whirls around when the beam of light cuts through the darkness, even though it’s not too strong.

Grian casts the flashlight a curious look, “I was worried we were going to be wandering around in the dark for a minute there.”

“I wouldn’t just lead us in here without being prepared,” Scar replies, heading further inside.

“I guess I should have expected that,” Grian says quietly, following along after him.

As Scar shines the flashlight around, and he realizes that he should have brought a second flashlight, so Grian isn’t just trailing behind him. He cringes at the sound of his footsteps echoing, the emptiness of building amplifying them. And it certainly is empty.

He frowns as they walk down the aisle, empty shelving lining either side. Not everything here would’ve been useful, but Scar was hoping they’d at least find something.

This trip will be a waste if they don’t find anything. The last thing Scar needs is for this to result in a net loss, since it’s looking that way now. The oncoming blackout will only make this harder, losing complete sight for who knows how long will make navigating difficult. There’s only so much this flashlight can do.

Navigating in the dark has never been a favorite of Scar’s, the risk of something being hidden is too high. He keeps his ears pricked for any sound as he cautiously searches, too wary of what may be lurking around a corner.

It’s been pretty silent, so he hopes that they’re in the clear, but there’s no guarantee on anything here.

Scar’s been avoiding looking at any price tags that remains, not wanting to know what they might have lost out on. Not like it matters that much, he already knows that most useful things have been looted already. What is left behind are things they have no use for.

Eventually Scar catches sight of a couple lanterns sitting on a shelf. He approaches the shelf, inspecting the quality of them. They’re covered in dust and grime, but don’t seem too horrible of quality if cleaned up a little.

He searches through them until he finds what he deems is the best, and least damaged, one. Scar grabs it, planning to clean it later. He looks back at Grian, shining the light downwards, “It will be useful when the blackout hits us.”

Grian nods, “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“I’ll take what we can get, at this point,” Scar murmurs, turning around to see what else there is. The small amount of things nearby are either useless or impractical. He sighs, “Not sure what else can be useful here.”

The avian hums, coming up to stand beside him, “We’re running out of time as well.”

Scar really didn’t need that reminder, his own mental timer constantly ticking loudly in his ears. He frowns instead of replying, trying to think of the best plan as he begins walking again. “We should probably return to the apartment soon then. It’s the safest play right now.”

“Right,” Grian whispers, keeping pace with him.

Scar moves as fast as he can, which is still slower than he’d like. The search turns up with nothing they can use, and Scar doesn’t waste any time as he leads them out.

When he exits the building, he instantly notices that it’s a lot darker than it was before, with the clouds rolling in quickly. “Let’s hurry,” he whispers, glancing back at Grian.

He’s staring up at the sky, a deep frown on his face, “At this rate it should hit as we get back.”

It seems like his internal timer is just as good as Scar’s is, which is useful in this situation. Grian is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and now isn’t the best time to figure him out. It’s always later, later, later.

He’s never liked putting things off, since later is never guaranteed. Since later could be life or death. Since later is always changing.

Scar hates later.

He nods as he walks back towards the apartment they stayed in before. Backtracking is also bad, but it’s the safest choice. Safety over time. Time is another thing Scar doesn’t like.

It’s always ticking, always going, always running out.

He shakes the thoughts out of his head, he can’t dwell on them. It’s an endless cycle, and he has no choice but to work through it. They continue the walk in silence.

Scar pulls out his flashlight again when they reach the building, the darkness already hitting the area. It’s completely dark inside the building now, the flashlight the only thing guiding their path. Reaching the sixth floor shows the start of the blackout, no light coming through the broken and partially boarded up windows.

The flashlight is their only guide back to the initial apartment they stayed in, which is as equally dark as the hallway. Scar sets the lantern on the table and heads to the bathroom, remembering seeing towels in there. He grabs one and returns to the table.

Grian is sitting in one of the chairs, watching Scar’s movements. He cleans off the lantern to the best of his ability, before pulling out his matchbox. He lights one and holds it over the wick, which lights after a few seconds.

Scar grins, stepping back and shaking off the match. He lets the flashlight turn off as the lantern lights up the room. It’s not bright, but it works well enough.

Scar glances over at Grian as he hums, his eyes focused on the flame. The light reflects in his dark eyes, the sight mesmerizing. Scar can’t help but watch as the flame flickers in his gaze. Scar is abruptly pulled from his daze when Grian turns to look at him.

Scar clears his throat, caught off guard, “It would probably be best to try and sleep through this.”

Grian nods, “Can’t do much else at the moment. I can take first shift, if you want.”

“Works for me, just wake me up in a few hours.”

“Got it,” he replies, turning to look back at the lantern.

Scar grabs the flashlight and uses it to guide him back into the bedroom. He removes his gear with ease, and leaves his gun in reach like always. The motions are mechanical at this point. He frees his tail as he climbs onto the bed to sleep.

The one good thing about the blackout is that it makes falling asleep easier, his brain not confused about the lack of darkness like before. It makes waking up on time hard though.

With Grian keeping watch, it eases that worry some, even though it shouldn’t with how little he knows Grian. He shouldn’t trust Grian as much as he does in this moment. Yet for some reason, he does, and he can’t bring himself to regret it.

Scar lets himself fall asleep easily.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

When he wakes up, it’s not from Grian. He blinks awake in the mostly dark room, furrowing his eyebrows at the sudden worry washing over him. It’s answered quickly with the fact that he doesn’t find only an orange glow coming from the other room, but a purple one instead.

Scar’s first thought is that it’s a UV light, his second thought is to grab his gun. They don’t have a UV light.

That thought prompts another worry, where’s Grian? Scar is realizing that he definitely cares more about the avian than he should. More than he intended to. Because of that, he doesn’t hesitate to enter the other room, gun raised.

Scar falters as he takes in the sight before him, freezing completely. The person in the middle of the room doesn’t notice him, too busy concentrating on their hands, both of which are coated in something that glows purple. Although it’s hard to gauge how concentrated they are due to the mask covering the majority of their face.

Of course that is nothing in comparison to eyes surrounding them. There are only a few, but magical glowing eyes are still magical glowing eyes. Scar tightens his grip on his gun, although he’s not sure how effective it would be against… all of this.

It’s hard to distinguish much about the figure due to the clashing of the orange lantern flame and the purple magic, in addition to the dark shadows. The most distinctive feature is the wings partially spread from their back.

One of the eyes suddenly flick towards him, which causes the rest to follow. The last to react is the person, whirling around to face him, “Scar!” All of the eyes vanish, as does the glow around his hands, leaving them bathed in just in the orange candle light.

The situation is so surreal that Scar somehow missed the fact that this is obviously Grian. Although staring into that mask is extremely unnerving and it throws Scar off. Especially since it almost completely covers his face with only a broken rectangle decorating it. There are no eye holes, yet Grian still looks directly at him.

“Grian,” Scar finally manages to say, voice strangled. “What the hell is this,” he gestures around the room with his gun hand. It’s definitely not the safest thing to do, but gun safety isn’t exactly on his mind right now.

Grian slowly reaches up and removes the mask, “It’s, uh, it’s a long story”

Scar gestures to where the window is, the world still dark around them, “We have plenty of time.” He drops his gun hand to the side, having forgotten the holster in his haste.

Grian fidgets with mask for a few moments before answering, voice quiet, “I’m a Watcher.”

“…I have no idea what that is.”

He sighs, “Yeah… I- I figured.” Scar watches him expectantly, and he continues after a moment, “It’s- Watchers are beings who-“ Grian lets out a huff, “It’s hard to explain what they are.”

“You said you’re a watcher, and then starting describing them with ‘they,’” Scar notes, for once not putting that thought to the side. He’s not going to ignore these small tells anymore.

Grian falters, taking a moment before replying. He sighs, “It’s because the Watchers kidnapped me and tried to make me into one of them.” He stares down at the mask in his hands, “And it worked, for the most part. I’m not fully one of them, but pretty close.” He grits his teeth and clutches the mask tightly in his hands, “All that I have left is my humanity.”

Scar just stares at Grian, unsure what to say, how can he even respond to that? 

Grian doesn’t give him much of a chance to as he shoves the mask into his bag with a huff. He looks back up at Scar, “I’m guessing you have questions.”

Scar hesitates but nods, “A lot.”

“Go ahead then.”

He sorts through the whirlwind of thoughts in his mind, trying to find any starting point. Scar settles on the first thing he thinks of, “Those eyes, can you- can you see out of them?”

“Yeah, I can,” Grian replies after a moment, “that’s the point of them, to See. They’re called Watchers after all, that’s all they do, Watch various worlds.”

Before Scar can react to that answer, the last word draws his attention and slams his thoughts to a full stop before they start rushing at full speed again. “Wait, ‘worlds’!?”

Grian stares at him blankly for a moment, he shakes his head, “Right. I should have realized that you wouldn’t know.” He takes a moment to think before he continues, “Basically, this isn’t the only world that exists, there are an infinite amount of them. Some similar, many different. I haven’t seen a world like this one before, but I also haven’t seen all too many worlds, so it doesn’t mean much.”

Scar opens his mouth to ask about that, but Grian cuts him off, as if anticipating his question.

“I’m not from here,” he says it like an admittance, like a relief to finally be honest about it. “I used my powers to try to escape the Watchers, they caught me trying to leave so I went to the first world I could. That’s why I have no idea what’s going on here.”

Scar’s mind is still racing with everything he’s learning, but finally something makes sense. Finally he knows why Grian is so out of place, but it does raise the question of just what ‘world’ Grian is from.

Grian seems to have gotten on some kind of roll as he only takes a breath before continuing, “Doing so basically drained all of my magic, so I’ve been working on getting that back.” He looks down at his hand and summons a small purple spark of… something, “I won’t be able to change worlds again with it being this weak.”

That slams Scar’s thoughts to a halt for a completely different reason, and he forces his expression into complete neutrality by the time Grian looks up at him again. It feels like a stab to his heart, even when he was expecting it. Of course Grian is going to leave, it was only a matter of time. “I see,” he forces out, keeping his voice free of all of the emotions he’s feeling.

Scar has grown to care about Grian and having the other close, even when he knew better to. It’s his fault for letting himself grow close to another person, to get attached to someone in a world where attachments are easily lost.

Something in Grian’s expression falters and he doesn’t reply for a long moment. He eventually breaks eye contact and quietly offers, “Want to come with me?”

“W-what?” Scar stutters, caught off guard by the question.

Grian looks back up at him, “This world is horrible and I don’t want to stay here longer than I have to. I doubt you want to either, so, join me. I can bring you out of here with me.”

“R-really?” Scar fails to hide the way his voice breaks, too shocked to even try.

“Yeah,” Grian replies, his confidence growing, “you helped me out so much when you didn’t have to, it’s the least I could do to repay you. So,” he holds out his hand, “what do you say?”

Scar grabs it but instead of shaking it, he pulls Grian towards him and into a hug. He can’t bring himself to respond verbally, only holding Grian closely. He’s immediately hit with the near overwhelming and addicting warmth, but it only makes him hold on tighter now.

Grian stiffens at the touch at first, but quickly relaxes into it, returning the hug just as tightly. They stay holding onto each other for a long while, Scar unable to bring himself to pull away like he did on the stairs.

Grian eventually breaks the silence between them, but he doesn’t move, “I take it that that’s a yes?”

“I- yeah,” Scar murmurs into his shoulder. Scar should probably be embarrassed for acting like this, but he finally, finally, has something to look forwards to. To hope for. He can finally have a future, so he can let himself have a moment of weakness here. Especially when he’s never been able to have one before.

Chapter Text

The last thing that Grian wanted to do was break out of Scar’s hug, but they have a lot of things to talk about, even if Grian doesn’t want to. This experience has also taught him a few things about Scar, which is enlightening in a way he wasn’t expecting.

It was shocking to see how quickly his walls crumbled when Grian offered to take Scar with him when he leaves. He expected to get a yes, just not like that. Apparently Scar is more vulnerable than Grian had realized.

Grian reluctantly pulls himself out of Scar’s hold, who lets go of him quickly when he puts just a little bit of pressure against his arms. Scar steps away himself, looking sheepish as he avoids eye contact.

Grian immediately wants to pull him back into a hug at the embarrassed expression on his face, but he forces himself to stay where he’s standing, they need to continue their conversation.

Knowing this will take a while, he grabs the lantern and sits down, gesturing for Scar to do the same. After a slight pause he does so, settling a little awkwardly in front of him.

“I guess with, uh, that decided, do you have any questions about anything else?” Grian really would like to avoid talking about what They did to him, but he still feels like he owes Scar. Until Grian can repay Scar for everything that he did for Grian, they won’t be even. 

Scar looks at him, surprised, as if he forgot what they were talking about before. He seems to realize after a moment and the surprise turns into a more neutral, but thoughtful, expression. It takes him a while longer to reply, “That mask you had, can you…” he trails off, frowning a little, before continuing, “what is it?”

Grian hesitates, but takes it out from where he’s put it in the bag, “It’s a Watcher’s mask. Well, my Watcher mask. It helps boost my powers, so I was using it to see if it helps me get my magic back more quickly.” He shows the front to Scar, pointing at the symbol on it, “This is the symbol of the Watchers. Anytime you’ll see this symbol means a Watcher is involved somehow.”

“Can you see out of it?” Scar asks after Grian doesn’t continue.

Grian looks down at it with a small frown, “Technically speaking? No. But I can use my magic to basically see through it, which I’m pretty sure is a loophole that the Watchers weren’t expecting.” He looks up and cracks a small grin at Scar, “They’re all about wearing the mask to cover my ‘mortal sight,’ since They use their own Sight to see. I hated not being able to see normally, so I created a work around.”

Scar stares at him with something akin to awe, “That’s impressive.” He glances away, “Not that I know much about magic, it’s mostly fairy tale stuff to me.”

Grian looks away too, flustered a little, “Ah, yeah, Watcher magic is kinda finicky in nature, so it’s not the easiest to work with without a spell book or rigorous practice.”

“Spell book?”

Grian nods, “They don’t call it that, but that’s basically what it is, a book of different Watcher spells. With direct reference to the book, it’s pretty easy to use the spells. Losing focus while casting a spell however,” he glances down at the mask in his hands, “can mess up a lot, apparently.”

“Is that what brought you here?” Scar asks quietly.

Grian nods, meeting his eyes again, “Yeah, I was using the book to cast the spell when one of the Watcher’s barged into the room. I panicked and just blindly reached out to a random world. I definitely skipped parts of the spell, and it sapped all my magic temporarily in retaliation.”

Scar frowns, “What will happen this time? Since you don’t have the book.”

Grian exchanges his mask for the journal in his bag, “Hopefully this is a close enough recreation to work.” He opens the page to the spell info and shows it to Scar.

The other frowns, “I can’t read any of that.”

Grian looks at it, confused for a moment before it dawns on him, “Oh. It’s in Galactic, the language Watchers primarily use. I guess I just wrote it in Galactic because the original book was written in Galactic.”

Scar leans back, “I see, so is that the spell?”

“Yup, everything I can remember from it, at least.”

Confusion suddenly crosses his face, “Where did you even get that book from?”

“I found it around here, wrote it in while you were sleeping yesterday,” Grian answers, shrugging a little.

“Ah, I suppose that makes sense. So that is the spell that lets you… change worlds?” It’s clear from Scar’s tone of voice that he’s wildly out of depth here.

“Yeah, although in order to use it, I’d have to be able to See into other worlds.” Grian glares down at his hands like they’re the cause, “Which I’m not able to do yet.”

Scar makes a quiet noise in response, but doesn’t reply further. Neither of them speak for a while, just sitting silently in the mostly dark room. Grian eventually raises his head to look back up at Scar, who’s watching him.

“Any other questions?” He asks quietly.

Like before, Scar takes a moment before he replies, “Was the robe I first met you in also a Watcher thing?”

Grian grimaces, but nods, “Yeah. The main Watcher outfit is that robe and the mask. I would have ditched the mask as well if it didn’t boost my powers and would be useful in this.”

Scar hums in thought for a moment, “What was your world like, if this one is so different? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“It’s different in a lot of ways, I don’t even know where to begin, really.”

“No zombies, I bet,” Scar mutters lowly.

Grian hesitates before carefully replying, “There are, but they’re different. It’s not exactly clear where they come from, but they appear only at night, and burn to death in the day.” He glances to the window, even if he can’t see out of it, “So they aren’t much of a threat, but there are threats where I’m from. They all come out at night, but some don’t go away during the day.”

Scar’s annoyance is clear, but he doesn’t express it when he replies, “There are threats worse than zombies?”

“I- yeah, there are,” Grian settles on after a moment. Telling Scar about his world feels like adding salt to the wound of the horrible hand in life that Scar’s been dealt. Yet, he doesn’t want to lie to Scar about any of it anymore, especially since Grian will be bringing him there at some point. “Although,” he continues after a moment, “even those threats aren’t that bad, because death is… different, where I’m from.”

He frowns, “What do you mean?”

“In most cases death… isn’t permanent. When someone dies they just wake up back in their bed, sore but good as new, pretty much.” Grian looks down as he fidgets with his hands, “Of course, permanent death is possible.” He clenches his fists as memories of fire and overgrown ruins flash in his mind, “But in few circumstances,” he finishes quietly. Grian tries to force the memories away, he can’t think about that. He needs to keep it together.

Scar’s frown is even deeper when Grian risks a glance up. Upon making eye contact, his expression smooths over into something neutral, which Grian has come to realize that that is how Scar conceals his true feelings.

Grian quickly looks down again, linking his fingers together. It’s definitely as hard as he expected to tell Scar how much better his world was. Well, his last world, at least. He doesn’t say anything else, letting them sit in the near dark in silence.

Eventually Scar breaks it, voice completely toneless, “You should get some sleep, who knows when the blackout will end.”

Grian looks up in surprise as the other grabs the lantern as he stands up, putting it back on the table, “Are you sure?”

He nods stiffly, looking at the lantern, “I want some time alone to think.”

Grian winces in guilt, standing up as well, “If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

He just nods slowly, even if Scar isn’t looking at him. Grian leaves to go to the bedroom without another word. He flops onto the bed, feeling a strange mix of guilt and hurt.

It’s a struggle to calm his warring thoughts, but eventually he’s able to fall asleep, even as fitful as it is.

~                    ~                    ~                    ~                    ~

Grian wakes up to a neutral-face Scar and a bright room. The other steps back, “Blackout ended, it’s a few hours past dawn.” Without another word, he turns around and exits the room.

Grian gets up and follows Scar, guilt overwhelming him even when the situation was unavoidable. Scar is sitting at the table when he enters, lantern off and ‘breakfast’ in front of himself and the other chair.

Grian sits down and they begin eating in silence. Before the silence between them was calm and comforting, now it’s suffocating. He keeps his eyes down as he eats, unable to meet Scar’s eyes.

He keeps his eyes downcast ever after he finishes eating, unsure of where he stands with Scar now. That whole encounter last night was a rollercoaster ride of emotions, and he doesn’t know how to go from there. Things were going so well and then… it all went south.

Grian can’t blame Scar though, it’s not his fault for anything that he’s feeling. Not like he can tell what Scar is feeling, with the mask he’s firmly wearing again. With the tense silence that Grian is receiving.

He looks up when he hears Scar move his chair back, his face is still fully neutral, “We already lost a good bit of daylight, we can’t dawdle.”

“Ah, right,” Grian mumbles, caught off guard a little.

Scar doesn’t give him any more time to respond, immediately grabbing his bag and heading to the door. Grian rushes to stand up and grab his own bag, apparently Scar got everything together while he was asleep.

He quickly catches up to Scar, following behind him as they head back down the stairs. It’s hard to read Scar at times, but it’s basically impossible now. He keeps his expression stoney and devoid of any emotion.

Any foothold Grian had in this strange partnership they have has quickly vanished and it’s left him scrambling to keep any ground.

Scar is definitely acting differently than how he was before Grian went to sleep, so what the hell did he think about during that time? Grian just resigns himself to follow Scar and hope the other says something. Grian would take anything, actually. Whatever it takes to end this miserable silence.

Scar continues to not speak even as they walk further into town, turning the opposite way they did before. Grian finally sees his expression relax a little, clearly going into his element here. It doesn’t make the silence feel any better, but it does feel less charged.

It doesn’t take them too much longer to reach what used to be a grocery store, a pretty big one at that. Thankfully it also has a lot of windows, meaning the inside is lit up enough for them to see without a flashlight.

Scar opens the door the same way he did the last one, this one also having its glass shattered. Grian is careful of the shattered glass as he enters, casting a wary glance at the shards that remain in the frame.

“We should split up, cover more ground,” Scar murmurs, gesturing towards one direction before heading in another. Once again, he gives no time for Grian to respond before he’s gone.

After a beat, Grian heads in the direction Scar gestured to, accepting his fate in this strained dynamic. He travels all the way to the back of the store before weaving through the aisles, figuring Scar would start with that.

While most of the shelves are empty, he does find some food. Most of it is guaranteed to be stale, but considering what it is, it will probably still be edible.

That’s what Grian has gathered from this world so far. The food is good so long as you can still eat it without getting sick. Even if it tastes horrible. Grian had to grin and bear worse before, he can handle food that tastes bad.

The building is empty as he searches through the aisles, which he’s thankful for. He’s gathered a decent amount of food by the time he meets up with Scar again. He looks a lot less steely than he did earlier, which soothes Grian a little.

“I’m not mad at you,” Scar says as a greeting, “if you didn’t realize.”

Grian startles, “What?”

“Just… frustrated, I guess,” he continues.

“Oh,” Grian mumbles, still caught off guard by the sudden admittance. “Ah, yeah, I was a little worried.”

Scar makes a quiet noise, breaking eye contact to stare at the shelves. He fidgets with the strap of his bag, “It was just complicated.”

Grian relaxes a little, “That’s fair, I realized that that would probably be a lot to take in, all of a sudden.”

Scar looks back at him with a small smile, although he still looks uncomfortable. Despite things being cleared up, an awkward air still follows, neither of them speaking for a moment.

Scar breaks it after a moment, changing the conversation awkwardly, “Find anything?”

Grian blinks in surprise at the sudden change, but goes along with it, “Some stuff, almost everything definitely stale. Edible enough, though.”

“Same,” he pauses for a moment, before continuing with an explanation, “anything left in stores and old houses are always going to be stale now. Only recently abandoned places will have food that’s likely to not be stale. Although it still won’t be that good of food, taste wise.”

Grian nods, “Makes sense, did we get everything here?”

“I believe so, which means we should head out to see what else is here,” Scar replies, nodding his head towards the door they entered through.

“Yeah,” Grian agrees, following him as he starts walking out.

The following silence is a lot more comfortable, although there were still some tense undertones to it. They travel deeper into the city, keeping an eye out for anything useful.

Grian casts a glance at Scar, seeing an extremely conflicted expression on his face. After a second of hesitation, he murmurs, “The offer is still open for asking any questions.”

Scar glances at him, surprise taking over, “Oh- well, I-“ He pauses for a moment, “Alright, noted.”

Silence comes over them again, although Grian isn’t sure if this is because Scar is thinking of a question or has nothing to say. He lets the silence stay this time.

Scar breaks it a couple minutes later, “Do you plan to return to your world?”

Grian flinches as he thinks of Evolutions, and he’s glad that Scar keeps his eyes forward. He takes a deep breath, “No, that’s not possible anymore.”

Scar glances at him, curious, but it quickly flickers to realization and then sympathy. Grian quickly avoids eye contact, but he can still hear it in Scar’s voice, “Oh.” A pause, “What’s the plan then?”

Grian quickly grabs onto the distraction, “I… actually don’t know. I’ve been thinking about that, but I don’t know all that much about different worlds. It probably would have been a good idea to learn more, but I wanted out the moment I could.” He takes a moment to consider his options, “I’ll probably just search for a good world when casting the spell itself. It’ll simplify things.”

Scar nods, “Makes sense.” He mulls it over for a while before continuing, “What do you know about other worlds?”

“Well, there are many different kinds with even more intricacies. The primary difference is that some worlds you don’t need magic to travel between, while others you do,” Grian begins, trying to figure out the best way to make it understandable and concise. “The difference is mostly in the ‘base’ or backbone of the world. That dictates how the overall effect of the world is and the rules it follows. You can non magically go between worlds that follow that same base, even then the worlds can vary a good bit.” He pauses, studying Scar’s expression for a moment, “Are you following?”

Scar glances at him briefly, “Kind of?”

Grian hums and switches tactics, “Alright. So, using an example, there are probably worlds that you can travel between as it is. Although those worlds would be similar to this one, at least in its base form.”

Scar falters in his steps, the vulnerable tone returning to his voice, “I can change worlds?”

Grian grimaces a little, “You can only go to worlds you know of. If you don’t know of an alternate world or how to make one, you’re stuck in the world you’re born to.”

Scar frowns and doesn’t reply, forcing the walk to return to silence. Grian doesn’t push the conversation further, letting Scar control it. Grian hates how little he can share that isn’t akin to putting salt in Scar’s wounds.

The silence continues as they come across and search through the remains of a gas station. Grian may not know much about this world, but he is aware that the small amount of stuff they’re coming across is very bad. He can also see the change in Scar’s demeanor as the search turns out unfavorable for them.

Leaving another place empty handed leaves a bitter taste in Grian’s mouth. He doesn’t like how this is looking.

They continue on after finding nothing, Grian now trailing behind Scar. While they pass several other places, Scar only casts a glance at them. Grian questions it, but trusts the other to know what would be useful or not.

The next place that they do stop at is a gun store. While Grian is sure that Scar is very much geared up already, he supposes making sure he has a big supply would be useful.

As Grian has come to expect, the store is pretty barren. Scar is quick to hop over the counter and begin rifling through stuff under it. Grian searches everywhere around in the front, just to be certain.

“What threats do you have that can be worse than zombies?” Scar breaks the silence suddenly.

Grian startles a little and looks over at the counter, where he can just barely see the top of Scar’s head. “Well, there are four main ones we deal with, although there are a lot more. I brought up my zombies before, but there are also skeletons, creepers, and spiders.”

Scar raises his head over the counter, intrigue seeming more important than his search, “Definitely need some elaboration on those.”

“Yeah, that’s fair. Skeletons are similar to zombies from my world, except they wield bows scarily well. Creepers are- well, it’s hard to describe them. They’re rather bushy things that explode when they’re close enough to you.”

Scar fully stands up, “Explode!?”

Grian grimaces, “Yeah, they’re pretty awful. It’s made worse with the fact that they’re completely silent. They only make a noise when they’re about to explode.”

“That sounds awful.”

“The worst of it is the destruction they leave behind, mainly. They leave big holes in the ground and can destroy parts of buildings.”

Scar watches him silently for a moment, “What about spiders? The ones I know are mostly harmless.”

“Yeah, that kind isn't bad, but it’s the giant ones that are problems.”

“How big?” Scar cautiously asks.

Grian tries to roughly estimate with his hands, “About that big, they’re not always hostile, but when they are, they have a nasty bite.”

“What the hell,” he mutters quietly. “And these are just some of the monsters in your world?”

He nods, “Yeah, there are plenty others, but they aren't as common so I can explain later.” Grian pauses, “Except for endermen, those can also be a problem.”

“Endermen?” Scar echoes, looking a little worried.

“They’re one of the stronger monsters and can be tricky to deal with. Thankfully they’re normally passive unless you attack first, or, strangely enough, look into their eyes.”

Scar furrows his eyebrows, “Look them in their eyes?”

Grian shrugs, “Not sure why, but it angers them enough for them to attack.”

Scar stares at him for a long moment before slowly replying, “Just what is your world?”

Grian laughs in spite of himself, “Yeah, it can be a lot sometimes, but it’s easier once you’ve lived there for a while.”

Scar looks at him like he’s insane, “ …Right. ”

Giving up on finding something useful, Grian goes over to the counter and hops onto it, “Find anything?”

He shakes his head, still looking slightly unnerved, “Seems like everything is gone. Only the safe remains, which we don’t know the code for.”

Grian tilts his head in thought, “I can try to break into it.”

Scar blinks at him for a moment, “Really?”

“Yeah, should be able to,” he swings his feet over to the other side of the counter. Scar steps back, gesturing towards the safe, letting Grian hop down in front of it.

He crouches down to look at it closer. It shows signs of attempts at being pried open, with deep scratches around the door of it. Grian concentrates with his magic, trying to picture the lock on the inside.

Breaking the lock without being able to see it is definitely not an easy task, but he makes an attempt at it. After a moment, he grabs the handle and gives it a hard tug.

With a snapping sound, the door gives way, opening up to reveal the contents of the safe. Grian steps back to let Scar investigate, looking up to see the other staring at him with wide eyes.

“Wow,” he murmurs, “that’s incredible.”

“Ah- uh- yeah,” Grian replies, a little flustered at the compliment and the awe in his voice. He gestures to the safe in deflection, “Anything useful?”

Scar startles, glancing over to it, snapping out of whatever daze he was in. He crouches down, refocusing on the situation at hand.

Grian glances at his wings, at the mostly-white that they have become. He holds out a hand with a frown, if he can break into a safe, what’s stopping him from fixing his wings?

With a little concentration, his wings change color, returning to the former red, yellow, and blue colors they held many years ago. Grian spreads them out more, forgetting Scar’s presence, and admires them.

He’s missed these.

A sharp inhale drags him back to where he is, quickly turning his head to see Scar once again staring at him in awe. Grian quickly retracts his wings, pinning them close against his back.

Scar’s eyes quickly flick to meet Grian’s, where he can now see a mix of confusion with the awe. He struggles for a response briefly before whispering, “How…?”

Grian shrugs, “The Watchers fucked with my wings, I wanted to see if I could fix them.”

Scar stares at him for a moment, “Yeah, that makes sense. I was wondering about your wings for a while now.”

He stares at the other for a moment, “I’m surprised at how silent you’ve been about certain things.”

Scar stands up and shrugs, “I didn’t know how to approach most of those topics.”

Grian nods, “That’s fair.” He tilts his head to the safe, “Find anything useful?”

Scar shows him an extremely fancy looking pistol, “This definitely seems like it was made more decorative than functional, but it will still work. Not much else usable besides ammo for it, most of what’s in there is money.”

The unsaid money is useless is clear to Grian, which makes sense considering that there are probably few others left in this world. Not much point in having money when there’s nothing to use it on.

Scar puts the gun in a side pocket of the satchel, “We should head out to find a good place to hide out for the night. We waste time going back and forth to the apartment building.”

Grian nods, “Yeah, that makes sense.” It feels nice to him to not have to pretend that certain things are obvious to him and to just react to things naturally.

Scar walks around the counter and heads to the door, Grian right on his heels. They fall into a much more comfortable silence as they continue to walk down the street.

Not long later Scar points to one of the buildings, “I think that’s one of those shops with an apartment above it.”

Grian looks over to the building, “Do you like the high ground or something?” 

Scar lets out a snort, causing Grian to snap his head in his direction. There’s something humorous in his eyes as he replies, sounding like he’s holding back something, “Zombies don’t always have the best time climbing stairs. They will, of course, but they usually don’t unless inclined to do so. So sticking to second or higher floors is a lot safer than first floors.” There’s a brief pause before he continues, “Of course zombies can still be on higher floors if someone got infected on a higher floor. Still rare, but more likely than a zombie climbing without motivation.”

“What I’m getting is that the majority of the time, zombies will only climb stairs if they know someone is up them,” Grian replies, glancing back at the building.

“Pretty much.”

He glances to the sky, “We should probably head in to get set up before night hits, yeah?”

“Yup,” Scar replies, heading towards the shop.

Grian follows him in, entering yet another empty store. It wasn’t too hard to find the door leading up to the second floor. Like the store, the apartment is devoid of anything that can be useful.

After confirming that the building is empty, Scar drops his bags onto the table, and sits down on one of the chairs. He glances outside, “We have some time before night falls.”

Grian sits down on the other chair, “Can I ask about that?”

Scar turns back to face him, looking confused, “Ask about what?”

He waves outside, “The whole night thing, it’s been bothering me this whole time, but I couldn’t find a subtle way to ask.”

“Ah,” Scar murmurs, glancing outside. “I don’t really have an answer for that. That was one of the first signs that the world was going to hell, the whole sky just… becoming wrong. ” He sighs, “It’s hard to say anything about why it happened or what its effect in all of this is, the people with the tools available to find out never did before the rest of the world fell apart.”

Grian takes a moment to process all of that, to realize how terrifying that would probably be. For night to no longer happen as it should, for no explanation to be given. He can’t imagine how hard it would have been, especially when that was only the start of the world ending.

Scar turns fully to look outside, “It’s not always predictable in how it acts. In the few instances you can tell something is off ahead of time you only have a few hours in advance, although that’s mainly with the complete blackouts.” He meets Grian’s eyes again, “That’s why I always try to get to someplace safe before night hits, because one of these times it may just get dark enough to be dangerous.”

“So it does get normal dark sometimes?” Grian asks after another few minutes of considering that.

“Not normal dark, I’d say,” Scar replies after a moment. “It does sometimes get dark enough to make visibility difficult, which poses a danger in several ways.”

Grian nods and looks outside, noticing the very slight shift in brightness as night hits. This world is something he could never have imagined existing, a world falling this much into ruin without outside interference.

He pushes away any thoughts relating to a world in ruin from outside interference and murmurs, “I’m sorry this all happened to you.”

Grian looks back over at Scar after a silent few minutes to see his expression shift into something more neutral. He gives him a dismissive shrug, “I’ve gotten used to it.”

Grian frowns, but lets Scar deflect the comment, instead letting silence fill the room. There is a slight awkward tinge to the silence, making Grian uncertain on what to say.

It seems like Scar also isn’t certain as he glances outside and takes the topic change, “It’s getting late, we should get some sleep.” Before Grian can reply, he turns back to face him, “Do you want the first shift, or do you want me to take it?”

Grian hesitates, but accepts the dismissal, “I can take the first shift.”

Scar nods, “Wake me up halfway through the night.” He exits the room and towards the bedroom.

Grian lets out a sigh, it has been a very long day. He’s glad that it’s finally come to an end. All he has to do now is wait out the night.

Chapter Text

Scar sighs as he stares out the window, the night a lot less darker this time. He’s once again alone with his thoughts as Grian sleeps. He forcefully pushes away the jealousy before it can fester this time.

Because that’s what this is, jealousy. Scar loathes to admit how jealous he is of the world Grian comes from, hates to admit to being jealous in general, really. It’s not an emotion he likes having, yet it’s here all the same.

Scar’s been working so hard just to survive in this world, to not die, when people die countless times in other worlds. Where people don’t have to worry about everything falling apart from being bitten or scratched by a zombie.

He runs a hand through his hair, he needs to stop thinking about this. Scar can’t change the shitty hand he was dealt, but he can change what he does with it. He was handed a rare opportunity by running into Grian that day, and he’s ever so grateful for what the avian offered him.

Of course, thinking about Grian himself also makes himself feel guilty for being so jealous. He has clearly gone through hell himself, so getting mad at him for ‘having a better life’ is both wrong and unfair.

Scar’s glad that Grian doesn’t seem to hold any resentment towards him for being so standoffish all day. He really needs to get his head in the game, being distracted is the last thing he needs out here.

Even though Grian can get them out of here, there is no solid time for when that will actually happen. Which means they need to survive until that day comes. If Scar slacks off one day, it can mean life or death in the long run.

Scar’s realized that it mainly falls to him to make sure they can survive that long. He won’t deny that Grian is tough and can handle himself, but he has no experience surviving in this setting. He’s adapted impressively fast, but it’s not enough to figure things out like Scar can.

Not that he’s bothered by that all too much, he’s survived years on his own, he can certainly keep doing it. The only issue with having someone with him will be be supplies. They’re running through supplies quicker than when Scar was alone.

While the ‘clear’ solution would be to split up and search, not only is it something Grian wouldn’t be able to do, it’s also not the most viable option. Sticking together is way more favorable in this situation, which makes it not that different then when Scar was doing this alone.

This does end up with the plus side that they can explore a building and loot it a lot quicker. Splitting up in a building is very feasible and worthwhile, it also makes exploring a building completely a lot quicker. With a building being fully explored faster, it gives them more time to search other buildings before night hits.

Grian may not have experience and miss certain things that can be important, but he is very good at knowing what can and can’t be useful in these more isolated situation. He definitely can’t figure out the best buildings to search on his own, but once inside he has a keen eye for what they can use or not.

Scar has noticed Grian’s hesitance in some of his responses, which he now realizes to be uncertainty. Despite that, he’s consistently made calls that Scar would have done as well. He may not have experience within this world, but he knows how to survive, and to survive well. 

Scar can’t risk giving out trust easily, but he can’t help but hand it over to Grian completely. It’s a weakness, but one he’s fully accepted. He’s signed away his fate now, whatever that means, and now can only wait for that fate to arrive.

Grian will either be his savior or his destruction.

Scar looks back inside the room, the outside being as empty as it has been the past few days. It’s almost reached the eerie side of silent, but from what drew them here, it seems like most zombies have deserted this place. It makes sense with how abandoned this place is. Zombies don’t tend to linger in places where there’s no living person, after all.

He leaves his place by the window to search through the apartment, seeing if there is anything useful remaining around here. Scar avoids the bedroom to not disrupt Grian’s sleep, but searches the rest of the upper floor. Scar doesn’t go back down to the store, staying where they’ve holed themselves up, they’ll have time to search that after they eat.

Scar returns to the table where he’s dropped his stuff and sorts through what they’ve found so far. Once he’s cataloged everything, he gets breakfast ready for him and Grian. With nothing else left to do until dawn, he makes a plan for what else they need to do in this city.

With how desolate it’s been so far, lingering here isn’t too favorable. While Scar would prefer to not leave a stone unturned, he knows when to cut his losses. The best middle ground will be to do one lap around the city and check out the most likely places for supplies before returning to Scar’s base.

He leans against the back of his chair, looking outside again. The streets bathed in the way-too-bright moonlight. He watches as the light gradually grows brighter, dawn arriving.

Scar stretches as he gets up and goes into the bedroom, faltering when he sees Grian. Well, seeing Grian is the hard part, his wings spread out wide across the bed. He hasn’t had the chance to really take them in completely since Grian always has them pulled close to his back.

The blend of red, yellow, and blue feathers looking awe-striking where they’re spread out. Scar may not have seen much of Grian’s wings before, but he thinks that they look better like this. He cautiously approaches the bed, unsure of how to wake the other up.

Grian has always carried his wings in a controlled manner, each movement of them seeming deliberate. The most that Scar has seen of them was yesterday, when Grian wasn’t looking at him. The way his wings retracted like a recoil was definitely a sign that Grian doesn’t like them being shown off.

Instead of trying to figure out how to approach the pile of feathers that Grian has become, Scar just calls out to him, “Grian? It’s morning.”

Grian makes a quiet noise in response and his wings pull back slowly. His head pops up over one of them, blinking slowly at Scar. After a moment he sits up completely, wings fully retracting and returning to their position close against his back. “Ah, already?”

Scar hums in confirmation, “Yup, let’s not linger here.”

He hears Grian get up and follow him as he returns to the main room, “Do you mean here as in this place or the whole city itself?”

Scar casts a glance behind him with a smile, pleasantly surprised with how easily Grian understood him, “The city itself, unless something strange happens, this trip is erring on the side of a net loss.”

“I was worried about how little we were finding,” he replies carefully, sitting down in one of the chairs.

Scar sits down in the other chair, “Yeah, it’s not good. I just want to do one complete loop around the city to not miss anything before we head back.” Grian only nods in response as they start eating.

Using the word ‘we’ is something so strange for Scar to use, yet it’s so comforting and right at the same time. It’s been a long time since he’s been with someone as a team, or whatever him and Grian are now. Allies, partners, friends, or whatever else they could be.

Scar doesn’t mind not having a definite answer to what they are, he’ll take anything. Anything to not be alone again, to have someone with him for more than a few days.

Scar watches Grian eat once he’s done eating himself, lips sealed to the thoughts brewing in his head. There’s no reason for him to bring up just what they are, not with things being so… complicated. They can have more discussions about those kinds of things later.

For once, later doesn’t seem so bad.

Grian meets his eyes when he finishes eating, briefly looking startled before he gives a small smile, “Ready to go?”

Scar mirrors it and stands up, “Yup! We’ll take a quick look around the shop and then head out of here.”

The avian nods, standing up as well, and, much to Scar’s surprise, heads down the stairs first. He slings his bag over his shoulders and quickly follows, pushing past the shock. He keeps a couple steps behind Grian, curiously staring at his back. Grian has never turned his back to Scar this much before.

It confuses him just as much as it intrigues him, when did Grian trust Scar to have his back so completely? Scars eyes flick to his wings, is that the reason for him keeping his back away from him? He doesn’t know enough about avians to know what is and isn’t related.

He lets silence fall between them as they arrive into the store and start looking around. As Scar was expecting they don’t find much, so he quickly leads them out and continued down the street. They’re back to walking side by side, neither taking the lead.

Scar’s not sure why is feels different this time, it’s not like this is the first time walking like this. Hell, most of the time they’ve been traveling they walk side by side. Scar’s only ever taken a distinct lead when there was no other choice to. Yet it feels different this time, charged with something he can’t name. It’s almost addicting in quality, like when he was hugging Grian.

That is something else he needs to unpack, the effect Grian has on him in general. Being alone for so long has blurred what companionship feels like to him so he can’t even begin to understand why Grian makes him feel this way. Is it just from the lack of contact with another person? Or is there something more going on?

“I’m assuming restaurants probably won’t be good,” Grian’s voice breaks him from his thoughts. He nods his head towards a small strip of connected restaurants.

“Yeah, most kitchens just have perishables, anything non perishable is in small quantities and not substantial.” Scar replies, refocusing on what’s going around them. It’s not like him to get so distracted, but so much else has been new, what’s one more?

Grian replies with a quiet hum, “Looking for anything in particular?”

Scar shrugs, “Anything that might have something useful in it really.”

“Primarily food, water, and medical supplies then?” He quickly surmises.

“For the most part, yeah. Out of everything it’s what we need the most of.”

Grian accepts the answer and lets the silence return, although Scar can see something more purposeful in his gaze as it flicks around. He clearly has a specific goal in mind as he looks around now. Scar forces his own gaze away to look around himself.

After a silent few minutes, Scar breaks it, ever curious about the world Grian is from, “You mentioned different world types with the same… base? What are those like?”

Grian hums in consideration, taking a moment to think before replying, “There are a few primary ones, so I’ll start with the one you probably know the best.”

“You can figure that out?”

“Mhm,” Grian gestures around them, “Community Worlds, which is one where a bunch of people live all across it in towns like these. Most of the times it’s just people living casual lives, no resource gathering and fighting for survival.”

Scar raises an eyebrow in curiosity, “Well, that does sound familiar.”

He nods, “The other types are pretty different, the next I’ll go over is Solo Worlds. Those worlds people create themselves, no one is born into it. It’s basically just a default and empty world and the person survives on their own. There are a few subsections to this, but that’ll take too long to explain right now.”

“So ask about it later?” Scar replies with a small smile.

That gets a laugh out of Grian, although a small and quiet one. Scar still thinks it sounds beautiful. “I suppose, it will take a long time now. The final main category is Server Worlds, which have two splits themselves. Public and Private ones, although there is a huge variety amongst them anyways.” He pauses a moment, “Public Servers are servers that anyone can join if they know about it, it can be anywhere from worlds similar to Solo ones or completely different and are focused on mini games or something similar.”

“That’s vague,” Scar comments idly.

“It’d take too long otherwise,” he replies back before continuing, “Private Worlds are similar in that they can be a variety of things and can only be accessed with knowledge of it. But even so you won’t be able to get in unless the creator of the world gives you permission to do so.”

“Huh,” Scar replies, deep in thought, “and these are just the major ones?”

“Yeah, it’s complicated to learn about them in a normal way.”

He raises an eyebrow and glances at Grian, “‘normal way’?”

Grian tenses, “With… magic now, how I can see and access worlds is different. Such as being able to go between different base worlds without extensive preparation.”

“That just gives me so many more questions,” Scar replies after a moment. “Way more than the answers I got.”

Grian casts him a wry smile, “Figured that would happen, it’s a lot of information.”

Scar shrugs, “I had to adapt quickly once before, I can do it again.”

“I’ll handle all world traveling stuff for now, you don’t have to worry about that,” Grian replies, with a bigger and now reassuring smile. “I’ll be able to pull you through however many worlds we need to cross. Which I hope is just one, but I can’t say for certain.”

Scar does relax a little at that, he’s very out of depth here and knowing that Grian will continue to be there to help him adjust is a huge comfort. “I appreciate that,” he whispers, staring at Grian. The avian meets his eyes with a soft look and smile, but quickly breaks eye contact.

Scar looks away as well, keeping an eye out on their surroundings again. They stay silent as they do a loop around the city. Scar notices several more place that can be useful, but after searching through them, they discover it’s just as empty as most other places here.

He regretfully has to cut his losses and glances to the sky to judge time of day, “We should head back to that first apartment and spend one last night here.”

Grian nods, “I assume we’ll head out in the morning, but will we head back to base or search elsewhere nearby?”

Scar takes a moment to think on that, “Probably base to empty our bags and restock, I don’t have hope for things nearby here.”

“Fair enough,” he murmurs as they begin the walk to return to the apartment.

Neither speak until they’ve returned to the first apartment that they’ve stayed at before, where Scar asks, “Do you still want to sleep in shifts?”

Grian gives him a curious look, “What do you mean?”

“This city is pretty deserted and this room is easily defensible, so this will probably be a good time to get a full night’s rest instead of what we’ve been getting so far. Especially with the long journey back which can cause who knows what kinds of problems.”

Grian takes a moment to consider that, “There’s only one bed here.”

Scar hesitates, but shrugs after a moment, sleeping with the other awake is way more vulnerable. “I don’t mind sharing it,” he pauses and watches Grian, “unless you don’t, of course.”

“…it’s big enough, I suppose,” he murmurs after a long few minutes of contemplation.

“We’re going to need all the energy we can before going on the long journey back to the base, so let’s eat and prepare.”

They eat in mostly silence, only making idle discussion about the plan tomorrow, to varied results. They’re in a position where making certain choices is difficult, an unstable balance of risk versus reward.

After not being able to come to a decision shortly, they shelve it for the morning. Even with being a light sleeper, Scar gets Grian to help him move the bookshelf back in front of the door as an extra measure of security.

With everything else sorted out, they retreat to the bedroom. Before Scar can ask, Grian is already climbing onto the bed, moving all of the way to the opposite side. He lays on his side, facing Scar, and wings just barely not pinned to the wall behind him.

Scar doesn’t comment, climbing onto the other half of the bed and, after only a beat of hesitation, turns his back to Grian. He’s had plenty of chances to stab him in the back before, why would that change now?

The prickling feeling of eyes on his back do keep him up longer than he’d like, but he does eventually fall asleep.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

When Scar wakes up again, it’s not to any of the reasons he was expecting. Something light and close to ticklish brushes against his arm. He opens his eyes and turns his head, startling at seeing the bright red feathers inches from his face.

Scar turns around more, seeing that Grian had flopped onto his stomach at some point in the night and spread his wings out. His left one is still mostly closed due to his proximity to the wall, but the right is completely outstretched, including around Scar. It’s almost like a blanket, a really fuzzy and soft one.

Scar curiously trails a finger along the edge of it, admiring it in the quiet morning. Grian’s wing shudders lightly at the touch and he makes a quiet noise, completely muffled by where his face is nestled between his arms. Scar quickly retracts his hand.

As carefully as he can, Scar slips out from under Grian’s wing, quickly putting his gear back on. The avian lets out a quiet groan and he shifts and slowly wakes up too. He blinks at Scar for a moment, confusion crossing his face for a moment before it vanishes, and he sits up.

It doesn’t seem like he was aware of what was happening before Scar woke up, so he chooses not to mention it. Scar’s glad that Grian isn’t waking up as jerkily as he was prior, it’s now more calm. He’s probably adjusted to things by now, at least by a little bit.

Neither of them speak as they get ready for the day, having gotten into a pattern the past few days. Repetition is something Scar’s used to, even as monotonous and boring as it can get. Yet sharing a repetition with Grian changes it, and makes it so much better. Scar doesn’t think he’d mind doing the same boring tasks for months so long as he has Grian with him, even if not a word is said between them.

After giving it more thought and discussion over breakfast, Scar decides that they shouldn’t head straight back to base, instead going a bit out of their way to hopefully find some supplies.

They don’t waste time after that to pack everything up and leave the city. Scar wouldn’t say it’s a relief to encounter a zombie soon after leaving, but the break in silence is nice. It falls easily to a couple of axe swings.

Scar keeps his axe out as they continue down the road that led them into the city, following where it leads. It’s mostly silent as they travel down it, but no matter how far along it they go, it’s silent outside of a handful of zombies.

Eventually Scar lets out a huff, “I don’t know if we’re going to find anything on this road, we’re going to have to camp out at this rate.”

“So we should begin to head back to the base?” Grian replies, head tilted slightly.

“Yeah, it’s for the best,” Scar replies, stopping and casting a glance around the area. “We can just travel out a different direction after we return when we head out again.”

Grian gives a small nod in agreement and they begin making their way back to the base. Several worries run through Scar’s head since it’s late and they have a long distance to travel, and they also haven’t had anything else to eat since the morning. Which is fine, but it doesn’t leave them in a good spot.

His worries are soon proven when they still haven’t come across anything and the sky begins to darken. It darkens a worrying amount, not on the verge of a blackout, but it’s a sign for a darker night than normal.

Scar tenses up as they quicken their pace, eyes flicking around for a sign of anything besides zombies. They easily killed the handful that appear, but it doesn’t make the situation better.

Scar clutches his axe tight as he looks around, it turns out not heading straight back to the base was a bad idea. They’re going to have a darker night and there’s no shelter in sight. From the way Grian’s wings are puffed up, he’s clearly just as antsy.

“There!” The avian quietly exclaims, quickly abandoning Scar’s side.

Scar snaps his head to watch Grian run off to a small building, an aborted cry dying in his throat. He runs after him, as taut as a live wire.

And Scar is tense for a good reason as, even while it sits on an overhang, a zombie is able to reach up and grab onto Grian’s leg as he reaches the entrance. The avian lets out something similar to a squawk in surprise as the rotten hand wraps around him.

Scar doesn’t waste time in closing the distance and slamming his axe down, straight into the zombies head, killing it instantly. But his momentum is too strong and he can just  barely stop himself on the edge of the overhang, despite the force of his swing.

Before he can readjust, the ground crumbles beneath the foot barely on the edge and he falls. Every thought about how to break a fall flashes through Scar’s head, but it’s too quick for him to process in time.

It’s not a long fall, but he still hits the ground hard, pain pulsing from every point of contact he has with the ground. Although one spot in his leg hurts way worse, sending shooting pain through him and causing him to yelp involuntarily.

Scar hears a quiet thud and frantic muttering beside him, but all he can focus on is the pain, any words drowning out. He tries to curl up from the pain, unable to process what he should logically do.

He flinches when hands touch him, but they only retract briefly before returning. Scar tries to fight against them, but he isn’t able to figure out what’s going on through the pain. He stops fighting when he feels himself lifted off the ground.

Scar forces his eyes open, to look past the pain, to see Grian looking down at him, worry lining every inch of his face, “G-Gri-?”

Grian relaxes a little, “How are you feeling?”

He makes a quiet noise and drops his head against Grian’s chest, pain too strong to focus. He would be embarrassed for being carried like this if it wasn’t for the pain.

Scar hears Grian mutter a curse as everything goes dark.

Chapter Text

Grian wouldn’t say that he’s panicking, but he very much is. He’s manages to carry Scar inside the small building and barricade themselves in. He lights the lantern that they thankfully took with, and it casts a small amount of light around the area as night completely falls.

With little other choice, he pulls out his Watcher mask and opens up a few Eyes around Scar. Thankfully their view is not hindered by the growing darkness and Grian can see Scar more clearly.

As carefully as he can, he rolls up Scar’s pant leg to see the damage, wincing at the swelling he can already see. Grian quickly grabs Scar’s supply bag and searches through their medical supply.

He had scoffed at how much Scar had packed ‘just in case,’ but now that he’s going to use those supplies, he feels guilty for that. Grian also feels guilty because this is all his fault. He was so hasty to get to shelter that he had completely forgotten to make sure it was safe around the building, and now Scar is suffering for it.

He pulls out the makeshift splint and, after struggling for a few minutes, figures out how to correctly splint Scar’s leg. Grian doesn’t know if his leg is broken or if it’s something else, but that’s his closest guess to what happened and he hopes to Void it’s good enough.

None of that is probably the worst part of this, the worst of the guilt he’s feeling. It’s that he cares about Scar, a lot more than he ever meant to.  So now yet another person he cares about got hurt in front of him and he couldn’t stop it from happening. He hopes it goes better this time.

After staring at Scar’s unconscious form for a few minutes, he puts all of their supplies to the side. Grian leans against a wall and gently maneuvers Scar to put his head in his lap. Grian gently combs his hand through Scar’s hair as he stares outside, guilt and affection mixing in equal parts.

Grian falters at the thought and glances down at Scar again, affection. Well, he can’t deny that Scar looks good, but for the thought to hit him so suddenly like that? He returns to combing through Scar’s hair, pushing that thought away for later, not wanting to tackle that line of thought currently.

Grian glances out of the barricaded window with a sigh, all he can do now is stand guard to make sure nothing else happens. He’ll stay up all night if he has to.

It’s eerily silent as he waits, the only sounds being his and Scar’s breathing, and an occasional painful whimper from him. He doesn’t know how many hours he sits there, guilt gnawing away at him.

Grian startles when he feels movement under his hand. He looks down as Scar groans and slowly opens his eyes. He sags in relief, “Scar!”

Scar narrows his eyes, “What- what happened? Everything hur-“ he winces as he moves.

Grian grabs his shoulders to keep him still, “You broke your leg, I think, and fell unconscious soon after.”

A couple different expressions flick across his face, before he throws on that neutral mask again, causing Grian to internally wince. Scar groans again as he shrugs off Grian’s hands and carefully pushes himself into a sitting position, eyes immediately focusing on the splint.

Grian fidgets with his hands nervously, “I’m so sorry Scar, I should have known better than to be so reckless. I brought you in here and tried to take care of the injury best I could.”

Scar grunts as he leans further to observe the splint more, trailing a finger along it. He lets out a breath and pushes himself back against the wall beside Grian, face twisting in pain. He rubs one of his arms with a light grimace, “I appreciate that.”

Grian looks away, “I am still really sorry.”

Scar doesn’t reply for a moment, but eventually lets out a quiet breath, “It’s fine, I’m glad that you’re okay.”

Grian makes a quiet nose in surprise, snapping his head around to look at Scar, who is staring straight ahead at the wall. “Yeah- I- I’m fine.” He recovers after a moment, “ You’re the one who got hurt, why do you care if I’m okay?!”

He shrugs, “I just don’t want you to get hurt.” He casts a glance out of the corner of his eye at Grian, offering him a small smile.

Grian quickly glances down at his hands to avoid eye contact, both embarrassed and flustered. It’s been so long since anybody cared about him as a person, as something more than a tool to be used. “Thanks,” he breaths out after a silent minute.

Scar places one of his hands on Grian’s entwined ones, gently squeezing them. The touch is extremely warm, and makes Grian even most flustered, especially after discovering his newfound feelings about Scar.

Neither move for a long while, the silence surrounding them heavy with something Grian can’t name. It’s not heavy, but it’s not the comforting silence he’s used to. Scar lets out a breath a couple minutes later, “How long was I out?”

Grian turns to look up at him to see him staring over Grian’s head at the window. “A couple of hours,” he whispers after another moment.

Scar makes a quiet noise in response, although Grian can’t tell if it’s positive or negative. He pulls his hand off of Grian’s, who barely stops himself from reaching for it again. He grabs one of the bags and drags it over to where they’re sitting.

He digs inside of it for a moment before pulling out some food, “Not sure about you, but I’m hungry.”

Grian blinks in surprise, but takes the offered food, “Thanks.” Silence fully falls as they eat.

After he’s done eating, Grian takes a risk and leans against Scar, resting his head against the other’s shoulder. He hears Scar inhale sharply, “Grian…?”

“I was worried about you,” he murmurs in response, keeping his eyes downcast.

“Oh,” Scar whispers. After a moment he wraps an arm around Grian’s waist, just under his wings, tugging him closer. “I’ll be fine,” he adds on after a moment.

Grian relaxes more than he has in a long time as he curls against Scar, exhaustion suddenly tugging at him. Too tired to second guess himself, he spreads out his left wing to wrap it around Scar, holding him close.

Scar makes a noise at the gesture, but he doesn’t comment on it, instead he whispers, “Go ahead and sleep, G. Go ahead and sleep…”

Grian doesn’t respond, already being dragged to sleep. He’s also just tired enough to not process the nickname Scar gave him. He only cuddles closer as he falls asleep.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

Grian wakes up slowly, warm and a weird mix of comfortable and uncomfortable. He presses closer into the warmth beside him, not processing what’s going on around him.

A chuckle breaks through his sleep haze, and he slowly opens his eyes in confusion. He flinches back when he realizes that he was basically nuzzling into Scar’s neck. His face flushes darkly and he looks away in embarrassment, yet he still leaves his wing wrapped around Scar.

Scar retracts his arm, pulling it away from him, “Morning.”

“Huh?” Grian mumbles, looking towards the window, seeing dawn light filtering through the boards. “Oh.”

“I would have gotten things ready, but, uh, I don’t think I can like this.”

Grian quickly turns back around, worry overtaking his embarrassment, “Ah- right- are you okay?”

Scar lets out another quiet chuckle, “It hurts, I’m still doing fine enough.”

Grian frowns in thought for a moment, “How far are we from the base?”

Scar raises an eyebrow, expression curious, but answers the question after a moment, “We shouldn’t be too far, but it will still be a long walk.”

“I can fly us back, it will be quicker and easier,” Grian offers, a little hesitant.

He frowns, “Are you sure you’d be able to do that?”

Grian huffs, insulted, “Of course I can. I’ll have you know, I’m very strong.”

A light blush crosses Scar’s face, “I’m sure you are, I just don’t want you to overdo it.”

He stands up, “I’ll be fine, it will be a lot better to get back to base quickly.” Grian goes over to strap on all of their bags, it’s an awkward weight, but not enough of one to cause issues unless he has to do this for a while.

Scar watches him for a moment before eventually nodding, “Alright, go ahead.”

Grian grins, trying to push aside his worry, and goes back to Scar’s side, crouching down. He wraps one of Scar’s arms around his neck, wraps one of his around Scar’s back, and the other under his knees. Scar quickly wraps his other arm around Grian’s neck, grabbing onto his own arm for safety.

“One… Two…” he murmurs quietly. “Three!” all at once, Grian stands up, Scar easily in his arms. Scar makes an aborted noise and holds on tighter. He drops his head against Grian’s chest, which Grian tries not to get flustered by.

He exits the building extremely carefully, wary of everything around him. “Which direction is the base?” Grian asks, looking down at Scar once he’s sure nothing is around.

The other lifts his head, a light blush covering his face. Scar looks around before pointing in one direction, “That way.” He immediately drops his head back down.

“Hold on tight,” Grian tells him, giving him a few seconds to do so before pushing himself off of the ground. It’s hard to get off the ground from standing up, especially with extra weight, but he manages. It’s also awkward from not having flown in the overworld in a long time.

Scar mutters something against Grian’s chest, his grip on him getting even tighter, when they take off. Grian holds him tighter in response, trying to not take it the wrong way.

He tries not to grimace as the bags put pressure against his wings when they shift. There shouldn’t be much longer to go until he arrives, so he’ll grin and bear it.

Grian sees the familiar sight of the base not long after, and slowly begins his decent. He carefully lands on the balcony, trying not to jostle Scar in the process.

“We’re here,” he announces, heading inside and to Scar’s room. Scar looks up as Grian gently sets him on his bed. He hesitates, “Do you need anything?”

Scar slumps against the bed, closing his eyes, “I-“ he shakes his head, “no, I’m good.”

Grian takes a step back, “Alright… call me if you do.”

Scar just makes a quiet noise in response as Grian backs out of the room, eyes not leaving Scar. He sighs once outside, immediately slumping to the ground and burying his head into his hands. Things got so badly so quickly, and now he’s a maelstrom of emotions.

Grian’s the reason that Scar got badly hurt, and now he’s crushing over him a lot. He has no idea what he’s doing with anything anymore. The one tangible thing he can figure out is working on escaping this place, everything else is a mystery.

He forces himself to his feet after wallowing for a few minutes, heading downstairs and to the storage room. Grian unpacks the bags of supplies they got, a little uncertain at doing this alone, but it needs to be done. He just hopes Scar doesn’t mind.

Once empty of most of the supplies, he leaves and goes to the kitchen, storing away everything food related they found, it’s not much more than what they left with.

It’s not long until he’s left with empty bags and the gun they found earlier. Grian hesitates briefly before heading down the hall, past the courtyard door. It’s a door he hasn’t been through yet, having no idea what it’s for.

He carefully pushes it open, freezing as he looks into the room. The walls are lined with weapon racks, a wide variety on either side. He slowly enters, he should have expected something like this, but it still catches him off guard.

Unsure of how the organization works, he sets the gun and ammo on the chest under the racks with the guns. Grian quickly leaves the room and drops the bags off into the storage room.

Grian returns to the kitchen to grab some food. He takes out something of equal proportion to what Scar usually takes out in the morning and a canteen of water. He quickly makes his way back upstairs.

Grian cautiously peaks into Scar’s room to see that he’s abandoned his vest and tool belt to the side, fully laying back now. “Scar?” he whispers, slowly approaching in case the other was asleep.

Scar’s open eyes flicker over to meet his, “Huh?”

Grian holds out the food and water to Scar, “I brought you breakfast in bed.”

Surprise flashes across his face before he starts laughing, it’s quiet but full of mirth. He stifles the laughter as he sits up with a wince, “Thank you.”

Grian returns it with a small smile as Scar takes the food. Grian takes a few steps back to lean against a wall as they eat, letting silence fall. Even once they finish eating, the silence persists, both of them leaning up against a wall and avoiding eye contact.

*

Scar lets out a quiet grunt in pain, quickly drawing Grian’s eyes over to him. He’s staring down at his leg with a grimace. After a moment, he looks up and meets Grian’s eyes. There’s hesitance as he requests, “Can you get me the morphine? With a syringe and cleaning wipes?”

Grian startles a little, but nods, quickly exiting the room. He shouldn’t be so surprised, Scar is probably in a lot of pain. He returns to the supply room and quickly locates the needed supplies amongst the other medical supplies.

Careful to not touch the needle, he makes his way back to Scar. He hands over the items even more carefully. “Thanks,” Scar whispers gently.

Grian steps back as Scar opens the wet wipe package and cleans off both the needle and part of his arm. He fills up the syringe with the morphine, before carefully lining it up with a vein and pushing it into his skin.

Grian quickly glances away, unable to watch any longer. It sends a shiver down his spine. A minute later he hears Scar grunt and the squeaking of the mattress. He looks back to see Scar laying on his back on the bed again, staring up at the ceiling.

**

He watches for a moment before murmuring, “Get some rest, I’ll keep guard.”

Scar’s eyes flick over and a weak smile crosses his lips, “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Grian whispers back. He exits the room as Scar’s eyes fall closed. He hates idling around, but it’s all he can do now.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

Sitting still is not one of Grian’s strong suits. He’s always up and about, doing something , flitting from one place to the next quickly.

It’s usually mischief he gets up to when he’s been idle for some time, but that’s not possible now. Grian’s stuck in the middle of a zombie apocalypse with someone he cares about bedridden from his actions.

Because he cares about Scar. No matter how much he tries to push away the thought, tries to busy himself with other things, it returns with a vengeance. He groans as he slumps into a chair. Guess he’s dealing with this now.

It’s not that Grian’s never had feelings before, but it’s been so long since he had. Not to mention that the Watchers had tried to beat all emotions out of him. It was a struggle to keep any of them, romance wasn’t really a primary thought.

Now it is. Now Grian has to deal with having feelings for his… well, he’s really not sure what his relationship with Scar even is. How can he even figure out his emotions when he can’t even figure out their current relationship?

Grian would assume that they’re friends, considering everything that has happened, but they have only known each other for barely over a week, so how can he be sure?

He groans and drops his head onto the table. It’s been a day since the incident and he’s already overthinking everything. Grian looks out of the window, seeing the courtyard covered in shadows.

He should sleep, this isn’t the kind of place where he can afford to be tired. Exhaustion could only lead to mistakes, and mistakes can lead to death. He groans again, burying his head into his arms.

Yet it’s not like Grian can sleep right now anyways. His overthinking mind is what had led him to the pacing that had him come down here to begin with. If he stayed upstairs there’s no doubt that he wouldn’t go to Scar’s room, which is the last thing he should do right now. Especially if Scar is awake and notices him.

Grian stands up to pace the kitchen again because thinking about Scar looped his mind right back around to worrying about his condition, and bringing the guilt right with it. Scar is clearly trying to hide his pain the best he can, but it’s clear to Grian that he’s suffering.

He’s supposed to be repaying Scar for everything he did for Grian, not causing him problems. That’s all Grian seems to do though, cause problems for others. He groans and buries his face in his hands, he needs to stop getting lost in his own head.

Grian retreats back up the staircase, he needs to at least try to get some sleep. He lays down on the sleeping bag and wraps a wing around himself. It’s highly uncomfortable, but he’s had worse before so it’s tolerable. Having received anything from Scar from the start is a luxury.

And now he’s thinking about how much he cares about Scar again. Great.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

As expected, Grian did not get even a wink of sleep, spending the whole night in a loop of over-thinking. At least with day he has an excuse to be up and about. Which of course means checking in on Scar, with the excuse of breakfast.

Grian peers in to see Scar sitting up, head tiled fully back and staring up at the ceiling. His tail is curled almost fully around himself, the end flicking side to side… as if from agitation.

Is Scar’s tail just as expressive as Grian’s wings? It sends another shock of guilt through him at the thought.

Grian clears his throat to get Scar’s attention, who startles, looking over at Grian quickly. His tail instantly stills before uncurling and falling limply off the bed, Scar greets him with a smile.

It all looks so intentional, just like the neutral expression Scar often wore. Grian can’t help but acknowledge how good Scar is at that.

It only makes Grian’s pain worsen.

“I brought you breakfast,” he murmurs, slowly approaching Scar.

The smile widens, as if becoming more real, even if it’s strained. “Thanks Grian.”

“Of course,” he replies, trying to hide the guilt from his voice. He doesn’t think he’s successful. “I’m here to help with anything you need.”

“You don’t need to wait on me hand and foot, I can take care of myself,” Scar replies, looking away.

Grian frowns, “You’re injured, you shouldn’t be doing. Especially walking, because your leg is broken.”

“What, are you restricting me to my bed or something?” Scar asks, smile widening at the joke.

“Yes.”

His smile drops as his eyes widen in shock, “What?”

“You shouldn’t be walking like that, so I can’t let you leave your bed right now.” Grian insists, determined.

Scar stares at him, as if trying to see how serious he is, before sighing. “You’re not going to drop this, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Alright, fine, I’m clearly not going to be able to change your mind.” Scar’s smile turns a bit more amused for a moment.

“You let me stay here so now you’re stuck with me,” Grian replies, falling into the light banter easily. It almost feels normal, like the world isn’t completely apocalyptic.

It feels nice, to have a touch of normalcy, even if it’s brief.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

The next several days pass by the same, with Grian tending to everything that Scar needs while overthinking everything the moment that he’s alone. It doesn’t help that as the days pass he’s slowly been able to see past Scar’s walls and realize how much pain he’s in.

It hurts especially because of how little Scar admits to the pain and asks for help with it. Grian knows that it’s because he’s stubborn instead of anything else, but it doesn’t make it sting less. Grian’s quick to push away any hurt from it because it’s selfish of him when Scar’s in so much pain.

To keep himself from overthinking too much, Grian focuses on his magic, testing the limits and making notes of how it progresses each day. It’s getting stronger, but slowly. Frustratingly slowly.

Of course this brings a whole new wave of thoughts he’s trying to avoid rushing back. Nothing like past guilt to distract himself from present guilt. With the forced stillness, it’s hard for Grian to distract himself from all of it. Still, he can’t help but try.

The consistency of it all is soothing, if only slightly. Surprises were never a good thing for Grian, so for things to stay mostly the same is nice. Of course he still hates the reason for it.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

Keeping track of the days as they pass quickly becomes a worry for Grian. Of course he knows that broken bones take a long time to heal, although he knows little else. But as one week becomes two, and now as two approaches three, the fear starts settling deep.

It’s halfway after the first week when Grian starts keeping track of their supplies. He marks down how much they have and how much they use each day. While they’re not at an immediate risk of running out, with how things are going, Grian isn’t sure Scar’s leg will heal by the time they do.

It makes Grian more anxious than he’d like to admit. Thankfully he’s able to keep his worry from Scar, because he knows that the other will want to be up and about even more. It’s hard enough to keep him still as it is.

The last thing Grian wants to do is leave Scar alone, even temporarily, but he worries that he might have to if nothing changes. He pushes those thoughts out of his mind. Thinking about the future is now as dangerous as thinking about the past.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

It’s when Grian is messing around with magic some days later that he gets the idea. Watcher magic is powers and supposedly limitless, and most especially, a shortcut.

Grian was quick to learn that with his magic a lot of things he’s used to could be done in so much less time. He was constantly learning about different things he could shortcut.

If he can break things with his magic, who’s to say he can’t fix breaks?

Grian does do a few tests on the concept of using his magic to heal, not wanting to risk causing more damage to Scar. Of course he can only do so little tests on inanimate objects to practice.

*

Which is what leads him to hold a knife over his arm. With the amount of sterilization products Scar has, Grian doesn’t worry about getting sick. However the thought of commiting to this makes him pause.

Yet it’s the only surefire test he can think of to know if he can heal with his magic. A small cut is all he needs to confirm. Grian has experienced way worse at the hands of the Watchers, so this shouldn’t be an issue.

He takes a deep breath in before dragging the knife across the back of his arm. It makes him wince, but the pain is minor to everything that’s happened to him in the past.

Grian is quick to set the knife down and hold out his hand over the wound. He concentrates on the thought of his skin piecing itself back together, healing from the cut he just made.

Slowly it works, the cut beginning to shrink under Grian’s many Eyes. Yet with it comes pains, making Grian bite onto his lip to not make any noises. It doesn’t even take a minute for the cut to be gone, like it was never there in the first place.

Grian quickly wipes off the blood, staring at his arm in surprise. There is completely no trace of the wound at all. He rubs the skin, only feeling faint pain from it. Nothing more than he’d feel from a bruise.

He quickly takes off the mask and cleans the knife. Grian now has confirmation that he can heal wounds, he just hopes it’s enough to heal Scar’s.

**

Once everything is cleaned up and put where it’s supposed to he leaves the storage room and heads up the stairs, mask clutched in one hand. Grian’s slow to approach Scar’s room, nervous but determined.

He peeks in, calling out a careful, “Scar?”

Scar’s sitting up like he normally is, staring straight ahead, looking completely bored and out of his mind. It only makes Grian more determined, knowing how much Scar wants to get up and move around again. He carefully enters the room and approaches him.

Scar turns to face Grian and smiles at him, probably relieved to have a distraction, “Hey Gri, what’s up?”

The nickname makes Grian falter, unused to hearing it. Scar’s only used nicknames a handful of times so far and he makes him flush every time. It only makes his feelings worsen.

Grian shifts back and forth on his talons,  “I was doing some tests with my magic and I believe I got enough of it back to be able to speed up your legs healing, but it’s going to be a very painful process.”

Scar glances between his leg and Grian, a contemplating frown on his face, “I can handle some more pain, this already hurts enough.”

That brings the guilt back quickly, but he pushes it away quickly, “You can tell me to stop at any moment.”

“Got it.”

Grian secures the mask onto his face and leans over Scar to look more closely at his leg. He opens a couple more eyes for a more complete look and tries to picture what a broken bone would look like.

Grian rests one hand just over the injury, barely brushing the splint. He pictures a broken bone mending, willing it to happen to the leg under his hand.

Scar cries out in pain, but doesn’t make any move to stop him. Grian persists, despite knowing that healing this bad of an injury will probably hurt worse. It’s slow going and agonizing, if the whimpers Scar makes are anything to go by, which pains Grian immensely for causing it.

After what feels like an eternity, he can feel that it’s over. Grian sighs and pulls back, putting away his mask, “I’m done.” He looks over at Scar, faltering when he sees tear tracks on his face, “Are you alright?”

Scar nods, eyes focused on his leg and he brings it up and undoes the splint. He winces as he runs his hands up and down it,but  his voice is tinged with amazement, “It’s fixed. It’s still sore, but fixed.” He looks up at Grian, who flinches under the force of the awe, “ Thank you. ”

Grian fidgets with his hands, “Of course, I can’t just leave you in pain when I can fix it. Besides, you’ve done so much for me, I have to repay you.”

Several emotions flick across Scar’s face, but Grian doesn’t have time to decipher any of them as Scar grabs his jacket and yanks him forwards, crashing their lips together.

Grian is still frozen as Scar adjusts, kissing him more properly.

Scar is kissing him.

After some time of Grian being too shocked to move, Scar starts pulling away. The feeling of Scar’s lips leaving his is what pulls him from his daze, and he quickly closes the gap again. Scar gasps against him, but easily goes along with it.

Scar drops the vice grip that he has on Grian’s jacket to instead cradle his face. Grian just wraps his arms around Scar, pulling their bodies close as he leans in further.

Chapter Text

Scar has no explanation for why he decided to kiss Grian, the avian was just so close and he couldn’t resist. Being forcefully bedridden by Grian gave him a lot of time to think over his feelings. Although the first night painted the most clarity, his time after returning gave him the time to understand it more.

He had fallen for Grian long before he was aware of it.

Scar very quickly starts to regret his impulsive action as Grian stays frozen. He pulls back, apologies on his tongue, but Grian closes the gap again before he can say anything.

He gasps against the avian’s lips, startled as the other kisses him back. Scar lets go of Grian’s jacket to cradle his face, keeping him close. Grian, in return, presses closer, wrapping his arms around Scar’s waist.

While Scar would preferably keep kissing Grian, he needs to breathe, so he breaks the kiss. He only pulls back a couple of inches, instead pressing his forehead to Grian’s. While he’s breathing heavily, Grian‘s breathing is fine, if a bit stuttered from shock.

“You’re beautiful,” Scar murmurs once he’s caught his breath.

Grian makes a quiet noise and flushes lightly, “I- you’re- you too.”

He laughs lightly, causing Grian to flush more, and pulls him into another kiss. Grian climbs onto the bed beside him, pressing even closer, Scar turns to meet him, kissing him deeper.

Scar takes his time, relishing in the feeling of Grian’s lips pressed against his. It’s soft and exploratory, both of them adjusting to the feeling of it all. The way it feels to be pressed so close to another.

The warmth feels all consuming, surrounding Scar so completely. He can’t picture being anywhere but in this moment right here, with Grian pressed against him, hold tight.

No matter how much he’d like to stay in this moment, he knows they can’t stay here forever and reluctantly pulls away. “We- we should talk about this.”

Grian makes a noise in disagreement and tries to kiss Scar again, who holds him back. He slowly opens his eyes and sighs, “Alright, yeah, fine.” He pulls away further, retracting his arms from around Scar and escaping his hold as well.

Scar tries not to be disappointed as he lowers his arms, “This just escalated really suddenly.”

Grian raises an eyebrow, “ You kissed me .”

He blushes lightly, “I- that was an impulsive move.”

Grian huffs out a laugh, “Which means…?”

Scar opens and closes his mouth a couple of times before replying, “I probably should have said something first.”

“Well, you didn’t.”

“Yeah, I-“ he sighs, “this is feeling backwards.”

“I like you, and you clearly like me, what else is there to talk about?” Grian replies, moving a little closer.

Scar blushes more, caught off guard. Sure, he figured that Grian shared his feelings, but he didn’t want to assume. “I mean- I guess? It just felt like something to talk about first.”

Grian drapes his arms over Scar’s shoulders, “We talked, now I think we were in the middle of something.”

As much as Scar would love to continue kissing Grian, he’s been too idle to sit here any longer. “As much as I’d like that, I think we have bigger priorities.”

Grian pulls back again, disappointment flashing across his face before it’s hidden, “Alright, fine.”

“You’ve just refused to let me leave my bed for so long,” Scar rushes to say, feeling the need to explain himself. “I just want to get up and walk around again.”

“Oh,” Grian murmurs, “right, that makes sense.” He climbs off of the bed, offering a hand out.

Scar takes it and uses it to assist him in getting off of the bed. He stumbles, legs a little weak from disuse, but Grian quickly steadies him. Scar gives him a small smile, “Thanks.”

Grian pulls away, “Of course.”

Missing the touch immediately, Scar grabs Grian’s hand, lacing their fingers together. At Grian’s questioning look, he glances away, bashful, “I want to hold your hand, and I finally have an excuse to.”

“Oh,” he murmurs, giving Scar’s hand a squeeze after a moment. Then, a quieter, “You can hold my hand whenever.”

Scar looks back at him, “Yeah?”

Grian nods, before tugging on his arm to lead him out of the room. Scar follows, stumbling a little, but soon keeps pace with him. It feels so good to walk again, even if it’s just around his base.

Scar unfortunately has to drop Grian’s hand when they reach the stairs. He grabs it again the moment they reach the first floor.

Grian leads Scar to the kitchen, looking nervous, “There is something else we need to talk about.”

A dreadful feeling washes over Scar as he opens a cabinet, finding a small amount of food, not much more than a week’s worth. He grimaces, he was starting to expect and worry about that, but he had hoped it wouldn’t be so soon.

“Yeah…” Grian whispers, “I wasn’t sure what to do about this.”

Scar sighs and closes the cabinet door, “It means we gotta go out again.”

“I guess I should have expected that,” Grian says after a moment.

“This is why I always kept busy, in case something would happen that would make me unable to travel,” Scar explains, leaning against the counter.

“Ah, that makes sense, I did wonder about why it was so urgent for us to head out,” Grian replies, leaning against the counter as well. “I’m assuming we’re going to head out the next morning, to not risk hitting nightfall.”

“Yup, best not to risk it, even if it’s just midday now.” Scar pushes away from the counter, “So let’s pack up now to be ready and then… talk, I guess.”

Grian nods and follows him out and back to the main storage room. It feels like a weird mirror of the last time they were here, packing up for a long trip, but things are so different between them this time.

Once the bag is packed with necessities, Scar leaves and heads to the weapon room, with Grian following silently at his heels. He pauses in surprise when he enters, seeing the golden gun sitting on one of the chests.

“Ah,” Grian murmurs, “I didn’t really know what to do with it so I just set it there.”

Scar nods, grabbing it and putting it where the gun he gave Grian was. He puts the ammo to the side in the chest, pulling out some for their guns to put in the back.

Scar turns around, “That’s all we’ll need for tomorrow.”

“You mentioned talking?” Grian asks, seeming nervous.

Scar nods, “Let’s go upstairs.” He exits the room and goes back to the stairs and leads them to the spiral staircase. He goes straight to the doorways outside, sitting down on the balcony, letting his feet dangle off the edge.

Grian sits down beside him, leaving little space between them, “What did you want to talk about?”

Scar takes a moment to sort out his thoughts before replying, “What’s the situation with your magic right now? You said that it’s stronger, but you weren’t specific.”

He sighs and fidgets with his hands, “It’s not strong enough to get us out of here, it’ll be at least a couple more days until.”

“So the trip is definitely needed.”

Grian nods, “Yeah.”

“Not the best situation, but as long as we’re careful we should be able to make it,” Scar mutters, mostly to himself.

“I know I said we didn’t need to talk about it more,” Grian cuts off his thoughts, “but what exactly are we?”

Scar stares at him, surprised by the conversation change. After a moment he whispers, “I’m hoping that it’d be boyfriends…”

Grian smiles up at him, “I’d like that.”

Unable to resist, Scar ducks his head down and kisses Grian. Quicker than he can react, Grian climbs onto his lap, pressing even closer to Scar. Scar wraps his arms around Grian’s waist, holding him steady.

Scar lets himself get lost in the kiss, to get familiar with the feeling of Grian’s lips on his. He can really get used to this. They spend a long time sitting there and leisurely kissing, holding onto each other.

Grian’s the one to end it, pulling back enough for Scar to see his whole face, “Related question, what do couples do other than kiss and hold hands?”

Scar shrugs, “Not sure, I haven’t had many partners considering, y’know,” he gestures around them.

“Fair,” Grian murmurs, dropping his head to rest against Scar’s chest, “I don’t really know either, it's been a while since I had one either. For obvious reasons.”

“Guess we’ll figure it out together,” Scar murmurs, dropping his head to rest it on Grian’s.

“I can live with that.”

Scar tightens his grip on Grian as they sit there, not as preferable as kissing, but still very nice. Grian tightens his grip a fraction in return. They sit there for a long time in silence, Scar would rather be nowhere else.

It feels nice to bask in the warmth of it, Grian pressed against him, wings fanned out partially around them. Scar can’t help but stare at Grian’s wings, just as in awe with the array of colors as he was the first time he saw them.

Despite everything that has happened, Scar resists reaching out to feel them again, unable to stop thinking about the reserved way Grian carries them. While things have changed a lot since then, Scar can’t help but hesitate, not wanting to risk anything.

Grian is too important to risk losing him. It’s a scary realization to have, to care so deeply about someone that losing them would be devastating. It’s even worse in this situation, where it’s so much easier to lose someone.

Scar tightens his grip, he can’t think about that. He can’t let himself think about what will happen if he loses Grian. They’re together, they can watch each others’ backs, Scar can keep him safe.

He forces himself back into the moment, why think about what ifs when he has Grian in his arms? Grian who’s holding him so tightly, who’s let down his guard, no longer being as tense as he always is.

Scar basks in the feeling of it all for a while before opening his eyes—when did he close them?—startling when he notices that the sun is beginning to dip below the horizon. Has that much time passed already? “Night’s approaching,” he murmurs with a sigh.

Grian pulls back a little, “What?”

“The sun is setting,” Scar elaborates, gesturing.

He pulls away more, “Oh. I guess we should go to sleep, then,” there’s a clear disappointed tinge to his voice.

“Want to sleep with me?” Scar blurts out, not wanting to be away from Grian just yet. He blushes darkly when he processes his words, “I- I meant sleep in my bed. With me. Not that. ” Grian starts cackling, making Scar’s blush darken more, “Forget I said anything, offer retracted.”

Grian forces his laughter to subside, “No, no, I’m sorry, I’d love to sleep with you,” there’s an amused glint in his eyes as he looks up at Scar.

Scar glares at him, the effect probably lessened by his blush, “You’re the worst.”

“Yet you still like me,” Grian counters, cheeky, but there’s a layer of something just beneath it.

Scar huffs, the sound fond, “I do.”

There’s a brief moment of silence before Grian whispers, “Is the offer still available?”

“Huh?”

“Can I spend the night with you?” His voice is quiet as he looks down.

“Yeah,” Scar replies just as quietly, still a little flustered.

Grian gives him a smile and carefully climbs off of his lap, offering a hand to help Scar stand up as well. He gratefully takes it, letting Grian pull him to his feet.

They quickly make their way back to Scar’s bedroom. Scar climbs into his bed and opens his arms and after a beat Grian climbs in beside him, right in his arms.

Scar smiles, pulling Grian close against him, Grian returns the hold, just as tightly. He’s content to fall asleep just like this, even if it’s a little cramped.

Before he can fall asleep, Grian slowly spreads out his wing and uses it to cover them both like a blanket. Grian’s tense in Scar’s arms, so he gives him and gentle squeeze and murmurs, “Goodnight,” into his hair.

Grian relaxes, whispering, “G’night,” right back.

Sleep comes easy with Grian held close in his arms, and he eagerly sinks into it.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

Scar wakes slowly, surrounded in a hazy warmth. He blinks open his eyes to see bright red feathers in front of his face. He follows the wings down to where Grian is still pressed against him.

He smiles, bringing his hand up to card it through Grian’s hair. He mumbles something as he slowly wakes up.

“Morning,” Scar murmurs against his hair.

“Mnh,” Grian grumbles back.

Scar laughs quietly, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, “We have to get up.”

“Yeah,” he breathes out, pulling away slowly.

Scar lets him go, sitting up with a stretch. Grian gets up off of his bed and spreads out his wings as he stretches as well. Scar chokes on a breath as he sees them extend to nearly their full length.

They pull back quickly and Grian glances over his shoulder, “Let’s get ready and go then.”

Scar nods, still completely awestruck, sliding off the bed and grabbing his stuff. It feels incredibly nice to fall back into the familiar pattern, and to no longer be bedridden.

The silence between him and Grian as they eat feels different than normal, filled with something unnameable. Scar doesn’t try to pursue the answer, comfortable enough in his relationship with Grian to not worry about it.

The silence persists until they’ve traveled a good bit away from their base, with Grian breaking it, “I can fly up to scout the nearby area once we get to new territory.”

Scar casts a glance in his direction, “That will certainly be helpful.” He fails to stop himself from muttering, “Could’ve been helpful earlier.”

Grian winces, making Scar feel guilty, “Yeah… I haven’t flown up high in the overworld for years so I was nervous to do so.”

Scar falters, “Overworld?”

Grian stops, eyebrows furrowed, “You don’t know about other dimensions?”

“About what?” Scar stresses, suddenly back to being far out of his depth.

Grian lets out a breath as he starts walking again, “There are multiple dimensions, with most Worlds having at least three of them. Those three being the one we’re in now, the Overworld. Another that you can craft a portal to, the Nether, which can overall be described as fiery and painful. And the third one you need to locate a portal for, that being the End, which is hard to describe. These are just the main ones, there are plenty of others.”

“And there are even more different, I’m assuming.”

He nods, “In hindsight, I should have realized that you wouldn’t know about the other dimensions, you never had a reason to learn about them, after all.”

Scar hums, “I guess more elaborate explanations can come later.” He hesitates after Grian nods before asking quietly, “They held you in a different dimension than the ones you mentioned, didn’t They?”

Grian grimaces, but nods, “Yeah. We were in the Void, completely isolated from everybody and everything. The only people who could get there are Watchers and Voidwalkers.”

“Voidwalkers?”

He shrugs, “I don’t know much about them, just that they’re mainly End or Void dwelling. Powerful but don’t mix with Watchers often.”

“I see,” Scar murmurs, taking that information in.

Silence falls again as neither of them have anything to say, continuing on in their journey. Scar breaks the silence next, a couple hours later, “We’re about at the edge of what I’ve explored so far.”

“Want me to get an aerial view?” Grian asks, spreading his wings out a little.

Scar nods, “Yeah, it should help. I’ll keep walking straight, you do your thing.”

Grian gives him a salute before pushing off from the ground with a large beat from his wings. Scar watches him climb higher into the sky in awe, amazed at the sight.

After watching Grian swoop in circles for a minute, he forces himself to refocus and continue walking. He can’t get distracted right now, he can do that later.

It feels strange that Grian is no longer at Scar’s side, which is weird considering that he’s not far away. Scar shrugs off the weird feeling, not wanting to dwell on it any longer.

He continues walking, keeping an eye out for anything ground-level. After a long time of walking alone, Scar notices a large shadow swooping around him.

He glances up to see Grian slowly descending downwards in a gentle glide. Upon making eye contact, the glide becomes less gentle as he suddenly dives down fully, pulling his wings close to his back.

Grian snaps out his wings just before hitting the ground, catching himself from a hard fall, startling Scar and making him jump. “I saw a pretty big building just that way,” he points almost directly to the right of them.

Scar gives him a nod, trying to shake off his shock, and changing his direction to start walking that way, Grian right at his side. Scar reaches out and grabs Grian’s hand, giving it a squeeze.

Grian returns the squeeze, giving him a small smile.

It’s not the safest to be traveling with only one hand easily accessible, but Scar can’t bring himself to mind. He can react quickly enough anyways.

It takes them a while to come into sight of the building, bigger than anything Scar has come across in his time wandering outside of towns. Although it is just the size of a large house, if the house was a complete square and a few stories tall.

Scar hurries his pace a little, to reach the building sooner, regretfully letting go of Grian’s hand to grab his gun. He leads them into the building, searching around it. 

It rubs him the wrong way to be completely clueless to what this place is for, looking so differently to other buildings he’s come across before. Grian sticks close to his side, as if sensing his tension.

It doesn’t help that the entryway is devoid of anything, nothing in sight besides the staircase leading upwards in the back. Each room he searches on the ground floor is just as empty.

It’s only on the second floor where they come across something. It’s relieving to find the shelves lining the edges, finally something to break from the eerie emptiness of every other room here. 

While the eeriness still doesn’t fade, he’s glad to see that there’s food in the many cabinets. Due to how uncanny this place is, Scar cautiously observes each food item before putting it into his bag.

After taking everything important he sits down against the wall, patting the spot next to him. Grian sits down next to him and leans in close to him. Scar pulls out some of the food he found, handing half over to Grian.

They eat, leaning against each other. The contact and comfort is near addicting to Scar.

Chapter Text

Scar’s clear unnerve at the building makes Grian unnerved as well, yet their search turns out anticlimactic. All that they find is a couple of food stores scattered throughout the building. Which, in fairness, is also unnerving, but it could have been worse.

Something had happened here, undoubtedly, but Grian can’t even fathom what it could be. It’s deserted so cleanly and completely, it all seems so rushed, but with how spotless it also seems like the opposite.

It gives him an eerie sort of feeling that Grian doesn’t want to linger on. He’s dealing with enough from adjusting to this world, adding more is the last thing he needs. He shakes his head to clear his thoughts as they reach the next floor.

Scar opens the door, and they’re greeted by sunlight. He steps out and lets out a breath, beginning to walk around the edge of the roof, , “Let’s get out of here, it’s getting late and I do not want to sleep anywhere near this place.”

Grian nods, “Want me to fly you down? It will be quicker.” And he might just want to carry Scar again, not like he’ll admit that out loud.

Scar peers over the edge, “It would be faster.” He looks over at Grian, “Did you see anything else when you were flying?”

He shakes his head, “Unfortunately not.”

Scar makes a noise in contemplation, “Guess we better continue searching then.”

“Want a lift down?”

Scar looks over the edge again before sighing, “Yeah, alright.” He seems resigned as he backs away from the edge and closer to Grian.

Grian laughs quietly, closing the distance between them and scooping Scar up before he can protest. He makes a noise in surprise, quickly grabbing onto Grian in return.

Grian quickly heads to the edge of the building, not hesitating to step off of it. He holds Scar close against him as he falls, wings only spread out a little bit.

As they near the ground, Grian snaps his wings all of the way out, giving a strong downbeat to stop their fall. Scar yelps and clings even tighter to Grian at the sudden jolt. He lands a moment later.

“Are you doing alright?” He fails to keep the teasing tone out of his voice.

Scar doesn’t move, only letting out a huff, “You’re horrible.”

“We’re down in one piece, I don’t see what the big deal is,” Grian replies, successfully hiding his amusement this time.

Scar pulls away, “You fly like a maniac!”

Grian rolls his eyes, carefully setting Scar back onto the ground, “I know what I’m doing.”

“We’re taking the stairs next time,” he mutters, smoothing down his clothes. Scar nods his head in a direction and starts walking.

Grian keeps pace with him, “I think you’re overreacting.”

Scar shoots him a look before refocusing on making sure the surrounding area is safe. Grian doesn’t try to keep the conversation going when Scar stays silent.

They keep walking through the abandoned landscape as the sun begins its descent. Grian shifts towards Scar as the sun starts getting closer and closer to the horizon. He really hopes the night isn’t bad, he doesn’t want to be out here in the dark.

Thankfully Scar soon points forwards, breaking the silence, “There.”

Grian looks in the direction he’s pointing, squinting for a moment before he spots a building. Learning from his haste last time, he only just slightly increases his pace instead of just running. He stays right next to Scar’s side, paranoid over that as well.

They are just able to make it there as the sun sets. It was an extremely small and makeshift shelter, not good for much besides spending a few days in. Which makes it perfect for them.

Scar slides the premade barricade across the door, securing it in place. They sit back against the opposite wall, Grian letting out a relieved breath and slumping against Scar.

Scar quickly wraps an arm around his waist to pull him closer. He presses a kiss to Grian’s forehead before murmuring against it, “First or Second shift?”

“Why do you always make me choose?” He murmurs with a huff of laughter.

“I just want you to have the option to pick the one you want more,” Scar replies with a shrug.

“I don’t really mind either option any of the times.”

Scar hums quietly for a moment, “You sleep first, you probably need it.”

Grian goes to protest it but stops and slowly nods. He reluctantly has to admit that Scar isn’t wrong. He’s been worrying himself too much to sleep often when Scar was recovering. “Fine, second shift,” he whispers. He flips over to drape himself across Scar, “You’re my pillow though.

Scar lets out a laugh, “Yeah, that’s fine. Just go ahead and sleep G, go ahead and sleep.” He wraps his arms around him and holds him gently.

Grian eagerly sinks into the warm hold and lets sleep claim him.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

He wakes up to Scar’s quiet murmurs and a hand carding through his hair. Grian blinks up to see Scar watching him with a small smile. “Hey,” Scar murmurs.

“Hey,” he whispers back, pushing himself up and, reluctantly, out of Scar’s arms. “Time to switch?”

“Yup,” he replies, easily letting Grian go.

“Nothing happened?”

Scar shakes his head, “Zombies passed by, but none noticed us.”

He sighs, “Good.” Grian shuffles around until he is leaning against the wall again, shoulder to shoulder with Scar. When he doesn’t move, Grian forcefully moves him to lay down, head on his lap. “Sleep.”

Scar blinks up at him in surprise, before he chuckles, “Alright, alright.”

Grian doesn’t waste time to run his hand through Scar’s hair in return, wanting even more contact with him. It still feels electrifying, but it’s less startling and more addicting now.

Scar hums and lets his eyes close, murmuring a whispered, “Dawn.”

“Yeah, I know,” he whispers back.

Grian sighs and tilts his head back until his head hits the wall. He summons a couple eyes to look outside the small building, hiding them, and closing his normal ones.

With his Eyes being so high up it gives him a good view of the area around them. It’s also really easy to do so now, a sign of how strong his magic has grown again.

As Grian watches through the eyes, he catches sight of some zombies, but none come near the building they reside in. It stays that way for the rest of the night, a complete silence only broken up occasionally by wandering zombies.

As the sun rises he closes the magic Eyes and opens his normal ones, looking down at Scar. Grian moves his hand to rest against the side of his face, gently caressing his face with his thumb.

Scar’s eyes flutter open, “Morning?”

Grian smiles, pulling his hand back, “Morning.”

Scar catches his hand before it can go far, bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. He then continues along, pressing a kiss to the rest as well.

Grian melts against the touch, smile turning more dopey as he stares down at his partner. Sooner than he would like, Scar sits up and drops his hand. He sighs as Scar pulls out breakfast for them, accepting it with a quiet thanks.

They don’t speak again as they eat, as they pack up, and as Scar un-barricades the door. They cautiously walk around the building before continuing on their search, going more parallel to Scar’s base now.

After what Grian figures is a couple hours, they come across a small camp, or the remains of one at least. He casts a glance at Scar to see his expression forcibly neutral. Grian looks back at the abandoned camp, feeling dread. He follows Scar through the gate slowly.

“These places don’t get abandoned naturally,” Scar murmurs as he walks into the center of the camp, letting the implications go unsaid.

Grian nods slowly, it really puts the ‘ghost’ into ‘ghost town.’ This time it really does feel like he’s walking on a grave. His eyes wander around cautiously as he tenses up.

Suddenly Scar grabs his hand, squeezing it tightly. Grian glances over to see him focused on the surroundings, with a deep frown on his face. Grian squeezes his hand back, it seems like Scar needs the contact just as much as he does.

He gives Grian a grateful look and relaxes a smidge, “Let’s not linger.”

“Yeah,” he whispers.

Their hands stay entwined the whole time, even if it causes them to move more slowly. They both need the contact. It feels too similar to grave robbing like this. Grian doesn’t like how much they find here, it shows so clearly what caused the  end of this camp.

Scar doesn’t waste much time to lead them out of it, pulling at Grian’s hand with an equally felt emergency. They continue walking until the camp is fully out of sight. Scar stops and lets out a long breath, eventually murmuring, “Let’s go back to our base.”

Grian slowly nods, before faltering after processing Scar’s words. Our base. The base is as much Grian’s now as it is Scar’s. It almost pulls him out of the dread still engulfing him, a part of him giddy at the thought.

They don’t take a break as they walk back, neither wanting to stop until they’ve returned to their base. Grian trusts Scar that they’ll get back before nightfall, even if they’re hungry.

His faith holds true as the base comes into view a couple hours before the sun sets. They quickly hurry inside, going straight to the kitchen. Scar immediately sits on the floor, and Grian quickly joins him.

Grian presses into Scar’s side, from that camp and how he was acting earlier, he probably needs the comfort. Although he’ll take any chance to get more physical contact with Scar. Scar presses back into him as they sit in silence.

After several long minutes, Grian grabs Scar’s bag, pulling out food for them. He hands some food over to Scar, but doesn’t eat yet, just holding onto his rations.

Scar sighs after a few minutes, “I shouldn’t be bothered by this anymore. Every zombie we see is someone who died, so seeing that…”

Grian swallows, “Death is death… doesn’t matter how much time passes or how little you knew them.” He fights the memories from reappearing, “Easy to look past the zombies, less easy to look past the signs of death itself.”

Scar casts him a look, the familiar confused look he keeps giving Grian. He thankfully doesn’t press, instead sighing again, “Yeah… it’s the sign of people trying to survive, but eventually failing that hits harder.”

Grian nods slowly, understanding. Different situations, same result. “Stranger or not,” he murmurs, “it’s hard to see. Makes you wonder if you could have prevented it,” he adds even quieter.

Scar silently grabs Grian’s hand, lacing their fingers together, and giving it a squeeze. He’s definitely realized that Grian is speaking from experience now, and Grian is so glad he doesn’t ask. Grian drops his onto Scar’s shoulder, pressing closer.

Scar turns his head and presses a kiss to the top of Grian’s head, not replying for a moment. “Not much we can do but use it to fuel us to survive, huh?” he murmurs some time later, a layer of resignation to his voice.

“Yeah,” Grian whispers back, he can’t forget about Evo, nor can he move on, but will it be enough for him to live for them? Would they hate him for it? For living when they died?

He tries to push the thoughts away, before he loses himself completely. Grian turns to bury his head into the crook between Scar’s shoulder and neck.

They stay completely pressed together for a long time, only breaking apart when their hunger gets the best of them. They still stay as close together as they can while eating. The closeness is a comfort to Grian, a sign of safety in a world that’s the furthest thing from safe, and it’s still so addicting.

He knows that it’s probably because he’s lacked positive physical touch for so long, but he doesn’t care about the logistics of it. He just wants the closeness and warmth that Scar brings him. So, he stays as close as he can to Scar as they eat.

Even after they both finish eating, neither move from their position, staying pressed close against each other. After a few silent minutes, Scar shifts, raising a hand up to cradle the side of Grian’s face. Grian lets Scar turn his head and tilt it up, putting them nose to nose.

Scar only waits half a second before closing the remaining distance to kiss Grian. He eagerly presses into it, raising his free hand up to card it through Scar’s hair, who gasps at the feeling. Grian only presses closer.

Scar pulls back after a while for air, breathing heavily but a small smile on his face. Pain still lingers in his eyes, but Grian’s not so different himself, so he can’t comment. Once Scar seems to have caught his breath, Grian immediately kisses him again, throwing both arms over his shoulders to pull him close.

Grian knows that he can’t kiss away his problems, but the cloud of death hovering over them seems a lot less heavy like this. Maybe… maybe he can just lose himself to his desires for a moment.

And they do lose themselves for a good while. Somewhere along the way, Grian ends up sprawled across Scar, straddling his lap. Grian pulls back, breathing heavily as he stares down at Scar, wings curled around them.

Scar grins up at him, hands now on his sides, “As much as I’d love to continue this, it’s rather late and we need sleep.”

Grian drops his head onto Scar’s shoulder with a groan, “Alright, fine.”

He wraps his arms completely around Grian, “You’re still welcome in my bed, if you want.”

“Phrasing,” Grian mutters, face heating up, before processing what the words mean. He sits up fully when he does, “Really?”

Scar tilts his head, “Yeah? I don’t know why you’d suddenly be banned from it.”

“Oh,” he murmurs, “Right. Yeah.”

Scar chuckles quietly, easily picking Grian up off of his lap and standing up, taking Grian with him. Grian lets out a squawk involuntarily, quickly  getting free of Scar’s hold and stepping back, embarrassed more than anything else.

Scar just grabs his hand, leading them up the stairs and to his room. Grian follows him, a warm feeling spreading throughout him, and smiles. He sets his bag down in a corner away from Scar’s gear, feeling weird about having his stuff close to Scar’s, as if he’s invading his space.

Scar doesn’t give him much of a glance, going through his nightly routine. He pauses as he sets a gun on the nightstand, as if calculating something. After a minute, Scar frees his tail and gets onto the bed, back to the wall, and holds his arms out for Grian.

Grian quickly goes to the bed and lays down on it, letting Scar pull him against him. Grian doesn’t hesitate this time  to spread a wing out over them, snuggling in close, “G’night, Scar.”

“Night… G,” he whispers back, hesitating before murmuring the nickname. Grian flushes warmly at it, holding Scar tightly.

It feels so foreign to fall asleep warm and safe.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

When Grian wakes up, it’s darker than it has been most of the time he’s been here, “What the…?” It’s just barely light enough for Grian to still be able to see things.

Scar sits up beside him, looking briefly confused, before quickly getting out of bed. Grian scrambles to follow him, grabbing an axe on his way out.

He enters the courtyard to see Scar dragging a barrel towards the center and frowns, “What are you doing?”

Scar gestures to the clouds above them, “It’s going to rain, so we need to collect the water.”

Grian stares at the sky, “I have no idea how you can tell the difference.”

“Mostly practice, but it’s also day so it should  be brighter now.”

He looks back down, “Why drag a barrel out instead of setting up a system?”

Scar sighs, “Because just like everything else here, the rain can get nasty. Sometimes it’s normal, other times it’s… well it’s not drinkable, at the very least.”

“So you gather it separately to make sure it’s safe water to not contaminate the rest of your supplies,” Grian surmises.

Scar gives him a crooked grin, leaning against the barrel that’s now behind him, “Yup. You always catch onto things quickly, don’t you?”

Grian shrugs, “Yeah.” He doesn’t elaborate, not wanting to think about why he’s trained to figure things out as quickly as possible.

Scar’s grin dims a little as he furrows his eyebrows, but he doesn’t say anything,  pushing away from the barrel after a moment. “We’re going to be stuck inside for the day, wet clothing isn’t fun no matter what kind of rain it is.” Whatever thought was troubling him is pushed away now. “So not much to do besides check our supplies and figure things out.”

“Right,” Grian replies cautiously, following Scar back inside. “What’s first?”

“Breakfast, of course,” he replies, sending a smile over his shoulder. “Which means we’ll sort through the food supplies first, and calculate how much we have. Then we’ll go through the main supply room, and finally the weapons. We’ll make a plan after all of that.”

Grian nods as he follows Scar, having a set list of a plan helps him figure things out and gives him a goal. It’s something he can focus on.

Chapter Text

As Scar organizes their food supplies, he can’t help but think back to the conversation they had the prior night. Grian spoke… intimately of death, which contradicts everything he had thought he knew of Grian.

So, clearly he’s missing something. It probably has to do with the Watchers, considering how he avoids talking about them any more than he had to in order to explain everything. Which would make perfect sense, actually.

Scar shakes his head, Grian’s past is something he doesn’t want to invade like that. When Grian feels comfortable talking about it, Scar will be there, but for now, he’ll leave it be.

Scar studies the supplies they have, considering. While he hated that place, they did get access to food that would last them a few days. They’re still not in the best standing, it’s still pretty good.

He estimates that they have about two and a half weeks worth of food, which is better than he expected. It gives them a couple days delay before having to leave, which might be needed depending on how bad the storm gets

Scar startles as thunder booms above them, yeah, it’s definitely going to be bad. Even if it doesn’t rain long, the mud will cause problems. Traveling through mud is a horrible experience that Scar prefers never having to deal with again.

“We’ll be good for a while,” Scar says, stepping away from the cabinets. “It’s enough to last out the rain, but we’ll have to go out again soon enough.” Him getting hurt really puts them in a bad place, but they’ll be able to recover from it so long as they act quickly enough.

A couple nights of a full night of sleep is very alluring though. Although not running out of food is way more important.

Grian nods, “So drop off other supplies and sort it out next?”

“Yup, although we don’t have much of that first one,” Scar replies, leading them out of the room. They enter the main storage room, putting away the little they’ve gathered from that short trip.

As Scar starts going through the shelves to calculate all of what they have, he hears rain begin to start pouring down. Scar casts a glance outside, staring at the rain for a moment. He can’t tell what kind it is from inside.

He refocuses on taking stock of what they have, putting the rain to the back of his mind for now. Scar is realizing that he forgot about a lot of what he has as he searches through the shelves.

It makes sense since the majority of it is useless to him now, but it’s still surprising that he has this much stuff. Scar makes a mental note of it anyways, just in case.

Of the most important thing, medical supplies, they have a good amount of supplies for. Which is only needed in emergencies, but it is really good to have nonetheless. Getting sick from bad injuries is the last thing they want.

Searching through the main supply room takes the longest, which Scar expected, but it still takes longer than he would have liked. Not that it matters with the storm raging outside, they won’t be doing much for a while anyways.

After making sure everything is accounted for and it’s all stored away again, Scar leads them out of the room. Heading to the final store room which contains all of the weapons. As he walks down the hallway he lights all of the lanterns along the wall, just in case the storm gets worse and makes things too dark to see.

As Scar meticulously checks all of the guns to make sure nothing is wrong with them, he feels Grian’s eyes watching him from the doorway. He thankfully doesn’t find anything wrong with the guns, although giving Grian the same gun he uses probably wasn’t the best idea since they would run out of ammo sooner. Unlikely, but possible.

Checking the melee weapons produces a similar result. They’re all in at least a good quality, some better than others. Although some could use some sharpening. Especially the axes him and Grian use, although Scar can wait a bit for that.

He turns around to see Grian now standing just outside of the room, head craned around to look behind him. His wings are spread out a little, but lower to the floor unlike the last time. There’s a frown on his face as they twitch.

“Everything alright?” Scar murmurs, looking at him, worried.

Grian startles, turning back to look at him, “Yeah! I’m fine.”

Scar tilts his head as he stands up from his crouch, “Are you sure? You looked… uncomfortable.”

He seems hesitant before eventually murmuring, “It’s my wings.”

Scar approaches him quickly, “Oh no, are they okay?”

Grian pulls them to his back quickly but winces at the movement and lets them sag again, “Yeah, they’re fine.”

“That didn’t sound fine to me.”

He takes a deep breath in before slowly letting it out, seeming resigned to this conversation, “They are fine… technically.”

“Technically?” Scar echoes, “and what about not technically?”

“Wings are pretty high maintenance and they require a lot of work to keep them in shape.” He sighs and casts a glance at them, “One part is semi-regular preening, to keep them clean and such.” Grian lets that information settle before adding on, “I can handle that on my own… except that I can’t reach the feathers where my wings meet my back all too well.” He shifts his wings and grimaces, “It’s more uncomfortable than anything else.”

Scar frowns, “That’s still not good.” He pauses before hesitantly offering, “I could help you. If you’re fine with that I mean!” he quickly adds on, recalling how protective of his wings Grian always seems to be.

A blush quickly covers his face and he glances away, “I- well- it’s just… personal. ”

“Personal…? I don’t get it.”

“An avian’s wings are… sensitive and… preening is a very intimate thing.”

“Ah,” Scar mumbles, blushing himself as he realizes. “I- I still can, if you don’t mind.”

“Yeah?” Grian whispers back.

“Yeah,” he echoes, “although you’d have to teach me.”

Grian nods and holds out his hand, and Scar quickly takes it. Grian starts leading him away but stops and glances back, “It would probably be better done on a bed, but since it’s been a while it will be messy.”

Scar takes a moment to consider that before giving him a small shrug, “I need to change the sheets anyways.”

Grian nods and continues to lead them back to the staircase. Scar reluctantly pulls his hand back in order to grab his matchbox again, using it to light the lanterns on the upper floor. Grian frowns but doesn’t comment on it.

When they enter Scar’s bedroom, Grian quickly sits down on the edge of the bed. Taking the hint, Scar goes over and sits behind him, staring in awe at the wings hanging loosely from his back. Grian shifts, scooting back a little and spreading his wings out a little.

He glances over his shoulder, “I’m going to give you an overview of what I need to do first.”

“That will be helpful, thanks.”

He narrows his eyes, “First off, this is just for the parts I can’t reach, that’s it.” He pauses until Scar nods, “What I’m mainly asking is to straighten them and clean them out of any dirt.” Grian pauses again, before slowly continuing, “Because of being unable to take care of them properly, there are probably both loose and broken feathers which would best be handled by being removed.”

Scar makes a noise, “Are removing feathers a good idea?”

“A few is fine, they’ll grow back later. Besides, leaving them would only make things more uncomfortable.”

“Alright…” Scar doesn’t try to hide his reluctance at the idea.

Grian suddenly pulls back one wing and turns around, “Giving a demonstration would probably be best.” He pulls one wing around until the underside is visible to both of them, with it so close he can see how messy they are, which isn’t that bad, but he can see a good amount unaligned. Scar listens and watches intensely as Grian murmurs directions and demonstrates slowly.

He turns back around after Scar assures him that he understands, spreading out his wings again. Scar grabs the nearby lantern, setting it carefully on the bed to get better lighting. As Grian spreads out his wings more, he understands what he was saying, the feathers closest to his skin are more messy than any of the other feathers. Messier then he had ever seen Grian’s wings before, how long were they uncared for?

Scar carefully reaches a hand out, lightly brushing the feathers, in awe of being allowed to touch them. Grian inhales sharply, shivering at the touch. He quickly retracts his hand, “Are you okay?”

He nods, “Yeah, just caught me off guard.”

“Is it okay for me to touch them again?” Upon receiving another nod, Scar reaches his hand out again, fingertips just barely brushing the feathers. Grian gasps quietly, but doesn’t react otherwise, so Scar touches them more fully.

Keeping a close eye on Grian’s reaction, Scar starts meticulously going through each feather and cleaning out any grime stuck in-between them. It’s more difficult than he expected with the feathers being small.

It’s not long before he comes across a broken feather, making a quiet noise at the sight. Grian glances back at him, “What is it?” He sounds almost breathless.

“There’s a broken feather, what… what exactly do I do?” Scar murmurs, hesitant.

“Just grab it by the quill and tug lightly, it will sting, but again, it’s better than leaving it there.”

Scar reaches out a hand and grabs the quill, even more hesitant now. Knowing that Grian is going to keep insisting, he tugs it downwards, as lightly as he can while still being firm. Grian winces quietly, but doesn’t say anything, so Scar relaxes and sets it to the side. It doesn’t make him feel any better about it, though.

He continues going through with the preening, startling at each loose feather, but after Grian’s reassurance, he stays quiet about it. Scar does ask every time he finds a broken feather, to which Grian needs to reassure that it’s fine every time, although he sounds more breathless each time. Scar doesn’t comment about it.

Scar stops after reaching the points Grian indicated to him earlier. Grian whines when he removes his hands, making Scar blink at him in surprise, watching a flush spread across his face and neck. “Gri…?”

He ducks his head down, staying silent for a long time, before he eventually whispers, “Keep going.”

“Are you sure? Earlier you said-“

Grian pushes his wings back against Scar’s hands which were still hovering, “Yes. I’m sure… please. ”

Scar frowns, confused, but obliges and continues preening his wings. He gives up his back and forth process from before to completely focus on the left wing, making his way through it completely first.

He startles when Grian lets out a quiet chirp, pulling his hands back a fraction. Grian ducks his head down more, blushing even deeper. He pulls his knees up, hiding his face in them, “Keep- keep going.”

“Is everything okay?” He murmurs, concerned over Grian’s strange actions.

“Mhm,” he replies, his voice muffled and high pitched.

Scar reaches his hands out and resumes his preening, watching Grian’s reactions even more intently now. He doesn’t stop Scar despite embarrassment flowing off from him in waves. Well, embarrassment and something that Scar can’t name.

He starts feeling uncertain as he continues, with Grian seemingly no longer able to guide him, Scar thinks he’s doing an okay job, but he really can’t be sure. He hopes he’s not doing anything wrong.

Scar is just starting to focus on Grian’s right wing again when the avian suddenly uncurls and leans back against him. He makes a noise in surprise, pulling one hand back to stop his arm from being pinned, leaving the other hand to rest on Grian’s wing.

Scar looks down to see Grian looking back up at him, face still red but expression somewhere close to gooey. He seems to melt against Scar, pushing more against him. Scar wraps an arm around him, pressing a kiss to his forehead, making him melt more.

He smiles and murmurs, “C’mon, we’re almost done, just a little more.”

Grian whines, but lets Scar push him back into a sitting position. Scar turns a little to get a better angle, which lets Grian slump back against his shoulder. This time Scar leaves him be.

He tries to finish preening Grian’s wing as quickly as he can while still doing a good job of it. Once Scar is pretty sure he’s done, he turns to wrap his arms around Grian’s waist, letting him fully collapse against Scar again.

He smiles down at Grian, whose wings are still spread out, but from this position the undersides are visible. Scare inhales as he looks at them, even though they are a little messy, they still look beautiful, somehow even more than the back.

“You really are an angel, aren’t you?” Scar breaths out, awestruck.

The blush that was beginning to fade from Grian’s face deepens as he splutters, seeming to come out of the daze he was in. “W-what are you talking about!?”

Scar blushes, realizing he said that out loud, and he quickly tries to defend himself. “Well, you came from another world, you’re offering to rescue me, and you look absolutely gorgeous,” he murmurs, grinning down at his partner. After a beat he quickly adds on, “Oh, and the wings too, of course.”

Grian, who was looking more flustered after each point, bursts into laughter, “And the wings?”

“Well, yeah.”

Grian tries to sit up more after that, but Scar’s hold keeps him down. He glances away, “I still think you’re over-exaggerating.”

Scar moves one hand to under Grian’s chin, using it to tilt his head back until they make eye contact again. He gives him a smile, leaning down to press another kiss to his forehead.

He feels Grian lean into it, letting out a quiet coo. Scar pulls back, an amused glint in his eyes, and Grian looks away, blush persisting. “Maybe I should call you a birdie instead,” he murmurs quietly.

Grian makes a quiet noise in protest, “It’s- it’s just stupid avian instincts.”

Scar tilts his head in consideration, “Does it have something to do with these?” He trails a hand along the edge of one wing, making Grian shudder and let out a surprised chirp.

He covers his face, letting out a whine, “It’s embarrassing.”

“Is that why you were hesitant to let me touch your wings?”

Grian nods, “Y-yeah.”

“Well, I think it’s cute,” Scar says with a soft grin.

He peaks past his fingers, “W-what?”

Scar loops his arms back around Grian's waist, “I think the sounds you make are cute.”

“That’s even more embarrassing,” he mumbles.

“Is it?”

Grian doesn’t respond, letting the storm outside be the only sound  filling the room. Scar glances out of the window, it definitely seems like it won’t end anytime soon. Which he doesn’t like, but at least the zombies struggle in it too.

Although that fact definitely tries to lure them into a false sense of security. It may be safer, but it’s not completely safe, nothing ever is. If there’s one thing he’s thankful for his paranoia for it’s not dropping his guard in scenarios deemed ‘safe.’

“Let me go,” Grian eventually says, breaking the silence.

Scar quickly complies, frowning, “Are you okay?”

He nods, pulling his wings in as he turns around. “I’ll do the other side later,” Grian says before Scar can ask.

Scar doesn’t comment on it, despite how much he wants to, wanting to understand the change in his demeanor first. He returns the lantern to the table before replying, reluctantly changing the topic when he can’t figure out how to approach the current one. “What do you do with the feathers?” he gestures to the pile he made beside him.

Grian doesn’t waste much time in grabbing the pile, moving it out of Scar’s reach, “It… depends.” He stares down at it, something contemplative crossing his face. He suddenly stands up, “Wait here.”

Before Scar can reply he’s out of the room, going who knows where. He lets out a breath, trying to push the concern out of the way, worrying won’t do much. Without much to do but wait, Scar gets up and gathers the bedding.

He sets it on the ground to the side, resigned to not leave the room until Grian returns. Which is foolish, since this is technically Scar’s base, but after letting Grian basically have full reign of it, he can’t really make that claim anymore, even if it really is only to himself.

Scar sighs, leaning against the wall, what has his life come to so suddenly? Grian just abruptly appears in his life and follows him around unquestioningly. He can’t say he regrets it, but it’s a really unexpected change to how his life was before.

After what feels like an eternity of waiting with only the rain for company, Grian appears again, looking a lot more nervous than before. One hand is in his pocket, clearly intending to hide something.

“Gri?” Scar murmurs, curious and concerned.

His wings twitch at the nickname, “I… have something to give you.”

“What is it?” Scar murmurs, head tilted as he approaches Grian.

He wordlessly pulls his hand out of his pocket, a cord gripped tightly in it. Although Scar is more focused on what dangles from it, one of Grian’s feathers.

“You’re giving me one of your feathers?” He says, near breathless, Grian had seemed so possessive of them earlier.

He nods, glancing away, a flush crawling up his face again, “yeah- cause- I want you to wear it… If you don’t mind.” He holds it out more insistently.

Scar carefully reaches out to take the feather from him, holding it gently when Grian lets it go. He stares at it in awe for a moment, it is definitely one of the ones that came out during the preening. After staring at it for a while, he takes the cord for it and loops it around his neck.

At the motion, Grian turns his head back to look at Scar, eyes quickly focusing on where the feather rests against his chest. He looks back up, “It looks good on you.”

“Thanks,” Scar replies with a smile, although he feels like he’s missing something about this whole interaction. Whether he is or not, Grian doesn’t seem inclined to share it.

He nods, eyes dropping back down to the feather, almost as if it’s magnetizing to him, “Yeah…”

Lightning flashes, lighting up the room around them as Scar tries to figure out what to say, “Any particular reason for giving me this?  Not that I’m complaining, of course, I love it.”

Something in Grian’s eye brightens when Scar says he loves it, but he still glances away, “It’s an avian thing. It… it means you’re important to me.”

Scar is the one who blushes at that, while he knows that Grian cares about him, he can hear the unsaid implications behind that. The layers behind the word ‘important.’ Scar doesn’t know how to respond to that, really.

Verbally at least. With no other way to reply, Scar closes the short distance between them. He places one hand on Grian’s cheek, turning his head over and up to look at Scar again. He ducks his head down to kiss him.

Grian startles, but quickly presses back into it. He wraps his arms around Scar’s shoulders, keeping him close. Scar places his other hand on the opposite side of Grian’s face to completely cradle it.

Scar holds him like the precious person that he is, putting complete care and gentleness into the kiss.

Chapter Text

Being able to take a moment to just kiss Scar is… almost addicting. Despite all of the better judgment he has, Grian wouldn’t mind spending an eternity like this. Of course practicality is nipping at his heels, reminding him of what he needs to be doing.

Even so, he can’t bring himself to pull away. Scar, apparently, doesn’t have the same qualms as he does and pulls away, murmuring, “We can continue this later, I need to take care of this.” He gestures to the sheeys on the floor beside them.

“Alright,” Grian reluctantly pulls back his arms, disappointed but understanding. His eyes instantly drift down when Scar steps back, staring at his feather laying right beside Scar’s heart. It fills him with something possessive.

Grian forces his eyes away from Scar, watching his movements instead. He walks a few steps away, crouching down to pick up the bundle of sheets that was laying on the ground. It seems like he’s fully entering some kind of productive mindset.

Grian follows him out, fully set on taking Scar up on the offer to continue that later. He shouldn’t be surprised that Scar takes him to the storage room, setting the previous bedding just outside of it, he had just watched Scar take inventory of everything after all.

What he does think about is how hard it would have been to gather all of this stuff, and where Scar even got it from. Although with the little he knows about things here, maybe he shouldn’t think about it too hard.

Grian doesn’t follow Scar when he leaves again, instead spreading out his wings to fix the feathers on the underside. After the startling vulnerability he felt when Scar did it, he’s not sure about letting it happen again. Because, on one hand,  it felt so good; but on the other, it made him so, so, vulnerable.

It isn’t much work to fix all the feathers considering he did a good job with them last time he did it a few days ago. Enough so that he only needs to adjust some feathers with little maintenance otherwise.

Once done, he approaches the door to the courtyard, peering out into the still pouring rain. It doesn’t seem like it will end anytime soon. Which means that they’ll be stuck in here for at least the rest of the day.

“Ah, there you are,” Scar says, almost right behind him.

Grian jumps and whirls around, “Scar!”

He chuckles quietly, taking a step closer to peer out of the window, “It’s definitely bad out there, we’ll be trapped inside for a while.” Scar glances down at Grian and something glints in his eyes. He takes another step forwards, causing Grian to let out a surprised noise and take a step back, startling when his back hits the door.

“S-Scar?” He asks quietly, shifting forwards just enough to not trap his wings.

Scar raises his hands up to cradle Grian’s face, making him inhale quietly, it’s almost like they belong there. He leans down, “I’d say that it’s later enough.”

Before Grian can process his words, he closes the remaining distance and kisses him. Grian gasps against him, caught off guard. Quickly getting over the shock, he reaches up and grabs Scar’s vest, tugging him closer.

Scar easily obliges, taking a step closer, almost pressing completely against him. Grian lets go of Scar’s vest to sling his arms over his shoulders to pull him the remaining distance. Yet it’s still not close enough.

Scar pulls back from the kiss, grinning widely down at Grian even though he’s panting. Grian mirrors the smile and murmurs, “Hi handsome.”

His grin grows, “Hey light of my life.”

Grian responds by pulling him into a kiss again, the response mirroring the angel comment too much for him to reply to it in any other way. Scar responds to the kiss eagerly, pressing even closer.

It’s almost like he’s drowning in the feeling of it all, being so completely surrounded by Scar, his back almost pressed against the wall. Grian tightens his grip around Scar’s neck and shoulders, keeping him close, he doesn’t care if the feeling devours him.

While being an avian gives him stronger lung capacity, which is surprisingly useful in situations like this, whatever Scar is very much doesn’t. So the next time they break apart, he’s breathing more heavily than Grian is. He doesn’t mind, leaning against Scar’s hands and staring up at him.

The staring seems to fluster Scar, considering the blush crawling up his face and him glancing away. Although with how quickly he looks back, it seems that being flustered isn’t enough to make him stop staring at Grian in turn, which makes him a little flustered.

Grian can’t help but continue to stare into Scar’s eyes, falling into his deep emerald gaze. He spreads his wings out, bringing them around Scar, completely cocooning them inside of his wings.

Scar makes a quiet noise when they brush against his back. He glances over at them, pulling a hand away to move it towards one wing, pausing just before touching it. He glances back at Grian, a silent question in his eyes.

Grian nods, gasping when Scar places his hand on his wings, lightly sinking his hands into the feathers. Grian pushes his wing closer into Scar’s hand, shivering at the contact. With the hand still against Grian’s cheek, Scar pulls him back into a kiss.

Grian presses even closer to him, feeling like his brain is turning into mush. Before he can get too lost in the kiss, his stomach growls, making him pull back in embarrassment.

Scar chuckles lightly as he drops his hands, “It’s about time we get something to eat.”

He nods, reluctantly pulling his wings back, an embarrassed flush still covering his face, “Yeah.” Scar grabs his hand as he leads them to the kitchen.

~               ~               ~               ~               ~

Gran is pretty sure that it’s not supposed to rain for three days straight, yet here they are. At least he thinks it’s been that long, time is hard to tell like this. Although he also knows that night is supposed to be dark, which very much doesn’t happen here, so his knowledge means nothing.

Being so idle the past few days has been making him nervous. They don’t have much else to do without being pelted by the storm. He peers out into the courtyard through the window, observing it.

The barrel Scar initially left out has long since started overflowing, the water spilling out of it. Scar’s moat has also filled up completely, which worried Grian until Scar assured him that the zombies can’t swim well.

He jumps when he feels arms wrap around his waist and a chin being placed on to top of his head. “Still bad, huh?” Scar murmurs.

“Is this normal?” Grian whispers back, just above the sound of the storm.

“Eh, it varies constantly, so yes and no,” Scar says, and Grian can feel his shrug.

He sighs, “So there’s nothing we can do but wait it out?”

“Not unless you want to go out in the rain.”

Grian grimaces, “Wet feathers are the worst, so definitely not.”

“Nothing left to do besides wait then,” Scar says, voice tense even when it’s that quiet.

“I hate being idle,” he mutters in response.

“Same.”

Grian stares outside for a long moment before a thought comes to him, “I might be able to cast the spell now.”

Scar’s surprise is near palpable, “Really?”

“Worth a try, at least. Nothing can go wrong unless I fully cast it, which I won’t do if I’m not sure it will work,” Grian adds on after a beat of silence.

Scar tightens his grip a little, and he sounds almost breathless when he replies, “Yeah- yeah, sounds good.”

Grian leans back against his partner, wanting the closeness even at the discomfort on his wings, murmuring after a moment, “Let’s give it a try then.”

“Right,” Scar replies, giving him a gentle squeeze before letting go and stepping back.

Grian shoves down his disappointment and turns around, “I’ll grab my bag then.”

Scar nods in response, and Grian quickly leaves to grab his bag before returning to the hallway. He settles on the ground, grabbing his book and mask. He opens the journal to the spell and secures his mask on, reaching deep into where his magic lies.

Grian’s briefly surprised to see just how much he has back, even if it has been a few months now. He does a couple light tests to see how much he has in a more in-depth way. He can see Scar watching him, tail flicking back and forth, through the couple extra eyes he opened.

He reads the entirety of the spell, and all information about it, wanting to be completely sure he has everything ready. While Grian is sure he can do it, the doubt and worry for the worst to happen strongly washes across him. He’s pretty sure his nerves are obvious. He faintly hears Scar start pacing as he stares deep  into the book, extra eyes disappearing.

Grian flips through the pages once again, double, triple, quadruple, quintuple checking. Scar’s pacing along the hall echoes in his ears, and he looks up, about to ask him to stop, but pauses. If he thought Scar’s pacing was erratic, then that’s nothing to his tail, whipping back and forth uneven to his strides.

He sighs, sitting back on his calves, trying to settle his wings. “Sorry,” he whispers and instantly Scar stumbles to a halt.

Scar looks at him, his ears twitching, “Huh?”

“I’m stressing you out, aren’t I?” Grian asks, a little louder. He knows that Scar is already nervous about this, so his worry being palpable really isn’t helping.

His tail continues to flick back and forth, but it’s calmer than before, “Ah, um, maybe a little?”

Grian stares at him for a moment, unwavering contact into his eyes. He shakes his head slightly, looking down at the book. If Scar is going to pretend he isn’t extremely worried for Grian’s sake, he’s not going to correct him.

“I’m confident that this will work, but part of me worries that it will go wrong,” he says honestly, not wanting to lie to Scar.

“So, slim chance of things going wrong?” Scar asks, hope filtering into his voice.

“Basically,” hopefully. Grian flips the pages to get to the spell itself, “Come, sit with me.”

Scar doesn’t move, hesitating. After a moment he walks towards Grian, sitting down on the opposite side of the book from him, “Okay, how does this work?”

Grian does a final read through of the spell before looking up at Scar, holding both of his hands out, palms up, “Hold my hands.”

Scar slowly raises his hands up and places them on Grian’s, tail wrapping around him, the end twitching slightly. Grian squeezes Scar’s hand, giving him a smile, and it stills. Scar grips his hands tightly, but returns the smile.

“Now, I’ll cast the spell and search through different worlds. Once I find one I will take us there, which will be sudden and jarring but you’ll be fine.”

Scar takes a moment to process that before whispering, “What happened when you first got here?”

“I wasn’t prepared for how the world would shift around me, and I fell the moment I landed,” he almost breaks eye contact from embarrassment, but for Scar’s sake he holds it and tells him the full truth. “Us sitting down will stop that from happening, or will at least make it a less drastic fall.”

“Right.”

“Are you ready?”

He doesn’t reply for a moment, but eventually murmurs, “Where do you plan on going?”

“A community world, I’m thinking. It’ll give us a good place to start with, plus it will give us a safe area without mobs immediately. I can show you how to world jump once we’re safe and we can go from there,” Grian adds on after a considering pause.

Scar nods after a moment, “Alright, I’m ready.”

Grian tightens his grip on Scar’s hands and looks down at the spell for one final time. He begins murmuring the spell, closing his eyes and channeling his power. He’s soon able to reach out and start searching through worlds, he searches very carefully through each world, making sure they’re like his base world and also not hardcore.

It takes a few minutes for him to find one that fits every criteria he has, long enough that he takes the first world that just fulfills his minimum requirements, not delving any deeper into it. Grian gives a light squeeze to Scar’s hands as a warning, before reaching out to the world a second later. A bright light flashes into his eyes and everything feels wrong as the world shifts around them. Scar gasps, clutching Grian’s hands tightly.

Only a few seconds later everything returns to normal, outside of a jolt from falling a foot. Grian opens his Eyes, looking around them, discovering that they’re in a small clearing surrounded by trees. He lets go of Scar’s hands, wanting to remove his mask immediately, but Scar only holds them tighter.

Grian gives him a smile, “It’s alright, we’re out, we’re safe.” He startles a little as he takes in Scar’s appearance, it seems like the world had deemed his vest of all things as part of that world. All that he’s left in now is his plain outfit.

Scar takes a slow breath in, looking around at the world around them. It takes him a long while afterwards to relax completely, relaxing his grip on Grian’s hands a few seconds later.

Grian pulls back one hand to remove his mask, changing his grip on the other to lace their fingers together. He looks up at the sky and then at the surrounding area, “We need to get going.”

“Why?” Scar murmurs, squeezing Grian’s hand.

“Because the closest town could be far away and night might hit before then. That and it can get pretty dark in the forest.” Grian hesitates, but adds in a whisper, “I… don’t know how respawn would work at the moment. I don’t want to risk dying when us joining this world might not have set our spawn here.”

Scar grimaces but nods, “Right, so we need to get to some place safe.”

Grian nods, standing up and helping Scar up as well. The moment they’re standing, Scar ducks down and kisses Grian. He startles, but reciprocates after a moment. He only lets the kiss last a few seconds before pulling back, tugging Scar’s hand as he walks into the forest.

They walk in silence, shoulder to shoulder, arms almost pressed together. Grian opens a few Eyes way up in the air, looking around for a town. It takes him a few minutes, but he sees one, instantly changing directions to lead them towards it, Scar follows him wordlessly.

They make good progress when Grian catches purple particles out of the corner of his eye. “Shit,” he mutters, wasting no time in grabbing the back of Scar’s head and forcing him to look down.

He makes a startled noise, “Gri!?”

Scar tries to move his head up, but Grian doesn’t move his hand, “Enderman. Keep your head down.”

He removes his hand after receiving a short nod from Scar, “What- what do we do?”

“Keep walking and keep your head down.” Grian pauses before adding on, “Be wary, other mobs might be around too.”

Scar gives him a slight nod as they pick up the pace. Grian instinctively spreads out one wing around Scar, either for protection or comfort, he’s not sure. It’s probably both.

Thankfully they don’t come across any other problems by the time they reach the town, entering it quickly. The pair only relax once they’ve put distance between them and the forest.

“What’s the plan now?” Scar asks, looking around, something hopeful on his face.

“Probably find an adventurer's shelter, if this town has one. The one’s I’ve seen are pretty helpful to adventurers, or newcomers in general. If not,” Grian shrugs, “I guess we’ll just ask around?” He’s not sure how well that will go, with having only spoken to one person in years, but it’s better then nothing.

It’s mostly quiet as they walk down the sidewalk, not many people being outside at this time of day. Grian very quickly loses his own goal of looking around, instead focusing on Scar, unable to help but smile at the amazement in his gaze. To be in a place so full of life, Grian can’t help but imagine just how much joy Scar is feeling from it. It’s nice for Grian as well, to no longer be in the void, but he’s too focused on Scar’s own awe to focus on what this means for him.

He’s definitely too focused to notice the looks being cast their way, hate and greed shining in their eyes.

It’s very quickly brought to Grian’s attention as someone grabs his wing, yanking on it and making him yelp. He whirls around, pulling it free from the stranger’s grip, bringing them both tight against his back.

He grins at them, “Those are some pretty wings you got there.”

Grian mutters a curse under his breath, of course he had led them to an anti-hybrid town. “Scar, run.”

“W-What!?”

The guy pulls out a knife, grin sharpening, “No, you’re not going anywhere.”

Grian spreads his wings out in front of Scar, flapping them as he jumps into the air. Startled by the sudden air buffeting him, he’s unprepared for Grian grabbing his knife hand in his talons and pulling it down as he lands.

The guy yelps as he lands on the ground, knife falling out of his grip as Grian pins his wrist to the ground. Grian doesn’t waste time in pulling his wings close to his spine again, whirling around, grabbing Scar’s wrist, and bolting in the opposite direction.

He runs until he sees an alleyway, immediately ducking into it, and dragging Scar most of the way to the back. Grian’s breathing fast, adrenaline roaring in his veins as he places himself between Scar and the opening of the alleyway

“I thought this server has respawn!” Scar hisses at him, “why is he coming at us with a knife!?”

Grian hesitates but replies a moment later, tone hushed, “In some worlds, respawn fixes every kind of injury, but others don’t. Which includes losing a limb.”

“I’m sorry, what!? ”

Grian grimaces, but before he can reply the guy who attacked them passes the alleyway, making him tense up. He’s gone a moment later, clearly not noticing where they disappeared to. Grian sighs, turning back to face Scar, who’s fully frozen, body tense as if preparing a fight or flight response.

He doesn’t have much choice but to explain, “Not every place is a fan of hybrids, some places like capturing them or taking parts of them for trophies. I should have been more careful, I brought us here without thinking of what this place could possibly be that could endanger us.”

Scar slowly relaxes, “Right… what should we do now?”

”Probably get out of here,” Grian says with a sigh, he doesn’t know if they can reach a friendly town by nightfall and he’s not sure if his magic can handle bring them to another world.

Before Scar can reply to that, a voice speaks from deeper inside of the alleyway, “I can help you with that.”

Grian doesn’t hesitate to move in front of Scar, tensing up again in case of a fight. He’d rather not run back into the danger zone of the street, but he also doesn't know who this is. “Who are you?!” He hisses, pining his wings close to his back, resisting the urge to spread them for intimidation.

The figure fully steps around the corner, “I saw what happened, I’m here to offer help.”

The full suit of armor makes Grian falter, one instinct screaming at the danger of this, the other side is oddly… relieved? “You… you’re not human, are you?” He carefully replies, trying to gauge what they are.

“I’m not,” the stranger raises a hand to press a button on the side of their helmet, turning it translucent and revealing his face. “The name’s Xisuma.”

“You’re a voidwalker,” Grian says, before he can stop himself, realization quickly settling in. He winces immediately afterwards, knowing that revealing that information isn’t a good thing.

Surprisingly, Xisuma only smiles, or seems to at least, “Yes I am. I run a kind of safe haven for hybrids who are stuck in dangerous worlds, or those on the run. I can bring you there if you need a place to take shelter for a couple of days.”

Grian isn’t sure of the offer, but does relax a little, Xisuma doesn’t seem like he’d hurt them. Scar notices and relaxes as well, carefully replying as he moves to be next to Grian, “I don’t know how to change worlds.”

It’s immediately obvious what Scar’s trying to do, he remembered when Grian said that Watchers and Voidwalkers don’t mix well. It makes Grian feel warm that Scar remembered that, and is quick to try and cover for him to stop Xisuma from learning.

While nice, if Grian can sense the otherworldliness from Xisuma, there’s no doubt Xisuma can sense the Watcher magic from Grian. He can’t hide if he wants this interaction to end well, “And I’m on the run.”

Scar gives him a questioning look, but doesn’t say anything. Something contemplative crosses across Xisuma’s expression, but it’s hard to tell what it means through the mask. He nods after a moment, “You’re free to join us temporarily. Or maybe if everyone agrees you can stay around longer.”

Grian can’t help but be surprised at the offer of possibly a permanent residence on a private server, but it does sound appealing. Although a temporary shelter sounds nice in general. It also sounds like a good place to hide if the Watchers are looking for him.

Of course he’s definitely going to have to talk to Xisuma about being a Watcher if they agree to either, maybe he can even help set up firewalls. Grian glances at Scar, wanting to get his opinion on the matter, but only gets a minute shrug in response.

Grian looks at Xisuma again, who seems to be telling the truth, “That would be great, if you don’t mind.” After a moment he realizes that only Xisuma shared his name and quickly adds in, “I’m Grian, and this is Scar.”

Xisuma nods, and seems to smile again, “Nice to meet you, and you’re welcome to join. We’ve had plenty of people join, both permanent and temporary.” He looks back and forth between them, “We can go now if you’re ready.”

Grian casts a glance at Scar again, who nods, “I’m good.”

He looks back, “I’m ready whenever.” Grian grabs Scar’s hand and laces their fingers together.

Xisuma nods, tapping something on the side of his helmet. “Alright, this will be a bit startling,” he says, reaching forwards to gently grab their shoulders. He closes his eyes as the world warps around them until they’re standing on a small island. It’s less jarring than the last two times, enough so that he doesn’t even stumble.

Xisuma pulls his hands back, “Welcome to Hermitcraft!”