Chapter Text
Cherries, from fruit to pit. Atoms. The sun, every day. Worms. Mulch. Perspiration. The moon, every night. Me. You.
Rebirth.
The various cycles of life and death.
GoodTimeWithScar fell from a high place.
——————————
Sometimes, a shade of black appears as what it is.
Black.
Other times, in the inky dark one can spot tinges of purple, red, even green.
Scar gazed into the void, eyes trying to pick out any particular tone. He found one: blue, but not that of diamonds. The universe’s underpainting was more midnight, when the sky had just started to unshroud stars and the birds had drawn quiet. The kind of blue that you couldn’t swim in, but you could certainly fall through.
The colour stretched in all directions around him, up, down, left, right. Scar floated as the centrepoint, an island, tethered to nothing yet unable to move.
He felt cold.
Someone screamed, but it wasn’t him, was it?
——————————
Buzzing.
There was a bug in his room.
The air shifted as it moved about, a pop of pressure to the right of his ear. Scar ignored it, squeezed his eyes tightly shut. His dream had been so interesting, no silly little fly was going to tear him from it. Who did it think it was? He tried to bring it back, the images that had been so crisp only seconds ago fading from his consciousness into a blur. It was no use, he was awake and he knew it. But Scar did not give in easily, pressing his back into the soft wool, slowing his breathing, loosening his shoulders. Thinking hard. Trying not to think.
What had he been dreaming about?
Something about colours, something about the world.
The insect circled him.
That was okay. He was almost gone again.
Paper-thin wings vibrated against his skin. The fly parted the hairs across his calf, leaving an itchy trail as it walked between. As if it had the right. As if he were nothing more than a piece of furniture. Scar grumbled and whined, tossing his body about until it was tangled in the sheets. He was an apex predator for goodness sake, and he would fight back!
…
He just wanted to sleep.
Why were his legs bare, anyway? He wouldn’t ever sleep without his pyjamas on. You never knew when you might have to rush out of bed, it was basically rule number one. Plus, he couldn’t remember getting changed; hell, he couldn’t remember going to bed at all.
Huh.
The hinges on his mental floodgates grew weary, then snapped all at once. Reality flooded into him, confusion melding with the last traces of his dream.
That void.
Scar never wanted to go back to that void.
Quick and sudden, he tried to bolt upright, a flurry of body parts all going different ways. As soon as he did, a hand slammed down on his chest, hard enough to knock the wind from him and send him back into the pillow. Ow. Panic set in. Heart hammering, pulse spiking. His eyes wouldn’t open, sticky with sleep. And his bones… his bones felt strange, like the meat had been methodically cut off and then glued back on without him noticing. Everything in the right place… but not quite.
The dream wanted him, wouldn't let him leave. Scar could feel it pulling at him, a thin thread that went unseen. Tugging. Grasping fingers. Cold blue.
“Scar— relax a second.”
The voice was close, tone distorted through a thick layer of reverberation. They spoke a second time, words cutting in and out like a faulty radio. Crackly, unable to broadcast. Scar couldn’t understand them, but somehow they felt familiar. Like he should know them. In the back of his mind he knew the speaker, trusted them with anything. His life. His well-being. All of him.
None of that mattered.
Scar wanted to bite them. Needed to.
If he could see them—
—there, his moment. He felt the speaker lean over him, carelessly grabbing something from the other side of the bed. Scar almost laughed. A stupid move, now they were in prime position. His teeth found the closest fleshy part and sunk in. …Nothing pierced. They weren’t sharp enough. He tried harder until his prey screeched, the sounds of ruffled feathers and shattered glass. A bird? Had he caught a bird? The void in him was purring.
“SCAR!”
Grian.
His good, kind, wonderful friend Grian.
Scar released the arm immediately, spitting out saliva and blood. It dribbled down his chin. He felt sick, oh he felt sick. That was not his blood. Through heavy blinks, frantic eyes finally opened, darting around to take in the strange room. Everything was too bright, but he recognised it nonetheless. The owner stood by the side of his bed, staring down at him in disbelief. Grian, with one palm wrapped tight around the opposite wrist.
He did not look happy.
“You… – did you…” Grian’s voice was clear to him now, shrill, almost frantic. “Scar. You BIT me!”
Scar didn't know how to respond to that, sheepishly recoiling into his pillow. It was true, after all. He had bit him. The metallic taste on his tongue was proof of it. And he did not know why he had done it. His mouth opened and then closed again, trying to conjure up a sentence that might defend him. To cry that it hadn’t been him, not really. That something very strange had happened, an external force taking temporary control. But he wasn’t a puppet! Scar was sane enough, for the most part, and it would sound even more ridiculous outside of his head than it did inside of it.
The compulsion. It had felt like hunger.
He swatted the thought away.
“You… you spooked me!” he lied, though it wasn’t a very good one.
Grian continued to look down at him, frozen as a thousand different reactions tried across his gaze. It was an unusual situation, after all. Scar watched it unfold, nails curled into the blanket with worry. His sweater was so red he could hear it fizzing, carbonated. In the end Grian settled on something unreadable.
Above all, he just looked tired. Blonde hair tousled at odd-angles, circles so dark Scar half expected to glance outside and see a giant moon.
The open window, from where he could see it, was spilling with early morning light.
“Sorry,” he offered, but it didn’t sound right or fair. What else was he supposed to say? They didn’t make ‘I am sorry that the blinding compulsion to eat your flesh overtook me’ greeting cards. They didn’t make those because that was weird. It didn’t happen to people! If it did, someone would have filled that gap in the market already. That was how you knew situations were normal to experience – when they had dedicated greeting cards. “I— well I didn’t mean to…” to hurt you. He kept his jaw clenched between words, untrusting of his own autonomy. What had happened?
Grian hesitated, then nodded once. Brisk. Rigid. Scar relaxed his fingers.
What followed next was a minute straight of strenuous silence. It was horrifying. Neither man knew what to do.
Scar begged to curl up and die. But that wasn’t happening, so he took the time to piece together the second puzzle that had wanted for his attention ever since he opened his eyes: why wasn’t he at his own home? It was not the most pressing issue, obviously, but he missed it. Needed the comfort of his house during such trying times. His treehouse had an earthy smell to it, each room oozing with sap and moss. The place he was in was colder smelling, more sterile with cut stone walls. Not medical, but cleaner than he thought a home should be.
Sure, he had slept over at Grian’s before. That was… something that happened, sometimes.
But… Scar just knew that wasn’t the case. Everything was too confusing.
He had bitten a man in his own house. Oh god.
Was he even awake? That was the most logical explanation. And Scar was a logical man! The kind of man with his head screwed on straight. He made elven cookies. He carved bed frames, — good ones, at that! Intricate ones. (Did Grian know he had a fly in his bedroom? The window was open, why wouldn’t it go out? Where was it?) He pranked his friends and he enjoyed every single day gifted to him.
He did not bite people*
*often.
“I’m going to go back to sleep, if you don’t mind.”
Grian protested but Scar pretended that he hadn’t.
——————————
His dreams were rectangular, bordered by pixelated white lines. A flashy sign with words, a button that begged to be pressed. He didn’t want to press it, though. Wasn’t ready. It was a big commitment, you know, pressing a button.
Why bother when the new vessel was overly animated, warm? The parts moved easily, the tongue placed well in the mouth to spill letters. To feast. Spine curved, the perfect place to nestle.
…
“Right… now, …I hate to be the one here to say it, but we can’t, uhh, rule it out,” that was a thick accent. British, but not Grian. With a tinge of hesitance behind every word. It was a permanent feature.
Scar wished everyone would leave him alone.
Wow. That was new, he didn’t often want that. A social butterfly, —climber to some, but he would deny it. If he ever did feel an insatiable hunger, it wasn’t for flesh, but to perform. Scar liked to be liked. Needed to be. It was never unusual for him to be seen playing a role or two, throwing on various suits and ties of texture and cut. Always the last at the party, the scene, the mountain. Desperate fingertips slipping through those who tried to leave early.
A Scar in isolation was a tree in the forest; he needed to be heard to be real.
And maybe that was it: he wasn’t ready to be real. Something bad had happened, Scar had no idea what, how or why, but he had changed in a way. Part of him displaced, shifted to the left. It scared him that he knew about it despite it being an invisible wound. A thing was inside of him. It was under his skin, waiting. Scar did his best to push it away.
How many hours had passed since he had first woken up, fangs slashing as a wild animal?
What if he did it again? What if he did worse.
And now the room had double the people in it to witness him off of his game. Double the questions. Too many loose threads to weave into a believable garment to adorn. What he had so far didn’t fit him. His friends would notice immediately, the way he would slouch beneath the heavy lie. He could not wear it yet, so he laid still, surface rough against his spine. There was a spring digging in deep, bruising. His gut curdled.
He could remember dying.
Dying and waking up in a bed that was not his usual respawn point. That was the only clue he had.
“I’m not ruling it out. I just… don’t you think we should think about this?” Grian sounded so quiet, a whisper. “If it doesn’t work then we have an even bigger problem on our hands.”
The second person, —Mumbo, he identified— was further away. “Yeah. I know,” a sigh. “I know.”
“It’s Scar,” he felt a weight dip the mattress at the side. Someone had perched on the corner.
What did that mean?
Had Grian told Mumbo that he’d bitten him? That was… not good. If people knew he was going around mauling like a dog, then he was so socially over. He’d hoped that Grian might keep it to himself, writing it off as Scar being… Scar. He’d certainly done weirder things. It was just a bite! A bite between friends! A bite between friends should stay as one. …But that wasn’t Grian’s fault, was it? He was more than allowed to tell people.
All he had been showing Scar was hospitality, and now he had been hurt.
Was he spiralling? It was fine! Everything was fine. He’d crawled back from far worse in the past. Scar would get up from his slump and dazzle until everyone forgot about the tiny little thing. The ringing in his ears would make just a perfect showtune.
He could put on a play with that wretched fly.
No matter how bad things got, he would adapt. Newfound confidence oozed from him. It didn’t feel like it was his emotion, but a tool was a tool. (Was he a tool, too?) He still had all of his limbs, a pulse, and his charm. That thing, that new hungry thing inside of him? It would not win.
He wanted to fix things, and quickly. Needed to do it. It was clear that his pair of friends weren’t going to be leaving anytime soon, so he sucked in deep and went through a mental checklist:
Did he want to attack them? No.
Very good!
Did he want to eat them? …Not enough for it to matter.
It was showtime.
“You know,” the words came out hoarse and dry. He coughed twice to cover it up, pizazz fighting to exist. “It's rude to talk about a man while he’s in the room,” Scar pulled himself up the bed into a sitting position, joints cracking like glow sticks.
Both of his visitors leapt a mile.
Grian was by his feet, Mumbo hovering at the door as if the room was rigged to explode and kill them all.
Possibly. They were in the home of the TNT prankster himself, after all. How fun that would be, to see some debris and destruction! Oh, he could use it as a cover, slip out unnoticed… Briefly, Scar debated starting a fire.
There was a lit torch on the side table. He could throw it.
He shelved the idea as a backup plan. Grian’s eyes were flickering between his face and the bedpost, as if looking at Scar for too long might damage him. Was his blood still dried there? He sure hoped not, that would throw a spanner in his plans to appear cool as a cucumber. He licked his lips, trying to taste it: nothing. It could have been relief he felt, it could have been disappointment. Neither mattered. Scar felt electrified above all.
The avian gave him a funny look.
“Do you…” Mumbo started, arms folded, rolling back and forth on the heel of his shoes. He was nervous. Scar would have to work harder to convince him. “Mate, Scar…”
“Scar do you feel normal,” Grian blurted out.
Absolutely not. “Yes, yes. I feel wonderful. Strong. Powerful. Why do you ask?” Scar was so far from feeling normal. He kicked until he was free from the mass of sheets, swinging his legs across the mattress to join his friend on the edge. If Grian backed away a little, it wasn’t worth noting. He was ready to go! Ready to leave! …The room spun, pre-vomit bile rising in his throat. He swallowed, placing his hands on his knees.
The shorts he had on were not his, a cotton grey fleece, the type that got too sweaty. He hated them.
“Well, —You did bite Grian.”
So he told Mumbo. Okay. He could work with that.
Scar was forced to slow down. He had to talk his way through it until he could reach a place to stop and think. That was what he did. That was what he was good at. “...A mistake! It could happen to anyone,” he dragged out the final ‘e’ for time. Strands of long hair framed his cheekbones, unusually greasy for him. How long had it been since he had seen himself? The floorboards were dancing. White gauze snaked around his right ankle, tied across the top of his foot.
An injury after respawn?
He could remember dying.
…That was nothing unusual! He died all the time! His friends joked about it often. Clumsy Scar, silly Scar, always breaking bones. Flying into walls. Falling into ravines.
—He had fallen into a ravine.
It had been so cold.
“The blue,” he felt a hand hovering over his shoulder, unsure to touch. Scared of his teeth? They shouldn't be… (no, they should.) He let himself be supported, just by an inch. “I’ve never seen a shade of blue like that before, Grian.”
The hand changed. Less wary, more humane as it made it’s choice pressed into cotton. A thumb drawing circles. “What do you mean? What was blue?”
Everything.
Time. The horizon. Him. The void and him had been one, an overlapping opacity in dark blue.
He didn’t respond, mouth tight.
His friends shared a look through narrowed eyes. The simple gesture pierced Scar as a bullet, -1 points to his social status. Flailing, he tried to grab it back. “I… lot’s of things are blue! Like, the… the sky… is one thing,” excellent. That would fix it. He felt like the captain of a ship in treacherous waters, a storm hammering holes in his vessel. Patch one up, and another opens. But it was just him, he had no crew to help, anxiously running from port to starboard.
He didn’t need one!
He didn’t.
“Right. Let’s just— here, Scar, look at this,” Mumbo was in front of him now, something plastic in his hands. His communicator? The device was handed to him as Grian made a sharp noise in protest. What was the issue? The LED screen flashed, displaying what it always had since the dawn of their world: Mumbo’s vitals, health and hunger
The redstone in his palm pulsated like a living thing. Had it always done that? Scar couldn’t remember. Was redstone… alive? He’d never thought to ask.
“Is redstone–”
“Scar, bud. …Look at it,” Grian interrupted.
Oh yes, he was supposed to be looking. It looked fine? Or did it? Mumbo’s hearts were nearly full, but there was something in them that he had to squint to see: Two dark lines running through the red, branding each one rotten.
They were in a hardcore world.
“Uhuh, yes, yeah. I do see, mmhm” Scar tried to care, attempted to inject some sincerity into his tone, but the fly was buzzing again. Louder and louder, closer and closer. Was it… inside his ear? No, no, of course not. He scanned the room, searching the air for that familiar black dot. If he could just find it, he could squish it between his thumb and forefinger. Then everything would be okay.
It was the root of all, he was so sure.
“Worse than that,” Grian reached over and pointed at the half heart missing towards the end of the row. “They don’t regen, not naturally.”
“And yours is… well, it’s quite freaky, to be honest,” another communicator handed to him, replacing Mumbo’s. Everything was moving so fast. He couldn’t breathe. Scar stared at it with a blank expression, eyes low. His temples throbbed. The fly was everywhere. He didn’t want to look, why were they making him look?
His screen was empty.
No hearts.
No messages.
As if he didn’t exist. Never had.
So Scar did what any normal, healthy individual would do upon being shown their nonexistence: he pretended he had not seen it. Tuned it out. A television set on static in the back of a room. There was a muffled conversation around him about farming golden apples, about the world respawn being broken. Theories about him being the… ‘catalyst’. His death.
Was he dead? …Technically they all died all the time, immortality as normal as the dirt, the grass. Perhaps they had all taken it for granted; become too comfortable with their permanence.
No. That was ridiculous. He would come back. They always came back.
The eels in his brain wriggled. It was too much at once. “Oh! Look at the time…” his communicator did not have the time on display, but he pointed towards it nonetheless. “I must be going!” he sprung to his feet, tripping forward without any shoes. A hand caught his elbow, steadying him. Scar stabilised, shaking it off, arm wrapped around his lower ribcage. It hurt. In fact, his whole body hurt. “Really, thanks for the room, G,” why wasn’t he in his own?
“Just so cosy. You’re so sweet,” his words tumbled out faster than he could say them, mashed together and incomprehensible. Finally, after several embarrassing failed attempts, clammy fingers twisted the door open.
No one tried to stop him as he exited through it.
—---------------------------------------
Hours ticked by, high sun dappled green across the clearing.
Calloused hands moved out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed, dropping another half-block flat onto the plains. Behind him, a long row had started to form.
He took a step back, wiping grime and sweat on his shorts.
Scar loved to work with copper.
There was an art to it. Streamlined from start to finish. First, mining it was easy, the sprawling veins available both below and above ground. That was very good for him— the less danger that surrounded Scar in his current state the better. He’d tried not to think about what would happen if he died again as he combed through exposed rock.
…
And then there were the optional steps! The ore could be smelted, the copper oxidised, the blocks cut, shaped, waxed. Each different path changed the original product in a way that sang to his synapses. The perfect all-rounder. A real zone out task, too; his mind free to travel while his body switched on autopilot. Lay down a block, move four paces forward, rinse and repeat.
Usually that was fine.
Except, Scar did not know where his mind was anymore.
After leaving Grian’s house he had tried to locate it; picking up fragments of himself as he walked. He’d visited his treehouse, sitting on the floor in his upstairs bedroom until that got boring.
(14 minutes and 27 seconds. At which point a detached voice had asked him if he knew what real guilt felt like, and so he decided that was enough sitting for the day.)
He’d seen Jellie. But she had hissed and spat at him, a pair of luminous eyes peering out from behind the great grandfather clock in his hall. She had refused to come out, too, even after he had placed down a bowl of her favourite fish. Truthfully, It really hurt his feelings to see her react to him that way, but he loved her all the same. She was having a bad day! It happened to everyone.
Hell, he had even spent time hunting down his shoes, finding the leather boots near the top of a ravine, a Scar-sized line of grass flattened in their wake. He ignored that, too. Lots of things were the same size as him. Plus, the area was due to be landscaped, anyway.
Whoever had dragged ‘someone's’ dead-alive body around was only doing him a favour, long term.
Scar stretched his smile out until it was political, plastered on hard as he worked. One slab, move forward, another slab, move forward. Who cared if the very fabric of their universe was falling apart! Sure, sure, maybe he was dead. Maybe they were all doomed. His treehouse expansion was coming along nicely.
And that was all that mattered, building, drawing up plans, having something to throw his creativity at. Easy to get lost in, — that was just how he liked it. He still had to sell his basement, after all, dead or alive or in between. The sign had been up for weeks with zero takers, but now that they were in a hardcore world? Real estate was all the more important. His basement was underground! Add some torches, a little flair here, some moss there… and BAM:
he would have the perfect survival bunker for sale.
Scar was a businessman. He knew an opportunity when he saw one.
Still… It was proving to be difficult. The few people that did dare to cross his path were acting weird with him. Treating him like a fragile thing, a broken piece that had dropped from a fuller human. Scar tried hard, amping up the charisma, searching for the shiny dollar signs in their eyes. Why didn’t they understand, he was presenting them the deal of a lifetime! If they could just look past his hunched frame, messy hair and the lack of light in his eyes. It was the building he was selling, not himself.
No one wanted to buy his basement.
Was it possible he was being too pushy, too brash? His friends were constantly standing further away from him than normal. Customers could be tricky puzzles, if you didn’t read them right. Bdubs had even been bold enough to ask him if he was doing ‘all fine’, moss cloak taut to his frame despite the burning sun. Scar could have eaten him then and there for asking such a stupid question.
(The pull was there, a twist in his stomach. An ache that grew with every hour. What would he do if it got unbearable? When it got unbearable?)
It was nonsense. Scar would be good and dandy the second he experienced the rush of a successful trade. Nothing quite beat that. Would it ever?
With the last piece of copper placed, Scar stumbled on his way up from exiting a squat. A wince, small, yet unconcealed as his ribcage folded inwards like an accordion. He cursed under his breath, the word foreign on his tongue. He was fine, but the eyes on him were eagled, picking up on every wrong move.
Grian was watching him. ‘Sorting chests outside of The Entity’.
Sure he was.
If the man was going to loiter… “Why don’t you just come over here, G,” Scar inspected one of his pieces of copper, fingernail scraping at a mark deep in the surface. It wouldn't clean, his skin raw by the time he gave up picking. How awful. Maybe he could use the other side?
Grian didn’t move, although he had stopped, spruce planks halfway between storage and floor.
“I won’t bite you again,” the laugh in his voice came through all wrong. He felt very bad for biting his friend! Of course he did. And now he was being blase about it. Scar hurried to find a tag-on sentence to make their friendship right again. “Probably,” …was that the right choice?
Scar scrutinised the singular word, repeated it in his head ten times over until it was muddled. Probably. Pro-bably. Prob-ab-ly.
Oh, it was worse now. “No…” he sighed. “That definitely didn’t help.”
Grian laughed at that, a pleasant sound that spanned the short clearing between them. Scar was so glad to hear it, —-- saline to cleanse his wounds. Something normal. Not death, not the blue, not the fly, just the simple act of making his friend happy.
“Phft,” Grian tutted. “Reckon you could bite my non-dominant arm next time? This is annoying, Scar,” he gestured to the mess surrounding him, various different logs approaching despawn. Ouch, had he really bitten him that hard?
He had to make it up to him, somehow.
Did he want a basement? It only had a dampness problem! The spider spawner was a perk not a hindrance. Everyone loved mob farms.
“I’ll be sure to even you up, don’t you worry mister,” Scar paid no attention to the images he summoned as a result. Blood and flesh, bones that snapped as easy as twigs between his teeth. He judged himself, neck ripe with goosebumps.
Grian stayed put; even with the lightness to their banter, he clearly knew better than to come closer. His friend had strong instincts, always had. They’d reaped the benefits of them together once, back in the desert.
Scar was glad, in a way. Hungry and annoyed, but glad. It was a very odd mental balancing act.
So he did what he knew best to do during times of stress: he kept himself busy. He put himself into his work. He did not indulge in the horrible thoughts. He tried not to, at least. It was hard, so for good measure, Scar decided not to indulge in any thoughts at all. An empty mind was a safe mind. Plus, Xisuma was looking into the code!
That’s what Bdubs had said, and Bdubs wouldn’t lie to his face. If he had, Scar would digest him, snapping open his jaw like a king cobra to swallow the moss man whole.
The problem would go away eventually. Scar just had to keep working until it did.
He moved on, digging winding pathways around his tree base, connecting the shiny new extension to the trunk. By the time dusk had painted the horizon, he had burnt through all three of his shovels. They were good ones, too. He hadn’t dug that much, had he?
Going inside to make another would have taken far too long; it left too much room for error. What if he tripped over a root on the way? Or committed an unspeakable act against his moral system before he reached his chest room? It wouldn’t do. Scar chose instead to do the next best thing, to get on his hands and knees and dig. Pulling up grass and shoots, scattering fistfuls of dirt that ruined his beautiful sightlines. Be it to hide or to highlight, sightlines were one of the most important aspects of a build.
They led the eyes.
Time did as it does, — it passed. How much, he did not know. Scar kept digging until his fingernails were caked, the world was dark, and heavy rain began to fall.
Scar never felt it, the water that turned his packed pathways into slippery mud. He never felt the sweater draped across his shoulder blades, either, or the hand that guided him to where it was dry. Where it was safe.
“Shower,” a towel, a change of clothes that smelt of fresh linen. Folded up nice and neat and passed with care. Scar nodded along, doing as told. Ignoring his smudged reflection in the glass panes. Ignoring the gnaw. The buzz. The hum.
An empty mind was a safe mind. An empty mind was a safe mind. An empty mind was a safe mind.
…
The shower did help. It was better to be clean. The steam sweeping deep into his sinuses with nature's broom, hot water the perfect temperature to soothe his aching joints. He stood in it, and when he could no longer stand, he sat. Dirt ran down the drain in clumps, his knees layered in thick brown clay and grass blades.
Scar sure hoped Grian had a good plumbing system.
By the time he stepped out of the shower and into his clothing, he felt… fragile. Significantly more aware of the terrors, of the thing that had burrowed inside of him and made a home. It was scary. Scar was scared.
And although he was scared, he was no longer numb. The knowledge just enough to shove him back towards his correct plane of existence. Slightly to the right and up a bit, notching him a little closer to where his usual self had stood sane (enough) just a few hours prior.
…That sure was a deep trench he had dug. And with his hands, too? It took everything in him not to tear his hair out. Frustration swelled in his throat at his carelessness, his inability to stay in control of whatever it was trying so hard to pilot him. He didn’t want to lose it.
Had to fight it.
He ended up in a chair at a dinner table, Grian handing him his final gifts of the night before sitting across from him: a cup, warm and sweetened with brown sugar, and a sandwich.
Tea. He sipped at it. The sandwich did not appeal to him.
“... This morning,” Grian started slow. “it’s possible we may have overloaded you… a teensy tiny smidge of a bit.”
Scar snorted, shaky and through the vacuum of his throat. Overloaded was an understatement, but what would he have done in their position? Likely worse. Likely faster, too. “No, really?”
Grian rolled his eyes, using the toe of his boot to prod him under the table. “Mumbo thinks the same, also,” and then he paused, picking at a stray thread on his sleeve. Scar noted that while Grian had put his muddied sweater in the wash, the one he had on now was identical in every way. Almost down to the loose stitching on the collar. He wanted to see his wardrobe desperately.
It was a shame the colour red was the loudest one.
Grian didn’t continue his sentence, which was weird. He’d left space for it in the air between them, backing out at the last second. Now, they were going to be forced to sit and fester in a prolonged pause. Their second one of the day, at that.
““I want to eat you,” not on Scar’s watch they weren’t.
Grian took his foot back.
“Not, like, for real, silly,” he threw an arm wave dismissively. His skin didn’t fit over the frame properly, pulled taut as he moved. “But yeah, yeah, for real. I want to eat you,” Scar gestured to the sandwich on the table, untouched. He picked up one of the spongy triangles, gave it a sniff and then put it back down in disgust. “There’s something wrong with me, G,” the demanding voice in his head told him to shut up and stop talking. Stay in his state of denial and go about his life until a magical force fixed all.
This was in fact how he often approached problems.
“Clearly. That’s a perfectly good sandwich…”
But it wasn’t working. He had just dug up half of his garden with his hands alone, for goodness sake. Scar knew that as much as he hated to admit it. He was not right, all wonky and bent wrong. And he trusted Grian to help him. He had to, before it was too late.
Maybe he could be right again.
“You’re not eating anyone, Scar,” Grian spoke in a matter-of-fact manner. Was he scolding him at a time like this? Scar relaxed a little. Their bond wasn’t so broken, after all. “I think we can safely say that… when you died, it… it gooped everything up a bit.”
Gooped? No need for him to get so potty mouthed. “Oof. Strong word choice.” Scar sat still as Grian looked him over, letting his eyes triage every inch of his skin. What was he searching for? “Still got all my parts?” He was almost certain he wouldn’t notice if the sentence was untrue.
Clearly he had found what he wanted, leaning forward on his hands, elbows on oak. “You seem …okay… right now.”
Scar shrugged. He felt okay. A phone had been on hold in his inner ear for the past hour, but it wasn’t a terrible sound. Elevator music, really. The upbeat type for fancy telemarketers or hotel receptions. As long as whoever was on the other side did not answer the call, it would be fine. So he was not perfect, just okay. “When you found me earlier I was… real out of it.”
“We overloaded you,” Grian repeated. “Probably should have waited to mention all that other stuff,” the ‘other stuff’ in question being the looming threat of permadeath hanging over them all. It wasn’t a light topic, especially when one is already losing their mind, and they had dropped it on him like a tower of gravel.
But it was real, It was happening. So he accepted it.
“I’m not going to, you know,” he dipped a finger in his tea, tiny bubbles bridging at the contact point, climbing up his skin. It was room temperature. “Eat you. I hope you know that.”
“I know. I’ll take the couch,” Grian took the sandwich with a sigh before he got up and left the room.