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It had been well over a year since Double Life and everything with the "divorce quartet" happened, but Pearl still glared at her communicator bitterly if Cleo or Martyn's usernames popped up when she was in a particularly bad mood. Bdubs picked up on this nearly immediately after the Mounders became a solidified alliance. After a while, Joel and Mumbo picked up on it too but Bdubs was usually the first one to do something about the mood shifts.
It wasn't like he could understand why she would react that way towards those two, after all, only winners could remember past games. She appreciated the effort, but she just plastered on a smile even though they didn't help half the time.
She remembers one time when the wither was on the loose and she and Bdubs had no idea about the threat that she explained a little bit.
"I can't really explain why I get the way I do when I see Cleo and Martyn, neither did anything," She could remember the first day of Secret Life, the first day Martyn had all his memories, and he had apologized. She would've been fine if the apology wasn't so clearly fake, just so she wouldn't kill him immediately. She never wanted to more than that moment. At least Scott hadn't bothered with fake apologies. Cleo couldn't even remember it, though she doubted she was sorry, she didn't need more of the zombie's false pity that was displayed in Double Life.
Bdubs hummed from where he was mining out his side of the cavern. "I get that. When we first spawned in and I saw Impulse, I don't know what I felt, it was like guilt and love and anger-"
She let Bdubs ramble about Impulse and at one point Etho (unsurprisingly) and thought about it. She vaguely remembered mentioning the Three Gs in Double Life, though it had been instinct to be friends with the two people pushing her away. Maybe, the non-winners (they weren't losers because they were all losers really) still had their memories, just so fuzzy that they hardly even surfaced until a familiar event or face triggered them.
"-and I just feel so heartbroken whenever I see Cleo and Scar. I'm kind of glad you're choosing to keep your distance since it gives me an excuse to not deal with that."
"I suppose that is beneficial for you, isn't it? Using me as your emotional shield." Pearl joked and tossed a rock at the short man digging on the opposite side of her.
"Hey! I could've taken damage from that!" Bdubs snapped, hurling his own stone at Pearl. She sidestepped it easily, battles from 2 years of life games showing in her agility.
That had ended in a rock-throwing fight that only ended when one of Bdubs rocks had reopened a scar from many lives past. Bdubs apologized a few times before they went up to see the wreckage of the Wither.
She thought about her interactions with the other Mounders too, how she and Mumbo knew each other before the games started so those memories stayed and he could recall things from before they were both in the games. She mostly had known him from Grian back then, since the mustached man was constantly hanging around her brother. He only tried to ask about her mood shifts once, she assumed it was because outside these games she was such an upbeat person and that was the only her he knew.
"Are you okay?" Mumbo had asked one late night when the Mounders were having their weekly sleepover (Bdubs was out as soon as the sun went down and Joel tired himself out scribbling on Bdubs' face and talking about how weird and obsessive Etho was). Pearl had seen a message in chat from Cleo asking where Etho was. Considering it was well past 4 am, it was no shock she couldn't hide the flash of hurt and fear that shot through her veins.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," she laughed, rubbing an eye only to feel tears beginning to well up there. She scowled, thoughts of how stupid she was being flitting to her brain like moths to the moon.
"Are you sure? I get it if you don't want to talk but it might he-" Mumbo couldn't get another word out before Pearl shoved her communicator towards him, maybe a bit too harshly.
"Can you hold on to this? That would help," she admitted quietly into the darkness burying her face in the feathered wings in place of ears. "I can't see the messages right now, 'm not in the right headspace."
Mumbo didn't respond but took the communicator gently, as though waiting for her to take it back, and then awkwardly patting her shoulder. It helped a bit in the moment.
She could still feel the flames of shame and annoyance at herself for letting one message, not even one specific or directed at her, get so deeply under her skin. Could still feel how much she wanted to hurt Cleo for hurting her. Feel the stupidity of the thoughts slice any reaction down.
She continued down the path, going to Gem's tower to see if she was there. After all, who else could compare to her murder camel buddy?
Another memory, this time of when she was trying to explain it to Joel, interrupted her thoughts. She just let it wash over her, the memories were making the journey faster.
"It's so stupid I care so much- it's not like they want to be my friends-" Pearl had vented, keeping any trace of emotion far from her, not wanting the tears she knew following with this sadness that this particular train of thoughts caused. She got good at this in Limited Life, when she knew BigB could remember everything and she told him new information, breaking down nearly every time until the end when she learned to pretend emotions were nothing but drips of water she could easily(it was NOT easy) plug. "They- they hurt me, clearly if I feel this strongly about it."
"Well, have you tried scoffing at them? Turning them into a joke," Joel offered, swinging his axe at the base of a tree near his base. "I feel all sorts of things about Eefo, mostly that I want to hunt him but not kill him, and it's overly obvious he feels something towards me so I turn him into a joke. Makes whatever it is easier to ignore if I'm laughing at him."
"It's hard to laugh around heartbreak," Pearl pointed out, remembering how fractured the Boat Boys seemed at the beginning of Double Life before growing impossibly close by the end, so much so that they still unconsciously pursue each other to the current game. She thought about how close she and Martyn had been, how they had started off as the best adventuring buddies and he flipped so easily, blaming her for everything. He broke her yellow heart. He made her red-
"Then try closure, maybe they're feeling badly towards you too," Joel was now collecting the logs from the fallen tree. "I'm not really paying attention to their reactions to you but maybe Martyn or Cleo look guilty or upset when they think you're not looking."
Pearl wanted to scoff, Joel being semi-serious? That was a new one, even considering how he was in the other seasons. She entertained the idea though, thinking about it on and off, even typing out a message to Cleo before remembering she would have no idea what she was talking about.
Pearl still has no idea how she managed to keep her worst reactions hidden for so long, even when they neighboured the one person who still made her see red and made her relive every life and every moment in less than a blink. The one person who even the slightest mention rehashed every old wound she spent so long fixing, trying to cobble herself back together.
Scott.
She froze on the path, he was walking straight towards her, lacking the normal fake grin he wore when he was in company of others who weren’t his close allies. He wasn't smiling in the slightest, just beelining towards her with- stars- eyes- coral- cherry petals decorating his hair.
Realities blurred as she shifted into a fighting stance, leg brushing against Tilly- Mailbox, who growled at her owner's opponent. Scott who was a starborn, bonded-Watcher, merling- just standing there with his arms crossed and an eyebrow raised.
She fought to control her breathing, preparing for a fight with the blur of Scott. She could feel phantom pricks of ice and cactus thorns and could almost see the mirrored frostbite and cuts on Scott.
"Pearl." Scott's voice cut through her panic with a sharp warning that only made the red fizz obscure everything further. Her stance bettered, leaving almost no room for an attack to pass her defense. If Scott's sigh of disappointment wasn't a tell-tale sign of his mistake, his next words were. "You need to calm down, I'm not going to hurt you, Double Life is over, we're meant to move on."
Pearl paused, red dissipating so the tears could blur her vision. "How am I meant to move on knowing you remembered and did that? That you still remember and never apologized! That Martyn remembers and doesn't apologize! That Cleo can be perfectly normal to everyone but me (she thought of BigB and forest fires in a quick passing) ! How I am I meant to remain myself when all I can think about is the awful way I felt in Double Life and the fact that I still miss you three-!"
Pearl cut herself off by moving her hand to her mouth, knowing she was going to say too much, that maybe she already had, and she backed away slowly. Not turning around at all until Scott, all of them , were completely gone from view before she took off back towards the Mounders base and hid in her basement.
Mumbo was gone. Joel was fixing his base. Bdubs was probably free, she should message him. A messy message, obscured by too many tears and blurring memories, was sent to her fellow Mounder. Mailbox huddled next to her as she struggled to lock everything back away, to deal with the other Secret Life members to trap and attack and finish tasks that could involve her. She hooked an arm around Mailbox and cried into her fur while she awaited a response.
She had seen him at around midday, maybe a little before. She stopped crying, on her own, after the sun had been down for at least an hour. The only message she received was one from Bdubs that said;
{Sorry, I had to do something at Etho's and I won't be back today.
So much for understanding.