Work Text:
Joel is dizzy, disoriented, and anguished when the first strike of his sword against Scott’s clatters in his ears. This is a stupid idea, he reminds himself, as the sound of metal clinking against one another drowns out the sounds of destruction around them. I’m going to die here.
He’s breathing heavily, teeth gritted, as Scott’s smiling face stares at him.
“Hi Joel!”
Don’t you want to win? He hears the quiet whispers of those voices in his ears, like a gust of wind passing by.
Of course he has to win. He has to. Even as he fights in this futile match, even as he glances at his bloodied, torn clothes, he has to kill him. He promised he was going to win for her.
“It’s your fault! It’s all your fault!” He was shouting, the sound of his own voice growing louder. The delicate blade of their swords clashing against each other was almost deafening.
And Scott—Scott was laughing. He was laughing as Joel’s hearts lessened by the second, a losing battle. The image of Lizzie smiling at him, of her surprised face when he proposed all those years ago amidst the ocean that connected their empires, flashed through his eyes, and he lunged forward, swinging his sword at Scott as their gazes met.
He sees his own reflection in Scott’s taunting eyes, a cascade of tears on his face. He grits his teeth and attacks one last time.
“It’s all your fault!”
And then he comes crashing down on the ground in a heap of blood and tears.
Scott’s fading voice blended into the background as he stared up at the clear skies.
Don’t you want to win next time?
A single tear runs down his bloodied face. He closes his eyes, breathes in one, last shaky breath.
I want…
What does he want, really? He’d always told himself he wanted to win, to fight against the fate threading his life. To kill. To forget. To put an end to all of this . To grab onto Grian’s hand and run away, run away for eternity until there are no more eyes around the two of them.
The world was brimming with white spots, like an explosion of stars in his eyes. Why was he still fighting, anyway? When all of this would restart again anyway?
Maybe if he detached himself from everything, from everyone he loved, it would be better. Empty but painless. Hollow but nothing more to lose. Is that what he really wanted? He couldn’t tell anymore.
He closes his eyes and waits for death to arrive like he’s greeting an old friend.
In the aftermath of his ordeal with the Watchers in the Hermitcraft server, there was a moment in time when it was simply too much.
Joel remembers flashes of violet when he closes his eyes, staring into an invisible glass wall, and the faces of his friends lying unmoving at his feet. He remembers sleepless nights (he still has those) and thoughts piling on top of one another and the emptiness in his chest like something has been carved out suddenly.
Everyday was agony.
Voices— their voices, Joel realizes startlingly—whispered in his ears, like some sort of incomprehensible chants. Each night he lies awake waiting for the sun to rise, hoping it would stop but it never does. They were always there. Maybe they’re in his head, after all. He’d once thought what it would be like to actually see them—what do they look like? Were their wings as white as Grian’s or was it different? Were their eyes a vibrant shade of purple?—but now he realizes that maybe this is his own special kind of torture. To hear their distorted voices, less of a human’s than some incoherent whispers. To feel them over his shoulder, and being greeted with nothing when he turns to look.
They’re not here , Grian assured him before when he had asked, near paranoid. But Joel can feel them rattling in his head, haunting the shadows of his mind, as if they had never left since that day.
Would death be kinder than this? He thinks vaguely, and Joel wonders if that was his own voice or the Watchers’. He can never seem to know these days. Would death welcome me in its arms?
Swaying on unsteady feet, he stumbles over to where a diamond sword is placed neatly atop a crafting table. He feels exhausted, like he could fall asleep if he closes his eyes for just a second too long. There was an itch underneath his skin, an almost unbearable weight as if someone was shouting at him. The blade, it was saying, over and over again. The blade. The blade. The blade.
His fingers twitched as it held the sword. For a second his vision dims, and he grips onto the handle, teeth gritted. An overwhelming sense of desire to cut himself as deeply as he could until it broke a vein went through him, sudden and foreign. The blade!
It felt like the ground was opening up beneath him, and in a spur of dizziness— I should just die—he slashed the blade of his sword right on the sleeve of his arm. The white cloth bloomed with fresh blood as it was torn apart like a tapestry. The pain was a dull, tingling sensation to his skin, merely an afterthought. Joel swayed on the spot, raising the blade in the air.
“What are you doing?”
There’s a tone of concern in the sudden voice that registers in his head—Grian’s voice, he realizes—alarmed and almost panicked. Joel grips the sword in his hand tighter, feeling faded, like the world is spinning underneath his feet. Or maybe that was from the blood. He wonders what he looks like from Grian's point of view.
Grian is in front of him, all wide eyes and fumbling hands. The distance between them has never felt greater.
“Joel—” He moves to take the sword away.
“Why?” Joel whispers, tired. “Why can’t I just die?”
He brings the glinting blade of the sword down on his arm again. It pools with blood instantly, a stinging pain shooting through his skin. “Grian, why?”
“Joel—stop it! This isn’t—” Grian’s cool hands feel like water against the warm blood on his arm. The sword is torn away from him, clattering to the grass with a soft thud. And then he is collapsing to the ground, hands on his shoulders, but all Joel sees is blood. On the grass, on his arms that Grian is wrapping torn bits of his sweater with. It’s on the sword, on his clothes, and suddenly it’s like everything clicks into place.
Is this what his fate had been all along? Were those the words written in some gold, bloodied ink somewhere?
He can hear their voices, loud and clear now, for a fraction of a second.
You cannot die. You can never die.
And, oh, a startling realization hits him—that those small bits of rest he manages to hold onto in between the games are the moments he’s always waited for. So is that what he really wanted, all along?
To rest.
No, he thinks, eyelids growing heavy. I want to die.
But they wouldn’t even let him have that.
Grian felt helpless.
It was the one emotion he loathed, the one feeling he’d buried deep in his soul so it would never resurface ever again. And yet, somehow, it always seems to find its way back up, anyway, like a swimmer coming up for air.
Helplessness was what he’d known back in the End, back when he didn’t know any better. It was the only thing he had for company as the Watchers took him there, as the endless darkness caved in on him, as he watched in horror the wings growing on his back, as he looked at his reflection and saw wide purple eyes staring back at him.
Helplessness was all he knew when he’d stood on the other side of that glass wall, watching Joel break into fragments right before his very eyes. And now, it was the very same, sickening feeling creeping up on him again as he watched his friend collapse to the ground.
He caught him easily, holding onto the cloth wrapped around his bleeding arms, and tried to steady himself. For Joel. For both of them.
How could things escalate so quickly? And how could he even do anything when there’s no one here to fight?
Maybe the memories were just the illusion, he thinks, something masking another cruel prophecy that the Watchers have written for them. And as Grian looks desperately, helplessly , at Joel, whose eyes are vacant as he stares somewhere along the horizon, maybe this is his.
Only ever meant to watch.
He was only ever meant to watch his friends suffer. He’d had his share of torture from them, and now they were focusing it on the people he wants to protect. Of course they would do that. He almost wants to laugh at the cruelty of it all. He could beg them to hurt him instead, but this was what they’d wanted him to relive over and over again. The helplessness. The reminder that he was always meant to be a Watcher.
Grian holds Joel closer, tighter, and closes his wings around him gently, as if that simple action could protect him from them. As if it could cast a barrier around him, invincible to any of their attacks. As if here, they could not set their watchful eyes on him. As hopeless as it is, he still hopes.
“It will be okay.” He whispers, because it’s all he could muster to say. “It will be okay.”
But he knows it won’t be. Drops of bright red blood are falling from Joel’s fingertips, as he leans against Grian limply, and it’s jarring to see how hollow his eyes are. Grian knows that the Watchers have truly broken something in Joel this time. A jagged scar, bound to bleed for eternity.
Would hope ever be enough for them to bear this weight? It was just a speck of dust in the universe now.
“It will be okay.”
But his voice breaks when he says it.
Present day.
The scattering of a thousand cherry blossoms around the mountain is a soft, whirling wind as it lands amidst the grass beside his feet. Grian breathes out a sigh, lying on the ground, heart heavy despite the sunny clouds and the comfortable quiet.
Joel beside him is a comfortable presence, eyes closed as the wind blows against his hair. Grian glances at the sky, watches the clouds pass by as it morphs into indistinct shapes and sees them cross paths over and over again.
“If I end up falling asleep here, don’t wake me up.” Joel mumbles, and Grian turns his head to him. His eyes are still closed, mouth slightly open as he breathes in slowly, carefully.
“We’re supposed to be clearing out the mountain, you know.”
“Too tired. I’ll do it later.”
A smile creeps up on his face as Grian momentarily closes his eyes. “We haven’t even started yet.”
Joel doesn’t reply, and for a moment Grian thought he might’ve actually fallen asleep right then and there, but when he turns to him, his friend is now looking at the sky, transfixed, as if it’s something he’s never seen before. His left arm is lifted to the sky, hands open in a gesture like he’s trying to reach the clouds. Grian watches, silently, and glances at the bare skin of his arm as his sleeve rides up. On it are two crisscrossed, uneven cuts, one a perfect straight line and another shorter one on top of it so that it’s almost forming an X shape. It’s still red, still healing, and the memory of it feels too fresh, too recent, of Grian wide-eyed and panicked, as he ties scraps of his quickly-torn sweater tightly around the cuts, cursing as it paints the red cloth darker with blood.
Ever since that day, he couldn’t help the horrible feeling of dread and worry gnawing at him. It felt like the single thread of string holding them together was snapped, like their only weapon, their only strategy in this unfair game was ripped away from their hands. Grian wonders if this was how the Watchers meant to break them. Maybe they were both still in that abyss, after all, Joel inside the glass room and Grian frozen in place. It feels like he's in a theater, with the dim lights focused on Joel on the stage, and Grian forced to sit through all of it. The puppet and the watcher.
Their gazes meet, and for a second, Grian sees it all over again: that hollow, hopeless look in Joel’s eyes.
“Do you think we can really fight against them?” Joel asks, lets his hand fall to his side, and it was like a monument crumbling to the ground. His eyes trail to the skies again, and Grian does, too.
It’s filled with clouds, white and soft-looking, and he couldn't help thinking how much they resemble a bunch of cotton. And yet Grian cannot help the feeling that they’re too close despite the sheer distance, as if they could come crashing down on the two of them any second.
Yes, he wanted to believe. Yes, we can fight them together. But even he’s not so sure.
“I hope so,” he says instead. He glances at Joel and takes in all of him, as if that could somehow keep him there, keep him alive and safe. When he speaks, he turns to the sky again. “Hey, can you promise me one thing?”
“I’ll try. What is it?”
“If there ever comes a time where the Watchers attack us again, just promise me to not fight them alone.” He breathes out a slow exhale. “Run away, go to me. Whatever. Just don’t face them alone.”
“Okay. I’ll…” He hears Joel take a breath. “I’ll call for you.”
They don’t look at each other. They didn’t need to. Their words carried over to one another naturally, like waves in the ocean flowing in the still water, like the endless sky and its infinite clouds floating through the world.
“I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”