Work Text:
“Rules are rules. You can’t join the Reds unless you’re killed by a Red.”
Scott huffs, crosses his arms. “You weren’t killed by a Red.”
Joel shrugs. “I was the only one. I get to make the rules.”
“Was Grian killed by a Red?”
“I was killed by Joel,” Grian reminds him. “So it counts.”
Scott has the sneaking suspicion that they just made up this rule to exclude him. He can’t really remember how everyone else died (the last week or two are something of a blur), but he’s sure that some of them weren’t Red kills.
“Basically, if you want to join we have to kill you,” Grian says helpfully.
Well, that’s a problem.
“You can’t kill me,” Scott points out. “I’m already Red.”
Joel shrugs again. It’s clear that he doesn’t care at all about Scott’s status, Red or not. “Sorry. No deal.”
Scott looks toward Grian, raising an eyebrow. Grian doesn’t show any sign of give.
They’ll try to kill him if he isn’t allied with them. He’s a threat, now, and he has allies that will join him as soon as they turn Red. They’ll want to pick away their enemies as soon as possible.
“Well, I can’t let you kill me. Is there anything else I can do to . . . join you?”
Maybe if he acts like he wants to be on their side, they’ll accept him. They need more people in their two-man team. They need him.
“Sorry,” says Grian. “Rules are—”
“Wait,” Joel says suddenly.
Scott doesn’t like the look on his face as his eyes travel up and down Scott, something dark in his gaze.
After a moment, Joel turns, drags Grian by the arm with him several meters away. They whisper to each other for a long couple of minutes, occasionally glancing over at Scott.
Scott shuffles his feet, examines his nails. They’ll probably send him on some task, won’t they? Like what Etho gave to Bdubs. Off to kill a friend to prove his loyalty, or something like that. He can kill Martyn, or Ren, or someone. Someone who is his ally by convenience, not by choice. And either one of them is mellow enough to not begrudge him for it too much.
Eventually, Grian and Joel turn back to him. There’s a smile on Joel’s lips—wolfish, his teeth almost too sharp. It reminds Scott too much of Third Life, of his crusade against the Red King, of everything terrible that had happened just after.
“We need you to prove your loyalty,” Joel says, and they don’t give him a chance to change his mind before lunging for him.
Scott tugs a little at his wrists, testing the knots. They don’t give.
“We’ll be back at sundown,” Grian says, pulling tight the rope around Scott’s ankle. He stands, dusts his hands off on his trousers. “Comfortable?”
Scott glares at him. “Oh, yes. I’m so comfortable here, tied to these posts.”
Two posts, about a meter and a half between them. Scott’s wrists are tied to a pole each, same with his ankles. The binds aren’t too uncomfortable, all things considered—Grian knows how to tie a good knot. More uncomfortable is the fact that the only clothes he’s wearing is a pair of boxers, his pale chest on display, the tan lines on his forearms stark.
The sunlight is weak, the air still chill enough in the early morning to send goosebumps sprouting across his skin, his feet wet with the dew beneath them.
There are no trees in this field, just grass and the occasional flower. Nothing to shield him from the rising sun.
“Right, well, we’ll be back at sundown,” Joel says jovially, clapping Scott on the back. Scott grimaces at the feel of his rough hand against his bare skin, clenches his fingers into fists.
It won’t be too bad. He won’t die, at least. A good regen potion, maybe some fire resistance, and he’ll be good as new.
If he’d been given the choice, though, he would’ve elected to make an enemy of Joel and Grian over this fate. Avoiding them for the next week would be easier.
“Try not to get too busy,” Joel calls over his shoulder as he and Grian pick up Scott’s things. “Have fun!”
Then they both hurry off, leaving Scott alone.
He rolls his shoulders, straightens his stance. He can do this, easy. It’s temporary, anyhow. It’s—it’s hazing. That’s all it is, an exercise in hazing to prove that he belongs here, that he has a place among the Red names.
He should’ve just opted to wait for Pearl and Cleo to go Red, huh?
The sun rises. It’s already a bit warm on his back, and he shifts just slightly.
Hopefully it doesn’t get too hot today.
There’s no way to drink any water.
Scott realizes that about an hour in, and by hour three he’s desperate for something to drink. It’s hot out, hotter than he expected—probably the hottest it’s been all week, but that could be attributed to the utter lack of shade in his position.
The sun beats down on him mercilessly, more and more painful with every ray. Scott clenches and unclenches his fists, breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth.
He hasn’t had a sunburn in weeks, now. In the early days of the game, his nose and cheeks were dusted with a light pink burn, clear evidence of his living outside. He’d tanned, though, and built a house, and this world tended toward cloudy days, so he’d pretty well avoided any damage to his skin after that.
In comparison, this is torture.
His back hurts. It burns, pulsing agony from his neck to his waistband, and his legs are probably burning, too, but the pain is inconsequential compared to his back. It genuinely feels like it’s on fire—and Scott’s stumbled backward into lava a few too many times to not know what that feels like. It’s awful, it’s so bad that each breath leaves him in a wheeze as he tries to restrain his panic at being stuck in this pain.
It’s just for a day. Just for a day, then he can have potions and—and water, and food.
He needs water. He needs water, more than he needs to get out of the sun. He’s never had heatstroke—Jimmy got it, once, in that horrible desert, and Scott had spent all evening fanning him and pouring cool water on his body, coaxing health potions down his throat—and he doesn’t want to start today, but he’s afraid he won’t have a choice.
It’ll be bad if he gets heatstroke. The Red Names aren’t in any position to offer him the medical help he would need.
There isn’t anything he can do about it, though—there isn’t a way to power through and not get heatstroke if it’s too hot out. There isn’t any way to manifest the day being cooler.
He has to wait it out, or hope that someone finds him before the day ends.
The sun’s almost directly above Scott’s head (not quite, the brunt of it focused on the back of his neck and shoulders) when his knees try to buckle. He groans, his throat dry, forces himself to stay upright. It would strain his shoulders too much to try to kneel—he doesn’t think it would even be possible, with how closely tied to the posts his wrists are.
He’d kill for water. He’d even kill his own allies for water. Wait, he doesn’t have any allies. Perfect. Then nobody will be upset when he kills them for water.
Maybe they’ll take pity on him. Maybe Grian and Joel will come back early, realize that they’ll surely kill him by leaving him here all day.
They won’t come back. They told him that he could join them if he survived this—they may want him to die.
The burns are bad. The burns are really bad—he’s afraid that even with a health potion, they’ll scar until a respawn.
Scott grits his teeth. He isn’t going to die here. He won’t let himself die, no matter how bad the burns get, no matter how delirious he becomes.
At some point, the sun reaches its zenith. It’s enough of a relief to not have it directly on his back (though it is still on his shoulders) that he allows himself a moment of slumped stance, hanging down as far as his binds will allow him.
He can survive this. He will survive this.
His face, chest, and stomach take the full force of the sun for the next couple of hours, and that hurts like the absolute devil. He’s not sure he’s ever gotten a sunburn on his stomach, but it’s excruciating—the burn feels like it creeps into every fold of his skin, and he tries to stretch away from it but that only serves to expose more of his stomach.
The heat on his face makes everything worse. His cheeks flush under the burn, his lips cracked lips tremble, his eyes begin to ache.
Scott starts getting delirious around then, he thinks. He needs a drink of water, he needs to get away from the sun before his legs utterly give out, as many times as they’ve tried already (and each time he slips, he can’t bite back a hoarse cry as the pressure on his shoulders shoots up). Tears slip from his eyes when his knees buckle for the third time this hour, and Scott takes a moment to cry, his head hanging down.
The skin on his nose is peeling, his cheeks are on fire, but that doesn’t stop the tears running down them like daggers dragging their way through his skin. It’s only when he watches the third tear hit the grass that he remembers how badly he needs water, and how much more crying will dehydrate him.
He frantically tips his head back, trying to keep from crying, but his head tilted up puts his eyes staring into the sun and that just makes them water even further. Scott curses raspily, turns his head so that he can bury it into his reddened shoulder.
This is torture. This is literally torture. They’re torturing him for no reason, and he can’t escape it.
He can’t quite reach the ropes well enough to try and chew through them, but even if he managed it, what would he do? He’s practically naked, no tools or weapons or supplies. Joel and Grian are the only people allowed to help him. If they came by at sundown and found that he had freed himself, Scott has no doubts that they would kill him.
It’s hard to remember that this will ever end. There’s nothing but Scott and the sun and the heat, and his swollen tongue and burned skin and shaking limbs, and his scratchy throat and rope-burned wrists and too-dry eyes.
“I want to survive,” he croaks to nobody. There’s nobody, nothing. “I’m . . . I’m gonna win.”
The sun glares down at him accusingly. It’s right, he supposes.
How is he going to win when he can’t even survive the sun?
Scott’s barely conscious by the time Grian and Joel return, chatting idly, their armor clanking.
They don’t talk to Scott. Grian sets to work releasing him (every touch is dull fire against his skin) and Joel mutters on about fireworks and crossbows or something. Scott doesn’t listen. His ears hurt.
Grian unties his left side first, instead of his arms first or his legs. Scott isn’t sure why, other than perhaps it keeps him in something of a standing position while he works on the right arm.
He blinks slowly, captivated by the way the setting sun seems to make Grian’s hair glow. It even hurts to blink. His eyes are burnt just as red as the rest of him, he’s sure of it.
His very brain feels like it’s burning. Is this dying? Is he on fire from the inside out?
As soon as his right hand is undone, Scott crumples to the ground on his back, thudding onto the hard dirt. Joel snorts; Grian sets to untying his ankle.
Something hits Scott in the face and he hisses in pain, shifts just slightly so that it slides off of him. Then he opens his aching eyes, sees a pile of cloth beside him.
A glimmering potion lands on top of it, then a second one, the glass clinking on impact.
“Your clothes, healing, fire resistance,” Joel lists off boredly. “Your boots and other stuff’s at home, didn’t want to lug it all the way back.”
He should take one of those potions now. You aren’t supposed to drink fire resistance for sunburns, Scott knows that, but he isn’t quite sure what you are supposed to do with it so he settles on the health potion. Somehow, he manages to move his terribly weak arm enough to loosely grasp the bottle, but there was no way he was going to be able to work the cork out. He lets his arm fall, unable to contemplate it any longer.
Joel sighs, stomps around to that side and crouches beside him. He takes the potion from Scott’s limp grasp and tugs the cork out, then presses the potion to his cracked lips and pours it in.
It burns going down his throat, the sickly-sweet melon flavor overwhelming on his thick tongue and dry throat when he’s had nothing to drink in hours, and he coughs and coughs and coughs until his gag reflex triggers.
Scott throws up all over himself, mostly bile and a bit of pink health potion, and Joel leaps back in disgust as he chokes, his own vomit trying to slide back down the wrong tubes.
Grian yells something, and the next thing he knows he’s on his side, someone beating on his stinging back. He coughs even more, chest constricting feebly, until he feels like he can kind of breathe again. His nose is running and eyes teary and there’s the smell and taste of vomit everywhere, but he doesn’t have the strength to wipe his face. He just leans back against whoever’s holding him up, exhausted.
“Give him some water,” the person behind him commands. Scott takes in a shuddering breath, only for another bottle to be pushed into his mouth.
It takes every ounce of control he has in him to not choke as water starts pouring down his throat, lukewarm but water, too much and not enough all at once.
The person keeps giving him water, but they pull it away every couple of swallows and wait until Scott is pushing his head toward them, blindly seeking more, before returning the bottle to his lips.
“This is disgusting,” the person giving him water says.
The one holding him shifts. “It was your idea to leave him like that. I said he should just get fireworks, but no. Let’s see if he can survive the world’s worst sunburn.”
“I thought it’d be funnier, sue me.”
“Yeah, well, we want him alive, remember? We need him on our side.”
The water gets taken away again, and Scott feels more tears building up. He feels awful—he’s shaking, his throat hurts, his whole body feels like it’s on fire, even his brain—but when he leans forward for more water, the water is replaced with the health potion.
Scott drinks this as well, feels the fire in his brain cool slightly, his body losing some of the burning sensation. He opens his agonized eyes and sees a blurry Joel in front of him, holding the health potion.
Joel doesn’t speak until Scott’s drunk the entire potion, by which point he feels at least slightly capable of being alive. He shifts in—in Grian’s arms, lets him ease him into a sitting position.
Joel looks uncomfortable, but he doesn’t speak. He just shoves Scott’s clothes and the fire resistance potion toward him, then gets up, shoving the empty potion bottle into his pocket. He stalks off into the woods with a look back.
Grian fumbles in his own pocket for a moment, before withdrawing a strength potion. He reluctantly drops it in Scott’s lap and follows Joel.
They leave him there, practically unconscious from the pain, barely able to move, alone, as night comes on.
Scott’s trembling fingers try to make a fist. He can’t quite manage it.
But he puts his hands to the ground and starts to push himself up.
Scott doesn’t stumble into the Red Life base until about an hour later, when night has truly fallen. He ignores both the others and their awkward gazes and instead collapses onto the bed they’ve set up on the opposite side of the room from them, not even bothering to shove his boots off it and onto the floor. His clothes chafe against his untreated burns and his head is woozy from pain and dehydration, but he made it in one piece.
He’s up until late into the night, applying the fire resistance with low hisses and pained groans. Joel and Grian don’t speak, and eventually, they both bury themselves under their blankets and ignore Scott entirely.
Scott vows, then, as he carefully dabs fire resistance onto his eyelids, that he will kill them. He’ll kill both of them.
And then he’ll win.