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Grian stands alone on a mountain.
He wipes blood from the brow of his lip with his sleeve, and the dark crimson seeps greedily into his faded red sweater. He inhales, then exhales, yet despite breath burrowing into his lungs, Grian doesn’t feel good. No, the warm desert breeze that’s caressing his cheeks and drowning his lungs isn’t good at all.
The sandstone is rough and firm beneath Grian’s foot, ensuring nothing besides cactus takes root in its soil, not even lilacs, not even poppies. He wonders if people can take root in such firm earth, but the moment Scar’s body flutters over the ledge and spills onto the charred sands below plays behind his eyes, and he realizes, no, no, people cannot root themselves in stone, not unless it’s a grave. The breeze nips his cheeks, but it does nothing to cool him from the sun, the sun drilling into his pores and burning where the cactus pricked needle-point holes into him.
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud.
“ It burns… It burns so much, ” he’d laughed, grin faltering as Grian punched his chest, his heart, forcing him to stumble backwards. Blood arced around him, eyes wet and reflecting something brilliant white that Grian couldn’t see. His muscles had relaxed in that one second, gaze drooping to Grian and lips softening to a gentle smile before Grian felt Scar’s ribs thrash and crumple beneath his knuckles. Then that shine dulled to a dark, lusterless green, and the smile slipped from his face, leaving only his soulless body to plummet to the dunes below and Grian standing alone on a mountain.
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun.
The sand is grating between Grian’s toes, uncomfortable, and something aching and sore is climbing in his chest, and he wishes Scar would punch him right between the ribs to stop it. Grian wishes he were standing in a waist-deep pond instead of on a mountain alone. A pond where a lone boat laps on the surface, where the blood murking up the pristine lapis waters is ignored, and all that matters is the thin line of red dribbling down Scar’s arm. Scar held up his arm and smirked, already grieving as he waded closer to Grian’s sword.
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
“Betrayer! Traitor!” Grian had screamed, kicking Scar over the cliffside and into that shallow pond below. Just like now, Scar hadn’t fought, just let gravity and Grian’s touches take him down, down, where the lilacs and poppies grew in fertile earth near a peaceful pond. His body had laid there for a moment, resting beneath the gentle waves his fall had drawn, but Grian had been too hurt, too hateful to watch him rise from the waters again. How he wishes Scar would rise from the waves of sand now.
All men make faults, and even I in this.
(It reminds Scar, much later, when he finds Grian’s body shredded apart, face unrecognizable save for one untouched obsidian eye, abandoned deep in the pit of a blown-up mining pit. How he wishes Grian would rise from the waves of stone, wishes his body would root itself there and grow into lilacs and poppies. He is tired of wandering this empty game; he wishes he’d been lain to rest in those sands, buried in the secrecy of the desert by Grian’s strong hands.)
Authorizing thy trespass with compare.
“You can kill me,” Scar said, letting Grian’s sword plunge into him, right between two ribs, yet just barely missing his heart. He smiled and a spittle of crimson dribbled down his chin, making the smile look genuine, pained. “For everything you did to me to keep me alive this long, you may slay me.” Grian won the right to slay Scar, to wipe that smile off his face, to avenge his own hatred, yet he hesitated as Scar lifted up his bleeding arm, reaching for Grian’s glistening sword to embed it deeper into himself.
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss.
No, that was not good. Grian’s breaths were too quick as he pulled out the sword, crimson arcing from its bloodied tip to drip more red into the murky waters. The wound began knitting itself, the skin closing in over his chest like Scar’s lips were closing in over his teeth, like how a looming sense of grief was closing in over Grian’s growing dread. Would the poppies that grow from this pond have petals as bright as Scar’s blood? Grian doesn’t want to linger on this empty, abandoned game long enough to find out.
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are.
“We're remembering the good times,” Scar told him, reaching out a rough, firm, yet very warm and very alive hand to pull Grian out from the ever-dirtying waters of the pond. Grian let Scar guide him, like he’d always let Scar guide him, through the bush and brier until they stood at the foot of the desert mountain again, where Grian would stand alone atop of with no warm hand to hold. Grian remembers the good times now, yes he does, and the sandstone beneath his feet reeks of it in cruel mockery.
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense—
“You’re turning on me?” Grian cried, knocked onto his back and reached for Scar’s rough, warm hands despite the sword drawn to his neck. He hacked up blood as his body crashed to the firm earth. “After all we’ve been through?” He didn’t have time to broil in anger nor grieve this intangible loss as an arrow notched in a foreign crossbow aimed at his chest, his eyes locked onto Scar’s as the trigger was pulled, impaling him into the ground amid wet grasses through the heart.
(Those were the bad times, Scar knew, a mistake he grieves, a mistake he wishes he’d stayed dead for. His hands are cold now, and no matter how tightly he wraps the shawl around his trembling figure, he will remain cold. Empty. The earth no longer takes the seeds he plants on it, not even lilacs, not even poppies, and is more sand than dirt. His hands were never cold and the earth never barren when his soulmate held them, his soulmate planted the seeds. When did they ever stop being soulmates?
Thy adverse party is thy advocate—
“NO!” Grian had screamed in a canyon, cry reverberating between the looming stone walls and above where Scar swam in the pristine lapis waters. The cry echoed, echoed in Scar’s ears, and he wanted to sink beneath the gentle lapping waves and be lain on the sandy bottom, rest his eyes until he can awaken from this empty, barren wasteland he’s won as his prize. He knew then if he fell beneath the waves and breathed, it wasn’t just his lungs that would drown from the water, but his heart would drown from a strange, unhealed wound just one rib from the organ. But his soulmate would drown in this pain and grief as well. Were they ever really soulmates?
And ‘gainst myself a lawful plea commence.
Scar stumbled towards the Secret Keeper one last time, on half a broken, shattered heart, and wondered if they were ever meant to be soulmates, even if just for a game. He remembered closing his eyes as Grian snuffed the breath from his lungs with a gentle, warm punch to his heart, stopping it the moment before Scar’s gaze finally glossed over. He fell for just one moment before he last exhaled, falling while staring at those onyx eyes that promised him flowers of red and violet. He died happy yet grieving.
Scar stands alone on the edge of a blown-up mining pit now, alive.)
Grian doesn’t yet know that while poppies and lilacs have been, will be trampled beneath his feet, he will always have a good time with Scar. He knows that as much as Scar is fickle, Grian’s scar marked just a rib beneath his heart in waist-high pond water will never fade. The heart pulsing above it will never forget, will never abandon the poppies and lilacs they should’ve planted together on this mountain of sand, that surely would’ve grown in the barren earth. Grian doesn’t yet know that his secrets will never stay secrets to Scar, that with his every dying breath, Scar will be thinking of him, only him.
Such civil war is in my love and hate.
It seems to be the inevitable course of their fates, even as his shoes dig into sand that crumbles with his weight, that they hurt each other, one way or another. There is only one more life left in this empty, barren wasteland, and Grian wishes he was holding flowers for the occasion. Red and violet ones, because Grian is hurting, because he is alone, but not for long, because Grian will be buried beneath the shifting waves of sand that has already plastered itself to Scar’s bloodied cheek, masking all his scars and gaping wounds. As much as Scar betrays him, abandons him alone on a mountain, Grian will always think of him, only him, with his dying breaths anyway.
That I an accessory needs must be.
The last life drops off the cliff, death reverberating through the empty wasteland, alone.
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.
(Scar opens his eyes at last, sand shaken from his soul. His life is dedicated to holding onto somebody’s warm hand and gathering poppies in his pockets, for someone he doesn’t quite recall. He gives him a life, but dies alone anyway. Even when their lives are entwined, when they die as one, together, they die so far apart, so alone. “ It’s the ultimate betrayal ” to die by his soulmate’s sword, so impersonal, so grievous and painful it makes Scar hunger for the fist stopping his bared heart. It makes Scar hunger for the burning of the desert.
The last life doesn’t quite die, but instead fades away with everyone’s secrets. He’ll carry his own —the fact his soulmate shot him through his heart— alone with him into the wild, where they can live once without sand again, where poppies and lilacs grow feral.)
No more be grieved at that which thou hast done.