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He doesn’t spend long in the darkness before he returns to himself. There’s a pop, like the world collapsing in on itself, and then he’s back home in bed. The covers are impossibly soft against his back.
He twists his head to the side, slowly, drinking everything he sees in with the hesitancy of someone who does not quite yet believe their eyes.
But it is real; that much is irrevocably true. He feels it beneath his touch, in the air he sucks slowly into his lungs, in the slight noise of creaking as he shifts on the bed, sees it in the light illuminating the dust particles in the air.
That designation, home, home, home, slips easily into his mind, as naturally as it ought to. Of course this is home, his expertly crafted home; as he looks around, everything he sees, every little nook and cranny filled with items that are familiar to him, caresses his heart like a warm embrace.
But the knowledge that there was another place, such a vast and stifling, arid place, he’d call equal to this, to his home, slots back into his brain as well.
He lies in bed for a while, soaking up the memories that still shine like sunspots in his mind, trying to sew two halves of his whole together.
It does take him a while to remember how to move, he’ll admit that. It takes him a few tries of flexing his fingers into the bed sheets, of forcing his chest to rise and fall mechanically, before he feels comfortable enough to even try and walk. His hand instinctively reaches out for the cane — his cane — that lies on his bedside table. The wooden handle is warm and familiar beneath his touch.
He knows where he’s going the moment he sets foot outside Larry the Snail. There was never questioning that. There was never anything else on his mind.
Grian doesn’t look at him when he arrives at his Hobbit Hole, and, when Scar approaches, tries to push him away; but Grian is shaking, and exhausted, and too desperate to keep him away for long, so he eventually collapses into Scar’s arms, holding onto him for dear life. Scar does not realise how tightly he clutches back until a few minutes at least have passed.
They don’t say anything. Their partnership does not function on frank honesty. They are too fragile for it; their final hilltop battle had been proof of it. Truthful words spilling from their tongues at last, broken and shattered bodies to repay that vulnerability.
But there had been solace, a happiness, in that destruction too; weeks worth of weight falling from his shoulders as he had let his poncho, a joy found in the stark sun blaring down on his back and in the love in Grian’s bloody curve of teeth.
He doesn’t let go, not once, not even a little, as the sun back here on Hermitcraft continues its lazy trek across the sky. Scar eyes the sunlight as it moves languidly across the wooden flooring.
Mumbo is the one to show first, eyes blown wide and hair a mess and relieved, grief-stricken words tumbling from his lips like one of the rainforest’s cascades. He wants to see Grian. Scar almost doesn’t let him.
But it’s actually the other way around, at first, as Grian throws his massive wings around him and slams him down into the bed. His halfhearted protests are muffled by the feathers in his face.
Eventually, he relents. Eventually, Grian calms down enough that Mumbo can actually sit next to him, a hand over his, whispered words strung out in a way that’s short and end-bitten, trying not to let on to how frantic he clearly is.
It doesn’t really work. At all, Scar notes, somewhat detachedly.
Mumbo turned to him at some point as well, asking him questions with as much distressed calm as he can muster, watching him with worried eyes when he doesn’t answer. Scar shrugs at that, too. None of this really matters, after all.
It’s almost like a play, with how mechanical and routine this encounter feels. A friend is hurt, a friend is worried. Friend B frets and Friend A lets him. Maybe a Friend C on standby, for moral support. This latter role is the one he takes up, even if he doesn’t feel much motivation to; he functions mechanically, off pure drive and automated instinct.
He only enters the scene once Grian has nodded off to sleep, having exhausted himself quickly with his initial panic and stuttered, near incomprehensible explanations to Mumbo. Scar plasters on a wide smile before he speaks.
“We went through a rough patch,” he says, smoothly, as Mumbo turns to him, “and it wasn’t much fun for anyone involved. But it’s alright now because it’s over, and we’re back home now.”
Mumbo stares at him for long enough that it makes the back of his neck prickle uncomfortably. He’d said something wrong, but he doesn’t know what. He hadn’t gone off script; this is what you said to assuage worries. Acknowledge the issue, then acknowledge the steps to solving said issue.
“Yes, but—“ Mumbo starts, “uhm, where did you go exactly, Scar? Do you know what happened? To you, to— to Grian? To everyone else?”
Scar opens his mouth to reply but Mumbo keeps rambling. “You— you do know you all just disappeared, right? For two months? With zero explanation? And you’re back now, just, out of nowhere, and I come rushing in to see Grian because it’s been two months, Scar, and the look on his face was— was, he looked at me like I was—“
Scar taps his shoulder to make him stop, tightens his grip a little to get his attention. Mumbo breaks off with a hoarse note to his voice. There are tears at the corners of his eyes, shining like small diamonds.
“I was so— so scared,” he says, quietly, “I didn’t know what to do. We tried looking everywhere. Nothing.”
“I don’t think there was anything you could have done,” Scar admits.
Mumbo watches him expectantly for more. And Scar knows he should elaborate, even parts his lips to ready his words, but he finds he doesn’t quite know how.
How do you condense everything that had happened into a few tidy sentences? How do you do that with any sort of accuracy, any sort of truth? How do you convey the sheer emotion of it all?
He ends up giving a half-hearted sort of shrug. Mumbo looks at him in something like devastation, and there’s at least a small part of Scar that can muster up a sense of regret.
The discussion falls off after that. Mumbo gets to pacing the room after a while of fiddling with the bedsheets, staring at Grian worriedly and stealing glances at Scar’s face when he thinks he isn’t looking. He checks his communicator periodically as he walks, presumably sending messages off to the other Hermits, muttering under his breath. Scar thinks of striking up conversation again but the idea rings surprisingly hollow in his chest and so he doesn’t bother.
Some people come in and out, though Mumbo never leaves; Scar feels too wrung out to care much and finds himself retreating, falling into his thoughts, a blurry haze of snapshots and feelings. He remembers snapping his fingers together from time to time, a habit in the arena and a familiar one now, feeling a vague sense disapointement at the lack of magic to spawn from it.
Cub only shows up once the two of them are asleep, as Scar pretty much expected him to. He doesn’t see him arrive, but his frame is outlined by the shine of the moon as he stands in the doorway.
He casts his gaze over them, Mumbo and Grian, something as stark as genuine sorrow and pity in his green. And Scar sees the very same thing when Cub looks at him, too.
He hears the pounding of his heart in his ears. There is pity in Cub’s eyes as he looks at him. Scar does not like it being directed at him.
It is like a worm, crawling beneath his skin, and threatening to spit out more spawn. It is a quiet warning, telling him something has slipped, and that the two of them are different from one another, now. A split in the seam.
“Don’t,” is what Scar eloquently says, voice low.
Cub blinks; and the pity isn’t as visible anymore, but he can see it twinkling at the corners of his deep green.
Scar’s heart still rattles around in his chest, a restless dog barking.
“Let me know,” says Cub, and Scar snaps back to focus. His back is turned to him, face shielded from his view, but his voice clear. “I want to know.”
By the time Scar has opened his mouth to answer, Cub is gone, with the settling, moonlit dust his only proof of presence. He shuts his mouth with an audible click.
He stares at the spot where he’d been for a long while after, listening to the distant sound of jungle birds and bubbling streams. Grian’s body is warm beside him, their hands threaded loosely together.
He doesn’t seek out Cub until the next season rolls around.
He’s always been— different about emotions, he supposes, as opposed to other people. The things that bother most bother him less. It would be a lie to say he hasn’t been affected, of course, but he finds the feelings floating to the back of his mind more often than not. Maybe it’s compartmentalisation, or just plain apathy, or some secret third thing; he hasn’t yet figured it out.
He isn’t quite sure what to make of it, on most days. He’s seen how badly it’s ravaged his friends, and wonders if the same were supposed to happen to him. He remembers the deep-set terror in Grian’s eyes when he’d reached out to him, how his friend had pushed him away when all Scar had wanted to do was hold him closer than he’d ever had before. Impulse’s pain is clear as day as well, and he’s learned to avoid looking at him too closely out of courtesy, as that seems to set him off. He acts similarly to the other Hermits who'd been taken, too, but Scar doesn't see them as often. He doesn't seek them out, anyway, and they don't really seek him out either.
Ren is a very interesting case.
He runs into him on the way to Octagon Island – because a man still needs to build and needs the logs to do so – as he lingers on the road, and Scar approaches him easily, without much of an extra thought. His legs are feeling stiff, today, so he doesn't begrudge the opportunity for a small break. “Ren Diggity-Dog! How are you doing today?”
Ren's canine ears perk up immediately, and as he springs up to face Scar, he sees them flatten themselves back against his dark hair. “Scar!”
There’s a stiffness to Ren’s shoulders, a stilted edge to his gaze. His lips are parted, slightly, as if he’d meant to continue speaking but hadn’t. He swallows once before he does. “Scar, hey, man– uh, I’m doing fine. What about you?”
Scar smiles broadly, trying to make up for Ren’s shrunken mien. “Why, I’m doing wonderful! It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the birds are singing–” – Ren’s left ear flicks in confusion, because the birds are not singing as there are no trees around them – “and the people are fantastic as always.”
“Right,” Ren says, without continuing. There'd been a sort of far-away, pensive look in his eyes before Scar had announced himself, but now it's been completely replaced with a poorly disguised wariness.
Scar blinks, hoping his disappointment doesn’t show in his face; because if there’s always been someone he could count on to go along with his grandiose descriptions, it’s always been Ren, and right now he isn’t giving him much to work with.
Unease begins to root in his stomach. He moves past it, holds onto his smile. “Well, what are you up to out here, Ren?” He takes a step closer, treading forwards with a casual gait. “You know, I came out here to stock up on wood–”
Ren startles back immediately, boots scrabbling over pebble. Scar freezes at once.
They lock gazes for a moment, then Ren shakes his head in what seems like confusion; at the man before him, or at himself, Scar doesn't know. His right hand is jutted out to his side, stilled in the air, fingers poised as if he's readying the summoning of his sword.
His jaw feels tight. Slowly, Scar works it free, drawing in a breath. He and Ren are roundabout the same height, but he forces his shoulders to flatten, anyway, tries to make himself seem less imposing.
Ren continues to stare at him, eyes wide. Scar bites at his lower lip, a little unsure of how to further proceed.
“Well, I was just wondering what you were doing— honestly!” He hesitates a moment, raising his hands, palms facing outwards. “I’m not trying to trap you, I promise.”
He’d like to think he’d made his voice sound softer, his demeanour more approachable, but Ren only shakes his head again, almost in disbelief. He mutters something beneath his breath, something which Scar strains to catch but fails to, and he doesn't know if she should inquire. He doesn't quite know what to do.
Eventually, Ren solves the issue for him; he raises his head, and speaks to him frankly. His blue eyes don't quite meet his.
“Scar, I— seriously, man, how are you okay with any of this?”
A pause. A tilt of his head. “I am not sure I follow, my friend.”
Ren’s nose wrinkles, ears twitching against his dark hair. “You’re acting… like yourself.” He says, voice low. “You’re acting like none of it impacted you at all."
Scar hums. “That’s awfully presumptuous of you.” He brings a hand down over his chest. “You don’t know my inner workings.”
“That’s the problem,” Ren murmurs. “I don’t know you. And I don’t know if I ever did, or if this is new.” Finally, he tears his gaze away from him, finding some sudden interest in the dirts and rock of the path they stand on. “I— I’m always on edge, these days, because I don’t know what to expect anymore. From life, from people, from— from anything.”
“Well, maybe I can help?” Scar asks, surprising himself with how imploring he sounds.
Ren huffs out a dry laugh, though not one without a certain edge. He tries to catch himself, at least. “No offense, Scar, because— I'm sure you mean well, but I think you’re the last person with the capabilities to help me." A pause as he purses his lips. "In this particular situation, I don't think either of us are— a good match, for that. Considering—" Ren trails off, lips still parted, before sucking in a breath. "Well, you know."
Scar feels his mouth twist. The unease in his gut has flowered into something like a frustrated displeasure, if he's to name it correctly, but he can't exactly throw the blame for it at Ren's feet. He's not cruel; and it wouldn't get them anywhere, anyway.
And so he relents, stepping away from someone he considers a friend. “Then I hope you find your way, Ren.”
Ren blinks, looken somewhat taken aback. "I— right. Thanks, Scar." Regret surges into his expression, suddenly. "I'll try, really."
Scar plasters a smile onto his face, as sincere as he can muster; in any case, he excells in faking them. "Oh, don't you worry your head about it, Ren. Take your time!"
There's not much more to add than that. Ren nods, shuffles his feet awkwardly for a few moments, before making his excuses to finally leave. Scar watches him tread down the road for a long while before he turns to finally go and purchase his logs.
So they'd gone their separate ways, and that should have been the end of it; but the encounter still swirled in Scar's mind like persistent thunderclouds, and he simply could not rid himself of them.
He does understand — if in a detached maner — that he was the villain of most of his friend’s stories. He had certainly relished his role in the moment; that haze of bloodlust sure had done a number on him. He remembers the feeling very clearly, despite how aggressively absent it’s become since his return.
But as much as he empathises, or tries to, it hadn’t been just him. He may have goaded Ren into puffing out his fur, but the Red King had taken on a life of his own, snarling and biting and clawing his way through anyone who’d stood in his way. It wasn’t as if the others hadn’t had their own nefarious tricks up their sleeves, either, not with Impulse’s whole spy shtick or Tango’s constant attempts to undermine. He'd offered Bdubs that clock, but all those kills done in the name of it had been his own. Not everything was his fault.
Scar remembers every single immoral thing he’d done, but that in no way diminishes the dirty tactics employed by everyone else there. They’d all had a leg in the game.
He’d assumed, at the time, that everyone was on the same page. We were put here to survive, came the easy thought, dripping into his mind like morning dew, so I will survive. And he had; right up until he’d no longer deemed it necessary to. Right up until his own story had come to a satisfying close.
That’s his issue, maybe, though he isn’t sure that it’s an issue at all. All of that is of the past, put behind them and literally not even any of their faults if you ask him, and so he’s moved on from it. At least in part.
He’ll own up to his murders, sure, he’s never a liar when it really matters, but his hands aren’t bloody anymore. He doesn’t even have any of the frankly enormous scars he’d received back then, and, as someone famous for managing to keep so many, he does have to wonder if that puts into question the validity of— whatever that had been. Grian always gets a bit distressed when he brings these honestly sensible points up, though, so he tends to avoid it these days.
He’s been doing a lot of walking on eggshells these past few weeks. It gets a bit exhausting, but he’s sure it has to be even more exhausting for those who have instead found themselves with a number of cracked ones beneath their feet.
He doesn’t think he’s an irredeemable villain. He thinks he’s a charismatic one, a conniving one, but not someone who acts out of a complete self-interest. He hasn’t got a heart of complete stone; it buckles under love’s pressure all the same, even if he may like to pretend otherwise.
He remembers echoes of guilt, rising up from his lungs as he’d breathed the night air in; he remembers the twinge of pain that absence had brought, whenever he’d looked to his side and seen his second half replaced by someone so much lesser. And he remembers his soul-crushing joy when he’d seen Grian atop that hill, bathed in the rising sun's light, bloody vengeance reserved for him alone bright, bright in his eyes.
Life wasn’t an option for him. Life was his partner’s only option, the only one Scar would have for him; and he gave up all of his, laid it at his feet beneath the burning sun and let him beat him bloody for it.
Darkness had bled into his vision and curled up his chest like a sleeping animal, docile and soothing and cradling him into his demise. He’d wanted that death; he’d craved it. Grian’s hands were warm around his shoulders.
He’s at peace with it. He’d won in the end, after all.
But Grian’s hollow-eyed looks remind him of just how much he’d lost, even when Scar thought he’d been doing him a favour; it reminds him of just how much of a burden his friends carry, whether it be Ren, or Impulse, or anyone else who’d had the misfortune of stepping their foot into that inexplicable and unexplained Hell.
There still remains the question of how they’d gotten there in the first place, and why them in particular, out of anyone in their universe, out of the Hermits. And that line of questioning leads him down a path he’d rather not follow too closely; whether they’re the only ones after all, and whether any of this is actually over.
There’s a big scheme going on here, far too vast and complicated and knotted together for Scar to make out on his own, and it does make him pause from time to time. Frustrates him a little that they’re all stuck in this messy hole of shared trauma, far too deep in to see the light shining in from above, and convinced of each other’s culpability in the matter.
Wouldn’t it be easier to let go of the painful threads, he wonders, wouldn’t it be easier to let yourself lay adrift on the waves until they brought you back to a more peaceful shore? He certainly thinks so. He doesn't see what else there is realistically able to be done.
The sensation of teeth shattering in his mouth had been an odd one. Scar touches his cheek, gently, and knows that, despite what had happened then, every single one of them is now back in their correct place. Threads, stitching back together.
Grian had packed a good punch. Scar is certain he still does. But he also knows that it is no longer something for him to worry about; that Grian’s hands would ever reach out to him with anything but softness is an absurd thought. In this world, at least.
Cub is even more emotionally disorganised than he, if they’re shaming their shared mindsets so, and thus Scar doesn’t really expect to learn anything substantial from this conversation; especially since his friend hadn’t even been there. But Cub is nothing but endlessly surprising.
“People process things differently,” he waves his hand around, “and I’m gonna be honest, Scar, this sounds like a whole lot these guys need to process.”
"Well, I sure wish they'd hurry up with it," Scar says, a complaint, an almost-whine, in his tone. He leans back a little in his wheelchair, crossing his arms. "I'm dealing with the brunt of it here, man!"
The edge of Cub's lips quirk to the side but he doesn't say anything. He's thought of something yet he's keeping it quiet, a secret hidden behind his teeth.
Scar doesn't like it. He doesn't like how Cub holds things back from him, now. He doesn't even quite know why he does; they've been a team for years, just the two of them, and it isn't a little thing like a death game to cleave that partnership in two.
It's not broken, he reminds himself, because it isn't; they're still them, Cub and Scar, once a vex and always a vex, trickster magic coursing through their veins and exploding in a blue fire of mischief. Nothing can take that away, even if the weight of time forces it to change.
"Okay, well, Scar," Cub starts, contemplative, “I mean, and I’m not sure if I’m understandin’ this correctly, but you were one of the first to— lose it, right?”
Scar nods.
Cub continues. “So maybe that’s why the others are havin’ issues with coping. Because they had less time to get used to feeling all that.” He shrugs. “Just a hypothesis, though.”
“Ah, you and your scientist’s mind, Cub,” Scar chimes, but doesn’t actually say anything more. He thinks about what his other has said. "You may be right there."
"Clearly," Cub answers, smugly.
He taps a pensive finger against his chin. "Ren should be over it hopefully soon, then. The others longer." He frowns. "Grian the longest. Well, at least he's maneagable."
He pauses for a moment, letting the memory of the desert sun wash over him again. And, sure, it had in a certain respect been an agonising experience, but he can't quite bring himself to hate it; that would be lying to himself. "It was us against the world in there, you know? We had a rough start, and a few bumps along the road, but oh boy, did we get the last laugh in the end!"
"I'm sure," Cub agrees; and there comes that scrutinising, sly look again. Scar is beginning to get fed up with being the object of his friend's theories and strategems, instead of being the accomplice to them.
He tilts his head to the side a little; and he's not trying to be deliberately combattive, but some sense of it drips into his voice anyway. "I'm not quite as lost as you think I am, Cub," he tells him.
Cub doesn't answer immediately, but Scar feels the small knot of tension in his chest unravel itself as the searching glint to his friend's eyes fade. For now at least, he knows.
“Try not to forget where you begin and end,” Cub eventually warns, one eyebrow arched upwards, in his customary, cryptic manner. Scar half expects him to elaborate but of course he doesn’t. He grins, anyway, letting all his usual flair flow back in.
“You wound me, dearest Cub!” A spark of blue twitches to life as he snaps his fingers. He avoids frowning at how minimal and weak the light had seemed, fearing that would prove his friend exactly right, somehow. He places the offending hand over his chest. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
Cub hums noncommittally, eyes narrowed behind his thick glasses. Scar almost rolls his own, but he isn’t quite that petty.
Life moves on whether you want it to or not. Scar moves with it easily, refusing to dwell on the things he can't change anymore than strictly necessary.
But he does wake up from nightmares on occasion. He doesn’t remember them as vividly as he ought to, he thinks, but he knows they’re bad from the way his nails have broken the skin where they’d dug into his forearms. Sometimes, though rarely, he scratches deeply enough to send rivulets of blood streaming down his arms. He watches, absentmindedly, as they stain the sheets.
Grian will scold him for it in the morning. Scar will tell him to go back to his own bed, in that lilting, teasing tone of his. Grian will only curl closer, pressing his head into Scar’s chest as if trying to merge their souls together. Scar doesn’t quite mind the idea. Maybe it'd be easier that way; maybe it'd bridge the gap that lies between them, that they pretend does not exist.
As for now, sometime in the early morning, the autumn wind continues to whistle past the Swaggon’s panelled windows. The moon can’t be seen from where he sits, up ramrod-straight in bed, but the room is cast in her light, so that’s what fills his gaze. His blood makes up dark spots against the bed sheets’ light grey.
It’s both alike and unlike the Sand Castle, the home that haunts his dreams and lives on still, a warm fire within his chest upon which Grian rests his head every night. All he knows for sure is that things had been less confusing, then.