Archive of Our Own ^beta

There’s a bucket of salmon sitting at Pearl’s feet, and another thrashing at the other end of her line. She reels it in slowly, feels its movements grow more and more frantic as it fights to escape. Pearl, indifferent, watches the water ripple and splash as the salmon — hook through its bleeding mouth — is pulled from the water. She reaches for it with gloved hands, setting aside her fishing rod and deftly removing the hook from its skin. Its mouth is open. Fish don’t make much noise, when they die. 

It’s strange, really. Most everything else dies screaming. 

(“Could you take care of Jellie?” There’s a wild quality about Scar’s eyes that scares her. He’s desperate. He’s heartbroken. “She— she doesn’t like tuna, but salmon’s okay–”)

She leaves her fishing rod abandoned on the dock, shivering against the chill in the air as she turns back towards Scarland, picking up the bucket of writhing fish as she goes. It’s overcast today, in that way that tells her that it would be snowing, if Xisuma hadn’t disabled it. No one was much in the mood for a snow day. 

She jumps the turnstiles at the front of the park. They’d stopped working a few days ago, and Impulse has been too busy helping to build up their base of operations to come over and fix it. It’s not even been a week since they got back. Things keep breaking. Scar had been an essential cog in their machine, and nothing quite works the same without him. Nothing works at all, it feels like. They’re no closer to getting Scar back than they’d been at the start. Pearl has no new ideas, no dimensional know-how, no intricate knowledge of the Watcher’s aside from knowing what they are. She can’t help at all, really. Not in any way that matters.

But she has been given a task to do. So, she fishes. She jumps the turnstiles. She finds Jellie curled up on Scar’s pillow, tail twitching. 

Jellie’s ears flick towards her as she enters, eyes sliding open and tracking her as she crosses the room. Pearl greets her softly, setting the bucket down next to the furnace, coaxing a flame out of the coals and putting the salmon on the rack. Cats could eat it raw, she was sure, but Scar had always cooked it for her. She’s a lousy substitute, but she’s going to do her best. Jellie was the most important thing to Scar, and he’d asked her to—

Well, she’d been the only person left to ask, she supposed. 

(“No, Scar,” Pearl says, voice breaking as she pleads. “You’re gonna take care of her, okay? Because you’re going to come home. You are.”)

He’d been crying during that final fight. He had been breaking apart long before it, though, and Pearl had missed it. 

She pulls the salmon from the oven, tearing it into pieces and putting it on a plate, crossing the room to the bed. Jellie squints at her, whiskers twitching. Pearl pastes on a shaky smile, sitting at the foot of the bed and setting the plate down between them. The plate from yesterday is on the floor against the wall, untouched. She hadn’t eaten it. 

“Please,” Pearl says softly, hands twisted into the fabric of the blanket. “You— You gotta eat something, Jellie. I… I promised—”

Her voice breaks, and she snaps her jaw shut, mouth trembling and eyes stinging. Her breathing stutters in her lungs. Jellie watches her, chest rising and falling slowly, lethargically. She’s barely moved from the bed. It’s probably one of the only places that still smells like Scar.

She swallows against the lump in her throat, nudging the plate a little with a shaking hand. “You should eat it while it’s warm.”

Jellie blinks, and doesn’t move.

“I’m sorry,” Pearl says, chest aching as if a boulder were crushing it. Her voice cracks and wavers. “I’m not the one who’s supposed to— He should be here. I should have won, I— I’m sorry.”

(“Tell Cub I’m sorry,” Scar says, and Pearl can’t breathe, can’t think— “Tell everyone I’m sorry.”

“Wait—!”)

Scar isn’t here. Pearl can’t get Jellie to eat. He had said she liked salmon, hadn’t he? Had she gotten it wrong?

“You gotta eat,” Pearl begs, tears trailing silently down her face. “Just— Please—”

A heaving sob cuts her off, hair sticking to the tears on her cheeks as she curls in on herself, hand coming up to cover her mouth. The crushing hopelessness of the situation closes in on her like a vice, terrible grief rising in her throat, threatening to choke her. She remembers the moment the arrow had hit her. She remembers appearing back home, all of them but one, collapsing beneath the horror of realization. She remembers the look on Grian’s face, utterly indescribable in its agony. If she’d just won—

“Pearl?”

Pearl jumps hard, whipping her head around to face the intruder, eyes wild and face still wet with tears. 

It’s only Impulse, standing there with his toolbox in hand and dark, dark circles beneath a worried gaze. His hair is a mess. 

“The turnstiles are broken,” Pearl says hoarsely. 

Impulse just nods, slowly coming closer. “I’ll fix it.”

Pearl sniffs, wiping at her eyes as she turns back to Jellie. Impulse stands next to where she’s sitting on the bed, seeming at a loss for words. He looks exhausted. Pearl wonders what he came here for.

“She won’t eat,” Pearl says, looking down at the full plate of salmon. “She misses ‘im.”

“Yeah, that’s going around,” Impulse says sadly, shoulders slumping. He sets his toolbox down and reaches over to pet Jellie gently, hand trembling slightly as he scratches between her ears. His eyes flicker back to meet hers. “How about you? Have you eaten?”

Pearl huffs, breaking eye contact, and Impulse bends down to his toolbox, pulling out a bag with a sandwich in it. Pearl blinks at him, and he raises an eyebrow.

“I brought it for lunch, but I’m not that hungry, either,” Impulse says, voice deceptively casual as he opens the bag. “How ‘bout we split it?”

Pearl opens her mouth to decline, but Impulse’s hopeful eyes make her hesitate, and then sigh. She holds out her hand, and Impulse smiles cheekily, handing her half of the sandwich. She takes a bite. Ham and cheese. 

“Thank you,” Pearl says softly after another few bites. She looks at Impulse out of the corner of her eye, watching his sad eyes clash with his warm smile.

“We’ve got to take care of each other, right?” Impulse says, laying a comforting hand on her arm. “We can’t all be falling apart when Scar gets back.”

“You’re so sure,” Pearl says, sorrow choking her words.

“Not sure,” Impulse confesses quietly. “Just hopeful.”

The sound of someone gently chewing interrupts their conversation, and they both turn to find Jellie crouched by the plate of salmon, picking up another piece to eat. Tears of relief sting at Pearl’s eyes, and she laughs softly, deflating as the stress leaves her body. 

“Hopeful,” she says. “I can try that.”

When Etho arrives at Decked Out early in the morning, Scar is waiting for him at the entrance. He’s leaning against the wall on one side of the entryway, face pink from the cold, wings smooth and folded behind him. He finally got the stitches out of the injured one recently, if Etho remembers correctly. He looks leagues better than he had when they’d first pulled him out of that place. 

Etho still has nightmares about that. 

Scar raises his hand in a wave as Etho lands beside him, elytra disengaging and folding into his inventory. The look on Scar’s face tells him that he’s got something on his mind. Decked Out will have to wait. 

“Hey, Scar,” Etho greets. “Here to play a few rounds?”

“Eh, not today,” Scar says, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish smile. “Haven’t really been into games recently. Not one’s that kill me, at least.”

Etho nods, a bit of sadness resurfacing in his chest. He can remember that time before the final death game, Scar grinning at him brightly as he bragged about getting to level two. It contrasts sharply with the image of Scar in the Watcher Realm, bruised and battered and barely standing. If he were Scar, he’d be tired of games, too.

“You fly over here? I heard you got your stitches out,” Etho says. “Congrats, by the way.”

“Grian dropped me off,” Scar says, sighing dramatically as he stretches out his wings. “He still won’t let me fly yet. Says they’re not big enough. Maybe in a few more weeks.”

“It’ll be here before you know it,” Etho says encouragingly. “Then you can get back to hotguy-ing people all over the server.”

Scar laughs a little — more subdued that Etho remembers it being, but a wonderful thing to hear nonetheless. 

“That’s actually kind of what I’m here for,” Scar says.

Etho blinks. “...You’re here to hotguy me?”

“No— Well, maybe later.” Scar grins teasingly, then sighs. “I need some advice.”

“Advice?” Etho repeats, feeling a little out of his depth. “And you’re sure I’m the best option?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Scar starts, quirking a strange little half smile, “but you’re kind of my only option.”

Etho’s brow furrows in confusion, mind spinning in slow circles as he tries to figure out what he could possibly be qualified for that no one else is. 

Possibly sensing his uncertainty, Scar turns his head just a little bit more, and makes a vague gesture towards his face. “We match,” he says. 

“Oh.”

He recalls their brief conversation when Scar had woken up from his exhaustion, bombarded by a group hug and finding it in himself to meet Etho’s gaze and joke about his life-changing injury. When he’d first seen it in the depths of the Watcher Realm, Etho had known that Scar would have no vision in that eye. He had intimate knowledge of what an injury like that could do. 

“You’re having trouble with it?” Etho asks, voice automatically going softer.

“I bumped into seven trees yesterday,” Scar says, scowling. “I walked into two doorframes just this morning. I tried to pour myself a cup of water and I missed the glass.”

Etho winces. “Ah,” he says. “Yeah, I— I remember having that issue.”

“It’s driving me crazy,” Scar says, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “Someone comes up on my left side and they scare the living daylights out of me because I couldn’t see them right away.”

“Can I ask— Your whole…magic eye thing,” Etho starts, internally wincing at his verbal stumbling. “Does it help? I’ve seen you use it to help your vision before.”

It’s true. Every now and then he’ll catch Scar with his blind eye glowing purple. 

“It helps,” Scar says, scuffing at the ground with his shoe. “It gives me a killer headache if I do it too much, though. It’s like if you tried to go without blinking for like, hours at a time. Magically speaking.”

“I get it,” Etho says, nodding in understanding. He tilts his head. “I can try to give you some pointers.”

“Great!” Scar replies, face lighting up with relief. “You’re the best, Etho, I will sing your praises from the rooftops—”

“Please don’t,” Etho says, laughing. “I will warn you, most of it is just about getting used to it. It takes time. And you’ll still definitely bump into things every now and then.”

“Huh,” Scar says thoughtfully. “Do you?”

“No comment.”

“Oh, come on!” He flashes a cheeky smile, a little pained at the edges. “You know I can keep a secret.”

“It’s definitely too soon to joke about that,” Etho says, though his mouth twitches beneath his mask.

“Probably,” Scar says easily. “So what’s up first on the schedule, oh wise teacher?”

“You’re gonna practice some hand-eye coordination,” Etho says. “Sound good?”

Scar smiles, a pleased chirp emitting from his throat as he pushes himself off the wall, wings rustling excitedly. “Etho,” he says, “I thought you’d never ask.”

For a long while, Scar comes and finds him every few days, and together they do a few simple exercises to help Scar’s brain readjust to using one eye. They have fun, actually. Etho finds himself looking forward to it. 

And if everyone on the server mysteriously starts walking only on Scar’s right side? Well, Etho certainly had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

Grian doesn’t want to let him out of his sight. It takes Scar an embarrassing amount of time to figure this out — possibly due to how little Scar actually wants to leave Grian’s side, himself. After the trauma and separation of the past month, it’s comforting to have each other within arms reach. Not to mention their instincts going haywire to make up for lost time. 

So, Scar doesn’t realize that anything is wrong until a good week and a half after he’s been back home. They haven’t left the little rescue-base village yet, still living out of the room he’d woken up in for the time being; at least until Scar is a bit steadier, and mostly healed.

The bandages on his arms had come off yesterday, and Scar had gotten his first look at his new scars. They’re strange to look at — jagged streaks going all the way up past his elbows, looking for all the world as if his skin had cracked like porcelain. They glow when he uses his magic. Separate from the trauma of receiving them, he can acknowledge how cool they look. And really, these are the ones he can wear as a badge of honor. These are the ones that had saved Grian’s life. 

Cub comes by early in the morning to invite him out for a walk, and Scar hesitates. Grian is still sleeping, mouth open and snoring, and Scar doesn’t want to wake him. He hasn’t gone anywhere without him yet, either. He flounders for a minute, anxiety twisting in his chest at the thought of leaving him here, but—

He turns to Cub, who is watching him carefully, hands in his pockets and seeming completely relaxed. There’s no sense of urgency, here. It’s safe. Grian can sleep, and Scar can go outside. They will both be okay.

If it was anyone other than Cub, Scar doesn’t think he’d be able to do it. He quietly gets up from the bed and follows Cub out the door, leaving Grian undisturbed beneath the covers. The fluttering of trepidation doesn’t go away, but Cub smiles at him encouragingly, and so they go. They make their way throughout recently decorated pathways of their little village, reminiscing about old pranks and builds, and it’s nice. It’s normal. It’s nice to feel normal.

So of course, it all falls apart rather dramatically. 

They’re near the center of the town when it happens. A shiver runs up Scar’s spine, magic tingling in the air a mere second before eyes open all around him. It’s Grian, he knows it’s Grian — can feel it in his bones — but the shock of it banishes all reason from his mind. All he registers are the Eyes, and Eyes mean danger. 

He loses sense of time for a while, lost beneath the glowing blanket of his forcefield, mind whirling and senses in overdrive, memories flashing behind his eyelids like lightning. Distantly, he can hear Cub’s worried tones, knowing he has no clue what’s just happened, unable to perceive the Eyes the way Scar can. He sits in his panic attack, and eventually Grian arrives in the midst of his own, a frantic beacon of familiar magic. It’s—

Yeah. It’s dramatic.

Later, after they’ve both calmed down enough to be embarrassed, Scar realizes that they might have a problem. 

“I woke up and you were gone,” Grian explains, equal parts sheepish and irritated. “I just— I don’t know. I barely remember it.”

They’re sitting on a bench beneath a tree in the central square, slowly recovering from the flood of adrenaline in their systems. The bench is a new addition — an attempt from some of the other hermits to liven up the place a little. With the weight of an empty space off their backs, there’s room for creativity. There’s time to rediscover the joy of creating. Scar’s not quite at that stage, yet. Neither is Grian, it seems.

“The Eyes scared me,” Scar confesses.

“I’m sorry,” Grian says, softly guilty.

Scar shakes his head. “I’m sorry I left without telling you.”

“Yeah.” Grian sighs, shooting him a sad little smile. “We’re gonna have to work on this, aren’t we.”

“Add it to the list,” Scar says brightly. 

And they laugh. Sometimes, Scar is surprised they still have that capability. 

Someone has built a fountain in the center of the square, and Scar watches as a bird comes in for a landing, settling in the shallow bowl at the top for a quick bath, feathers fluffing and droplets flying. The feather attached to his ear blows in the wind, brushing gently against his neck. 

Oh. He has an idea.

Scar stretches out his wing to the side, ignoring Grian’s disgruntled confusion as he scans it intently, eyes narrowed in concentration. Eventually, he finds what he’s looking for, and without preamble, he grabs a feather and yanks. 

Grian lets out a startled sound of protest, his own wings fluffing up in agitation. “Scar!” he shouts. “I– What on earth are you doing?”

“Can’t a guy pull a feather in peace?” Scar asks teasingly, shrugging it off. “Besides, it was loose, anyway.”

He holds the feather in front of his face to examine it, shiny and clean. It’s bigger than the one hanging from his ear, but he thinks it’ll do just fine. He turns to Grian and holds it out, soft smile pulling at his mouth. Grian blinks at him in surprise.

“It’s for you,” Scar says.

“For me,” Grian repeats. He reaches out slowly and takes the feather, holding it delicately in his hands, staring down at it. He glances back up at Scar, emotion swimming in his eyes. “Are you sure?”

Scar nods, smile turning a bit sad, turning back towards the fountain to watch the bird. “When I was… When I was alone there,” he starts, voice growing quieter, thoughtful, “I just– I missed you. And I would look at this thing–” He gestures to the feather on his ear. “–and I’d feel– It didn’t fix anything, but it… made me feel like you were there, sometimes. Like part of you was with me.” Another bird flies down and joins the first one at the fountain. Scar turns back to Grian with a smile. “I want to do the same for you, you know? Give you a part of me.”

Grian stares at him, eyes glistening with emotion, and then he looks back down at the feather. It’s gray, but quickly turns purple in his gentle hands. It’s the first time that Scar doesn’t hate the color. 

“Thank you,” Grian says softly. 

Scar nods, nudging Grian playfully with his wing, and Grian rolls his eyes, smile widening. 

Later, under the incredibly intense scrutiny of Grian, Gem helps them attach the feather to a necklace. To Scar’s knowledge, Grian never takes it off.

At the time, Grian had hardly thought about it. It was something Cub had said in passing to make a point, something he clearly had no intention of elaborating on without Scar’s explicit permission. There had been much bigger fish to fry, and no space in his mind to wonder. Every bit of focus he'd had had been dedicated solely to figuring out how to reach Scar, how to bring him home. So, he’d hardly thought about it.

(“He grew up in a hardcore world,” Cub had said. And then, firmly: “You’ll have to get the details from him. Not my story to tell.”)

Grian, at that point, had been drowning in hopelessness and guilt, unable to spare any energy towards curiosity. The next weeks had been a blur of failure and success, a whirlwind of heartache and triumph that ultimately ended with Scar right back where he belonged, injured but healing. For all intents and purposes, he forgets about Cub’s odd comment entirely. 

Almost entirely.

Then Scar makes an offhand quip about childhood trauma, and Grian starts to wonder. A question takes root in his mind and grows. He’s never asked about where Scar had come from. It’s not the type of thing that the hermits tend to ask about; it was a generally understood rule that if someone wanted you to know something, they would tell you. Many of the hermits had been running from something or other when they’d first joined the server. It was considered polite not to ask. 

But Grian has known Scar for years now. They share a bond that would be acknowledged on a cosmic level. They're a bit beyond the awkward pleasantries of getting to know each other. So.

He’s on a park bench in Scarland, the sun high in the sky. It’s spring, and Scar is planting flowers. The ones that had been there before had all died in the cold of the winter months, and Scar had decided that some simple gardening would be the perfect first project to ease himself back into building. Grian, as he’d been doing quite a lot recently, had decided to keep him company. They’d been bantering on and off for most of the morning, but had since settled into an easy quiet. Jellie is sleeping on a rock, and Sunny is scratching at the loose dirt Scar’s been working with, searching for bugs. 

It’s a scar on the back of Scar’s neck that brings it to mind, old and faded, barely visible. Entire decades old. It takes a lot, to get a scar. It’s nearly impossible — unless you’re in a hardcore world. 

“Can I ask you something?” Grian asks abruptly, shifting anxiously where he sits. 

Scar looks up, dirt smudged on his cheek and hands, face slightly red from the sun. He gives him a half smile, mismatched eyes crinkling slightly in confusion at Grian’s obvious nerves. 

“Sure,” Scar replies, wiping his hands on his pants. He stretches, wings spread wide, a birdlike noise escaping his throat as he does so. “What’s up?”

Grian picks at a thread at the bottom of his sweater, frowning slightly as he tries to figure out how to word it. Really, he should have thought further ahead.

“Cub said something to me once,” he starts, watching Jellie’s ears twitch in her sleep. “It was— something about how you grew up in a hardcore world?”

Scar freezes. Grian watches as several complicated emotions flicker across his face, clearly taken off guard. His mouth opens slightly, and then closes again, mouth twisting subtly as his expression lands on something pensive and anxious. Grian’s gut flips. 

“Cub said that?” Scar asks, voice unreadable. Next to him, Sunny perks up, and Grian could swear that the chicken narrows her eyes at him accusingly.

“It was while you were gone,” Grian explains, voice dipping into something somber. It’s still hard to think about those weeks. “I was…struggling. Cub was trying to get me to stop blaming myself. It came up.”

Scar nods slightly, gaze drifting to the side as he frowns thoughtfully. Grian can practically see the thoughts running rampant through his mind, and he forces himself to wait patiently. The flowers Scar is planting are bright and vibrant, a multitude of different colors and shapes. The way they’re placed seems completely arbitrary to Grian, but he knows that Scar has placed each plant with the utmost care. 

When people first meet Scar, they see what he presents on the surface; clumsy and clueless. And while he certainly has his moments, Grian has learned to look deeper. Most everything Scar does is very intentional. His builds especially, but in other things, too — like what he chooses to share. Grian still only knows the bare bones of what it was like for him to be at the Watcher’s mercy. What he does know keeps him up at night. 

Eventually, Scar’s gaze flicks up to meet his, eyebrows pinched in a nervously assessing way. It’s a moment that feels heavy, and Grian just stares back, hoping that some of the love and concern and support is visible in his eyes. Finally, Scar inhales shakily - stands up from the ground to sit next to Grian on the bench. 

“Yeah, Cub was— Cub wasn’t lying,” Scar says. “I did grow up in a hardcore world.”

“You did?” Grian asks softly, because as much as he'd believed Cub, hearing it confirmed still stings. 

Scar hums in assent, staring ahead at the flowers he’d planted, gaze distant and haunted. Grian feels a little nauseous. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” Grian says, stretching his wing to brush against Scar’s. 

“I think… I want to tell you,” Scar says, turning back to him, looking faintly surprised by his own words. He quirks a strange little smile, almost a grimace. “Are you, uh, sure you want to know?”

Grian is not sure. He nods anyway, and Scar’s smile turns a bit more genuine, soft and resigned. He visibly steels himself. 

“It was a zombie apocalypse,” Scar says simply, head tilted as he squints at the sky. “And I’m pretty sure I was the only human left, at the end.”

Grian’s stomach plummets.

“Zombie apocalypse?” he repeats, the words shaky. 

“Yep. But not like, normal zombies, of course,” Scar says dryly, shaking his head. “They still looked like— like people. They didn’t burn in the day, and they were fast. They could chase you for miles.”

God. Grian’s throat goes tight, and he swallows. 

“There were… some teenagers, I think, at the beginning. We lived in this— windowless bunker. Tons of food and water and supplies. Meant for a bunch of people, probably. But it was just us,” Scar continues, eyes going hazy as he remembers. “They’d started teaching me how guns worked, and I— I think they taught me how to read. I don’t know how else I would have learned. 

“Then they left one day and never came back. I was five, maybe?” Scar chuckles a little, glancing at Grian with a glimmer of humor in his eye. “Is now a good time to admit I genuinely have no clue exactly how old I am?”

Grian blinks, momentarily startled out of his mounting horror.

“I just always thought you were being vague on purpose,” he says faintly. Scar laughs, wings shaking behind him, and then there’s a pause. 

Jellie stands and stretches, primly making her way to the bench with a trilling meow, jumping up onto Scar’s lap and curling up. Scar scratches behind her ears, an absentminded gesture as his brow furrows in thought. Grian waits patiently, watching Dishwasher the chicken swallow a bug whole. 

“I didn’t leave the bunker for a few years,” Scar continues, the tone a little more serious than before. “And then I… I ran out of crayons, so. I left. Packed a bag and a gun and started exploring.” He picks at the woodgrain of the bench, staring down at Jellie in his lap. “Eventually I got comfortable enough to leave the bunker behind for good, once I started finding new places. Never did find more crayons, though. Had to make due with pencils.”

The worst part is, Grian can imagine it. A young Scar with a baby face and a backpack half his size, alone in the world and looking for something to give it color. Carrying a gun. 

“A lot of my scars came from that world, but most of them have faded by now, I think,” Scar says, scanning his skin as if there’s wounds only he can see. “Ins— Injuries worked differently there. It’s hard to explain. There was— I had to do blood transfusions on myself. I learned how to inject morphine so I could keep running when I was hurt.”

Scar’s rambling now, like some dam has burst and everything he’s ever kept inside is rushing out of him. Grian should maybe interrupt him, but his tongue feels stuck to the roof of his mouth. He can’t start talking any more than Scar can stop. 

“You’d think I got my name from my scars,” Scar says, smiling in a way that looks painful. “I named myself after my gun. I don’t even remember if I had a name, before that. I didn’t really know what names were. I found Jellie and she liked jelly so I named her Jellie. It made sense in my head.”

Jellie perks up at hearing her name, bumping her head into Scar’s trembling hand. Grian finally finds the strength to open his mouth. 

“Scar,” Grian says hoarsely. “Stop.”

Scar meets his gaze, something desperate and tired etched into his face. His eyes carry the wild quality of someone who knows what survival truly means. It makes him look ancient. It makes him look very, very young. 

“I let myself die,” Scar admits quietly, eyes glistening. “To get out of there. I let them get me.”

Grian closes his eyes, chest aching. “How old…?”

“Nineteen, I think,” Scar says. “I counted the winters. Always celebrated my birthday on the first snow day.”

Grian doesn’t want to know what that celebration would’ve consisted of. He’s seconds away from breaking down sobbing as it is. Wordlessly, Grian extends a wing and rests it across Scar’s back, feeling the other’s wings relax in response. 

“I’m sorry,” Grian says in a wavering voice, blinking away the moisture in his eyes. “I’m sorry that— that happened to you.”

Scar hums, eyes closing briefly. 

“When I made the deal with the Secret Keeper,” Scar says, “I wasn’t really… I just figured that I could handle it, being alone there. Because I’d done it before.”

Grian swallows, heart squeezing in his chest. It’s like grief, almost, but he’s not sure what he’s grieving. 

“It was different, though,” Scar continues, glancing at Grian with a sad smile, eyes watery. “I knew what I was missing.”

Scar, reliving his childhood alone in an empty world, missing his friends. Longing was an open wound, and the Watchers were sharks in the water. They’d probably loved it. Grian, not for the first time, has the urge to go back there and kill a few with his bare hands. He wants them to hurt. 

Grian tips his head over to lean it on Scar’s shoulder, a silent show of support, and for a while they watch Scar’s flowers sway in the wind. He tries to remember that they won. They’re safe. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Grian says, soft and aching. 

“Yeah,” Scar says, leaning into him slightly. “Me too.”