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The wind was whirring in Grian’s ears, shrill and loud and resounding. It is all around him as he sits there, soundless and completely still. The ground is rough against his bloodied, raw skin, but he cannot care enough because all he hears is static, a ringing in his ears that wouldn’t go out.
He watches the feathers from his wings fly away into the cliff, all torn and bloody and dusty as it lands on the bottom of the ravine. He watches as it makes its way to the body lying there in a pool of blood.
It’s too far from here, but Grian knows the way Joel’s lifeless eyes are staring into nothing as he lies there, motionless. All alone.
He’s seen it so many times now that the image has been burned into the back of his mind. That even when he restarts everything and meets Joel again with his familiar grin and laughter, he still sees the way his brown, dull eyes stare lifelessly up at the sky.
Always so close, but never close enough.
Always just a fraction too late, never just a little early.
Were they really doomed from the beginning? Or did Grian make everything worse by trying to defy the world? Sometimes he thinks that this power to restart time is more of a curse than a blessing. As though there was some being out there, granting him this ability just to watch him fail every time. Of course that’s what the Watchers would exactly do. Fate has already been set, and no matter what he does he can never rewrite it.
Joel will always end up here, and Grian will always be there to watch it happen every single time.
Maybe he should’ve known from the beginning that it would always end up like this. The Watchers would never let him have something like this just like that.
“You can restart everything for as long as you want. You can be with him for as long as you wish. But you can’t save him.” That’s what they told him in the beginning as he stood there against the cold, battered and broken and pleading.
Grian should’ve known.
He can’t save anyone. He can’t even save himself from restarting this loop over and over again. Because as exhausting and hopeless as it is, he still always closes his eyes and lets the wind carry him away to the beginning of the story. Just to see Joel again. Just to be with him again even if it won’t last. Even if Joel won’t remember any of it.
He just has to see him again.
“It’s weird.”
How many times has it been since Grian started this? How many times has he lived through this? He can’t tell anymore. But as he stands here, rummaging through chests looking for weapons and hears Joel’s voice, everything comes to a standstill.
Grian’s heart always aches when he sees Joel. It’s always so bittersweet with them.
“What is?” Grian asks, closing the lid of the chest.
“I feel like…” Joel trails off, walks over to a window to stare outside for a second. Grian watches his eyes, so bright and curious. He tries hard not to think about anything else. “Like I should know you.”
Grian almost drops the sword in his hand.
“Like I’ve met you before. Have I met you before?”
At the end of their story, when Grian would come just a little bit closer to saving Joel, to the rare times when he’d be able to jump down that ravine and try to catch him but fail anyway, he would tearfully whisper, I’m sorry. And Joel would be in his arms, unmoving, eyes fluttering close. “I’m sorry,” he’d cry. Oh, how he’d cry. “I’ll save you next time.”
And how Joel would smile so faintly around bloody lips. “You’ve been here…before…haven’t you…?”
And Grian would nod, tears spilling out. “I’ll come back for you.”
Now Grian hears Joel’s question and wonders what it entails for them. Was this the sliver of hope he needed, or was it just another cruel trick of the world? Either way, he clears his throat. Turns around to face Joel and look him in the eye. Lets his lips quirk up into the smallest of smiles.
“Maybe.”