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The air reeks of iron and rust.
A sanguinary smell that's been tracked by blade and arrowhead.
Scar stands at the edge of the hill looking upon the last frontier in his journey thus far. He's done so much already, one more life taken wouldn't hurt him. Not anymore at least.
Pearl stands at his side. She already knows what needs to happen. Technically nothing needs to happen, but it will. And it has. And it will never stop.
Gem's in the little valley between the hills. Her fate has been sealed since the beginning. She shouts, pleads even, and she really does believe that she deserves a friend. That she deserves a friend within the person that she's hurt.
The sun's rays beam wildly down at the scene. It intrudes into Scar's retinas as he makes his way down the hill. Approaching Gem, he tries to be friendly. Without a single word spoken back, he feels sharp steel cut right into his side. He tried to curb his own malignance, he really did, but he knows by now that that's not how things work. They never worked like that. And they never will.
Scar fixes himself on Gem before taking his blade and slashing it deep across Gem's chest. It cuts her skin just as much as it cuts through her denim, and she still doesn't speak a word.
Blood and metal is tossed around between the two, and Scar isn't letting himself down. Just barely an hour ago Scar felt too afraid to face Gem, now he knows his own capabilities, and how he severely overestimated Gem's.
Scar is facing injury though, and Pearl notices. She can't let Scar try through fire by himself, she wouldn't let him. She won't let herself lose him. She won't give herself the pain of watching someone close to her die when she could have prevented it. She already has. But never again.
Pearl steps in and makes her resolution clear.
Gem has the audacity to feel betrayed, and Scar slips into his own mind; his body moving seemingly on its own.
He remembers exactly what it was about Pearl that he was enamored with. She was strong, she was powerful, but most importantly she reminded him of what he wanted most in the world. Scar wanted to be free. Scar's personal sense of a free world is a place where he could be everything he's ever wanted to be and nobody wanted to hurt him. To him, Pearl never wanted to hurt him. Even when she did, it didn't feel 'evil' to him. Pearl felt human. And in a world full of monsters, being human is the greatest thing you can be. Scar's world was full of monsters.
Scar's hands grip his sword with great tenacity, as he drives the blade straight into Gem's torso, piercing between her ribs and coaxing out flesh and viscera with every turn of the blade.
Gem's blood is all over Scar now, her body completely torn with injury that only a man with a certain level of insanity, delirium, and dare say villainy, could do to another person.
Gem is gone. The air is thick with the lack of regret.
Scar and Pearl look at each other. They should be sad. They should be terrified. Instead, they laugh.
They laugh and laugh and keep laughing that happy laugh that only two jilted lovers could share after the sight they've just beheld.
To the both of them it was over, and although they're sticky with the entrails of a friend-once-loved, the moment is truly theirs.
Scar looks at Pearl. Pearl looks at Scar.
Scar takes his bow and fires a single arrow into Pearl's side.
Pearl laughs again as she preps her blade to fight her wild swain.
They don't need to fight. But they will. That's how it always happens. And it will always happen. And it will never stop.