Chapter Text
Pearl walked with her hands shoved deep into her pockets, the chill of the late morning clinging to her arms despite the sun overhead. Her pace was steady, but her mind drifted, scattered as always when she was left too long alone with herself.
Gem slipped in first. The memory of her laugh at sunrise, the way her hand had been warm under the blanket, lingered like an ember in Pearl’s chest. She recalled Gem sulking after a bout of her own chaos—half an hour spent tearing apart their apartment, convinced her phone had been stolen during the night, only for Pearl to find it in her coat pocket where she had put it “safely.” Gem curled up on the floor, calling herself stupid, and Pearl crouched beside her and patted her back until she smiled again, coaxing her back with patience. The thought curled Pearl’s mouth upward slightly, quiet and unbidden.
But the smile faltered when another thought intruded. Sharp voices bled through the corners of her mind. Again. Not good enough. Again. The echo made her shoulders tense. No. Not now. She forced the sound away and pulled Gem back into focus. Desperately trying to convince herself she wasn’t trapped anymore.
At the apartment building, she buzzed in and climbed the stairs two at a time, tugging her sleeve down over her wrist out of habit.
The door opened with Cleo standing there, posture easy, tone even. “Hey, Pearl. Come in.”
She managed a small, fumbling smile. “H-Hey.” But the steadiness in Cleo’s voice drew her in. No pressure, no teasing. Just welcome.
Inside, the unit buzzed with its casual sort of life. Bdubs glanced up briefly from the table, lifted a hand in half a wave, then muttered something too quiet to be heard without breaking stride on his laptop. From the other side of the room came a sharp thunk from Etho smacking his keyboard and grumbling under his breath.
Cleo giggled. “Don’t mind him. He’s got some CS project or something. You’ll hear that at least once an hour.”
The air was busy but not overwhelming, casual noise that settled around her rather than pressing in. Pearl eased her shoulders as she slipped off her shoes.
Then Scar appeared from around a corner. Pearl blinked. He wasn’t in his chair. He leaned against a cane, taking slow but steady steps across the floor.
“Scar!” Her voice jumped before she could temper it. “You’re… walking?”
He grinned crookedly, weight balanced on the cane. “Kinda. Sometimes the meds dull it enough to let me. Not for long, but hey—feels nice to stand.”
Pearl swallowed her questions, nodded, let the detail settle in her chest.
A timer went off in the kitchen, and Cleo vanished for a moment before reappearing with plates. They passed them around without ceremony.
When they offered her one, Pearl shook her head instinctively. “Oh, it’s fine. I don’t want to impose.”
Cleo slid a plate into her hands anyway. “Don’t insult my cooking.”
Pearl blinked, then laughed softly, giving in. “Fair enough.”
At first she ate quietly, cautious, tucked into herself. But the noise of casual chatter bled in. Etho and Cleo bickering over where he plugged in his laptop, Bdubs talking to Scar about bushes and trees. Slowly, Pearl loosened up. Her shoulders dropped, her posture eased. By the time the plates were scraped clean and stacked near the sink, the tightness in her chest had unknotted just a little.
“Thanks,” she murmured, sincerity tucked in her voice.
Cleo only nodded, cheerful and easy as she picked up the empty plates.
Scar led Pearl into the studio, the room familiar in its layered messes. The tarps underfoot were thick with overlapping paint splatters, each stain a remnant of one of Scar’s afternoons. Canvases leaned against the walls—some finished, others half-begun, others abandoned in loose, abstract gestures that spoke of energy burned out mid-process. The space didn’t feel chaotic, though. It felt alive, flowing with a rhythm Pearl could almost hear if she stood still long enough.
She lowered her bag carefully onto a clear patch of tarp and folded herself cross-legged before a blank canvas.
Her hands moved before her mind even caught up. Brushes first, lined in a clean row from smallest to largest. The water jar, filled, rim wiped once, then again. Paint tubes aligned in neat sequence, reds blending into oranges, oranges into yellows, then onward into greens and blues. She shifted one brush a half inch to the right, let out a quiet breath, and finally sat back. There. Ready.
It wasn’t tension, just rhythm. Muscle memory. Precision woven into her body, steadying her nerves like a familiar ritual.
Scar had started loosening the caps on his paints, but he paused mid-motion to watch her. His own work area was freer. Brushes gathered in jars, paints grouped loosely by color families, tools shifting in and out of clusters as his mood demanded. It was tight enough to function, but he gave it room to breathe.
“You look relaxed,” he said with a faint smile, “but you still can’t start without everything lined up?”
Pearl blinked down at her brushes, then let a chuckle slip out. “I can’t help it. Feels wrong otherwise.”
She wasn’t defensive. She knew herself well enough to say it plainly.
Scar tilted his head, his grin widening just a fraction. Then, with a half-bow from where he sat, he gestured toward his space. “Well then, I apologize for any messes that arise from my work habits.”
Pearl huffed, shaking her head. “Please. Gem is nowhere near this organized on even her best days.”
Scar chuckled, dipping his brush into a jar of water as he glanced at her. “Sounds like her,” he said easily, the corner of his mouth quirking upward. He leaned back slightly, brush twirling between his fingers before he added, voice warm and genuine, “Are you ever going to bring her around? We’d all love to meet her.”
Pearl’s lips curved into a small smile, though her hand didn’t pause in its movements. The brush swept across the canvas in loose, easy strokes—wide arcs of color, nothing defined yet. It was unusual for her to be so unstructured, but the freedom felt good for once, almost indulgent. She let the rhythm carry her as she answered, a soft laugh escaping her. “Maybe. She can be a little shy,” she said, tone fond, careful. “But I’ll convince her eventually.”
The words settled in the air between them, light but sincere. Pearl’s chest ached faintly with the honesty of it. Talking about Gem like this wasn’t difficult exactly, but it was rare. She wasn’t used to the idea of letting anyone see how much space one person could take up inside her. Still, with Scar, it felt safe.
Her brush moved again, colors bleeding together. Loose, relaxed, unlike her usual rigid structure. She wasn’t planning, wasn’t mapping out a composition—her subconscious was guiding her hand, and she didn’t fight it. She simply allowed the paint to wander where it wanted.
Scar leaned back slightly, brush poised in one hand as he studied Pearl’s canvas. Her strokes were softer today—broad, loose, untethered by the tight precision she usually demanded from herself. A small smile tugged at his lips.
“You’re not wound up this time,” he said, voice calm, teasing just enough to make it gentle. “Usually you paint like someone’s… looking over your shoulder.”
Pearl’s lips twitched into a faint smile. She didn’t look up from her canvas. “Guess it’s easier when, in the end, it doesn’t matter how it turns out.”
Scar wiped his brush against a rag, the soft scrape of bristles against cloth filling the space. He smirked, eyes still on his work. “Or maybe,” he said lightly, “you’re finally starting to believe it doesn’t always have to be perfect.”
That caught her off guard. Her hand froze mid-stroke, a faint hitch in her breath. “I—well…” She gave up on trying to correct him and dipped her brush back into the paint instead. He’s not wrong. But…
Scar didn’t linger on it. He turned back to his canvas, mixing colors with an easy rhythm. “You know,” he said after a pause, “for me, art isn’t about hiding. It’s about—letting go, I guess. Moving.” He chuckled softly, almost to himself. “I can’t walk anymore, but the beauty of art is I get to feel like I’m still… flowing.”
His tone wasn’t heavy; it was factual, in the way someone learns to live with something instead of fighting it. The words hung there, simple and unpretentious, like wet paint settling into canvas.
Pearl’s brush slowed. She tilted her head slightly, watching him from the corner of her eye. He looked steady, his hand sure, his expression peaceful, but beneath that steadiness, there was something else.
He sounds at peace, but he’s not. Not fully.
Scar didn’t notice her studying him. He kept painting, one color blending into another, every stroke deliberate but unhurried.
Pearl looked back at her own work, tracing the movement of her brush through the air. Her fingers twitched. She could feel her chest tighten with something unnamed. She knew why he gets it. He’s not free either.
She wanted to say something—something honest, something that could bridge the space between what she felt and what he’d just admitted—but the words caught in her throat. Her jaw clenched. Instead, she pressed her brush to the canvas again, painting in silence.
The studio felt quiet except for the soft sounds of paint and breathing.
Scar wasn’t trying to teach her anything. He was just talking. And Pearl, for once, allowed herself to listen without needing to fix, measure or perfect anything.
Her brush continued easily at first, the colors soft and untethered, a wash of golden tones, pale browns, and faint blue shadows blooming across the canvas. There wasn’t any clear image, just warmth and light. Her breathing matched the rhythm of her strokes: steady, calm, almost meditative. The quiet between her and Scar was easy, filled only with the faint scratch of bristles and the muted hum of music from another room.
She didn’t think, didn’t plan. Her hands just moved.
Bit by bit, her motions began to find form, not deliberately, but inevitably. A shape emerged: the faint curve of a piano, its body half bathed in gold, half swallowed by deep, heavy blue. A small figure appeared next, sitting at the bench, short hair, back straight, hands poised above the keys. She hadn’t meant to paint that. She hadn’t even thought of it. Her stomach twisted.
Where… did that come from?
The brush hesitated in her grip, hovering just above the surface. She should’ve stopped there. She should’ve smeared it over, turned it into something else.
Anything else.
But her hand didn’t stop. Her body kept painting as if it didn’t belong to her. The room on the canvas took shape around the little boy, sunlight flooding half of it, shadows creeping inward from the corners, swallowing color and space. The bright half glowed like memory; the dark half closed like a fist.
No, no, no—
Her heart thudded in her chest, her breath quickening, the paint beginning to blur. But before she could pull back, a voice cut gently through the haze.
“Piano?”
She flinched. The brush froze mid-stroke. Scar had turned in his chair, head tilted as he squinted at her canvas.
Pearl’s pulse jumped. She swallowed quickly and forced her voice to steady. “I… used to play.”
Scar smiled faintly, and nodded before turning back to his own work, unaware.
She blinked — once, twice — eyes stinging. Bitter tears welled before she could stop them, but she blinked them away just as fast, smoothing her expression into something calm and practiced. Her hand moved again, covering the hesitation with another stroke of gold, one that didn’t belong.
The soft scrape of Scar’s brush somehow made the silence louder. Pearl stared at her own canvas for a beat too long. The image she’d painted, a little boy seated at a piano, hair cropped short, half the room lit in soft gold while the other half was swallowed by shadow, seemed to stare back at her.
Pearl’s jaw clenched as she tried to focus, but her mind had gone thin and scattered. The sound of her brush on canvas echoed too loud in her head, like keys striking wrong notes.
Her stomach knotted. She forced her hand to move again, dipping her brush into the rinse cup and cleaning it with deliberate precision.
Focus.
She wiped the handle twice, as if that could erase what her body had already known.
Scar glanced over once but didn’t press. He could feel the wall rising, a small, practiced barrier she put between herself and anything that hurt too much. Instead of trying to break it, he looked back to his palette, dipped his brush into a muted blue, and said lightly, “You know… I took a gap year. After the accident.”
Pearl blinked, faintly startled. “You did?”
He nodded, still focused on his canvas. “Yeah. Couldn’t walk for months. It was all physical therapy, pain management, repeat. Every day the same. You start to lose track of time when everything’s about trying to stand up again.”
He paused, voice steady but with something frayed underneath. “Everyone else kept moving on. New jobs, new projects, new lives, and I was stuck in place.”
She listened in silence.
“The world doesn’t wait for anyone.”
He said it plainly, not as a complaint, just simply naming a truth that had already shaped him.
Pearl stayed quiet. She listened, using his words as an anchor to keep from drifting back into the memory she’d almost unearthed. He sounds tired… but not broken. Maybe that’s the difference.
Scar mixed another color, brushing a streak of deep blue into his painting. “When I came back, everyone I knew had already graduated. It felt like walking into a room where all the furniture’s been rearranged. Everything familiar, but nothing where it used to be.”
A small huff escaped her. Not laughter, but recognition. “Yeah,” she murmured, “I get that.”
The silence that followed wasn’t heavy. It was thoughtful, quiet enough for the sound of their brushes to fill it.
After a while, Pearl spoke again, softly. “I took a gap year too. Before I met Gem.”
Scar looked up, eyebrows lifting slightly, but he didn’t say anything, he just gave her the room to continue.
“It wasn’t for anything physical,” she went on, her brush hovering in the air. “I just… wasn’t in a good place.”
Her voice thinned toward the end. She turned her eyes to the rinse jar, watching the cloudy swirl of pigment bloom and fade in the water. “I think I just needed to stop. Everything was moving so fast and I was barely holding myself together. So I took a year. Eventually, I felt okay to come back.”
Her throat tightened as the words left her, stripped of their specifics. She didn’t mention the gun, or the tears, or the way she’d come back the next day pretending nothing had happened.
Scar didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. He just watched her for a moment, the calm in his expression not forced or distant, just understanding.
Finally, he exhaled softly. “Guess we both had to rebuild.”
Pearl’s lips curved in a faint, uneven smile. “Yeah. Different kinds of broken, I guess.”
Scar’s eyes flicked back to his canvas. “Broken’s still fixable,” he said quietly, like it was something he’d decided long ago but still needed to believe.
The studio had fallen quiet again, the hum of conversation replaced by the soft rhythm of brush against canvas.
Pearl had stopped painting a while ago, though she didn’t notice at first. Her strokes had slowed until they bled into stillness. Now the little boy at the piano sat half-finished under her hand.
She exhaled shakily and set her brush down, flexing her fingers. Her shoulders ached.
You’re fine. Just breathe.
She reached for her water jar, swirling the brush through cloudy water that had long since turned grey. Cleaning tools gave her an excuse to move. When that didn’t quiet her thoughts, she lifted her gaze, searching for something else to look at, somewhere to rest her mind.
Scar’s side of the room caught her eye.
He worked with easy concentration, head tilted, shoulders loose, as if the world was speaking to him. His brush moved in long, sweeping motions across a canvas already bursting with light and air. From where she sat, she could make out rooftops, broad planes of ochre and rust, framed by a sky that seemed to stretch forever.
At first, it looked freeing. Expansive. Beautiful, even. But as she stood and took a few slow steps closer, the perspective shifted. The angle tilted upward, not down — like the viewer wasn’t flying over a city, but falling backward, watching the world rush away.
Her breath caught. “That’s… not what I expected,” she murmured.
Scar’s brush paused midstroke. He glanced at her, then back at the painting. “It’s the last thing I saw before I fell.”
Pearl blinked. “Oh.” It was all she could manage.
Scar didn’t seem to mind her silence. He dabbed his brush into a muted blue, adding a curve of shadow beneath the clouds. His tone stayed steady, but there was a quiet ache buried beneath it.
“I can’t stop. I don’t want to,” he said. “If I can’t move, I’ll make the world move for me. Even if it means having to fall again.”
He said it without bitterness, but the undercurrent was there, a small, stubborn pulse of defiance that made Pearl’s chest tighten. She watched him for a long moment, trying to decide whether it was courage or recklessness that drove him. Maybe both.
Her eyes flicked back to her own canvas. The boy’s face was unfinished, but the posture, the piano, the darkness cutting the light. She didn’t need detail to recognize it. Her body had painted it without permission, every muscle remembering what her mind had tried to bury.
Scar’s voice broke softly into her thoughts. “It’s weird, right? To look at the worst thing that ever happened to you and still call it art.”
Pearl froze. Her pulse kicked once, sharp in her chest.
She managed a small nod, eyes still on his painting. “Yeah,” she said quietly. Then, softer, almost under her breath: “Weird.”
Her voice trembled just enough to betray her. She tried to steady it by humming faintly. Her face, though, gave her away. Scar caught the flicker of discomfort before she turned back to her canvas, the corners of her mouth drawn tight.
She dipped her brush again, but didn’t start painting. Just stared at the water, the colors bleeding slowly outward until they vanished.
Pearl sat back from her canvas, brush balanced loosely between her fingers. The little boy at the piano stared back at her, half-formed and half-shaded, as though waiting for her to finish what she’d started. Her hand hovered, but she didn’t move. She didn’t want to. The longer she looked, the tighter her chest felt.
Across the room, Scar exhaled, stretching out his arm until his shoulder gave a soft click. He’d been watching her out of the corner of his eye, observing the way she hadn’t touched her brush in minutes, the stillness creeping back into her body.
Her phone buzzed against the tarp beside her. She blinked, pulling herself back to the present. A string of messages lit the screen: a bunch of memes from Gem, half-baked thoughts about the café’s new espresso machine, a heart emoji, then another chain of videos. Completely disconnected, perfectly her.
Pearl’s lips softened into a smile before she could stop it. The tension that had settled in her chest loosened, replaced by warmth, and affection, drawing her back home. She’s so ridiculous, Pearl thought, and the ache in her chest eased just a little.
Scar kept his voice gentle, careful not to startle her. “You want to leave it here? I’ll put it with the others.”
Pearl blinked, the words taking a moment to sink in. Leave it. She almost said yes — her instinct was to leave this behind, like she always did. But her fingers twitched against the edge of the canvas, grounding her. Leave it, and it’ll just become another thing you pretend didn’t happen.
She swallowed. “No,” she said finally, surprising even herself with the firmness of it. Her gaze didn’t leave the painting. “I think… I’ll take it home.”
Scar looked at her, eyebrows rising slightly. He didn’t question, didn’t tease, he just smiled faintly. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” She wiped her hands on a cloth, the motion slow, deliberate.
There was weight in that, more than either of them acknowledged.
She began cleaning her brushes, packing her things one by one. Scar glanced toward the door and then back to her. “Want a hand carrying that?”
Pearl smiled faintly. “I’ve got it.” She stood, sliding the painting carefully under her arm. “Thanks… for having me, Scar.”
Scar smiled up at her from his chair, hands folded loosely in his lap. “Anytime, Pearl.”
She nodded, her expression light but unreadable.
As she walked through the main room, Cleo waved without looking up from her laptop. Etho, still glued to his screen, gave a lazy wave that was somehow still genuine.
Scar watched her go, his smile lingering for a moment as the door clicked shut behind her. For a while, he just sat there, eyes on the empty space she’d left behind.
He smiled faintly. Pearl had left lighter than she’d arrived.
He’d helped a friend. That was enough.
But the longer he sat, the heavier his body began to feel. The smile thinned, his jaw tightening as he shifted in his seat. His right hand drifted down to his thigh, fingers digging in against the muscle until the pain sharpened. A hiss slipped through his teeth before he could stop it.
He knew exactly what was happening, but refused to falter.
Hold it together. Just a little longer.
He exhaled shakily, pressing his palms against the arms of the chair and pushing himself upright. The motion was practiced, contempt disguised as control. He grabbed his cane, rested against his easel and took a step, then another. The third felt like a needle pressed into his spine.
The relief from the meds was already bleeding away. Each nerve lit up in protest, a bloom of pain that turned his breath shallow. He tried to brace through it, but halfway to the kitchen his leg buckled. The cane slipped from his hand and clattered against the floor.
He caught himself against the wall, breath stuttering.
Come on. Move.
The kitchen counter wasn’t far.
Just a few more steps, almost—
“Don’t.” Cleo’s voice came softly from behind him.
He turned his head, half-startled. She was already there, calm as always, not asking how bad it was. Just knowing. Without a word, she pressed the pill bottle into his hand.
“Sit down,” she said.
Scar tried to argue, but his lungs gave out before his voice could. He leaned against the counter, panting once before twisting the cap open with shaking fingers. The pill went down dry, bitter against his tongue.
By the time he blinked again, Etho was at his side, silent as a shadow. He slipped an arm under Scar’s to help guide him back to the chair, no words, no hollow sympathies, just quiet steadiness.
Bdubs bent to pick up the fallen cane, setting it neatly against the wall where Scar always kept it. “There,” he muttered. The word was simple, familiar, as routine as breathing.
Cleo lingered nearby, arms crossed. She watched until Scar was settled, then turned to tidy the cup and stray brushes left on the counter.
Scar sank into the chair, his breath rough but steadying. His hands rested on his knees, open, as if in surrender. The edge of pain was already dulling, slow and reluctant.
“Thanks,” he murmured, the word rasping out between breaths.
Etho gave a small nod. Bdubs hummed faintly. Cleo’s hand brushed his shoulder once before she turned back to her laptop.
And just like that, the room eased back into the rhythm of keys clacking and quiet chatter filling the air again.
Scar leaned back, watching the light crawl up the wall. His chest rose and fell in slow, uneven breaths.
Scar leaned back, eyes tracing the light as it crawled up the wall. His chest rose and fell in uneven breaths.
Broken’s still fixable, he’d said earlier.
The words came back to him now, softer but heavier, settling in his chest. He’d meant them for Pearl.
But sitting there, bones aching and heart steadying, he realized they’d always been meant for him too.