Chapter Text
It was quiet around them. The last lightning strike of Ren’s and BigB’s death had shaken all of the other players. But now it was quiet again.
Scar and Grian had gone to the Velvet Keep. Scar would call it home but it wasn’t. It didn’t feel like home. Grian didn’t feel like home. Not anymore at least.
A panda grabbed his attention as it sniffed his pockets. Scar smiled, the pandas were the only things that made him happy in this time. He reached in his pouch and pulled out some bamboo, feeding it to the panda who got right to eating.
He felt Grian stand behind him, waiting. What he was waiting for, Scar didn’t know. What he did know though was that Grian had just murdered his lover. Grian was the reason BigB was dead and Scar felt a smug happiness from that. It had bloomed in his chest since the lightning had hit and grown to cage his heart in. Normally, he would have been sad that Ren was gone, and he was! Ren had been the one who could relate the most to the pain Scar felt himself. But he felt good, relieved even, for the first time since Grian had found out Scar was his soulmate.
“You wanna say something?”, Scar asked over his shoulder, not looking at the flightless bird standing behind him.
He heard feathers ruffle. “Why are you so cold?”
Scar perked up. “Me? I’m cold?”, he asked and turned around, leaving the panda to eat the bamboo.
Grian didn’t speak up again. Scar couldn’t suppress a laugh. “You are the one who killed them.”
The avian flinched and the movement slightly pierced the walls he had surrounded his heart, his soul in. With one quick shake of his head, it was gone. Cheater was what his mind reminded him and every last bit of empathy he had faded away.
“Are you growing…soft, Grian?”, Scar asked, stepping slightly closer to the man who in turn retreated a step. “You have, haven’t you? And for whom? For your dead secret soulmate,” Scar muttered coldly.
“Hey!” Grian shouted. Scar grinned, finally he had triggered him.
“What could you be feeling right now?”, Scar asked, putting a hand on his chin. “Are you sad that BigB’s dead? Or maybe mad at yourself that you didn’t look beforehand who was running through the door?”
Grian’s eyes flashed. “Shut up, Scar.”
“I always thought it was your thing, killing. But now I’m wondering if I’m wrong,” Scar questioned.
Grian pulled his wings closer to his body. He was shaking. Scar knew that Grian was really uncomfortable now and he didn’t feel guilty at all to be the reason for the other’s distress.
“It’s crazy to think about it,” Scar said, talking more to himself than Grian. “You have never grieved me as much as you do BigB now.” A numbness settled over Scar. “I hoped you would have had at least a little bit of pity for me. Considering you were cheating on me since the start.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Grian mumbled.
Scar sighed. “Sure, whatever you say, songbird.” Grian stopped shaking and froze in place. The only things that still moved where his hair and feathers thanks to the wind that was slowly picking up. Scar knew that the nickname would remind Grian of the “relationship” they had in 3rdLife. When Scar was not joking around, was not behaving like he normally was, he was aware of every word he said, how he structured each sentence. It was something he had learned when he was a kid, he couldn’t remember who taught him but he had refined this skill.
“I won’t stay with someone who can’t even admit to being in the wrong,” Scar said and suddenly a line, a red string appeared in between himself and Grian.
Grian stared at their soul bond. Then he raised his head, anger in his eyes. “That’s just like you, you always leave when it gets hard.”
Scar napped his head up, not believing what he was hearing. Before he could answer, Grian had grabbed the string and twirled it around his fingers, his hand. He continued talking: “You’re selfish, only thinking about yourself and those stupid pandas.” Grian waved his hands towards the panda reserve Scar had built.
“Leave them out of this. They are not to blame for your actions,” Scar answered defensively.
Grian continued: “You’re reckless, putting our life on the line with stupid things like jumping off the Keep.” Scar had to agree with Grian on that one but that didn’t mean his words didn’t hurt.
“You’re boring, expecting me to stick around and entertain myself by playing couple.”
“What, you mean like 3rdLife? You mean like when we were happy, songbird?”, Scar asked, his voice wavering slightly but finding comfort in the way Grian winced.
Grian shook his head disappointedly. “3rdLife is over.”
“So, everything that happened there doesn’t matter anymore?”
Grian didn’t answer him. After a few seconds he continued his speech: “You’re unforgiving, just because I made a mistake, you wanna leave me?” Scar couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Cheater cheater cheater, chanted his mind to the beat of his (their) heart.
“You wanna be alone?” (The last thing made a memory flash in front of Scar’s eyes. A memory of sitting alone on a mountain in front of a house, a purple hood over his hair, tears streaming down his face as he watched five people playing with spyglasses, four people making shields together, four people picking flowers, three people gossiping, one person running around setting traps.)
Each accusation hit Scar deeper, scarred him from the inside. However, he didn’t cry. He wanted to, wanted to fall to the ground, his heart broken in tiny pieced. He needed someone to gather those pieces and hold them close, care for them, glue them together, keep them safe. But Grian was not the one.
“You wanna do this?”, Scar asked instead and raised one eyebrow, the Red of his eyes burning. Grian’s eyes widened, realizing what can of worms he opened. Scar could see how Grian suddenly realized what he had actually said. Grian realized that Scar had the same amount to shoot back at him. Grian knew that he didn’t treat Scar right, he never really had to be honest. Panic swirled in Grian’s eyes and Scar felt that was justified.
“No, Scar, please, I’m sorry,” Grian rambled, stepping closer, grabbing Scar’s hands. Scar looked at where their bond was still wrapped around Grian’s hand and now slowly tangled in his own fingers as well. It felt wrong.
Scar pulled his hands away from Grian’s grasp. Grian was taken aback but only for a moment before he tried to reason: “Scar, you’re my friend, I didn’t-“
“Friend?”, Scar repeated, cutting Grian off. “Friend?” This time it was quieter but not softer said. Scar hated how the word tasted on his tongue, hated how it had sounded out of Grian’s, his soulmate’s, mouth.
Quickly, Scar was in front of Grian, their faces so close together that their breaths mingled. “Is this what ‘friends’ feel like to you?” Scar’s breath caressed Grian’s lips. Grian had the audacity to blush.
Scar walked back, their soul bond growing longer. “I’m not looking for a friend, Grian. Not in you,” Scar admitted. He saw how Grian lowered his eyes, staring at the ground at Scar’s feet. The wind was making all the grass blades swing heavily from one side to the other. “But I know that my effort with you is a waste of my time and energy,” Scar added.
Grian’s eyes met his and Scar got a quick look of the melancholy of memories in them before it got replaced by fury.
“Then go,” Grian said, his words sharp as a knife. “Leave, if you must. At least like this I won’t have you plaguing my mind, my decisions, my life anymore.”
Both men stayed unmoving for a while, the wind so strong it was ripping at Scar’s hair and Grian’s wings. The pandas had long retreated, sensing there were negative emotions in between them. It had started to go dark, there were fast moving clouds in the sky. Every once and again you could see a star.
(Grian and Scar didn’t notice how Joel and Etho were standing outside of their ship, looking over the ravine and towards the two. They had been watching, the wind carrying a word over to them every once and again. They didn’t notice Pearl lurking around in the shadows, listening intently. She knew Scar’s pain, having been betrayed by her own soulmate. She and Scar had been each other’s comfort, even if it meant just standing in powdered snow together to annoy their soulmates. Grian and Scar didn’t know that there was a canary hiding amongst the trees, shivering in the wind. They didn’t know that the ghosts were picking sides and it was three against one for Scar, even when Scar had burned down the Ranch.)
“Did 3rdLife mean nothing to you?” Scar’s voice was quiet, barely audible over the wind. Grian heard it nonetheless.
“Do you mean the time I had to kill you?”, he answered, his voice even colder than the night air on Scar’s skin. He clearly had enough of talking about the Game.
He shook his head. “I mean us.” Grian flinched, Scar continued: “I mean me.”
Scar raised his head to meet Grian’s eyes. They were Red, same as his own. Their soul bond was now tightly stretched between them.
“I won’t fight for something that died in that Desert.”
These words struck Scar hard. He took their bond in his hands, looking at it. It was taunting him.
(One day, you’ll hear what I’m saying)
“Scar, what are you doing?”, Grian asked, panic rising in his voice.
“One day, you might care, might understand me,” Scar said quietly, tightening his grip around the soul bond, starting to pull.
(One day, but not today)
The bond’s color faded slowly. It was pain he had never felt before, tears springing in his eyes. He heard Grian gasp and saw how he clutched his chest. The string unraveled more and more until there was barely any left.
“Scar, no, please,” Grian begged, his one hand on his chest, his other trying to reach for Scar. Their faces mirrored each other in pain but while Grian had panic and anxiety written all over it, Scar was determined and numb.
With the last chuckle Grian would hear from him in a long time, Scar said: “After all, you’re just a man. Selfish. Want to have what you can’t. Forgetting to care for things until they are gone.”
Scar pulled one last time. The same second the bond in his hands snapped, he could feel something breaking in him, on a deeper level than just bones or his heart. He knew he had done it, he knew he had ripped their soul bond apart, knew that Grian and him were not soulmates anymore. Grian cried out and fell to his knees, clutching his side of the red string close to his heart. Scar on the other hand let go of the string and as it fell to the ground it turned black and faded. The only thing that was left were black string-like tattoos on his wrist where the bond had sat. A permanent reminder of what he had broken, what he had lost that night.
“This is my goodbye.” Scar turned away and left into the dark, into the night. Grian sat crying, sobbing on the ground, looking at his own blacked out bond and then after Scar. The wind had stilled and Scar ran, not wanting to hear Grian’s cried, Grian’s call anymore.
Scar had fled. He was going to wither away like an abandoned flower because he rejected his sun. Instead, Scar went to find the moon, crying in her embrace until there was nothing left.