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Gem watched Grian’s chest rise and fall steadily, his breath more even than it’d been every night they’d spent in company.
Ren sat beside her, warming one hand by a torch while he gnawed on some steak. He didn’t seem too cold despite the permafrost of their winter wonderland; Gem figured it had something to do with the trailing patterns of fur.
Gem herself was fighting off the chill; this frozen landscape was so awful it could settle ice in even her bones.
Grian, though, Grian had been barely functional since the games started.
Desert, he kept whispering under his breath, why couldn’t I be back in the desert?
So why was he warm now? It wasn’t any better down in the cave as they waited out the night for the trivia-bot: the stuffy air untouched by the small torch, and the four bodies not quite enough to match the phantom wind that blew despite their rocky surroundings.
Well, the answer was simple: Scar was curled around the man, their bodies flush like they’d always fit in one another’s arms.
Grian had fallen asleep first— not before instructing them how to sleep for the best trivia-bot mining— and he’d shivered his way into his characteristically uneasy rest. Not long after, Scar had left Gem and Ren sitting by the torch to hit the hay.
Instead of rolling out his own bedroll, Scar had simply slipped into Grian’s small space and curled around him. He’d fallen asleep almost immediately.
Gem had watched, fascinated, as Grian’s shivering ceased, his muscles relaxed, and his breathing evened out. Grian was always coiled tight, an edge to the mischief that Gem appreciated, so seeing his peace was interesting.
Gem rested her head in her palm, gazing at them and remembering her own quiet nights with Pearl. She wondered if the two pairs were similar.
Ren beside her sat forward, following her focus.
“They’ve always been like that,” he said, his gruff voice carrying a weight to it.
Gem snorted half-heartidly. “Baffles me how they can bicker my ear off but they can do this just fine.”
“History,” Ren answered simply.
She cast him a strange look. Grian and Scar were… well, they were Grian and Scar. They’d always been an enigma to Gem: she’d never really understood why they acted the way they did with one another.
Gem had never won the games, so throughout every major game, she was riding blind. She knew the winners remembered everything, even their previous games. This winter game seemed to be different, considering she could remember everything. When she joined in Secret Life to Grian pushing her into the square hole in Past Life.
The winners, though, had their memories even during the real games, not just these quick jokes.
“Like what?” Gem asked, curious. “That's gotta be one complicated history.”
Gem remembered in Past Life when Grian hadn’t hesitated even a second to draw his sword and cut Scar down when Scar had dared the red lifes to PvP. One second they were literally killing each other, and the next Grian was relaxing in Scar’s arms.
The fire flickered, casting shifting shadows on Ren’s face.
“You weren’t there,” Ren’s accent rolled. “In the early games…” He trailed off, clearly remembering something bitter.
“Scott,” Gem offered, “he told me stories. Something about two factions, two hands.”
Gem’s recollection of those stories were fuzzy, but in Secret Life she’d known nothing about why some people acted stranger than the others, and Scott’s answer had been to tell her bits and pieces of each winner’s story.
“We were split,” Ren confirmed, an old, burnt out rage carried in the words. “The first week of Third Life, the first game, Grian accidentally killed Scar. Played a prank that went wrong. The first death of every game, and it was green on green, don’t you know? Back then that was awfully taboo.”
Gem tilted her head, wondering how Grian killing Scar led them to this.
“Grian indebted himself to Scar, offering service until he lost his first life. They didn’t break the pact even when Scar went red early on. Then, I became king of the server with Martyn at my right hand.” Ren gazed at the two sleeping figures, recognizing something in them. “They resisted, and the server split with me leading one side and Scar the other.
“It was all about loyalty. The two hands, Grian and Martyn, they were fiercely so.”
At that Gem snorted. “Yeah right, Grian, loyal. He betrayed me last time, took my win.”
There were no hard feelings, it was a death game, after all. Gem wouldn’t remember next game, and she was too busy surviving to get mad in this one.
Ren tsked, “No, lass, you should’ve seen ‘em. Oh, Grian played it off as servitude, but then he died, and the pact was technically over. All it took was a smile and some flowers from Scar to keep Grian by his side.”
“Flowers? Like Scar’s sunflowers?”
“Poppies and lilacs,” Ren corrected. “They both stunk of them for weeks.”
Gem groaned and buried her head in her hands. “Scar’s cloak in Secret Life. They were woven into the fabric. I always wondered why.”
Idiots the two were.
“That surprises me,” the man breathed, “Scar wouldn’t have remembered giving them to Grian.”
Gem didn’t really believe in fate. She believed people did what they wanted, and the consequences led to the chain effect of life. Hearing this, though, made her wonder if Secret Life was destined for only one winner, and it wasn’t her or Pearl.
“Scott said he was the favorite,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Maybe he somehow knew.”
“Now that… that doesn't surprise me. Those two, they’re bound together. If Scar was close to a win, he may have started to remember bits and pieces.”
“They’ve always been weird about one another,” Gem noted.
“Yes, the Watchers string them together every time. Third Life, Double Life, always quiet allies when the other shoe drops.”
“Double life? Were they soulmates, then?”
“Oh, they were insufferable,” Ren laughed. “A dysfunctional yet ride or die couple. Scar forgave Grian when he tried to steal BigB from me.”
“They didn’t just divorce like Scott and Pearl?” Gem remembered Scott’s careful stories of that game. Pearl never, ever, spoke of it. Grain liked to laugh about 5 a.m. Peal, but she always shut it down.
“They couldn't have even if they tried. They can’t be separated, you see. Like me and Martyn; since Martyn won, he’s been stuck to my side.”
“He isn’t here now,” she pointed out.
“Is Pearl with you?” Ren shot back. “The winners, they work differently than us. They remember, and they keep those day one alliances through lifetimes. She’ll be with you at the end. Martyn, he will be by my hand before winter ends.”
“Pearl has tried to kill me more times than I can count on my hands,” Gem snarked, holding up a gloved hand and wiggling her fingers.
“And how many times do you think Martyn has killed me? How many times had Grian killed Scar? It’s guilt.”
“Grain’s guilty about killing Scar?” Gem asked, only knowing Grian’s thirst for Scar’s blood.
“Oh,” Ren exclaimed, surveying her intensely. “You don’t know how Grain won, do you?”
Gem averted her eyes, staring into the flickering torch instead.
No, Scott had never said. Nor had Pearl. Nor had Grain himself.
Ren took that for the answer it was. “They were allies, you see. Closer than any of us. I was dead, but we were ghosts. I watched as Scar ripped Grian’s second life away from him. Grain, rightful in his rage, attacked Bdubs, only for Scar to turn and kill the man himself.”
“They were the last two,” Gem breathed, a realization dawning on her.
“One had to win, lass. We made sure of it. We didn’t care who it was; we only wanted blood.” There was something dangerous in Ren’s voice.
“The guilt…” she whispered. “Grian didn’t— didn’t betray him, did he?” It wasn’t so much a question as an accusation.
Ren smiled sadly. “That would be too easy of a fate. No. They ventured up to their homestead, a mountain in the sand, and encircled themselves with cacti, just as they encircled the desert, and used their llama’s grave as a headstone. Then, to fight honorably, they shed themselves of any weapons or armor, and beat each other to death.”
It was such a brutal image that Gem winced. She could imagine the sand caked in wounds, the desert sun beating down on bruised bodies, the blood staining hands and headstones.
“They loved each other…” she breathed.
“And they were forced to watch the other die face to face by their own hands,” Ren finished.
“And that’s how Grian won?”
He nodded solemnly. “You wonder why Grain doesn’t talk about it, why they are the way they are?” Ren jutted his chin back to Grain and Scar.
They had not moved, still sleeping soundly in the niche of the cave wall.
“In the games until Scar won,” Gem said slowly, “it was only Grain that remembered. So in Secret Life, in the other games, he was alone?”
“As alone as you can be when faced with a man you loved and killed who doesn't remember a bit of it,” Ren said with bitter humor.
“But the other winners. They would remember, wouldn’t they? Scott and Pearl and Martyn?”
“They were just as bad. Scott killed me to win, but he did it honorably by running from Pearl as to not betray her. Pearl won through Scott’s sacrifice after a game spent in horrible solitude. Martyn won by betraying Scott.”
“And Scar won alone by killing me and Pearl,” Gem finished off.
“To win, me lass, is to suffer,” Ren warned.
Gem didn’t know why, but it only made desire burn hotter in her throat. She wanted to remember, even if it meant replaying every time she cut down her allies, every time the indignance of betrayal shone in Pearl’s eye.
She looked back at Scar and Grian.
“But they can find each other again. Once they remember,” She challenged.
“Only if they want to.”
“They want to.”
“They do. And they hate themselves for it.”
“Why?”
Ren sighed. Neither of them were winners, so they didn’t really understand. Unfortunately, both of them were close allies with the poor few.
“Because they will keep destroying each other,” he answered. “When you win, it means you have left ruin in your wake.”
“Pearl won’t destroy me,” Gem declared. She was right, she had to be.
“Not willingly. You never lose them willingly.”
Gem sighed, relaxing back into the stone wall behind her.
Grian shifted in his sleep, flinching then pressing back into Scar’s body, and Scar, in turn, unconsciously draped a heavy arm over Grian’s waist; they looked like two sleeping gods, cradled in the valley of great mountains, unmovable and eternal, ever melded.
She wanted to wonder how they got like that— whether it was something truly greater or simply a shared existence in the desert— but Gem figured that would only lead her to her own relationship with Pearl, and she couldn’t handle being such a deity.
Not that she was afraid. Gem was never afraid. But she was human, bound to the earth like the mountain rather than the valley, and to be a god was to relinquish her humanity. She hoped she didn’t have to do that to finally win. Gem would much prefer to seize her victory in her own way, not a predestined fate or a sacrifice of something fundamental.
Gem wanted to win with a sword in her hand and her enemies strewn around her, her rage justified by vengeance of her allies, and her final moments in a quiet world while she waited for her hard-earned memories.
“They’re winners,” Gem stated, catching Ren’s attention again since it had drifted in the lull. “If you win, you remember. If you remember what you lost, you can always get it back. You could win, Ren, and be like them.”
Ren, who had been about to speak, closed his mouth.
“I could be like them,” she continued.
“Who’s to say they’re happy?”
“Ren,” Gem laughed, “we aren’t happy anyway. At least they remember their love. It might be all they have.”
He seemed to consider this for a while, falling silent and staring into the fire. She didn’t blame him; it wasn’t the most comforting of sentiments, but Gem had weighed her options: forget and continue her perpetually destructive cycle with Pearl, or remember and carve out little moments of peace like Grian and Scar.
It wasn’t a tough decision to make.
Martyn had won last time, then Scott with the other double victory, then she’d pushed Joel to first, and her first opportunity at number one was seized by Scar. It was one thing to talk about winning and another to actually do it, but Gem was confident. If she could make it as far as she had every single game, then she stood a chance at remembering. At breaking the cycle.
Ren suddenly stood, gathering his things and moving towards his carved stone nook.
As he passed, he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, looking down at her with melancholy. “Get some sleep,” he advised, “like them. We need tonight's trivia to go right if we really want to win.”
“I want to win.”
“I know. I admire you for that.”
“But you still don’t?”
Ren chuckled, the sound low and deep like a roaring fire. “If Martyn stops trying to find me, then maybe I’ll try to remember. But for now, he seems to be doing just fine keeping up.”
With that, he was tucked into his nook and settling into his bedroll.
Gem, casting one final glance at the already asleep forms, wondering how to keep up with Pearl, followed his lead.
She tucked in for the night and drifted off into sleep addled with winter questions and dreams of lives she never got to live with someone she never got to love.