Work Text:
Cleo was the undead one.
Yet, funnily enough, Scott was the ghost.
Well, obviously. To be fair, he was one, in a sense. In both senses, honestly.
Literally, in that she saw the guy blast himself to kingdom come, saw his disfigured corpse hit the ground and the whole done deal. Metaphorically, in that, even if the Scott he’d turn into was still up and kicking, this Scott — the person Scott used to be, the person this Scott was, right now, all the beliefs, ideals, and dreams he held at this second — were as dead and buried as she was.
He was a Scott they'd watched Scott kill himself. A Scott they'd helped make. A Scott they resented and forgot and, sometimes, at their weakest, mourned. Missed.
If you replace every part of a ship one by one until none of the original parts remain, is it still the same ship?
Occasionally, she'd asked themself the same question. Usually, when stitching new mismatched skin over old, rotting flesh, or sewing an ill-fitting arm or two back into a deltoid muscle, flexing her fingertips until the limb that wasn't felt like it was hers. They'd never found an answer. Though, to be fair, that was probably because she'd never bothered to ponder it long enough to come to one. Never cared enough to, really. It was a silly thought experiment for silly people.
“Cuuuute. You put your hair up. ” was the first thing her chosen soulmate said to her, which made them snort, because, really? Yes, right, of course, obviously that was the first thing he said. Because he was Scott.
But, also, he wasn’t. He was her old friend, the one who had died two years ago, but, also, simultaneously, the guy she had just spoken to yesterday.
He was Scott, in the way his pointed ears twitched, the way they always did when he was nervous or wary. And, yet, he wasn’t, in the way he dug crescent-shaped indents deep enough into his palm to scab, a habit he’d first picked up to annoy Pearl in Double Life before it’d become compulsory, a habit he’d only broken in Secret Life and hadn’t relapsed into since.
He was everything Scott was. And, well, wasn’t. Isn’t, now. Everything he had been and nothing he still would be.
"Yep," they combed their fingers through their hair, twisting the hair bobble idly with a shrug. They didn't make eye contact with him. Like a coward. "Decided to put it up in... the next season after yours, I think, actually."
For a second after, maybe two, there was silence — deafening, dead silence, the kind of silence that made your ears ring with alarm bells before they finally mustered enough courage to take that unnecessary breath and exhale out a clipped: "So. We need to talk."
"Yeahhhh," Scott agreed, like he would, like he was, as he echoed, "Mm. We do, yeah."
Not gonna lie, Cleo would rather redig their own grave than have this conversation. Having it, to be fair, was very much like digging up and an old, rotted corpse. Having to disturb the build-up of sediment and silt, of forgetting and forgiveness, fingernails dirtied with dried blood you forgot you spilt and spit you forgot you spat, all to stare at the ugly mug of something you thought you had killed and laid to rest a long, long time ago, the mutilated remains of both who you were and of who you promised you'd never be again.
"Listen. Scott. So... It's been a while — well, yeah, obviously — and, so, a lot of things have changed. Like, a lot. Too much, actually, and as much as I'd love to, really, I truly, earnestly, do not have the time or patience to speedrun your two-year character development and dismantle all your unhealthy coping mechanisms in the week or so you're going to stick around, so it'd be absolutely lovely if you could do me this solid and trust me blindly on everything I'm about to say. Yeah?"
The familiarity of the motion was almost comforting. And that, in of itself, was rather discomforting. Disconcerting, even. Their fingers slid into the cross brace as if they'd never left it. Funny, to be the zombie and, yet, also the necromancer, pulling the strings of a reanimated corpse, taking their old puppet out of the locked, wooden box that should've stayed buried six feet hers. They were probably a bit rusty, true, but they'd always been good at puppetry.
So you can imagine their surprise when, instead of being pulled taunt, the danglers snapped.
Maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise. Cleo had been the one to teach him how to cut a string, after all. She'd handed him the scissors and shown him how to snip off the one tied to his finger.
Still. Somehow, she never imagined he'd cut the ones tied around his wrists. The ones tying him to her.
"Mm, no thanks," He hummed, voice whetted, "I'd rather not, actually. See, I think I've done enough of that for a lifetime. Or, a couple lifetimes, from what I've heard. Have you met Gem, by the way? Absolutely lovely. Gave me a bit of a run-down on what happens — happened — in Double Life."
"Gem?" Cleo felt her nose wrinkle, as if she'd smelled something rotten — something rotting, rather, and something that wasn't her, for once. They scoffed. "Yeah, no, I wouldn't exactly treat her as an expert on all things Double Life. Or, on basically any season, really. She hasn't been here for, like, half of them."
"Maybe not," he agreed in that way of his that meant he didn't really agree, "but she did a bit of research on my behalf. Some asking around. Had a little chat with Martyn, actually."
"Martyn?" Oh, she was going to kill him. They didn't even know what for yet, but she was going to absolutely murder him.
Mhm," he hummed non-committally, "Funny, turns out, I wasn't the only one you gave a cornflower. Gem said Martyn mentioned a conversation you and he had early on — one in both our pasts." Scott titled his head, eerily detached, "'Scott's just another healthbar for somebody to go through before they get to me', huh?"
Martyn'd never done the whole snow spelunking thing. Still, for a second, Cleo could've sworn they were still soulbound and he must've dunked himself in a block of the stuff, for that was the only explanation they could come up with for how suddenly a haunting sense of cold washed over her. "That — come on, Scott, you really think I meant that? I was just saying that to get him off your back—"
"I guess actions do speak louder than words," he not-agreed again, "like how I've heard you immediately turned around and tried to absolutely murder me after it was down to the last two pairs. Like, literal milliseconds after Bdubs and Impulse died, apparently. Did not hesitate."
"What?! I did not, Scott, no, that is a lie. That is a bold-faced lie," they hissed. "That is a load of rubbish. That is not true. I never even hit you! Not even once!" "Martyn did," he insisted, frigid, "and you didn't stop him." "I — Martyn was never beholden to our allyship, Scott, you know this, you always knew this. I'm not — I wasn't his keeper! It's not like I could stop him—"
"—So you didn't even try to?"
"No, I tried! I tried, I did try — I had no choice, I was loyal to you as far as humanly possible, I never thought we'd survive to that session — survive that long — there was no clean, quick or painless way — I never went after you! I only ever attacked Pearl—"
"That's a technicality and we both know it," he scoffed.
Cleo didn't need to breathe. And, yet, they still felt their lungs begin to constrict, anyway, airway getting tight as she choked, "Scott, you have to understand, I had no choice..."
"There's always a choice," he sneered, voice cold, ice-cold, colder than her, cold enough to make a corpse shiver, "Especially* when there isn't. I wasn't supposed to be able to choose you, but I did. We chose to choose each other when it wasn't a choice — at least... well, at least, I chose to choose you. You were the one who taught me there's always a choice. So don't give me crap about not having a choice," he spat, voice breaking in tandem with her unbeating heart, "Not when you were mine."
"I — I held on for as long as I could." They asserted stiffly. "I held on until I couldn't anymore..." "I don't think you did. In fact, I think you were always looking for the first excuse to let go. "Yes! Go on, Scott,"" He deadpanned, ""Suicide! That's what we want"! Isn't that what you cheered as ghost while I killed myself? Guess I really was just 'somebody else willing to lay down their life for you', hm?"
"You know I didn't mean—"
"No, you did. You did mean that. You meant that, and, the sad thing is, I think it's the only thing you ever said to me that you did mean. And I didn't even get to hear it. Kinda insulting, that you couldn't even say it to my face. Almost as embarrassing as the fact I never figured out you had two."
Ironically, at that, he turned to face away from her. He didn't even seem to breathe for a moment, still and rigid before he shrugged with forced slack and continued on with a simple, casual, "Yep, sooo, I'm going to leave now. Just I thought I'd humor you for a bit. Bye, Cleo. Have a nice life. Or don't. Not really my business, I suppose, since I'm kinda not going to be in it anymore."
And, then, he... turned around.
And started walking away.
He was leaving. Not Pearl or Martyn, no, not this time. This time, he was leaving them.
"Wha — wait, where are you going? Where do you think — nono, Scott, no, Scott, Scott, do not walk away from me, mister, don't you dare, Scott, listen, you're going to go off and get yourself killed—"
"—Sounds like you'd enjoy that, huh?"
"—Scott, I am serious, you don't know how this season works, how this this world works, Gem clearly only told you all of that because she wants to betray and use you—"
"—yeah, you'd know all about that, wouldn't you—?"
"I didn't betray— I was just following Martyn's—"
"—I'll see you, I'm going to my room in Gem's base that she's already made. Yeah, we already have a base together, so. Cya later."
It'd been lifetimes since they'd been in anything close to a relationship with Scott. After Double Life, they'd gently, amicably, kindly killed what they had had together, their queerplatonic partnership euthanised peacefully in its sleep after they decided they'd just be better off as just friends. And, yet, still, they couldn't help but numbly stare as their dead then-boyfriend disappeared into the horizon after crawling out of the soil and brutally dragging something she'd already thought long-since dead out of its grave to murder it all over again right before her eyes as she muttered in a hollow, cracked voice:
"...I—I feel like I've just been broken up with."