Chapter Text
The abandoned facility was offshore of New Hermiton, a shamble of a structure that seemed like it aspired to be a sandbar, and nobody had so much as looted it for building materials before this, which Scar personally thought was a waste. People very rarely looted builds for their basic foundations here, or at least that was what he’d found, and even when he and Warhawk and Tinkerer and Shadow Prince stepped off the boat, Warhawk barely glanced at the rock beneath his feet. Scar tried not to flinch when Warhawk stepped past him.
It was dusk, the sun dipping below the horizon like a sweet berry into chocolate and the sky stained purplish like dye had splashed across it. The city lights spilled over the stars. Warhawk’s metal-sheathed feathers reflected the light until Shadow Prince called up shade to dull them.
Warhawk slipped around the side to check the perimeter one last time, cutting through the air as quietly as a phantom. Scar waved a hand to camouflage the boat-- great technology, he had no idea how it worked-- and Tinkerer knelt to drop off some molded clay figures she’d animated. They peered around facelessly before stationing themselves at the treeline, leaving nubby prints in the sand.
“Remind me what we’re looking for again?” Tinkerer asked. “Flash drive, about yea big, probably in some kind of case?”
“It should be a black case, about the size of an item-- a picture frame?” Scar ran through his inventory one last time, shifting his bow and the loaded gun to the first two slots. The boat was tied to the dock, so it wasn’t going anywhere, but he could feel the water it displaced sloshing up to wet the wood. If anyone was really monitoring this place and came by, they might notice that. “It’s very important to me, so we have to be careful not to damage it.”
“You know, sir, when something’s important to me, I look after it a little more cautiously,” Tinkerer said, and Shadow Prince winced.
“I had... many affairs to handle,” Scar said, drawing himself up indignantly. “Many affairs, and schemes, and dastardly behaviors, and you wouldn’t know this, being vigilantes and eating out of cloth sacks in the alleyways--”
“What?”
“But a man like me makes a lot of deals,” Scar said. “Some of which involve storing important items where they’re safer in the moment.”
“Right,” Tinkerer said. “Right, sorry. Didn’t mean to disrespect you at all.”
They had a mask on that covered most of their face. Scar still knew exactly how their eyes had just tightened, how the walls Cleo kept up against threats had slammed their gates shut again. That usually happened when he reminded them of their deal with the Mayor.
Never mind that Scar still hadn't figured out what their deal with the Mayor was.
“Hawk’s on his way back,” Shadow Prince cut in before Scar could say something vague and magnanimous. “So, we should probably get out of the open. It’s underground, right?”
“About a mile into the woods,” Scar agreed, “right as the sun sets. Does that sound right to you, Warhawk? Anything handy you want to add?”
“I’ve found the entrance, and a separate one that the satellite scan wouldn’t have shown that goes out onto the water,” Warhawk said, a little out of breath. He had dust on his armor, but he shook off his wings and that took care of it. “That one’s for ships, but it’s collapsed in, and we don’t have the technology to get through the rock, unless you’d like to give me a few minutes with explosives. I didn’t see any movement, but there’s signs that someone’s been coming in and out the main entrance.”
“Great. Just what we needed,” Tinkerer said. “You know this is meant to be neutral ground?”
“We’re being neutral,” Scar protested.
“Neutrally breaking into an abandoned base full of weapons,” Shadow Prince said, “and, oh boy, I guess we’re neutrally planning to neutralize any conflicts--”
“Peacefully, with big sticks. Big sticks and a metal bird man and good intentions in our heart,” Scar told them all, heading toward the treeline. Warhawk fluttered to get in front of him, not sparing him a glance. “And Warhawk can scout a location like nobody’s business, so this’ll be easy as pie. In and out, no stress, basically a day trip except we’re doing it on quite the lovely night. Listen to those crickets, that’s an order.”
“I think I preferred when you sent instructions by cryptic text,” Tinkerer informed him, and Shadow Prince slipped closer to her side. The sunset cast long shadows that rippled as he passed them, clinging to his boots like cooling honey.
The entrance to the abandoned base was sealed with no clear keyhole or keypad, only a thick steel door and concrete set into rock, overgrown with shrubs and creeping vines. Scar looked at the concrete wistfully– the fastest way into this base actually involved a pickaxe– and tried not to sigh.
“If you can get me into the computers, I might be able to spoof it like at Zed’s place,” Shadow Prince offered, rocking on his heels. “Or hey, check it out, there’s a gap between the steel and the floor. The door might not be working at all.”
“That’s big enough to get something in,” Tinkerer said, sounding intrigued. She took out another little creature, this one twisted together from wire into a cat shape, and it skittered into the hand-length gap as she shut her eyes. “Give me... a moment... this is called analog hacking, by the way, Prince, take notes.”
“You’ll be singing a different tune when we find something with a motherboard,” Shadow Prince threatened, and the door shuddered and pulled itself up like a ship under stress, groaning and stalling out once it had risen about four feet.
Warhawk’s metal mask was unreadable. He darted through the gap and called back a minute later. “Clear!”
“Thank you!” Scar called back, and they made their way in.
The purpose of the mission was to find an encryption key. Scar would have kept that key incredibly close if it had been-- well, him-- and it would’ve stayed in an item frame above where he slept, or in his inventory, but there wasn’t anywhere else in his home base that it could be.
He’d broken through the floors, so he would know. There had been blocks of wires and gurgling piping that he’d had to put back in a hurry because the computer stopped working, and blocks of concrete and stainless steel beams and granite, and blocks of ceiling that opened up to secret storage rooms of projectile weapons and odd technology, spears with embedded gemstones and a broken-off shotgun lined with human teeth and a shattered visage with Grumbot’s face that had made Scar jump. There had been a series of chambers and a lab with notebooks in familiar handwriting, dusty and untouched for who knew how long, and a coffee cup on the desk with dried-up crust at the bottom.
There had been a room with dark stains splattered against the walls, a bed frame with no mattress, and a drain in the floor. Several rooms like that. But none of the others had had people inside.
They cleared the abandoned base methodically, Warhawk and Prince breaking off as Tinkerer stuck by Scar’s side, focus split between her dolls. They walked past walls pockmarked with gunshots and great big jagged slashes, exposed wiring someone had laid out and shredded and a lot of mysterious stains, broken overhead lights and scattered glass that they did their best not to crunch underfoot. Whole sections were scorched up to the ceiling and smelled faintly of smoke and ash.
A level down they met up with Warhawk and Prince again-- Prince shook his head and made a what-can-you-do motion with his arms when Scar glanced at him, which Tinkerer hissed at-- and entered a room of pressurized gas tanks and industrial pipes, though Scar wasn’t sure what kind of gas or what the diamond symbols meant. The pressure gauges were all at zero. Prince made everyone stop while he teleported Tinkerer’s dolls here and there with his shadows, each of them carrying bundles of twigs or a little sensor, and then his shoulders sagged and he waved them through.
Scar went first, just in case. This wasn’t a universe that offered second chances.
“This place has been scoured,” Tinkerer said after another hour of searching. “If you had something here, it’s been sold at least three times on the black market, mark my words. You’d have a better time tracking people coming and going.”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Scar said with no despair at all, not even a whisper of it, he’d asked the computer to look out for the key on cameras and run the usual searches and that was probably what Tinkerer meant-- “that’s what I’ve already been doing, but it’s always good to double check, isn’t it? It could be in a little hidey-hole.”
“Well, we’ve cleared about fifteen little hidey-holes and the most we’ve seen are rats.”
“I mean, there’s more hidey-hole potential here,” Prince offered. “But, uh, if it was in this place it probably got melted.”
“Yeah, this might be a bust,” Scar admitted, and a breath of disturbance made him pause, holding out a hand to catch the others before they stepped past him. “Huh. Actually, hold on a second? And... cover your ears.”
“Okay?” Prince said, a little high-pitched. Scar fired three shots at the far end of the hallway, and Warhawk jerked back, drawing his own weapon.
Two of the bullets hit the wall in explosions of plaster, raining down dust that stopped before it hit the ground; a third hit with a spatter of blood, and the invisible person staggered and swore, revealing himself as a figure in a hoodie and sneakers, body armor covering his vital organs.
“Mother fucker-- what did I do to you?”
“Sneaking around is a crime in my jurisdiction,” Scar said cheerfully, “and it’s very rude to be invisible near a private conversation! A private conversation between allies, and you, my friend, are very welcome but not an ally.”
“That’s one of Doc’s gang,” Tinkerer said under her breath. Prince’s shadows stood ready at their feet. “Stop me if you know this but he’s low level, don’t know his name–”
That was good to know, because Scar had had absolutely no idea. Nobody had the courtesy to come with name tags anymore.
“Well, you missed,” the other villain said. His injured arm flickered, hoodie going translucent and slowly solidifying again. His eyes were so wide that Scar could see more whites than iris. “Barely-- barely grazed me. And if you kill me Doc is gonna be pissed, so you better back off.”
“Am I scared of Doc?” Scar asked his audience, keeping his gaze on the new guy, and Warhawk sidled up, wings bristling. Scar made his tone light and airy. He had to think hard to keep his eyes the right shade of green instead of letting them shade blue. “I can tell you’re scared, since for some reason people just get so out of sorts when they get grazed by bullets, but am I scared of you? Everyone comes out here, or so I’m told. I don’t think anyone would draw a connection between me here and you dead.”
“I already texted him,” the other villain bit out. “When I saw you. I’m just looking, I’m just a scout, no one sent anyone here for you.”
“Sir, he can’t be much over seventeen, and he’s not got a weapon,” Tinkerer said, still under her breath.
“Okay, then,” Scar said to the other villain, a little gentler, “maybe you’d like to help me out. Have you seen any mysterious boxes around here? Anything the people who looted everything might’ve left behind?”
The other villain stared. “Wasn’t it you who tore it apart in the first place?”
Warhawk went still. Scar let his smile grow wider. “As you can see, I wanted to take a trip down memory lane. Pick up some old photo albums, clear out the cave spiders, maybe find something that, wouldn’t you know it, I had a brain fart and left behind? Silly old me.”
“We haven’t seen anything,” the other villain said. “Doc has no comment to make through me, Mr. Mayor. If you want to ask him in person and you’ve got something to trade for the information, you can go and do that.”
Warhawk tensed up. Scar shook his head minutely and said, “Oh, well, if you insist,” then added on impulse, “Something to trade wouldn’t include you, now, would it?”
“No,” the other villain blurted. “No, it wouldn’t, he doesn’t negotiate for hostages.”
So which is it, then? He values your life enough to take revenge, but not enough to want to keep you alive?
It would’ve made sense to say it. Scar had made similar threats these past few months, combing through New Hermiton’s underground and facing off challengers who said he’d fallen off, gone weak for some reason, maybe been injured and that was why he was suddenly playing nice-- but it would’ve been a lot of hassle, and they hadn’t found anything, and he didn’t really want to get in a fight with Doc, anyway. He had the sense it wouldn’t be the least bit fun.
“In that case, I think we’re done here,” Scar said, vanishing the gun back into his inventory. The kid flinched, then apparently processed his words and nodded convulsively. “Tell Doc I said hello, will you?”
“Sure,” the other villain said. “Sure, I-- sure.”
“Just be sure to stay visible until we’re gone, or I’ll have to have Warhawk here kill you,” Scar said cheerfully, and the kid nodded again. “Goodbye, have a great time scouting, maybe I’ll see you later!”
His crew were quiet as they went back through the base. The boat was where they’d left it, the robotic pilot waiting just as patiently as expected. It was dark and the beach was empty except for them.
Tinkerer chatted quietly to Prince as they climbed onto the deck. Warhawk waited until Scar had boarded before he flapped up to join him, keeping a sharp eye out in case of assassination attempts, or unexpected Doctor Monster minion attacks, whatever he was supposed to be looking for.
He stumbled when he landed. Scar startled, stomach twisting like it always did when he was basically alone with Warhawk, and his bodyguard shrank into himself, not drawing away but just waiting, breathing gone shallow.
Scar swallowed hard. “Good job today,” he said, instead of everything he should’ve been saying for the past several months, and Warhawk nodded at him, wings tucked close to his side. “You can go below deck. I’ll be out here for a little while.”
“Sir, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Warhawk, my friend,” Scar said, and his bodyguard shivered almost imperceptibly. “If I need your help, I’ll ask for it, but right now my orders are for you to go hang out with Tinkerer and Shadow Prince. You can tell me if they’re scheming in my absence.”
He wasn’t sure that that last part had come off properly as a joke. Warhawk went down, leaving him alone on deck, and Scar clutched the railing and tried to enjoy the view, letting himself pretend his nausea was seasickness. He always felt guilty calling Warhawk by his code name.
The other Scar had beaten that into him, though. The other Scar had molded an innocent person into a bodyguard as reliable as his robots, so he could have someone at his back while he took all the best things in the world-- blackmail, murder, smuggling-- and somehow made them awful as he clawed his way to power.
The Mayor had climbed to the top of the scrap heap, and he’d taken a perfectly good not-a-player and broken him into a weapon, and now Scar had to keep calling Warhawk by that name. He had to keep his cover no matter what it took, unless he wanted to end up trapped in this dead, ugly, mindless universe.
He had to remember not to call Warhawk Grian.
*
*
Scar had been sitting on this bed for a while now, looking down at his hands and watching them shake.
The comforter was velvety and deeply red. The pillows were softer than a dream. All four of the walls in this room were coded into screens, defaulting to an unsettling darkness, and he could pick up a remote to flick between a lush jungle, a city of glass skyscrapers, a mountain biome, or a street bustling with more people than Scar had ever seen anywhere except the Mojang Hub.
If he raised his voice above a whisper and asked for it, a service robot would whir up and offer him foods he'd never seen before, like colorful juices that tasted like sunshine, and steak with weird tangy sauces, and seared chicken on beds of leaves. If he asked for information— who's the admin here, where am I, where's the universe, have you seen it, it's bigger than anything so I don't think I could have misplaced it— another wall would convert into a screen for him and scroll through text that gave him a headache to read, and if he told it that it would read aloud for him instead.
Very considerate that way, this server. This Not-A-Server. Scar smiled weakly at one of the service bots to show his appreciation, but it didn't react. Someone had written a name on its arm in permanent marker, but someone else– or the same someone, who knew– had scratched it out, leaving violent grooves in the metal.
Scar’s inventory was close to full. He carded through it again, going over his last Ender pearl and the weapons he’d had with him when he showed up and the glowberries he’d been hoarding. He ran fingers through his hair and his smile wavered and broke and it took a second to bring it back up again. He wanted to claw out of his skin.
The computer chimed politely. "Mr. Mayor, do you have another inquiry?"
“I really thought I had a good lead this time,” Scar said, trying to keep his voice even. “I got the timelines wrong, I guess... who knew games in other universes would be so much less organized, right? It’s like no one planned this at all.”
“Would you like me to research games for you?”
"I’d like you to research the noble llama,” Scar said, because the last time he’d asked serious questions such as whether anyone named Cubfan135 was in the database, everything had come up frightfully blank. "I am really, really feeling the need for some comfort llama time right now. Just their little fluffy faces, and their blankets..."
The computer screen flickered and brought up photos of fuzzy, long-necked animals. Something called Wikipedia defined llamas as a domesticated South American camelid, which smarter players than Scar would've probably understood. Something called Heropedia said there'd been a vigilante named Llama Man but he'd died twenty years ago in a public assassination, execution-style. Double tap. It didn't look like anyone had found the death that funny, and he never showed up again after that, so maybe he hadn't been laughing, either.
Or-- he hadn’t been, right. He definitely absolutely positively hadn’t been laughing, ever again. People didn’t respawn here.
Scar felt kind of hungry and kind of tired, and he still had fading bruises from the mission before this one, which had been going great until their attempt to pay back Scarlet Pearl’s favor had ended in Scar being slammed into a wall.
It felt scummy to ask Bdubs to heal him, though, and the easier solution would be a respawn. He had the bed right here. The pillows were stacked in fours and felt like soft moss squishing under his back, molding themselves to support his spine. He slept here, so he should’ve had the spawn point shifted over by now.
Scar put up a video of llamas in a grassy field, living their placid woolly lives in peace among the flowers and the sunshine and the tiny buzzing things that weren't all shaped like bees.
The trouble with respawning in this room was that Warhawk might hear. Which was coincidentally also the trouble with respawning anywhere, now that Scar thought of it, but he had an infinity bow and a netherite sword for once, and that wasn't nothing, was it? A man could fight another man with less, even one he really didn’t want to kill.
And then pulling his punches would mean he came back in this room, without any tools to mine with before his opponent lunged in after him, and then he could come back again, and again, and again, like having someone wrap fingers in his hair and push his head underwater at another person’s orders— like trying to scream and finding all the air had been sucked from his lungs, so the universe couldn't hear him and it kept looking away—
Wow, that was— that was a little bit dramatic, wasn't it. Scar reached behind him for a pillow and squeezed it in his lap. "Can you just call me Scar?"
"Please enter your key to alter personal information," the computer said, like it had every time before.
"Where do I get the other versions of me from? Can I send them back?"
“Please enter--”
“Is there a portal to let them go back?”
"Please enter your key to access classified information."
"Oh, man, is it really classified, though? Think about it. I know the answer, and you know the answer, presumably, but I'm just testing you to make sure…"
"Please enter your key to access classified information."
"Well, that is just plain rude," Scar said. "Has anyone ever told you you have bad manners? Did you skip the computer finishing school and go straight into honest employment? Because if I'm being truthful, this is not what I'd call honest, you're keeping information from me— who else would know?"
"Please enter your—"
"Never mind," Scar said quietly. "Go ahead and turn yourself off for the night."
The screens cut out. The service robot by the door tilted its head down and powered off like it had the night before, and the fluorescent lights overhead softened into wispy afterimages before snuffing out completely, doused like soul torches buried in gravel.
Instinctive disquiet crawled over Scar's skin, anxiety popping up to tell him that there were monsters nearby, or about to be, and if he didn't place a torch he'd be in a spawntrap with no friends at all nearby to get him out of it. Any moment now a skeleton would blink into existence and turn its guttered eye sockets towards his player tag. Zombies would clamber up to sink their teeth into his tendons and rip them out. Spiders might spawn, too, or zombie villagers that he could trap away from daylight, and it had to happen, didn't it? Mobs were inevitable. The universe abhorred a dark and wasted space like it abhorred a bored player. It wanted to fill it with light and color, or at least with some fantastically entertaining violence.
Silky, total darkness. Scar hugged the pillow and shut his eyes, wondering if there were night vision cameras tracking him right now that would flag this and decide that he wasn't doing a good job being— himself, absolutely just himself, who else could he possibly be but the supervillain called the Mayor— and the room stayed empty, a limb constricted so blood wouldn't flow.
All of Scar felt grayed and numb.
"Hello?" he mumbled, hushed so the computer wouldn't hear him. “Are you there? I'm right— I'm right here, waiting for you. I'd like to go home now. Do you see me?"
The ringing in his ears hurt like there were twin needles nudging into the soft folds of his brain. It hurt to hug the pillow and it hurt to breathe too deeply and it hurt to be. His skin was a crackling shell enclosing stale air and ozone, a scaffolding surrounding a mass of glitching phrases, a bundle of instructions stating that Scar often had brown hair and green eyes and slashes across his face and chest but his clothes, well, he liked to change those every minute. Changing the rest of him took a little more focus.
"Sitting in the dark like this, it's kinda hard to tell if I'm really here," he whispered. "So, like, a little bit of help wouldn't go amiss, if you get what I mean, and I have some lovely ideas for a bank to build if you'd just give me the chance— I just need some materials, or as you can see I'm having a not too good time here so getting back on Hermitcraft would be my best bet for that—"
The faintest suggestion of footsteps outside the door cut him off, a sharp thrill spearing through him. The service bot by the doorway lit up like a party decoration and said, "Designation: Warhawk would like to know if you have orders for him.”
"No," Scar blurted. "No, I am one thousand percent fine, I am peachy pleased about the mission today. He can go on break. Does he take tea? Does he sleep? Tell him he can go for tea and nap forever."
There was a silence. "Warhawk would like clarification on whether he can seek medical attention."
The world narrowed, like Scar was blocks beneath a polar sea and staring up at a hole in the ice. His whole body washed cold. “He got hurt on this mission? Turn the lights on, and tell him he can come in, he is absolutely welcome.”
The real Grian’s feathers hadn’t been white since Season Six, but Warhawk’s were still the color of old snow, where he had feathers. He took down his armor as soon as he entered Scar’s room, metal melting into his skin and the bladed feathers going carefully flat; the only real feathers he had were around his alulas. Every other one from his shoulders down had been replaced.
His eyes were dark and wary, his cheekbones too pronounced. “Sir,” he said, and without the voice modulation from his armor it came out thready, almost defensive. “You wanted to see me?”
“My good friend the computer told me you wanted to ask about an injury,” Scar said. “I didn’t think anything serious had happened on this mission.”
“It’s from the other entrance,” Warhawk told him. “Part of it collapsed on me when I tried to get through. It didn’t affect my mission readiness, I just thought you wouldn’t want me limping since I’m supposed to protect you.”
“You should go talk to Bdubs about being hurt, then. That’s what we keep him around for, isn’t it? Pay him the big bucks, he can fix you up as good as new. Better than new, even. How bad is it?”
“I can walk,” Warhawk said. He tugged up his pant leg to show splotches of savage bruising, darkening into purple around the side of his calf. The sort of bruising that would go down to the bone, which no one here seemed to heal from that quickly. “But you said–”
He faltered, lips going thin. He still hadn’t met Scar’s gaze.
Scar had seen the videos of how Grian had been turned into Warhawk. He’d watched them after he finished hiding the other Scar’s corpse, shoving him under a bed in that little room he’d been trapped in and cleaning himself up very nicely, concentrating hard to convince himself that the new game was impersonating the Mayor, that was the skin he needed, those were the rules he needed to follow-- after he’d gotten the blood out from under his nails and realized he’d need to fool the other Scar’s favorite lackey first.
The videos had been-- something! They’d definitely been something. Scar hadn’t actually known Warhawk was Grian until he’d watched them, so that had been a surprise.
Sometimes when he closed his eyes the last image he’d seen before breaking the screen floated around like a sun spot, vividly unreal, contorted so it didn't even look like a body: something pale and torn open arching with his wings yanked out at angles, mouth open in a silent scream. Something twitching and twisting as microscopic robots burrowed under its skin, repairing wounds that were just gonna open again like a build someone couldn’t get quite right. Blood gleaming black on the floor, running into the drains.
It was weird. A long time ago-- gosh, it must have been seasons back-- Scar and Cub had played some games as vexes. ConVex then ConCorp, just amazingly evil, corporate overlords who smiled with sharp teeth and walked through walls and ate people alive. They'd had a ton of fun clashing with the NHO and chasing Etho down at the end of the season.
The fear in Etho's eyes had been real when they had, obviously. The taste of his flesh had been real, and the vex powers that had crept up on Cub and Scar until cannibalism was second nature had been real, too, and the chase had been lovely-- but it hadn't been anything like what Scar had seen in his counterpart's records.
This Grian hadn't ever been laughing. He hadn't respawned and complained about the inconvenience of being torn apart, like any respectable Grian should have. He'd spat and taunted at the beginning, voice shrill like when he was really scared, like when a game was supposed to stop, and then he'd started begging as the days went on and then he'd just— it wasn't screaming, if Scar was being honest, it was hoarse barks and whimpers and this relentless— Scar didn't know, he didn't even know. And it was Scar’s voice responding to Grian back then, but he couldn't imagine those words coming out of his mouth.
You broke the rules again, Warhawk! So yeah, there are gonna be consequences. Don't you look at me like that, I've made my rules clear, haven't I? I have been quite merciful, all things considered. This is a lot nicer than I usually am to trespassers.
Scar remembered Warhawk in the room when Scar had been strapped down. His bodyguard didn’t seem to remember-- he hadn’t remembered a lot of things in the first few days since the other Scar’s death, weirdly enough-- and Scar had been trying his best to forget it, but it had kind of left an impression. The other Scar had been very clear about Warhawk’s standing orders when it came to prisoners. He’d made sure Warhawk demonstrated.
Respawn had made the other Scar very happy. The Mayor probably had videos of all that lying around somewhere, too, but Scar hadn’t been able to find them.
“I said you should tell me if you were hurt so you could get healed,” Scar told Warhawk, keeping his voice even.
“I’m doing that,” Warhawk insisted. “I’m doing that right now, I’m-- and I’m sorry, I should’ve remembered about the entrance. I don’t know-- I didn’t know I’d done that before, or I wouldn’t have tried to go in that way. I think I set off one of our own bombs.”
“That’s all right, we all make mistakes,” Scar said. “I know you’re good at your job! You didn’t mean to forget.”
“I can go to the room,” Warhawk said, low, and bile rose in Scar’s mouth. “I can do better next time, I swear, you can-- you’ll want to punish me so I learn--”
“Do you know what, I think getting a leg injury is punishment enough,” Scar said, because if he had to hear any more of that sentence he thought he might scream. He was sitting at the corner of the bed, Warhawk standing closer to the door, but he rose and walked to his desk, gestured at the chair across from him to get the weight off Warhawk’s leg. His bodyguard followed the wordless order and sat. “And you walked around on it for a few hours, right? So that is the lesson filed right into your brain, we don’t need to do any more of that. You can go to Bdubs as soon as we’re done here.”
“You don’t like to have me around healers.”
“You’ve been behaving really well, so it’s fine,” Scar said, and Warhawk swallowed hard, something draining out of him to be replaced with relief. Scar could still read him, even though he wasn’t his Grian. All of his pesky emotions flittered right across his face, and he emoted with his wings exactly the same way, even if they were heavier at his back. He was a lot less robotic than he had been when Scar had met him. “Did you eat today?”
“I’ve eaten my required calories for the day. This morning, and right before the mission. But I don’t need food every day, obviously, so--”
“You should raid the fridge the others use,” Scar suggested, leaning his chin in his hand. “Those three order so many groceries, you’d be doing everyone a favor taking some-- and we could order lobster rolls, I remember how you liked those last time.”
Warhawk made a face, then flinched. Scar pretended to have been studying his nails. “I’ll eat whatever you want me to."
“You should go and get at least two foods from the common room fridge and eat those until you’re full,” Scar said, thinking about Warhawk’s energy requirements. In the early days he hadn’t eaten at all without orders, and Scar had kept messing it up, and Scar hadn’t known he’d miscalculated until Warhawk had fainted. People here didn’t have hunger bars or anything to keep track with. “After you’ve seen Bdubs for your leg.”
“Yes, sir,” Warhawk said. “Did you need anything else from me? Do you want Bdubs to write you a report or anything?”
“Sure! He can send it to me over the system,” Scar said easily, like someone who knew how to access reports. “Now go on, shoo! Be gone from here. Go see Bdubs.”
“Yes, sir,” Warhawk said again, and stood.
Scar let his smile fall as soon as he was sure he'd gone.