Saw the clip of Grian’s eyes in Scar’s stream as well as some fanart of the moment and _immediately_ started thinking of an au. I’m not gonna write a full fic, but I’ll share what I have thought about so far!
Astronomer Grian discovers something out in space thanks to his new telescope. He spends a lot of time studying it, as anyone would, but then things get…weird.
Scar watches as the love of his life starts to lightly unravel. Muttering things to himself, having trouble getting to sleep, and sleeping restlessly when he _does_ sleep. He frequently has to be reminded to eat/drink and sometimes needs to be watched doing it or he just won’t.
And then his eyes changed. Once a super dark brown, now had bits of blue and purple in the irises.
Scar demanded to know what Grian found, and why he’s acting strangely. He’s asked so many times before where Grian just brushed it off, but it’s getting toooo far now.
Grian reluctantly says he found something _sentient_. And somehow, when he saw it, it saw him. It had no face and no eyes, it looked like any other distant galaxy formation, and yet he could feel it staring right at him.
It was haunting him, tormenting him, and he needed to know why, and how. He became obsessed, and in his focus, it slipped into his head. And he can hear it talking to him from the inside. It called itself The Watchers. And it had been waiting for him for such a long time.
Scar asks anyone he thinks might know the answer about what this was, to which Cleo, an archaeologist studying ancient civilizations, reluctantly tells Scar that she does. And it wasn’t good.
The temple she’s studying spoke of a being in the sky that corrupted and possessed people, and the more it could observe and watch, the more powerful it grew. It was only stopped and sent away thanks to the help of another being in the sky driving it away. It told humanity where to find it should they ever need it again, but shared no name before it left.
So, Scar decides to take the risk and journey into the stars to find the planet the other entity is from, before it’s too late for Grian, and possibly many many others as well. Even if it means possibly sacrificing himself. Yeah sure there’s magic and other common Sci-fi tropes that allow much further travel than physically possible in a lifetime happen in just a moment, but it’s also incredibly dangerous to get to and he doesn’t know the name of the thing he’s looking for! But hopefully as long as he can ask it, it can go help.
And stealing from PHM for a little bit:
When Scar’s ship is attacked and he crash-lands on the nearest planet with an atmosphere he can live in, he lives but doesn’t remember much. As he works on repairing his ship and surviving on this planet, he very slowly starts to remember bits and pieces. And even though Grian appears in a lot of the memories, it takes a loooong time for Scar to remember Grian’s name. Like for a while it’s “oh that cute looking guy was in my memories again” then for another bit it’s “oh he must be pretty important to me if I’m trying to save him from something out here” and for another bit “oh he’s my husband…” and all the while he just can’t remember his name. Sure he remembers a lot of the little nicknames, but the name evades him.
And all the while, there’s also a password he can’t figure out. And he can’t fix his communicator with Earth without the password.
One evening, he gets so frustrated with things he runs/hobbles off (the crash definitely damaged his legs and he doesn’t have the proper equipment to let them fully heal correctly) and cries on a hilltop. When he looks up though, he sees a beautiful sunset, and it takes him back to a memory, when he first met Grian.
He got frustrated by some college assignment and went off to clear his head. But there was someone already at his spot when he got there, and he went to leave but the guy said he didn’t mind company. And Scar would usually prefer alone time, the guy looked really cute so he stayed. They talked for a while as the sun began to set, and Scar notes how beautiful the guy looks during the golden hour, how his eyes caught the light and make them look golden. And he accidentally slips out the word pretty but thankfully! the guy says Scar looks very nice as well. And they suddenly remember they hadn’t introduced themselves to each other, and Scar goes first, and then so does Grian.
When Scar returns to the ship, it turns out the missing password was indeed Grian. So finally, he can fix his communicator and let Earth know what’s happened to his ship.
And that’s all I have so far! I’ll probably think of more but I’ll get to that when I get to that. But yes, The Watchers are an eldritch space horror infecting Grian. And the only cure is in a galaxy far, far away…
