(this does not have to be canon i just thought it’d be sweet!)
Grian is alone, which is exactly how he wants it. He wants to sit in the darkness, missing the silvery other half of his soul, missing the friend he’s responsible for vanishing. He knows it was his fault, he does, and he’d trade his own stupid godhood for the chance to stop this stupid chance event. The sun can go to hell, for all he cares. The gods can give the light to Pearl. She deserves it. She’s so much brighter than he is and yet so much less scorching. Calmer.
The gods don’t need him, he tells himself, and he fades, tripping through reality after reality, watching a golden-haired boy and two girls, one raven-haired and one with fluffy locks the color of the dusk, make their way through life after life after life. He knows that he’ll never get to the life he’s actually lived. Every time he snaps back to the blackness, he remembers less and less about himself. He is golden-haired, and they are the colors of the night sky and the bright dawn, and he has to disappear. He knows that. And so he keeps going.
(Jellie is missing, and Scar is trying so hard not to panic. He really is. But the dorm’s been so empty, lately, it’s so… lonely… and Jellie, his lovely, not-as-chubby-because-she-went-on-a-diet cat, the darling of the school, is missing. He knows that cats do this sometimes, and he remembers that Grian once had cats who had run off. Scar puts out her favorite bed and a can of luxury wet food, and he waits. He puts on music, but the pictures around the dorm don’t help the loneliness much.)
Jellie knows exactly where she needs to be to help her human. He is silly, most of the time, and the red-sweatered one makes him laugh in the late hours of the night when they’re both drinking things that she knows they definitely shouldn’t (really, even cats know that energy drinks smell like death. Jellie doesn’t understand how humans willingly consume them.) Recently, the red one, bright and enthusiastic, has been missing, and her human has been sad. She knows because he gave her extra catnip, and he never does that when he’s not upset. So she goes looking for him. It doesn’t take long. He’s stationary, curled up into a ball in a chair. The greenhouse lady, the one who gives her sweet berries, is watching over him, and when she sees Jellie she reaches down for ear scratches. Jellie loves ear scratches, but this time, she has a mission, and so, upsettingly, she dodges the friendly hand of the greenhouse lady. Curse her beloved human. He’d better give her so much catnip for this. She carefully curls herself around the drooping foot of the red-sweatered one (currently missing his trademark red sweater, which Jellie thinks is a shame. It’s very cozy, good for a bed) and goes to sleep. She’s prepared for the darkness that follows, because Jellie always knows exactly what to do to make her human happy.
Grian does have an Achilles heel for soft things. He also has a soft spot the size of the Pacific Ocean for Scar, even if they haven’t spoken much lately, and if possible, his love for Scar’s grouchy, aristocratic cat, Jellie, is even bigger. He can’t help it. They’re such an odd pair. And when he starts seeing a cat with the same “little bit of red in her” that Scar always mentioned (he’s not sure who that is, or when he’ll show up in the cycle, but the name feels warm on his tongue), well. The cat is so familiar, and he’s pretty sure he adores the fluffy animals. He is guilty already, what’s one more look up?
(Scar really, really misses Jellie. But, he realizes, as he gazes at the portraits, he knows she’ll find her way home. She always does. His friends… humans are more temperamental. You can’t exactly lure them back with catnip, can you? But… you can offer them a home again. Just because they have new friends doesn’t mean that they won’t return, just like Jellie, but he has to let them know they’re welcome. He stands up, still staring at the photo that Impulse took of all five of the roommates at the lakeside, just before Grian shoved Mumbo into the water and Scar fell in on his own from laughing so hard. They won’t come back unless he tells them that he misses them. He turns tail and runs out of the room, leaving the bed and the food at the window.)
Jellie is good at what she does. The red-sweatered human is stubborn, and fading fast, but she’s the best sweet talker this side of the universe, and so she follows him, watching his lives and progress. The greenhouse lady and the kind raven one show up a lot, which Jellie could have predicted even if she wasn’t here. She’s not blind. Their bond goes soul-deep. Eventually, the bright one turns to face her in the dark. “Why are you here?” She doesn’t respond, because she’s a cat, and he wouldn’t understand her. She just sits down and meows, cuddling up to his leg. He sputters a little, but when he bends down, he knows exactly where her favorite scritching spot is. Jellie purrs, smug. There it is. The red-sweatered one sighs and sits down. “How do I leave?” he asks quietly. “I don’t… I don’t think I want this. I don’t… I don’t quite know where I came from, though, much less how to get back.” If Jellie could laugh, loud and wide like her human does, she would. Because she knows the way back. Because Jellie always, always knows what’s best for her humans.
When Grian wakes up, groggy and not quite himself, all lens flare and sunrise-purple light, five people are in the bay. He doesn’t immediately have all their names, but there is the raven-haired woman, the rosy dawn, a man whose hands look like they’re either covered in blood or some suspicious red powder, a man who looks like he just woke up and ran here on foot, half-dressed and in different fashion styles entirely, and a man with green eyes holding a happy gray cat.
No, this is the ending I want. Luna, you are so amazing. This was absolutly beautiful and better than anything I could’ve come up with.
janainaart
jacobvanloon
origamiaround
jbbartram-illu
