There’s sand in Grian’s hair.
Scar didn’t notice it the first time around but now he sees it.
There’s usually not enough water to wash themselves, and on the rare occasions when there is they don’t have the time to wash their hair properly, or the stream is far too cold to stay in it for long enough, so they bolt out of it hissing, shivering, and sometimes giggling, put their clothes on hastily and run back to their desert to warm up.
Scar finds sand on Grian’s temples and on his neck, under his fingernails and on his clothes. In all the places they don’t have time or water to wash properly. He inspects Grian’s hands, rough from… everything they’ve been up to lately. The fingernails are looking less human-like now, in a way that Scar knows they do whenever Grian doesn’t cut them for too long. They look almost like claws now.
Grian frees his hand from Scar’s gently to tuck him and Scar under the blanket. He sighs, satisfied, and puts his hand back onto Scar’s; Scar grabs it immediately and resumes his inspection.
“What, never seen my hands?” Grian asks sleepily and bumps his forehead into Scar's ribs.
“Of course I did. I just never noticed how amazing they are.”
“Void,” Grian mutters. “You’re disgusting.”
Scar laughs soundlessly.
“What- Stop shaking! Are you laughing? Stop that, it’s like an earthquake down here.”
“Well if you weren’t snuggling me like that maybe it wouldn’t feel like an earthquake.”
“Oh, so you want me to stop snuggling you.”
“When did I say that?”
“That’s what I thought. Stop laughing.”
Scar does, eventually, but only after his sleep deprivation-induced hysteria decides to. Grian frees his hand again and Scar misses the contact immediately, but then Grian puts his arm over his chest and keeps it there in a tight embrace. Scar’s right arm gets squashed between them in the process and he briefly thinks about finding a more comfortable position but decides against it. Even with the promise of his arm going numb by the morning, and with the blanket barely covering his chest, he can’t imagine a place he would be more comfortable than he is now.
Grian stretches his wings - and wow does he make it look satisfying - and puts one of them over Scar’s body too, for good measure.
“This isn’t fair,” Scar complains. “I don’t have a second pair of forelimbs.”
From his position he can’t even hug Grian properly, and there he is, the bastard, one-upping Scar with his superior number of limbs.
“Hush. Sleep,” Grian says. “It’s gonna be a long day tomorrow.”
When was the last time their day wasn’t long?
“Goodnight,” Scar says. He pats Grian on the forearm and leaves it there - the only form of hug he’s allowed to perform right now. “Sweet dreams.”
Grian hums in response. After a few minutes his breathing gets quiet and slow.
How easy it would’ve been to break his neck right now. The thought doesn’t disturb Scar as much as it probably should. He could do it and it would’ve been easy, with Grian laying beside him with his neck, stomach, even his wings laid out for Scar to hurt. But he won’t. Not here, not now. Not this Grian.
He’d hate to cut the dream short. This is the first time in years that he’s been allowed to breathe.
He takes Grian’s hand in his and fights the urge to sink his (overgrown, too, but not predator-like) nails into the back of Grian’s hand. Sleep finds him when he gets too tired to fight it.
______
There was no one, in the end.
If Scar knew that it gets so lonely, he wouldn’t have even thought of winning.
The more he lived among his flowers, the more he wished it to never happen. A natural reaction to his situation, really. His loneliness just grew and grew until it wasn’t just self-pity anymore, not just despair and longing, but bitterness and anger.
He knew that if he’d die the current game would end, and the next game would begin, and all that would start anew and hurt just as much as the last time. So he just kept living.
He didn’t have any remains to bury. Even the items eventually disappeared from their chests. Their houses became overgrown with young plants and moss, some even begun to crack. Logically Scar knew that it definitely wasn’t long enough since the end of the game for all that to happen, but reality in the game worlds rarely followed logic.
Then the shadows came back, and Scar had enough.
“I want to make a deal with you,” he said without turning his head to look at them because that would make them disappear. “You guys probably want me to die, right? So that you could throw me and the others into the next game. And I really don’t want it to happen.”
They didn’t interrupt him. He didn’t expect them to.
“So how about we meet in the middle? Say, I jump off the nearest cliff right now, you get your next game, but after it’s over - it’s going to be over for good. Forever. No more games. And you can have my code. All of it. Do with it what you want. You guys probably love eating code for breakfast, and surely I’m absolutely delicious. What do you think?”
He swallowed a lump in his throat.
“Would my code, freely given, be enough for you to leave me alone?”
“Scar.”
Scar froze. The voice. He remembered the importance of this voice now that his past memories have been partially returned to him. He didn’t remember all of it but he remembered enough to know to listen when the voice spoke. He simply couldn’t help it.
The shadows usually disappeared when Scar looked at them. He knew that. It didn’t stop him from spinning on his heels sharply and looking at that one.
_____
Grian is smiling but Scar knows him well enough to know: he’s mildly alarmed.
“What are you doing, Scar?” he chuckles.
“We’re almost there! It’s just over that hill.”
“What could possibly be over that hill that is not just more sand?”
Scar only hums a tune in response. Grian huffs in annoyance but follows him anyway, lets him lead him by the hand wherever Scar wants. Scar’s chest aches at how trusting he is. How trusting he used to be.
The sun is beginning to set. It’s comfortably warm now but the temperature will start to drop soon. It’s foolish to stray so far away from any shelter and warmth with the sunset so close. Scar doesn’t think he cares. Grian doesn’t seem to either, even if he complains.
Scar stops. They’re standing at the top of a dune.
“Yep,” Grian tries to cross his arms but one of them is still occupied with Scar’s, so he puts his free hand on his waist instead. “Like I said. More sand.”
“Well hold on, it’s not just some sand.”
“Yeah? What’s so special about it? Looks like just good ol’ sand to me.”
“This is the sand I will defeat you on!”
Grian yelps when Scar tackles them to the ground. He grabs Grian, mindful of his wings, and they start rolling down the hill. Grian’s laughing, there’s sand in Scar’s mouth, there’s probably sand in Grian’s mouth, too. After a few seconds they slow down to a stop.
When the world stops spinning and Grian stops giggling, he asks, “What was that about?”
“Oh, you know, nothing. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.”
“For how long?”
“Embarrassingly long.”
“Dude. You’re actually gross.”
They stay like that, staring at the darkening sky. The sun hides behind one particularly big sand-dune but the sand they’re laying on is still warm enough to be pleasant and to keep the soon-to-be chilly air from making them cold.
Scar turns to look at Grian. There’s sand in his hair - still. Grian probably won’t be able to get rid of it at this point. Not in this life, anyway. Without saying anything, Scar reaches out and puts a handful of sand on Grian’s chest. Grian looks down at it in confusion, then glances at Scar and arches an eyebrow. Scar shrugs. Grian shrugs back and turns his attention back to the sky.
Bury me in it, Scar wants to say. Bury me in warm sand.
Maybe this way he’ll escape it. Buried in a place he will always call home. Maybe if they stay here, warm and safe in the desert’s warm, dry hands, they won’t have to do it again. Maybe if they curl right here beside each other like little kids the desert will accept them as her children and keep them away from everything and everyone else, forever.
He doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he takes another handful of rapidly cooling sand and pours it in Grian’s hair. Grian side eyes him, says nothing and smiles.
_____
“They don’t want you,” Grian said.
Scar was pretty sure it was Grian. Even if he looked different and was slightly see-through, he sounded the same.
“They don’t want your code, Scar. There’s nothing- There’s nothing you can offer that’d make them stop.”
Scar felt cold dread spreading from his heart to his lungs and down into his stomach.
“They will kill you now,” Grian continued almost impassively. “They’ll have a- punishment waiting for you. When you wake up. Something they think will be entertaining to watch.”
He understood then. He wasn’t really doing anything by staying alive. They were allowing him to do it. There was nothing he had that he could use to bargain with them. Not even his life. Not even his code.
Scar suddenly realised that he wasn’t angry anymore. He was just tired.
“Will the others be there?” he asked, voice quiet. "Will you?"
Grian looked like the question physically hurt him.
“Yes.”
_____
They’re preparing for battle. Scar’s red and Grian’s green, because Scar couldn’t change that part of the story, apparently. The castle is quiet and cold in the early morning hours.
Grian puts his armour on and watches Scar struggle with his. It’s theatrics and they both know it.
“Do you need help?” Grian asks, smirking.
“Who? Me? Pffft! Never.”
He lets his helmet fall to the ground with a loud clunk.
“Whoops.”
Grian stares at him, both annoyed and amused, and picks the helmet up. He fixes Scar’s hair gently, brushes his hair off his forehead before putting it on his head and making sure it won’t fall off this time.
“Hey,” Grian says, still standing close to him. His voice is small and serious. “Don’t die.”
He puts his hand on the part of Scar’s shoulder that’s not protected by the iron. There’s steel in his eyes, a quiet kind of determination, as if he can will Scar’s life into never ending, as if he can make him immortal.
And Scar never expected the fact that the feeling is mutual to be the worst part of having this again.