Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Pearl is dead.

It was a surprise, at first, and now it’s settled into something numb, something distant; she’s dead, Scar, you won loops in his mind as he drags himself out of the ravine and across the map to where the Secret Keeper still stands, imposing and terrible.

Scar thinks he hates the Secret Keeper. He thinks he hates what it’s done to him. Scar could have had friends, he’s pretty sure, if it weren’t for the Secret Keeper. He could have had something other than—other than isolation. But he might not have won if he’d had that, would he? He probably would have gone down alone, anyway, far away from any of those friends. He doesn’t know. He’ll never know, now.

He lost his book at some point. He’s not sure if it really matters. He hadn’t thought he’d win. He hadn’t thought—

It doesn’t matter now.

He’s barely standing. Everything feels bruised, cut open, laid bare. He leans against the pillar the succeed button is built into and glares up at the Secret Keeper.

“This is your fault,” he says to it. It doesn’t respond. Why would it? It’s a stone statue.

Scar sighs, and he stares at the button.

He might as well. He might have lost the book, but he still remembers the task: win Secret Life.

He presses the button.

It’s instantaneous.

He gets health, sure, but he barely notices it over the flood of memories that hit him: the Clockers tower, Bdubs and Cleo, having a family. Further back than that, the panda reserve and Grian avoiding him, going after BigB and leaving Scar alone in every way except physical; before that, Magical Mountain, and the loneliness so similar to now that had come with it, trying to sell crystals and enchanting and no one wanting any of it. And before that—

Before that, the desert.

The desert, and Grian, oh, Grian. Nights spent with him in quiet, days spent under the desert sun preparing traps or messing around. Pizza, and Dogwarts, and the cactus ring—

Oh, Grian.

Grian died here. Grian died far away, and Scar hadn’t bat an eye at it because he hadn’t known Grian the same way here, hadn’t known there was something missing in the first place. Grian was his soulmate, his other half. Grian was his everything at one point. And now… and now, Grian can’t even look at him. Had Grian remembered? Had Grian known?

He must have. There’s no other reason for Scar to remember the grief in his eyes during Double Life, the way he couldn’t stand to be around Scar more than was necessary for their survival. 

Scar feels even more alone than he had before, now.

“Are you happy?” Scar says to the Secret Keeper. “Are you happy with your winner?”

He’s going to be alone forever.

The air hums. Scar squeezes his eyes shut and slumps against the pillar.

“I don’t want this,” he says, nearly a sob. “I just wanted friends.”

Sure, a little chaos, but nothing that would end up with him here, all alone, no allies. Chaos has always been the most fun with someone to share it with, and Grian had always been the best at that. Grian had reveled in it the same way Scar did.

He doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

He opens his eyes, and he’s not where he was a moment ago.

He’s on a hill. It’s covered in flowers, mostly tulips. The sun is rising in the east. 

He knows this place.

He scrambles to his feet and looks around. There’s no landmarks that he can see through the trees, but he knows this place, unless he’s been sent to a new game, because there was only ever one flower forest. 

Is he in Third Life?

He remembers climbing down this hill, remembers digging through the cliffside for materials, remembers running into other people. 

How did he get here? What time is it, how late into the game has he been dropped?

He digs around in his pockets for something, anything at all, to orient him. He finds absolutely nothing. He squints through the trees and waits to remember where to go. He knew this place once. Maybe not like the back of his hand, or his bones, but he did know the layout of the map, and he did know what was around his spawn point.

He knows if he went a little closer to the border he’d find the valley that Jimmy and Scott settle in, and if he went west he’d find the desert, and if he goes east he’ll find the village, and Dogwarts—or, maybe not Dogwarts yet, but the mountains, at least—and if he goes north he’ll run across Skizz Point and further north he’ll find Etho and Tango’s swamp.

He takes a deep breath. He should walk around a bit, see if he’s really here (he knows he is). Get a lay of the land. See if he can find anyone. The village is as good a place to start as any, isn’t it? There will be people there, won’t there?

He can only hope.

He starts walking.

The village is untouched by the mayhem of the game. There are still villagers here, and there aren’t any additional builds, and the ring of dirt demarcating the burned-down dark oak tree is nowhere in sight. The tree itself isn’t even there yet. It makes Scar’s heart hurt more than he was expecting it to, seeing all of this again. Familiarity clogs up his throat until he feels like he’s about to cry.

He pushes that down. 

Is he the first one here?

For a moment, he debates: he could take over the village. He could live here, he could turn this into his empire. It would be like Trader Scar’s, but even better! He’d have things people actually want, like villagers! He’d get visitors! He doesn’t know how long this will last, so he might as well make the most of it, right?

He doesn’t know why he’s here, or how, or what’s happening. He doesn’t know why he came back here after he won Secret Life. Scar made it out of that hellscape victorious. He killed so many people for it.

So what is he doing back? Is this a new task, some new quest given to him by the Secret Keeper? Is his job not done? Is there something he’s meant to do here? Someone he’s meant to save? Someone he’s meant to kill?

Or is it just… random chance?

Does it matter? He doesn’t have a book with him. He doesn’t have any instructions at all. If he’s meant to do something, if the Secret Keeper has some plan for him, then it did a bad job of telling him. If he doesn’t have any instructions, isn’t his goal to just… get out? Go back to whatever home server he has? He can’t remember where it might be, which is frustrating. All he remembers is this, the games, this cycle of death.

He wants to get out.

He flexes his hands and looks around. No one else is here yet. He knows that eventually Etho and Tango will show up, and so will Bdubs and Cleo and Impulse, and then so will…

Grian.

Oh, God, he’s going to have to face Grian.

Grian, who loved him. Grian, who abandoned him. Grian, who looked at him like he was already dead, and now Scar knows why. Grian, who Scar wants to find and hug and—

He doesn’t know if he can. He doesn’t know if he can handle it.

He’s been fine without Grian before. He doesn’t need Grian now.

There’s a creeper behind him, Scar can hear it. He reaches for a sword that isn’t there anymore and spins around and sees Martyn, who’s grinning brightly. He bursts out laughing, doubling over.

“Oh, you should have seen your face!” Martyn laughs.

It’s jarring to hear Martyn’s voice again. The last Scar saw Martyn, he’d died trying to climb the ladder up to Etho, Cleo, and Grian up in that little box. Martyn had harassed him for weeks. Martyn, before that, had won, too. Scar sort of remembers that: he remembers being a ghost, being an observer to his betrayal, remembers seeing Martyn lose it before Scar got sucked into Secret Life and the cycle started all over again.

Before that, and before that, and before that—

Martyn hasn’t met Ren yet.

“Hello, Martyn!” Scar calls out. “That gave me quite the scare!”

“I apologize for that,” Martyn grins at him. “What are you up to? I’ve just been doing some mining—first day tasks, and all. You know how it is.”

“Of course, of course,” Scar nods. He should… probably do some of that himself, shouldn’t he? At least, if he wants to survive. “I’ve just been exploring, personally. Is this place yours?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Martyn chuckles. “I don’t have a home, really. I was actually about to go explore myself to find one. How far have you gotten?”

“Not very,” Scar says. “I sort of ended up here after spawning.”

“Maybe we could go together, then.” Martyn brightens. “It’s always more fun with a friend!”

He… could do that. It would give him some idea of where everyone else is. He admittedly didn’t get much of a sense for other people’s setups at the start; he’d been so busy, so focused on the desert, that he hadn’t thought to. He knows better now, though, knows that it pays to know who looks like they’re going to ally with who, even if he already knows how this is going to shake out.

It’s just…

“You know what, that sounds like an amazing idea,” Scar says, and hopes he won’t regret it. “Lead the way, Martyn!”

Martyn smiles, and turns on his heel, and starts walking.

Scar follows.

Martyn really doesn’t have any destination in mind, it turns out.

He’s just sort of wandering the server and scaring people with his creeper recording (and oh, does Scar jump every time, even though he knows it’s not real). It’s all familiar to Scar, albeit without any of the landmarks. Etho’s castle isn’t in the swamp, and Scott and Jimmy aren’t exactly set up yet, and Dogwarts.

Dogwarts isn’t Dogwarts, isn’t even Renchanting yet. It’s a wooden platform and an enchanter on a mountain, and Martyn grins and gives Scar a conspiratorial side-eye.

“Let’s see if we can get Ren, too,” Martyn whispers to him.

Scar nods, and stands back while Martyn sneaks forward, communicator in hand. Scar’s eyes stray to the enchanter atop the platform, and he swallows. 

What would happen if he just… took it? Right here, right now?

He could get rid of Renchanting right at the start. He could take the legs right out from under Ren, stop him from ever rising to power. Would that stop anything? Would it change anything?

Does Scar have the ability to find out, actually? He doesn’t know if this is a one-time thing or not. 

He loses his window, anyway. Martyn pulls his prank, and Ren jumps, and Martyn cackles. He turns to Scar and shouts through cupped hands, “It worked!”

“Good job!” Scar calls back, jogging over. “What’s going on here, Ren?”

“I’m glad you asked!” Ren straightens, smiling. “Welcome to Ren’s Enchanted Emporium, gentlemen!”

“Not much of an emporium,” Scar mutters. Martyn snickers.

“It’s a work in progress,” Ren defends. “Would you two be interested in enchanting, by chance?”

“Oh, of course,” Martyn says, beelining over to the enchanter.

“Ah-ah-ah,” Ren says. “Payment first.”

Martyn pauses. Glances at Scar. 

“We could be your marketing team,” Martyn offers. “Y’know, go around the server selling your services? You don’t have any kind of reputation yet, after all.”

Ren hums. Scar looks between them.

“I don’t have any gear to enchant,” Scar admits, which pains him a little bit. Isn’t the first step of one of these games always to get your armor and weapons sorted? “This is between you and Martyn.”

“Oh, c’mon, Scar,” Martyn says. “It’ll be fun! We’ve already been traveling around, it won’t be much different than that.”

“You know what, I like it,” Ren interjects. “Scar, feel free to enchant once you do have gear, my dude.”

“Yes!” Martyn grins brightly, turning to the enchanter. Scar feels a smile stick on his face and not go away.

Maybe he can still salvage this. It’ll just be… teaming up with Ren and Martyn, right? It’s not like he was planning on teaming up with Grian, anyway. It’s not like this changes anything.

It’ll be fine.

“Well, that’s very generous of you, Ren,” Scar says. “Thank you.”

“Of course!” Ren grins. “Can’t wait to see you back here!”

Scar gives a lazy wave to Ren as he follows Martyn down the mountain once he’s done enchanting, and he wonders whether he has multiple chances.

Grian is in the village when they get there. 

Seeing Grian is…

He doesn’t have the same exhaustion lining his face that Scar is used to, that he remembers from Secret Life. He’s bright, and excited, and he has no idea what’s about to happen. 

Martyn gets a big grin on his face and puts his finger to his lips as he looks at Scar before sneaking up on him. Scar knows what’s about to happen. He remembers this pretty vividly.

Grian leaps in the air as Martyn plays his recording. Martyn bursts out laughing.

“You were the last one I needed to get!” Martyn crows, and Grian puts a hand to his chest and gasps.

“That was obscenely loud!” Grian shouts. 

Scar doesn’t say anything. It feels like his throat has blocked up, like he can’t speak at all. Nothing has happened to him yet. Nothing has happened.

Now that he’s looking for it, he can see the creeper in the distance, the one that Grian will lead over to the group. Scar positions himself on the opposite side of everybody from it and laughs along with everyone about Martyn’s prank.

He watches as Grian leads the creeper over, a barely-restrained smile on his face.

He watches the creeper blow Etho up.

Everyone starts shouting at once, but Scar can just stare at Grian’s face, at the way the glee immediately drops from it, at the way it’s replaced with regret and horror.

“Oh, no,” Grian wails. Scar wonders if this is what it was like when he died to this creeper the very first time. “Oh, no. I feel so bad. I have to make up for this somehow.”

Scar watches as the sun sets, as Grian leads Etho away into the dark corner of the village, as Grian talks to him. He realizes what’s happening. He was in Etho’s place before, after all.

Despite himself, his stomach drops.

It’s not him this time.

Scar is with Ren and Martyn. Scar isn’t with Grian. Scar has nothing to do with Grian.

He knew he wasn’t planning on teaming up with Grian at all, but still—

God, Grian.

His head hurts. His head is splitting open.

He shuts his eyes, and he opens them to a hill covered in flowers.

Nausea curls in his stomach. He sits up abruptly and looks around. He’s back where he started, the sun rising in the east.

What in the world?

How’d he end up back here? Wasn’t he just in the village, with Grian and Martyn and everyone else? He didn’t die this time, so how did this happen?

Scar stands, and looks out over the hill, staring out across the land. Absolutely no clues from that. Had he died? He should know if he died, right? It should still be nighttime if he’d died, right?

He should probably get back to the village anyway. Just in case people are worried, just in case he did die and the respawn took a while, because the alternative is that he’s gone back in time.

His travel to the village is quicker this time. He nearly trips over the landscape in his rush, but he’s careful; it’s trained into him at this point to be wary of ledges, too much careless damage taken and not recovered back in Secret Life. He knows it will regenerate here, he knows it doesn’t matter here, but it’s habit now. 

The village is empty. Scar’s heart sinks. 

It’s—impossible that he went back in time. There’s no mechanic for that. He’s not on limited time the way he was in Limited Life, he doesn’t have time he can make up, and even that wasn’t time travel.  

Why did he go back? Why did—

There’s a creeper hiss behind him.

Scar jumps, and spins around, and Martyn is standing there. He bursts out laughing.

“Oh, you should have seen your face!” Martyn laughs.

This is exactly what happened last time. There’s a last time, now.

“Hello, Martyn!” Scar says, even as his mind is rushing to put together any explanation for this. “You scared me pretty badly with that!”

Martyn’s laughter tapers off. “I do apologize for that. How are you doing?”

Scar, to be completely honest, is very confused. He won’t tell Martyn that.

“Good!” Scar smiles. “How is everything going over on your end?”

“Just doing some mining, some resource-gathering,” Martyn says. “You know, first day tasks and all.”

“Of course,” Scar nods. “Well, I wish you luck with that! I’m off to explore. I’ll see you later!”

Scar dashes off before Martyn can invite himself along.

Scar finds a cave and lights it up and sits against the wall and thinks.

Okay. He went back in time. Twice. That shouldn’t be possible. 

What is going on?

This isn’t happening for Martyn, at least, unless Martyn is really good at pretending it isn’t. Scar hasn’t talked to anyone else to get a sense of if it’s happening for them, but he’s willing to bet it isn’t. Which means he needs a plan.

He should probably talk to people. He should find out what other people know, if it’s anything. He suspects no one else does, but it can’t hurt to check, right? Besides, it’s not like he’ll be telling them that he’s time traveling. He doesn’t really think he wants to let that on—he doesn’t know how that will alter things, or if it will at all, or whether any of it even matters.

This is too much for him. He can feel panic starting to creep in on him. He takes a deep breath.

And another.

And another.

And another.

Okay.

Time to move.

The first people he runs into are Scott and Jimmy. They’re setting up in their little valley and Scar slides down the cliffside into it, carefully picking his footing so he won’t take any damage. 

“Scott! Jimmy!” Scar calls. “Great to see you! How is everything?”

“Hi, Scar,” Scott says, looking up from where he’s been crouched in a small patch of farmland. “Jimmy’s out getting materials. How are you?”

This is around when Martyn showed up, too, right? He remembers showing up here with Martyn, at least; he’s not sure if that’s how it went the first time, too. He wasn’t there for it. 

When he gets out of this, he’ll be the master of Third Life.

When he gets out of this.

He has to figure out how to do that, doesn’t he? And to do that, he has to figure out what counts as failure. If it’s like the secret tasks, there is a failure state, one that has to be avoidable. How does he even do that?

“I’m good, I’m good!” Scar pushes his thoughts aside for the moment. He’s here having a conversation. “Exploring, you know how it goes! This place looks nice!”

“Thank you,” Scott says, transparently pleased.

Subtle questions, subtle questions. What’s a good subtle question? 

“You wouldn’t have happened to notice anything weird about the server, would you?” Scar asks, and then wonders if that’s too blunt. He’s not really interested if there’s something wrong with the server—there wasn’t before, at least—but… it’s the closest he can get to have you noticed time being weird without actually asking that. 

Scott frowns slightly. “I don’t think so. Why, have you noticed something?”

“Nah.” Scar waves his hand. “I was just wonderin’ if there was any way I could game an issue for an extra life. I die really easy, y’know, it would be nice.”

“Uh-huh.” Scott kind of smiles, so Scar assumes he’s gotten away with it. “Well, if you’ve got anything else…”

“Not really,” Scar says. “You wouldn’t mind if I hung around for a bit, though, would you?”

Scott gives Scar a suspicious look. 

“I… guess you can,” he says. “Don’t die here with your bad luck, all right?”

“I’ll do my very best,” Scar says, sitting down by the pond.

He stares into the water and sees his own face staring back. It’s the first time he’s really seeing his reflection since before he won Secret Life. He’s missing the bags under his eyes, his hair isn’t as frazzled, his eyes are green. His eyes are green, the green of three lives, the green of never having died. Even when he was in Third Life the first time, he didn’t really stay like this long.

There’s scars missing from his face, nicks from mistakes and flying debris from explosions. He holds his hands out and examines the back of them, too, and his arms; there’s scars missing there too, and it’s a little odd after weeks with them. He’s pretty sure he’s the only one who would notice amidst the scars he still has.

He breathes out through his nose. He’s been trying to keep the panic of this situation from hitting him full-force, and now it’s creeping in.

He thinks it’s probably because he doesn’t know why he’s here. He doesn’t know what he agreed to, what deal he made, what force decided to give him this. He doesn’t even know if it’s a good thing. He doesn’t know if it’s a chance he’s been given and not just a curse.

Scott’s face appears in the water next to his head. Scar looks at it in the water, and then looks up at Scott in the flesh.

“You good there?” Scott asks. Scar smiles.

“Of course,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’ve just got a… a look,” Scott says. “Like you’re upset about something.”

“What could I have to be upset about?” Scar asks.

“…I don’t know,” Scott says. “Just… if you need to talk to someone, I’m around. I can keep a secret, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Something about the phrasing makes Scar’s chest hurt. He keeps smiling at Scott, hoping his face is blank of any of his worry.

“I’ll be sure to,” he says, and doesn’t mean a word of it.

He’s gotten very good at keeping secrets himself, after all.

He sees Grian again as he’s leaving Scott and Jimmy’s base. He’d watched Martyn come through, watched Jimmy come back, watched Martyn leave. The sun had set, the sun had risen, and then Jimmy had questioned his continued presence so Scar had left.

Grian is clearing out his little hobbit hole in the mountain. Scar remembers it, vaguely: it’s his first base that he’d abandoned as soon as he and Scar had become a team.

Scar balances across the wooden planks Grian has set up as a bridge and knocks on the wall.

“Knock knock knock!” Scar calls. “How’s it goin’?”

Grian looks up and back at him, blinking. He sets his pickaxe down.

“Scar,” he says. “Where have you been? I don’t think I’ve seen you this whole time.”

“Here and there,” Scar says vaguely. “Nice little place you have here.”

Grian scrunches up his nose.

“It’s small,” he says, “and it’s absolutely the worst thing I’ve ever built.”

“I doubt that,” Scar says.

“I appreciate the effort.” Grian sort of rolls his eyes before turning back to the wall and continuing to hollow out the space. “Maybe we should just start over.”

“We?” Scar asks.

“Yeah,” Grian says, not looking at him. “Me and BigB.”

Him and BigB.

Scar’s mouth goes dry. His head pounds.

“You and BigB,” he repeats, and Grian nods.

“Blue sword boys,” he says. “Minus Martyn, I guess. I hear that he’s decided to go it alone for the time being.”

“Blue sword boys.” Scar only seems capable of repeating things that Grian has said. His voice sounds dull. His head is tearing itself apart. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thank you,” Grian says. “What are you planning on doing?”

“Oh,” Scar says distantly through the pain in his skull, “I don’t know.”

Scar wakes up on that hill covered in flowers.

He screams.

Chapter Text

As far as Scar can tell, he’s in a time loop.

As far as Scar can tell, talking to Grian for too long causes it to reset. Which is… inconvenient, considering Grian seems to be just about everywhere.

He stays in the village with Etho and Tango, once. He arranges so that he’ll help them with the villagers and he builds a wall around the place and it doesn’t get nearly as wrecked as before. That arrangement lasts two days until Bdubs and Cleo come by with Grian.

“It doesn’t surprise me that you’ve taken control of the village,” Grian says. “Seems like something you’d do.”

“And I see you’ve joined up with the Crastle!” Scar says. “I hope this doesn’t make us enemies, Grian.”

“I don’t know,” Grian says cheekily. “I would hope not, myself.”

“We’ll have to see,” Bdubs adds.

When they eventually leave, Scar blinks and opens his eyes back on the flowery hill.

The next loop, Scar shows up at Bdubs, Cleo, and Impulse’s base like he did the first time and he just doesn’t split off from them. He runs into Grian while he’s watching Bdubs start building the Crastle because he shows up with Impulse.

“Hey, guys!” Impulse says. “Grian and I almost have villager trading set up, if you wanted to come check it out.”

“We owe a couple to Ren, courtesy of Cleo and Bdubs,” Grian says, leaning against the wall, arms crossed. He looks at Cleo with raised eyebrows.

“Take it up with Ren,” Cleo says, raising her eyebrows right back.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Grian waves his hand dismissively. “It’s fine. Etho’s expecting one of you to at least help us deliver, though.”

“We will!” Scar says. “We’re people of our word, Grian. We would never back out of a deal.”

“Uh-huh.” Grian pushes away from the wall. “Well, I’ll see you then,” he says, and waves as he walks away.

He loops not long after that, sitting up on the hill as the sun rises.

Grian teams up with new people almost every time. Scar goes through a loop where he teams up with Joel first. There’s a loop where he helps Skizz build a really nice castle on Skizz Point. A loop where he’s Ren’s right-hand. That loop feels very, very wrong against his skin. He loops halfway through a conversation, that time.

Scar thinks, between all the loops, Grian teams up with everyone on the server except for him at least once. His longest loop is two weeks, his shortest two days. That loop, he’d gone mining and hadn’t emerged from underground until the loop had forced him to. 

Avoiding Grian, then, doesn’t avoid the loop resetting, which is mildly frustrating. The loop might have nothing to do with Grian. Then, Scar realizes, that’s ridiculous. This is Third Life. What would it be about if not Grian?

But what he’s doing now isn’t working. So, he may as well just start… trying things. Things that are far out of the ordinary, further than just shaking up who’s teamed up with who.

So, he steals the enchanter. What else?

It’s Ren’s. Ren’s the only one with one right at the start. Scar sneaks up the mountain and waits for Ren to leave on some mission or another—Scar’s pretty sure he goes mining, but he couldn’t really care less what Ren is doing, just that he’s gone—and he just… takes it. Ren’s still so trusting this early in the game, he hadn’t even thought to hide it. This is almost too easy: Scar has stolen enchanters that are hard to get, and this one might as well have a free enchanter to a good home sign on it. 

He runs into Grian on his way back to the desert. 

“You wouldn’t happen to know where Ren’s enchanting table has gone, would you?” Grian asks. 

Scar looks back at him with wide eyes. “Why do you ask?”

“Because Ren is devastated about it,” Grian says. “I told him he could always make another, but it’s not like it’s cheap.”

It isn’t. Scar doesn’t remember exactly what the recipe is, but he remembers it involves diamonds and obsidian. That’s a fair number of diamonds, then, and that’s hard to come by.

“Right,” Scar says. “And if I did know?”

“Yeah?” Grian leans forward. “Would you tell me?”

“Would you tell Ren?”

“Maybe.” Grian raises his eyebrows. “Stealing isn’t against the rules, but it is rude.”

Scar gets an idea. If avoiding Grian does nothing to stop the loops, then maybe teaming up with him will be… fine? Maybe it would be fine. He hasn’t looped yet, and usually his conversations with Grian don’t last much longer than this before he blinks and he’s gone.

It’s worth a try. Scar, admittedly, misses being on a team with Grian.

“What if I had a business proposal,” Scar says, leaning forward and whispering too-loud. “We sell the ability to enchant to people. We could get set up in the desert. There’s this mountain I saw where you can see just about everything from the top.”

Grian looks amused. “Did you take the enchanting table, Scar?”

“Maybe,” Scar admits. “But how does that sound? You could be in on it. Free enchanting for life. For life, Grian.”

“Uh-huh.” Grian crosses his arms, but he still mostly just looks… amused. Entertained. “The desert, huh? Not a great place to live.”

“Oh, it’s a perfectly fine place to live,” Scar says. “It’s great, even. You really can see everything from the top of the mountain. Plus, imagine the mystical vibe we could have. We’d be business partners. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“It… kind of does,” Grian admits. “We wouldn’t tell Ren it was his table, right?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Scar agrees. “Like you said, he can make another. But by the time he does, we’ll have the whole customer base, and he won’t have a leg to stand on.”

“Hm.” Grian thinks for a moment, or at least does a good job pretending to. “You know what, I’m in.”

“Yes!” Scar grins. “You won’t regret it, G.” 

He holds out his hand. Grian rolls his eyes but smiles as he shakes Scar’s hand.

“We should call ourselves something cool,” Grian says as they pass from the forest to the desert proper. 

“Magical Mountain.” 

It slips from Scar’s mouth before he can think it through. A moment later, he regrets it. Magical Mountain had been second only to Secret Life in terms of how utterly alone Scar had been. He doesn’t want to think about it every time he goes to advertise their new business.

But Grian brightens as soon as he hears it, and Scar knows it’s too late.

“Magical Mountain is perfect,” Grian says. “Could use a tag line, though. Hm… What about Magical Mountain: where the deals are enchanting?”

He makes a broad gesture with his hands. Scar’s throat feels closed up.

“I like it!” Scar says anyway. He can’t back out now, not without inviting suspicion from Grian, and he can’t have that.

Scar helps Grian level out the top of the mountain and moves to help him build before he gets shooed away. 

“I don’t want you to fall off or something,” Grian says. “What if you went mining? Made sure we had enough materials for this and to survive for a while longer.”

He doesn’t really want to leave. Grian’s got a focused little frown on his face, and Scar missed it so badly. But he can’t just hover around here, or else the frown will turn from focused to annoyed.

“Sure,” Scar says with a shrug. “Let me know if anything happens.”

“Will do,” Grian says, already turning away. Scar gives him a lazy salute anyway before heading down the mountain to their mineshaft.

He keeps the enchanter on him the whole time. He’s not about to make the same stupid mistake that Ren did, not after this long.

Grian makes a little castle on top of the mountain with a courtyard. It’s not the Sandcastle, not the way Scar is familiar with it, but it’s… close. It’s a time before the builds devolved into pure function or turned into a gimmick. People just didn’t have time, later on, to dedicate to builds like these, too focused on gearing up and the Boogeyman and everything else. 

The courtyard is nice, and they set up the enchanting station underground where it’s cooler and Scar keeps the enchanter on his person while it’s not being used. They steal cows from Tango and they set up bookshelves early on and Scar realizes, at some point, that Ren and Martyn aren’t even a team.

Martyn’s out on his own somewhere. Ren has gotten sucked into whatever Etho is up to. Ren shows up to Magical Mountain once early on to snoop. 

“It’s just strange,” Ren says. “My enchanting table goes missing and suddenly you and Grian are all set up with one.”

“I’m offended that you’d think so little of me, Ren!” Scar says, putting a hand to his heart. “Who’s to say I didn’t get this enchanter fair and square? Collected all the diamonds myself!”

“Uh-huh.” Ren doesn’t look convinced.

“You know, there’s no reason you can’t enchant here, too,” Scar says. “Here, I’ll even give you a discount, because I want us to be friends. Ten iron to enchant your gear.”

“Ten—Scar.”

“It’s a good deal!” Scar spreads his arms. “And we’ll be friends. Allies, even! That’ll be valuable when people start going red, y’know.”

Ren looks at him with narrowed eyes. Scar doesn’t think he’s getting anything out of this. Oh, well.

“I’m going to be very upset if I find out that it was my table, Scar,” Ren says. He turns and leaves.

“Thank you for visiting Magical Mountain!” Scar calls after him, waving. Then, he deflates. 

He’s used to having enemies, at least. At least this time it’s not the whole server. At least this time he has Grian with him, and he thinks he has a pretty good thing going with the Crastle. Martyn seems fine so far, too. Scar honestly hasn’t seen much of him.

Scar doesn’t, obviously, stay green the whole time. That stupid ravine claims another one of his lives, and he grumbles as Grian helps him collect his stuff. He’d managed pretty well avoiding damage before then, too, still used to the way it wouldn’t come back in Secret Life. He was so careful, and then he’d fallen, and it had hurt so much before it hadn’t hurt at all.

“It’s okay,” Grian says as they sort through his junk at the bottom of the ravine. “You still have two more lives. And, hey, look at that, you didn’t even die first!”

Ha. 

“Do we still have the enchanter?” Scar asks as he searches. He lets out a breath of relief as he picks it up. He hugs it to his chest and lays down on the stone ground. “Oh, enchanter, how I worry about you.”

Grian snickers. “It’s not a child, Scar, it’s a table.”

“You don’t know our bond,” Scar says.

“You’re right,” Grian says, still snickering lightly. “I don’t.”

Scar builds a fence around the ravine. He’s not going to fall down it again, at least not in this loop. He can’t see the edge, is the problem, while he’s running through the desert. He’s not going to let it claim a third life from him. He puts up signs, too. Grian sort of laughs at him, but Scar thinks he kind of gets it.

Scar watches people die ahead of him: Cleo and Ren and Jimmy and Martyn. Jimmy’s the first red this time around, and it sort of makes Scar feel sick. If nothing else, he knows Jimmy is at least decent at resisting the bloodlust that being red clouds someone with. Scar knows he doesn’t like it much, doesn’t like the way it makes him feel less real. 

Martyn goes red to one of Jimmy’s traps. Scar worries about that.

“We should sabotage him,” Scar says on a whim one morning while they’re sitting around in the kitchen. Grian looks up from where he’s standing at the counter, making breakfast.

“Sabotage him?” Grian asks. “Scar, might I remind you that you’re yellow and I’m green.”

“We just can’t attack him,” Scar points out. “Stealing all his nether wart and doing a little property damage isn’t attacking him.”

“He’ll come attack us, then.” Grian rubs his face. “We shouldn’t provoke one of the two reds on the server if we can help it.”

Right. He hasn’t done this before. No one has done this before except for Scar. People, other than him, have been very nice to each other, all things considered. Theft has been relatively low, no one’s killed each other’s animals (Scar briefly considered it while they were at Tango’s, but he ultimately decided against it), and there hasn’t even been any serious preparations for the reds. Scar is used to things being much more off-the-rails than this by the start of the second month.

“He’ll come attack us anyway,” Scar says, shrugging. “It’s what red names do, Grian.”

“Jimmy hasn’t,” Grian says.

“Jimmy is Jimmy.” Scar sighs. “I bet Scott helped him with that kill. Martyn’s not like him.” 

Martyn, when red, is ruthless. He’s cold, he’s calculated, he’s cruel. Martyn is extremely, extremely dangerous. Scar has never liked going up against Martyn while he’s red. 

Grian gives Scar a sidelong look. “And why’s that?”

He’s alone, Scar thinks.

“He’s going to have potions and know how to use them,” Scar says instead. “Strong gear, enchantments—we just aren’t going to be prepared for him.”

Grian stares at him for a second, and then he scoffs. 

“You’re being paranoid again,” he sing-songs. “It’ll be fine. There’s people on this server that he’s more annoyed with than us.”

The next day, Scar watches Grian explode.

It was a trap by their front door, a pressure plate that hadn’t been there before. Scar had seen it, had been opening his mouth to warn Grian, when he’d stepped on it.

Scar was far enough away that the blast didn’t catch him, too, but it definitely got Grian. His items are scattered across the floor now. There’s a chunk taken out of their wall. 

Behind him, Martyn laughs. Scar’s hand jumps to his sword and he draws it, turning.

“Oh, that was fantastic!” Martyn grins. “Didn’t even see it coming!”

“Back off, Martyn,” Scar warns. Martyn cocks his head at Scar, still smiling. His red eyes pierce into Scar’s yellow, and some instinct Scar barely remembers hisses at him to run, to get away.

“Too bad it didn’t get you, too,” Martyn continues, sighing. “Only getting one of you is boring.”

“Guess I was too far away,” Scar says lightly. Scar’s got the enchanter on him. If Martyn kills him, Scar has no doubt that he’ll take it. Martyn’s hand drifts to his sword.

“I can fix that for you,” Martyn offers. “You wanna go? I’m game.”

“I don’t really, no,” Scar says. He glances back to the base. Grian should have been back by now. “You got your kill, Martyn. Leave it.”

“You’re serious now.” Martyn raises his eyebrows. “What’s that about? You’re usually much more chipper than this.”

He doesn’t remember exactly how he acted in Third Life. He’s been through five of these now, and he’s even won one. If Martyn starts something, there’s a chance Scar could end it. He knows how to handle himself in a fight now.

Martyn considers him for another minute before shrugging and letting go of his sword.

“Whatever,” he says. “I’ll get you yet, Scar. I want another red name, you hear me?”

“There’s plenty of yellows other than me,” Scar says. “Why don’t you go after one of them?”

“I’d like to at least finish what I started,” Martyn says. “I’ll see you, Scar!”

Martyn turns away.

“Goodbye, Martyn!” Scar calls after him as he leaves. 

Scar is still staring off into the desert when Grian says behind him, “That was… something. What happened?”

“Martyn trapped the base,” Scar explains while Grian picks up his stuff. “I told you it’d happen.”

“…You did,” Grian acknowledges. He gives Scar a long look. “You knew.”

He didn’t, really. He’s just familiar enough with Martyn’s way of doing things that it wasn’t a surprise for him like it was for Grian. He’s sure it won’t be the last trap they encounter. 

No one’s had a trap fail on them horrendously yet. It feels like some kind of weird, messed-up miracle. 

They have allies, after that; there are people who jump to their defense after seeing what Martyn did. It’s Scott and Jimmy, who Scar thinks just want someone to attack, and it’s Skizz who dies a few days later to a pitfall and goes red. It’s Cleo and Bdubs, who were already allies. It’s Impulse, who Scar doesn’t trust in the slightest, not after the first time. It’s a good chunk of the server, Scar realizes. It’s almost familiar. It’s just different enough to make Scar’s heart ache.

And Scar feels bad for Martyn, honestly.

He knows what it’s like to be alone, to have everyone turn on you. He knows the way it can make a person bitter and angry and even more isolated. He’s intimately familiar with how and why someone lashes out in conditions like that. It doesn’t surprise him that Martyn gets more violent as the days go by, relying less and less on traps in favor of jumping people when they’re alone and stabbing them through or shooting them down.

“You know what,” Grian says one day after they watch Bdubs go red to an arrow in the chat: “you were right. We should go sabotage his base.”

“Let’s do it,” Scar says. He’s itching for something to do, for action. For all the trouble it caused him, he likes being Chaos Scar once in a while. He hasn’t gotten the chance, not recently. 

They go out to the other side of the map and they sneak into Martyn’s base. It’s a simple tower surrounded by a cobblestone wall, and it probably could have been fine at one point but right now it just feels threatening and a little sad. 

They find his nether wart, and they kill his animals, and they steal the sand from his chests. They would be in and out without a sound if it weren’t for the fact that Grian looks back at him as they’re leaving and says, “I want to blow up his base.”

“You want to blow up his base,” Scar repeats.

“We can’t kill him back,” Grian says, “but we can send a message.”

More than we’ve already sent? Asks the side of Scar that was lonely and abandoned in Trader Scar’s, the part of Scar that was blown up out of nowhere by Skizz for something he did because of a task. Let’s blow up his base, it’ll be fun, insists Chaos Scar. 

Chaos Scar wins out, as he often does.

“You have TNT with you?” Scar asks. Grian grins and nods.

“Of course I do,” he says. “We were coming here to sabotage, did you think I wouldn’t bring TNT?”

“Fair enough, fair enough,” Scar says. 

Grian rigs it up. It’s just a mess of TNT in the middle of the tower. Scar still feels a little bad.

“Okay, get out, get out,” Grian says. “Scar, get out!”

He’s just a few seconds behind Grian. It’s a few seconds that costs him his life, just a little too close to the blast. 

He stares at the ceiling of their bedroom in their base and groans. Dying by explosion is never pleasant. Grian is probably blaming himself for it right about now. Scar should go reassure him and get his stuff back.

He trudges back to the crater that used to be the lower floor of Martyn’s base to find Grian and Martyn arguing there. Scar picks up the pace.

“—You didn’t have to blow it up,” Martyn is saying. He looks annoyed. He glances over to Scar and his scowl deepens. “Oh, goody. Scar’s back.”

“Scar!” Grian turns. “Scar, I’m so sorry—”

“It’s fine, it’s fine!” Scar shakes Grian’s shoulder. “I’m fine, Grian.”

“…Okay,” Grian says. “If you’re sure.”

“I am,” Scar says.

“Get your stuff and go,” Martyn says. “I don’t want to see you back around here.”

Scar can’t find the enchanter in his things when he’s searching through them in the chest Grian had made. Scar feels a moment of panic bubble up.

“The enchanter—” Scar starts.

“I’ve got it,” Grian says, side-eying Martyn. “Don’t worry, Scar.”

He breathes out. He knows it’s not as big a deal here to lose the enchanter as it was in Last Life or Double Life, but it still feels important. Grian may not understand that part, but he knows it’s important to Scar. It makes something warm fill his chest. He missed Grian very badly, he thinks.

“Well,” Scar says. “It was a pleasure seeing you, Martyn. We’ll be on our way now!”

“…Right,” Martyn says, arms crossed. “You may be red now but that doesn’t make us friends.”

“That’s disappointing,” Scar says, and sort of means it. He wasn’t expecting goodwill after he sabotaged Martyn’s base, though. He doesn’t have a task to justify it anymore. “I’m sure we’ll see you around!”

It’s a week later when Martyn kills him, takes him out of the game entirely. He comes at Scar with his sword and Scar manages to hold his ground, for a little while. He doesn’t know what will happen to the loop if he dies.

But it doesn’t matter how good of a fight he puts up, because Martyn comes out victorious, and everything goes black.

Scar wakes up on the hill covered in flowers.

Ah.

Chapter Text

He really has to figure out the fail state of this time loop.

Dying seems to be a fairly obvious one. He’s not sure whether it’s dying in general, or whether there’s a point where the death will stick. He’d like to not find out the hard way, but he’s not sure how else he’d learn that information. 

It does mean, in most situations, that Scar has functionally infinite lives. It’s just that on every third death, he’ll end up here, on this hill. He’s not sure whether he prefers that.

There’s another fail condition, though, and that’s what Scar is struggling to figure out.

It’s not talking to Grian. Scar made it pretty far last loop, when he stole the enchanter and teamed up with Grian the whole time. It didn’t abort in a matter of days like the others. So… avoiding Grian triggers the fail state, it looks like. 

Which does limit his options for what to try somewhat.

He paces around the village as he thinks. It’s become a bit of a habit now to come to the village first thing after starting a loop. It’s where everyone ends up congregating eventually, so it’s easy to make a choice about who to go with from there.

As though Scar won’t be trying to go with Grian every time now.

“You look deep in thought,” Tango says from a rooftop. Scar looks up, blinking. Tango’s watching him with a tilted head and an odd little smile. “You good there, buddy?”

“Oh, perfectly fine!” Scar waves his hand. “Just considering taking over the village, you know.”

“You’re gonna have to hurry if you want that,” Tango says. “We’ve kinda already got our sights set on it.”

Scar knows that, if the loop goes long enough, the both of them end up leaving eventually to go to the swamp. He doesn’t tell Tango that, doesn’t say that the village becomes Impulse’s territory almost exclusively. Instead, he just smiles cryptically.

“Well, I appreciate the heads-up,” Scar says. “I’m sure you and I can work something out. Split it halfway, maybe?”

Tango chuckles. “Maybe. You’ll have to talk to Etho.”

“I will,” Scar says. “Where is he?”

“Somewhere,” Tango says. “I wish you luck.”

Scar doesn’t need luck. Luck has never actually gotten him anything good.

Besides, Scar’s not actually all that interested in the village. Maybe if he could convince Grian to take it over with him, but otherwise he gets the feeling he’ll just loop back before he’ll get to see how things would have changed. He’s starting to think the loop might be centered, somehow, on Grian, rather than on Scar himself.

If the loop is centered around Grian, then… what? What does he have to do? He wishes he had some kind of instruction. He’d gotten used to having the tasks in Secret Life, being left on his own like this is… almost alien now.

He hangs around the village while Tango and Etho set up shop, and he keeps the fact that their early setup won’t matter to himself while he waits for Grian to show up.

It’s so achingly easy to sway Grian to his side. Grian is lonely, too, and as soon as Scar says we, he can see something in Grian’s eyes change. Even when Scar suggests absurd things—one loop he says they should try and rule over the swamp, just to see if he could convince him, and Grian laughs at him but he follows along anyway because he wants to be alone as little as Scar does. 

One loop, they make friends with Ren and Martyn early on, and it feels deeply weird to be included even a little bit in that particular dynamic. There are times when Scar feels like he’s intruding on something, like he shouldn’t be witnessing whatever Ren and Martyn have.

“You know,” Martyn says at one point while he and Scar are on some mission or another, “Ren’s a really great guy.”

“Yeah?” Scar glances at him. He’s got a distant look on his face. 

“Yeah,” Martyn says. “I think… I think it’ll be hard, at the end of all this.”

“Huh?” Scar stares after him as he starts to walk ahead. “What’ll be hard, Martyn?”

Martyn pauses. “Oh, did I say that aloud? Silly me.” 

He doesn’t elaborate. Scar never finds out what he might have meant. 

There’s a loop where Scar manages to convince Grian to take over the village with him. That one’s fun; Impulse gets pulled in on it since he sticks around stubbornly and between the three of them they control most of the villagers on the server. 

They join up with Cleo and Bdubs once, and the Crastle is barely big enough for them all. Scar helps Cleo dig out the moat and they last fairly long, actually, in that loop, until people start going red and they end up fracturing along lines of distrust. 

The changes don’t stay isolated to Scar and whatever he chooses to do, either. When Scar doesn’t go red first, it’s usually Jimmy; that doesn’t surprise Scar, exactly, but the way he and Scott wind up driving whatever conflict happens does. Sometimes Ren becomes the Red King, and sometimes he doesn’t. Scar can’t seem to find a pattern to that one: sometimes, Ren just shows up with his bloody crown and his red eyes and Martyn standing protectively beside him, and Scar has to accept that war is about to break out.

Joel is always something a wild card, Scar discovers. Even when they team up with him, he feels like he has to keep his eyes out. Joel ends one of Scar’s loops with his pack of wolves, and Scar does his best to steer clear of them after that, even when they’re allied. 

Grian changes, too. He makes deals with Scar that lead to their team in some loops. In others, he just follows Scar into whatever nonsensical adventure he’s embarking on and doesn’t leave. Sometimes Scar has to all but beg him to be a team. Sometimes Grian comes to Scar first. Scar can never predict what’s going to happen with Grian, changing the start of things like this.

But no change that Scar makes alters the end of the loop: Scar goes out, sometime long before the end, and he wakes back up on the hill. He’s lost count, now, of how many loops he’s done, how many times he’s done this. Nothing brings him any closer to learning how to end the loops.

In the current loop, he’s trying to set up a competing business to Renchanting. He’d already tried replacing it, after all, and doing that again would be boring. He likes the challenge. 

Martyn comes over and chews them out for it, of course he does, and afterwards Scar laughs with Grian about it.

“This was a terrible idea,” Grian says, but he’s smiling, so he’s not mad about it.

“Yeah,” Scar agrees, leaning against the bookshelves. “Worth a try, though.”

“We have to come up with a better plan,” Grian says. “Something that will actually get us allies.”

“Friendship passes,” Scar says, and then snickers. He’s wrapped back around to friendship passes. He kind of missed them, if he’s being honest, even if not a single soul on the server except for him actually cared.

Grian starts laughing with him. “Friendship passes? Scar, what’s a friendship pass?”

“It’s—a piece of paper! A certificate of our bond,” Scar says. “I write on it that we’re friends and then, bam! New ally!”

“Scar, that’s a terrible idea.” Grian can’t stop smiling, though. “How will that ever work?”

“Just trust me, dude,” Scar says. “It’ll work.”

Grian is still snickering.

“Uh-huh,” he says, disbelieving. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

They don’t get time for it.

Joel goes red, and then Cleo, and then Scar; then, it’s over, a lost sword fight and a pain in his gut.

Scar wakes up on the hill and just stares at the sky.

…Time to get back to it.

He doesn’t know what he wants to do this loop.

He’s tried too many things, and none of them have changed the fundamental fact that he comes back here to the start. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing, or whether there’s a how that he’s doing wrong.

He just…

He’ll call this loop a loss and just… do nothing with it. Call it a breather. A break.

He winds up wandering over to where Grian is setting up after walking around the server a couple of times, trying to think of where he wants to set down, before remembering that if he wants this break to be substantial in any way he has to stick around Grian.

“Knock knock!” Scar calls. He can hear the wear on his own voice. He hopes Grian doesn’t pick up on it. “Grian?”

“Scar?” Grian pokes his head out of a crude stone archway. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t feel like building a base,” Scar admits, more honestly than he’d really meant to. “Mind if I just crash here with you?”

Grian watches him for a moment, and then he shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. Go for it.”

“Great,” Scar says, and drops down against the inside wall. “Your bridge out there is perilous, for the record.”

“It’s not going to stay that way,” Grian says, turning back to opening up the space some. “I’m going to make a real bridge, and a less terrible entrance. Just… after I have a shelter. And some more materials.”

“Uh-huh.” Scar looks out into the little valley Grian has built above. It’s smaller than Scott and Jimmy’s, and it hasn’t got a lake, but it’s still a very pretty spot. “I think the entrance is fine, personally. It’s got charm.”

Grian snorts derisively. “It’s terrible is what it is. I should have just dug a hole into the side of the cliff and left it open. Or built something over the drop, that could have been fun. But, no. Terrible hobbit hole it is.”

“I’ll help if you want,” Scar offers.

“Didn’t you say you didn’t want to build a base?” Grian asks.

“Yeah, on my own,” Scar says. “That would be lonely for both of us. Look at it this way: free roommate, free friend!”

“Sure,” Grian says. “That’s what this is.”

“It totally is.”

“Whatever you say, Scar.”

It’s so easy, every time, to sink into the banter. It’s natural, like breathing and eating and drinking. It’s like he never left, except for the ways Grian barely knows him at the start.

He supposes it’s better than the alternative. It’s better than Grian looking at him like he’s dead already. It’s better than him avoiding Scar for the simple crime of being himself. That had been worse. That had been leagues worse. At least like this, Scar can build up a new relationship.

He settles into Grian’s little hole in the mountain. It becomes their little hole in the mountain: Scar meant it when he said he’d help, after all. He adds his own touches, his own style to the place, and Grian never changes them. 

They build bridges across the gap outside. Real bridges, not one-by-one walkways. They curve around and go down to the floor, and Scar likes to just sit out on them and watch the sky sometimes. 

They steal Tango’s cows. It’s become one of those habits, by now: Scar goes to the village first, and he teams up with Grian, and he steals Tango’s cows. Tango catches them halfway through the heist this time, and Grian screams.

“Scar, go go go!” Grian cries, while Tango shouts something about everyone’s finding his cows and soon it won’t even be a secret, it’ll just be Tango’s cow pit!

“I’m going, I’m going!” Scar shouts back. It’s loud, and cramped in this tunnel, and Scar is holding tightly to the lead he’s got as he tries to tug their new handful of cows through it. 

“Fine!” Tango shouts. “Just take them! But know when I go red, you two are goners!”

“Good luck catching us!” Scar shouts back, and Grian scream-laughs.

“Don’t taunt him!” Grian can barely hold back his laughter. “He’s gonna—Scar, he’s threatening us—”

“He’s green, he won’t do anything!” Scar pulls the cows out of the tunnel. “Okay, we’re going! Thank you Tango!”

“Thank you Tango!” Grian says too, and then they get in their boats with their cows and look at each other. There’s a moment where they’re both trying to hold it in—it doesn’t last. Grian breaks first, but only by a tiny bit. 

“Oh, did you see his face?!” Grian giggles. “He was so mad at us—”

“We weren’t the first, either,” Scar says. “Tango just has people running through his secret little cow bunker constantly—”

“It’s really not going to stay a secret,” Grian wipes at his eyes, but he’s still giggling. “You can—Tango, you can hear them from the surface—”

“There’s barely a block between his cows and open air!” Scar looks back at the tunnel they’d just left through. It’s been patched up now. “They’re so easy to find—”

“It’s a miracle no one has said anything about it in chat,” Grian says. “Hoooo. Okay. We should get back before someone comes and steals them from us. ”

Scar looks back at Grian, about to say yeah, let’s go, when it feels like all the air has left his lungs. 

Grian’s eyes sparkle in the moonlight, glittery with tears. He’s smiling still, those eyes crinkled as he can’t seem to stop. He’s looking ahead, not at Scar, and Scar thinks this—this joy, this glee on his face—is maybe the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

I want to kiss him, Scar thinks, and then stops. Picks over the thought, turns it over in his head.

It’s not, maybe, the first time he’s thought it. He remembers there were a few moments, here and there, where it had cropped up. But this is the first time he feels it so strongly, so ardently, that he wants to act on it.

Scar’s been staring for too long, because Grian looks back at him. 

“Scar?” Grian asks. “Are you all right?”

He’s haloed, almost, by the moonlight. His hair has frizzed up, slightly, in the humidity. His eyes search Scar’s face, the smile slipping slightly from his face but not disappearing entirely.

“I—uh, yeah,” Scar says. “I’m great. Perfect, even.”

“…If you say so,” Grian says, not entirely convinced. 

They go home. They set up the cows in a little hidey-hole at the bottom of the valley. They go to bed.

The desire doesn’t wane. Arguably, it gets stronger: Scar finds himself in the middle of mundane tasks—harvesting their farm, checking on the cows, just sitting there—getting distracted by watching Grian go about his day. He spends a week on-and-off fixing the entrance, now that there’s not much else going on (and isn’t that weird, that things are relaxed a few weeks into the game), and Scar sits out on the bridge and watches him.

“Are you going to help, or just stand there?” Grian asks at one point, tone light, teasing. 

“Just admiring your work,” Scar says honestly. Grian looks back at him. 

“It’s a mess right now,” he says. Scar shrugs.

“I enjoy watching the process,” he says, and doesn’t mention that part of it is just getting to watch Grian. Grian stares for another moment, something unreadable on his face, before he shakes his head and goes back to fixing the entryway, smiling. 

“You’re weird,” he says. 

“Thank you,” Scar responds. 

It strikes him one night while Scar’s making dinner that this has, somehow, become a home: the loops had slipped his mind entirely for a bit, actually, which probably should be alarming but somehow isn’t.

It hasn’t replaced his other homes. Scar thinks some part of him is always going to live in that desert, that there’s going to be a piece of him in Trader Scar’s forever. But this is its own sort of peace, its own sort of shelter: it’s cozy, and quiet, and there’s Grian with him every day, and it’s enough.

He’s shaken out of his thoughts by the door opening.

“Smells good,” Grian says as he enters the kitchen. He hugs Scar briefly from behind before circling around to watch him. “What’re you making?”

“Salmon,” Scar answers, and he wants to kiss Grian so badly. He doesn’t. “What were you up to?”

“Quick mining trip,” Grian answers. “Got lucky, found some diamonds.”

“Nice.” Scar should probably go mining properly again at some point. That can be a later worry.

“Anything I can do to help?” Grian asks. 

“Not really,” Scar says. “I’m almost done.”

“Sounds good.” Grian doesn’t move away. It’s comfortable. It’s safe. They’re both still green. Everything is okay, at least in this moment.

Jimmy goes red.

It’s the start of the second month, and it doesn’t really surprise Scar. What does surprise Scar is how quickly Jimmy gets to trying to kill people. It’s only a few days after he goes red when they’re walking by Dogwarts and Grian spots something. 

“What’s that?” Grian asks, pointing. Scar looks over. 

There’s a chest in front of the doors. It looks like a trap if Scar’s ever seen one. Grian is already veering off to investigate it.

“Grian,” Scar says. “Grian, that’s a trap.”

“Is it?” Grian frowns. “It just looks like a chest to me.”

“I guarantee there is TNT under that chest,” Scar says. It’s kind of embarrassing how obvious of a trap it is. There’s a sign over the front reading, for Ren!

Ah. So that’s what Jimmy is up to. There’s no way anyone’s going to open that.

“I’m going to go warn them,” Scar says. He heads inside.

Moments later, he hears an explosion. Scar freezes. His communicator buzzes in his pocket.

“What in the heck was that?” Ren says as he comes out of Renchanting. “Scar? Was that you?”

“Are you blowing up our base?” Martyn asks, joining him. 

“No! No, no no no. I, uh, I think that might have been Grian, actually, and I need to go—check on that,” Scar says, beginning to turn back toward the gate.

“Why would it be Grian?” Martyn asks. Scar doesn’t answer, too busy staring at the crater outside the now-broken gate.

Oh, no.

“Oh, Grian, no,” Scar mutters. Grian is nowhere to be seen. Neither are his items. 

Scar sort of remembers Ren saying their enchanting table bomb had taken out all his gear the first time, too, but…

Jimmy is climbing down from BigB’s castle off in the distance. Scott is standing on top of that hill. Scar’s jaw tightens. 

Jimmy is cheering, which: frustrating, but Scar knows how nice it feels to have a trap go off correctly.

“Oh, Scar,” Jimmy says, coming to a stop. “I… uh, hey!”

Scar sighs. “Jimmy.”

“How are you… uh. Would you believe me if I said that it wasn’t meant for you guys?”

“Yes, Jimmy, because you labeled it,” Scar says.

“He labeled his trap?” Martyn asks. Scar turns back to them.

“I was coming back here to warn you that there was a trap meant for Ren out there,” Scar says. “And then Grian opened the darn chest.”

“Are you serious?” Ren asks, looking between Scar and Jimmy.

“Yeah,” Scar says, and sighs. “I’m… I need to go check on Grian.”

“I really didn’t mean to get him,” Jimmy says. “I am sorry for that. I’m going to go apologize to him.”

Scar doesn’t want him to come. Jimmy is already following him. He resigns himself to Jimmy being there.

Grian is sitting on one of the bridges, his head in his hands, elbows on his knees. 

“G?” Scar asks. Grian looks up at him with golden eyes. 

This has happened a couple of times now, where Grian goes yellow before Scar does. It doesn’t happen very often, admittedly, but it does happen. Grian’s gaze shifts from Scar to Jimmy behind him.

“You brought Tim,” Grian says. 

“He followed me,” Scar says. 

“I’m sorry for killing you,” Jimmy says, and Grian narrows his eyes.

“Timmy, why would you label your trap?” Grian asks. 

“I mean, it worked, didn’t it?” Jimmy says. “Uh—it wasn’t meant for you, though. I do feel bad about that bit.”

Grian sighs. “Go back to Scott, dude.”

There’s a moment of quiet.

“…Yeah, got it,” Jimmy says. “Not, uh, welcome here. Goodbye.”

Scar watches Jimmy leave. He sits down next to Grian. 

“I shouldn’t have opened that chest,” Grian says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Stupid.”

“You still have lives left,” Scar says. He catches Grian’s hand and pulls it away from his face. Grian turns to look at him. “It’ll be okay.”

“Any of my stuff survive, by chance?” Grian asks. 

“Not really, no,” Scar says. Grian groans. “But, hey! It’s okay! We can always get it back!”

“The diamonds, Scar,” Grian bemoans. 

“That’s… yeah, that’s not ideal,” Scar says. But at least I still have you.

Grian sighs. His head thuds against Scar’s shoulder. He doesn’t let go of Scar’s hand. “You’re right, you’re right. It’s not like I was on red. It’ll work out fine.”

“That’s the spirit,” Scar says. 

“Still sucks,” Grian grumbles.

“Yeah, it does,” Scar agrees.

They sit there for a while before they go inside, if only because Scar doesn’t want to let go.

He watches, days later, as Jimmy still gets a kill off on Ren and Martyn.

Things tip over halfway through that first week of the second month.

It’s a quiet morning. Scar is making breakfast. They’ve settled into a routine; it’s something Scar would call domesticity, frankly. They don’t get visitors particularly often, but that’s in large part because they’re not offering anything. Scar wonders if this is what it was like for Scott and Jimmy, if that was why Scott was so reluctant to give it all up at the end. He thinks he understands. 

“Good morning,” Grian says sleepily as he pads into the kitchen. He wraps an arm around Scar and leans up and kisses him, quick and casual as though they’d done it a million times before. “What’s for—”

Scar’s heart jumps into his throat. He freezes where he’s standing, and Grian’s half-shut, sleepy eyes widen in realization. He takes a step back, arm snaking away from Scar. 

“Oh my goodness,” Grian says. “I am so sorry—”

“No! No, no no no no, Grian—” Scar twists, holding Grian’s shoulders. The gold of Grian’s eyes focuses on Scar’s face. 

“Scar,” Grian says, sounding frozen himself. “Scar, I’m so sorry. That was such an overstep. I can’t believe I—”

“Grian,” Scar says, and leans down to kiss him back.

Grian’s lips are slightly chapped from their time in the game. Scar doesn’t push it, ready to pull back, but Grian kisses him back, holding on to Scar’s arms. Scar’s chest feels like it’s going to explode. He’s smiling.

“You don’t know how long—” Scar starts when they break apart, and then Grian starts laughing, too.

“Oh my—oh my God. Oh my God.” Grian is smiling, too. “We’re idiots, aren’t we? We’re fools. Absolute and utter fools.”

“Maybe,” Scar admits. “Maybe we’re a little foolish—look.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for weeks,” Grian says. “I didn’t mean to just do it but this worked out—this worked out better than I could have—”

Grian kisses him again. He’s smiling when he does it. It’s uncoordinated, and Scar feels a little stupid as he pulls Grian against him into a hug, but it’s a good kind of stupid.

Breakfast is forgotten.

Later, as the sun is dipping into afternoon, they sit on one of the bridges and stare off at the sky. Grian is laying down, his legs dangling over the edge of the bridge, hands behind his head.

“What does this make us?” Grian asks.

“Hm? Oh, what, the kissing?” Scar asks. Grian hums an affirmative. Scar shrugs. “I mean… I don’t see why it has to change. Unless you want it to!”

“…No,” Grian says. “I like whatever we have. I don’t want to… I don’t really want to… ugh. I don’t want to change the words. Date. Dating feels too… I mean, this is a death match. It’s going to become a death match eventually. Last one standing wins, and all.”

Last one standing wins. Grian sounds defeated as he says it. Scar gets the he’d forgotten, a little bit, that they were headed toward an end eventually.

“Maybe we just try to make the best of it while it lasts,” Scar says. “Just… exist.”

“Just exist,” Grian echoes. “I like that.”

Scar stares at him, stares at the yellow in his eyes, and wonders just how long it’ll last this time.

They move things around in the base.

Scar’s room becomes storage and Grian’s room becomes their room, and it’s nice, and it’s—comfortable. Scar loves it, loves getting to see Grian first thing every morning.

One morning, there’s a knock on the door, and a familiar voice calling both their names. Scar stares at the ceiling and squints and tries to wake up enough to place it.

“Who is that,” Grian mumbles, also woken up by the noise.

“No idea.” Scar sighs and pushes himself up. “I’ll go check.”

It’s not even dawn yet. Who’s traveling around at night to see them?

Scar pads through the house, and opens the door, and meets Ren’s red eyes. Something in his chest seizes.

Did he miss it? Did he miss the death message? When had this happened? He knows it was… probably going to happen, sure, but he didn’t know when. He didn’t think it was really that late in the game. 

“Scar!” Ren beams. He’s doing the voice, the Red King act. Scar’s eyes dart from him to Martyn standing beside him. He’s still green, like Scar is. He looks intent. “We’re here on a mission, my good sir. Would you like to pledge your allegiance—”

“We’re closed for business,” Scar hears himself say, and then he shuts the door.

There’s a stunned silence for a moment. Through the door, Scar hears Martyn say, “Did he just…?”

They really are reaching that point that every game reaches where everything collapses on itself. In Third Life, it starts with Ren, almost always.

There’s another knock. Scar takes a breath.

“Closed!” Scar repeats. 

“It’s a house, Scar, it can’t be closed,” Martyn shouts back. Scar sees Grian shuffle into the room, squinting with sleep.

“Is that Martyn?” Grian asks.

“And Ren,” Scar says. “Ren’s red.”

“Ren’s red?” Grian’s squinting turns into a frown as he reaches for his communicator. “Why’s he red? When did that happen?”

“Dunno,” Scar says, even though he’s got a pretty good idea. It was recently, at least. It was probably because of Jimmy.

This is… great. It’s just great.

So much for just existing. So much for waiting this out. The server’s about to erupt, and Scar doesn’t even know who he should be blaming for it.

He’d tried to pay attention. Somehow, things had still slipped through the cracks.

Somehow, some way, he’d gotten comfortable in one of these loops, one of these games. It had faded away into the background and he’d drifted back into that carefree place he’d been in the real first time he’d done this. It had just been him and Grian and everything had been okay for one little stretch.

The bubble has popped now.

“What in the world does Red Winter is coming mean?” Grian asks, dumbfounded. He looks up at the door.

“Nothing good,” Scar mutters. “Just—we shouldn’t bother them. Just leave them alone.”

“I’m going to ask Martyn about it,” Grian says, and it’s not really a surprise but it’s also not the answer Scar wanted to hear.

“I’m sure he had a perfectly good reason,” Scar says. “And we don’t have to ask.”

Grian gives Scar a weird look.

“…Scar,” Grian says, and it sets off about half a dozen alarm bells in Scar’s head. “Do you know something I don’t about this?”

“What? No,” Scar says. “They just got here. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for us to mess with them, since Ren’s, y’know, red and all. At the moment. Very bloodlust-y, I imagine.”

Grian searches his face. Scar hopes it’s blank, or at least believable. If anyone’s liable to call him on this, it’s Grian.

But he doesn’t, and he sighs.

“Okay,” he says. “But I’m asking Martyn later. He’s green, he can’t just—be killing his partner. It’s against the rules.”

“Yeah,” Scar says. “That part’s pretty weird.”

The matter drops. A couple of days later, Grian comes back to the house angry about something.

“They were asking for—for tribute,” Grian explains. Scar knew that part from other loops he’s done, loops where he’s been on the Dogwarts side of things. “Join Dogwarts by giving us something and put up this ridiculous banner. I told them no. We may be in their bad books now.”

It’s—fine. It’s absolutely fine.

“I’m going mining,” Grian continues. “I need to cool down.”

“All right,” Scar says. “Be careful.”

“Always am,” Grian tells him, and Scar watches as Grian disappears back out the door. 

He drops into the nearest chair and exhales hard.

It’ll be fine. They’ve beaten Dogwarts before. Sure, Scar hasn’t… exactly lived through any of the loops where this fight has broken out, not since he did this for the first time, but he knows it’s possible. It’ll be fine. 

And then what?

He pushes the question off. And then what doesn’t matter. He gets water, and he sits back down, and he waits for Grian to return.

Deep breaths. It’ll all be fine.

Grian returns abruptly.

It’s with a message on Scar’s communicator that he doesn’t see, and the door to their bedroom opening, and Grian’s voice asking, “Scar?”

Scar’s heart plummets.

“Scar, I, uh—I,” Grian continues.

Scar’s on his feet in an instant. He’s holding Grian’s shoulders, staring into eyes that have gone from gold to red; Scar knows his own are still green, and it’s a new kind of terror to know that Grian is red before him.

Grian’s never been red before him.

Sure, in other games, but not—not here, not in Third Life. Scar always goes red first. Always.

“What—forget that, are you okay?” Scar asks. He’s aware he sounds a little desperate, but—

“I lost my stuff,” Grian admits. “Again. But other than that, I’m okay, Scar. I just. It was so stupid. There was a creeper and a ravine and lava, and I wasn’t paying attention, and—but I’m fine.”

Scar can imagine what happened. The creeper probably knocked him into the ravine, and he died in the lava, and how ironic is it that he went red falling into a ravine? How familiar, how twisted-around? Scar kind of wants to laugh. Grian was always worried about Scar falling down environmental hazards like that, but it hadn’t been him this time.

It feels, somehow, impossible.

“It’s fine,” Scar says, like that’ll make it true. “It’s fine. I’m just—you’re here, everything will be fine.”

He’s still here. He’s red, but he’s still here.

Any bad fall could change that.

Is this how Grian felt, back that first time watching after Scar? He can feel the itch to get Grian back in armor under his skin, to make sure he’s protected. They live inside a cliff face. 

Scar is still green.

It feels like the world has turned on its head.

Scar just pulls Grian close to his chest and squeezes. Silently, Grian wraps his arms around him and hugs back.

Scott and Jimmy come by to ask what happened; Grian explains, and Scar worries, and Scott gives them both a long look and doesn’t say anything.

“Do you want to join us, then?” Jimmy asks. “Against Dogwarts.”

“Are you planning a war or something?” Grian asks.

“Yes,” Jimmy says seriously. “We’re planning a stand out by the Crastle. We’ve got Bdubs and Cleo in on it already. Are you in?”

“You can say no, if you’d like,” Scott clarifies. “I know you probably just want to stay here and wait the whole thing out.”

Scar knows they’re not going to be given a choice, in the end.

“No, we’ll come help,” Scar says, hoping the resignation stays out of his voice. “You’re our friends! That’s what friends do.”

“Yes!” Jimmy grins. “We’ll give you the time when we’re more sure of it ourselves. Meet at the Crastle for it.”

Grian nods. “Will do.”

Jimmy leaves them a paper a day later. Grian and Scar get there early.

Jimmy comes running through, most of Dogwarts behind him; he’s screaming something that sounds a lot like go, and Scott up in the Crastle says says, “time to fight.”

The fight that breaks out is messy. Scar ends up outside with Jimmy and Grian, and he can’t keep track of where anybody is. He gets eyes on Jimmy just in time to watch him die to Ren’s sword. Ren looks past him to where Scar is standing. Scar straightens.

“Hey, Ren,” Scar says, and then realizes that Jimmy’s body isn’t disappearing, that he’s out. Right. 

“Do you wish to be next, laddie?” Ren asks in that ridiculous accent of his. 

“Not really!” Scar says. “If you’d excuse me.” 

He turns and runs. Ren chases after him.

The fight, broadly, has gone sour. Scar feels his communicator buzz again as a lucky arrow flies through one of the windows on the Crastle and kills Scott. It’s time to get back behind the walls and regroup. 

Where’s Grian?

Scar desperately scans the battlefield for him. Finally: a flash of red, a sword, a shield. He’s too far away to reach, busy fighting off Etho. Scar’s not even sure Grian would be able to hear him over the din of battle. He cups his hands around his mouth to try anyway.

He watches from a distance as the arrow pierces Grian’s throat.

“Grian!” Scar screams. It hurts, the force with which it tears itself from him, but it’s nothing compared to the way his stomach drops to the floor. 

Grian turns, one hand going up to the arrow shaft, and his red eyes—wide, terrified—meet Scar’s green.

Scar, he mouths, and then he collapses.

His body doesn’t move.

Grian was red.

Scar runs toward his body and grazes his hand—

He wakes up on a hill covered in flowers.

Chapter Text

The loop is definitely attached to Grian.

Scar can’t imagine any reason why it would reset when he dies if it isn’t. The question now is what in the world Scar is supposed to do with that information.

He finds himself wandering over to the village on instinct. He can piggyback off of Martyn’s mine for materials, and most people will be here eventually. Grian will be here, most importantly, and he should really talk to Grian. He… doesn’t know how to talk to Grian, not after…

The loop is mechanical by now. He knows where to mine to get enough iron for armor and tools, and he knows when to emerge to meet everybody in time. He knows how to avoid the creeper that Grian brings over, knows how to stand just-so.

This time, he messes up.

He stands too close. He knows he’s standing too close when he hears the creeper behind him, but he’s not quick enough to get out of the way.

He wakes up on that hill, and he’s yellow.

Scar races back to the village to find Grian peeking under his shield, and it’s so familiar and so alien that Scar takes a moment to reel. Then, he shakes it off and approaches. 

“What was that?” Scar asks, trying to sound confused and not upset. He doesn’t want to upset Grian, not when the image of his last moments last loop are so fresh in Scar’s mind. “What happened?”

“Oh, Scar, I’m so sorry,” Grian says. “I—it was supposed to be a prank, I was just—I was just going to bring it into the group and then kill it, I didn’t—oh. Oh, I feel awful.”

Scar is just happy Grian didn’t die. Grian never dies to the creeper, but after last time, Scar’s still scared.

Everyone else is talking around them. Scar watches Bdubs build him a grave, just like the first time. Grian pulls him aside into the darkness to talk to him.

“I really do feel awful,” Grian says. “I didn’t—well, I meant to bring in the creeper, but I didn’t—I didn’t mean for you to die. So, I owe you now. I’m your teammate until I lose my first life. Is that a deal?”

For only the second time in all these time loops, Scar gets hit with a sense of deja vu.

“Sure,” he says, distant to his own ears. “Yeah. It’s a deal.”

Grian nods, a little unsure of himself.

“So, what’s the plan, teammate?” Grian asks. Scar shuffles them closer to the village, to the light and the relative safety.

He hadn’t… thought of a plan for this loop yet.

He’s already stolen the enchanter. He’s already taken over the village. Already lived in the desert, the swamp, the mountains. Already teamed up with every single person on this server and then repeated a couple. They’ve gone solo, they’ve gone in a group. 

Changing things drastically hasn’t done anything for the state of the loop. So… maybe…

“We’re taking over the desert.” Scar grins. “We’re going to be the ones in charge of all the sand on the server, Grian.”

“All the—Scar, do you know how big that desert is?” Grian asks, incredulous. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I’m very serious,” Scar says. “People will pay us for the rights to dig sand—”

“They—might,” Grian says. “You know they can just take it, right?”

“We’ll defend it with our lives,” Scar says. “We’ll be unstoppable, Grian. Think of all the TNT once we go red.”

“…I didn’t really expect you to think that far ahead,” Grian muses. “It’s still… a lot. That desert is very big, Scar.”

“We’ll build a wall! It’ll be fine,” Scar says. “It’ll be fun, even! Think of all the cool stuff you can do with sand, Grian. There’s TNT. There’s glass, which means bottles. We could go to the Nether and take all the nether wart and have two monopolies.”

“That’s… sorely tempting, actually,” Grian says. “You—you know. There’s only one patch of dark oak on the server.”

“There’s two, actually.” It slips out of Scar’s mouth before he can stop it. “I saw two while I was exploring.”

“I didn’t see the other one,” Grian mutters. “Are you sure?”

“Extremely sure,” Scar says. “One up north and one down south.”

“Well, we could just cut them both down, assuming they’re both relatively small. Collect all the saplings, and boom, no one else gets any dark oak.”

“Three-way monopoly,” Scar says. Grian nods.

“We’ll have to be fast, though,” he says. “There’s no telling whether other people have found them, too. And I think Martyn’s already been to the Nether.”

He has been, hasn’t he? Scar vaguely remembers seeing the achievement in the chat.

“I doubt he found a fortress that fast, unless it’s right there at the start,” Scar says. He knows it’s not. He’s even gone with Martyn to the Nether in previous loops, actually.

“Let’s just start with the dark oak for now, then.” Grian glances out the door of the house they’re in. “I sure hope no one was listening in on us, that would be awkward.”

They leave at dawn, and they take Pizza, and oh, the way Scar’s chest aches because of the llama.

Scar stops around Grian’s starter base. It’s odd to see now without its criss-crossing bridges and lamp-posts. He knows he won’t find a Nether portal at the bottom of the valley. He peeks over anyway, just to check. 

It’s flat. The base is just a hole in the cliffside with a basic entrance. It’s not the home it had become.

Scar misses it.

“Okay,” Grian says, taking Pizza’s lead from Scar as they continue towards the desert. “To the desert first, and then—do you want to split up? You take one dark oak patch, I take the other?”

There’s a little part of Scar that panics at the idea of letting Grian leave his sight that long. The last time it’d happened, Grian had died. But this is a different loop, and a Grian who barely knows him, and Grian can take care of himself. Better than Scar can, frankly.

“Sounds like a plan,” Scar says.

They get to the desert at night, and Scar watches as Grian races between cacti to get to a safe spot.

“There it is, Grian.” Scar gestures to the familiar mountain. “Monopoly Mountain.”

“We haven’t got any monopolies yet, don’t get ahead of yourself,” Grian says, snickering. “You want to make the base up there?”

“It’s got a good vantage of the whole desert,” Scar says. “I don’t see why not.”

“We’ll do that, then,” Grian agrees.

They leave Pizza at the foot of the mountain and start lighting up the area. Scar knows they’re not going to manage the whole desert, but it slips out anyway: everything the light touches is ours, and Grian laughs, and Scar grins.

It feels like old times. It is old times, by some arguments. No one except Scar has been touched by the games, least of all Grian. This is a fresh server for him.

They leave in the morning, once they’re stocked up on axes and gear.

“Good luck,” Grian says as they part.

“You as well,” Scar says, and heads south.

It’s more daunting than Scar had initially thought it’d be. Plus, he gets caught halfway through.

“What are you doing,” Scott asks behind Scar, and he jumps slightly. He grips the handle of his axe tighter and turns to face him with a smile.

“Scott!” Scar leans against the tree he’d been cutting down. “Surprised to see you here!”

“I live right over there,” Scott says, gesturing back to his little valley. “Did you not know that?”

“No.” Scar absolutely does. He’s not about to tell on himself. “I didn’t! How’s your day been? Good, I hope?”

“You’re not answering my question,” Scott says, looking around the area Scar has already cleared out. “You can’t possibly need this much wood. Aren’t there trees closer to your base?”

“Grian said he needs it,” Scar says. “Something about a base design. I just said yes, of course I’ll go chop down a ton of trees for you.”

Scott narrows his eyes. “You’re up to something.”

“Yes,” Scar says. “Cutting down trees.”

“Could you not cut all of them down, at least?” Scott asks. “Take some saplings and replant them at your base, don’t take all of ours.”

“I will,” Scar lies. 

In one loop, right at the beginning, Scott had said that Scar could come talk to him. Scar wonders if that applies here. 

“While you’re here,” Scar says, and Scott hums. “I have a hypothetical situation to run by you. A thought experiment, even!”

“…Uh-huh?” Scott sits down on the ground. Scar turns back to the tree he was cutting down. 

“So, say you were trapped in a time loop,” Scar starts. 

“A time loop,” Scott says. “Okay.” 

“The time loop seems to be attached to a second, different person. It resets if you die, and it resets if they die. There’s no way to ensure you both survive.” 

“Well, then I think you’re stuck,” Scott says. “If the loop resets when either of you die, and you can’t both survive, then you have to figure out a different way to break the loop. Scar, this isn’t a convoluted way of telling me you’re in a time loop, is it?”

“What? No.” Scar moves on to the next tree. “Why would I just tell you I was in a time loop, Scott? That seems silly.”

“Depends on how deep in the time loop you are,” Scott says, and it feels ominous. Scar clears his throat and focuses on the trees.

“Elaborate on breaking the loop,” he says. 

Scott is quiet for a moment. “…Well,” he starts, “you’d have to figure out what the loop is actually about. What’s triggering it. Does it reset for anything else? Hypothetically.”

Scar’s pretty sure Scott is on to him. But the loop hasn’t reset, so maybe that’s fine. 

“Uh,” Scar says. “Avoiding the other person.”

“Then it’s probably about whatever that relationship is,” Scott says. “Maybe you have to do something with them. Or convince them to do something with you.”

Convincing Grian is never that hard.  

“Right,” Scar says. 

“Was that helpful?”

Scar thinks for a second. He sort of guessed a lot of that, but… the idea of trying something with Grian, of trying to do something specific with him, or for him…

“Maybe,” Scar says. “I’ll get back to you on that.”

He probably won’t, unless he gets weirdly lucky and manages to break the loop this time. 

Scott doesn’t leave. Scar ends up in a tense stare-off with him while he sits there and watches Scar cut down trees, until it becomes clear that Scar’s not going to stop, at which point Scott gets up to protect his trees more directly.

In a panic, Scar just sets it all on fire and runs.

They end up not getting their monopoly that loop, which is disappointing but not unseen. It still makes Grian sad. 

There’s comfort to the desert. He hasn’t actually lived in the desert for too many of these loops; he was too interested in trying new things, and that meant not staying in the same place. Without them, the desert had a tendency to stay uninhabited; everyone else wanted to live in more habitable locations, and Scar sees the logic to it. 

But it’s Scar’s home, more than many of his other bases had been. He doesn’t know if it’s home for Grian, at least right now, but… it wouldn’t be the same without him. It really wouldn’t. Scar’s glad he’s here with him.

He thinks the key to getting out of this loop might be making sure Grian wins the game.

His other thought was that he had to prevent Grian from winning, but that doesn’t make much sense if Grian dying resets the loop. It would be, at least physically, much easier to ensure that Grian doesn’t win if that weren’t the case. Emotionally…

Well, that’s not Scar’s problem, because Scar is going to make sure he does win.

It sort of doesn’t matter for the first few loops. Scar doesn’t actually remember exactly how everything went; he gets stupid and dies to mobs, to pitfalls and explosions of his own making and, one particularly mortifying time that makes him especially glad no one else remembers these, falling into lava while running around the desert. He dies in the Nether, a couple of times, more bold than he’d been the very first time (more reckless in ways that benefit him in a game like this, usually; less observant than he really should be after having won one). 

He starts to figure it out, though: to figure out which actions lead to what, the cause-and-effect of Third Life’s events. It’s the easiest way to make sure Grian wins, after all: he’d won the first time, and if he just recreates those exact conditions, he should win again.

He lets himself be blown up by the creeper. He feigns ignorance of the second dark oak forest, even though it means losing their monopoly. He lets Cleo take Pizza, even though he knows, now, exactly when she takes him. He trips into the ravine and lets himself go red. 

It doesn’t stop all of his experimentation.

“So,” Scar says, “I had a plan for today.”

“Right,” Grian says. “I also had a plan, but let’s hear yours first.”

We should steal BigB’s cookie, Scar nearly says, just to see the look on Grian’s face. He doesn’t. “We’re blowing up Ren.”

Grian grins, and that’s just as worth it.

“I was sorely hoping you’d say that,” he says. “All right. I know how to make instant death traps, but I need a few materials. I’ll go to the Nether for that, and you… wait here?”

“Will do,” Scar says. 

He ends up wandering over to Dogwarts on his own, hanging around the outside wall. He gets spotted by Martyn, because of course he does.

“What are you doing here?” Martyn demands, and Scar holds up his hands.

“Can a man not go for a walk?” Scar asks. Martyn narrows his eyes and puts his hand on his sword.

“Not when you’ve threatened the people living here,” Martyn says. “If you’re here to hurt Ren—”

“No, no! Not at all!” Scar wonders if there’s a better place for the trap than right outside the doors. It’s not… bad, and it would have worked if they’d put the trap together right the first time, but it’s a bit obvious.

Scar wonders if he could make the trap work correctly the first time. He has experience with them now. He wonders if he could at least lure Ren away to give Grian more time to do it right.

He’s supposed to just be doing what he did the first time, and he distinctly remembers the trap failing before Jimmy set it off. Fixing the trap isn’t on the list.

But what if it makes things easier?

…There’s no harm in trying. If it fails, he’ll just keep going.

“Well, get out of here,” Martyn says. “I don’t trust you.”

Scar sighs heavily. “Okay, okay. I’m going, I’m going.”

He heads back to the Sandcastle and thinks.

He doesn’t know how Grian put together the trap, is the only thing stopping him. He’d have to find out, and that would probably end the loop, but…

They end up having to deal with Skizz again, because he follows them from the Sandcastle. That’s fine; Scar doesn’t actually remember Skizz causing them any real problems with the plan.

Etho is there still, too, and obviously Ren and Martyn, who never seem to leave Dogwarts for any extended period of time. Scar plays distraction, just like before, while Grian sets up the trap out front. Scar knows already that it’s going to fail, he just doesn’t know why.

He decides to ask when they leave.

“So, how does it work?” Scar asks quietly.

“There’s a TNT minecart or six under there,” Grian whispers back. “They’re on an inclined powered rail. A piston should push them forward, and then they’ll hit the block in front of them and explode instantly.”

Scar has never set up a trap with an inclined rail. Granted, he doesn’t usually use minecarts at all unless he’s pushing them off something, but he doesn’t think he’s seen Grian do that, either. At least, he hasn’t done it anytime recently.

“Wouldn’t a flat rail work too?” Scar asks. Grian frowns.

“I… guess it would,” he says. “But it should work the way it’s set up now, and I really wasn’t joking about how sweaty this is making me, can we go?”

“Okay, okay!” Scar lets Grian herd him toward BigB’s mountain. “Point taken!”

The explosion doesn’t go off the first time. Scar knew it wouldn’t. Grian is still disappointed, until it does, and Scar realizes he was too far away to see the way Grian’s face doubtlessly lights up in glee. 

It’s short-lived. Scar still shoves Ren off the edge, and Martyn actually kills him this time over it because he lands a lucky hit. 

The next loop, Scar stops them before they can leave the trap.

“Can I look at it?” Scar whispers. “I want to know how to do this myself in the future.”

It’s a lie. He wants to change it, wants to see if he can fix it, wants to see whether Grian’s eyes will light up in glee when it works, too.

“…I mean, it’s right there,” Grian says, confused. “What do you want to do with it?”

“I’m just taking a look!” Scar promises as he runs back. He has to be fast about this. 

It only takes him a moment to identify the components of the trap. It’s a simple one, compared to some of the things Scar has seen. With a speed he picked up somewhere along the way, he switches out the rail. It’s not fast enough to stop Grian from poking his head over Scar’s shoulder.

“What are you doing?!” Grian hisses. “It was just fine—”

“I had an idea,” Scar says. “I heard something—okay, I’m done, I’m done, we can go. We can leave, let’s leave.”

“That was—pointless,” Grian says as they scale BigB’s mountain. “Pointless and stupid and it’s a miracle you didn’t get caught doing it. What was that even for—”

Scar turns just in time to see Scott break the enchanter Grian had placed there and for the whole thing to explode. Jimmy, Scott, Martyn—all three of them gone, just like that. Grian stares, dumbfounded, at the crater. He turns sharply back to Scar.

“You did that for a reason,” Grian accuses. Scar can’t look away from him. “Scar, why did you—you know something. You knew something about that trap that I didn’t.”

“I—uh.” Scar falters, looking away. “No?”

“You do,” Grian prods. “Why did you change the rail?”

“I heard something about TNT minecarts a while ago. I don’t remember where,” Scar lies through his teeth. “Guess I’m actually pretty good at this red name thing, though, huh?”

There’s something sharp in Grian’s eyes. He’s not going to let this drop. He’s clever, he’s smart, Scar’s not getting out of this one. 

“You’re lying to me,” Grian presses. “Scar, what’s going on? Something’s going on.”

Scar can’t do this.

“Grian,” he says helplessly. If he shares, if Grian knows— 

If Grian knows that Scar’s been looping time, that he has information, that he hasn’t shared it—what would he think? What would he do? Scar can’t imagine that he’d want to stick around after that, life debt or no. Would he think that Scar is doing it on purpose? For fun? Would he even look at Scar the same again, look at him at all, it was bad enough before but for it to happen again— 

“Scar,” Grian repeats, and his tone has shifted. Scar’s head hurts—

He sits up sharply on the hill.

Scar doesn’t try fixing the trap again.

And that’s fine, because Grian’s delight over it working late is so much better, so much more Grian, than the suspicion. Scar wants to take the mad, gleeful scream of a laugh that the bomb brings out of him and bottle it forever. The first time he’s finally close enough to hear it, he almost kisses him—he doesn’t, but it’s a close thing.

But it can’t last.

Scar gets careless. He gets comfortable again, not with the domesticity of living with Grian but with the loop itself. He forgets he’s not the only one with lives to lose.

They’ve just gotten Pizza back in this loop. They’ve just hit the cactus wall. Scar knows the bridge ahead is broken, he does, knows he has to fix it quick because Grian won’t help him and it’s nighttime and there’s so many mobs around.

“Scar,” Grian says. “Scar, do something! Pizza is going to die, Scar, do something—”

Boom.

Scar barely manages to catch himself on the bridge when he hears the creeper explode. Pizza isn’t so lucky.

Neither is Grian.

It takes Scar a moment to put it together, because the last time Grian had died it’d been when he was red and his body isn’t here, just his items. And then the breath catches itself in Scar’s throat as he realizes Grian died, and he’s fine, he’s just yellow, but it still pierces through Scar’s ribs.

Scar exhales shakily and pulls himself closer to solid ground. It’s still nighttime, still dangerous, but he needs to collect Grian’s stuff.

It ends up not being an issue. Grian comes running through, staring at Scar on the broken bridge.

“What was that?!” Grian cries. Scar breathes.

“I’m so sorry,” Scar says. “Grian, I’m so sorry. I should have been faster.”

Grian searches his face. He sighs.

“It’s fine, Scar,” he says. “Here, let me get my stuff. I’ll stay here tonight and then head out in the morning when it’s less dangerous.”

Scar’s brain comes to a stop.

“What?” Scar asks. Grian looks back at him.

“I’m yellow,” Grian says. “I don’t owe you anymore.”

Scar stares at him.

“What—we can still be friends,” Scar says in a rush. “You don’t have to leave.”

For a moment, Grian looks like he’s going to agree. Then, he sighs.

“No, Scar,” he says. “I said I’d leave when I went yellow. I’m not—let me be clear here, I’m not saying we’re enemies, it’s just—I’m just not your teammate anymore. I can’t stay.”

Scar swallows. There’s a lump in his throat. His chest feels tight. When he’d gone yellow back then, he’d stuck around, why is this different?

This is different because they’re not at the end. This is different because it’s not Dogwarts versus everyone else. This is different because Scar isn’t even red.

“G,” Scar says. “Come on.”

Grian won’t look at him. Grian won’t look at him. He just gathers his things and turns back to the Sandcastle and leaves Scar on the bridge.

Scar stares off into the trees. His chest is squeezing in on him, his head is pounding.

This is it for the loop, isn’t it? Grian left. The loop never lasts if Grian isn’t there.

He wakes up on the hill.

Scar hasn’t even made it to the end once yet and he’s exhausted.

He stays on that hill until noon at least, just resting his head between his knees. He doesn’t have any gear, he doesn’t have any materials. He sees Grian soon. Soon, he starts it all over again. He should have used this time to get ready so that he’s following the steps, but he didn’t.

He pulls himself up. Time to go.

He runs on autopilot now. He lets Grian blow him up. He accepts Grian’s deal. He goes to the desert, and cuts down the trees, and doesn’t even realize he’s not wearing armor until Grian shoves a set of iron gear into his arms.

“Put some clothes on,” Grian says. “You’re stressing me out like that.”

Scar blinks at the armor.

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” Scar says. Grian’s face is set into something determined.

“Put some clothes on,” he repeats, and then turns on his heel and walks away, back to his furnaces. Scar keeps staring at him.

It’s been so long since anyone has had to remind him to put armor on. He didn’t have anyone to do it in Secret Life, not that he’d needed it. By then, there’d been some muscle memory to it, some instinct, some knowledge that if he didn’t he would die. Scar swallows. He… missed it, actually.

Scar puts the armor on.

If he takes it off once in a while just to hear Grian say put your clothes back on, well, no one but Scar has to know.

He scams people. He hands out reputation points and friendship passes and he’s trying to remember who got what the first time but he also wonders whether it even matters because he’s not sure whether a single person he gave a friendship pass actually ended up on his side in the end. 

He visits Scott and Jimmy sometimes. He understands Scott a little more, he thinks, after the loop he spent just living with Grian; understands the desire to just stay here, to not let the conflict outside reach them. He does his best not to bring it with him when he visits. 

He watches Jimmy go out first, and can only see Grian’s eyes, red and terrified, in his mind.

Ren gets him that time. Scar wakes back up and starts over.

When they get to the battle in the desert, Scar pulls Jimmy aside.

“You should stay ducked under the bunker wall the whole time,” Scar says. “Just in case. We’re both really prone to dying.”

Jimmy searches his face, frowning slightly.

“Yeah, but we gotta see what’s happening so we can do our jobs,” Jimmy argues.

“Just—trust me,” Scar says. “It’s probably gonna get bad out there.”

“They’re here!” Grian shouts from outside the bunker. Jimmy stares at Scar for just another moment. 

“Okay,” Jimmy says. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Scar times it perfectly. Etho is dead, and so is Impulse. He wonders how that’s going to change things in the future. He wonders if he’ll even get to see it.

An arrow flies through the slit in the back of the bunker and hits Jimmy square in the throat. Scar stares for a moment, frozen, as Jimmy collapses.

Scar ends up dying to Martyn’s bow. He wonders, when he wakes up, whether there’s any way he could save Jimmy, too.

He tries. He wastes so many loops trying.

There’s a loop where he nearly convinces Grian and Scott that they should be outside. 

“I just think,” Scar says, “that they’ll be more likely to go for it if you aren’t so obviously playing bait, y’know?”

“But you could die,” Grian says, eyebrows pinched. 

“I could die anyway,” Scar says, which doesn’t seem to help Grian’s concern. Scar sighs. “Grian, come on. Just give it a chance.”

If it goes wrong, Scar will just loop, anyways. Grian doesn’t know that. 

“He sort of has a point,” Scott says. “I don’t like it either, though. I don’t trust Jimmy to stay alive that long.”

“Wh—hey,” Jimmy says. “I need to participate, Scott.”

“And you can,” Scott says. “From inside the bunker.”

“Let me be part of the fight!” Jimmy argues.

“And just let you die?” Scott asks.

“Uh,” Grian says. “Not to interrupt this, but they’re coming.”

“I’m staying out here,” Jimmy says. 

“Scar, get in the bunker,” Grian says at the same time.

“Jimmy—” Scott starts.

“He’s not going to budge,” Scar says. He’s not sure which him he’s talking about.

So Scott ends up in the bunker with Scar. 

And they end up watching Jimmy get skewered by Etho.

“Jimmy!” Scott screams, voice breaking as he lunges for the gap out of the bunker. Scar pulls him back as he claws at the sandstone. “Scar, let me out there—”

“It’s over,” Scar says, throat dry. “Scott, it’s over.”

“Scar, you don’t want to try this,” Scott warns. Scar swallows and lets go. 

Scott goes down to Ren, and Grian goes down to Martyn even without the trap, and Scar just stands frozen in the bunker, Scott’s heartbroken scream ringing in his head.

“You’re surrounded, Scar,” Ren says. “Do you surrender?”

He might as well end this loop now. He thinks about taking himself out just so none of Dogwarts gets the satisfaction, about drawing his sword and lodging it through his throat. He doesn’t know if he can do it. He can’t see Grian.

“No,” Scar says, and draws his sword.

He doesn’t get the chance, someone’s arrow doing the job first.

Jimmy dies first.

Over and over and over again. 

There’s so many ways he goes out. If it’s not the arrow, it’s someone breaking through the bunker and attacking with a sword, an axe, a bucket of lava. He’s cursed, Scar thinks, to die this many times in this many ways, to go out first despite all of Scar’s best efforts.

There’s loops where Scar manages to keep him alive long enough to drag Jimmy along with him on his mad dash through the woods. Jimmy goes out in the middle of it, almost always. One of those loops, Scar caught Scott’s eyes as Jimmy went down, and Scott had looked like the entire world had ended. Scott had ended up getting killed before Scar, that loop, Grian unable to hold him back from going after Ren with his sword and getting cut down by Martyn. 

Scar can’t keep using up his loops like this. He’s exhausted the possibilities, ran through every option he can think of. It’s like Jimmy is doomed to go out first, and Scott is doomed to continue without him.

The last loop, Jimmy dies in the bunker, and Scott had at least gotten to hold him that time, Scar on the outside with Grian. Scar had gone down before he could have apologized to Scott for not managing to save him again.

This loop, Scar catches Scott’s shoulder as they’re setting up and says, “in case I don’t see you after this, I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Scott frowns. “Sorry for what?”

“Just—” Scar glances over to where Grian is setting up the last touches and lowers his voice. “Just, I’m sorry.”

Scott holds Scar’s eyes for a moment. “Did you steal something from us? What—”

“Uh, guys?” Grian says. “They’re on their way! Scar, get in the bunker!”

Scar squeezes Scott’s shoulder and retreats to the bunker. 

Jimmy dies. An arrow through the throat, fired by Skizz, just like the majority of these loops. Scar runs, and runs, and manages to live.

He’s almost at the end. He’s closer than he’s ever been before.

Scott pulls him aside while they’re hiding out in BigB’s house. His yellow eyes are rimmed in red, tear tracks still staining his cheeks. Scar doubts Grian has noticed, and if he has, he almost certainly hasn’t commented on it.

“You knew he was going to die,” Scott says, and Scar waits for the accusation to hit him: you did this. You killed him. But Scott just sounds resigned, exhausted, the way that Scar feels. “Didn’t you?”

“…Yeah,” Scar admits. It’s easier to tell Scott. Scott isn’t really his friend, at least not right now; they’re allies, sure, and Scar understands, but he knows if things came down to it, Scott would run him through without hesitation. “I did.”

“How many times?”

The question catches Scar off guard.

“Sorry?” Scar asks. “How many times what?”

“How many times has he gone out first?” Scott clarifies. Scar glances at Grian. He’s barely out of earshot, watching Dogwarts intently.

“I don’t know,” Scar says.  All of them. “I’ve lost count.”

“You tried to stop it.” It’s a statement rather than a question. Scar exhales.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Thank you,” Scott says, “for trying.”

Scar stares at him blankly.

“But I failed,” Scar says.

“But you tried,” Scott counters. “I thought I was the only one who would. I give him a hard time, but—but he was my husband, Scar. No one else cared for him the way I did. You tried to save him. That… it means something.”

Scar doesn’t know if he can speak. He nods instead. Scott nods back.

When Scott dies, this time, Scar wonders if he got to be with his husband.

They reach the end. 

Dogwarts has fallen. Impulse and BigB are both dead. It’s just Scar, Bdubs, and Grian left. Scar stares at the no-kill pass in his hand and breathes through his nose.

There’s one way this ends. He remembers it, remembers Bdubs tearing the pass from Grian’s loose fingers before he could get a grip on it. Remembers running Grian through without hesitation. He doesn’t know if he could do that now.

He doesn’t have a choice.

“Whoever gets the no-kill pass I don’t kill,” Scar says, and tosses it out. He squeezes his eyes shut as he hears Bdubs and Grian fighting for it.

Bdubs comes out victorious.

Scar realizes as soon as it happens that he could have rigged it, could have ensured that Grian had a better chance, but it’s too late now.

Maybe next time, he thinks, if there is a next time.

He draws his sword. He swings toward Grian. He meets Grian’s eyes, and sees the betrayal there, the anger.

His sword stops.

“Grian,” he says. He can’t do it. Grian’s eyes harden, and he hefts his sword, and the last thing Scar feels before he wakes up on the hill is the pain of Grian’s blade in his side.

He takes a moment to stare out across the landscape after that, and then he sighs and hoists himself up. Time to get back to work.

This loop, before they head to the swamp, Scar strides into the Crastle.

“Where are you going?” Bdubs asks.

“Yeah, Scar, what are you doing?” Grian follows Scar inside, frowning slightly.

“Oh, I just thought it would be a good time to dump the junk out of our inventories,” Scar says. “Just in case.”

He knows it’s kind of a weird time to do it, actually. But he doesn’t know how to tell Grian to empty his inventory without it sounding weird, and this is the best he’s got. Grian glances back at Bdubs in the doorway.

“I mean, I guess,” Grian says. “I’m carrying around a lot of stuff I don’t particularly care about.”

“Exactly!” Scar opens one of the chests and sorts through his own inventory. He needs, at this point, food and weapons and that’s it. “Who knows what useful stuff you might have to pick up later?”

“There’s not much later left,” Bdubs comments. “This seems pointless. Let’s go get BigB already.”

Scar knows there’s not much time left. 

“You never know,” Scar says cryptically. Grian rolls his eyes but Scar sees him dump a handful of items into the chest, too.

Success.

They head out. Bdubs kills BigB in Scar’s name. They meet up on the little stretch of dry land again. Scar grips the no-kill pass tightly in his hand and meets Grian’s eyes.

“Whoever gets the no-kill pass I don’t kill,” he says as he tosses it down, the words like acid in the back of his throat. Grian’s eyes widen. Scar doesn’t think he’s properly appreciated that before, the mix of bafflement and anger there.

Grian and Bdubs both dive for it. Grian scoops it up and runs a few feet away, clutching it to his chest.

“I got it!” Grian says. “I got it, I got it—”

Scar draws his sword. He feels bad killing Bdubs, too—he’d been family, at one point—but it tears at his insides less than killing Grian does, right now.

And then they stand there. Grian stares at Scar, then his sword, and swallows.

“You were going to kill me over a piece of paper if I didn’t—” Grian says, looking between Scar and Bdubs’s body. “You were serious. You were serious.”

Shock gets edged out on his face by anger, and Scar grips his sword tighter.

“You were going to kill me over a piece of paper,” Grian repeats, angrier this time. “Why—that’s—Scar.”

“Even if I had, you’d have come back,” Scar says. “And I didn’t! And I didn’t, I made sure—I—you had inventory space. It was fine.”

“I had inventory space so that makes it fine?” Grian’s voice is verging into something a little shrill, disbelief lining his face. “Scar, what kind of reasoning is that?!”

This isn’t going the way Scar expected.

“You can win!” Scar cries. “You can win, Grian, you wanted to win so you can win now—I made sure—”

“You rigged it? You knew this was going to happen and you still—Scar, what if I hadn’t gotten that paper?”

I would have killed you, Scar wants to say, except he wouldn’t have—he couldn’t, he already knows he couldn’t. His silence speaks for itself. The paper crumples in Grian’s hand as his fists tighten at his sides.

“After everything we went through,” he says. “After everything I did for you, you’d throw it back in my face like this over—I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you. What kind of friend—what kind of teammate— I knew I couldn’t trust you. From the start, I knew it. You have lied to and scammed every single person here and that includes me. You never actually cared, did you?”

Scar flinches.

“How dare you,” Scar says. “I never once pretended to care about you—”

“Really? Because you were so willing to kill me over—let me remind you—a piece of paper!” He holds up the slip, clenched in his fist. “Paper, Scar! Unbelievable!”

“And I didn’t!” They’re both shouting now. “You wanted to win, didn’t you? I’m right here!” 

Grian glares. He drops the paper into the mud and draws his sword. 

“Fine, then!” Grian shouts. “Fine!” 

Scar spreads his arms: an open invitation. Grian charges.

And stops.

The tip of his sword rests against Scar’s armor, just over his stomach. Grian looks frozen, too many emotions on his face for Scar to pick through individually. His knuckles are white on the handle of his sword. 

“Do it,” Scar goads. “Go ahead. You’ve earned this.”

Grian’s jaw tightens. The tip of the sword presses forward slightly.

This is taking too long. 

Scar tears his armor off and steps forward.

It hurts. It hurts, but not as much as some things—getting blown up used to be one, and he’d say lava is still up there. And then he takes another step, and feels it stab through his back, and it takes everything in him to keep himself upright.

“Scar.” Grian’s eyes are wide, focused on the blood coming slow and sluggish from the wound, held mostly closed by the blade itself. “Scar. Scar.”

“You did it,” Scar says. It comes out a whisper. “You won.”

“I didn’t want to win like this,” Grian whispers back.

Scar doesn’t know if he can say anything else. Instead, he just wraps his arms around Grian’s shoulders and pulls him close, kissing his forehead. Grian shudders. He lets go of the sword and clings to Scar.

This death feels, somehow, the most gentle.

And then he wakes up on the hill.

Chapter Text

Scar paces the hall of the Sandcastle. 

Grian winning didn’t end anything. Scar is still here. He doesn’t know why. Was his job not to help Grian win? Was that not the goal? So then what is?

It’s not changing things. It’s not ensuring Grian wins. Does… does Scar have to win? But he’s already proven he can’t kill Grian. 

He wishes he knew who—or what—sent him here in the first place. He wishes he had someone he could ask. But he doesn’t, so he just has to guess and hope he’s right.

He’s so tired.

He has to figure out how to get out of this loop. He can’t stay here forever. He can’t handle it. He can’t handle the cycle of dying and losing Grian over and over and over.

The only thing he can think of is winning Third Life himself, but that’s impossible. That’s impossible. He would have to kill Grian, to betray him, and he—he just can’t.

He could try to do it fair and square in the cactus ring, but that means killing him while he’s yellow. That’s still an awful, underhanded kill. 

So that’s not an option. He has to think of something else. Some other solution. He has to figure out who sent him here, he has to figure out what they want from him. If Secret Life taught him anything, there’s always a way to succeed a task. It may be awful and unpleasant, but there’s always a way to succeed. 

He can’t help but feel like the awful, unpleasant task is going to be killing Grian. 

He doesn’t reach the end again. He goes down fighting in the desert outside the bunker, or he goes down during the battle of Dogwarts, or he goes down even earlier than that. 

There’s one time when he makes it through everything, and he does reach the end, and he realizes what the options are.

“Hold on, guys,” Scar says. “I gotta do something real quick before we go after BigB.”

“What could that possibly be?” Grian asks. Scar looks around. There. If he can just get to the top of the Crastle, without his armor the fall should be enough to kill him. Or he could drown in the moat, get trapped on one of the magma blocks. He has options. If all else fails…

He considered it before, stabbing himself through. He never managed to do it. He doesn’t want to rely on it, not with Grian and Bdubs watching. 

Especially not with Grian watching.

His only comfort, doing this, is that Grian won’t remember. 

He races to the top of the Crastle and breaks open a wall. He takes off his armor. 

“Scar,” Grian calls. “We should—”

He falls, and he wakes up on the hill.

He’s almost certain the Secret Keeper sent him here.

He genuinely can’t imagine what other entity would do this to him. He can’t think of anything that would have it out for him, or love him, enough for this. This could be an act of love, the way his villain task was probably an act of love: the universe at large wanted him to win, and it went too far, and whenever it did Scar became more alone. This is like that, a little bit.

Everything is becoming… fake.

He can predict everyone’s lines. He knows the script by heart now. He goes to the village, he gets his materials, he gets blown up by a creeper. He comes back, Grian hides behind his shield and apologizes, everyone else talks over each other. 

They go to the dark corner of the village. They talk. Scar agrees to Grian’s deal. They take over the desert. Pizza goes missing. Pizza is found. Scar goes red. War breaks out. Scar dies, by his own hand or another’s.

Does it count as dying by another’s hand if he orchestrates it, if he manipulates the stage directions?

He wonders if anything is watching this. If it’s entertained. If it loves him, like he thinks it might. If it’s annoyed he’s missing something obvious. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.

He dreams, sometimes, of the sunflowers around Trader Scar’s. He wonders if there’s any way he’d go back there. He wonders if that would be preferable to this, to the facsimile of having friends, of having connections. He hates it. He hates it.

He goes to the village. He gets blown up. He takes over the desert. He starts a war.

Rinse and repeat.

It doesn’t change. It doesn’t alter anymore. He could always go back to trying whatever he could think of, but he already exhausted those possibilities, too. Anything else being different would require other people to act differently, and they just won’t.

Cleo and Bdubs always start the Crastle. Etho and Tango always move out to the swamp. Ren and Martyn start Renchanting. Impulse always betrays everybody, except for Bdubs, who betrays him. Again, and again, and again.

Scar wants to mouth along, see what that does. See whether anyone catches on, except that risks Grian catching on, and that will reset the loop. There’s no point in that, not at this point.

He tries to get Ren and Martyn’s enchanter. They’re justifiably appalled by that. Scar never succeeds. 

Once he tries to steal it, just to see whether it would change the loop. He fails. He feels trapped by it, now. He remembers it had been freeing, back at the start: he could try whatever he wanted! The possibilities were endless!

The possibilities have narrowed. Time has slowed. He’s well and truly lost track of how many loops he’s been doing this for. Forty? Fifty? A hundred? It could be any of them.

He wishes he counted the time. He wishes he knew how many years he’s been here, repeating the same two months. He wants to tear his hair out. 

“I want the cookie,” Scar says.

“…The cookie,” Grian repeats, unamused. Scar nods. Grian pinches his nose. “Scar, you’re red. You’re supposed to be killing people, not stealing cookies.”

“But I really want the cookie,” Scar insists. Line after line after line. Play the scene out until the end.

“Fine,” Grian says. “I had plans, but if you just want to steal cookies—”

“No, let’s hear the plan,” Scar says, and Grian explains, and Scar doesn’t listen.

The bomb doesn’t go off, like always, and then it does, like always. Grian screams his laughter into the sky, and it’s a point Scar almost looks forward to. At least he gets to hear this. At least he gets this.

Scar doesn’t sleep. Grian is baffled as to where the phantoms come from, and Scar doesn’t tell him that it’s his fault, and they just kill them. He wonders if he could fail the performance through being too tired. He wonders if anyone would notice.

Grian does, sometimes. 

“Scar,” Grian says, and it’s a deviation from the norm. Grian’s the only one who deviates, Scar has found, without being prompted. Maybe it’s because he’s this close to Scar at all times. “Have you been sleeping?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Scar asks, and hopes it’s convincing. Grian frowns.

“You look awful,” Grian says bluntly. “Your eyebags could have a life of their own.”

“Maybe I’m just keeping an eye on you, G,” Scar says. “You’re always out there keeping watch.”

“Yes, but I sleep,” Grian says. “During the day, while you’re out there cooing over your bee.”

“Mr. Bubbles needs the attention,” Scar says. “Otherwise, he won’t know he’s appreciated.”

“Uh-huh.” Grian shakes his head. “All right, fine. But get some sleep tonight, all right?”

Grian worries about him. Scar wonders when it flips over from obligation to care. Scar wonders if it even happens every time. He knows there’s a point it shifts—Grian’s gone yellow before that point and not come back. 

Scar doesn’t know if that’s the sort of thing he could experiment with. He doesn’t know if he could handle it.

He gets closer to the end every time. He starts staring at his own blade and wondering, seriously, how hard it would be to run himself through. He wonders if there’s any way he could kill himself that would stick.  

It would be preferable, he thinks, to killing Grian to get out. 

There’s no way he could kill Grian that would be honorable. Somewhere along the road, he would have to betray him, and that leaves a sour taste in Scar’s mouth.

So he doesn’t, and he doesn’t, and he doesn’t. The loop ends: tossing himself off a cliff, drowning in the swamp, setting himself on fire. Letting Ren kill him, getting blown up, surrendering in the bunker. 

Over and over and over.

Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat.

He gets blown up. He makes a deal with Grian. They take over the desert. They go after Pizza. They bomb Dogwarts. They start a war.

He stops visiting Scott and Jimmy, like he had earlier in the loops. He doesn’t think there’s a point to it anymore.

He doesn’t mess with Grian’s trap. He doesn’t try to save Jimmy. He doesn’t try to comfort Scott. He doesn’t rig the no-kill pass, but he hardly gets to the point where it would matter.

The first time he kills Grian, it’s an accident.

He kills Grian on instinct, on muscle-memory of the script. He stares at the spot where Grian had just been, only his items left to signify he was ever there, and he drops his sword.

He’s shaking badly. He’s shaking so badly he can barely stand.

“Scar?” Bdubs asks, the first deviation from him. Scar can’t do it. He did it. He can’t do it again. He can only see, behind his eyelids, Grian dying and not getting back up and Scar screaming—  

“Kill me,” Scar says. “Kill me, Bdubs, kill me kill me kill me—”

“Woah,” Bdubs says, taking a step back. “Scar, are you… okay?”

“I can’t do this,” Scar says. He sounds… “I can’t do this. I can’t.”

“…Shouldn’t we go after Grian?”

Grian will be red. The last time Grian was red was—Scar doesn’t even know anymore. Scar doesn’t even know how long ago they lived together in that little hobbit hole in the mountain. The memory is getting fuzzy, the way old memories do, and Scar laughs. It’s a weird, unhinged, desperate noise as he sinks to the ground. 

“I can’t remember how he’d sound when he’d sing, Bdubs,” Scar hiccups. “I can’t remember—”

Scar knows he used to dance while he cooked. He still does it, but it’s—it’s not the same, it’s not, because Scar can’t wrap his arms around Grian’s shoulders and kiss him while he’s doing it in any of these loops, in any of this time in the desert. He can’t turn up the volume on the jukebox and distract him with a dance party. He can’t even remember what disc they’d play. Cat? Mellohi? Chirp? He doesn’t know.

“Please just kill me,” Scar breathes. 

He hardly feels Bdubs’s blade.

It turns into a habit. It’s part of the dance, part of the script. He has to do it. Maybe if he just does this correctly, maybe if it goes exactly the same just once, he’ll be free.

It’s better than the alternative. It’s better than winning. It’s better than going through that again. 

He still regrets it, killing Pearl. It feels so long ago now. He wonders if he’d ever have gotten a chance to really, truly apologize to her for that. He wonders if he’ll ever see her again. She wasn’t in Third Life, and neither were Mumbo or Lizzie or Gem. He wonders if he’ll ever see any of them again.

He hates this.

He follows the script.

Explosion. Desert. War. Swamp. He kills Grian. He gets to that pond only after the—fifth? Eighth? Time he does it. He can’t look Grian in the eyes. He can’t look at the red, can’t face it again.

“Traitor!” Grian screams loud enough it breaks his voice. “Traitor Scar!”

He sinks into the pond. Scar can’t look at him. 

“You can kill me.” Scar’s voice is dull when he says it. “For everything you did for me to keep me alive, you may slay me and take the enchanter.”

The enchanter. The enchanter. Who cares about the enchanter? Why does it matter at this point? They fought a war over a table? A table anyone could make? Were they serious? They destroyed themselves over this?

He doesn’t see Grian’s face when his voice softens. “What… no,” he says. “I can’t. I literally can’t.”

You have, Scar thinks. You have and you will again.

At least he’ll never remember it.

At least there’s that.

At least if he loses he won’t remember, won’t be cursed—

They go to Monopoly Mountain. They fight. Grian wins. The loop resets.

Scar wants to scream. He doesn’t know if he has it in him.

He repeats. Explosion, desert, war, swamp, pond, ring. Explosion, desert, war, swamp, pond, ring.

Until he knows it by heart. Until he can look up in that pond and see Grian’s face, see the way it softens when Scar makes his offer, the way the malice leaks out of his eyes. The way the anger dissipates, the way his sword dips into the water. 

The way it would be so, so easy—

Scar can’t do it.

He’ll never leave. He’ll never leave the loops. Not like this. Not doing the same thing until he’s mad with it, until he’s just as frozen as everyone else here. 

He’s exhausted.

He has no options.

He has one option. He could still kill Grian.

And there’s some relief to that, at least: Grian wouldn’t remember. Grian wouldn’t know. Grian wouldn’t look at him with betrayal in his eyes until the end of time. He wouldn’t treat Scar like he’s nothing, wouldn’t ignore him and avoid him and hurt him the same way.

But then he wouldn’t know.

Does it matter? Does he care?

If he loses Grian once, but he comes back—if he gets Grian back, rather than this predictable puppet of him—would it be worth it?

He could hear Grian sing again while he does the dishes, warble-y and off-tune with the jukebox. He could dance with him again. He could kiss him again. He could do what he’s done every single loop now and rebuild and rebuild and rebuild and maybe some of it would stick, some lingering affection sticking to Scar.

It would mean killing him.

Isn’t he already doing that? 

Is this Grian even real? Does he count?

Explosion.

Desert.

War.

Swamp.

Pond.

Ring.

Rinse.

Repeat.

Again.

Again.

Again.

He can’t do this anymore.

He reaches the pond. He watches Grian come down, screaming betrayer at the top of his lungs. He kills Bdubs. It’s easy. It’s so easy. He misses Bdubs, the version of him who’d change.

Scar faces Grian levelly. He watches the way the anger contorts his face, the despair. Watches the way he sinks to his waist in the water, his sword dragging. Hears the way his voice breaks. Traitor. Traitor Scar.

“You can kill me,” Scar says, like he’s said five-ten-fifteen-endless times by now. “For all you’ve done to keep me alive, you may slay me and take the enchanter.”

Mechanical. Automatic. If he’s not careful, he’ll slip. He won’t be able to follow through with this, and he’ll have to do it over again.

“What?” Grian stares at him with wide eyes. “No, I can’t. I literally can’t.”

Grian’s sword drops entirely. They stand there, staring at each other. Scar feels something start to crack. 

“We could just stay here,” Grian continues. “Not—we don’t have to leave.”

Could they? Scar hasn’t tried that yet. He wonders how long it would last. It almost makes him falter. “Just us and the ghosts,” Scar says.

“Yeah,” Grian says. “Just us and the ghosts. They want a fight.”

They always do. Scar wonders whether they have any sense of change once they’re dead.

“C’mere,” Scar says, opening his arms. It’s a deviation. It’s a trap. 

Grian wades right into it, slumping against Scar’s chest. Scar wraps his arms around his shoulders and stares blankly at the water past him.

“I hate this,” Grian mutters.

“Me too,” Scar says, and means it more than he intends to let on. He takes a breath in. “Sorry for this.”

“For wh—”

Scar pushes him under the water.

Grian’s eyes snap wide as a stream of bubbles escapes his nose. He tries to get his legs out from under him, hands reaching up to claw bloody lines down Scar’s arms. His mouth opens as he screams something that could have been Scar if it weren’t so warped by the water around him. There’s surprise in his eyes, and panic, and betrayal. Scar wants to look away.

He can’t.

Grian thrashes until he can’t anymore, until his clawing turns to something weaker. The blood mixes with the water, sand-stirred and cloudy now. Scar’s jaw tightens. It takes less time than he’d thought it would. It lasts an eternity. 

Grian stops fighting. Grian stares up at Scar, animal panic warring with resignation on his face. Grian sinks. 

“I’m sorry,” Scar whispers, and his voice finally cracks. He doesn’t even know if Grian hears it. 

Scar’s barely even aware of the items floating in the water. He can’t look away from Grian’s face, still and blank now. The warmth starts to seep from him, and Scar wonders just how long he’s been holding Grian’s dead body under the water. 

He won.

He thinks this might have been the worst thing he’s ever done.

Was it even worth it? Grian won’t remember it. Grian won’t remember any of this now. Scar made sure of it. Is that better? Is that selfish of him, to be happy about that, at least? That Grian won’t be haunted by the memory of killing him?

His eyes hurt. He’s crying. He doesn’t feel like he’s here.

Eventually, he gets out of the water. Eventually, he drags Grian’s corpse to the shore with him. Eventually, he sits back against the cliff and shuts his eyes.

He wakes up on that hill, and he shatters.

Chapter Text

The first time Scar sees Grian after—after—just after, he can’t stop the full-body flinch.

There’s no sign that anything happened, just like there’s never any sign that anything happened. Grian gets to reset, like Scar doesn’t. Grian doesn’t know. Grian will never know, if Scar has any say in the matter.

Would Grian hate him, if he knew? Would Grian be able to stomach looking at his face ever again? He’d betrayed Grian not once, not even twice. Enough times now that Scar has lost count, and he hates that. Hates what betraying Grian does to him.

He’d say he’ll never do it again, but… he just doesn’t know.

The temptation to run, to team up with somebody who isn’t Grian or to go it alone for a loop or two sits there under his skin, but he knows it won’t last. He knows it’ll be a few days at most before the loop shunts him back here, back to the start, back to Grian.

But he can’t. He can’t face him, not with the image of his resigned expression under the water so fresh in Scar’s mind.

He doesn’t get a choice.

“Scar!” Grian waves him down outside the village. Scar turns toward him, like he knows he always will.

“What’s up?” Scar asks, even though the sight of him makes Scar’s chest hurt like he’s been stabbed. 

“I haven’t seen you yet!” Grian grins. “How are you, dude?”

Scar wants to hug him. Scar wants to shove him to the other corner of the map and never let him get close enough to hurt again.

Is this why Grian never looked at him during Last Life without frustration? Why he left in Double Life? Kept his distance in Limited Life, in Secret Life? Why he left Scar so achingly alone for so long? Because it hurt too much to know what he’d done, what he’d caused for Scar? Scar thinks he understands now, at least.

It still hurts. But he understands.

“I’m good, I’m good!” Scar says. Grian tilts his head at him anyway.

“Yeah?” Grian asks, not entirely believing. “Where’ve you been, anyway? No one’s seen you yet. Guess I’m the first.”

“Oh, I was just out mining,” Scar says, and that’s honest. He doesn’t explain that it was because Scar couldn’t face anyone yet, didn’t have it in him to stay cheerful, to stay personable. “You gotta get all the good stuff before everyone else finds it, G.”

“Ah,” Grian says. “I see. So, you found diamonds, I take it?”

“I totally did,” Scar says. “I’ll give you some, if you want.”

It’s entirely instinctive. Scar doesn’t even know if it’s smart. 

Grian blinks at him. Narrows his eyes. “What do you want?”

“Who says I want something?” Scar blinks innocently. “Maybe I just want your friendship.”

“Uh-huh.” Grian crosses his arms. “Seriously, Scar.”

“I am serious!” Scar digs around in his pockets and holds out a handful to Grian. “Here. You can probably make boots with that, right?”

Grian stares at the offered diamonds. Looks back at Scar’s face.

“…Scar,” Grian says, “are you okay?”

Scar feels like he might crack again.

“I’m doing perfectly fine, thank you for asking!” Scar is still holding his hands out. “C’mon, Grian. Just—just take them.” Please.

Grian stares for another long moment.

“…Well, I’d be a fool to pass up free diamonds,” Grian says, and Scar drops them into his hands. “Are you sure you just want friendship for this?”

“Very sure,” Scar says. “We could be teammates. I was—going to take over the desert, you could join me.”

Scar gets the feeling this loop is already lost. He’s already deviated from the script, and he never gets to the end when he does that. Then, he wonders if it matters, if following it got him nothing but—that. 

But the desert is comfortable, and if he goes back to Grian’s starter base he’ll definitely break.

“Take over the desert?” Grian snickers a little. “Scar, that desert is enormous.”

“The sand, Grian,” Scar says. He feels fake. “It’s about the monopoly.”

“On sand,” Grian asks, smiling. Scar would do anything to keep that smile there.

“On sand,” Scar confirms.

“It’s not going to work,” Grian says.

Scar knows.

“It’ll be fun, though,” Scar tries. Grian sighs and shakes his head.

“I wish you luck,” he says. “Thank you for the diamonds, Scar.”

Scar doesn’t stop him as he walks away.

Scar has been doing this for far too long.

He gets to the end, over and over and over. He has nothing else to do. Grian kills Scar. Scar never kills Grian, not permanently, never again. He smiles and tells Grian not to worry and that he’s sorry and all the rest he can think of, and Grian stares at him with teary eyes and says he doesn’t feel good as Scar dies under the desert sun. Scar wishes he could do anything for him.

Scar goes red the way he always does, and Grian stays green, and Scar is relieved because at least that means he has an excuse for staying around longer.

He can’t sleep. He doesn’t bother trying. The phantoms are annoying, but Scar will deal with them. Instead, he stands in the doorway to one of the rooftop balconies that make up the Sandcastle and stares at Grian. 

Grian is sitting on the edge, focused on the desert beyond. He’s sitting watch. It’s something he does, something that Scar had occasionally tried to get him to stop doing. It never works. He’s given up by now.

Scar still sees him, sometimes, when he shuts his eyes: underwater, scared, angry. It’s definitely the biggest mistake Scar’s made, and he’s made some mistakes. It didn’t even get him out. 

What will he do, once he does get out? Does it matter?

Grian doesn’t notice him, Scar thinks. Scar wishes Grian would be more careful about watching his own back, but that’s how it goes, isn’t it? Grian watches Scar’s back, and Scar watches Grian’s, and he hopes to whatever higher power might be out there that he doesn’t miss something obvious. He’s gotten used to it again. He’s gotten used to not being alone, to having a teammate to rely on.

God, Scar still wants to kiss him. He feels awful for it, sometimes.

He pads over to where Grian is sitting and lowers himself to the ground. The air is cool and dry. Grian glances at him but doesn’t stop his vigil of the desert. 

“You’re too quiet,” Grian murmurs. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

“I didn’t mean to spook you.” Scar keeps his voice quiet too. He doesn’t want to ruin this.

“You didn’t,” Grian assures. “I thought you were sleeping, though.”

“Couldn’t.” Scar doesn’t want to explain it. He slides his hand over Grian’s. Grian doesn’t pull away, like Scar half expects him to. He doesn’t know where he stands with Grian like this, whether he’s allowed to love him, whether that’s just as selfish as being glad he doesn’t remember.

“That’s too bad.” Grian twists his hand to hold Scar’s properly. “The phantoms are going to be a pain.”

Scar snorts, and leans against Grian’s side, and doesn’t say anything else.

“You know,” Grian says after a long stretch of silence, “I didn’t expect it to end up like this.”

“What, us in the desert? You’ve said that before,” Scar responds. Grian looks up at him, turning so he can see Scar’s face better.

“No, I…” He searches Scar’s face. “For you to be… this important to me.”

His voice is barely audible. Grian laughs bitterly to himself.

“It’s going to get me hurt,” he says. “But I—I don’t know. I don’t know, Scar. I want to believe you won’t turn on me, but you lie to people. It’s what you’re good at.”

It’s going to become impossible to kill him again. Scar knows he won’t be able to face the betrayal in his eyes.

Scar squeezes Grian’s hand and kisses him, selfishly, foolishly, instead of answering.

Scar doesn’t know if leaving the loops means losing Grian. He thinks it might make him a monster that he wants to keep him more than he wants freedom. Maybe it doesn’t matter if he gets out, as long as he has this.

He doesn’t want to keep losing Grian to the loop resetting, either.

Grian kisses him back, because he doesn’t know better. When they break apart Scar holds him close to his chest and whispers, “I would never pretend to care about you.”

After a moment of hesitation, Grian hugs him back.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay, Scar. I believe you.”

They stay there until the sun rises.

When it does, Ren goes red.

“Give me the banner!” Martyn shouts as he alone chases Scar through the woods. The explosions have gone off, everyone else has died, Scar has gotten away from the majority of Dogwarts but not Martyn. He’ll probably reunite with Scott and Grian soon. 

And then he’ll keep going, and he’ll reach the end, and he’ll have to kill Grian all over again.

He doesn’t want to.

He hates this. Hates the cycle he’s trapped in. He always starts hating it around this point, around when things start to go downhill. Around when Jimmy dies.

Scar stumbles on a root and yelps as he falls to the ground. He wasn’t looking where he was going, too caught up in his thoughts, and now Martyn’s going to catch up.

So much for this loop. Not that it would have gone anywhere, anyway. Scar starts to push himself upright when he feels something sharp against the back of his neck.

“The banner,” Martyn demands from right behind him. Scar sighs.

“Just kill me,” he says, dropping back to the ground. “Make it quick. Get it over with.”

Nothing happens.

“…What?” Martyn asks. “That doesn’t make any— what?”

The bafflement, the change, is a welcome breath of fresh air. 

“You can take your stupid banner off my dead body, if you want,” Scar continues. “Assuming any of this—hey, does any of this matter after I die?”

The question escapes him before he can think to keep it private. He’s never considered it before.

“What are you talking about?” Martyn pulls his sword away, and Scar turns his head to look at him. He looks… confused and mildly annoyed. Great combination. 

“Forget it.” Scar chuckles. “Besides, not like you’re gonna remember any of this.”

He can feel himself cracking. It’s a very distinct cracking to the way he’d broken after he’d killed Grian: this feels almost hysterical, in the old sense of the word. He feels like there’s a chunk of his sanity breaking off and dropping into the abyss, like glacier ice falling into the sea. He’s surprised it’s taken so long. He kind of wants to laugh.

“I’m not going to—what does that mean?” Martyn looks mostly just confused now. The anger has slipped away in favor of bafflement, his sword held at his side. Scar turns and sits up facing him.

“This one’s a bust!” Scar grins, and it feels slightly too wide on his face. “C’mon, Martyn, kill me. I gotta start over.”

“Start over,” Martyn murmurs. “Start—Scar, what do you mean, start over?”

“I mean start over!” Scar leans back on his hands. “Martyn, do you want to know a secret?”

“I—sure,” Martyn says. 

“I’m in a time loop,” Scar says. It’s weirdly relieving to have said it; it’s just as damning. “I’m stuck, Martyn! The same two months, over and over and over—I’m losing it! Haha, it’s kind of nice to say it, actually. You’re the first person I’ve told. Scott figured it out a couple times, but that’s it.”

Martyn stares at him.

“You’re joking,” he says. Scar sighs heavily.

“I wish,” he says. “I don’t think it’d be a very funny joke.”

Distantly, Scar can hear Grian and Scott’s voices. He can’t make out anything they’re saying. Martyn’s eyes flick up.

“…You know what,” Martyn says, “come find me in the next one, yeah? Let’s chat.”

“Scar!” Grian’s voice is closer than it was before. “Scar, where are you?!”

“Before he gets here,” Scar says. “Come on, Martyn. Just do it. I know you want to.”

Martyn hefts his sword.

“If you say so,” Martyn says.

“Scar!” That’s Scott. Scar turns his head just in time to see Scott and Grian break through the trees. “Scar, get up—”

Martyn’s sword cuts through his heart, and he’s gone.

He goes too early the first time, he realizes.

“Martyn,” Scar says as soon as Martyn leaves his mine, and Martyn jumps. 

“Oh my word—Scar!” He puts a hand to his chest. “Don’t do that to me! Grian did that earlier and I wasn’t expecting it again—”

“Sorry, sorry!” Scar holds up his hands. “Didn’t mean to scare you there! I need to talk to you, though.”

“Sure,” Martyn says. “About what?” 

Scar gestures for Martyn to follow him. Martyn gives him a weird look, but follows.

He looks around the house they stop in and then Scar takes a deep breath.

“Okay,” Scar says. “I’m, uh, I’m—in a time loop.”

Martyn stares at him. 

Then, he breaks out laughing.

“Oh, that has to be the best one anyone’s tried to pull today,” Martyn says, wiping a tear from his eye. “A time loop. Really, Scar?”

Martyn had said—

But that was a Martyn who had already done a lot of the game. That was a Martyn deep in Dogwarts. That wasn’t this Martyn, that wasn’t a Martyn who thought this would be a simple, fun game with his friends. 

“I’m serious,” Scar says. 

“Uh-huh.” Martyn leans against the wall. “Well, this was a welcome laugh. Thanks, Scar. I was going to go exploring, see what’s what. Care to join me?”

Resignation sinks into Scar’s chest. “I—nevermind. Have fun.”

The mirth slips slightly off of Martyn’s face. “I didn’t seriously hurt your feelings or something, did I? Scar, seriously, if I did you can tell me.”

“You didn’t!” Scar waves his hands. “You didn’t. Just forget it, okay? It’s no big deal. I’m—you know what, you’re welcome.”

“…If you’re sure,” Martyn says. He pushes the door to the house open. “I’ll see you around, yeah? Good luck!”

With that, Martyn leaves.

Scar sits against the wall and rubs his eyes. 

He needs to talk to a version of Martyn who will believe him, a version of Martyn who isn’t this one. He’s probably already lost this loop, but it feels like a waste to kill himself over it. He can just—avoid Grian. That usually resets the loop, doesn’t it? But that means spending anywhere from a few hours to a few days in this loop.

He’ll… count it as a break. He won’t do what he did the last time he decided he needed one. He doesn’t think he could handle it, the trust Grian had put in him during that loop. Not now. Not after Scar killed him, betrayed that trust so grossly.

He doesn’t actually have to worry about it, he discovers. While they’re all gathered around talking after Martyn pulls his prank on Grian, Martyn glances at Scar.

“Did you all know that Scar’s claiming to be in a time loop?” Martyn says lightly, and something inside him freezes.

“A time loop?” Cleo asks. “Really, that’s the best he could come up with?”

“Ha, ha,” Scar says. “Listen, it was—a bit.”

“Uh-huh.” Cleo crosses her arms and raises her eyebrows.

Grian opens his mouth to say something—

Scar opens his eyes to the hill.

What?

Oh. Of course. Grian had found out, so the loop reset.

He might as well try talking to Martyn again this loop. He waits, this time. Waits until he’s red, until Ren joins him. Until he’s standing across from Dogwarts in the desert, banner fabric clutched tightly in his hand.

“Just give it back,” Grian urges him. Scar searches the line and finds Martyn.

“I will,” Scar says to Grian. Then, he cups his hands around his mouth. “Martyn! I want to talk!”

“There’s nothing to talk about!” Martyn shouts back. “Give us the banner or we’ll—”

“Just come chat with me and I’ll give you the darn banner,” Scar says. “Over here.”

He gestures to the edge of the cactus wall, on their side of it. Grian gives him an incredulous look.

“You’re going to get killed,” Grian says.

“Martyn’s green, he won’t actually do anything.” Scar knows that Martyn may be dangerous, but he won’t attack unprovoked.

“Ren’s not,” Grian points out. “Skizz isn’t. Scar, don’t be—I’m coming with you.”

“No!” Scar says it so strongly that Grian takes a minute step back. “I, uh—I have something I want to talk to Martyn about privately, is all. It’ll—I’ll come back. I will.” If he doesn’t, it won’t matter.

“I… I don’t like this, Scar,” Grian says.

“I happen to agree with him,” Ren says from across the wall. “I don’t trust whatever shady business you have with my Hand, Scar.”

“You guys can watch!” Scar holds out his arms helplessly. “That’s fine! Just—not be in earshot!”

“I’ll talk with him, m’lord,” Martyn says, and the voices they do are still kind of hysterical, but Scar’s just as deep in his own mess. 

“Great!” Scar claps his hands. “Meet me over there on your side.”

Scar hops over the lava moat and gives Grian a thumbs-up. Grian rubs his arms nervously. 

“Be careful, Scar,” are the last words Scar hears from him before he gets out of earshot. 

“All right,” Martyn says, immediately confrontational. “What is it you wanted to discuss?”

“I’m about to say something that’s going to sound kind of insane, but you have to at least hear me out,” Scar says. “Okay?”

Martyn narrows his eyes. “…Okay. Say your piece.”

Scar glances around, just in case Grian has crept within earshot. “I’m in a time loop.”

Martyn stares at him, and for a moment, Scar’s worried he’s going to burst out laughing the way he had last time.

Instead, he says, “you’re right, that does sound insane.”

“But you’re hearing me out,” Scar says.

“I’m hearing you out,” Martyn confirms. “Why tell me?”

“You told me to,” Scar says. “A couple loops ago. You killed me in front of Scott and Grian in the woods—not too far from here, actually, funny enough—and I don’t know if you took the banner or not but that’s why you were chasing me. I’d put it on a shield to taunt you.”

“That… does sound like you,” Martyn muses. He puts a hand to his chin. “…A time loop, huh. So you know what’s going to happen?”

“Kind of?” Scar rubs the back of his neck. “I know what happens when things go the same, but sometimes I do stuff—like this, honestly—that, uh, changes things. Sometimes it’s in big ways. I took Ren’s enchanter way back at the start once, that was a fun loop.”

Martyn’s expression is flat, unamused. 

“But, uh, I know how this is supposed to end,” Scar confirms. “I know how things are supposed to go.”

“Sticking to it hasn’t broken the time loop, though, I take it,” Martyn says. “How about a test, to see if I believe you? Who’s the next person to die?”

“Etho.” He barely has to think about it, after this many repetitions.

“How?” Martyn looks genuinely curious.

“I’m not telling you that,” Scar says. “Oh no. Because you’ll tell him, and then it won’t happen, and your test won’t work.”

“…Fair enough,” Martyn says. “All right. If you’re right, I’ll come talk to you. Sound like a deal?”

“Sounds like a deal,” Scar agrees.

“Now give me the banner and I’ll be on my way.”

Scar wonders if there will be repercussions for this. Small things have caused the loop to reset before, and he’s nervous about this setting off some sort of chain reaction he’s not aware of. 

He hands over the banner. Martyn all but snatches it, hands gripping the material tightly. He looks it over, presumably for damage, before nodding.

“The deal is sealed,” Martyn says, back in voice.

“I’ll see you around,” Scar says, and watches Martyn walk back to his team before heading back to Grian himself.

“What was that about?” Grian asks in a low voice as Scar returns. 

“Don’t even worry about it,” Scar says, and Grian looks worried by that.

“Scar…”

“I’ve got it handled! I’ve got it under control,” Scar rushes to assure. “You don’t have to worry about anything, Grian. Everything is fine.”

“…I don’t really believe you,” Grian says. “But if you’re… sure, I guess we can see how this plays out.”

“I am,” Scar says, not entirely honestly.

He’ll just have to see.

Sure enough: Etho enters the desert. Etho flees from Grian’s bow. Scott and Jimmy join in the chase. 

Scar kills Etho with a shot in the back. His items explode as his body disappears. 

Martyn sends him a private message later in the day, after a tense stand-off in the desert followed by a botched excursion to Dogwarts: meet me alone at these coordinates, followed by a string of numbers. 

“Hey, Grian?” Scar calls as he leaves the Sandcastle. “I’m going on a solo adventure!”

Grian’s head pops over one of the rooftop balconies. “Where are you going?”

“Secret meeting,” Scar says honestly, which: maybe he shouldn’t, but he knows how to get Martyn to listen to him now, so he can redo this if the loop breaks. “I’ll be careful, I’ll be careful, but I thought I should let you know I was leaving.”

“Things are so tense right now, Scar.” Grian frowns. “Are you sure? Maybe this should wait.”

“Nah,” Scar says. “I won’t die, Grian. I’ll be fine.”

“…Okay.” Grian sounds nervous. “I’ll… believe you for now.”

“Fantastic! I’ll see you later, G,” Scar says, and then he heads out, Grian’s ever-watchful eyes on the back of his neck.

They meet at a point south of Skizz Point. Martyn is already there when Scar arrives.

“Didn’t bring anyone else with you, right?” Scar asks. Martyn crosses his arms.

“Of course not,” Martyn says. “This is between you and me.”

“…Right.” Scar looks off past Martyn. “Nice meeting spot.”

“It seemed neutral enough,” Martyn admits. “I’d have picked directly between our bases, but… well, Skizz lives there already, and I assumed you wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of pulling me aside alone if you wanted an audience to your… time loop.”

He still sounds a little disbelieving. Scar can’t blame him.

“Etho died,” Scar says. “That was your condition, right? That I predicted something that we could all confirm.”

“You were the one to kill him, so pardon me for still being a little skeptical,” Martyn says. “But, fine. I’ll believe you, for the time being. What do you want?”

What does he want? Scar drops to sit at the base of a tree with a huff. Martyn follows a tense moment later, hand still on his sword.

“I dunno, Martyn,” Scar says. “Just—someone to talk to, I guess.”

“You could talk to Grian,” Martyn says. “I’m sure it would have taken much less effort to convince him.”

“The loop resets if I think he knows,” Scar says. “I’m not entirely sure why.”

“…Yeah, I got nothin’ for that one,” Martyn says. “That’s puzzling indeed. Fine. Scott, then. You’re all buddy-buddy with him and Jimmy over there in Hobbitland.”

Scar sighs and tips his head back against the tree.

“I’ve tried to talk to Scott about it,” Scar says. “I don’t know if I can again.” The last time had been while he’d still been trying to save Jimmy. 

Martyn hums. “So me.”

“So you,” Scar agrees. “It could have honestly been a lot of other people, but you were the one who was there at the right time, I guess, so it’s you. Believe me, if I could have talked to someone easier, I would have tried.”

“Way to make a guy feel wanted,” Martyn says, but his tone makes it sound like… a joke? Is Martyn joking with him, even though they’re on opposite sides of the server war? He moves on before Scar can ask. “But, sure. Go ahead. Talk my ear off. I’m… admittedly, I am curious. If you really are in a time loop, I want to know what you’ve tried.”

So Scar starts talking.

About the first loops, when he avoided Grian; about the loops where he did anything but what he remembered doing the first time; about the loops where he did exactly what he remembered doing the first time. About anything and everything.

He skims some details, obviously: a lot of them, actually. Martyn doesn’t necessarily need to know that they’d kissed in one—two—three loops. He doesn’t need to know about the other games. He doesn’t need to know about the way Scar had drowned Grian, hands just-barely on his shoulders and not his throat. 

But he tells Martyn the broad strokes. What he’s tried, what’s failed.

“I fixed that bomb that we did?” Scar says. “The one at Dogwarts that made Ren yellow?”

“Yeah, I noticed it was broken,” Martyn says. “You fixed it?”

“It took out you and Scott instead of Ren and Skizz,” Scar says. “I didn’t get to see where that would have gone, ‘cause Grian confronted me about knowing the trap was broken and the loop reset.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Martyn says. “I’m genuinely quite curious as well.”

The war they’re in—the fact they’re on opposing sides of it—fades away. It feels like talking to a version of Martyn who had been his friend, once. It feels like talking to a Martyn who isn’t hellbent on winning the war. 

He doesn’t seem happy to hear that he and Ren don’t typically win. 

“It does make continuing all this feel a bit pointless,” Martyn admits. “Knowing that you’ll defeat us, and that we don’t factor into what you consider the end at all.”

“I think we just got lucky,” Scar says. “There have been loops where I messed up in the last fight with you and Ren and I died. I don’t know if Grian would have come out of those victorious or not, but I suspect he doesn’t. You two are powerful.”

“Thanks,” Martyn says. “For what it’s worth, you and Grian are forces of nature yourselves. Grian with that TNT, man. Whoof.”

“He’s really something special, huh,” Scar says. Martyn gives him an odd look.

“…You really care about him,” Martyn observes. “He’s not just your lackey like he says, you’re really partners in all this.”

“I think—no, I know I love him,” Scar admits quietly. “Not—not, like, want to date him, but—ugh. No. I just know that I love him.”

“I… I think I can tell,” Martyn says. 

“We have kissed,” Scar blurts out, even though he’d really meant to keep that to himself. Martyn stares at him, dumbfounded. “Not in this loop, but—before. The loop you killed me, we kissed, and I promised him I wouldn’t betray him, and I—it was the easiest way to end the loop without—without breaking that promise. Without breaking him.”

Martyn is silent for a long moment. When Scar looks up at him, he looks lost in thought. He’s looking somewhere past Scar, off into the distance. 

“I…” Martyn says softly eventually. “…Yeah.”

Scar wonders what he’s thinking. Knows he’s not going to find out.

They stay there for the whole evening. They split ways when it starts to get dark, and Scar returns to the Sandcastle, and Grian is there, and it feels like everything is right again in the world.

“Hey,” Scar says, hugging Grian from behind. Grian tips his head up to look at Scar.

“Yeah?” Grian says. “How’d your secret meeting go?”

“It went okay,” Scar says.

“You’re not gonna tell me what it was?”

“I don’t know if I can.”

Grian frowns slightly, but he doesn’t move to leave.

“Don’t let it get you killed, whatever it is,” Grian says. “If I can’t be there to protect you, you have to promise me that.”

“I promise,” Scar says, and doesn’t know if he can keep it.

Grian holds onto Scar’s hands and stands there with him in silence, and Scar never wants to let go again.

Chapter Text

Scar keeps meeting up with Martyn.

“I killed him,” Scar admits. He hadn’t told him about this their first meeting, but… but he…

“Yes, you said so before,” Martyn says. He’s lounging against a tree, tossing an emerald in the air over and over again. “Plenty of times, actually.”

“No, I mean,” Scar says, “I won once. By killing him.”

Martyn pauses his tossing to stare at Scar.

“…You won,” Martyn says. “You won and it didn’t get you out?”

Scar shakes his head. Stares at his hands. “I never want to do it again, Martyn,” Scar says. “Kill him like that. Watch the life drain from his eyes at my hands and stay gone.”

Martyn is silent. 

“…I didn’t really want to kill Ren, either,” he admits. “It’s different, obviously, but… you know, I don’t think we’re that different.”

They probably aren’t.

“You’re almost always with Ren, in these loops,” Scar tells him. “Even before I started doing the same thing. You and Ren kept drawing to each other. You kept killing him to start Red Winter.”

“Huh.” Martyn examines his emerald. He’s trying to affect uncaring, nonchalant, but it’s falling just short. “That’s a surprise.” 

Is it? Scar doesn’t think it is. “Grian says the first person to demand a fight at the end is Ren.”

Martyn snorts. “Ren’s got this idea about a grand showdown at the end. Fistfight, no armor. I think it’s maybe excessively dramatic, for an audience of no one.”

Scar thinks about the loops where he got to the cactus ring. Thinks about the real sorrow on Grian’s face. 

“It seems cruel to the people doing it,” Scar says. Martyn side-eyes him. 

“Does it now?” He says it lightly. Scar’s not convinced. “Ren thought it would be a big grand finale. But he said something similar about the beheading, so I think he may just have a skewed sense of… well, not quite self-preservation, but something like it.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Ren all right,” Scar says. He sighs. “I don’t know, Martyn. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

He never thought he’d miss the secret tasks, but here he is. At least back then, he’d had instructions. He’d had direction. He’d had something to do, some goal to achieve. 

“Maybe you’re going about it the wrong way,” Martyn says. “Maybe there’s not something you’re supposed to do.”

So I’m just trapped here forever?

He doesn’t say that. 

They fall silent. Martyn stares up at the tree above him.

“…How’d you do it?” Martyn asks. “Kill him, I mean.”

Scar keeps staring at his hands. “I drowned him.” 

Martyn whistles. “Brutal.”

“He’d have beaten me in a fair fight, I think,” Scar admits. The only fair fight they had, Scar lost, at least. “I had to make sure I’d…”

Martyn doesn’t respond immediately. Martyn keeps staring at the tree, actually, something unreadable on his face.

“I get it,” he says eventually. “To win something like this, you have to fight dirty.”

Tango on half a heart, just high enough off the ground to take damage. Etho fleeing for his life. Cleo stuck in a hole. Gem on the bad side of a two-versus-one. You guys are gross.  

“Yeah. You do.”

Martyn gives him a look, too piercing, too knowing.

“You might have to fight dirty to get out of your time loop,” he says. “You’re going to have to be prepared for that, Scar. Unless you’re fine staying here forever.”

He can’t. He just can’t. But he can’t kill Grian again, either.

He said that the first time.

He doesn’t answer Martyn.

—

The third time they meet, Martyn launches right into it.

“You want to break the time loop,” Martyn says. “Do you know what triggers it?”

“No,” Scar says, settling on the ground. “If I did I wouldn’t still be here, Martyn.”

“Fair enough, fair enough.” Martyn chuckles. “Right. So, do you have any theories?”

“I thought it might have been related to who wins the game,” Scar says. “It isn’t.”

“Have you tried getting someone who isn’t you or Grian to win?” Martyn asks. Scar looks up at him blankly.

“The loop resets if either of us go out,” Scar says. “I doubt we’re supposed to get someone else to win.”

Martyn sighs. “Worth a try. Right. Anything else?”

“Nothing!” Scar says. “Absolutely nothing, Martyn! I’ve been here for—years, and I have nothing.”

“Hm.” Martyn crosses his arms. “That’s not ideal, no. How about this: in the loops you’ve already done, have you had any… I don’t know, thoughts, feelings, what have you, that repeated? Unrelated to Grian specifically, maybe, but.”

Scar hasn’t thought about it. He was too busy being stuck in the loop to pay attention to whether there were any patterns in thought like that. “I don’t know.”

“What about what sent you into the loop to begin with?”

There’s only one thing it could be, right?

“I do,” Scar says. Martyn looks at him expectantly. “…It’s called the Secret Keeper.”

“The Secret Keeper,” Martyn repeats. “I’m unfamiliar.”

“It was…” How does he explain the Secret Keeper without explaining that there were more of these, will be more of these? That Scar won one already and is now stuck here? “…Part of a different server. It gave out secret tasks you had to complete if you wanted to heal. They weren’t… exactly easy.” 

They started out fairly simple, to be fair, but the further into the game they got the harder the tasks became. Scar remembers dreading the appearance of a new book, the start of a new task. 

“Why do you think it was this Secret Keeper, then?” Martyn looks intrigued. 

“Because I’d just succeeded a task,” Scar says. “And then I wound up here.”

“And it was the only thing around that could have done it?”

“As far as I’m aware.” He doesn’t think any of the ghosts had that power, at least, and the Secret Keeper was mysterious enough as it was.

“I really was going to try to help you whittle down the options,” Martyn admits, “but I’m not sure I can, at this point. It… sounds like you’ve been doing this for a while.”

“You don’t know the half of it, Martyn,” Scar groans. If he gets out, will he be able to handle time moving normally again? Not jumping back potentially months at a time? 

He leaves that meeting with Martyn feeling offset and dissatisfied. It doesn’t get better when he gets back to the Sandcastle.

Grian is already waiting for him. He’s perched on the nearest rooftop balcony, eyes focused on Scar.

“Did you have fun?” Grian asks. He sounds almost bitter. Scar looks up at him.

“Did I do something wrong?” Scar asks. Grian bristles somewhat.

“I don’t know,” he snaps. “Martyn, Scar? Really? Martyn?”

How much did you hear?

He doesn’t know how to explain it to Grian. If Grian knows, the loop resets, that much is clear. When Scar doesn’t answer, Grian pulls back from the edge of the balcony, mouth straightening into a line.

“I only caught the end of it,” he admits. “I got worried, and… I don’t know what you were talking about, or why, but Scar, he’s our enemy.”

“I know that,” Scar says. “It’s—I—it’s complicated.”

“Complicated,” Grian echoes.

Scar remembers, in Double Life, the way he’d felt when he realized that Grian was seeing BigB. He remembers the betrayal, the anger. He remembers thinking what am I doing wrong, remembers resigning himself to Grian being distant and disconnected. Remembers making the stupid cookies and giving them to Grian and telling him they were for his secret soulmate. Remembers the way Grian had gotten when BigB went out.

He can see all of that reflected back at him on Grian’s face now: betrayal, upset, anger. What did I do wrong.

“Grian,” Scar says.

“Forget it,” Grian says. “I’m… still green, so I’m still…”

“Grian,” Scar pleads.

“I said forget it, Scar,” Grian says. He turns away. “Have fun with Martyn. Don’t blame me if he betrays you.”

Scar messed up. He doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t know if he can.

“I’m sorry,” he says anyway.

Grian doesn’t answer him. 

It ends up not mattering at all, in the end. Grian still dies in his bunker trap. He still sticks by Scar afterwards, though he’s more wary about it. He’s sure to tell Scar that it’s a team-up of convenience, and it hurts but not as badly as Scar almost expected.

He stares at Martyn in that final fight, curled over Ren’s body, and sees the way Martyn looks at him. All the goodwill is gone, all the nights of talking about Scar’s stupid time loop wiped away.

“I hope it hurts,” Martyn says to him. “I hope it hurts when you kill him.”

Grian shoots him. He gives Scar a look. Scar sees the question in his eyes and doesn’t answer it.

“We should find Bdubs,” Scar says as he turns his back.

And then they’re in the swamp again. Scar knows this loop won’t matter. He sighs. He’ll have to start over. He wonders if there’s a way to start over that won’t hurt them both now.

“Sorry, Bdubs,” Scar says as he turns on him.

“Wh—Scar!” Bdubs cries, and Grian stares at the whole scene. Scar turns to him.

“You can kill me,” he says. It’s resigned. “It’s okay.”

Grian doesn’t move.

“I don’t know what you aren’t telling me,” Grian says, “and that… hurts, but I’m not killing you, Scar.”

That’s too bad. Scar doesn’t want to drag this loop out to the very end.

“Okay,” Scar says, drawing his own sword. He might as well, at this point.

Realization crosses Grian’s face in one horrible flash.

“Scar, don’t—”

Scar has already slit his own throat in one clean motion.

—

Scar doesn’t want to start this loop.

He doesn’t want this. He wants to… 

He doesn’t know what he wants.

But he does it anyway, lets muscle memory carry him through the motions. He thinks he’s doing a fine job keeping up the act, until Grian confronts him. It’s after he’s gone red. They’re in the Sandcastle, and Grian is staring him down from across the kitchen.

“Something’s wrong,” Grian says. 

“Nothing’s wrong!” Scar says, hoping he can inject enough enthusiasm into his voice to make up for the way everything feels stagnant. “Nothing at all, my friend.” 

Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong.

Scar has just… been here too long.

He’s starting to come to terms with never getting out. Maybe he’ll do another loop where he breaks from form, where he does something else. Maybe that’ll be close enough to shaking things up to keep him from losing his mind completely. Maybe he’ll…

No. He can’t do another loop in Grian’s hobbit hole. He thinks that will break him.

“I know you, Scar,” Grian says, no-nonsense. He crosses his arms and leans against the counter. “Something’s wrong.”

He wants, more than anything in the world, to hug Grian. He wants to force Grian somewhere far, far away, somewhere Scar can’t hurt him ever again.

At least he doesn’t remember any of it.

“I’m perfectly fine,” Scar insists. “Now, we were going to go trap the Crastle, weren’t we?”

“…Right,” Grian says. Scar gets the feeling he hasn’t dropped it entirely.

They cause their carnage. They start their war. Grian watches him like he’s liable to explode.

Scar takes up time sitting out on the rooftop balcony at night himself. He picks the highest tower and just… stares across the dark desert. Sometimes he watches Grian doing the exact same thing further down.

One night, Grian comes up to him.

“Hey,” Grian says softly as he sits down next to him. Scar gets a sharp sense of deja vu. He nearly laughs at it.

“Hello,” Scar says. Grian bumps his head into Scar’s shoulder. 

“You should keep your clothes on up here,” he says. “Never know if you’ll fall off. It stresses me out.”

His voice is quiet. Scar doesn’t answer, just finds his hand and holds it. He should tell Grian to go away. He doesn’t want to hurt him.

“You know I care about you, right?” Grian says. “I know I’ve never said it, and I don’t know if it was clear or not.”

“I know,” Scar says. Grian doesn’t usually tell him flat-out like this. “I don’t mean to worry you.”

“Then tell me what’s wrong.” Grian’s voice is pleading. “I can tell there’s something, there’s been something for weeks. Please.”

If he tells Grian, the loop resets. He wants to hold on to this, this moment, just a little longer. Just until things start to explode around them.

He can’t meet Grian’s eyes. They’re too searching, too sharp. He’s scared that if he turns, if he meets that gaze, Grian will lay him open.

Grian waits. When he doesn’t get a response, he sighs. 

He doesn’t leave Scar, though. 

The game continues. Scar watches everything happen through a layer of glass. He barely feels anything that happens to him.

He reaches the end. He’s not sure why he bothered to play it out this long. Grian is screaming at him from the top of the cliff. Scar kills Bdubs. It’s easy now.

Grian’s voice breaks as he stumbles through the water toward Scar, the way it always does. Scar watches him, the way he always does.

“You can kill me,” he says. Grian stares at him with that searching look. For everything you’ve done to keep me alive…

The line never leaves him.

“I—no,” Grian says. “Scar, what’s going on? You’ve been… off this whole time. It’s like I’ve been talking to a wall.”

Scar stares at Grian, at the desperate thing on his face.

He doesn’t want this.

He doesn’t want to hurt Grian like this, too. He didn’t mean to trap him here with him, somehow, when the Secret Keeper sent him back. He just—he—he doesn’t want to be…

Alone.

Oh.

Oh. He’s an idiot.

Scar cracks. He laughs, high and breathless and a little manic. Grian takes a step back, still watching him with that desperate, worried thing in his eyes. The air catches itself in Scar’s throat and the laughter bubbles into a sob as he sinks in the water. It comes up to his chest. 

“Grian,” he says, covering his face with his hands. “Grian, I’m so tired.”

Grian drops his sword in the water. It would be so easy to drown him again. Scar hates himself for even thinking it.

“Scar?” Grian asks.

“I’m so sorry,” Scar breathes. “Oh my God, Grian, I’m so sorry.”

“What?” Grian wades closer. “What did you do?”

Grian knowing resets the loop.

Does it matter anymore? Does he care? The loop will reset soon anyway. He drops his hand from his eyes and searches Grian’s face. It’s open, scared, but not for himself. Scar did this. Scar needs to—he needs to fix it, somehow.

“I’m in a time loop,” Scar mutters. Grian freezes.

“A time loop,” Grian says slowly. Scar squeezes his eyes shut and waits to feel the warmth of the rising sun on his eyelids.

It doesn’t come.

He open his eyes again. They’re still in the pond. It’s still the dead of night. 

The loop didn’t reset.

“Yeah,” Scar says. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“And what…” Grian swallows. “And what’s the time loop about?”

“You,” Scar says. “Me. Us.”

Us, critically, now that Scar is actually using his brain. Now that Scar is looking back over the footage, over the games he’s played, over the way Grian never looked at him like he was alive in a single one of them past Third Life. Never looked at him like he was real.

It had hurt. It had hurt, and he’d been so alone, and he’d missed him even if he didn’t know it. He’d…

Scar feels so, so stupid.

“Us,” Grian echoes. “Scar, what happens at the end of the time loop?”

“Usually, you win,” Scar says. “You kill me. Middle of the day in a ring of cactus, a fistfight to the death.”

“I’m not doing that,” Grian says immediately. “Scar, I’m not doing that.”

“You never want to,” Scar says. “But you do it anyway. Last man standing, remember?”

Grian falls silent. He moves to sit by Scar’s side, right on the edge of the shore. 

“…You could kill me instead,” Grian offers.

“No,” Scar says, and it’s just as immediate. He thinks he’d be sick if he did. 

“…You already tried that, didn’t you?” Grian guesses. Scar nods. Grian is quiet.

“I think it’s because you won’t remember if I do that.” What a cruel twist, isn’t it? This whole time, Scar had been nothing but relieved that Grian couldn’t remember anything, and yet… “Just… only the winner remembers.”

“You’ve done more of these,” Grian says. Scar doesn’t look at him. That seems like answer enough. “…You won one.”

“Yeah,” Scar says. It’s almost silent.

“I’m sorry,” Grian says. Scar laughs. It’s wet, closer to a sob.

“We’re not getting out of here in one piece, Grian,” he says. “We’re not going to make it.”

“For what it’s worth,” Grian says, “I really did mean it. About caring about you.”

“I know,” Scar says. “I know. I love you.” 

“You’re looping time for me,” Grian says, and it’s almost joking. “I would hope so.”

“We lived in your starter base once,” Scar says. “We kissed there.”

“I wish I could have been there.”

Yeah.

“What are we going to do, Grian?” Scar asks after a stretch of silence. “We can’t just stay here forever.”

“The spectators want that fight you mentioned,” Grian mutters. “I don’t really want to give it to them.”

“I don’t know if we have a choice,” Scar says, and he tries to make it sound like a joke. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Grian is quiet.

“That’s really how it ends, huh?” He sounds upset by it. Scar doesn’t blame him. “Is it… Is that really okay?”

“It’s not the worst way I’ve gone out,” Scar says. “I get to see you when I die.”

Grian stares at him.

“I don’t know whether to be flattered or horrified, frankly,” he says, and Scar laughs. He can’t help it. Grian follows along, more subdued, more concerned. 

Scar can see the sun starting to rise, the sky lightening. He reaches over and holds Grian’s hand. Grian grips his hand tightly. Scar sighs.

“We should get this over with,” Scar says. Grian frowns.

“Are you sure?” 

“Unless you really do just want to stay here with no one around,” Scar says. It’s Grian’s turn to sigh.

“Okay,” he says. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

When they reach Monopoly Mountain, the sun has risen fully. They put together the ring, the way they always do, only it’s different now because Grian keeps stopping to just look at him. They stand outside the entrance.

“Ready for this?” Grian asks.

“Very,” Scar says. Then, as Grian is stepping forward, he reaches out and holds his shoulder. “Hey. Promise me this won’t change anything.”

Grian looks back at him. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Then promise you won’t hate me,” Scar says. “Promise you won’t hate yourself.”

Grian is silent for a stretch.

“I promise,” he says. “I promise not to leave you if you won’t leave me.”

“I would never.”

“Then let’s do this.”

It’s messy. It’s fast. It’s the most real Scar has felt in who-knows how long.

He dies in Grian’s arms, and he shuts his eyes, and he hopes.

—

Scar opens his eyes to a wooden ceiling. He’s in a bed. Rain pitter-patters outside a window. 

He’s not on a hill. There’s no flowers. The sun isn’t rising in the east, at least not right now. 

He falls apart.

He curls up in that bed and he sobs hard enough it hurts, and it’s the most relieved he’s ever felt. He didn’t think it was possible. He’s out. He’s out.

He made it. 

And all it took was talking to Grian. A laugh bubbles up in his throat, desperate and uncontrollable. All it took was telling him.

What a simple solution. What a world-ending trial.

He doesn’t know how long it is before he stops crying. He doesn’t know how long it is that he lays there, completely drained, before there’s a knock on a door. He knows it only takes him moments to pull himself out of bed and to that door, to yank it open to the sight of Grian standing there.

He’s soaked. He’s got his wings back, folded neatly behind him. His eyes—not green, not yellow, not red, just his eyes, dark as midnight—are wide and expectant. He looks nervous. 

“…Scar?” Grian asks, and that’s all it takes.

Scar pulls him inside into a crushing hug. He’d cry again, he thinks, if he had any crying left in him. As it stands, he just holds on to Grian and buries his face in his hair and shakes. Grian wraps his arms around Scar’s back and clings to him like he’ll disappear in an instant if he lets go.

Later, they’ll sit at Scar’s table and they’ll talk about it. Later, they’ll sort out what happened in the time loop, what probably caused it. Later, they’ll try and fail to put a name to them. Later, they’ll do all the hard work of fixing things, of building things.

It will all be new. It will all be different, and it will be a crushing relief.

But for now, they stand in Scar’s open doorway and just hold each other, and Scar never wants to let go.