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Mumbo is not surprised when, the morning after Scar’s death, Grian runs away from the Southlands’ little trust exercise as soon as he’s been passed the life.
Martyn’s indignant squawks follow him as he flees, and Impulse gives brief chase, but Mumbo doesn’t bother. He knows exactly where Grian’s going. And he knows that Grian, even odds or better, will be back before long.
He’s even less surprised when Grian returns that evening, looking furtive and ashamed, and guiding a golden-eyed Scar by the hand through the still-rigged front gate.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” he says, without any malice, and Grian jumps. His wings flare, the feathers puffing up – expected, a standard Grian startle response. He steps between Mumbo and Scar, weight distributed evenly between his feet, his centre of gravity dropped in something that might be almost a fighting stance – less expected. Novel. Concerning.
“Oh.” Grian relaxes when he realises who it is, though only a little. The feathers flatten again. His wings stay half-flared, though, and he stays in front of Scar. He still hasn’t let go of Scar’s hand. “It’s just you. I thought you might’ve been Martyn, come to–”
He makes a motion with his free thumb, a jerky slash across the front of his throat, and grins. It doesn’t reach his eyes.
Mumbo sighs, and crosses the space between them to press a kiss to Grian’s temple. “Welcome back, idiot,” he says, fondly, and his chest warms at the way Grian’s eyes flutter half-closed, the way Grian tilts his head into the brief press of lips against skin. “I’ve been waiting for you all day.”
“I’m sorry.” And then– “I’m sorry, Mumbo, I know I shouldn’t have, but– I signed a contract.” There’s something pleading in Grian’s voice. Something that doesn’t sound like a contract at all.
Scar, behind him, has not said a word. The hood of his wizard’s robe is still up, pulled low over his face, leaving only golden eyes and the faint suggestion of lips visible through the shadow. His scars – old, pale, diagonal, cutting through one eye, through the other and the bridge of his nose, across his cheek to brush just right of the left corner of his lip – are invisible in the low light, but…
When Mumbo squints, he can just about make out something red, something angry-looking, something with the texture of melted wax, crawling across Scar’s face towards the corner of his right eye. Towards the right corner of his mouth, half-pulled-up in what might not be a wry smile.
“Hey, Mumbo,” says Scar, and when he smiles his salesman’s smile, the right side of his mouth hardly moves. His teeth flash white in the dark. His voice has the usual lilt to it, all effortless and easy charm, but it’s hollow in the middle, empty down to the bones. Dead inside. “I’d apologise for dropping in on you so unexpectedly, but I’m not sorry at all, so I won’t bother. And besides– I had an invite.”
Mumbo does not miss the way Grian’s fingers tighten around Scar’s hand. Does not miss the way Scar’s fingers – burns there, too, flowing down from his wrist over his pinky and ring finger – go white-knuckled in return.
“I made a promise, Mumbo,” whispers Grian, wretchedly, and that– that sounds closer to the truth.
“Move aside, Grian,” says Mumbo, with a sigh. “I’m not going to hurt him.”
Grian moves aside. He lets go of Scar’s hand, and Mumbo takes that as the sign of trust that it is.
Scar takes it as abandonment.
He doesn’t run, doesn’t so much as flinch, but there are suddenly whites all the way round his golden irises. Mumbo can see them, as he approaches, wet and reflective in the dark. They flicker yellow-orange in the torchlight, his pupils blown wide and dark with adrenaline.
When he knocks Scar’s hood back off his head with the brush of a single knuckle, Scar doesn’t flinch, but his eyes are full of fire.
The torches cast a strange, dancing light across his new scars. The burns cover the right side of his head, hair gone and replaced by fresh, glossy skin in silver and red all the way up to his temple. The warped tendrils of it reach towards his eye, across to his mouth, down below the neck of his robe. His lip is tugged up at the corner by it, his mouth twisted into a permanent half-smile. His eye seems spared, though – unharmed, like his full left side.
The respawn’s strange like that, sometimes. Capricious, in what it decides to take from you. In what it decides to leave. In the marks it decides you should bear.
Mumbo sighs, again, and presses the same kiss to Scar’s temple as he had to Grian’s. Though he’s gentle, steady – even when his lips press against waxy, burnt skin, alien to the touch – Scar flinches as though he’d been struck by lightning.
“Easy,” murmurs Mumbo, for his ears only. “Easy now.”
Scar exhales, unsteadily, and dips his head in what might be a nod. “Yeah,” he mutters – twitches again, when Mumbo settles an arm across his shoulder, before leaning ever so slightly into the touch. Something in the motion of it reminds Mumbo of fresh-tamed wolves, eager for affection, fearful of violence, bristling with recently-feral pride. “Okay, okay, I get it. Behave, etcetera etcetera. I’ll play nice. I promise.”
That’s not what Mumbo meant, and he thinks Scar knows it. But he’s done enough pushing for one night. Instead, he opens his other arm, jerks his head in Grian’s direction. “Hey, Grian. What’re you waiting for? Get over here!”
Grian slots under his arm gratefully, easily, like he was made to fit there. It loosens something tight in Mumbo’s chest. “So you’re not going to dob us in to Martyn, then?” he asks, cheekily, a note of genuine worry buried deep enough to be barely audible. “I’ll make it up to him somehow, I promise, I just– I knew he wouldn’t say yes, if I asked, so–”
“Martyn decided that his loyalties lay elsewhere, whilst you were out on your rescue mission,” says Mumbo, with remarkably little bitterness. It’s hard to feel bitter, with Grian pressed warm against one side, Scar pressed fever-hot against the other. “So you’re safe. For now, anyway. You know how he gets about revenge, and all that nonsense.”
“Yes,” says Grian, like he’s won something, which is an entirely inappropriate and entirely Grian response. “So Scar can have Martyn’s bedroom, then, is what I’m hearing.”
Mumbo hums, non-committal. “He could,” he says, and thinks of Scar and Grian, hand in white-knuckle hand. “Or we could drag the bed into our room. Sleepover time.”
“Oh!” Grian perks up at that, the top of one wing nudging against Mumbo’s elbow. Mumbo doesn’t even need to see them to read the body language written there; they’re traitorous tell-tales, every time, and he knows Grian like the back of his own hand. “Oh, a sleepover. My, my, Mumbo. How forward of you! What do you think, Scar? Are you willing to risk your good name and virtue to have a little Southlands sleepover with me and Mumbo?”
Scar shrugs one shoulder, and says nothing – but, for the first time since he walked through the front gates, that strange new half-smile of his reaches his eyes.