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It comes to him in flashes sometimes.
Gem will say something that hits a little too close and Joel will feel like he’s back there. 3rd Life, Last Life, Double Life, Limited Life, Secret Life, any of them, it doesn’t matter. They all end the same way for him. He gets so close—so close—to getting everything he wants and he always has to watch as it gets ripped out right from under him. It’s always his own fault too.
It happens again and again. He gets so incredibly close and then he fails. It’s almost funny at this point.
Maybe it’s his own fault. Maybe if Joel could be satisfied with what he has, he wouldn’t always want more than he deserves.
But that’s the thing—Joel’s never been satisfied unless he can have everything.
He bites and scratches and he never lets anything—or anyone—get close. He draws blood just for the sake of feeling like his destruction is being put to use. He doesn’t know why he bites, but he knows that he has to. His teeth bury themselves in flesh and it’s the only place where they feel at home.
That’s what he always does. He fights and he claws and he does everything in his power to hurt people. It always happens when his desperation takes hold. He wants to win—he wants so badly that he’s willing to tear down anything in his path. He wants, he wants, he wants. It’s probably why he hasn’t won yet. He likes the game a little too much. He likes the violence, the aggression, and the fighting too much to strategize and play it safe. When he goes red, every person around him is an enemy.
This time, he’s done it differently. He’s kept his head clear. He’s kept his emotions in check. Maybe that’s why he’s so close. He has Gem to thank for it. He wouldn’t have made it this far without her and now she’s gone. Joel hadn’t even been there to see her die. Part of him wants to win for her. He wants to show her that her trust in him wasn’t misplaced.
(He hasn’t even buried her body yet—he hasn’t even seen her body. He’d been nowhere near Gem when she died, unable to save the person who had been by his side throughout this entire game.)
“Joel!”
“Grian! Thank fuck you’re alive!”
Joel sprints toward Grian’s tower, the familiar deepslate structure just as haunting as always. This tower has seen so much death already, both inside and outside its walls. If Joel believed in fate, he might have called it cursed.
He doesn’t believe in fate though. He believes in wrapping his own hands around destiny’s throat and squeezing.
“This has been—that was chaos, Grian,” Joel mutters as he climbs up the steps, finding Grian pacing around the top of the tower. He immediately moves into regrouping, asking Grian about what resources he has.
Grian and Joel have always worked well together. They can read each other shockingly well. Joel just has to give Grian a look and Grian knows exactly what he means.
He doesn’t really know what it is. All that he knows is that he sees something in Grian that nobody else does and he’s certain the same is true. He can’t explain how he feels about Grian. Nobody would ever understand it—he doesn’t even understand it.
If he had to place when it started, he’d say that it feels like he and Grian have been intrinsically woven together. He can’t remember a time when he didn’t look at Grian and feel that painful ache of separation. If he did have to pick an actual time, he would say Last Life. He and Grian had been red together, sitting in that stupid house, and they’d had nobody other than each other. They’d been all teeth and claws, but they’d found a semblance of home there anyway.
Joel’s pretty sure that being with Grian makes him worse. Grian encourages the cruel parts of Joel. Every part of himself that Joel hates is exactly what Grian loves about him. They can’t be anything other than their worst selves with each other. They wouldn’t fit together if they were good. Spending his time with Gem this game had let him mellow out and stop rushing into fights he logically can’t take, but he’s been allied with Grian for so little and he can already feel the blood clouding his vision.
It’s always like that when he’s red. He can’t see anything other than rage. There’s blood on his hands and in his mouth and all he wants to do is tear flesh from bone. Grian makes it worse.
“Joel,” Grian says, snapping Joel out of his thoughts. “You know—you know you could win this, right?”
He’s so close. God, he’s never been this close before. It all feels different this time. He’s spent the whole game doing the exact opposite of what he always does. He made allies and took things slow. He didn’t rush into fights nor did he make enemies for no reason.
He finally figured out why it is that he bites.
“I know, Grian,” Joel snaps back, probably more aggressively than he should have.
Gem had told him the same thing. Joel, you could win this, she’d said right before everything had gone to shit. He and Gem had been by each other during the whole game. No matter where he’d looked, Gem had always been by his side, ready to back him up without question. When everybody else had been chasing Joel, desperate to get him off green, then yellow, Gem had been there. She’d been family.
Then she died. Joel hadn’t even seen it happen—he doesn’t even know how it happened. All he knows is that one second Gem was alive and the next, she was gone. He’d thought it was going to be him and Gem in the final. He would have been happy to see her win. She would have given Joel the fight that he so desperately craves.
Joel’s not a martyr; he doesn’t want to say that it should have been him or anything like that. He’s glad that he made it this far, but a part of him wishes Gem was here too. If it had been Gem versus Joel versus Grian, Joel honestly doesn’t know what he would do. What do you do when you find yourself strung between your two allies, one of whom sees the monster and doesn’t flinch while the other sees the monster and knows he’s the same?
That’s why it’s funny to hear Grian parroting a near exact mirror of what Gem had said to him; his two allies who were so similar yet so different. He’s even starting to believe them. He could win this. He’s put so much effort in, he’s tried so hard, he’s done everything right. If he’s going to win one, it’s going to be this one.
He owes it to Gem at this point.
Joel turns around to find Grian staring at him. The way Grian looks at people is always so unsettling. He looks at you like he’s trying to take you apart and put you back together. Joel thinks he might be the only person that Grian can’t do that to; picking apart Joel’s brain to find out what makes him tick would mean being confronted by the fact that the two of them are more similar than they are different and Joel’s fairly certain that neither of them want that.
Grian knows Joel like nobody else. Joel’s never met anyone who sees straight through him the way Grian does. Everyone always tells Joel that when he goes red, he’s scary. When Joel goes red, he turns bloodthirsty. Nobody’s ever been able to understand that his bloodlust doesn’t come out of nowhere when he turns red—it’s always there, simmering under his skin, bubbling and ready to burst. He’s just better at controlling it when he’s not red. Grian is possibly the only person who can tell. Grian looks at Joel and he sees his hunger; he sees that ever-present desire to eat. To ravage.
They’re both hungry. They’re starving. They want more. They want to kill and eat because what other way is there to show your love? When you love someone, you want them in a way that can’t be achieved with the restrictions of skin.
Joel’s seen the way Grian can kill when he’s still on green. Grian can say that it’s accidental all he likes, but Joel knows him better than that. When Grian goes red, he no longer has to pretend that he doesn’t want carnage above all else. They’re the same way, the two of them are. It’s why they could never be happy. It’s why Joel knows that there’s no universe where Joel and Grian don’t destroy each other.
Parallel universes. It’s what they’re supposed to be. They’re never supposed to touch, never supposed to exist in a way that doesn’t doom everything around them. The world can’t handle it. When parallel universes collide, they destroy themselves. Grian and Joel are parallel universes who have somehow found their way to each other, disregarding every restriction that was supposed to be put on them. Joel thinks they might just be biding their time now, waiting for the inevitable. Forever has never been an option for them. Joel’s always just been satisfied with now.
Grian steps forward and he places a hand on Joel’s cheek. It’s soft. It’s gentle. It’s nothing like what Grian and Joel have been to each other before. Joel was half expecting Grian to slap him across the face. That would be more typical of their relationship.
(Joel has to remind himself that they don’t have a relationship. Whatever it is that’s between Grian and Joel is distinctly the lack of a relationship. They can’t be everything so they choose to be nothing. They can’t have what they want so they have each other. They’re full of contradictions. Hot and cold, in and out, right and wrong. Joel can’t even tell which way is up anymore.)
“I would give my life for you,” Grian says softly, like he’s afraid the words will cut right through Joel’s skin and Joel will bleed out right in front of him. “You deserve the win. It’s your turn.”
This softness isn’t typical of them. It’s not what they’re supposed to be. They’re supposed to be blood and hatred. They’re supposed to bring out the worst in each other, kicking and clawing because they’re the only ones who can handle it.
Joel raises his hand, placing it directly over Grian’s. He just stares into Grian’s dark eyes and he knows that Grian can tell exactly what he’s thinking.
“No, you won’t. You won’t kill yourself for me,” Joel says adamantly. It’s a reprimand. It’s a prayer. It’s a promise. It’s a plea. It’s all of those things at once.
He won’t accept a victory where Grian lies down and dies in front of him. He won’t accept a victory that isn’t him against Grian in the way they’re supposed to be. Joel won’t accept mercy. Not from himself and certainly not from Grian. That’s not who they are. They’re not selflessness and sacrifice; they’re the all-encompassing agony of wanting more than you deserve and only being able to get it from one other person. They’re the reminder that you can’t hate someone without loving them at the same time. They’re the throbbing torment that reminds you that you’ll only be happy once you’ve dug your claws into the gory meat of the one person who understands who you are beyond the boundaries of skin. Joel will never be happy unless Grian fights him with the intent to kill because he doesn’t know what love is unless it’s sanguinary.
Neither of them is soft. Neither of them is made to love. Joel doesn’t want self-sacrifice from Grian. He wants Grian to stare him down, predator to predator, and he wants Grian to dig his teeth into his neck. He wants Grian to love him exactly the way they were made to. He wants to feel the gritty, dirty, possessive way that Grian loves. He wants to be torn down into nothing but the primal instinct to eat.
Teeth in flesh and tongue in blood. What can a person ever want more than to have the one they love inside of them in any way they can? The separation of skin between Joel and Grian is already too much. He looks at Grian and he sees himself. It’s a mirror and it’s a river; he’s Narcissus falling in love with the very parts of himself that he hates.
“You can never make it easy, can you?” Grian sighs, his hand falling from Joel’s face.
Joel huffs out a laugh. “You don’t like it easy, Grian.”
Every time Joel looks at Grian, he feels an inexplicable pull toward him. He wants to kiss Grian. He wants proof that they’re both hungry in the same way. He wants proof that this horrid revulsion that he feels for everything isn’t something that he’s alone in. He wants to see himself reflected in Grian from the way he thinks to the literal blood in his veins. He wants to kiss Grian and he wants to bite through his lips, draw blood, and taste it on his tongue. He wants to eat him down to the bones, love and hatred being the same exact thing.
If Joel was anyone else—if Grian was anyone else—he would have kissed him right now. He would have taken advantage of this moment and kissed the man he loves. He would have kissed him until he couldn’t breathe, a promise that they’ll find each other again in the next game. They always end up together somehow. In every lifetime. Joel thinks they might be inevitable. He would have tried to say all the words that he always swallows down because he’s afraid of what admitting them will do to him. He would have done something.
He’s not anyone else though and neither is Grian so Joel just turns away and gets to work on crafting TNT.
“See you later, idiot!” Joel says through laughter as he lets an arrow fly at Tango. The arrow buries itself directly in Tango’s chest, digging in right to the hilt and sending Tango crumbling to the floor. Honestly, he hadn’t been expecting the arrow to find its mark the way it did, but he’s not going to complain. His shock must show on his face because Grian starts laughing from behind him.
He turns on his heel so he can look at Grian and he can’t stop himself from laughing too. Joel’s always felt most at home on a battlefield. He never feels like himself unless there’s blood on his hands. Grian gets that and that’s why they can laugh about this. That’s why they can laugh while they’re surrounded by the bodies of their friends, blood staining their hands, some of it theirs and some of it not.
Joel doesn’t want to win if he doesn’t have to fight for it. He’ll only consider it a victory if he has to fight and tear people apart to win. It shouldn’t come easy. Nothing worth doing ever comes easy. A true victory is one born of bloodshed.
With Tango dead, there are five people left, two of those being Joel and Grian. It’s a 2v3, but Joel’s fought worse odds.
(For a second, he thinks about Last Life. He remembers the 2v6 that he and Grian were in. He remembers looking at Grian and deciding that they weren’t going to back down. They were going to die fighting and they were going to die together. Joel took down two of them before Scott got him, a potion burning his skin, no blood or pain the way he craves it. Joel’s only regret is that he almost wishes that Grian had been the one to kill him instead.)
“This is it,” Grian says, his grip tight on his shield. He’s right. This is it. Everything ends here. There are three outcomes here; either Joel wins, Joel dies by Grian’s hand, or Joel dies by someone else’s hand. He’d be happy with two of those endings.
Joel nods firmly. “This is it.”
He likes fighting alongside Grian. Joel thinks they work well together. Grian is much more strategic than he is, but Joel is more skilled in combat than Grian. They weren’t known as the deadliest duo for nothing. When Joel’s vision gets blinded by the blood he sheds, Grian is right behind him. It’s exhilarating to know that someone will match him. He doesn’t often have someone fighting alongside him who will follow him into odds that they both know they can’t take because they trust each other too much to ever run away. Joel can’t place if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Honestly, he doesn’t really care.
Nobody quite understands the blinding thirst for blood that the red life brings out of Joel like Grian does. Grian looks at him and he gets him. It’s so much easier to let out that thirst for butchery when they’re on red. The thing is, people love to tell Joel that he goes crazy when he’s red. Grian is the only one who can tell that Joel wants to kill when he’s on green just as badly as he does when he’s on red—it’s just easier to let it out on red. Grian can see the hunger that bubbles under Joel’s skin because he has the same one; Grian’s killed on green several times and Joel knows that he likes it. They get each other and it’s why they work so well together.
When Grian and Joel fight alongside each other, they’re not fighting to survive; they’re fighting to kill, to maim, and to slaughter.
It’s Pearl’s voice that gets Joel to draw his bow, pulling back an arrow and watching as Grian does the same. He has to focus. He can’t think about Grian anymore. He can’t think about the fact that when Pearl, Cleo, and Ren are finally dead at his feet, he’ll have to turn on Grian or else feel one of Grian’s arrows buried in his back. He can’t think about that right now.
“Hey, guys.” Joel grins wide as he watches Pearl, Cleo, and Ren run up to the two of them. His eyes are wild and he’s starving. He’s going to ravage, he’s going to mutilate, he’s going to butcher.
He fires an arrow at Pearl and it lands, burying itself in her shoulder. Pearl yanks the arrow out, scowling at Joel as she advances forward, leading the charge. Grian starts shooting arrows immediately, backing up Joel without missing a beat. Covered by Grian’s fire, Joel moves back and pulls out his axe. It’s always been his weapon of choice; he doesn’t like the long-range of bows and swords are too lightweight. When he brings an axe down on someone, it’s done with the intent to kill.
“Joel, run! They’re ganging up on you!” Grian’s voice rises with panic as Pearl, Cleo, and Ren all come running towards Joel, dodging Grian’s arrows. Joel should run. Everything that he learned during this game is telling him to run. His one ally left is telling him to run. All of the regrets that have buried themselves into his skin are telling him to run. He can’t take a 1v3. No matter how skilled he is, he can’t win a fight where he's so vastly outnumbered.
But he can take a 1v2. He’s done it before. If Grian can take down just one of their enemies then Joel knows he can take the rest of them.
“No, it’s fine.” Joel grits his teeth as Ren is the first one to face off with him.
Against all the odds, Joel trusts Grian. Grian will know exactly what Joel needs from him and he’ll do it. He always does.
(Even when it’s not what Joel wants, Grian knows what he needs. They both do. Sometimes what they need is destruction. Sometimes what they need is to be reduced to rubble, broken apart in the hands of someone who loves them. Sometimes love is carnal.)
He’s spent this whole game being nice. Now, he wants to eat.
Ren tries to cobweb him, but Joel lost his first life to cobwebs and he refuses to let it happen again. Ren stumbles into his own cobwebs—or is it Martren now?—and Joel grins wildly as he runs away, looping around to get in from behind.
Joel glances behind him, watching as Ren struggles to push past the cobwebs. Half of Ren’s body is corrupted, blending into the blond of Martyn’s hair and the bright blue of Martyn’s eyes. Joel doesn’t know what happened with Ren, but he knows that Martyn had died and Ren had tried to hang onto him in any way he could, forcibly stitching their skins together.
In a way, Joel understands it. He can’t see Grian from where he’s standing, but he’s always felt like if he got too close to Grian, their bodies might melt right into each other in an attempt to get past the separation that pains them.
The flash of lightning that comes next is exactly what Joel was expecting. He doesn’t know if it’s Cleo or Pearl, but regardless of which one, Grian has done exactly what Joel wanted him to.
(Joel does not even entertain the possibility that it could have been Grian who died. Joel is certain that he would feel it. He would feel the snap of the only thing that’s ever understood him vanishing.)
Then he sees Cleo running towards Grian and he knows it was Pearl who fell. He’s lost sight of Ren, but the blood is fogging his vision now and he can’t think clearly. He wants blood. He wants to kill. He wants to rush in and consume. He deserves it now, doesn’t he? It’s been long enough. Let him eat. Let him eat.
“Cleo!” he calls out, firing a shot at Cleo. She ignores the arrow tearing into her back as she continues to chase after Grian. Grian disappears from his vision and Joel keeps chasing, sending another arrow flying into Cleo’s back, burying itself in her skin.
Cleo snarls as she tries to get away, desperately running away without even turning around to face him. When Joel gets close enough, he pulls out his sword, swinging it towards her. Cleo dodges his first swing, running down the hill in a plea for survival.
Fuck that. Nobody runs from him and escapes. Nobody stares down the blinding red of Joel’s hungry eyes and lives. He’ll tear down everything in his path, ravenous and vicious. He has no mercy. Not for those who beg and not for those who fight for their lives. What is the point of mercy when the greatest act of love is to kill and be killed?
“Cleo, you’ve gotta go!” Joel shouts, his sword slicing across Cleo’s back. Cleo stumbles forward, blood dripping down her body. “I’m sorry, Cleo, goodbye!” Joel shouts as he plunges the sword into her, feeling the tearing of skin and flesh beneath his blade. He watches as Cleo stills on the floor and Joel can’t help the laughter that escapes.
It feels good.
It feels good to finally devour everything that he’s been depriving himself of in his attempt to be better. He doesn’t know if Gem would be proud or not, but he can’t allow himself the thought. It feels too good to wonder if it’s right or not. How could something so all-encompassing and satisfying be wrong? How could it be wrong for Joel to do the very thing that he was made for?
He was made for this. He was made to destroy and devastate. This is his purpose.
His head wildly whips around as he searches for who’s next. His hands are shaking, coated in blood. He doesn’t know whose it is, but it isn’t his. Grian is still alive—he must be—so all that leaves is Ren.
“Where’s Ren?” Joel mutters to himself, raising a hand to touch his face and smearing blood across his cheek.
It doesn’t matter where Grian is. Not until Ren’s dead. Joel won’t think about it until Ren is dead—can’t think about it until Ren is dead. Joel will cross that bridge when he gets to it.
He’s just barely turned around when he spots a familiar shade of blond hair from around a tree. Ironic, isn’t it? It’s Martyn who gives away Ren’s position. Joel might’ve missed Ren blending into the forest around him if it wasn’t for the stark blond hair that Ren has sprouted in grief for Martyn. If Ren had gotten the jump on Joel, Joel would have been the one in trouble, especially considering that he has the low ground.
“Hey, Ren!” Joel taunts, tossing an ender pearl over to where Ren is. It’s unnecessary and it inflicts damage on Joel like ender pearls always do. He knows he could have run and he likely would have gotten over to Ren eventually, but he threw the ender pearl because all he wants is to kill and he wants to do it now. No delays. Whatever gets him there the fastest. So what if he takes a little bit of damage in the process? He can take it. He’ll just have to make sure that Ren takes twice as much.
Ren tries to cobweb Joel, but Joel ender pearls out again, the breath rushing out of his chest when he does. He can see arrows raining down from somewhere and he can only assume that it’s Grian, but he has no idea where they’re coming from.
Joel pulls out his bow, loading an arrow and shooting it as Ren tries to run away. It firmly hits its target, the poison from the tip very quickly making its way through Ren’s veins. Ren groans as the poison slowly seeps in and Joel pulls out his sword again as he chases.
“Aw, does that hurt, Ren? Is that hurting?” Joel taunts as he slashes at Ren, burying his blade right into the spot where Ren’s flesh meets Martyn’s. “Does that hurt?”
Every grunt of pain that Ren makes is fucking music to Joel’s ears. He wants to maim. He wants to mutilate. He wants to hurt and lacerate. He just wants blood.
He wants to finish Ren off with his sword. He doesn’t want it to be the poison that gets him. How unsatisfying is that? No blood, no carnage, nothing romantic about it at all. Joel wants to tear the life from Ren’s body with his own two hands—he wants to feel that final breath escape his chest.
Joel swings forward again, once again slashing across Ren’s skin. Ren stumbles down the hill and Joel buries his sword in Ren’s chest right up to the hilt, cackling as the blood sprays into his face. He wipes his face, feeling the blood drip past his lips.
He’s almost done it. He’s so close. God, he’s so close he can taste it. This isn’t going to be like every other time. He’s going to win. He’s finally going to get all of the things he wants but doesn’t deserve.
Fuck being deserving. That doesn’t matter. Better people than Joel have died for nothing, never getting the things they deserve. If Joel’s still here then morality means nothing in a game like this. Sure, Joel made it to the finale by being kind and good and human, but he’s winning the finale by being exactly the monster that he was in every game before this.
“Grian!” Joel breathes out. It’s him and Grian. They always find each other like this somehow, alone together, searching for something that they both want, but can’t have. It’s happened time and time again. Every time Grian and Joel team up, they find themselves alone at the end, with no allies except for each other.
For a moment, Joel forgets what this means. He forgets that there can only be one winner. He breathes out Grian’s name like it’s a prayer.
“It’s just us, the final two.” Joel grins as he climbs back up the mountain in search of Grian. They made it. They did it.
An arrow buries itself in the ground next to him.
Right. One winner. One of them has to die. One of them has to be killed by the other. There’s no way around it. There’s no outcome where Joel wins this with Grian.
“Where are you, Grian?” Joel shouts, searching for Grian. Another arrow flies past him. Joel tries not to think about how Grian’s aim is usually better than this.
He considers his two options. He wins or he dies by Grian’s hands and honestly, he doesn’t think he particularly minds either outcome. If he has to die, it might as well be by Grian’s hands—it might as well be at the hands of someone he considers an equal.
This time, Grian’s arrow hits, burying itself in the meat of Joel’s shoulder. Joel’s head snaps up to the source of the arrow, spotting Grian perched in the trees. Grian’s staring down at him, his eyebrows furrowed in frustration and another arrow nocked and ready to be fired.
And suddenly, Joel doesn’t want to die.
He wants to bury his teeth in the flesh of Grian’s neck. He wants to win. He wants to tear the skin from Grian’s bones and taste his blood in his mouth. He wants to bury his blade into Grian and rip past the separation of skin between the two of them. God, he wants so much. He thinks this might be the one thing he does deserve though. If anyone in the world has ever been made for each other, it’s him and Grian. Sometimes he thinks that neither of them deserves anyone except for each other.
Joel wraps his hand around the arrow in his shoulder and tears it out, blood oozing down the wound and dripping onto the floor. He can see the way Grian’s eyes narrow, his tongue growing heavy in his mouth as he stares at the blood that he drew—first blood. Grian’s just as hungry as he is. Both of them are starving. Nothing will ever satisfy them.
Joel ender pearls behind the tree, once again taking unnecessary damage. He doesn’t care anymore. All he can feel is blood. All he wants is blood—Grian’s blood.
This really was the only possible outcome. Joel doesn’t think he ever would have been able to win a game if it wasn’t Grian against him in the final two.
It’s Joel against Grian. Joel against the only person who has ever felt the same craving for blood as him. Joel against the only person who understands him beyond the physical separations of bodies. Joel thinks it cruel sometimes that they were separated like this. In another life, they’re one person and they’re happier (or maybe they’re worse. Maybe combining into each other means only embracing the rotten parts that they share and none of the positives. Maybe that’s what they were meant to be in the first place).
They’re two predators, stalking each other, staring down the only person that they consider an equal. Joel looks at Grian and he sees himself. He sees a mirror, a reflection, a parallel of everything that he hates in himself, but craves in Grian. They shouldn’t have been allowed to exist in this universe together. They shouldn’t have been allowed to touch each other like they can. Each brush of skin against skin burns with the reminder that they will never be one. They will never be what they need to be. Joel will never be able to bury himself under Grian’s skin and feel his heart beating as if it’s his own. That’s all Joel wants. He wants to find belonging in the warm flesh of Grian’s body, knitting their bones together and returning them to the way they were supposed to be.
He finds his home in Grian’s veins. He feels the blood pumping through Grian as if it’s his own. He finds his home, church, and final resting spot in the crooks of Grian’s body. Nothing matters to him except the way his skin burns when he brushes his fingers against Grian’s flesh.
It barely even crosses Joel’s mind that this is a game and they’re fighting to win. Joel looks at Grian and he wants to kill him for reasons entirely unrelated to winning a game. He wants to kill Grian, not because it will secure his victory after trying for so long, but because it just feels like the logical endpoint to his relationship with Grian. They have to destroy each other. Nothing will ever end unless they destroy each other. Joel’s not thinking about the game. He’s not thinking about winning. He’s thinking about eating. Ravaging. Consuming. Devouring. He’s thinking about finally putting an end to this sick feeling of familiarity. He’s thinking about destroying and being destroyed. He’s thinking about what it means to love and what it means to lose. They’re the same thing, aren’t they? You can’t have one without the other.
Can what he feels for Grian even be called love? It’s too twisted and rotten to ever be what a normal person might consider love, but Joel knows that all that rot inside of him is just echoed in Grian. They love each other like they hate each other. Really, it’s the same thing.
Joel bides his time before he strikes—like a predator watching its prey or maybe a predator watching another predator. He knows Grian better than either of them would like to admit. He can read Grian’s mind like he’s made a home inside the folds of his brain.
That’s why when he ender pearls up to the tree, he catches Grian off-guard, swinging his sword without a moment of hesitation. Grian scrambles to pull out his sword, attempting to fight back, but it’s too late.
“I’m sorry, Grian!” Joel shouts as he swings. He means the apology. He hopes Grian can tell that he means it.
He’s sorry for this and he’s sorry for everything else. He’s sorry for all the times he let the rot spread, encouraging Grian’s bloodlust and rage. He’s sorry that he’s happy it’s ending this way. He’s sorry that he’s not really sorry and he’s sorry that he actually is a little sorry.
(It’s funny how contradictions always happen with them. Nothing can ever be so simple with them. Joel’s sorry and he’s not at the same time. He’s fairly certain Grian is thinking something similar.)
Grian yells as he falls backwards, his hands clawing at the air, desperate to grab onto something, anything. Joel watches him fall. He almost reaches out, almost offers a hand, but he remembers how he detests mercy. Letting Grian fall is a greater show of love than saving him ever would be. Grian would never accept his mercy anyway. Grian would scoff at the sight of an outstretched hand from Joel. Grian will save himself or not at all.
Joel stares as Grian’s body hits the floor and lightning strikes, signalling his victory.
The laugh that escapes him is involuntary, loud and resounding. He’s won. He’s won and he’s lost at the same time. It’s the same thing, a wicked voice in his head supplies. You can’t have one without the other—not in these games. If you win, you still lose and if you lose, you win in a way.
Finally. Finally.
Victory is his. After all this time, after every life lost, whether it was his own or just at his hands, everything is worth it. It almost feels inevitable. Everything he’s done has been leading up to this moment. His head is clearer than it’s ever been. He got what he’s been wanting all this time.
He stares down at his hands, covered in blood. He can taste blood in his mouth. Is this what it feels like to be satisfied? To finally have everything that you ever wanted? To finally be a victor? To have finally shown everyone that the violent dog has a bite behind its bark? To have finally become the monster that you always know you’ve been?
The monster wins this time. There is no happy ending. He won the game that he spent being uncharacteristically nice by reverting back to the monster that he’s always been. There is no lesson learnt.
There is just blood.
Joel drapes Grian’s body over his shoulder, humming softly as he carries Grian down the mountain.
It’s odd to see Grian so still. Grian’s eyes are always flitting around the room, searching and scanning for an answer to every problem. His mind is never quiet, constantly thinking and reading people, trying to figure out how to get everybody to do exactly what he wants.
Past tense. Joel has to remind himself that Grian will no longer look at him with those inquisitive eyes of his. Now that Grian is dead, there is nobody in the universe who could possibly understand Joel. Nobody will ever see through him the way Grian did. He will be alone, never truly understood.
Grian’s smaller than Joel so it’s not too hard to carry him down. Grian will be the first person he buries. Joel knows Grian well enough to know what Grian would have wanted. As much as Joel would like to bury Grian right next to his car near where he’s planning to bury Gem, he knows it isn’t what Grian would want. He figures Grian deserves to get what he wants at least once—even if it’s after death.
The Spanners’ graves are still standing and Joel takes his time digging a new one right between Mumbo and Skizz. Joel is softer to Grian in death than he ever was in life. He’s tender and careful as he places Grian into the dirt, brushing his finger against the raised flesh of the wound he’d inflicted right before Grian had fallen to his death. Grian deserves this softness for once. He deserves it from someone better than Joel, but Joel is all that’s left.
As Joel carefully covers Grian’s body with dirt, he wonders if they ever could have been something. They’d always been convinced that they could never be everything so they’d chosen to be nothing, but what about something? Would that have been enough for them? Would they have been satisfied? Could they ever have been satisfied?
Joel supposes he’ll never know now.
“In the next life, yeah?” Joel winks at the grave, ignoring the way his heart feels like it’s going to tear out of his ribcage. Grian will find him again in the next life. They always do. That one will probably end even more horrifically.
He wanders around the server, searching for unburied bodies. He has a checklist of things he needs to do before he lets it all fade to black. All of these people had been his friends—are still his friends. He won’t leave them unburied.
He buries Bdubs and Tango together, searching around the server for their third Tuff Guy. He finds Etho alone and it’s almost ironic; the guy who floated from alliance to alliance killed without anyone around him to help. Etho had betrayed Joel time and time again, pretending to be allied to Joel and Gem while taking one of Gem’s lives and hunting down Joel when he’d been the last yellow. Still, despite all that, Etho was part of The Family, even if he had betrayed it in the end. Joel doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to fully snap that pull he has to his ex-soulmate. He’ll always care for Etho even if he doesn't want to sometimes. He’ll always look at Etho and feel like a part of his soul is missing. He buries Etho with the Tuff Guys and if he’s a little softer with Etho than he was with Bdubs and Tango then nobody needs to know.
Next are Pearl and Cleo—it’s a no-brainer as to where to bury them. He knows that they’d buried Scott, Impulse, and BigB in their base and he figures there’s no better place than to bury the two of them than with the people that they’d loved so fiercely. Pearl had been trying so hard to get Impulse the win and yet, she’d outlasted him.
(Joel refuses to feel bad for that. He refuses to feel the guilt. He can’t blame himself for winning. He won’t. He loved every second of every murder that he’d done to win. He played the game. He doesn’t feel guilty—he won’t feel guilty.)
(But if he apologizes to each person he buries then that’s nobody’s business but his own.)
He buries Ren in the same grave as Martyn. He thinks they would have wanted that. It’s what he would have wanted with Grian. He hopes Ren and Martyn somehow find each other wherever they’ve ended up. Staring at Ren’s body, half his own and half the man he’d loved more than his own life, is unsettling. Joel hadn’t gotten a close look at the way the two bodies had knit together before now. It’s not natural. It’s an abomination, Joel can’t help but think.
When he climbs back up to the Bamboozlers’ base, Joel has to steady his breathing before he can continue. Scar’s body is easy enough to find. Jimmy and Lizzie had been planning to bury him before they’d died. Joel buries him under the parrot that Lizzie had built him.
He almost throws up when he enters the Bambunker—or at least, what’s left of it. The walls are covered in blood and the smell is noxious. There’s not enough left of Lizzie and Jimmy to bury fully, but he gathers what he can. He can’t tell which parts are Lizzie’s and which ones are Jimmy’s, but he does what he can to split them evenly. He buries them under their own parrots as well though it’s more of a symbol than a proper burial. Lizzie and Jimmy were two of the people that Joel cared about most in the world.
He knows very well that Grian had been the one to blow up the Bambunker. Grian’s never too ashamed to brag about his carnage. Grian lives with blood under his nails—lived with blood under his nails. He never needed to be red to make use of his bloodthirst. Grian had promised that he would take Jimmy out of the game and Joel knows better than most that Grian will always make good on his promises.
Joel wishes he could blame Grian for Lizzie and Jimmy’s deaths. He wishes he could be angry at something or at someone, but he can’t blame Grian for doing exactly what the game asks of you. Joel’s done worse. He’s done so much worse in his attempts to win. He could blame Grian for killing two of the people that Joel loved more than anything, but that would mean he’d have to blame himself for the kind of carnage that his own love requires. Joel can’t hold Grian accountable for doing the same things that he knows he would do if given the opportunity. Winning these games means leaving your morality at the door. You can promise to be good all you want, you can make alliances and friends, and you can tell yourself that you’re going to win by being better than those that came before you, but you’ll never win that way. The game requires blood. It requires butchery. You will win in a bloodbath or not at all.
That’s what he tells himself as he buries the bits that he could find of Lizzie and Jimmy. Ignoring his own guilt and morality is the only thing that will get him through this. The Bamboozlers had found a home in each other and they’d all died mere minutes apart. Joel thinks they would have liked to be buried so close together.
He thinks about how he has to make all these inferences and guesses about what the dead would want from him. He could be completely wrong. He could be going completely against their wishes and have no way of knowing it. Grian would have been much better at this. Joel’s always been awful at reading people other than Grian.
Then again, maybe the dead don’t want anything at all. They’re dead. How can they want when they’re nothing? The dead don’t yearn or desire. The dead have no wishes. Maybe everything that Joel is doing right now is just his way of projecting onto them, trying to find some way to absolve himself of guilt.
It’s just now hitting him that they’re dead. Joel is the only one left. He’s alone in the truest sense of the word. Every person he ever loved is gone, reduced to a corpse that will rot the same way that Joel has for his entire life.
He’s been thinking about winning since the very first game, but he’d never really thought about what comes after winning. What now? What is he supposed to do now that the only person he has left is himself? It’s not like he considers himself to be particularly great company.
Gem is last. He buries her right outside her barn, tender and soft with his only ally. Gem had believed in him from the start. He doesn’t think he’d have made it this far if it weren’t for her. She taught him to be softer. She taught him to be smarter. That’s what made this game so different from the others. He wouldn’t have won without her, he knows that. She deserved to be here with him.
“I won, Gem,” Joel mutters, staring down at the raised patch of dirt. “Just like you told me to.”
Gem doesn’t reply—obviously, she doesn’t reply. It’s still strange. Joel had grown so used to Gem always being there that it’s odd now that she’s not. Joel almost feels like Gem is going to rise up out of her grave to congratulate him or maybe make fun of him (honestly the latter is more likely).
He wanders around for a bit, picking a few patches of flowers in colours that he thinks Gem would have liked. He lays them down on top of her grave, arranging them in a way that at least looks a little nice. Gem had put so much effort into making their base look nice. Joel doesn’t want to ruin that.
“I hope you’re proud of me.” Joel tilts his head up as he speaks, hoping that somewhere, somehow, Gem can hear him. “I think you’d be proud. I hope I’m not wrong in assuming that. I guess you can’t really answer me—because you’re dead and all—but I think I know you well enough by now. You’d call me stupid if I said that I wouldn’t have won without you so I won’t say it, but I—whatever, you know what I mean, don’t you?” Joel looks back down at the grave one final time. “Bye, Gem. Thanks.”
When everybody else is gone and buried, the only thing left is himself.
Nobody will bury him. There’s no one left to do that.
Every person he has ever cared for or loved is dead. He is the only one left. All he has is the guilt of victory and the blood on his hands. What good is victory if there is no one to share it with? No one to brag to? No one to congratulate you? What good is winning if you can never win anything ever again?
There’s no other option.
Joel takes a deep breath, shutting his eyes and tossing his ender pearls into the air. He teleports around a few times, each time sending a wave of nausea through his body. Each teleport hurts more and more as they stress out his body, tearing it in every possible dimension. Human bodies aren’t made to teleport. They can only take it in small doses.
The universe is trying to pull him inside out and the pain is relentless. It’s a punishment. Joel’s always thought that he didn’t deserve anything he got, but if this is what he gets from victory then maybe victory is the only thing he’s ever deserved. This is the only logical outcome to winning. If the world won’t be so kind as to give him what he craves, Joel will do it himself. He’s always been good at that, hasn’t he? Taking fate into his own hands and doing whatever he has to to get what he wants. Joel has no mercy—not even for himself. He feels the pain of his body hitting the ground, tearing itself apart.
Then, everything turns black.