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Scar was dead. Grian could tell by the still body beneath him, blood seeping into the sand, cacti spines embedded into flesh. Yet his heart was still full, still empty, still numb.
Grian rose from his sitting position on the ground, and unwrapped his arms from the murdered lying next to him. Standing up came difficult, especially as his mind was flooded with Sights. He wouldn’t gain solace, even in victory.
He couldn’t see anything, nothing but red and purple and scars and that stupid smirk. He couldn’t hear anything, nothing but Their whispers in his ears and cries of pain that had rang out moments before.
Scar was dead. And Grian was a murderer.
The only telling of the passage of time was the setting of the sun in the distance, light fading on the dark day that had preceded him. He had stood over the body for hours, wisps of shadows and screams leaving him in solitary as he attempted to process the loss of everything he loved. The only thing he loved.
But alas, night was coming, and the voices would only get louder the longer he was stuck in that empty server.
He decided he could be responsible, and at least make the dead look presentable. It deserved that after all it had done for him. Reaching down with shaking hands, he turned the corpse to lie on its back, ignoring the tear droplets landing on the body’s bare torso.
He recoiled. Imminently, Grian was met with a myriad of bright purple, assaulting his eyes with each glance. They were everywhere once more.
One great violet eye settled itself on the body’s face and Grian couldn’t take it. As abruptly as he could, he placed the departed’s arms onto its stomach, flinching at the bright red of blood draped down the muscled limbs, and forced himself to leave.
Red and purple.
The knot in his stomach grew tighter as he struggled to pull his gaze from the immovable being below him, turning towards the remnants of their blown up base. He crossed the rubble, sand and detritus scattering with every step and searched for that specific chest. It couldn’t have all blown up in the explosion, could it?
Standing over the crater that was once their home, Grian let out a sigh of relief (or a sigh as close to relief one could get at the end of the world). It was there. The chest next to the enchantment table - where he had kept his valuables - remained fully intact, even with the lack of ground beneath it. Grian had picked up the contents of the victim’s inventory when it had died, so he built up with the few blocks of dirt he had and opened the chest with heavy hands.
The flowers were there.
Poppies and lilacs.
Eyes watering once more, he pulled as many flowers as he could out of the chest with a deepening sadness. His home was nothing but ruins, his partner nothing but a cold body, himself nothing but an empty soul. It was all he could do to honour his murder.
Breaking the blocks beneath him, he landed on the soft sand once again. It seemed the material aspects of his treacherous world were the only things he could truly trust. The sand couldn’t fall out from under him, leaving him in the midst of nothingness, just like how he couldn’t slaughter the sand, leaving it cold and dead beneath his fingers.
The few flowers he had grasped by the petals instead of the stem had left pollen on his hands, gripped so tight that the flowers had been left squashed. So, dropping the few damaged flowers in a trail of red and purple behind him, he gave one last glance to the debris that was his home, and approached the carcass of his lover.
He squinted his eyes shut at the attack of purple on his eyes, trying to blink away the omens of his origins. Their eyes had engulfed the body now, only breaking to taunt him with the crimson of blood that stained its skin.
Red and purple.
He scanned the corpse once more, bile gathering in his throat as he finally perceived it in its full form. He hadn’t previously seen past his tears, past the purple, past the wounds, because he couldn’t bring himself to. But now, he had to. He ignored the whispers, and observed.
If not for himself, then for Scar.
The brave man who wouldn’t back down from a fight. The bubbly man who befriended each and every animal and treated them like his kin. The caring man who was there for him at every turn. The love of his life.
The lifeless body before him.
His emerald green eyes, starkly contrasting the bags beneath them. His soft hair that Grian had cut for him all those months ago framing his face, falling down to his shoulders. His calloused hands, knuckles scabbed over with dried patches of blood littering his fingers.
He could’ve been asleep, if not for the horrid purple tingeing everything, muddling the colours, filtering everything into shades of brown.
The spines of cacti still stuck out of his arms, each one met with a blotch of crusted scarlet. Grian compelled himself forward, willing himself to continue what he came for.
He fought back against the flurry of eyes attempting to spoil his vision and leaned down, raising one of Scar’s arms. Placing the bouquet down beneath his hands, he returned Scar’s other arm to its original place, and took a step back.
Red and Purple.
Blood and Eyes.
Poppies and Lilacs.
With as much of a bittersweet smile as he could muster, Grian stepped around Scar, nearing Pizza’s grave - the cliff edge - and reaching for the poncho draped across it.
It was hand embroidered, containing all the little imperfections something handmade would have. The black fabric had poppies and lilacs sewn into the edges, stripes of red and green, and a final little badge of their banner, the mark of Pizza. Three little words were stitched at the bottom.
“Made With Love :J”
He glanced through wet eyes at Scar’s peaceful state, stumbled forward, and knelt down. Leaning over the head of hair in front of him, he drew the poncho over Scar’s bruised and bloodied chest. He planted a chaste kiss on his forehead before pulling back with a sigh and sitting on his ankles.
“I’m sorry, Scar,” Grian breathed out with an unusual sense of finality.
Grian rose from his spot on the ground and dusted sand off of his trou-
He lost his footing.
He slipped off the cliff edge in a cloud of dust.
He couldn’t trust the sand.
He couldn’t trust the flowers, the poppies, the lilacs.
He couldn’t trust himself.
Because the only one he could trust died at his own hand.
And he was next.
Grian fell from a high place.