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Scar falls. A slip, a shower of sand and sickening crunch before either of them can utter a word. A series of wet, gasping breaths, echoing from the limestone walls of the ravine, before everything comes to a halt, because the universe is many things but it is not kind. Not here.
Scar falls, and Grian’s heart falls with him.
He comes back. They all do. Bone and muscle and skin knitting back together into something colder and sharper and wrong.
Scar opens his red red red eyes from the bed Grian’s laid him on, skin grey and cool to the touch, something other curling in the slope of his shoulders when he sits himself up, all muscle and animal and predator.
“Scar?” Grian asks once he swallows down the instinctual need to fight and run, carefully keeps his hands from straying to his sword. It’s laced with fear and need and something a little too close to hope. He swore his first life to this man- or whoever the crimson-curled shell of one he might now be, and should he choose to kill him sooner rather than later, then so be it.
Scar drags his eyes (crimson and bloody and wrong ) away from Grian’s neck, away from where he knows his pulse point is pounding in Scar’s ears, maybe even louder than in his own. His gaze is unnervingly pinpointed and hazy all at once, something like looking a wolf in the eye. Hungry and calculating and powerful, and Grian’s chest suddenly feels too small.
“…Partner!” Scar finally says. His grin is too wide and his too-many teeth are sharp, too bladed and long to be human anymore.
There’s a feeling sat in Grian’s chest, tight and nestled too close with the lack of air to fit. Relief and horror and something frighteningly like affection for something so close to a monster.
Scar comes back but he comes back wrong.
It takes four days before Scar lets him out of his line of sight, before he’s willing to turn his back and let Grian even glimpse the back of his neck, too-thin shoulders, wire-laced muscle, something roiling and ancient twists his once companion into a threat. He sticks to corners and walls, vigilant and paranoid and always so much sharper than before.
On the fifth day since his flesh knit him back together in a form made for death, Scar crouches down to open a chest, and Grian freezes from behind him.
His back and neck are bent, elegant even in shades of grey, all sinew and lined muscle. It’s something painfully vulnerable for something made by the gods to rip and tear and bleed one last time.
It’s only for a breath of a space before he’s springing up again, humming a note that’s warped and unsettling with his new vocal chords, but the glance he throws Grian (still frozen, unsure to move, unsure to breathe, unsure to betray this fragile display) is significant. A miniscule test of trust, going against every instinct he’s been gifted and rewritten to have over and over again for the sake of a flimsy contract. For the sake of human hands, something he no longer possesses.
Something changes, after that.
Scar doesn’t burn anymore. The bright sun of the desert doesn’t affect the dull pallor of his skin, it doesn’t even make him squint against the heat and flare of the rolling sand, his eyes adapted and stronger with pupils that contract down to a pinprick leaving nothing but deep blood red.
He doesn’t need the same amount of food, gets by on one meal a day. He drinks less water, doesn’t even sweat. Immune to frostbite and heatstroke all in one.
He doesn’t sleep the same, and more than once Grian is shaken awake by some deep instinct to run and run and hide, to find unwavering crimson eyes locked into him from across their little base.
His skin is thicker, harder. He doesn’t cut or scrape in the same way, doesn’t dip or give in quite the same way beneath Grian’s fascinated wandering. Twitches at the contact instead, grits his too-many teeth and leaves the room a little quicker than comfortable.
He’s gentle with Grian, more so than before. His muscles and different, more strength confined to smaller space, his ribs visible and at the same time iron bends beneath his unnaturally steady grip. His grip when he moves Grian out of the way of a stray arrow is the closest his hands come to shaking, so so careful with his beating human heart and so much warmer flesh.
Grian still insists he wears armor. His stomach twists when he sees his bare skin, part scared for his safety, thick skin offers no protection from creeper blasts so close, part scared rabbit at every flash of grey and red.
Grian still makes him extra food, dedicated time to regeneration potions, instant health where he can. Makes sure he’s hydrated and rested. Takes the time to make sure he won’t lose his friend again, twisted and taloned as he may be.
Scar still stares at his neck. Glances over soft spots, hungry for something violent, implanted by the gods, bites his own cheek to taste blood and forces himself away. Grey hands over soft arteries and blue veins. Grian has a bunker, somewhere, and a pack of food and materials for running and hiding once he finally gives into instinct. His heart still races while his bones scream hunter predator monster. They don’t talk about it.
A monster and a human united over something a little like friendship.
They make do.
Later, much later, when Grian is bloody-knuckled and bloody-eyed as well, when they’ve bested everyone else, when two hunters become one become two, Scar smiles at him again. Sad and relieved and so so lovely for something made for death.
He kneels down in the shallow pond, neck and teeth bared, the first and last of them. Something reverent and holy in his gaze, something like understanding.
“Go on then,” he whispers, raspy and used, knowing it carries to his now so sensitive ears. “You’ve done so well. You’ve done so much… for me. For everything you’ve done to keep me alive for so long, you can take it. You belonged to me for so long, I can belong to you.”
It’s something like acceptance. A request and an apology in one.
Grian's sword is heavy in his hands. He knows how this plays out, he knows how it’s supposed to end. Altas and Cassandra sit heavy on his shoulders and he can’t help being selfish for a little longer.
One of them has always been the predator and one the prey. One of them has always been greater and sharper and less than human.
Later, when Scar falls with a last wet gasp, immobile for good, last reaches of life seeping from his skin, Grian drags himself to the ledge with unnaturally steady hands and lets himself plummet. Something like rest and a poetic conclusion he wanted to end with, something he thought he wanted.
Scar falls, and Grian’s traitorous heart falls with him.