Chapter Text
When Grian first was propositioned by the Watchers, he had roughly three thoughts in his head.
The first was that becoming a bit more powerful - like an admin but better, One had said, before Two had butted in saying that he would be able to command code on a never-before-seen level - is very obviously tempting.
He liked coding, even if it didn’t always agree with him. It was a form of art in his opinion, one that could be learnt and built upon just the same as painting or architecture. (By this analogy, of course, his coding was usually more like stick figures. But still, he could admire the beauty and the potential.)
The second was that he had perhaps underestimated the beings he had fucked with because they stood feet above him with robes that shined ominously in the cold stillness of the End.
Sure - they had placed obsidian on his chests before, had erected a statue of clay wings in an obvious temptation, which he had dewinged underneath a blank, blue sky, with words of mockery on his lips. He didn’t like to be tested - especially didn’t like to be manipulated, not in such an obvious, powerful way.
And they were powerful, in a way that made every hair on him stand straight upwards. He couldn’t take that. Not with a thousand days to prepare.
The third thought was… well, when the Watchers had stood in front of him, and had told him that if he joined their ranks, the rest of EVO would be safe. His third thought was' it was too good to be true.
He hadn’t been sure what to expect, really. That was two-sided; both the threat and the thrill of joining.
The wings had been welcome, at least - they had been painless, if not uncomfortable. The Watchers, Grian had quickly learned, had little use for gore. They had taken him from his world, into one where the sky seemed constantly grey, with the occasional change of the sun illuminating the clouds until they were golden-grey, and the ground was made of light, almost ashen plants, pastel greens and yellows and blues.
As he had lain prone on his knees, head swimming, One had held his face in one large hand, studying him. Their mask betrayed nothing of their expression, except for how it tilted when they looked up, over his shoulder - and Grian might have asked why they weren’t looking at him, except another hand was on his back, sturdy, talons ripping through his sweater.
“Hey!” Grian protested when their skin met his own - he had never touched a Watcher before. The grip tightened for a moment, and he fell quiet.
Their skin was cool like porcelain, like a deep cave on a hot day, like a stone’s backside turned over to reveal the crawling bugs and dirt that thrived underneath. It wasn’t so much slimy as it was smooth, and Grian had shuddered against the feeling with a grimace.
Just as soon it pulled back, and before Grian could ask questions, something was pulled back with them.
The sensation reminded him of when he and Mumbo, barely teenagers at the time, had played alongside a creek. Grian had goaded him into a sword fight with a pair of sticks they had found on the ground nearby and Mumbo had turned out to be surprisingly half-competent when it came to fighting.
Grian had swung wide, Mumbo took the opportunity to strike - and he’d fallen back into the shallow water.
He’d was unhurt - but by the time he’d managed to get home, his wet jeans had largely dried on him. They were stiff, almost painful to get off. His skin had felt papery afterward, still stinging with the loss.
Growing wings was a lot like that.
They pulled and they pulled and they stung against the cool air in the Watcher’s dimension, and Two had pulled him up by his armpits like a child while the new limbs fluttered uselessly behind him.
“You’ll be great one day, Xelqua,” they said thoughtfully.
“I can walk,” he protested, squirming in their hold, “Come off it - Xelqua?”
Before he could ask what that meant - if it was like, a term for a student, or a swear, One sighed. “For now, we will let him rest.”
Grian had been feeling quite energetic, thank you, he was a grown man and did not need to be put down like a toddler pitching a fit - but before he could so much as scowl, sleep settled over him like a heavy bag around his head.
That had… kind of set the tone for the rest of the experience. Grian had assumed when the Watchers had promised he would learn about code, would become powerful, it would be more of a class. A mentor-student thing.
Instead, he was given a very monotone, bland room with nothing more than a white bed and a chair in the corner, and every morning he was sat in front of a rather monotone, bland meal, and then he was whisked away - the first day, for clothes fitting, which had ultimately been the two watchers demanding white robes from the thin air, and the ground spitting them up obediently, pre-tailored.
(That was admittedly a little cool, if not fucking creepy.)
Every day since has at least opened with them trying to teach him something .
Sometimes, this something is teaching him to stretch his wings; too-cold fingertips pressing at his his back, trailing sensations that started as unnatural, but have slowly acclimated to simply unpleasant.
Grian tries to mimic the motions sometimes, in the privacy of his bedroom. He can never quite seem to get more than a flutter out of the heavy limbs.
Sometimes, these lessons come in the form of him splaying his hand out to the ground. Feeling as the dirt, damp and silty beneath his fingers, bleeds code; or rather, that’s not wholly accurate-
The ground bleeds code the same as he bleeds blood. It is a skin, the code hidden far into the molecules.
Instead, he feels Code pulse underneath his skin.
The first time he had felt it he had jolted back like he had touched a hot ember. The ground beneath him had a heartbeat.
The Watchers can pull Code from the ground, like a thread from a sweater. Grian doesn’t know how to- doesn’t know if he wants to learn.
If enough threads are pulled…he doesn’t know if the world can unravel, too. It’s not an idea he’s eager to find out.
A lot of the time, the majority of it is what Grian has come to call his ‘programming’ sessions. (They don’t like that term, and he does not say it aloud.)
The Watchers talk to him as if he is a higher being - which, perhaps, now he is. But they talk about Players as beneath them, beneath him.
They condemn the very things that he loves about his friends, loves about himself. They talk about hand-built caves and softly lit cabins as if they are vermin, as if the very idea is something sick.
The first time Grian had suggested their builds could use more life, more color (something that was very much true; the little he had seen was on par with the types of builds Mumbo and he had made as children, if you took away the colors they had painted them with) had also been the first time he had been sent to his room - like a petulant child, a temper-tantruming teen - for the day. And the day after that.
Grian had decided that he needed to leave pretty quickly after that.
He breathes in a stiltedly steady rhythm, his posture thrown, poised carefully in dreaming ignorance. He’s trying to feign being asleep, not that he’s wholly sure if the Watchers know enough about Players to appreciate that.
Grian is unsure if the Watchers are twins by birth, or by creation, or - something . Lovers, friends, or perhaps some relationship that isn’t bound by what he’s familiar with. It doesn’t matter.
When the night comes, sunlight leaching out from the clouds above, and the moon rises - forever full, it seems - washing the pale world blue, One takes their shift, watching over the world from their station, while Two takes over their own.
He can’t help but wonder what exactly their plan is for him, in the long haul. He doesn’t know if what’s happening now has ever been done to another player before - or if he is simply an experiment.
If it is an experiment; this slow burn attempt to turn him into one of them.
(Being a Player is a hell of a lot more enticing than whatever they’re trying to get him to be, frankly. The wings are nice, and the feeling of code around him is comforting - and he can feel it now, from the hair that brushes over his nape, to the ground underneath his feet. A heartbeat second to his own.
But it is not worth - whatever this is gearing up to be, and he does not want to stick around and find out if their inhuman assholeness is just something unique to them, or if one day, he will graduate from ‘Xelqua’ to Three, and find himself scorning the very things that he loves.)
Grian glances to the wall. The walls, made of marble and accented with obsidian are simple in comparison to most materials - their essence repeating over and over in glowing cyan.
“Code,” he calls, voice barely louder than a murmur. The cyan across the wall flashes brighter in response, almost enough to produce light. It’s still really, really weird to be able to talk to the very essence that makes up just about everything. “What time is it?”
Cyan flashes again, before a simple line illuminates - the spacing is odd, the words made up of lines that are already written, but after a moment he makes it out. May 5th, 12:01
Grian nods his head silently. The Watchers, creatures of habit and structure, keep to a strict schedule.
One should be circling the eastern wall, right about now, while Two should be walking through the hallway between the main building, and the dome-shaped one that Grian has never been inside.
Not until tonight, anyway.
He slips to his feet, sheets falling from his shoulders and snagging momentarily on his big, white wings. There’s a pile of clothing snuck underneath the pillow, and he pulls them out, slipping the items on one after another.
The clothes are simple and grey - not the flowing robes the Watchers had fitted him in, but ones more suited for adventure that he had asked the Code for. At first, he thought it was a pot-shot, that the thing would report him back to the Watchers, and that they would do… something, probably. They don’t exactly seem the types to let him have such Player things.
But he had asked, head bowed and lips barely moving, and the next night he had found simple, well made clothing underneath his bed with an additional button in the back to fasten underneath his wings.
He tightens the strings that make up the cinch of the pants and pulls the shirt’s sleeves straight.
He breathes in, out, in again. Feathers shudder to either side of him, their shifting audible in the quiet.
And then, swallowing his apprehension, Grian stands up. The marble under his feet is cold to the touch, though he’s grown used to the feeling by now.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Grian opens the bedroom door and slips out into the hallway.
The escape plan had taken more time than he’d thought. The Watchers’ halls are tall and winding, filled with passageway after passageway, and a thousand dead ends with no escape at their crest. He thinks it might be a way for them to hunt, if they need to - the entities still have to see, physically, but they see more than any Player ever could.
And they remember.
His heart beats rapidly without permission as Grian rounds a corner. There is no use in ducking his head in to see. They would notice him in a second.
Grian makes it into what could generously be called a dining room. It does, at least, have a table and chairs; the table is large and round, the chairs situated so that they each have a third to themselves.
He imagines himself as he pulls two of the chairs from where they’re pressed in. He imagines himself, draped in too much white, sitting in that space day after day. He imagines himself growing older, not with thickening muscles and growing knowledge and gentle crows feet around his eyes - but instead, with a mask covering his entire face. His disposition turned into something cold and callous.
It’s not a pleasant thought.
Grian stacks one chair on top of the other, wings beating uselessly behind him as he climbs up them. (He hasn’t yet grown the muscles nor the reflexes needed to fly. It is surprisingly hard to learn how to use new limbs.) The chairs underneath him creak ominously, wood scraping against wood as he perches - and he scrabbles off of them as quickly as possible, onto the window ledge.
It’s a large, wide thing, stained glass detailing a world in desaturated blues and greens. The colors are not so much colors as they are suggestions, tinges that do nothing to make the viewer feel comfortable.
He digs his fingernails around the junction between glass and marble, feeling for a weak spot.
This is the most uncertain part of the operation at this point - he’s not counting the dome, not yet. He has to have hope.
If he breaks the glass, it will be too loud. Grian doesn’t actually know how sensitive the Watchers actually are to sound– but once, he’d broken a plate, and One had come storming in from halfway across the castle, so it had to be sensitive. It’s why he worries about his breathing and his heartbeat, even though he cannot control them.
However acute their sense actually is, he knows breaking a window would be like setting off an alarm, too dangerous to risk this far from his goal.
His fingernails don’t catch on anything and after a minute Grian lets out a minute sigh. “Code,” he whispers, “can you help?”
Blue streaks pulse once, twice, along the transparent pane. After a moment, the lines on the glass shift, running across its surface like water across rocks. Grian presses a hand gently against the glass, and it folds cooly underneath his touch like molten candy. The illustrated world crumbles into a crinkled ball.
“Cool,” he breathes out, glancing down at his hand. It comes away perfectly clean. “Thank you.”
The code pulses once again, as if acknowledgment, and Grian breaks his reprieve. The hole in the glass is large enough for him to squeeze through, its edges rounded. He exits legs-first, and grunts when the glass catches against his wings. Right. It’s still a bit odd, having to account for the extra limbs.
He presses the wingtips out of the hole, wiggling, and with an unceremonious plop he slips out of the window, onto the lawn below.
Grian holds his breath for a few seconds, listening. Was that too loud?
No Watchers come streaming around the corner, illuminated by rage and indignation, so he hopes the answer is no. Grian stands slowly, the vegetation underneath him soft and short like moss. It's soft on his feet - it feels like a bloody carpet, and he didn’t realize how harsh it was to walk on flat unyielding marble for weeks (has it only been weeks? Or longer?) until now.
He breathes against the relief, so sweet that it’s almost painful - and when he opens his eyes, it's to the code flashing again, lining the pale tufts of not-grass.
Grian nods understandingly, not daring to speak more than is needed, and he moves.
From outside, the castle looks large and bland - which, perhaps, is not much of a change. Obsidian lines the bottoms of the walls in a black, harsh trim, and there is a watchtower built up at every corner. Its light does not revolve - it does not need light.
Grian turns his back to the cold, towering thing. He’s in a courtyard, now, the dark of night shrouding everything in shadows.
He knows this path as well as he can, having never traversed it. He sticks near the walls, walking from heel to toe to heel again, in hopes that it will dampen his footsteps. When he has to cross a pathway, he does so with careful, unsure feet, stepping across cobblestone and knowing that any pebble scraping along underneath his foot could be the thing that would ruin him.
Would Grian be killed, if he was caught? Or would they have some other plan in mind, some other punishment befitting the man?
They threatened EVO to get what they wanted; him. How little of a cost did they consider that? Did they want him especially, so much so that they could deal with other lives on the line? Or was he a plaything and the other EVOlutionists were simply less than even that?
He doesn't want to find out and as he reaches the pathway to the dome, a smooth-stone thing with pillars arching over in arcs that seem almost impossible, their bases carved obsidian, Grian swallows thickly.
He takes a step forward, careful to lay his foot as softly as a collector lays a fragile, expensive piece of glassware -
And it shatters as the code, docile as it had been, flashes orange and then blank, plain against the blocks it had been so stark against only moments ago.
It is the only warning he gets, other than an inhuman, terrible screech behind him - and Grian leaps to the side, light feet forgotten in favor of adrenaline and speed.
With his heart crawling out of his throat, he ducks behind a pillar. The mechanical whirring ceases, and it does nothing to comfort him.
They have seen him.
Fuck.
Grian doesn't have time to mourn, doesn't have time to fear, he barely has time to do anything more than run.
His footsteps pound against the cobblestone ground, in a dead sprint. Grian leaps over a decorative bush. He stumbles as his wings act as counterweights, dragging him down and pulling clumsily with the wind.
He has no time. He needs to run, needs to go-
As he attempts to slip behind a pillar, there’s a sudden yank against his arm.
Grian’s legs kick and wings flap as he is lifted into the air, his right arm screaming in sharp pain. Fingers wrap around the flesh, squeezing against muscle and fat and skin in a bruising manner. Talons dig in deep enough to leave marks, divots that draw beading rivulets of blood in their peaks.
“Let me go!” He shouts, trying to kick back.
One simply maneuvers him around - and they hold him up to their mask. The thing is porcelain and plain, reaching far up below their hood, and ending inwards, a good inch from their chin. Engraved on it is an all-to familiar portal filled with gold, and inside of that - an eye.
The eye, unlike the portal, is plain. It’s hard to see in dim light, only light shadows filling its void - and its design is simple. There is no pupil in the wide, exaggeratedly blown iris - or perhaps, there is no iris to begin with.
The artist did not bother with eyelashes. Grian wonders if it was because eyelashes symbolize too much Human - wishes and flirting and beauty - or if they simply found them lacking in the minimalist design.
“Xelqua,” One says, and the name that is not his - not by choice - is spoken with a growl. The hand on his arm tightens further. It's too warm against his skin. “What are you doing out of bed?”
Oh, excuse him. Just a normal adult, expecting a bit of bloody agency. How silly, all-seeing thing! What a foolish concept.
He doesn’t say anything, however. He just whimpers as the talons deepen.
“Are you trying to escape?” One asks, when he doesn’t respond. They sound bemused. The hand squeezes until pain and heat cannot be separated. “You’ll never leave our sight,” they spit like a curse. A fact. Like they know that no matter what he does, he will never, ever leave.
Fuck that in particular, actually.
It’s hard to punch, when you’re suspended in the air - but he makes do, winding his free hand up and aiming for square in the middle of the eye of the stupid mask. They jerk back, trying to avoid him - but the Watchers, for all their powers must not be very scrappy, because they certainly saw it coming. The movement just gives him momentum, and his knuckles collide into the porcelain.
There’s a cracking sound, and like a miracle, One swears and drops him - not without a parting gift of their talons scratching against skin. Grian wastes no time jerking away, into a run.
“Catch me, then!” He yells defiantly back as his feet slam against stone, the layer of silence he so carefully waded through to get this far shattered beyond repair. Grian cradles his left hand to his chest. Somehow, he doesn’t think the cracking he heard was their mask.
When stealth isn’t a variable, the pathway feels a lot shorter. Maybe that’s the pain playing tricks on him.
It doesn’t matter. Grian slams into the dome’s doorway without the time to admire it - and the doors don’t yield underneath him.
“Come on, come on,” he says, pushing again. “Not now. ”
It still doesn’t bow in, and Grian’s eyebrows pinch with emotion - until one of his fumbling hands makes it down the surface, and clasps against a knob. “Oh,” he says breathlessly as he grasps onto it with sweating hands, yanking the piece of metal so hard to the right that it screeches beneath him. “I’m an idiot.”
The doors have the type of presence that is usually saved for slow, grandiose movements, designed to make the opener gasp in awe. But he doesn’t have that type of time, and the large, heavy wood sighs as he pushes it open with urgency.
Behind the doors is a bullpen, of sorts, the center of the ground lowered, while walkways stretch around it like they’re intended to frame it. The room is circular, working up to a rounded point that is at least ten blocks above his head.
That, however, is not the most shocking thing.
There are screens lining the walls from end to end. Some are large, poignant, while others are barely the size of his thumb. They play live footage. In one scene, a waterfall consumes a too-curious chicken, pulling it down, down, donwn. In another sits a half-exploded desert temple, sand gently stirred by the wind. In a third, there is simply a sparse forest - simply greenery and animals roaming. Peaceful, untouched.
The screens carry all the way to the top of the dome, too high for Grian to see; they wrap around with no clear stopping point, other than the doorway. In the bullpen, there are twin desks, filing cabinets creating a maze of changing scenes and moving shapes. It almost seems like it’s meant to-
Before Grian can finish the thought, there is a creaking sound behind him, and he swears again. He reaches forward blindly with his injured arm, ignoring the stinging sensation that comes with it.
Grian’s fingers ghost over a screen - the close one with no players, and he presses his thumb to the screen and hopes. Desperation wells up in his throat like a droplet of blood bleeding from a fresh wound, until it’s all he can feel, until it’s so all-consuming that he feels like he’s going to choke on it.
His pinkie on the other hand is the first to go. It’s - he doesn’t have to see it. It is not painful in any way other than nothingness where he once felt things. It spreads quickly up his arm, void and void and nothing at all where it had once been. Grian’s stomach swoops like he’s falling, like he’s in the descent of a swing, and the string has yet to pull him into a curve.
It, despite everything, feels right.
And as he pours his essence into the world grabbed at random, code spilling into code like granules of sand in an hourglass, the time ticks on.
It’s twenty-three minutes after midnight when Grian’s sinking feeling twists into something more close to a freefall - though he doesn’t realize it, at first.
Soon, the only sensation is that; falling.
Falling, falling, falling.
It feels like the days of his youth, when he and the local teenagers (though usually Mumbo and Jimmy) would build towers up around a lake, competing for height, until finally they jumped off one after another, falling from their own personal springboards.
Back then, Grian had reveled in the swooping feeling, the weightlessness, the feeling of falling forever. He was one of the tallest heights they’d recorded, in the end - only matched by the most daring, and Mumbo, who wasn't so much a fan of the height, of the adrenaline, as he could be goaded easily into joining Grian.
There is only one difference between then and now.
Grian, those years ago, knew that he would fall into water.
Adrenaline spikes sharp as a sword underneath his skin, lungs stinging as they constrict. Wind whips against skin like sandpaper, and his loose grey clothing billows around him, the cloth doing nothing to protect him from the chill.
Grian’s wings jolt into an arc so suddenly, like they’ve just remembered their purpose, and he lets out a pained yelp at the snap.
It's not natural to fly, yet; he’d never had the time to practice. And so Grian falls like a rock, aimed upwards with his wings bowed around him like an umbrella.
It… is not ineffective per say. Instead of terminal velocity, with its sandpaper wind and nausea, this feels more like being in the middle of a giant windstorm.
He falls like that. For how long - well, probably only a minute or two.
But it feels longer.
Grian’s wings ache with strain and his wounded arm screams, and when the ground swims into view he nearly sobs with relief.
It is immediately replaced by fear. Below him is a sparse forest with proud trees and living things and no water in sight.
Oh, he is fucked.
Grian lets out a strangled yelp as he tumbles to the ground, wings flaring out and beating desperately while he scrambles in the unrelenting air for- something. It’s like trying to tread rushing water when you’ve never swum before.
When Grian lands, he does so feet-first. His legs crumple out from underneath him, knees bending too fast, too soon. He tumbles across the ground, skidding his palms as he tries to break the fall.
Grian yells, wordless, the sound devolving into a pained hiss.
Ultimately, it could have gone worse.
Grian lays there for a moment, letting out a broken keen as he tries to stretch his legs out from under him. His palms are scraped and stinging, and blood is trailing sluggishly down his arm, tickling and sticky and wet, and he hasn't been an owner of wings for too long, but the way they feel - they have to be injured. There’s no other explanation for the ache. He doesn’t think they were broken, but…
As soon as his legs are flat in front of him, Grian dips his head to the ground, reveling in the cool dirt pressing against him for a moment. He never wants to do that again. Trade in his wings, folks, Grian is very happy to be grounded from now on.
To do that, though, he has to get up.
He’s escaped, great. Grian grimaces, and even though he really doesn’t want to, he pushes himself up into a sit. Leaning on one hand, he uses the other to prod at his legs. If he can’t walk, it’s all over. May as well hand himself to the Mobs now.
Fingers ghost over kneecaps, prodding gently. Grian gives a gentle hiss on his right knee - but when he forces himself to go further, to try bending it, he finds that while it’s stiff, it’s not a sharp pain. It’s a dull one.
Which means it’s probably not broken.
He could cry with relief, but instead, Grian just grimaces and slowly pushes himself up. It hurts to stand. He does so anyways, legs quaking but holding underneath his weight. He can find a potion to heal them. Probably. Maybe there’s a nearby village he could go to; he’s always been good with trading. A cleric would take one look at him and take anything he offered, probably.
But bruised is not broken. And he is still alive.
It's still sore. Painful even, and Grian lets out a hiss as he stretches. He has to rest his wings in a draped fashion, hunching over slightly so they don’t drag on the ground.
… Maybe it was a little optimistic, to say that he hadn’t broken them.
There’s not much he can do, though. He hasn’t the foggiest idea of wing care - he’d been more of a cat person, before he’d been forcefully enticed by the Watchers to join them.
So he just… doesn’t worry about it, for now.
Instead, Grian looks around the world, slightly tilted by his hunched form.
It seems untouched. There’s a few trees around him, some wild-growing flowers that reach a bit above his ankles.
A sheep bleats a dozen blocks away, eyeing him warily, her lamb obliviously prancing nearby - tail wagging as it investigates a fallen tree. The mother edges a bit closer to the baby as it hops on top of the log, its hooves clopping on the hollowed wood - and Grian glances away respectfully.
There’s a chicken, too, scratching at the ground beneath it and pecking every so often.
Walking a pace reveals that the forest - if it can be called that - is composed of birch and oak trees. There’s a shallow cave in one hill, and a thin, trickling stream that he follows a pathway to - the grass trodden down by hooves, over time.
“Okay,” he tells himself, voice strained and hoarsened, “I can do this.”
Grian slowly harvests the fallen log, taking care not to strain himself as he breaks the wood into pieces.
The wood isn’t very sturdy - it’s obvious the tree has been down for some time. The inside of the log is hollowed by rot, and with only a little work, he can tear most of the bark off. Scouring it with a water-washed stone yields a bit of tinder, and he keeps it beside himself as he works. It’s good to have fire starter.
(He leaves just a little left for the lamb - scared off for now by him, it and its mother taking to the edge of the woods, eyeing him warily - to jump on.)
The worst pain, by far, is his legs and right arm. Grian sits on the grass as he works, well aware that at any point a Mob could come across his prone form, and he’d have little defence against it.
None do, though. And when he gets up again, Grian finds a sturdy enough stick to use as a make-shift walking stick. Its bark is rough beneath his hands, but for now, it works, taking some weight off of his still-aching legs.
By the end of the day, he has a simple shelter. It’s nothing more than a couple of logs piled against one another, roof low enough that it makes him stoop.
The doorway isn’t a door at all- but instead, an arch, with a log slung to one side so he can close it behind him. The ground is dirt, with a bed of leaves, because he hadn’t the iron to shear a sheep, and the little lamb that played even while watching cautiously had sort of endeared itself to him. Killing its mother for what may or may not be enough to sleep comfortably felt like a Bambi situation in the making.
He hadn’t actually watched Bambi, mind you, but Mumbo had told him about the plot once - and he was pretty sure the deer killed the hunter in the end? Maybe. Something like that.
Grian wasn’t giving a baby sheep a free revenge arc.
The sun sets, and Grian’s stomach sets with it. The land is thrown into warmth, its vibrant colors a sight that warms a chasm weeks in a world of soft blue-greys had left behind. His arm throbs.
It feels, ultimately, like a trophy.
He lets out a stilted laugh, leaning against his shabby excuse for a cabin. The sound is sharp around the edges. It cuts through the trees like a glass shard, hysteria and relief painting its edges. He closes his eyes for a moment, before wrenching them open again to admire the sunset.
He doesn’t want to miss it.
He doesn’t want to miss it, even though the colors bleed into one another, even though the world is getting blurry in his vision, swimming slowly.
Grian’s laugh turns hiccuped and he stares into the sunset until the last warm colors have bled into black. He stares long after he grows quiet- until the shining eyes of mobs, illuminated by the pale moon above, turn their gaze upon him.
When Grian has drank in as much of the sight as he could, he finally steps inside, pulling the log over the entrance. He scrubs at his face idly, laying himself atop the leaf pile without hesitation.
It’s not a proper bed; not by a long shot. But he feels satisfied, happy.
As Grian drifts off, he has the passing thought that the Watcher was arrogant. They had told him he’d never leave their sight. And yet, he’s here. And yet, he’d left.
And, well, sure. The world is a little empty.
But… he thinks he could make it his own, with a little care. Tomorrow, he’ll build a house - nothing too modest, nor too complex. Maybe a treehouse.
Yeah, a treehouse. He’d like that.
Grian closes his eyes at the thought, burying his head in the cushion of his arms. A twig digs into his cheek.
Sleep takes him easily.