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thetomorrowshow · 3 months

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took turns a-starin'

shout out to the comment that told Jimmy to get here right now bc his fiance is really sad. sorry

cw: graphic depictions of violence

The current pulls him, further and further . . . he doesn't want to go with it, he thinks, yet he floats along, the water cool and cleansing over his many wounds.

He doesn't want to go.

He flails as he falls, reaching out for something, for anything, falling and falling, the dark water growing ever closer below—

He's floating—

He's falling—

He hits it with a crash—

Scott wakes with a gasp of breath.

Something is missing.

What's missing? How can something be missing? He needs to find it, he needs to follow—

He tries to sit up and immediately feels the consequences, his breath stolen in a gasp of pain. His entire body hurts like a boulder fell on him, which wouldn't be good in any circumstance, but he can't really recall being underneath any boulders recently.

The odd feeling that something is missing remains (it's as if. . . .), but Scott pushes it away, takes in a deep breath.

Right. What . . . what happened?

He grits his teeth, gathers what strength he can find and properly sits up, blinking back the fuzzy blackness that envelops his vision.

Dear Aeor, everything hurts. What did he do, fall off a cliff?

He sits there for a moment, just breathing through it. His left wing is asleep, filled with pins and needles. His right wing must be caught up in some blankets or something, because he can't move it, something binding it to his back. His entire body is sore, his head pounding, his throat and nostrils raw, his limbs aching. He's hungry, too, he notices after a moment. Did he not eat anything for supper?

And that, really, is when Scott realizes that he isn't in his bedroom.

This isn't his bed—it feels like a wooden cot, creaking and stretching under him. His blanket is coarse, pillow naught but another blanket bundled up.

The floor is grass, the walls of whatever hut he's in seem to be made of leaves and branches as his eyes adjust to the low level of light, uneven slats between branches letting in sunlight from outside. It doesn't have a door, either, just vines hanging down one side instead of a wall.

Scott slides off of the cot, his legs almost too weak to keep him up. He steadies himself against the low cot (half bent-over, not quite enough room to stand tall) as his vision once again goes black.

Where is he?

The last thing he remembers—

The last thing he remembers is dying.

Losing against Xornoth, his body burned and broken, Rivendell surrendering to the demon because Scott failed—

"I'm dead," he whispers, wrapping his arms around himself, his vision returning in blurred pulses. "I'm—I died, I fell off the cliff and died, I—"

Is this the afterlife? A hut made of branches on the grass?

Scott limps toward the vine curtain. It feels like his knee got injured again (it feels like his legs are stumps of aching wood), just like it did when he was in the dungeon and fWhip kicked it, and if this is the afterlife shouldn't his body be healed?

He draws the vines to the side, his hand trembling, and steps out into the sunlight.

This is a proper camp, he notices first of all, shielding his eyes from the sun. There are several more huts made of tree branches, and plenty of tents and lean-tos set up. People mill about, cooking over open fires between tents, sharpening weapons, scraping at animal skins. A child sprints by in front of him, bare feet pounding against the ground, another child not far behind.

They look. . . .

They look, for the most part, like Cod. There's a couple of people here and there who clearly aren't—they lack the distinctive scales and fins, but they don't seem out of place, cooking and eating and working with the rest of them.

The camp is set up in the clearing of—of a swampy forest, it looks like. There are small pools of murky water here and there, the leaves of the trees hanging low and weighed down with vines. The camp stretches far, too far to properly tell where it ends, and Scott finds himself wondering just how many people are here.

"Oh! You're awake!"

Scott turns to find a teenage girl beside him, earfins flicking curiously. She's clearly Cod, scales spreading outward from her nose like freckles and mousy brown hair pulled into an intricate braid, and she smiles brightly at him.

"Don't tell him I wasn't with you when you woke up, okay? I'll go get him."

And with that, she walks away, leaving Scott to flounder for a moment before deciding to follow her.

Walking is absolutely not his strong suit right now—which would make sense, he was thrown off a cliff—but he limps behind her, doing his best not to lose her.

She weaves between a group sharing out bowls of some sort of porridge—Scott's stomach growls—then past four or five children drawing with sticks in the dirt.

Scott goes to sweep his hair out of his eyes, only to find it already pulled back—into a braid, and feeling with his fingers he can't even tell which sections of his hair are tied into which. He doesn't have very long hair, but it's somehow been so well done that there aren't any loose strands.

Who braided his hair?

And whoever had hadn't washed it first, he notices, wiping a bit of grime from his hand on whatever it is he's wearing—and at least that's familiar, torn and dirty black mourning clothes. Not that he expects someone to wash his hair while he's unconscious. That would be odd.

How long has he been unconscious? How was he so out of it that even braiding his hair didn't wake him?

How is he alive?

He can't be alive. He shouldn't be alive. He died, didn't he?

The girl gets fairly far ahead, but she pauses, talking to an elderly man for a moment, who points to the left. She follows his pointed finger, and Scott follows her.

It comes to his attention that he doesn't really know who he's being led to. He could be a prisoner here and have no idea, this could be his death.

If he isn't already dead, that is.

He's still unclear on that front.

And then the girl goes around a tent, and Scott goes around it as well, and there's a circle of Cod there, pointing at a map and talking and planning something, presumably.

And Scott sees—

His jaw drops.

No.

This isn't—it isn't possible, it can't be—

Right there—on the other side of the circle, frowning a little bit, scratching at the beard that he hadn't had before—

Jimmy.

Beautiful, perfect Jimmy.

He looks different. He has a beard, for one—not at all long or very thick, but not patchy either, short and even. His hair is a bit longer than Scott remembers, pushed back behind his ears—one of which is half missing, part of the fin cut cleanly off. There's a sword strapped onto his back, the hilt visible above his shoulder.

He looks the same, though. That's his sharp jawline, that's his golden hair (lighter than it was last time he saw it, he knows that somehow, he can tell that Jimmy's been out on the sun), that's the way his brow furrows when he's trying to figure out a problem, it's Jimmy through and through in all the intimate ways that Scott knows him and it can't be.

It's Jimmy. It's really him.

Jimmy's dead. Jimmy was killed by Mythland, buried in a mass grave, the Codlands fallen under Sausage's rule. That isn't him. That can't be him.

Then Jimmy looks up, his eyes (and he sees, wavering in and out, desperate and beautiful brown eyes) meeting Scott's.

"You're awake!" he says, crossing over to him in a couple of long strides, as the people behind him fall back into conversation.

Jimmy.

Jimmy is coming very very close to him, very very quickly.

He takes Scott by the hands, and Scott pulls away at his burning touch, he hasn't been touched in over a month, not in any sort of tenderness, he doesn't know how to handle it—he almost falls over backward, his stomach swooping as his legs are too weak to account for pulling away—and in a smooth action, Jimmy catches him around the waist, sets him back upright.

Scott can only blink at him.

"Hey," Jimmy says softly. "Let's get you back to your bed, all right? We can get you something to eat, and . . . and I'll explain."

There's a lot of explaining for him to do. Scott's honestly almost convinced that he really did die, despite his pain, because Jimmy's dead, and if Jimmy's dead and he's with Jimmy, he's dead too.

But he follows Jimmy back down the same path the girl had taken, bare feet stumbling and body numb.

Jimmy stops in front of a pot of whatever the porridge is that Scott had seen earlier and scoops up a bowl of it. Scott watches, watches his arm move, watches the way his back stiffens when he bends over, then straightens as he stands, the sword strapped there shifting ever so slightly.

This can't be real. None of this can be real. It's been a month—it's been longer than a month, he thinks, since they got the news that Jimmy was dead and he would have to go on without his betrothed, and every morning was a struggle to get out of his lonely bed and every day was a struggle to not break down in front of everyone and every night he cried himself to sleep and Jimmy's just here.

It can't be real.

That pain can't be for nothing.

Jimmy draws back the vine curtain of the hut when they arrive, loops it up on a handy twig above the doorway to keep it open. Then he sits on the edge of the cot, pats the space beside him.

Scott sits. He can't help but stare at Jimmy—he thinks it's Jimmy, and not some trick. Why would a trick add a beard, or bother to lengthen his hair that little bit? The scars where his scales had been (tugged out by the pull of the Void in the End) glimmer here and there, and as Scott looks closer, he realizes that new scales are beginning to push through the scar tissue.

A trick wouldn't give him that.

This can't be real.

Jimmy sets the bowl in Scott's hands, warmth spreading to them near-instantly. "We don't have very many spoons, sorry," he apologizes. "I'll whittle you one if I get a free moment."

With no other way to react, Scott raises the bowl to his lips and drinks.

It's different than he expects—he doesn't recognize the grain, something a bit chunkier than he anticipated, and it's savory, likely flavored with boiled-down fat. Scott can't tell if it's meant to be a breakfast or a supper, and he doesn't really like the slight chewiness, but it's warm and feels good on his throat and in his empty stomach.

This can't be real.

How is any of this real?

"I really missed you, Scott," Jimmy says quietly after a moment, and Scott starts. He hadn't forgotten that Jimmy was there, per se, but he hadn't quite made up his mind about whether or not he was a hallucination. "I wanted to go to you, but . . . it wasn't time yet."

Time yet? Time for what? It wasn't time for his fiancé to contact him to let him know that he wasn't dead?

Unless they're both dead. And this is the afterlife.

But the longer Scott is awake, the less it feels like the afterlife.

"It's difficult to explain," Jimmy says when Scott doesn't respond. "But I've been out here for a while, now. We're leading a rebellion against Mythland, actually. We have a whole system going—fighters, spies, people who have volunteered to stay in the towns to ferry out runaways. We just launched an attack last week that got us fifty new rebels, actually, it was huge. It did kind of give away that we aren't just a little group of refugees, but some sort of organized force, but we couldn't keep totally hidden for long. I mean, we have almost a hundred able fighters, and—"

"You died," Scott interrupts, his voice a croak. "Sorry, but—you died. I can't—how?"

Jimmy bites his lip, one hand twisting his trousers. "It's a long story."

He doesn't look at Scott. He doesn't even look at him.

Scott takes another sip of the porridge, barely managing to swallow around the lump in his throat. His eyes are burning, tears welling up. Jimmy was dead. Jimmy was dead, people saw him die, he—this isn't something that can be explained away!

"Tell it, then."

Jimmy looks at him, now—straight in the eye, and Scott never thought he'd see those beautiful brown eyes again—

"Okay."

Jimmy's shaking.

He can't stop, even as Pix gets a fire going. Even as Pix drapes a blanket over his shoulders. Even as Pix puts a cup of something warm in his hand.

"Does it still hurt?"

Jimmy nods. Of course it still hurts, he was stabbed several times and he died and he doesn't know how he's here—

"Well, you woke yourself up fairly well, so it should heal quickly," Pix tells him. "Drink that. You'll feel better."

No, he won't. He can still feel the steel parting his flesh, the cold grasp of death, the blurriness and the fuzziness and he died—

He wants to know how Pix is here. How Pix knew what to do. How he isn't actively dead.

But he can't make himself speak. He can't find the strength to open his mouth.

Pix takes the blanket away with a word of warning, lightly touches his upper back, right around the stab wound.

Jimmy flinches forward, whimpers when the movement sends jolts of pain down his entire abdomen, following the path that he can so vividly remember the sword taking in his body.

"Sorry," Pix mumbles, but doesn't pull his hands away, tracing around the wound and down his back.

It hurts. It hurts to touch, it hurts to move, he shouldn't be conscious let alone alive, all he knows is that some force beyond himself had given him the strength to heave himself out of the pile of bloated bodies and stumble out of town, walking through endless blurred fields until Pix appeared beside him and supported him with an arm around his waist, led him into a cove of trees.

And more than anything, it hurts.

"Do you need water to heal?" Pix asks, a clear frown in his voice, and Jimmy has no idea how to answer that. Water to heal? Heal how?

He just stays still, staring into the fire.

He should be dead. He was dead. Why isn't he dead? Why isn't he dead?

He's still shaking. He's cold, he hasn't stopped being cold since he died, he didn't die because he's still here but he died—

"Drink that," admonishes Pix, setting the blanket back on him. "You nearly died, you need your strength."

"I did die," Jimmy manages, too-loud, too-loud in his echoing, stinging ear. "I—I died, I don't—"

"Not quite," Pix corrects, sitting cross-legged on the ground before Jimmy. "Your flame certainly flickered out a few times, but I kept the embers alive. Long enough that you began to heal."

That doesn't make sense. That isn't how the body works, Jimmy shouldn't have healed at all, he was dead—and how would Pix know any of this?

Pix shifts, frowns. "You've seen the Candles of Pixandria, yes?"

He has. Pix brought him there once, three or four years ago. A seemingly endless cave under the desert, filled with candles, a dry fountain at the center with a special candle set out for each of the emperors.

"They represent the lives of all of the people of the Empires," Pix says, and Jimmy vaguely remembers him saying that before. "When a candle goes out, that life has passed on."

"How do the candles get there?" Jimmy finds himself whispering—more to distract himself than anything else, he doesn't really have the interest, everything just hurts and he can't bear to think about it any longer.

"A good question," Pix says. "I put them there. And when it is time for a person to pass on, I put out the flame. Think of me as a . . . steward. And I have been watching your candle all day and night, fanning the embers, coaxing it into holding on."

Embers. So his candle had gone out. He had died. Or—or almost died, maybe?

He tries to take a deep breath, bites his lip to keep a noise from escaping when his insides scream in pain. He was stabbed in the shoulder, the blade missing bone and slicing through the muscle and tendons there; his ear was partly chopped off; his thigh was slashed open, cutting a major artery and sending his blood spewing everywhere; he was skewered by a sword, going in just below his shoulder and all the way down his body, passing down through his ribcage, piercing all sorts of vital organs in its path. Short of slitting his throat, all that could be done to kill him had been done.

And it all still hurts. His left arm is still mostly useless; his ear stings and all sound on his left side echoes oddly; his thigh still bleeds sluggishly against his drying trousers; he can feel that his organs definitely aren't doing well. He's probably bleeding internally, actually. That would explain the throbbing pain in his stomach, the coppery taste in his mouth.

It doesn't feel like it's getting any better from when he was killed. It almost—it definitely feels worse, the aching cold beginning to bite.

"Drink that," Pix tells him a third time. "It's just broth, with some herbs for pain. You can have a healing potion once your innards properly begin to heal on their own."

Jimmy would drink it, but he thinks he might throw up said innards if he lets anything into his injured stomach right now.

He shakes his head just the slightest bit. "Can't," he forces out between gritted teeth as another wave of pain hits. "Hurts."

"It's going to hurt, but you need to continue healing. This should help take some of the sting away, give you a bit of warmth."

Right, then. He should probably try to drink it. He owes that to Pix, who apparently somehow saved him.

But as he goes to lift the mug to his lips, it slips from his trembling fingers and falls to the ground, spilling hot broth all over his waterlogged boots.

Pix is saying something, picking up the mug, but Jimmy doesn't hear it. He just stares down at the ground where the broth is soaking into the earth and tries not to cry.

It all hurts so bad. He can barely even think. He shouldn't be alive.

He shouldn't be alive, clinging to this painful not-quite-life, it's a disservice to keep him alive at this point and he just wants to lie down—let the cold take him again—

"—Jimmy? Jimmy? Right, I'm going to pick you up, and we're going to find you some water."

Then there's arms around him, lifting him up, and Jimmy can't hold back the cry of pain as his insides slosh together unpleasantly.

"Shh," a voice soothes. "Sorry if I drop you—I'm sure Scott can lift you just fine, six-foot-something elf and all that—but those of us not quite there might struggle—"

Scott.

Jimmy really, really wants Scott. Just to hold his hand while he drifts off. Just to be here. Just to love him in his last moments.

And then, before he can fully give in to the darkness, head slumping and eyes fluttering shut, he's laid carefully in water.

His gills flap open and Jimmy sighs a little, relaxing into the soothing hold of the water. It feels nice, so very nice against his wounds, cold but not in the way that the darkness is cold—caring, homey, like Scott, like Lizzie.

His head tilts back, pressing into the mud a bit. Last time he got mud in his hair, Scott was jokingly annoyed. He had sighed and shaken his head and clearly tried not to laugh.

He misses Scott.

It hurts less, now. Jimmy opens his eyes, takes in the water's surface just above him, the blurry face of Pix looking down at him.

Then he closes his eyes again, suddenly too tired to care. He could just fall asleep here, despite the pain.

And maybe he does. He isn't really sure. He just knows that he closes his eyes for a very long time, and when he opens them, his entire body feels heavy.

He's underwater, which is nice. He likes being underwater. Sun is filtering in through the surface, the sky bright blue above him.

He doesn't usually take midday naps in the shallows. What brought him here?

He died.

He died, didn't he?

Jimmy sits up, head breaking the surface, and bites his tongue to keep from crying out as the breath is stolen from his chest.

His body hurts. Hurts bad.

He remembers . . . everything. Every wound he suffered, the end that he finally accepted.

He thinks, though, that these wounds used to hurt more.

Jimmy lifts his arm, tests its range of motion. His shoulder still hurts, but he can move his arm, which is nice. It feels almost good to stretch, but he's careful about it, not wanting to push it and reopen the wound that surely still exists.

His thigh looks all right, though, from what he can tell past the hole in his trousers.

He prods at his stomach, hisses between his teeth at how sore it feels. Right. That one's still bad. Not like it was, though. He thinks, as painful as it is, his insides have somehow stitched themselves back together.

"There we are. Feeling better?"

Jimmy starts; looks up. Pix is sitting under the shade of a nearby willow tree, looking almost relaxed. He stands when Jimmy sees him, dusting off his hands.

"You're practically healed, now, so if you'd like to come out of the water, you can."

Practically healed?

From death?

He doesn't understand.

It still hurts. It's not like it really feels too much better.

But he pushes himself to his feet anyways, leans on Pix's arm when it's offered, clutching his left arm around his stomach as if to hold it together. His abdomen feels uncomfortably warm inside, almost over-full in a strange way, and it doesn't seem unreasonable that his organs might burst out of his skin if he moves the wrong way.

"You slept the rest of the night and for part of the day," Pix tells him, as they begin their slow walk back to wherever it is they're going from this clear little pond in the middle of the woods. "You almost died again, I'm sorry for not noticing sooner—I thought you'd be fine after the distance you walked—"

"Roll it back," Jimmy says through gritted teeth, his thigh smarting and stomach panging with each jostling step. "Why are you here? What happened?"

Pix hums. "I'm here to save you, and to pass something on to you. Something you can probably put to far better use than I can."

Save him. Rather nice of one his allies to try and save him, if it is rather belated. He likes it when his friends care about him.

His steps are uneven, right foot falling heavier than the left as he leans a bit more of his weight on Pix. He could really do with a health potion right about now.

At least he doesn't feel cold, now. That's a good sign, right? And it doesn't really feel like his body's falling apart from the inside anymore, which has to be good.

"The Codlands," says Jimmy after a moment, just trying to keep his mind on something other than the pain. "What happened?"

"Mythland won," Pix says, a little blunt but not at all unkind. "Your soldiers fought for far longer than they ought to have."

Jimmy feels a surge of pride, despite knowing that Pix is right. Fighting past the end of the battle just means that more of his people died, probably too many to support the land as it is. But they had defended their country even when it seemed utterly hopeless, and Jimmy knows that whatever the afterlife is like, they'll receive welcome.

Like that one soldier had told him. Unless that was a dream. He could have imagined that. His . . . the end, there, is a bit foggy.

He's pulled out of his thoughts as they arrive at a small, vaguely familiar clearing with the remnants of a fire in the center, a log for a seat beside it, something long wrapped in cloth beside a pack leaning against the nearest tree.

Pix helps him sit on the log, easing him down slowly, which is surprisingly less painful (though still quite painful) than expected. Jimmy just tries to situate himself while breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. He's fine. He died but he's fine. He's going to be fine.

Holy moly, he hurts.

Pix goes over to the bag, rummages through it. "Right," he says over his shoulder to Jimmy. "I have got a health potion, if you want it. And also. . . ." his hand hovers over the long, covered item.

And Jimmy, despite everything, feels curiosity spark.

Scott waits.

Jimmy doesn't continue, seemingly lost in thought, staring at the grass.

"Well?" he says after a few long moments. "What was it?"

Jimmy starts a little, looks back up. "Oh, uh, this sword," he says, gesturing to his back, where the sword is belted. The hilt looks old, so old that the leather of the handle is stained almost grey, wearing thin in places. "It's pretty cool. It's got some kind of enchantments or something, but we haven't figured out what yet."

"Oh," Scott says, for lack of anything better to say. Then, "Are you feeling better?"

"Like it never happened!" Jimmy says cheerfully, but the tight lines around his eyes say otherwise. "The scars haven't gone away, yet—you can look if you want."

This is all so much. So very, very much.

"So," Scott says slowly, "you . . . died?"

It hurts to say. He wants to cry so badly, even though Jimmy's alive and here and he mourned him for so long but he's actually here so he can stop crying.

Jimmy shrugs. "Not exactly? I thought I was . . . er, dead, but apparently I was kind of in a really deep hibernation?”

"And then—what, you just miraculously healed?"

"I don't really understand that part yet, either. But I guess I just have some kind of healing magic, now? Because I can use it, not just on me—I healed a woman who broke her leg, just put my hands over the break and she was good—and I healed you, too! When you washed up!"

It doesn't make sense.

People don't just magically gain healing powers, unless in some defiant act of deus ex machina they rewrite their ending. Jimmy can't have died.

But he did die. Jimmy died. He says he went into hibernation, he says that Pix kept his candle alive, but if he didn't die then why did Scott mourn?

He doesn't want Jimmy to be dead, of course. That's—well, it's just ridiculous. He loves Jimmy, of course he wants him alive. He wants Jimmy here, he's happy that he's here!

None of it makes sense, though.

He just can't put it together. It doesn't fit in his head, it doesn't work. He can't look at his beloved right there beside him (so close he can feel his warmth, can almost sense his chest rising and falling in very real breaths) and know that he's been alive this whole time.

Jimmy, apparently, died? But didn't die. And instead of going to Scott, he's been leading a secret forest rebellion? No communication with him at all? Not even two words? No “I'm alive”?

Scott had waited so long those first couple of days, waiting for news that Jimmy had managed to escape, waiting for Jimmy to just walk through the door. It hadn't happened, and he'd accepted that it never would.

He had sailed across the ocean, heart grim.

He had dressed in black for the first time in years.

He had sat there as Sausage spewed such vile things, spoke of Jimmy as nothing more than the dirt he walked on.

He had sobbed. He had grieved. He had come to face the fact that he would never see his beloved ever again, even denied a final sight at the memorial. He had mourned, and changed, and borne this grievous burden alone.

Yet here Jimmy is.

And here Scott is, beside him, still dressed in the torn remnants of his sorrow.

Softly, carefully, Jimmy lays a hand on his knee.

Scott shifts his leg away.

Jimmy quickly pulls his hands back together in his lap.

And it isn't—

It isn't that Scott doesn't still love Jimmy. He very, very much does. He's still in love with him. He doesn't know that he would be able to stop.

But he doesn't know what to do here, in this strange moment alone with his dead fiancé after mourning him for so long.

"I know it's a lot," Jimmy says after a long moment. "I don't really know what's going on out there. But now that you're here—we can go to Rivendell, and, and we can take back the Codlands! With my rebels, and your armies—or—"

"We can't," interrupts Scott, too loud.

He hadn't thought of Rivendell yet.

It's surely been conquered by now, hasn't it? After all, he silently encouraged them to surrender.

Jimmy's hands drop from where he's begun gesturing. "What?"

"We can't," Scott says, and there are sudden tears in his eyes as he remembers the absolute despair that he'd felt on that clifftop.

He'd been so alone.

He'd been so certain that he was going to die.

He'd been cast from the cliff, knowing that at least if he died he wouldn't have to feel such pain.

For some reason, he's still here.

After failing.

"Rivendell surrendered,” he says hollowly. “The other countries will probably follow."

"Sorry, what?"

"Rivendell surrendered," Scott repeats himself. "I—I couldn't stop Xornoth. I tried. I swear I tried—" and it's all coming out, spilling from him like tar, sticky and burning— "I thought I was Aeor's Champion, and I found both of the artifacts, and I tried to fight Xornoth. But it didn't work, he beat me, and I couldn't let anyone die, so we surrendered—we—and—and Xornoth rules Rivendell now, and probably the rest of the world soon."

Jimmy doesn't answer for a long moment.

Scott doesn't dare look at him, eyes on his lap, on the bowl of porridge that he doesn't feel hungry enough to finish.

They lost.

It's basically over.

And it's all his fault.

"Did that . . . did that give you ice magic?"

Scott blinks, glances around. The grass has frosted over, icicles hanging from the ceiling of the hut.

What?

"Did the boots come with me?" Scott asks. He sets the bowl down and stands, gripping his arms around himself. He'd forgotten about the whole ice problem—he froze Gem, he might have killed her, he has to message her and see if she's all right—

Jimmy frowns. "We found you barefoot. What boots?"

Then why. . . ?

It can't follow him. Did it follow him?

Then he remembers—his room was always frozen, even when he moved to other rooms they froze too, the boots all the while in the Codmade bag in his bedroom.

The ice had followed him, not the boots. It always had.

Great. So now he's cursed, because he put on the magical boots without checking to see if they had a warning label. Wonderful. He's just . . . so happy about this.

And Jimmy's just sitting there, looking up at him with that adorable little crease between his eyes, and he should be dead—

Scott runs.

He slips a bit on the frozen grass but just keeps running, he ignores Jimmy calling after him, out of the hut and away from the camp, running and running through the woods until there's an angry stitch in his side and his body hurts too much to keep pushing.

He collapses on the ground up against a tree trunk, burying his face into his knees. He can't do this.

He can't do this! He's tried all his life to do everything right, be the perfect little firstborn prince that everyone expected him to be. Through his younger brother constantly trying to kill him for the throne, through his parents passing away from an unexpected illness, through the entire courtship mess, through the death of his fiancé, through the battle preparations, Scott has done his absolute best to be perfect! And so far, he's done pretty well, he'd say! He hasn't been perfect, by any means, but he's been good enough, and now he's properly failed for the first time and he doesn't have any clue of how to go forward, especially when said failure was so monumental that his entire country fell under enemy rule because of it!

He was supposed to die. He should have died, rather than live in his failure!

Scott sobs into his knees (and the tears freeze on his cheeks)—they lost, everything is lost, and he hurt so long and so terribly and now he has to hurt even more.

It's all just too much. That's all it is.

He's happy he's alive. He's happy Jimmy's alive.

Right?

It would be easier if. . . .

And how can they even continue on like this? What can even come next? It's not like Scott can defeat Xornoth. Nobody can. Alinar's ritual failed.

He failed. Scott's the first ever hero who actually failed, full stop, and now he has to face the consequences of that without any prior reference for how to do so.

Not to mention, he hasn't bathed in who knows how long, he's wearing dirty and bloodstained mourning clothes that hang from his shoulders like axe hangs above a prisoner's neck, his wing is itching to be free from whatever binding it's wrapped in, his entire body aches, and he's so tired.

It's too much! He can't do this!

Where even is he? Out in some wood somewhere, with bugs and dirt and rudimentary camps, where he doesn't have anything or anyone—

His ears twitch at the sudden sound of soft footsteps, and he quickly stifles his crying. Nobody needs to hear that.

But the footsteps get closer and closer, until they pause just before him, and whoever it is crouches down near him.

"Don't get close to me," Scott gasps out, valiantly ignoring the stuffy quality of his voice.

He's not sure if it's because he doesn't want to be touched, or because he doesn't want to hurt someone by accident. He can't control the ice—he already hurt Gem, he can't hurt anyone else, he can't let anyone close!

"I won't."

Jimmy.

Gentle, perfect Jimmy.

Jimmy, who Scott can't stop feeling strange about because he ought to be dead, but isn't.

Just like Scott ought to be dead, and yet isn't.

Maybe. . . .

"Would it have been better," Scott manages around the lump in his throat, "if we were both dead? And—and in a happy afterlife together?"

A happy afterlife that doesn't, of course, exist. Scott knows what awaits him at the end of this, and it isn't Jimmy.

But he can let himself believe in it, if only for a moment.

Scott hears a bit of rustling, as if Jimmy shifts against the ground.

"I can't say I haven't thought that," Jimmy says eventually, something reluctant in his voice. "I—I spared you the details, Scott, but . . . it was rough. Dying, fully dying—and then hours later, there I am, being forced to live again? I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

Scott basically died, too. But he doesn't think it was as bad for him as it was for Jimmy. All that happened for him is he passed out when he hit the water. Jimmy felt his life bleed out of him, went cold and stiff, felt his heart beating slower and slower until it became too slow for him to hold on to consciousness.

Scott can't imagine how hard that must have been.

It doesn't make him feel any better. Worse, actually.

Jimmy suffered all that, and didn't need Scott's support.

Whereas Scott would have given anything just to see Jimmy one last time.

"It was really, really hard. It still is, sometimes. But I know that if you and I are both still alive, and here, and together, after everything? Maybe . . . maybe we're supposed to do something big. You know?"

Jimmy might be meant to do something big, but Scott kind of feels like he's only alive by chance. Clearly he isn't that favored of Aeor, seeing as he couldn't use the artifacts and is now cursed with ice magic.

He doesn't feel like he has any sort of divine purpose. He doesn't feel like he's alive for a reason.

He's just here.

A failure.

A failure that shouldn't be alive.

"That's what I like to think, anyway," Jimmy continues. "It gives me something. A reason to keep going. I mean, if you think about it, I shouldn't be alive. But I'm here, and that means I have something left to do. I have to do good with the new time I have."

That's . . . that's something. Right?

He's here. By chance, maybe, but he's here.

Perhaps he can do a little good?

Nothing world-changing. He can't stop Xornoth. He can't free Rivendell. He can't even free himself from this curse.

"I can't control the ice," Scott warns, lifting his head a little. He doesn't look up enough to see more than Jimmy's boots, worn and dirt-encrusted. "I can't . . . I can't do it. There are a lot of problems, and I don't know how to solve any of them."

"I know," Jimmy says softly. "I'm here."

Jimmy's here.

Jimmy is here.

Okay.

If—if Jimmy's somehow, miraculously here, and he thinks they can do something good, maybe Scott can try.

"Okay," he says, staring hard at Jimmy's boots. "But—but nobody can come close to me until I figure this ice thing out."

He thinks of how his room never defrosted.

He thinks of how cold he's been lately.

He thinks of Gem lying limp on the ground, hair white.

"Nobody," he repeats. "Nobody can come close. I'm sorry, it's just—I can't hurt anyone else."

"I know," Jimmy says again. "Whatever you need."

"I need to be separated," Scott says immediately. "A—a tent, or something, away from everyone else. Will that work?"

"We'll set one up right here," decides Jimmy. "What else?"

"Nobody comes over here."

"Okay."

"Nobody," Scott emphasizes, for perhaps the billionth time, and finally, he drags his eyes up to meet Jimmy's.

Those beautiful, soft, loving brown eyes.

"Not even you," he forces himself to say. "I'm sorry."

Jimmy doesn't argue. "I'll do whatever you need," he says, maintaining the eye contact. "I just want to help."

There's nothing else, then. That's all he needs from Jimmy. Solitude.

It hurts. He doesn't want to push Jimmy away, after so long of believing him gone forever.

But there's a discrepancy, there. There's pain and grief and confusion and maybe a little anger between Jimmy right here and Scott's need for him.

He doesn't know how to reconcile all of those feelings with the living dead man in front of him.

He doesn't think things between them can just go back to normal.

Everything would be a lot easier if they had both died. There wouldn't be any false loss to mourn, no results of utter failure to live with.

But he's here, and Jimmy's here, and maybe he's right.

Maybe there's something important they need to do.

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