Pearl found Scar in the panda reserve, feeding the pandas.
"Hello, Scar!" She called.
"Oh, Pearl! Hi!" He turned around and smiled. "Are you looking for Grian? I know you two are close."
She smiled back. "I already spoke to Grian. I have a question for you, actually."
Scar looked surprised. "Uh, fire away!"
"How are you still happy?"
He blinked. "What do you mean?"
"The Games are horrible. In Third Life, your first and closest ally beat you to death. In Last Life, you were abandoned by everyone. And now Grian's kinda ignoring you - again - so... How are you still happy?"
Scar blinked. "Well... It's because of the Games." When he saw Pearl's look of confusion and concern, he quickly continued. "Not in the way you would expect - they haven't done something to make me happy. I'm just very spiteful - because I'm being happy out of spite. The Games and the Lords would break us, and try to, but... No. I will not be broken."
"Wow." Pearl was surprised - she didn't know what she expected Scar's reason to be, but it sure wasn't that. "You know, I've been thinking a lot about the trauma the Games have caused. No one I've spoken to likes them - and I've spoken to a lot of people. I kinda accidentally became a therapist for the contestants. I am just, like, really good at listening or something?"
"That actually makes sense. I've found that everyone needs someone to talk to about their problems, and if they don't get that someone for too long, and the problems are too big, they'll just spill it all to the nearest person who won't immediately shut them down."
"Really?" Pearl hadn't seen stuff like that.
"Yeah. I can listen if you need someone to."
"Really? You'd be willing?"
"Yeah.You've listened to a lot of people, people who don't want to darken their soulbound's view of them with their trauma. It;s your turn."
"That'd be nice." Pearl paused. Where to begin?
~*~
"...And they kicked me out. I've just been really lonely, just me and Tilly." Pearl sighed.
"It's really hard to be alone, isn't it? Especially in a world where everyone's supposed to have a soulbound to work with," Scar said.
"You're probably the person who understands this best, aren't you? With how alone you were in Last Life..."
There was a flicker of sorrow in his eyes at the mention of the last Life Game.
"Do you want to talk?" Pearl asked.
Scar hesitated. "Are you sure? You've already listened to so many people's problems, I'm sure you don't need to hear mine on top of them..."
"It's fine, it means that I have practice. And anyways, it can't be good to keep everything to yourself for so long."
Scar paused, then started talking:
"I just- Third Life wasn't horrible, I had Grian by my side and I knew that no deaths would be permanent, but in Last Life... I'm a very social person, so being left completely alone like that... I hated it. It was okay when Joel was there, but he went Red fast, and then we couldn't be allies. There was a point where I got so desperate I tried to use lives to bargain for friends, like you did with Scott, or Lizzie with Ren. It didn't work, though. They'd betray me, or I'd betray them... And Grian - he tricked me into giving him one of my lives, and then left. He just... abandoned me, after Third Life. We were dati-" Scar flushed and corrected himself, "Best friends in Third Life. I thought... But he left. And so did everyone else. And now Grian and I are soulbound, and he's being so cold to me, and maybe he never really cared as much as I did."
"Maybe you should tell Grian about how shunned you feel, maybe he did care, and there's some other reason he's behaving the way he is." Pearl knew how Grian actually felt, and maybe if Scar just talked to him they could fix it and-
An arrow skidded past her cheek, leaving a fine streak of blood on her face.
"Skeleton!" Scar cried.
Oh, it was so much later than Pearl had thought - it was dark, and dark was always dangerous - and there were monsters out. How long had they been talking?
"Scar, run!" She called, but he already was. She darted in the direction of the Red Velvet Keep, but changed directions quickly at the sight of a creeper in the way, since those were the worst. She didn't want to be anywhere near it. But there were skeletons behind her and zombies beside her. And they took her moments of indecision to close in, quick.
She couldn't just run away anymore, she'd have to fight.
She drew her axe and cleaved through the rotting flesh and weak undead bones of one zombie's neck, then another. A spider's fangs tore through her pants and into her calf and she grunted. The wound didn't feel deep, and she didn't have time for it without risking more, so she ignored it.
She felled two more zombies in quick succession as it began to rain, clearing a path through the mobs, then burst into a run, each step sending a sharp pain through her leg.
She had to get away, she didn't want to get herself killed.
Been writing. I'm working on a story you probably won't see for another year, and I just hit 60k words, so... yay. (It's also barely halfway done)
YOU ARE READING
Not My Pyre (A Pearl-Centric Double Life FanFic)
FanfictionPearl grows tired of the wrongs committed by the leaders of her country, known as the Lords of Misharin, and decides to do something about it with the help of some friends who are trapped in the Lords' Life Games with her.
