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jellieland · 5 months

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It’s a while before Scar reappears on Hermitcraft, after his victory.

When he does, Pearl is doing one last sweep over the server. Things are starting to slow down a little as the server is shut down, colours muting and mobs stumbling to a stop, but it’s nothing half so violent as it was last time.

Xisuma has backups of backups of backups, and Pearl has been repeatedly assured that last time was the exception, not the rule.

Still. She checks things over.

She is flying over Scarland when she sees Scar, sitting there at the end of Main Street and staring pensively out across the server.

She hasn’t seen him since he killed her, almost a week ago.

She flies down and alights softly beside him. “Hey Scar,” she says.

His eyes flicker to meet hers. He gives her his signature half-smile. It looks a little strained. “Well hello there, Pearl!” he says. “You know, I forgot about this place!”

Pearl looks at him for a moment, and heaves a sigh. So, they’re talking about this, are they? She sits down on the bench beside him.

To be fair, she isn’t sure who else he would talk to about it. If not her, it would probably be Grian. Grian, who just this morning had snapped at her to make sure she didn’t miss out Scarland in her final loop, in that way he had of transforming a remarkable amount of the worry he felt into irritation as soon as it left his mouth.

“Yeah,” says Pearl. “Me too. Nice to be back, right?”

“It’s ending,” says Scar, and Pearl winces. He isn’t wrong. The timing on this isn’t brilliant, but they couldn’t really wait much longer. “Why do things keep ending?”

“What, just sort of things in general?”

“Everything always ends,” says Scar, staring at her intently. “It ends and ends and ends. How in the world do you not go mad with it?”

Pearl chuckles ruefully. “You're asking the wrong person, mate.”

A villain, but not a demon. Forced into wickedness, but not made with it inside him.

No. No, he wouldn't understand. Not really.

“I don’t think it’s the going mad that’s the problem, really,” she says. “I think it’s the keeping going afterwards.”

“Oh.” He sighs. Then he narrows his eyes in suspicion, glancing up at the sky. “What about the moon, Pearl?” he asks. “How’s that been looking? If that’s gone all funny again as well, I don't know what I’ll do.”

Pearl looks up at the sky.

She looks up at the sky for a while.

It’s been more than a year, now.

“I reckon the moon’s still worn out after last time, mate,” says Pearlescentmoon, still staring at the sky. It’s the easiest place to look, at the moment. “You can’t do that kind of ending twice, you know? It would be too much to do it twice.”

The sun is bright, but she feels a chill, deep in her bones.

“Well,” says Scar. “Well! That’s good to know. But still, it’s very nice of you all to wait for me for so long.”

Pearl shrugs. “I mean, we didn’t really wait. It’s only been a week.”

Scar blinks. Blinks again. “Huh,” he says. “A week. Interesting!”

“Interesting?” Pearl squints at him. “How so?”

He stares at her for a moment before he speaks again. “I thought that was it,” he says. His eyes look far away. “I thought that was all there was, Pearl. I thought there was nothing, after.”

Pearl opens her mouth, but he keeps going.

“I thought that was all there was,” he says again. “So I wasn’t going to just give up. You know? That would be absurd! I was going to keep going. I did keep going!”

“You did,” says Pearl. It’s halfway to a question, but not quite there.

She doesn’t know if she would have kept going, if she had been given the choice, and not handed victory and death in one fell swoop. That’s one of the few things about her victory that she hasn’t wondered about much. She hadn’t even considered it before, to be honest.

She thinks, probably, that she would have kept going.

She’s less sure that it would have been pretty.

“I did,” says Scar. “You have to, don’t you?”

Pearl thinks of Grian. “I don’t know,” she says. “I think it’s a choice, sometimes. I think that makes it mean more, actually.”

“Well. Maybe,” says Scar. “It just- I couldn’t waste it, you know? It was a whole world.”

The weight of that settles over her. A whole world.

A whole world, and refusing to give it up, until you are made to.

“How did you die?” asks Pearl. “In the end.”

“My elytra broke,” says Scar.

“…Huh.” says Pearl, taking a moment to consider the implications of that statement.

“I was trying to get more shulker boxes,” says Scar. “Do you know how annoying it is trying to get stuff done without shulkers, Pearl?”

“Yeah,” says Pearl. “I have an idea.”

“Well,” says Scar, “I was trying to get more but my elytra broke. Did you know, the void kills you no matter how many hearts you have.”

“Oh,” says Pearl. “Yeah, I guess it would. You see Lizzie down there?”

Scar snorts. “No. Everyone falls alone, Pearl, don’t you know that? Martyn, and Lizzie. And me too.”

Pearl looks around at the world, slowing down around them. “Well,” she says matter-of-factly. “You’re not falling now. You’re here now.”

“…Yeah,” says Scar softly. “Would you look at that? I sure am.”

They sit in the quiet for a while.

“Why would you not kill me?” asks Pearl abruptly.

Now is not the time to ask. She knows this. But it’s been burning at the back of her mind for the past week, and there will never be a time to ask.

Scar blinks at her for a moment, but recovers without missing a beat. “But Pearl!” he says, all wide-eyed innocence. “I did kill you!”

She gives him a look. “When I asked, Scar.”

“I-” he stops, and sighs, serious again. “Look. I know that was what you wanted. But- it wouldn’t have been fair.”

“Why?” asks Pearl.

“It wouldn’t have been fair,” says Scar again. “You can’t talk about it, first. You can’t volunteer, you can’t plan it out, you can’t draw a line in the sand. It ruins everything, if you do that.”

He looks at her, eyes intense.

“If you do that, that makes it a choice, not a reaction. That's what it is, I think. That must be what it is. You said it yourself—if it’s a choice, it means more.”

“That was my choice, Scar.”

He shrugs, unrepentant. “And I made mine, too.” He frowns for a second. “Think of it like this: I was fighting Gem. And when she died, I just kept fighting.” He shifts slightly, looking almost uncomfortable. “It doesn’t have the weight it would’ve had if we stopped and decided to make it matter more.”

“You’re saying it doesn’t matter?” asks Pearl flatly.

“No!” exclaims Scar. “No, that’s not what I was trying to say at all! But- I wasn’t given your life. I didn’t just accept it. I fought for it. And you didn’t have to give it away. It’s worth more than that, Pearl. Someone should have to fight for it.”

The look he gives her then… she has to look away.

“That’s what I think,” says Scar firmly. “That’s what I wanted to say.”

Pearl stares down at her hands for a while. “I don’t know if I totally agree with how you chose to do things,” she says. “But… thank you, Scar.”

They are, again, quiet for a while.

“What do you think I did, while I was still there?” asks Scar eventually. “You know, if someone was making you guess.”

Pearl leans back and looks at him intently, considering. “I reckon you caused chaos, and made something beautiful.” She shrugs. “That’s what you always do, yeah?”

“Oh,” says Scar, looking genuinely touched. “Why thank you, Pearl. I certainly try.”

“You sure do. You know, whatever else you do, I have to give you that,” says Pearl wryly.

Scar looks at her for a moment, then tilts his head slightly to the side. “You know, Pearl,” he says, serious, then pauses.

“Yeah?”

“I left a whole pile of shulker boxes in the Mounders’ base.” His voice stays serious even as his typical sly smirk creeps across his face.

Pearl takes a few seconds to register what he’s just said. “I- you- Scar!”

“Completely unsorted,” he says airily. “It was just a real mess, honestly.”

“Why would you tell me that!”

He snickers at her. “I can’t believe you would leave such a mess, Pearl! I mean, who else could it have been? It’s in your base, after all!”

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” Pearl narrows her eyes at him, laughter bleeding though the mock-annoyance in her voice.

He shakes his head. “And you call yourself a cleaning lady!”

“Right, that’s it!” says Pearl. “I’m finding this server and tidying it up whether you like it or not.”

Scar jerks back slightly, humor suddenly shaken.

…Right. She’d almost forgotten.

He looks away. His expression, though, is thoughtful rather than pained.

“I don’t think you need to do that, really,” he says.

Pearl watches him. “Why not?” she asks. “Are you the only one who’s allowed to keep trying?”

He sighs.

“There’s always going to be some things you can’t clean up,” he says. “But you can’t always be going backwards to get them.”

They look out at the world around them gently, carefully slowing down to a stop.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re not wrong,” says Pearl. “I guess it’s a balance. What you can fix, and what you need to let go.”

Scar nods. “I think so.”

He gives her a warm look. He looks up at the sky, where the normal sized moon is just beginning to rise. He glances around him at the remarkable things he has made, that this time will be left just as they are.

“And there’s always a new sunrise,” he says.

#something about the end of secret life and the end of season 9 and the anniversary of moon big all coinciding had me thinking about endings.#this is the result of that. and also it's about scar and pearl but that's probably pretty obvious.#hermitcraft #secret life smp #goodtimeswithscar #pearlescentmoon #my writing

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