Work Text:
Golden ichor dripped down on his skin, the colour of luminescent gold that'd dimmed itself to the dark crimson it once was, glistens in the faint light from the palace's walls, the universe outwards dark against the elliptical galaxy he'd once dreamed of, urged towards. The blood stains the tiled, quartz floor, a ghastly trail to follow him dripping off his fingers as he reaches for the rock again, grasping at it with what might he had left.
He's weak, yet the flocking of watchers spirits had screamed, begged him otherwise. The shaking through his entire body trembled to the pain overflowing his very being again, after a countless amount of time of being unable to feel.... at all. Even that small bit of contact with cracked, bloodstained marbled stone had been his striking point. A shudder rips through his chest through a broken breath as the gored rock finally falls from his limp grasp, hitting the marble floors harshly.
" Finally ," He whispers, a broken cry coming out from Grian's sore throat, one that is barely heard by any of those present. It's not even loud enough to be a whisper.
A sob escapes him as he crumples forward into himself, and his head meets the bitter, bloody cold tile. His hands are still grasped to the blood dripping from his head, puddling around him. The wings around his once ears had been soaked and stained with what he never wanted to remain with him, as no vision had served him- to his sight taken by the damned souls. Wishes and screams from them that promised him eternal power were desperate to save their vessel of a god, but there was no use. no use to control him, to fly him to safety, to the golden velvet robes he had been decorated with, now stained with the very blood they wished for him to hold.
He couldn't do this.
He couldn't eternally live with himself, just himself and a world he couldn't see. Without Scar, Without Mumbo, or Iskall, or Tango, Jimmy, Ethos- His friends. He didn't want to live in a world without them. He didn't want to be alive anymore, to have to pretend everything was fine as long as he kept up the act of a god, who never truly wanted to exist at all.
This wasn't his life.
Scraping, grisly ragged hands had slowly reached for the rock again, which the watchers had tried so hard to rip from him. The one thing he saw as salvation, was death. The dark plum-tinted wings on his back- thrice more than he'd felt before, twitching and curling on themselves as they desperately tried to hold onto life, unlike their beholder. He wanted to be free, and The Watcher, did not.
"Grian, you made a deal with us."
"You made our deal!"
"You wanted this!"
As the watchers whispered, the sound dying slowly, Grian was only aware of one thought.
"And you... lied to me." He murmurs.
The words seem to have shocked some of The Watchers, splitting apart the souls that'd been lost to generations past, as they watch their god throw his life away. "I wanted life... not power . I was lied to..." "We never lied !" "This is what you wanted !" "you never said -" He'd tasted the bitter ooze of blood coming from his head, staining his lips. He wanted to choke on the taste. "-that I'd be alone , Watchers." The same words that seemed so far away before, just like any ideal of a god, or what they wanted. There was none. Like a repeated dream that he knew would never come true. Yet, here he was, lying pathetically on the ground, a pool of blood surrounding him like a blanket, while tired tears slid down his face.
"Please, Just let me die..."
He croaked, gripping the rock with the final trickle of strength he could do, no matter the whispers and grabbing hands- hitting himself, one last time.
It was almost as if a bomb went off.
A crack in the palace, echoing, and shaking the floor below. Blood seeped between the crumbling quartz and plaster cracks, as Grian's limp body danced with lilac runes against his scarred, stained and damaged skin. To the silks, he'd worn held no more purpose with the blood he was detrimentally stained with and would last to a permanent burning memory. To a puppet string and its dancer, the corpse of the god lifted itself in the air, as dead eyes had glowed with unnatural velvet light. If he couldn't live as a god, his soul would redo.. to make things right.
Even for arms being dragged in different directions, wings that had been desperate to rip themselves off this very corpse he was born with, the watchers could do nothing.
Absolutely, utterly nothing. To the burst of light that would kill whatever had remained around it, as pure spiritual consequences,
Time did, what time does.
Restart.
Grian's eyes strained against the shining sun, colourful wings gracing his back as he'd looked off over the horizon of building projects- of friends he'd known in his past life, much too well. To the copper towers that he'd grow to recognize among years time, countless rocket shops, to his old, comfortable red sweater that everybody knew him for along with a stack of TNT. A cry of relief had left his throat, in similarity to waking up in a movie scene, the reality he was back at the very start of everything- where he could refrain from the same mistakes-
He was home.
He was finally home.
Hugging himself in that moment wasn't enough, nor would it ever be enough.
He was home.