Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Cub?" Scar’s voice drifts into Cub’s awareness, with the tentative edge that says there is something Scar has done that will need fixing. No magic whatsoever curls into Scar's voice, not even a hint of the passive chime it usually carries, which is a bit odd.

Whatever, Cub decides it’s worth putting down his work to meet Scar partway and check it out.

"Did you get your magic sealed again, dude?" Cub rounds the corner of the shelf and is momentarily blinded. He'd already adjusted his vision to see and examine magic directly before even getting to Scar, and the amount of power rolling off of Scar right now damn well hurts to look at even indirectly.

"Hey, no worries, hey, I'm here, I'm here." In between blinks of spotty vision, Scar's arm slips around his waist, warm and steadying. Cub squints his eyes shut and practically rips away his magic sight, letting normal vision settle back into place.

"That has to hurt." Cub says distantly, already recovering from his daze. That much power, and absolutely none of it leaking into his voice? He knows that's painful for Scar.

"It's okay, it's okay, I don't want to spook you, it's fine, I'm fine, see, I'm fine and I'm here." Scar babbles reassuring circuitous and repetitive nonsense, smooth and over-eager and so painfully devoid of even the slightest charm. Cub has heard this before. He knows what this is.

"You're bound." Cub realizes, the words flat on his lips. Frigid chill tightens around his ribcage.

That's. That's bad. Cub looks around, pulling a few steps back from Scar as he does. Scar doesn't fight it. Either the summoner is lurking somewhere for this ambush, or worse, they believe that they've broken Scar enough to send him alone.

"He's not here." Scar volunteers.

Fuck.

"Yeah, okay, I'll fix this. How are you doing in there?" Cub already has ideas and plans pushing to the surface, there's no point or use in panicking. Just sink his fingers into planning. Keep moving until the problem unravels.

Scar's body goes rigid and then there's an all-consuming crack.

Cub, back slammed flat on to the floor, held down by hands he can't fight because they're not there.

Scar practically on top of him, cupping his cheeks and whispering, words heavy with power that even Cub can't shrug off. Prying open his brain and his chest with tender verbal claws, and rearranging the bits in there, reshuffling his priorities as easy as breathing, until that lonely longing-

"He only wants you if you're willing, he's so sweet, you'll adore him, well as much as you adore anyone, but you'll see it'll be perfect, you can be with me and powerful and we can be safe and everything will be right in the world, you just have to remember that you want it. Listen to me, listen, I know you can do that for me, I'll make you perfect for him."

The world, crumbling around him as that gaping void inexorably opens up in his chest again, begging to be filled by anything that will have him.

"NO! STOP IT." It's not Cub's own voice that rings out, but Scar's. Harsh breathing fills the silence, and Cub, disoriented, feels the all-too-real vision fracture, and chip away. Like a stubborn film peeling reluctantly off of reality.

He's still standing in his lab, several paces away from Scar. Scar, who has his hands fisted into the sides of his own hair, pulling hard.

"Cub. Cub Cub Cub Cub Cub." His name spills from Scar's lips like a meditation, like a skipping record, and the lingering fragments of the all-too-real illusion are swept away.

"Yeah. Uh, yeah. What the hell." He figures that speaking an answer would be probably the right thing, even though he has no clue what to say to that, tone mildly baffled. His hand rubs his chest briefly, where there isn't an unending hunger revived.

"Sorry, I- Could you. Please pretty please not say things like that right now? I'm trying, I promise." Scar sounds exhausted but even then he fills his request with sweetly imploring smiles.

"Like- Ah." Right. He'd promised to fix this, reassurance as easy as breathing, he's done it a dozen times before. Normally it’d be fine, if Scar is present enough to be here and talking to him while bonded. "Yeah, got it. None of that." Out loud, anyway.

"Thank you, you're the bestest." Scar's smile could power entire generators, Cub thinks, if only he could figure out exactly how to harness it. Scar’s hands finally come down out of his own hair, and he rolls his shoulders to loosen them up again.

"I know." Okay. Okay, so Scar is so deep into this that even the suggestion of fixing it has his instincts uh- Kicking in and completely shattering the world around them, whether he wants to or not. What the fuck. Since when could he even do that.

Honestly, Scar's doing an awful lot of resisting things, for a bound Vex. It's odd. Something to mull over in the back of his mind while the front of his mind is handling the immediate issues.

Taking a second look, Scar also looks and sounds awfully... Scar-like, for a bound Vex. Cub knows firsthand what they look like right after a binding, and he's rarely encountered a summoner who cares about bringing them back to their appearance they had before it. Usually they prefer the more monstrous form, both to make it easier to think of them as beasts to use, and to make sure they were always ready to be employed in their duties at less than a moment’s notice.

Though, if Scar is meant to be a trap for him, looking like he usually does would be the best way to do it. And the best way to avoid people asking too many questions overall.

"It's another person. It's a Hermit." Cub realizes aloud. His thoughts rearrange, try to fit in that new conclusion.

The expression on Scar's face is enough confirmation. That faint near-missable cringe of fear as Cub moves closer to figuring out who his summoner is. He'll have to try not to trip those terrified instincts again. He got out in one piece last time, but he's not sure he can trust Scar to break him out if it happens again.

Scar's lips move without him saying anything loud enough to hear, and for a moment Cub braces himself- But he realizes it's not a charm, just the same simple shape over and over again.

It's Scar mouthing his name over and over again. As if Cub's name could keep him tethered to the ground right now. And, absurdly, it seems to be working.

That's Scar for you. Magic really must play favorites, even the Vex sort.

"Why are you here, Scar?" Cub asks, bluntly.

"Where else would I go? You'd find out, and it'd be worse if I hid it. I wanted you to know. I wanted you to be ha- I missed you." Scar's not the most composed he's ever been. No sticky-sweet confidence, only this rawly earnest nervous rambling. A salesman holding himself back from a clearly` unwelcome pitch by the skin of his teeth.

"How much of what you said is true? In that- Illusion." It felt more real than an illusion, their illusions don’t fool one another, but that's what Cub's calling it for now. He carefully picks through Scar's honeyed words inside of it, looking for information.

"Mm, all of it? I think?" Scar's expression wavers for a moment, trying to go that sharp kind of unfocused the illusion-Scar’s gaze had held, and Cub decides it's a bad idea to remind Scar of that frenzy, actually.

"So your summoner would prefer if I went to him willingly? That part?" Cub presses. He never said he wasn't prone to bad ideas.

Scar nods eagerly, repeatedly. "Yes, yes he was very clear about that."

"So if I tell you no, I'm fine, go away, then...?"

Scar keens a whine in the back of his throat, sad and pathetic and capable of making weaker Hermits crumble instantly. Cub has practice ignoring it.

"Please?" Scar tries, still fighting back his magic. Cub could almost be impressed at this level of self-restraint from Scar, knowing exactly how compelling the magically ingrained need to serve one’s summoner was. It could be touching, if he were a more sentimental man.

"I haven't said no yet." Cub assures, more to ease Scar's instincts than because he has any sort of indecision. His answer is No, same as it's ever been, but it's far far safer to give Scar a softly implied Maybe when he's like this. A Maybe can be stretched a lot farther into a safe zone to work from.

Scar nods. "I'm good, that's good. There's no rush, take your time. All the time in the world, good buddy." Scar talks more like he's convincing himself than Cub.

"Take your shirt off." Cub's mouth moving ahead of his thoughts again, piecing together the notions that Scar is wearing a very covering button down right now, that he hasn't even undone a single button when he's clearly come here with what Scar would think of as the intent to seduce Cub back into that life. Scar would never pass up using what he considered to be one of his top persuasion assets, regardless of how little it worked on Cub, unless there were a compelling reason not to.

Which means there's something Scar wants to hide.

"N- No?" Scar tries, taking a step back.

"Scar. Shirt off." Cub commands it this time, bringing to bear his forcefully authoritative tone. His fingertips crackle slightly with the promise of magic where he taps his thumb against each in turn.

Scar's expression goes slightly loose and his hands fumble for buttons. Cub thinks he should feel bad for taking advantage of that automatic reflex, built up on years of helping each other through the worst of being lone Vex. He doesn't.

Scar starts at the bottom buttons, so Cub knows the important bits are at the top, and waits patiently. It wouldn’t be Scar if he didn’t try to weasel his way into a tiny bit of extra time, even like this.

The shirt falls open. Hm, three anomalies that Cub can visually note. Glittering gold across the collarbone, dark bruises that must have been bites around his neck, and-

What the hell.

Not only is it a mark of his summoner's magic on Scar’s shoulder, it's a purple eye.

That could explain how Scar's force of will shattered reality for just a moment, though. Why his magic blazes so bright now.

"Oh, Scar." Something in Cub aches. This isn't going to be easy to save Scar from at all, not if They're involved. Not if it's gone this far. Two marks? If Cub were more in touch with his Vex instincts, he might be concerned that the thing he’s feeling about it includes jealousy rather than being pure revulsion. Any average vex would be envious of that.

Scar won't meet his eyes.

"You have awful taste in people, you know." Cub says, just to have something to say.

Scar hisses sharply, then covers his own mouth, so the following "Sorry, sorry." comes out muffled.

Cub ignores, it, moving back into Scar's space and pressing his fingers to the eye-mark, probing. The magic in it feel like teetering on the edge of a cliff rough sand scraping the soles of your feet with a wildfire screaming through every bone in your body to jump. It feels like the noise of a hunting owl's wings. It feels like being seen down through every single defense you've ever built up, down to the core of what makes you-

Scar's hand is on his wrist, pulling his hand back. Breaking that connection.

"Careful." Scar murmurs. "I'm used to it." It's not really an explanation for anything about that dizzying magic.

Scar moves his hand to lace their fingers together, and Cub can see him biting back pleas for Cub to join him. They both know the answer, and forcing the issue would be a problem. It would break bad for them both.

"If I were you, you'd be his already." Scar says. Cub wouldn't have bothered with trying to talk his partner in crime into it, no niceties. If he believed it was best for both of them, he'd have taken the most direct path, and had complete faith that Scar would forgive him.

"If you were me, you wouldn't be his at all." Cub counters. He doubts he'd have been caught in what feels like a trap tailor-made to enrapture Scar alone, of all vexes.

Which is information. Who is interested in Scar in specific?

Everyone likes Scar, certainly, but who would most want to have him? To keep him. And to let Scar play at still being who he was, no less.

Maybe they let Scar go off on his own so they could be away from his influence and find their own way to break this arrangement. Mm, it's a possibility, but not one Cub is going to bank on.

That does raise the question of whether they are extremely weak willed, and Scar is the one pulling the strings and doing the coveting... Or if they are strongly willed enough to keep Scar in line, even when Scar fears something. One of those possibilities is significantly worse.

And the sheer amount of secondhand magic imbued into Scar from the bond tends not to be something carried around by the weak of mind.

"Where's my index at?" Scar asks, after a while of pondering silence from Cub.

"Around a fifty." Cub doesn't have to put too much thought into that at least.

Cub had explained to Scar a while ago that he keeps a running tab of a Danger Index, when Scar has been bonded. How much of a direct threat Scar is during it, as best as he can assess. An easy benchmark for them to both understand the situation.

If it were up to the sixties, Cub would be gone, not even willing to be in the same room with Scar. As it is now? Scar is treading on thin ice, and any move could push him over that edge that has Cub bolting for safety and working alone.

Scar nods. "Any tests I can do?"

Cub considers it. That Scar is willing to cooperate is a big opportunity here. He has to tamp down on the urge to sedate and restrain Scar, tuck him away in one of his secret bolt holes. Scar would let him, he thinks, right now. But he doesn't want to make the summoner tip their hand.

Not until he knows more, anyway.

Feeling the magic flicker and roil through Scar's skin where their hands are pressed together, Cub is beginning to get the sneaking suspicion that Scar overpowering him in that illusion wasn't pure fantasy make-believe.

If Scar is this powerful, then how powerful would it make Cub?

Cub lightly squeezes Scar's hand, running over in his mind which tests might be safe.

"He didn't make you stop taking orders from other people." Cub notes aloud as it occurs to him. Scar had snapped to obey him with the usual ease.

"Only people I already trusted. Like, trusted-trusted. Like, willingly seen me like that before trusted."

So either someone not-possessive, or someone supremely and arrogantly assured about his possession of Scar. Given bite marks... Probably the arrogant option.

Granted, the summoner's commands probably would override his own, but it's at least a moment of potential hesitation or confusion Cub could cause at a vital juncture. The kind of split second that can swing an entire confrontation.

"So you and he have talked this over." Cub says, still doubtful that a summoner would do so, but trying to remind himself to think the best of his fellow Hermits.

"Some of it. He's... curious. Kind of like you." Scar smiles in that dopey too-soft way that says he's got too many feelings in him. A familiar sort of expression, when Scar talks about those he cares about. Certainly not something every summoner can pull from him. Someone he was already relatively close with, then.

"No one is like me." Cub answers.

"Mm, just a little. But not too much. I want to tell you he takes good care of me like you, but I know you won't believe that right now."

"That was just an excuse to tell me that and try to cut off my protests at the same time."

"Is it working?"

"No."

"Dang." Scar deflates dramatically.

"You would think anything, any kind of attention, is good treatment right now." Cub carries on.

"I would. He's giving me plenty of attention." Scar agrees easily, perking up again. And that is information Cub can work with. Maybe the summoner was someone who already wanted Scar's attention. Or possibly someone who understands how a vex needs it from their summoner. No, probably not that. Cub doesn’t know of anyone in their world here who knows as much about Vex as they do.

He considers just asking who, but he's trying not to spook Scar away, and Scar seems particularly spookable about him knowing too much concrete information about his summoner. As Scar should be, frankly.

It's a familiar dance on both sides.

Scar hums, and Cub can practically feel a thought queuing up out of the chest monster in that brain.

"Oh, right, I nearly forgot. You could study the sculk again." Scar beams with having remembered.

"Come again." Cub demands, skeptical.

"The ooey gooey bluey stuff underground, you know it. If you agreed, you could study it again. Like, real close all safely and stuff." Scar chatters happily.

"That sounds like Cub-themed word salad. Am I losing you here?"

"No! I mean it." Scar protests, crossing his arms and glowering at Cub.

Cub is unimpressed and simply waits for Scar to run out of patience with the scowling.

"I do. We found some, I stumbled right into a patch-" Scar lifts his finger, to stop Cub's interrupting chiding from winding up. "No, siree, none of that. I wiped it off, clean."

"With... a cloth?" Cub asks. He suspects the answer, but he's not going to trust a hunch when there's evidence to be had.

"With my hand. Yes, bare. Yes, it's fine." Scar shoves his hand into Cub's face, showing it to be bare and clean, no trace of sculk. "I just flicked it off, and it went, right back to its puddle. Mmmy summoner got all excitable about it, and asked a bunch of questions. I told him I didn't need it, because it was true. With him, I didn't really care about what it was offering, so it was easy to wipe away." Scar almost tripped over saying his summoner's name for a moment, but catches himself, much to Cub's disappointment.

"And if I don't believe you."

"Well, for one I'd be very sad. And for two, you could ask my su- Well, you can ask him when I'm sure you're not gonna be weird about it." An incredibly mild way for Scar to put it.

"I'm not going to suddenly be convinced by the person who could have told you to lie." Cub points out.

"He could have but he didn't." Scar just barely taps his foot in frustration, clearly trying to hold still and look calm.

"And I have no evidence of this." Cub shrugs.

"Fine, then maybe I won't give you your gift." Scar threatens.

"Oh no. I'm sure I'll survive." Cub deadpans. And he's sure Scar won't hold out lon-

Scar cycles an actual damn sculk catalyst into his hand, and Cub chokes on thin air. Just as quickly, Scar tucks it back into his inventory, out of sight.

"I think you might want this one." Scar gloats, smugly.

"Scar, you have to kill a Warden to get one of those."

"We did." Scar says, simply. His smile is all vicious cheer and fae delight. An avatar of true satisfied hunt, not a trace of boasting exaggeration to be found. Cub knows beyond a shadow of a doubt in the subtle currents of the catalyst’s magic, that Scar had struck the killing blow on the Warden for that catalyst.

"That- That-" Inside himself, Cub can feel the exact moment his hard No shifts to a genuine solid Maybe.

He knows Scar sees it on him, because that fae thing in Scar's expression grins with sharp hunger and giddy abandon. Blood in the water.

People, on the rare occasion they know about Scar's magic, his vocal charms, think that if the magic is kept out of his words, then his words are safe. Toothless. De-clawed.

Cub knows better.

Scar doesn't need even a single drop of magic to weave an entrancingly strangling verbal net around someone, when he's truly motivated.

It is only now that this net has encircled him, has already pushed past the first layer of his walls, that Cub is realizing how deeply, deeply motivated Scar is right now, peering at him with pale fae eyes that seek to devour all resistance. They don't hide their nature from one another. Not the way they sometimes soften it for others.

Scar won't be playing games, if push comes to shove here. It is vitally imperative that Cub keeps him playing games, for even a sliver of a shot at success.

A game can be won.

"How deep did you let him get into you?" Cub asks, unable to keep a note of dread awe out of his voice.

"He gave me his blood." Scar sing-songs instead, eyes blown wide with feral glee. "He gave me his blood three times, Cub."

Now, Cub doesn't subscribe to the notion of patterns of numbers being special to magic, but he knows that Scar, ever the builder, does. And sometimes, magic likes listening to Scar's whims, for whatever reason. And that- The feels heavy, intuitively, to have the blood of his summoner thrice freely offered to him.

For all Cub's now a man of science by choice, the knack for understanding magic never really left him either.

"It sounds like you're getting quite a lot out of this... arrangement." Cub comments, bringing his tone back to neutral.

"So much." Scar agrees, a purr rippling through him. Cub is practiced at dismissing the feeling that sound stirs.

Scar takes his hand back so that he can spin in place, throwing out his arms and with all the flair of the showman he is, pushing himself suddenly into his Vex-forward form. Sharp teeth, sharper claws, ethereal skin, and glowing eyes. Wings, for just a moment too many wings, but Cub blinks and it's back to the usual two.

Scar looks... Good. Healthy. Shockingly healthy.

Cub reaches out and touches Scar's wing. It's still artfully tattered, exactly the way he knows Scar likes it, but the skin is healthy, soft to the touch like a well broken in leather jacket.

He avoids Scar's eyes, unsettled by the lilac tint to their hue. Because he's used to them being electric blue, pure with Scar's magic, because it's just one more sign of how deeply entangled Scar and his summoner are. How wrong things are.

It could be a trick, Cub thinks. Spoil Scar with good tending until they get their hands on Cub with that implicit promise, then let them both be run into the ground once they can no longer object.

But the clear effort that's gone into keeping Scar's urges sated and his body healthy is... Meticulous. More effort than would be really needed to just be a ploy.

A lot of energy to waste on just Cub for just a vanishingly small chance, that could have much more easily been used to force him or remove him. Sure, Scar would be a bit sad to see him go, but a summoner can make him shut up about that. Can make him forget about that.

His hand flexes, gripping tight to Scar's wing.

"I'm not going anywhere." Scar reassures, entirely too perceptive. He loops his arms over Cub's shoulders, as close to a hug as he can get while conspicuously not trapping Cub in close to him.

"You're already gone." Cub speaks softly.

"I'm not gone. I'm still me." Scar argues back gently.

"For exactly as long as that's amusing, at the whim of someone else." Cub knows he should shut up, but that's also not something he claimed to be good at.

"I trust him." Scar says, simply.

"You trust too easily, my friend."

"With myself, maybe. I trust him with you." Scar confesses, meek and vulnerable.

Cold crackles of terror build in the base of Cub's spine.

Scar has never told him that about a summoner before.

The blatant horror in his gaze makes Scar shrink down.

"Did you... offer me, to him?" Cub asks, haunted by the possibility. Summoners have forced information about him out of Scar before, of course. But for Scar to give of his own volition...

"I know you." Scar starts, sharp and pleading, twisting in place. "We... would never be safe, if we left you alone."

"You did. You volunteered, before he could even think to ask-"

"He asked a question halfway there, it reminded me of you."

"And you seized that memory instead of letting it slip away." Cub accuses. He knows how good Scar can be at managing his own mind while caught in mental snares. How Scar can turn his own slips and forgetfulness into an advantage, into room to work, into a cracked door promising escape. How this was a choice Scar made, for both of them. "You put him on my trail."

Something in Cub screams that this is well beyond a hundred on the Danger Index, but- His feet remain frozen to the ground, anchored by the icy terror that keeps hitting him in waves as he processes the implications.

"I told him to let me handle it." Scar says, as if that's any kind of defense.

"So you could swan in here to terrorize me and soften me up, until he could swoop in-" A tiny spark of anger fights against the icy terror drowning Cub’s senses, but falters as soon as he’s interrupted.

"No, no, I wanted to explain. I knew you wouldn't listen, but I had to try, Cub, I had to."

"Of course I'm not going to listen when you're like this. It’s what I promised. What you want."

"It's what I wanted."

"Want." Cub argues, firmly.

Scar tosses up his hands, before letting them fall limp back onto Cub's shoulders. Cub's hands haven't left Scar’s wings.

Cub hates that his terror and grounding are coming from Scar in equal measure, some kind of messed up canceling reaction. An equilibrium one stray atom away from collapsing to either side.

He’s not safe here. He’s not safe with Scar. He’s not safe anywhere Scar knows he frequents.

He’s not safe with one unknown other friend turned ticking time bomb, ready to be sprung on him at any moment. How is a Hermit a summoner? How is a Hermit a Watcher?

He can’t make his legs move.

“Oh, Cub.” Scar clicks something soft and sad to him.

Cub ignores it.

An atom strays. The suspended moment breaks.

Cub's claws grow, and when he pulls his hand back from Scar's wing, he takes a chunk of it with him.

Scar cries out, harsh and choked with pain, folding forward and trembling in horrified shudders that finally match how Cub is feeling. For once, Cub knows, Scar's not being overdramatic.

The sound feels distant and scratchy in Cub’s head, unreal. Cub holds the chunk of Scar's wing, chunk of Scar's soul, in his hands greedily. He sways in place.

Then he leaves.

The sound of Scar’s cries ring in his ears well past the point of being out of earshot.

Grian had been flying, checking out progress on various builds, and then his wing had hurt, and then he'd dropped cleanly into a blank fury that overwrote every sense.

Unknown time later a week he pushes himself back up. His skin feels all wrong, his body too small and wet and meaty. He's underground somewhere. Confusion fills the places fury has vacated.

Scar clings to him, and he wraps his several wings around Scar.

"Lungs need breathing." Scar says, simply. He taps Grian's chest.

Grian breathes in sharply, clearing the fading and spots that had started to claim his vision. Right. In and out. Breathing.

Scar twists, pressing a kiss to the gem embedded in Grian's throat. It pulses with reassuring energy, Scar’s magic.

"Welcome back." Scar greets, offering Grian an apple. He seems to have taken a shine to them, Grian had noticed, ever since their excursion together. It’s such a silly thing to get attached to.

Grian holds the apple and stares at it, wondering why it's not dissolving into its component parts to nourish him.

"Eating. With your mouth." Scar gently reminds him.

Oh, yeah.

Grian puts it to a mouth that has too-few teeth and too-little space. After a few moments he remembers how to bite, chew, swallow. Hunger eases.

Scar's fingers card through his hair.

"How did we get here?" Grian's voice creaks with disuse, sounding all-wrong in his ears. No depth, no booming resonance.

"You brought us here." Scar answers, moving to hold him.

"Me?"

"You." Scar mimics the inflection Grian uses when referring to the self that doesn't fit inside his flesh and bones. Scar is getting better at mimicking him, he notes. Still not as good as he is at mimicking Scar, though.

"I... don't remember. Just. Anger. Rage. Fury." Grian finishes the apple and spurred on by that reminding him he has arms, he clings to Scar.

"Yeah, you seemed pretty mad about the whole thing. I didn't even know you could look that much like that, or stay that way for so long. Kinda impressive, really."

"Having a body after that sucks."

"Having a body in general sucks, welcome back to the club." Scar sticks out his tongue at Grian briefly.

"What happened?" Grian gets back on track, before adding, "You don't seem surprised."

"Well, a week is a while to get used to just about any dang thing."

"Scar." Grian ignores the movement in his peripheral vision.

"Okay, okay, geez. No need to go sprouting extra wings on me." Scar kisses each of the... five? pairs of tiny wings agitatedly wreathing Grian's head. “As much as I do enjoy them.” Scar hums a fond note.

"What happened." Grian demands, not allowing himself to be distracted.

Scar sighs. "A little bitty tiny bit of my soul got damaged, and you reacted poorly to it." He extends his wing, showing where there's a fresh-healed hole on the edge that wasn't there before.

This time Grian's back erupts into a riot of wings, dozens of them, all competing for their own space to crush Scar close, bumping into one another and shedding a riot of colorful feathers everywhere.

"Okay, okay, that's better than I expected, I can work with this." Scar spits out feathers to be able to talk, or maybe swallows a few of them whole- Either way, he manages to speak despite the severe technical difficulties of being smothered by a multitude of wings.

Grian trembles, his very atoms longing to shake apart again.

"Grian, c’mon, focus on me. Just me. I'm here, I'm safe, I'm yours. Just focus and breathe for me." Scar coaxes, a shiver of honey-sweetness on his lips.

Grian welcomes the magic wholeheartedly.

Wrapping Scar's soothing words around himself like a cloak, Grian manages to lose the panic in his lungs and limbs. Steady breaths. Focus. He can do that. Breathe. He’s doing that.

Scar is here, safe in his arms.

Gradually the wings fade back to just three pairs. It's as good as he's getting right now.

"Who do I have to disaggregate?" Grian croaks.

"No one."

He makes a noise of protest.

"Really, I don't want you to break him down to his constitution particles or delete him or any of the other things you suggested. I just... mishandled the situation, is all." Scar curls in on himself, clearly disappointed in himself for the whole thing.

Grian growls again.

"Stay with me, please. Here-" Scar turns, and puts his wings in Grian's hands. They’re so small compared to what Grian now knows they could be, small like they were in the rare instances he saw them before they’d been linked. "A massage, please?" Scar asks.

Grian sighs, but lets himself be captivated by the task. He does enjoy taking care of his flock, and preening is an important part of that. His hands smooth over Scar's wings with the confidence of experience, kneading here or giving a little boost of magic there.

"Thank you." Scar relaxes under his touch, clicking soft contentment. With Scar relaxing, Grian finds himself doing so as well.

Grian lets himself get lost in the calm and familiar motions of tending his flock for a while, it makes him feel more real, more solid. More like himself, plain and simple.

"It's just that I pushed him a little to hard, a little too fast. I got him on the hook, I know I did, I had his interest." Scar starts talking fast, as if he'd never stopped explaining himself earlier. "But he knows me too well, I told you that already, I had him and then he figured a few things too soon. He's so smart, so clever, he'll be useful, I promise. I promise, I'll get him for you and it'll be so good, just wait a little longer, please."

Grian sighs and curls a wing around to cover Scar's pleading lips.

"I hate it when other people hurt you. I don't know if I'll be able to rein myself in if harm to you goes that deep again." Their souls are bonded, Grian had felt the shrieking wrongness of a piece of his own soul being shorn off at the same time. Had felt every molecule of Scar's pain and horror and shock.

"I'll do better, I'll be more carefu-" Scar tries to push the wing aside to babble more.

"You're getting your second chance, hush. I just don't know that I have a third in me, so use it wisely." Grian talks over the attempt to start babbling again.

"Oh good, oh thank goodness. Thank you. Have I mentioned you're the best? Because you're the best." Scar clicks and purrs and even throws in a keepcovet chirp just for good measure.

Grian chuckles, letting himself bask in the warmth of that while chirping back soft affections of his own. It's been nice being around his extended flock since they’ve been back, but getting to tend to Scar and hear those best attempts Scar makes at his noises still hits him close to the heart.

"Hope you brought a pickaxe, though, because I sure don't have one, and I don't see any actual exits." Grian muses, wondering if they're going to have to punch through stone to get out. He’s not up for phasing through the stone, not while his whole brain still feels like only partially-set jelly.

"You weren't exactly in a 'let me pick up my things' mood when you nabbed me. I think I'm lucky you didn't manage to cut off communications, or the whole community might have had a frenzy on us." Scar leans back into his touch, easily relaxing back into his usual chattiness.

Grian groans. "Please tell me they're not getting weird about it."

"That'd be lying to you, Grian. Which I only do when it's very funny. Or select Tuesdays. Anyway they're being pretty normal-weird about it, since I in my most esteemed grace and wisdom was here to assuage the worst of their fears. You've got some people lining up to make sure I didn't decide to finally off you for good, though. There've been some very hurtful accusations, you know."

"You're so proud of that I can hear it from over here." Grian's sigh is fond. "How many of them do you have convinced that you're the one who kidnapped me?"

"Oh, let's see, just, I'd say, about all of them. Well, except Mumbo. Mumbo knows you'd have gotten him kidnapped too just to see him, if I was in a mood for this long." Scar leaves out the other obvious exception, but that's because they're done talking about Cub for now.

"Good ol' Mumbo. I'll have to drop by and bother him so he can relax." Grian is already thinking of pranks he can pull, to soothe both their nerves.

"Once we dig out of here, anyway." Scar reminds him.

"Do you think we could just wait until someone stumbles on us?"

"Sure, if we want them to dig out the entire multi-chunk area."

"Ugh. Stop being the reasonable one. I hate it."

"As you wish~" Scar takes Grian's wing in his hands and presses it close enough to kiss each individual feather. Which Grian gets the feeling he was resisting doing, in favor of things like sense and conversation. Grian figures can count this as a win, and let the logistics fall to a slightly future Grian.

Cub is, in fact, losing his mind.

He'd put the piece of Scar's soul in magical stasis, and built himself a new little bunker that for certain no one knows about. Then he'd remembered that the thing he's hiding from is a Watcher, and can probably just find him anywhere on the world. Then he'd decided to not care about that, because he doesn't really know if a Watcher can just see anything they want all the time forever.

Even if it does seem implied by the name and common whispers.

Still, he'd managed to last three days in his little bunker working on some small projects he'd shelved a while ago, and only occasionally checking the chatlog. Three days, before he decided that he was just gonna go back to his bases proper and damn the consequences.

Which, for now, seemed like none.

He'd noticed Scar occasionally piping up in chat, not too long after Cub returned to his factory for the first time. It's a small relief.

The smoothtalking comes easily and skillfully enough that Scar must still have his wits about him. Managing to get people to, if not forget, then at least politely ignore, the few of them that had seen... something that wasn't a person nor creature they knew, well, that's just Scar for you. Playing at being the one to have spirited Grian away gets Scar teased by the other Hermits, especially so soon after they'd just had a mini vacation together. Cub only just then learned about that ‘vacation’ from these conversations, not really having paid much attention to that sort of thing before.

The second honeymoon jokes had rolled in quick.

Cub keeps closing the chat and telling himself he won't check it and then hours later reading back through every single message there. It's exhausting, honestly. A lot of the chatter isn't even relevant, especially as the days carry on.

Grian is just about the worst possible option for Scar to have bonded with. Given Scar’s previous attachment to him, and Grian’s general stubborn and contrary ways, neither one makes a good first target. Cub is struggling to figure out a viable angle to come at it from, something that would feel more solid than this continued game of just see where it goes. Nothing comes together.

Scar doesn't message him. Grian doesn't message him.

Grian doesn't speak in chat at all the entire week, actually. Which is another concerning point of data.

But, circling back to the point, every day that goes by has become one long stretch of Cub trying very hard to keep his mind on literally anything except the looming anticipation of the unknown. He doesn't know what's going to happen from here. That’s what drives him most up a wall, not knowing what to plan for or when.

He can guess with relative certainty that Scar or Grian will show up, eventually. Maybe both of them. Maybe they'll be sick of playing with him. Maybe this is already over, and he just hasn't caught up with reality yet.

Maybe it's nothing, and Scar will show up and nothing will change.

Cub has no way of knowing. No clue. It doesn’t even occur to him to turn to any other Hermit for help, this is his own business to handle. It always has been.

Even if he has no idea how to build defenses against the things Scar had done in just that first visit. Vex magic? He can protect himself against that if he needs to, for short periods of time with high concentration on it. Whatever it was that the summoner, the Watcher, had corrupted Scar with was something entirely new, though. He doesn’t know enough about it, other than its raw power.

And on and on, the thoughts chase themselves in loops inside his brain, inexorable and exhausting, while his hands work on menial tasks just so they don’t have to stop moving.

When Scar finally does drop into his lab a bit past a full week from their last disastrous meeting it is without any fanfare, but he looks like he's rather focused on something. Cub stops his experiment to just watch Scar sneak around. It takes a good ten minutes or so before Scar looks up at him for the first time, and then a further five before Scar's head whips back around to Cub with a startled yelp.

"You know this is my lab, yeah?" Cub asks, Scar's behavior almost for a moment making him wonder if he's the one who got the wrong address. But this is his lab, unless someone's made an impossibly perfect one to one replica of it to... study him? Trap him? Anyway, point is, Scar's the one being weird here, not himself, and he reminds himself of that.

"Oh, haha, didn't expect to see you here. Uh. Hi? Hello. Hi Cub." Scar hovers nervously.

"And where should I have been?"

"...in hiding?" Scar tries.

"Not much point in that, is there?" Cub shakes his head.

Scar shrugs.

"So I might as well be somewhere I can get actual work done." Not that he’s really doing any.

"I'm glad you didn't hide." Scar says, softly. It's full of sentiment Cub doesn't agree with, and he can just imagine Scar building wrong ideas inside his own head already. That Cub isn't in hiding because he 'trusts' Scar, or because he's wavering about his Maybe No.

But fine, let Scar think what he wants. It'll keep him at a safer risk level if he fills his own head with that drivel.

"What were you looking for?" Cub asks, instead of acknowledging any of that.

"Oh uh, well. I thought I'd have to like, track you down, so um. I was just looking for hints of your whereabouts. All good now! My sleuthing skills saved the day again." Scar gives a winning grin and victorious peace sign.

"Remind me to never hire you as a detective."

"Cub." Scar whines.

"Never not ever." Cub replies firmly.

"I'd be a great detective." Scar argues.

"Oh, I'll get you customers, just people I don't like."

"...so people you won't care if I make deals with?" Scar perks up significantly, fluttering his wings.

"When have I ever?"

"True, so true. You spoil me, so much."

"Too much apparently, too much. Gave you too much free leash." And there goes his mouth again. It's hard to remember that he wants to hold his tongue when a low simmering anger has had time to take up residence in him. Makes it too easy to be sharp, to lash out.

"Exactly the right amount of free leash, don't sell yourself short. You've a very deft hand for this sort of thing." Scar complements, as genuine as he can be right now.

"And if I demanded you let me practice that right now?" Cub challenges.

"Well, I'd take a moment to most graciously caution you that there are a few new failsafes in place, but if you think you can work with that, you're welcome to. You know you're always welcome in my mind, Cub." Scar bows, as if inviting Cub inside.

"Too much has changed for me to know anything." Cub speaks flatly.

"Not as much has changed as you think." Scar straightens up and meets his gaze levelly.

"One way to find out." Cub closes the distance, his own severe strides leaving him less time that he'd like to prepare.

He wraps a hand around the back of Scar's neck, fingernails just barely sharpened enough to prick the skin there.

"Relax." Cub commands, even though his hand is doing the magic and not his words. A bit of show, misdirection, re-enforcement. A little theatre makes the magic go down easier for Scar.

Scar lands out of his float onto his feet, then shuffles backwards until he can prop his arms behind him on a counter. Cub moves with him, hitting him with wave after wave of calm and relaxation. The sorts of charms that Vex magic is made for, the energy gleeful in curling around anyone it can get into.

Scar puts up no resistance, his gaze softening. Calm and receptive, eyes on Cub.

Cub tries to come up with his next command, a thing that would usually spring so easily to him as to not even require thought at all, but it's all just... blank. Hollow. He can't really get into the groove of it. All he can think about is how Scar doesn’t need this from him anymore.

"Do you look at him like this?" Cub asks, without meaning to.

"Yes." Scar answers, with the voice of a man who has no idea what that means to Cub.

Cub ignores the weight of it pressing on him. He can't spare a moment right now to think about what it means, what his unnamed emotions are.

"Close your eyes."

Scar's eyes slip shut, and he reclines further into the counter.

"Forget." Cub commands. Again, the word isn't carrying the magic, it’s his hand picking along the strands of Scar's memory and trying to pluck Grian out of there, whole and entire.

And yeah, like Cub expected, neither Scar's brain nor his summoner-bond quite know what to do with that command. It's nothing outright hostile to nor endangering Grian, so it doesn't trip the most obvious choices for safeties, but it still makes the magic roil and writhe, makes Scar twitch and keen softly. He's going to have to replace the lab countertop, with the way Scar's claws are ruining it.

Cub's lungs fill with sand, and he has to force them to keep breathing through the tactile manifestation of those deeply rooted memories.

Cub gropes with his free hand until he finds a crystal, deciding partway through that he can't hold these memories himself, they need a vessel. He'll just be the conduit to get them there. He started this, not seeing it through isn’t an option now.

Slowly, breath by breath, grain by grain, the sand drains out of his lungs, and Scar stops twitching under his fingers.

The quartz glitters with murky light, like sun scattered by endless grains.

"Keep this safe." Cub orders, handing over the crystal to Scar before he can let himself second-guess that.

Scar pries a hand out of the countertop and cautiously takes the quartz from Cub. He holds it close to his chest. Something he doesn't comprehend, but instinctively knows is his. He holds it like something precious, in danger of being stolen, not realizing it already has been.

They've done memory modifications before, little edits here and there, mostly to other people, but never this deep, this complex. Not a whole person, not someone so integral. A part of Cub is excited to see the result.

"Wake up." Cub commands, providing a jolt of magic from his fingertips to jumpstart the process of Scar becoming aware again.

"Cub?" Scar sounds groggy and confused, reaching for Cub with the hand not clutching the crystal. Cub offers his hand for Scar to take, watching.

Scar's breath hitches, but he puts on a smile.

"Something is wrong, Cub." Scar practically crushes his hand.

"I have it under control." Cub says, calmly. A veiled way to indicate that the wrongness is on purpose. That he's running an experiment. Scar has participated in his experiments before.

"It feels- I don't like it." Scar's leg starts jittering rapidly, nerves winning out over the way doing that for any length of time leaves Scar overly sore.

“I know. Bear with it for me.” Cub speaks calmly, steadily.

Scar takes a couple deep breaths, then synchronizes his breathing with Cub’s. His grip lightens only enough that the bones in Cub’s hand are no longer in immanent danger of snapping.

“Why is my magic all wr- different?” Scar asks, holding his upper body still in a way that speaks to suppressing trembling.

“It’s part of the experiment.” Cub lies. “Can you tell me what it feels like?”

Scar’s expression twists, but he’s not unfamiliar with things being kept from him during experiments. Control variables and such. He knows to bother Cub about it afterward, if it isn’t resolved when the experiment wraps up.

“It’s. Big? Real big. Bigger than it’s ever been, and throbbing with power.” Scar is very focused on trying to string together words, Cub can tell from the furrowed brow and slight slowing of his cadence.

Cub gives a quiet snort at how Scar phrased it, though. Some things never change.

“It feels good?” Scar carries on, either not noticing or ignoring Cub’s amusement. “But also wrong. This isn’t Vex magic, this isn’t my magic. But… it is? It answers by my name.” Sparks of blue and lilac dance over the back of Scar’s hand where it clutches to Cub’s. “I should- I should remember what changed it. Something changed it. Something changed me.”

Cub watches Scar, absorbing the information spoken. Without memory of his summoner to trip things up, the words are significantly more trustworthy. And all Cub needs is the right clue, the right information to bring together some kind of a plan. It’s just too bad he doesn’t know what he’s even looking for.

Scar shifts his focus outward suddenly, locking onto Cub’s eyes in a way that violently steals Cub’s breath. Cub’s brain itches under that gaze, but he can’t look away. He’s not sure he would if he could.

“You did not do this change.” Scar declares, with the feeling of factual finality. He blinks, and suddenly Cub can breathe again, with a tiny tremor. “Your magic feels right, it feels the same. Blue, and blue. Loud and quiet.” Scar nods, still talking himself through his thoughts aloud.

Cub flicks the fingers of his free hand while he processes that. Maybe he’ll ask Scar more about it later, when all of this is settled.

“Yeah, but I want to fix it.” Cub answers, honestly, about Scar’s magic.

Scar flinches slightly, then looks confused. “Why don’t I want that?” He’s more asking himself than Cub. “I just want what’s missing.” Scar’s hand subconsciously tightens on the crystal he hasn’t noticed himself holding, and on Cub’s hand.

“What, aren’t I enough for you ol’ pal?” Cub does his best impression of Scar’s jovial sort of way of speaking. It’s complex enough a task that he doesn’t have room left over to think about how he feels about Scar not wanting this fixed, even without his memories.

“No. You’re missing too. Just, differently missing.” Scar dismisses without a thought, before seeming to back up and think on his own words. Eventually an understanding dawns on his face. “Oh. I’m missing a someone. That makes sense. D’you know who I’m missing?”

“Do you trust me?” Cub asks, instead of answering.

“Of course, Cub.” There’s no trace of hesitation, not even a twitch of his wings, before Scar answers.

“I need you to shatter that on the ground.” Cub instructs, careful not to make it an order.

“This?” Scar looks down at the crystal for the first time, captivated instantly by the way sand seems to fall through the inside of it like an endless snowglobe. For a moment it looks like he might question Cub, before he steels himself and throws it down to the hard lab floor. When it only cracks on impact, Scar stomps on it to finish the job, shattering it completely.

Cub is already leading Scar to a chair before the wave of magic erupts, pushing Scar into it and keeping his hands firmly on Scar’s shoulders when Scar’s legs start to go out from under him. The least he can do is steady Scar as all the memories rush back in after being released.

Cub isn’t sure why he’d chosen that, to be honest. If he’d asked Scar to destroy it with his magic rather than physical force, the memories would be at least warped and most likely destroyed entirely. If he’d kept the crystal he would have a bargaining chip against the summoner.

Cub decides that this whole situation is messing with his head, if he had been seriously considering leaving Scar incomplete like that. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t do that to Scar, even to save him.

Not until he’s explored every other option, at least.

Scar looks up at Cub with wide eyes, finally back from having that much of his brain unceremoniously dumped back inside of his head in one go. Without a word, he pushes Cub’s hands off his shoulders and stands.

This time, Scar is the one to turn tail and flee. Cub listens to his footsteps retreat through the crunch of crystal shards, then goes back to his work.

Grian’s own wing is shoved unceremoniously out of his lap and immediately replaced with an entire Scar. Scar’s drape is artfully relaxed, his breaths calm and even. Perfectly calm and even.

Grian brushes a hand over Scar’s cheek, the deep wrongness of Scar’s demeanor as plain to him as if Scar were shouting it.

“Hey, hey, you’re here now. You don’t have to hide.” Grian tries to assure Scar, even though he’s still fumbling and learning how to do comfort in ways other than too sharp words and circuitous actions.

Scar pushes himself up enough to bury his face in Grian’s shirt, and grabs onto Grian’s wings with hands just the far side of careful. It hurts, but it won’t do damage, so Grian lets it be. Scar’s breath hitches, his diaphragm flexing and jerking erratically where he’s pressed into Grian.

Grian trills and hums a soft lullaby, something that lives in the gaps in his bones and in his feathers and just feels natural. He thinks he must have hummed it to himself before from the way Scar perks ever so slightly with recognition, even though Grian doesn’t remember having done so on purpose.

“You’re real.” Scar speaks finally, after the long quiet of clinging to Grian while Grian wove any melodies he could think of.

“As real as I get.” Belief made flesh, a soul given birth from codified death. Well, everyone has their origin story, and Grian is yet a well far ways off from his departure story.

“It all happened.” Scar continues. A slightly clearer picture settles into place for Grian.

“He messed with your head.” Grian begins preening Scar’s hair, claws picking through the strands meticulously.

“I invited him to.” Scar immediately counters. It’s hard to tell if he regrets that invitation or not, but Grian knows that once Scar has made an invitation he stands by it regardless. No matter how much trouble it brings him. “I want him to trust me.”

“Do you have to flirt with falling off the edge so hard?” Grian asks, knowing the answer.

“Yes.” Plain as that. Scar does things with his whole heart, including risks. It’s endearing, as much as it is worrying. It’s not a heart without teeth, of course, he knows Scar isn’t weak even when Scar does slip. He worries all the same.

Grian lets his magic slide down out of his fingers, through Scar’s scalp, seeking the shapes of Scar’s mind with only the most careful of brushes. Scar’s eyes slip closed.

“He put it all back how it should be, he put me back together. It’s all there.” Scar assures Grian, and Grian’s magic agrees with that assessment. Aside from the dread prickles of unease, he doesn’t feel much different, no lingering foreign magic or sharp changes in his vex. He withdraws his magic and moves into massaging Scar’s scalp.

“It is.” Grian assures, with the weight of an unarguable truth reflected in too many eyes.

Scar lets out a shuddering breath and loses the line of tension running along his spine, nodding.

It’s been a stressful couple weeks for Scar, Grian knows that. He gets the feeling it’ll get worse before it gets better, and he can’t protect Scar from that. No matter how much that chafes him.

But he can be here, he can carve out little sanctuaries for them to curl up together in. He can start humming again, this time something perky and pop-ish, and encourage Scar to take the time he needs to decompress and find himself again.

He can’t fight Scar’s battles, but he’s here at Scar’s side with a ready arm every step of the way.

Cub didn't really plan for his short shopping run to be anything more than that.

Of course, that was before he felt the looming presence of Scar's magic curled tightly around one of his fellow Hermits when simply passing near them them in the shopping district. He’s long since figured it out, so it’s not like the who is a surprise. Even if he hadn’t put it together from the earlier hints, Grian going missing after Cub had hurt Scar would have sealed the jig being up. But Cub hadn’t expected to run into the summoner here, and now. He’s got some preparations, some protections, but it doesn’t ever feel like it could be enough at this point. And some part of him just hadn’t wanted to get proof of being right about the who on account of how messy it would be.

Immediately Cub stumbles back, every instinct in his body torn between fight and flight, leaving him stuck rooted frozen instead.

"Hey, uh, are you... okay?" Grian asks, immensely awkward. He steps toward Cub, and Cub reflexively steps back. Keep distance, he’d drilled that into himself enough over the years for it to come through and snap him out of his stuck position when approached.

He has to keep space between himself and Scar's summoner. Fuck. He has to act normal.

Yeah, no, okay that ship has long since sailed. Well past the horizon now, no calling it back.

"You stay. Over there." Cub demands, as he forces down the instincts through great effort and endless practice. He doesn’t want to know which set would win, the siren urge to succumb to a clearly powerful summoner who already has what’s his, or the terrified urge to thrash and fight and kill, but Cub considers himself to be above both of those sets of base urges. He chooses what he wants to do for himself these days.

"O...kay??" Grian says, still seeming a bit off-balance. Chiming resonances of Scar's magic float around Grian in waves, it’s so completely, gratingly blatant to every one of Cub’s senses. As if they’re flaunting it in his face.

"I'm disappointed in you." Cub says, the thought manifesting before he can consider that it's a bad idea to so clearly tip his hand, just in case Scar has been in any way discreet about him. Doubtful.

"Ah. Right." Grian nods, before taking the initiative to take a step back himself. "I uh. Hope he didn't do anything... too," Grian gestures vaguely. "About it. He insisted on handling things himself."

Cub watches Grian suspiciously. "He’s been very... Scar." It's a nothing statement on the surface, but it's also a telling statement. It would be all too easy for his summoner to make him not Scar-like.

"Oh good, I think." Grian nods. "If there's anything I can do...?"

You won't. Cub curbs the thought before he can speak it this time.

"You've done more than enough already." Cub snaps, and Grian at least has the good grace left in him to flinch at that.

"I guess, feel free to text me whenever? I don't want to be enemies with someone Scar cares about so much." Grian offers, shuffling his weight back and forth between his legs.

Too late. Another bitter thought not for voicing right now.

"Yeah, whatever." Cub rockets off without any further fanfare. He doesn't care about finishing his shopping anymore, he needs the four familiar walls of his base.

The main upshot of his meeting is that night when he slips into restless nightmares of Scar devouring his soul and offering up the husk of his body, now the summoner has a face to go with the multitude of eyes.

"You're dreaming again. Wake up." Scar's voice echoes with power, sweet and real, and Cub immediately follows it out of that horrorshow of a nightmare. He opens his eyes to the darkness of his own room, quickly sitting up in his bed.

Scar has perched himself on the side of the bed, swinging his feet and smiling at Cub. It could almost be one of any dozens of times he's had nightmares riffing on this theme, and Scar has drawn him out from it.

It's just that this time the feeling of his mind so easily molding to the warm tones of Scar's magic wakes him up more effectively than a dozen cold showers could.

"How long have you been there."

"Few minutes, not so long."

Scar could have said anything to him in his sleep. Scar could have crafted the nightmare itself-

"Why are you here." Cub ignores his groggy brain attempting to tangle itself in strangling possibilities. Nothing but lingering remnants of nightmare-terror to shake off.

"I miss you, Cub." Scar leans in close, pressing his face and body right into Cub's space. "I miss you every moment of every day. I miss us." Fervor tints his voice, sharp passion with a cutting edge.

"Scar you're at like, a ninety right now, I'm going to need you to tone it down." Cub stills in that way that speaks to him intentionally not allowing himself to fidget.

"Oh come on, a ninety has to be too high for just a little sentimental conversation." Scar leans back out of Cub's space again with a sigh. The fervor in his tone tapers off, replaced with a hint of bargaining. "Surely that's an eighty at most."

"You still shouldn't be here at an eighty either."

"But I want to be here." Scar’s eyes glint in the darkness, quick enough that they almost seem blue.

And there's just no arguing when Scar when he's being like that. Not if one wants to retain even a scrap of sanity. Cub's feeling like he's going to need his today, thank you very much.

"Fine, come here, I'm not getting up yet." Cub flops back onto the bed, leaving space that Scar immediately fills with himself. Cub's long since learned to take Scar being a cuddler in stride. It’s even nice on nights where his body wants more than his mind does, of other people.

Doesn’t hurt that Scar’s not the worst pillow out there.

Cub rests his head on Scar's shoulder, letting sentimentality win for just a single moment. It's so close to how they normally are when Scar gets in one of his cuddly-missing-Cub moods. Usually just brought on by both of them getting wrapped up in their own projects for a while. Or rarely after a nightmare catches one of them flatfooted.

"So you're letting a ninety into your bed?" Scar asks with a snicker, far too cheerful for the hour.

"A seventy, at most." Cub counters. Scar had calmed down and backed off when asked to, after all. Had waited for an invitation. It hadn’t been quite as bad as it had seemed. Cub doesn’t think about how he should still be fleeing from a seventy. This whole situation is upending his scale, sliding him down into boiling water one degree of excuses at a time.

Scar chuckles, and begins picking through Cub's hair. That's new. Cub isn't quite sure what to do with it, so he lets it happen. As Scar finds a rhythm it does become kind of soothing.

Cub snaps his fingers repeatedly.

Scar purrs, well aware that's Cub's redirect for when he feels the urge to click too strongly to simply suppress it. That doesn’t happen too often these days.

And then Scar chirps at him.

Cub tries to push himself up to look at Scar, but Scar pushes him back down. Scar makes that same sound again, and then a second chirp.

"Did you finally break up there?" Cub flicks Scar's temple. Scar swats at him, then goes right back to picking at his hair, moving and arranging and settling it.

"Can't break what's already broken-"

"False."

"So it's really just par for the course."

"If I didn't know, I'd have figured it out by now."

"But you do know. I know you met him." Scar's anxiety thrums high, packed into those few words.

"Does he really make those stupid noises?" Cub is far more interested in that than in talking about his brief encounter with Grian. The topic change seems to ease some of Scar’s tension, the shoulder under Cub’s cheek going back to a more pillow-like feel.

"You didn't hear it from me. And they're not stupid, they're cute."

Cub sighs, then shifts so he can run a hand through Scar's hair, in a normal-person kind of way. Scar clicks softly to him, noises Cub refuses to acknowledge the meanings of. Scar doesn't begrudge him that, never has.

"So you've gone and pack-bonded with him." Cub can't stop the part of his brain that is still turning over the whole problem.

"Mm, that's his fault, I say."

Cub's shoulders hunch in.

"No, no, wait, no, not like that- I just mean, like. He did it first. Maybe even before this? I think almost certainly before this. I mean, it's not pack for him, but it feels sorta like the same."

"You have got to stop tying yourself to people."

"And you have to stop isolating yourself from people."

A well-tread argument between them, distilled down to base elements after how many times they’ve gone over it before. Their own individual ways of dealing with what they were and what they are.

Well, what Cub is. What Scar isn't anymore.

It feels lopsided to not be a matched pair.

He wonders how long it will take him to get Scar to budge, or if he'll have to just do it and actually test his certainty that Scar will forgive him.

...he wonders, with Scar in this deep, what would be left of Scar if Cub forcibly broke this bond. Beyond that, what would his furious powerful known to be vindictive Watcher summoner do afterward, and would Scar beat him to it.

Scar's hand twitches, tangled in Cub’s hair but not pulling. The feeling of it draws Cub back out of his thoughts and into the current moment.

"Scar? Scar, hey Scar, come on-" Cub starts, only realizing now that he’s been subconsciously probing Scar’s magic with his own, looking for that bond to snip for the past couple minutes. Of course Scar knows that feeling, it’s impossible to forget.

Scar presses a hand to Cub's throat, enough to make it slightly harder to breathe, but not enough to put him in any danger. Scar’s eyes go in and out of focus, an internal fight that Cub isn’t privy to. It resolves with Scar narrowing his eyes at Cub, focused on him with intent but without frenzy.

Well, at least reality isn't cracking around them. Just making ominous creaking noises.

Cub chooses to go limp and explicitly non-aggressive under Scar's touch, trying to defuse the situation rather than escalate it. Scar studies him closely, eyes glinting with lilac light, and set with a coldly fae emotion. There are lines you don’t cross, not without consequence, and Cub had just wandered directly through one he should have known better about.

Scar clicks, demanding. Cub remains silent, snapping his fingers once.

Scar’s hand presses harder on his throat, a bare fraction short of strangling.

Another set of clicks from Scar, sharper.

Cub is disappointed in himself just a little for relenting this quickly and clicking back to Scar. He can't lie, in those sounds, they don't allow for it. He gives genuine apologies, and even worse, a hint of longing affection at the end, despite what Scar is doing.

It's just- This is a normal thing for a wronged vex to do, when the person who wronged them isn’t someone they could want dead-or-worse, is all. Demanding his due, his chosen reparations, as roughly as he needs to. Cub can’t hold it against him, not when he’s been on both sides of this with Scar before. And in an odd way, it does confirm that Scar still considers him dear enough to spare the kind of wicked or gruesome things they’ve done to those who’ve wronged them in the past, considers him someone who gets the intimacy of this minor power struggle and not an infinitely crueler fate.

Scar rumbles with a delighted purr as soon as Cub concedes to answering him back, his hand falling away from Cub’s neck and moving to loop around Cub and pull him closer. He’d really been asking for so little, after all, just a meaningful apology.

Cub hates the way he willingly tucks in close to that purr, tilting his head into Scar's hand as Scar shifts to petting his hair. Hates how easy it would be to spill more clicks from his throat and mouth. He doesn’t, but it’s closer than it should be.

He's built up all these walls around his Vex instincts, all but the strongest that he only indulges under very rare, very careful circumstances of having no other option. And here's Scar, tearing down half those walls with not even an hour's work.

Maybe a ninety was right after all.

"Cub, c'mon, I'm still a builder and terraformer. Don't make me drag you along to my zoo to help me work on it to prove it to you." Scar is back to pestering him at his factory, barely even days later.

"It seems like all you do lately is come bother me." Cub rolls his eyes.

"I wouldn't have to if you'd come see me at my train every now and again, you know. It’s really nice, the perspective is frankly some of my best work, and the interiors are all cozy and furnished."

"Yeah, sure, come to the hand-sculpted heart of your land here, where you can freely slip magic or drugs into my food or do who knows what to me, great idea." Cub deadpans with a withering look.

"Oh, Cub." Scar almost looks pityingly at him, and Cub barely has time to register that for the danger it is.

Cub slides his hand along toward an emergency button, knowing he’s too late but having to try regardless.

"Tsk. Unfocus." Scar slams him with a tsunami of caramel-sweet magic in his voice, scattering Cub's thoughts before he can get any defenses up. Some part of Cub thinks he should have expected his turn to come around after his own actions last time.

Cub's hands drop to his sides, but twitch as he tries to pull himself back together. Then Scar is there, stepping into his space, a hand gripping the back of his neck and voice low and sweet and dizzyingly full of enticing magic.

"You don't need any of those thoughts, I'll just take them." Scar's free hand swipes a thumb across Cub's forehead. A magnetic wipe of the hard drive, a sensory trigger he only trusts Scar with, used when Cub is clawingly desperate and unable to deny his Vex nature without it beginning to bleed the life out of him one chunk of damage at a time.

Again and again, Scar's thumb swipes across his forehead, a tender touch, each pass dulling his thoughts, quieting his worries, sinking him into the bliss of letting go. Reminding him that all he has to do is obey and be good, nothing else matters.

"Oh, wonderful, you remembered so perfectly for me. So good for me." Scar's praise lights up every nerve in him, every heady chemical cocktail for bliss flooding his body at full blast to drown him even further.

Breaking him down, tearing away Cub until all that's left is this needy thing in his skin. The worst of it is how good being broken down to his base elements feels. Every time, the relief of the process is without compare. The resulting quiet and peace of is unparalleled.

Scar presses a kiss to his forehead, locking in that state.

"You can listen for me, can't you?" Scar murmurs, cupping Cub's cheek with one hand, and the back of his neck with the other. Tenderly holding him steady.

Cub manages a nod, because his tongue is too clumsy and thick right now to spill promises to listen and obey and drink in every word he's given.

"Good boy." Scar smiles, somehow wringing impossibly more joy out of him at having pleased Scar. Cub shudders in Scar's hold, pleasure overwhelming his senses again, too much and too perfect and everything he could ever need.

"I just need you to remember this experience. Remind yourself of it, now and again. Can you do that for me?"

Cub absorbs the command, words radiant with pure power as Scar speaks. He holds it easily, encapsulates this perfect adoring empty obedient feeling, and sets it to surface in his mind intermittently. Locks it in place so his conscious mind won't be able to touch it. No one but Scar has that key. He nods when it's finished.

"Wonderful. You're so good for me, dear pack-mate. So sweet, so obedient, so good. So useful to me." Scar knows every piece of praise that will fuzz out even the tiniest bits of his brain that are left in this state. Every last one of them laser targeted to him, learned over their years together. Scar has become an expert at loosening that noose their natures holds on them, honed his skills for Cub as much as Cub had honed his own for Scar in return.

Cub loses track of everything, drifting in the peace that only his fully quieted brain can bring. It's been too long. How has he gone so long without this? His magic unwinds tight coil after tight coil, settling content in the understanding that he’s in his rightful place and it doesn’t need to strangle the life out of him to get him back here.

Eventually, he feels the swipe of a thumb across his forehead again, going in the opposite direction. Scar's other hand has moved from his neck to holding his wrist.

"I give you your thoughts back, whole and entire. I call you back to me by name, Cub. Load back up for me." Scar's voice is softer, fonder. No longer commanding.

Cub grips Scar's wrist in return, needing the steadiness as his thoughts pull their way free of sugary snowdrifts, filing themselves away back in the correct shelves.

"Focus, Cub." Scar's voice encourages him, guiding him back as it always does.

Running through the past… however long, Cub can place his own memories right up until Scar's thumb on his forehead, then the whole thing loses cohesion in a fog of bliss. Fuck.

Quiet terror turns into icicles stabbing into every juncture of his spine, and he trembles in Scar's grip. He has no idea what Scar did to him.

Scar's hand moves back to cupping his cheek.

"Hey, hey, it's alright. You're still here. You're still you, still Cub. Just breathe," Scar soothes, and Cub hates that he leans into it. Into the very hands that undid him. But... he needs comfort after being undone. He always has. His grasp on his self-control is too tight to handle having it stripped away like that without gentle affirmations afterward, which Scar knows as clearly as he does himself.

Scar was the only person he trusted to give him that comfort. His body still trusts Scar.

"What-" He forces out a shaky word.

"I just needed to make a point." Scar says, as if it were that simple. "I know you have some kinda cameras in here. I left you with one teensy tiny suggestion, and you can watch the footage to see what it is without being further effected by it." Scar's magic permeates that last bit, sealing it into a binding promise.

The relief Cub feels to have that protection for when he goes to watch the footage is humiliating. Because he will go look. He would have even without Scar's promise. He has his own ways to try to make it safer. But Scar's word is binding and absolute. It won't change anything to hear whatever he was told again.

"You took advantage of my responses to you." Cub says, wishing he could feel betrayed. Maybe the feeling is eclipsed by how he’s more betrayed by his own body and mind’s reactions than he is by Scar’s actions. He's doubting his every thought and feeling right now, frantically wondering if any of them are Scar's words and not himself. He’s not sure he’d be able to tell.

"No more than usual." Scar smiles, fey and unrepentant as he floats, arrogantly. "No more than agreed upon in our deal."

"You know that shouldn't apply during this."

"There's no stipulation saying it doesn't."

"I-"

"Do you wish to renegotiate the terms, dear Cub?" Scar practically purrs the words with a lick of hunger touching his voice.

Cub knows when to cut his losses. There is zero chance he comes out of a negotiation with better terms instead of worse, while Scar is like this. He shakes his head. He'll just have to... work with it.

If the suggestion is something he can't live with, the terms do dictate that he can get Scar to remove it.

Of course, that requires trusting Scar to take him under again.

"Well, if that is all, I will be seeing you later, Cub. Have fun~" Scar chuckles, and then he's gone, before Cub can even decide if he wants to protest or not.

Cub delays his viewing of the footage, even though he knows he should get it over with. He instead throws himself into tinkering with new designs for fireworks, letting the time roll over him.

That is, until he feels himself set down his tools and step away from the bench. It's a failsafe they'd imprinted deep into Cub's subconscious after a close call. If a suggestion activates while Cub is working on something that has any chance to be dangerous, it will delay, and be temporarily replaced with an order to disengage safely move somewhere without danger instead. More so that he doesn’t lose his work to an explosion or something, than for the inconvenience of his respawn. There's a different one for if he's around people other than just Scar when it activates, if it's anything they might notice.

They'd had a long time to build up and perfect this system, especially since they'd planned to use it for the rest of basically forever to keep themselves alive. And occasionally entertained. Really, what’s the point of having keys and backdoors to each other’s minds if they didn’t occasionally use it for mischief?

A perfect accident that they’d even stumbled into it in the first place, the first time Cub had gone into a frenzy at his magic turning on him. He’d frightened Scar into charming him, and even in the half-crazed daze, he’d realized it had helped. They’d fumbled their way into building a system for themselves from there.

The back of Cub's neck tingles, just from the feeling of his body moving on its own, at Scar's behest. He can only wait to see what will happen. He flops into a soft lounge chair.

Pleasure and emptiness muddy his mind.

And then Scar's voice.

Remember.

The word fills his entire mind, resonating and echoing and reverberating. Encompassing his whole being for those brief moments, spilling the whole lost memory of Scar taking control of him out into his mind’s eye, before it all fades away, and with it the feelings of emptiness and bliss fade as well.

What does not fade is the feeling that something molten-hot has been injected into his system. Cub knows that feeling is all his own, in the now. Restless heat that builds as he thinks about himself, helpless to resist Scar's words. That builds as he pulls out his tablet and calls up the camera footage.

Scar may pretend to know nothing of his lab setup, but cannot ever resist his own urge to show off. He gives himself away by playing to his audience too perfectly. Scar holds him precisely so that one camera tracks Scar's face, dominant and sharp, amused and fae. The other camera, of course, captures Cub without fail, every exact detail on display. The way his body takes a shock from the initial magic blow, and the way even in that dizzied state he looks to Scar for guidance. Looks to the man who had done that to him, and trusts him completely.

The camera gives him clear proof of how Scar's honeyed words drag him under, accented by tender touches. How he goes willingly. Blindly.

Scar uses every hard-earned trick to soothe his fears and take them away from him, hollowing him out until all of his reasons to fight his instincts are gone, the only way he can let himself indulge.

The heat runs thick in his veins as Scar praises him for dropping so well, for being so good.

Cub does his best to focus, hands clenching in the fabric of his labcoat.

A simple hallucination recurring with no specified schedule. By far not the worst command Scar could have left him with. Not even the worst Scar has left him with. They’ve done a lot of experimentation with each other’s minds over the years.

Sometimes Scar would weave incredibly complex and intricate self-reenforcing suggestions for him, with a skill and flair only Scar possessed. Things Scar had chosen to put all that effort into building purely for him. Sessions that had taken him so deep that they’d sustained Cub for years instead of months, lengthening the span of time he could hold tight to his own control without it actively harming him through his magic.

So yes, in comparison, this is... Minor. Tiny, even. It doesn't grow in intensity or trap him anywhere.

It just reminds you of who you belong to and their power over you.

Cub's breaths come in short pants, unknown emotion gripping his lungs.

It is going to be a long night.

"It has to go." It's barely a decent hour of the morning when Cub stumbles up to Scar's train, demand cutting through the quiet.

Scar's expression goes concerned, immediately standing from his peaceful breakfast, and moving over to Cub's side. He gently grips Cub's wrist, taking the pulse there. It's too slow, even though the disheveled look suggests one to think it should be too fast. How could it be fast, with Cub’s own mind practically dragging him in and out of the memory of that haze every couple hours? He can barely focus. He was lucky to manage flying here.

"Of course, come here. I have a private room." Cub allows himself to be led into the room of the train, some part of him grateful that Scar isn't just going to unwind him out in the open wilderness, where anyone could drop by.

"Too much. Point made. I get it." Cub forces out words as Scar gets him settled. He sees Scar setting up Cub’s phone, not even having felt Scar lift it off of him. He hadn't even had video evidence on his mind, having forgotten to even consider wanting any kind of proof of what Scar does to him here.

"Shh. Just drop." Scar gives Cub's arm a sharp yank forward as he speaks, and Cub is simply gone.

He hadn't even known himself he was quite that close to the brink, normally that technique wouldn't work until he'd been brought up and down a few times in rapid succession. Apparently less rapid succession also works. A distant part of him notes that for later, then dissolves. Receptive nothingness reigns supreme in Cub’s mind again.

"There you are. You did such a good job for me." Scar presses their foreheads together.

"Now I just need you to turn loose of that command I gave you. Give it back to me, please, nice and tidy. You did so wonderfully, a rousing success." Scar speaks warmly and kindly, efficient in his own winding way. Familiar with the pathways in Cub’s mind, and easily navigating them. The suggestion fades, falling away into the satisfaction of earned praise.

Scar pulls back to smile at him, then presses a hand gently over his eyes, pulling lightly downward. Cub's eyes close automatically. Scar guides Cub to a horizontal position, laying beside him, tucked close.

"Now just get some rest, my pack. My den is safe, I'm here. A little nap, and then you'll wake up being you again. Being Cub again." Scar nuzzles his cheek, clicking warmly. "Goodnight, Cub.”

Cub sleeps.

Slanting rays of sunlight through windows too pretty to be his own wake Cub. Scar snores atop him, having moved to drape heavy on Cub in his sleep.

Damn, he'd needed that nap. He couldn't get any real sleep the night before, not with that suggestion repeatedly waking him up.

Something tight in his paranoid thoughts loosens, at the way Scar had immediately taken his concern seriously. Had immediately undone the suggestion. Cub had severely underestimated the impact it would have on himself, he knows that now.

If Scar had left it for even a week, it might have broken him entirely.

Their deal, their way of codifying this thing made out of the raw edges of submission and control and instinct, their way protecting one another, means Scar couldn't go back on removing it if Cub asked, but he could delay, or try to play with Cub, or work at convincing him he wants to keep it.

Or give him something new to replace it. Their games can go on for days like that.

He has a relatively clear memory of this session, he thinks. It was brief, and Scar had only taken him deep enough to remove the suggestion, not nearly as deep as he'd chosen to be when planting it. Cub will check his phone later, but for now he'll go with the theory that Scar just did right by him.

It helps Cub breathe a little easier.

"Sorry." Scar's voice drifts down to him, muffled. "Didn't think it would be that strong, or get that bad so fast."

Cub can't entirely blame Scar for that. It had been some part his own mind’s interpretation at pushing the suggestion so often. If it had been once a day, or even twice, he'd have lasted much longer. He doesn’t let himself think about the implications behind his mind’s choice.

"It's good now." Cub answers, finally. Scar made it right, that's what matters. What he's holding to.

"Are you? Good now?" Scar asks, finally looking at him. His expression is soft concern, almost shy, nothing sinister. And yet, something about it unsettles Cub in a way he cannot put his finger on.

"Yeah. Rested, clean, crushed to death, all good." Cub ruffles Scar's hair, making it messier than sleep already had.

"Good." Scar's relieved smile has something under it. Cub isn't sure what. Scar nuzzles his chest and then relaxes again. Cub tries to let that bothersome feeling that he’s missing something go.

"Mm. You did that in some part because Sneaky Reasons." Cub accuses, completely failing to let it go. He knows why Scar said he did the sudden drop, but the occasional glance and unreadable expression speak to Scar attempting to hide something from him.

Scar shrugs. Which isn't a lie, at least.

Cub pushes the thought around his head like worrying a loose tooth. If he could come up with any hypothesis for what the reason could be, it wouldn’t bother him so much.

He can’t.

“Tell me.” Cub demands.

Scar fidgets. He’ll break with another push right now, they both know that. He’d warn Cub off explicitly if he was unwilling to be pushed. This is just Cub’s last chance to turn back.

“Spill.” Cub presses ahead.

"It's not even that sneaky." Scar starts, unease evident in his tone. "It's just that you needed it, soon."

"I was doing fine." Cub immediately replies, almost automatic.

"It sneaks up on you, we know that. And I see it so much more clearly now." Scar murmurs. He's trying to shrink in on himself, which isn't going terribly well.

Cub sighs, moving his hands to precise positions on Scar's back. The correct little jabs, and Scar's wings unfurl.

"Thank you for telling me. I'm not mad. Can you explain more?" Cub speaks simply, his hands running over Scar's wings smoothly.

As much as they have rituals for Cub, they have scripts and rituals for Scar as well. His own set of keys to Scar's mind, which haven't been revoked. The invitation to let go is palpable, but not forceful. Scar is going to have to meet him halfway, here. That's really the only way you can ever truly catch Scar, at least half-willing.

Scar presses his wings into Cub's hands, meeting Cub's gaze properly. There's flecks of blue and purple in the green, turning them into some sort of oil-slick iridescent gem. More importantly, there's Scar in them, and Scar nods, letting his head settle back onto Cub. There’s trust in the motion, vulnerability.

"I was... worried." Scar says, still traces of hesitance in his voice.

"Good, keep going." Cub assures, letting his magic spill delicately into Scar's wings. Scar can't hold on to any tension when he does that, he knows.

"That you would be scared. Wouldn't ask me. That it'd hurt you. Or worse." Scar's voice is drifty now, letting his fears spill into the air without holding back.

"Worse?" Cub prompts.

"Worse," Scar nods. "Worried that you might join us out of desperation from having no one to turn to for that. Had to prove I was still safe for it. I can behave. I can help. I want to help you. I can wait." Scar nuzzles into him.

Cub lays there in mute shock. He'd expected any number of sinister or senseless reasons. Scar is very good at senseless reasons for the things he does.

Cub hadn't even come close to expecting Scar wanting to prevent him from caving out of desperation.

His hands keep up the familiar motion of tending to Scar's wings. Polishing them with his magic, and occasionally reaching inside of them to smooth a snarled bit of energy. It gives him time to think.

"You... really want me to come to you of my own accord." Cub says. A couple weeks ago he'd have said that would never happen, with full confidence. Today? He's not so certain. Unlikely still, but not impossible.

"We want you willing." Scar agrees, easily.

We.

"Why?"

"I can't lose you." Scar states it like a fact.

For all that Scar would probably forgive him for forcing an issue he believed in, Cub doesn't work that way. Something between them would be broken if Scar took that choice away from him, and they both know it. Scar can tease and cajole and argue, but Cub has to take that step himself.

Well, maybe they're not so entirely different at the core of their selves after all.

"Thank you." Cub presses a kiss to Scar's forehead. Scar needs a little bit of physical sentiment, when he's like this. "Go ahead and rest now, I'll think about what you've told me."

Scar nods, clicking content little sounds before drifting off to sleep again.

Cub lays there, awake, turning ideas over and over in his head, coming to no conclusions.

"Hey if you're gonna be busy with Cub for a while, I was thinking I might nip over and seduce Mumbo a bit." Grian opens with, while Scar and he are attempting to lever themselves out of their nest for the day.

"Ooooh? I did have an appointment with my charming fellow Cub, but you make quite the tempting counteroffer." Scar chuckles, scooting closer to Grian.

Grian shoves his hand in Scar's face, pushing him away. They’d be here all morning if he let Scar latch onto him again with that sort of tone in his voice.

"It's not an offer, you twit, it's me keeping busy because you're away so much." Mumbo is good company, and flustering him is an endless source of fun for Grian. And maybe his plan is also just a smidge to make Scar jealous. Grian is well capable of multitasking, thank you very much.

"I wish I could take you with me, my absolute angle. Alas, I think the shock might kill him on the spot. And who even knows where his respawn is, it would be a whole thing." Scar sighs with overdramatic wistfulness. Grian hasn’t decided yet if he’s going to strangle Scar for the new nickname or not.

Grian dresses himself, outright stealing one of Scar's shirts, another button-down. Scar immediately undoes the top button after Grian gets the second one done.

"I know. And honestly, I've probably been putting this off too long anyway, you know?" He’s felt a lot more confident lately, more ready to address lingering tensions and potentials that he might have let slide before.

Scar nods, mussing Grian's hair in that perfect artful way only his rough fingers know how to do so easily. He ghosts his hands over Grian’s shirt, subtle motions that change the way it hangs off of him to better accentuate his features. Little tucks to keep it all in place even with as active as Grian can get.

"Knock 'em dead, bud." Scar encourages warmly, once Grian's look is up to his standards of seduction. It occurs to Grian that the only jealousy he might get out of this is that he didn’t bring Scar along to watch. Well, he’ll consider that later, depending on how this goes.

"Always do." Grian flashes his most reckless grin, before taking off out their window. The wind will only add to his charm, Scar had made sure of that.

Even the ever-increasing impending feeling of the end of his world doesn't stop Cub's shop from needing to be stocked with fresh fireworks. They've been selling particularly well lately.

Ever since Scar and Grian got back.

Thankfully, he never runs into those two in there. He'd be ready to book it if he did, his own shop thrumming with willingness to hide and protect him.

What he runs into instead, is arguably worse.

Familiar magic that feels sickly-wrong is the first thing he's aware of. His curiosity keeps him from bolting, too used to suppressing the way his skin crawls around oddities he needs to know more about.

In the middle of that, he takes longer than he should to notice Mumbo. Generally all too awkward in his gangly limbs, today Mumbo is practically drifting, gliding through the shop with a dreamy expression on his face. He doesn't even seem to be shopping, so much as just listlessly circuiting around the room.

As if called here by the carefully cultivated subtle twist in the magic eddies here that beckons in those afflicted with magic related to Vex bonds, normally a lure for Scar or Cub themselves if something goes unexpectedly sideways.

When Cub looks sidelong at it, looks at the shape of the magic clearly, he can see the spider-silk cocoon of Vex-ish magic wrapped around Mumbo. The magic feels so similar to Scar's, like a good forgery that hardly even needs to try, but it isn't his. Cub knows the shape of Scar's handiwork too well.

Moreover, Cub knows with certainty that Scar would never intentionally leave a friend wandering in this state alone.

“Here, let me, you’ve got a little something-” Cub is speaking and moving before his mind fully catches up to him. He may not be as close to Mumbo himself, but he knows that Scar cares about Mumbo and that’s almost like close enough to the same thing.

Close enough to easily bring his magic to his hands as he brushes invisible cobwebs off of Mumbo’s suit. He thinks Scar would be proud of him for the way he palms some string out from his own inventory, as if he’d just pulled it off of Mumbo. He’d pretended a dozen times to fail that trick as Scar was determined to teach it to him, just to see Scar’s reactions.

Cub is extremely careful to clear away all the Vex magic except for the single alarm strand tied to Mumbo’s wrist. Cub doesn’t like leaving it, but he cannot risk alerting the summoner to his work being undone. This may not be Scar’s work, but practice with Scar’s works makes Cub a deft hand at altering this less refined work as well.

Mumbo blinks. “Huh. Thank you.” He smiles at Cub, clearly ignoring confusion setting in as his daze lifts. Like that’s a familiar sort of thing for Mumbo.

“No problem. You wanted some fireworks before heading home, yeah?” Cub’s hand rests steadily on Mumbo’s shoulder as he speaks. “You look kinda exhausted, dude, like you could use a nap before getting back to work.”

“You know what? I believe you may be correct.” Mumbo’s smile is easier this time, if a bit embarrassed.

Cub claps Mumbo’s shoulder once, before letting his hand drop. That should be enough to get Mumbo home safely so he can nap off the effects of the magic.

Mumbo has always been particularly easily influenced, hasn’t he?

“Right this way, I was just putting out some new stock that might interest you.” Cub leads Mumbo casually through the rest of the transaction, even giving him a bit of a discount, before sending him on his way.

Sleep won’t be coming for Cub tonight, so he swings by to bring home extra prototypes from his lab instead.

As predicted, instead of sleep, all Cub gets at home is a slow pressure buildup of festering anger and resentment. He knows that's dangerous, because he knows there will come a point that it eclipses his sense and self-preservation. That’s how it always goes.

He thinks about it, but he already can't quite grasp why that's a problem.

Another couple hours and Cub can't convince himself it's a bad idea to track Grian down and shake him roughly awake, dark and seething.

"Shut up. Shut up. If I planned to take a chunk out of you I would have already." Cub growls.

Grian stops shouting, focuses on him.

Cub waits.

When he's sure Scar isn't about to materialize to be a problem, he plows ahead.

"Look. I don't give a shit that you two have decided to do stupid mindgames with me. Whatever. I get it. I can take it. I'm not effected. I'll figure it out." Cub's voice is low and steady and so so calm.

Grian tries to protest, but Cub presses a hand over his mouth. He can't hurt Grian, Scar would know, but he's not letting Grian interrupt him, either.

If he were any worse with his hands, with his magic, it wouldn't work to shut Grian up, he can feel that. Honestly, as it is he doesn't think it'll last long.

"But. I draw the line at you using this to lead other Hermits, other people Scar cares about, into danger. I do not know if he can care right now, but he would. He will." Frost practically crackles in Cub’s level tone, the chill of something dark and meant to remain undisturbed.

And really, if he were in his right mind and not consumed by righteous fury, Cub would know it was fucking idiotic to attempt to dictate terms to a summoner. But...

But until now, Grian has been- How to put it? Remarkably still Grian-like about it all. Enough to lull Cub into this probably-false sense of security. Enough to let his indignation make a fool of him.

Grian scrabbles at Cub's arm, attempting to pry it off without clawing apart his flesh. He knows as much, because if Grian weren't being careful, his arm would be in tatters. He’s seen the damage those claws can do, and even if he hadn’t he’s heard Scar wax poetic about it enough times for the information to sink in.

"You can't just accuse- I've done nothing- You're delusional-" Grian manages to hiss out, his wings sharply drawn up and enough out to give him more bulk in the dark room

Cub drops his hand down from Grian's mouth once his ability to hold back Grian's talking by force of will runs out. Instead he presses in to corner Grian against the wall, and rests his hand on the glow below Grian's neck. The touch is a jarring twisting of the imagery of intimacy.

Most people wouldn't be able to do anything to such a powerfully imbued vex-bonding and blessed crystal.

Cub is not most people.

Cub has breathed deep of Scar's magic for years, he knows it better than his own blood. Cub has his own magic centered in his hands, his fingers, his claws. He lets the force of his magic creak as it presses against the gemstone where his fingertip rests on it, not damaging it.

Yet.

Grian's words die in a startled gargle. Cub takes the advantage, before fury can replace Grian's shock.

"You, of all people, were supposed to care about Mumbo." Cub wields the words like a scalpel, precise flicks of a tiny cutting edge, understated. "I do not care what you do behind closed doors, that's none of my business. What is my business is when you leave someone coated in active open Vex magic to wander the streets alone, ripe for the picking by anyone who they happen to run into. I will not be having that."

Grian's face wings tuck back tight against his head at the mention of Mumbo. He looks like he's trying not to hear Cub, but slowly horror creeps across his features. Good. He should be horrified at what he'd done, even if Cub had salvaged the situation without anyone getting hurt.

That's what Cub does, after all. He cleans up messes. Not the tedious physical ones, but the actionable tangles, things he can really dig his hands into. Other people's, his own, it doesn't really matter at this point. It's not charity, but it keeps him busy with interesting work. Gives him new things to study.

It keeps Scar happy. That used to be part of his job, keeping Scar happy.

Without thinking, instead of pushing his magic against the crystal, his magic twists to begin to pull the magic from it, coveting that tiny piece of Scar under his claws too much to let it go.

Wait. When had he let himself have claws?

Cub forces his fingers to blunt down to their usual stubby softness.

It's not as easy as it should be.

He does it regardless.

Grian whistles harshly, a warning note as clear as the hairs rising on the back of Cub's neck.

Cub brushes his thumb over the crystal, pushing his luck by touching it one last time, before finally drawing his hand back. He's not giving back that little fragment of Scar's magic he stole from it, but doing so hasn't damaged the thing. And he has no doubt Scar will charge it right back up again, the instant he returns from who knows what sleepover is keeping him away right now.

"Consider that to be the cost of fucking up. See that you do not do it again." Cub commands, his voice heavy with authority, but no magic.

Grian seethes, eyes filled with resentment and guilt both, face lit by mingled purple and blue.

Cub takes his leave, taking the blue light of his eyes with him as he goes. He stalks out, straight through a wall.

Later, he promises himself, he'll care about how close to the surface his Vex traits are getting again these days. He needs them right now. He needs their power, even when that power comes with risks.

Between the adrenaline crash and that tiny fragment of Scar's power pulsing gently in his palms, Cub's asleep before his head hits the pillow. He'll survive the night or he won't, it’s not his problem anymore.

In the morning he wakes to the sound of pacing in his room.

He really needs to get around to magic-blacklisting Scar from just showing up in his buildings. As it is, they currently still welcome Scar the same as Cub himself. Dangerous.

Cub pushes himself upright, not even bothering to pretend to sleep. More important to assess the situation, check Scar's mood.

Which seems... conflicted, as best Cub can tell from observing him. Which is probably as good as he can hope for right now. He'd done some spectacularly stupid things last night, after all. With the haze of roiling anger dissipated in morning’s light, he can at least admit that to himself.

He's lucky he's waking up as himself at all. He's pushing his luck, but it hasn't failed him yet.

"You're awful, you're really awful, you know that?" Scar doesn't stop his pacing when he addresses Cub, instead moving his hands up to pull at his own hair.

"Yeah, I noticed." Cub isn't going to bother to disagree with that one. Why fight the truth?

"You're going to tear me apart. Do you know how hard I'm trying here, Cub?" Scar's voice pitches up with distress.

"I do." Cub has been in close enough to Scar’s position before, in the awful juncture where chosen self tears against the core facts of his being. Not to mention, on top of that, Cub has been privy to Scar's issues regulating forever.

To most people, Scar appears to have no self restraint, and Cub can get why they would think that. A little mess, a little chaos, Scar brings it wherever he goes.

They think that because they have never seen or heard the kinds things inside Scar's head and heart that he keeps locked down. They say that because they don't know how easy it would be for Scar to own this entire world, not in name, but in truth of power. He and Scar had done it once, very nearly. Just to know that they could.

There's a reason Cub has never objected to Scar being taken for the Games. Red life has always been a catharsis for Scar, a true moment to let loose and be all of himself, the bright and the dark alike. It's not something Cub needs. It is something Scar needs.

It works.

Scar rips out a chunk of hair. Cub is out of the bed before he can think about moving, reaching out and taking Scar's hands in his own. Radiating power from his fingertips not to force control, but to offer comfort. To soothe pain.

"That's a bad habit." Cub chides, lightly.

"You're a bad habit." Scar retorts, and Cub smiles at the nonsense of it.

"You do keep coming back to me." Cub pulls Scar toward the bed. He refuses to pile it high with pillows and blankets, but it's still more comfortable than standing here.

Scar will only wind himself up with more pacing, not calm himself down.

Scar puts up token resistance, but allows Cub to manhandle him onto the bed, pressing Scar down and laying on him. The weight of a body helps keep Scar inside his own skin.

It's all too easy to fall back into the learned steps of taking care of Scar, when Scar's upset like this. When he caused it.

"You're doing good. As good as you can right now. I appreciate it." Cub assures Scar.

Scar nuzzles into him, drinking in the comfort. It doesn't have that same ravenous edge it usually does, but nevertheless Scar relaxes under him.

"I hate that I get why you did it." Scar murmurs, voice hoarse.

"You care about Mumbo too." Cub reminds Scar, because he knows everything else is hard to remember when your mind is filled with the howling that someone has upset your summoner. Threatened them, even. Stolen from them.

Scar nods.

"Fixing this can help prove he is how you say he is." Cub offers, conceding a tiny inch of ground in their tug of war, to try to ease Scar's mind.

"He didn't know what he was doing. You know how Mumbo is, pliant to a fault, especially for him, he didn't know it was anything different than usual." Scar sounds like he believes that, at least. Cub is still deciding how convinced he is.

"If he didn't know, then you're going to have to teach him. If he cares about people still the way you say he does, he should be willing to learn, right?"

Scar whines, and Cub squeezes his hands, not letting him pick at his own skin. "I want to want to make this simple." Scar pleads.

"You want to do this right." Cub replies, simply. He doesn't think there is a right way to do this, but he knows Scar thinks there is. And it's that tenuous thread of Scar's ideas that is giving him the breathing room he's trying to use to plan. Losing it would be devastating, would be death in all but body.

He could curse the way that thought makes his heart pound.

Cub avoids wondering if he'd give himself over to that idea, if he were the only one on the line. As it is, that's a moot point, because Scar's life depends on him holding on.

He can't help but still think that Scar is only being allowed to be Scar to lure him in. If Cub gave in, then they'd probably both be hollowed out, filled with whatever their summoner finds most pleasing.

Would the other Hermits notice? Would they care? Would they think it's some temporary game, like so many things were in the past? Would their summoner collect more people after them?

Obviously the others couldn't be bound in the same way as Vex are, but... Vex magic does have a great many creative uses in the hands of an imaginative mind. Scar would be a better weapon for that, but he operates best with a levelheaded shadow. Someone to support him, and to step in when showmanship goes to his head.

Granted, nothing much would go to either of their heads, if their summoner so chose.

Still, Cub's hands open some locks Scar's voice skitters over without grip when on its own. He can open pathways for Scar to get inside people’s minds and magics, the tap of a single perfect wedge against a boulder.

They would be unstoppable. They nearly were, once, in a time when they had significantly less experience and power than they do now.

And it would only cost Cub everything he had ever held dear.

Cub lies to himself, that he's only picturing these scenarios so he can plan for how to thwart them.

He lies that it doesn't excite him to consider who among their friends they would choose to go after first. Would it be people their summoner wants to acquire? Easy targets?

Or could it be the dangers to their operation first? They came for Cub first out of everyone, after all, and he is the foremost threat.

But he's also someone Scar would want.

And he’s someone who boosts their power significantly.

So it's hard to tell what the angle is, which only leaves him more possibilities to imagine.

Cub cards his fingers through Scar's hair. This close to him, it's impossible not to feel the magnitude of power Scar is holding tucked inside of himself.

If they went toe to toe in sheer force of magic, Cub is not confident that he would outlast Scar.

But that isn't what they're doing. That’s not how they play this game.

Scar begins humming a soft tune, the melody inviting Cub to partake of his magic, and Cub- Cub thinks about refusing, he really does. He thinks about how it could easily be a trap. He knows Scar won’t be able to rest without doling out some sort of punishment for the mistreatment of his summoner, his nature and the depth of his bond won’t allow it.

Cub thinks about how hungry he is for the magic Scar is offering up to him freely.

Ultimately, he rationalizes to himself that he needs more power if he might end up going toe to toe with Scar, or even Grian. So he shouldn't turn his nose up at any opportunity. He can weather any incidental pain and turn the power to his own advantage. Scar has done that before, finding ways to sneak little advantages to Cub during retributions summoners pushed him to do. No summoner is forcing Scar this time, but he’s still Scar, for now.

In the end, Cub drinks down the raw sweet power offered to him with complete abandon, letting it suffuse warmly throughout his body. Scar's unfamiliar-familiar magic fills him and fills him and fills him, and not for a fraction of a second does Scar's remaining power waver or fade.

"You could have this all the time." Scar whispers, when he finishes humming.

Cub reaches out and cups Scar's cheek. Cub doesn't have his words right now, but it sends enough of the right message, to someone as sentimental as Scar.

Scar could offer him all the power in the many worlds, and if it cost him Scar, it would never sway him.

Being given a taste of that power is mindblowing, though. He feels confident that he could crack open the stars in the sky, right now, spill their glowing guts and gobble down their stinging-sweet cores. He could unweave the fabric of reality and look beneath it. He could slip through the spaces between nothings, letting himself blend with the deepest of darks until he’s one with every piece of it.

"You'll get used to it. The madness tastes good, it tastes so, so good." Scar speaks fervently, almost frenzied, that unreal magic thick in his voice, sounding half-lost in the power himself.

The entire world unfolds to shove itself abruptly and unrelentingly into every one of Cub's senses all at once, it's too much, too much, it's feeling every thread of the thin blanket, it's seeing every inch of his base, it's two heartbeats thudding jarringly out of sync, it's the taste of his own mouth, it's wings and wings and wings all the way down it's his mind plunging headfirst into the blocks of the wall, seeing every molecule that makes them up, the twitch and shuffle of atoms bursting against his eyes, against his mind. His body locks up too tight for him to even scream from the overwhelm of it all.

And then the singular only thing it is, is Scar's hand over his eyes. Just that, and Cub leans gratefully into the blessed relief from everything.

"I know, I know. Acclimating hurts a little, the stretch and burn in the mind. It becomes sweet, it becomes thrilling." Scar soothes him, crooning affectionate words.

The room doesn't feel real. It feels like an empty façade of hollow bits, bumping against one another. The only real thing is Scar's voice, and without it, he'd drown.

"I know you can take it, you're doing so good for me, Cub." Scar praises, adoringly.

Cub feels himself whine, but he doesn't hear it, blood rushing too loudly inside of himself. He can't get anything into his lungs to say something proper, he can't breathe. He struggles weakly to find breath, but doesn’t dare risk dislodging Scar’s hand from over his eyes by moving too much.

Scar's lips seal over his, and Cub gasps in sweet air pushed from Scar's lungs to his own.

Slowly, so slowly, the remainder of the world crashing riotously against his senses muffles, falling away.

Cub gulps down more air, faster. A distant part of his mind knows he's freely inviting Scar's charms into his senses, letting Scar twist his very ability to interact with the world...

It's worth it right now, it's worth anything in this moment, to stop feeling like he's a paper façade of himself, folded in half and so close to tearing along the perforated line.

His body doesn't know how to stop trusting Scar, especially when his mind can't focus on anything. He clings, breathing in cotton candy that turns poisonous sickly-sweet, that muffles his brain further, beyond what it'd need for just soothing his senses.

"Guess I'm still selfish, huh Cub?" Scar's words resonate like they come from inside his own head, instead of from the lips just pulling away from his own.

Fingers card through his hair, tender and kind.

"I just want you back so badly, let me pretend for a little bit, please." It's a little late to be asking, but Scar does anyway.

With his brain offline and unavailable to give him reason to, it's impossible to fight that plea. Cub gives himself over into Scar's hands, to the bond they’d forged for themselves while taking care of one another. He wants so badly to believe that bond still means something, that Scar hasn't left him behind.

"It's okay, it's okay now, I've got you. You did so good, you did amazin'ly. I knew you could take it, your mind is flexible like mine, for all you try to hide it. You'll get it, just give it some time to settle." Scar keeps talking, honey pouring over Cub's brain and down his spine, dripping lazily from his ribs. It makes everything slow and sweet and good, loosens any tightness before it can even start to form again.

"Sometimes it has to hurt a little before it's good, you understand that. Break a bone to set it. But I won't break you. No, no, I won't, I'll be gentle, I'll take it slow. You can stretch without breaking, once you do, the high is like nothing else. You’ll be doing amazing things with it in no time. After a little nap, of course." Scar is curled around and inside every inch of him, every molecule, cradled and safe.

For a single crystal clear moment, Cub sees the image a cloak woven out of spider-silk wrapped all around himself, weaving into himself and dissipating into threads of his own blue. He understands in that instant, exactly how dangerous this new strain of hybrid Watcher-Vex magic is, as it thrums in his veins and re-writes his understanding of what's even possible.

He wants-

Scar kisses his temple, and the image is gone, lost to him. From there Cub understands nothing but safe hands holding him and kind lips on his cheek and syrupy bliss that goes on forever and ever and ever.

It's not the kind of forever that lasts, though, and an impossible amount of time later, late-day sunlight falls on Cub, making him realize he can realize things at all again. His thoughts move slowly, but they move.

Underneath him, Scar purrs and clings to him, content and relaxed. Around them, the world doesn't feel so oppressive on Cub’s senses anymore. He can see a normal amount of it, take it in without it all crumbling fractally around him.

Some part of him knows, if he were to do it again, it would feel better, sharper, less overwhelming. He would be able to grasp that power, start shaping it. Overall, as awfully overwhelming as it had been in the moment, he’d still consider just that experience to be getting off lightly considering Scar’s devotion and motivation with his current summoner.

As it stands, Cub’s body is still thrumming with power, but it's all been converted during his nap into his own magic to store. His magic understands the shape of it now, even if his mind hasn't quite caught up yet on how to process the senses it gives.

His fingers itch with the curiosity of the potential of what he could do with that magic, if it were his. The things he could discover would be unrivaled-

He has to remind himself that the cost of that power is giving up his ability to choose what he does with it at all. It's a less convincing argument than he's used to it being, but it takes the edge off.

It's only when his tail swishes that he realizes that his whole body had shifted, probably in an attempt to bear the magic he'd so greedily taken. Vex organs handle it better, and with those come the claws and fangs and tail and wings that mark him for what he inescapably is.

It's been so long since he'd let his wings out. Long enough for many people to forget, or never have seen them, or to assume they were some sort of trick or hologram. Long enough that he doesn't have to force himself to ignore their absence in the mirror anymore.

He keeps his own wings neater, more whole, than Scar does. He likes them orderly and almost purely geometric. He likes them.

He has such a hard time putting them away. It's why he doesn't indulge in taking them out unless the situation is worth it. He supposes lessening the strain on his sanity caused by ingesting something not too far off of pure Watcher magic probably counts as being worth it.

While he can pull his claws back and discard his fangs with ease, settle his skin and make his tail curl up into nothingness, the wings linger. Instead of the struggle of pulling them in, he makes the impulse decision to instead illusion them invisible.

No one has to know that he wants them out for a little longer.

Well, no one but Scar. Their casual, passive illusions simply don't register to one another.

But he can work with this. If Scar thinks he's come away from this with an inch of victory, it'll make him want to keep playing, keep him from getting impatient or bored.

If Cub thinks of it as only giving the tactical illusion of losing ground, he doesn’t have to think too hard about the reality of it.

Scar's teeth needle very carefully at Cub's forearm, not drawing blood, but gnawing as much as they can short of that. At this point Cub doesn’t even bother getting tense or so much as stopping his tinkering when Scar shows up again to join him while he’s working. One doesn’t get upset with a cloud for casting a shadow, it’s just nature and physics. Scar continues to be in his orbit, as he ever is.

"Are you seriously- Are you seriously teething again?" He raises an eyebrow.

"Cub." Scar whines pathetically, not even taking his mouth off of Cub's arm to do so.

"This is not selling your point very well, I had my rodeo with that, no thank you to round two."

"My teeth are fine, I just need to eat somebody so bad." Scar’s wings droop, a perfect picture of sorrow.

"You want to eat someone. You don't need to eat someone." Cub corrects, clinically.

"I need to, Cub. I need it. Like you need-"

"Shut up."

Scar gnaws for a few seconds in silence.

"We could take a hop and find someone easy-peasy. It'd be fun. It’d be exciting. It’d be so good." Scar tries fluttering his eyelashes and wings at Cub. His shirt has somehow mysteriously come undone, chest held at just the right angle that the inlaid gold catches the light. Cub wonders how many people that works on. Probably fewer than Scar claims, but certainly not none.

"Don't you have someone else to take you for walks." Cub replies, monotone.

"Ugh. He's bein' the same as you, all 'you don't need that' and 'we're not eating our friends on here' and 'you have legs today, find someone yourself'. No fun at all." Scar whines further, pitching his voice up to mimic Grian’s objections.

And- Well, okay, that does strike up an indignant feeling in Cub. His hands flex. Open. Closed. Open. Closed. Open. Closed. Clench.

Rationally, he knows Scar doesn't need this, Scar just likes the way it feeds his magic and gives him a thrill.

Irrationally, it pisses him off that Scar's summoner isn't helping him with this.

Back to rationally, maybe... Maybe if he helps Scar with this, it'll be the crack in that bond that he needs, for Scar to come back to him. They’re building back up their rapport, it has to sway Scar eventually.

Ugh. When he puts it like that it sounds like he's competing with Grian for Scar's affections. Gross.

Anyway, it's no contest, Cub knows he'd win any day of the week, especially if Grian weren't a filthy rotten cheater about it.

Cub sighs in resignation and Scar perks up right away.

“Thank you! You’re a rockstar, you’re the best of the best. Oh, oh, this is gonna be great!” Scar beams up at him, every wicked tooth on ravenously eager display.

If the enthusiasm is a little contagious, well, Scar’s too busy with his own excitement to call Cub out on it.

It hardly takes any time at all for Cub to settle his work and get ready to hop worlds with Scar. The process is too familiar to be anything but automatic and practiced. Another thing they have systems and rituals in place for, but this time more for fun than for their actual survival. Cub just thinks it’s nice for the setup to have a smooth and familiar shape.

It's not that they care, really, what the morality of the person they're going to eat is. That's not why they have a simple plan for weeding out half-decent folk from their hunting.

No, it's for two very sensible reasons.

One is the pure and simple practicality of the thing. People who scam and screw others over tend not to have people willing to go to bat for them, nor people willing to go looking for them at all if they don't show up on time somewhere, people who will care if they come back changed. Even the occasional admin who has noticed them will usually willingly turn a blind eye if the person they pick off is someone who makes a habit of just barely skirting the edge of the kind of assholery that an admin could actually reprimand. It doesn’t hurt that their meals tend to be significantly less unruly after respawning.

The second reason is because eating a deal-breaker oath-scorner tastes so much better. Betrayal tastes amazing.

So the plan goes as it always does, finding a popular hub during off-peak hours, and hanging around, doing a couple trades. See if anyone will bite for trying to scam them, with Scar's winning but head-empty smile and friendliness, backed by Cub being as awkward and slow as he possibly can nearby. Not difficult roles for either of them.

Rinse and repeat over as many hubs as they need to in order to hook someone.

Sometimes they even reward people, for making good deals with them, for turning down an offer where they 'accidentally' offered too much, or for driving a hard but fair bargain with them. Leaning into the power of those deals, handing out those small gifts, it heightens the anticipation, the tension. The magic around them builds in invisible swirls and eddies, only visible to vex eyes.

Now and again they meet the gaze of others who can clearly see it. Thus far none have been interested or bold enough to approach them directly about it, but those times are usually when an admin comes around to check on them later.

Scar's flow of words easily grease those interactions, carefully kept free of any overt influencing magic, but packed full of his own personal charm. Scar sometimes even makes casual friends with them, exchanging chat info or handing out a business card in case those poor overworked admins run into any untouchable troublemakers. Still, in the end, they are always found to be on the up and up, and left to their business.

They behave the role of perfectly polite guests and traders, right up until the moment they’ve been seeking finds them.

A broken deal sings hunt in their veins, and the hardest part is herding their prey somewhere isolated before they partake in their living feast. Vex charms ensure their prey won’t fight back strongly enough to escape and won’t remember a thing when they respawn, and sometimes they take even more from the mind if they feel particularly slighted by the actions of their meal.

The part that surprises Cub the most is how easy it is to fall back into that rhythm and flow with Scar. How much it feels like nothing has changed, like there’s no unspoken barrier between them.

Scar is always there at his fingertips, ready with a bright smile and a sweet word, and he is always the grounding shadow at Scar's side, ready to take action while Scar spins sweet spells. They don't even have to speak to one another to know every step of this dance.

Cub ignores the way that the color of Scar's magic no longer rings as off to him and just lets himself bask in the reaffirmed connection between them. Normally he would fight to keep tighter control on his own Vex traits and magic, but today is not for that. Today is for tightening his bond with Scar. That is worth a great many risks to him, if it can help him free Scar.

In his theories, the power they get from gorging themselves on the blood and flesh of the living is less about eating someone and more about punishing those who trespass over the customs and deals that twine so tightly with vex magic. But, well, Scar does get quite enthusiastic about the eating someone part, so who is Cub to turn his nose up? A meal is a meal, they’re all meat in the end.

“You’re going soft, letting me get to the best organs first.” Scar teases Cub with a giggle, after they finish off their meal and are left to themselves finally.

Cub flicks him with a little jolt of magic, before chuckling back. He’s too sated to care all that much about being teased. He rubs his bloodied cheek on Scar’s. Hell, he’s missed his pack. Missed being in each other’s back pocket, being up to mischief together. Missed how their magic sings as one, refreshed and renewed.

Scar purrs so loudly at him, and- How long has it been since he's seen Scar this happy? This vibrant? Certainly, not ever with previous summoners. Even the best of those times had been more manic, more frenzied. Had carried with it the feeling of Scar tearing the throat out of any fraction of joy he could reach and parading the scraps of it around in his bared teeth to spite the potential for despair wrapped around him.

This isn't that.

Simple as that, Cub knows it isn't. It's a whole new beast.

Compulsively, Cub turns his magic inward and double checks himself, making sure he's not being influenced by any external magic. He doesn't hide it from Scar, because frankly that would be next to impossible, so he might as well own it even though it's as good as a silent admission that he's wavering, dangled in front of Scar at his bloodthirstiest. He gets a sly side look from Scar, but no comment.

Nothing. His own magic is pulsing vibrantly under his skin, whispering with quiet ideas about wanting to be used more, about him wanting to be with his pack. The usual stuff he's been handling for years.

Cub tells himself it's worth it. That the shift of his Maybe from firm to soft upon seeing Scar’s vibrant joy is worth it, if this can get him a foot in the door to getting Scar out.

But some all too blunt part of him just won't shut up about how a foot in the door means stepping his own foot willingly over that threshhold.

"You're thinking too hard for food coma hours." Scar leans in and nuzzles his neck, before getting distracted with licking the blood off of it.

At least the distraction runs both ways, giving enough sensation to pull Cub out of his thoughts and back into his body. Into the moment. He runs a hand through Scar's hair, messy-slick with blood, and picks out the worst of the chunks.

"No food comas before we get home." Cub reminds Scar, finding he can string words back together again. Their illusions may hide them from most sights, but he doesn't want to have to explain this to anyone off-world with truesight. Showing up drenched in blood and dazed is thankfully not something terribly noteworthy on Hermitcraft, especially with enough room on the world that one might not run into anyone at all.

"But nap." Scar pouts, looking up at Cub with wet and soulful glowing eyes.

"Home." Cub replies sternly, giving a couple moments of hard stare with his electric blue overpowering Scar's lilac. He knows Scar isn't trying too hard, from how quickly it's over. Scar clicks deference as he concedes.

Cub stands, resisting the urge to lift off his feet into a hover, and pulls Scar along. Partway there, Scar apparently simply gets bored with the idea of getting to the appropriate exit point and the world warps around them without warning. Cub is still not used to that, all these new things Scar can do. He gets the impression not even Scar knows the full extent of it.

They tumble into Cub's bed, streaking it with viscera. Not the first time, and it won't be the la-

It's not the first time.

"Rude." Reflexive grouching from Cub, with no bite to it.

"Comfy." Scar squishes in close with Cub. "Den that smells like pack."

"Bed." Cub corrects him. Cub has to draw that line, regardless of how often his own mind refuses not to think of his bed as a den. Even though his magic sings contentment with Scar wanting to be here, Cub still has his limits, his self-control.

He needs that line in the sand to hold to right now.

What Scar needs to hold to is apparently him, which. No surprises there.

Cub is going to have to burn this entire bed when they wake up. Maybe his outfit too. It's not a big deal. Standard cleanup after one of their excursions, really.

"Stay." Cub demands. It's not a Command, not in the way that reaches inside of anyone to force the issue. It's just a word, just air in rippling compressions, just electricity firing off through meat to move the bellows.

"I'm here." Scar answers, quiet and earnest, fingers curled into the back of Cub's shirt.

For the first time in the month since Scar's returned, Cub honestly believes that.

He'd forgotten what it was like, to lay in his own bed fully aware and not have the constant background hum of suppressing unwanted or dangerous instincts going. For the moment all of his urges are sated. His vex instincts want nothing more complex than to lay here, savoring a feast's lethargy with his pack who finally feels real. He wants that too, a rare point of agreement.

Cub gathers Scar closer into his arms, getting a pleased hum from Scar. Cub doesn't subscribe to wishing he’d had more nights like this, back before Scar had been taken. There's no point. But he'll let himself have that narrow slice of hope that maybe they could make something normal out of how things are now.

He doesn't sleep a wink that night.

It's the best rest he's gotten in weeks.

Cub stops trying to avoid Grian.

Mind, this doesn't actually increase his interactions with Grian. He's not going out of his way or anything, and they'd honestly done fine barely interacting for months at a time before. The usual Hermit way of life.

Still, he knows Scar notices. It means something to Scar.

Cub’s world isn't going to stop narrowing down to just Scar Scar Scar until he's solved this problem, is it?

Speak of the devil himself.

As expected, Scar drops in a few days after their outing, showing up to watch him producing fireworks. Unsurprising, practically clockwork he could set his redstone by at this point.

No, the surprising part is that Scar has his hand tightly gripped with Grian’s, clearly pulling him along despite all of Grian’s very obvious reluctance and tense prickliness. Scar’s bright cheer is in no way reduced by this.

Cub’s cheer is also not reduced by this, in that he had no cheer before it and retains a null cheer value afterward as well. Mostly he’s wondering if he can get away with not looking up from his work until the summoner- Grian. He needs to think of him as Grian, at least to his face. Until Grian gets fed up and leaves.

Obviously it was a plan that would never work with Scar on a mission here, but it was a nice passing thought.

“Got time for a lunch break? I brought some scrum-diddly-umptious lunch boxes.” Scar breaks through Cub’s attempt at focusing with the chipper offer.

Grian looks like he would rather have his wings plucked.

“Sure, why not.” Cub agrees, in most part to spitefully extend the awkward situation for Grian. He satisfies himself with silently noticing that Grian looks appropriately mortified and perhaps even betrayed to not have the out of Cub refusing.

Cub knows that it’ll take a while from there before he’s is at a good stopping point for his work, so he lapses into silence to continue to that point more efficiently.

In his peripheral he vaguely notices Scar entertaining himself by taking Grian’s hand in both of his own, and articulating each of the joints in turn to make different gestures. It’s honestly a kind of nice change of pace from Cub having to make sure Scar has something to keep his hands occupied until Cub can pull himself out of what he’s doing. And it doubles as keeping Grian’s hands off of any levers and buttons Cub has in here. Wandering distractable unsupervised hands of all sorts tend to do poorly in Cub’s spaces.

“Roof?” Cub asks, by way of informing Scar he’s ready, a solid quarter hour after he’d last spoken.

Scar perks up immediately. “Exactly what I was thinkin’, yeah. Good breeze, good view, all that good stuff.” Scar takes Cub’s hand, going back to holding Grian’s hand with only one hand, moving to drag them both along. Cub lets it happen, almost surprised by the way Grian looks about as used to it as he himself is. Scar knows the pathways through the factory almost as well as Cub does, so Cub just lets himself enjoy the riot of colors they pass along the way.

Once they get up there, Scar of course breaks from the group to perch right on the edge of the roof.

“Get back here.” Grian rolls his eyes, tugging Scar back toward one of the raised stripes of colors criss-crossing the roof instead. They make for decent benches, and are significantly more Scar safe.

Scar gives the kind of pouty whine that says he doesn’t really mind, before letting himself be pushed to sit there. Cub watches the pair of them interacting. He hasn’t really had a chance to observe that directly thus far, it would have been too much of a risk to be near both at the same time.

Cub paces back and forth, parallel to the stripe they’re sitting on. He just needs to move around a bit after being as still as he gets when focused for so long. Grian steals several not-terribly-subtle glances at him, but when Scar pays it no mind seems to try to also tune it out.

Scar’s arm loops over Grian’s shoulders and there’s a faint flicker of magic before Scar has the lunch boxes in his hands. It would be very easy to mistake that for Scar pulling them out of his own inventory, but Cub knows better. He’d know better even without his Vex instincts leaving his skin crawling from it for a moment before Cub can shake it off.

Flicking his gaze to meeting Scar’s eyes, Cub is greeted with an impishly unrepentant shrug, confirming that Scar had known Cub would notice Scar pulling the meals out of Grian’s inventory as if it were the most casual thing in the world. As if it weren’t completely unhinged for a Vex to pull from their summoner’s inventory at will without a care in the world. Grian, meanwhile, has had absolutely no reaction to this, far too busy with stealing his pick of the lunchboxes.

“You know that one’s mine.” Scar admonishes Grian with a grin, while holding out one of the remaining boxes to offer to Cub. Cub takes it when he’s close enough and keeps up his steady pacing.

“It’s the one I want.” Grain counters unrepentantly, as if this gives him the full right to the lunchbox he’d taken. His head wings puff up and flutter, more than Cub usually sees them move.

Cub looks at the box in his hands. Stars have been drawn on it in teal glitter-glue, smooth and slightly squishy where he runs the pad of his thumb over them. It’s a soothing, a bit.

Scar and Grian are still bickering over something meaningless by the time Cub gets his walking out of his system, settling over to sit beside Scar. Scar doesn’t even look away from Grian when he reaches back to give Cub a single pat on the leg in fond acknowledgement, before needing his hand back for a particularly sharp gesture.

Cub opens the box. Little compartments of different foods look back up at him. Literally look, because Scar has given several of the foods some sorts of decorative eyes and ears. Cub would blame Grian for all the eyes, if Scar hadn’t already liked trying to do those little foods that looked like animals, though Scar’s patience rarely backed up his ambitions on that one.

It’s a little touching that Scar went out of his way to actually manage it for today. At the very least it speaks to how anxious Scar is for this meeting to leave a good impression. Cub doesn’t really get all the fuss and effort with food, with making it look fancy. He’d be perfectly fine eating the same simple food that eases his hunger and keeps up his healing day in and day out. But he knows this means something to Scar, so it means something to him, that Scar is putting in the extra effort.

“It tastes better with the webcaps.” Cub comments mildly, as he munches on the salad.

“See?! Exactly what I was saying!” Scar jolts with vehement gestures, ranting in vindicated tones of passion. “I told him, I was telling him, it’s just not the same without them!” Cub is pretty sure that wasn’t at all what the argument was about, actually, but he wasn’t paying enough attention to know for sure.

Grian looks absolutely scandalized.

While Grian is frozen in that stunned moment, Scar switches his own and Grian’s boxes victoriously. Cub snorts a half laugh and keeps eating.

The cacophony of Grian’s screeching and Scar’s laughter makes it almost-easy for this to be any other normal day relaxing with his friends.

Grian pounces on Scar, knocking him flat off the beam and onto the ground, while Scar treats the whole thing like a bear hug, locking his arms and trying to squeeze all the stuffing and air out of Grian in exchange. Cub peers down at them. Something in the shape of their movements makes his brows furrow.

“You’re moving wrong,” Cub speaks it as a fact, a mild oddity he’d noticed. He knows it like he knows the way his own back is held just slightly wrong, no matter how he tries to ignore his wings there.

Grian’s hackles go immediately up and his head wings pin back, “There’s nothing wrong with how Scar moves.” Grian doesn’t growl the words, but it’s a close thing.

“Yeah, duh, because I was talking to you.” Cub rolls his eyes.

“Excuse you?” Grian’s look shifts to both baffled and offended.

“I won’t.” Cub deadpans.

Scar snickers, and then nuzzles up into Grian’s neck. Grian’s indignation falters under the affection.

“I didn’t know you pay such close attention to Grian.” Scar’s eyes twinkle up mischievously at Cub from under Grian, where he’d ended up after Grian’s tackle. Scar’s arms remain locked tightly around Grian’s torso just barely below his wings, but Cub knows that grip is slightly too high for Scar’s usual comfort. The kind of shift done to avoid crushing something delicate while still looking casual.

“He’s not the only one being obvious about it.” Cub shrugs.

Grian squirms out of Scar’s hold, before deciding to just sit directly on Scar and ignore the pair. He leans, reaching over to pick up his food again, resuming eating out of Scar’s box while pointedly ruffling his wings, dislodging some feathers onto Scar. Scar does his best to sneakily steal bits of food out of the box whenever Grian is mildly distracted. Scar gets his fingers rapped for it multiple times, but his enthusiasm never abates, always waiting for the next moment to try again.

When no answers are forthcoming, Cub goes back to his own food. He amuses himself with occasionally tossing a piece to Scar, who snaps them up midair like he’s starving, a deeply dramatic ploy for pity that seems to have little effect on either of Scar’s current companions.

Despite the movements from Scar’s twisting and snapping rocking and shaking him, Grian keeps his balance and doesn’t reprimand Scar for being a rather poor seat.

The sun feels really nice on Cub’s wings, he thinks. He’d forgotten how nice, not tending to linger in it too long. The sun is just a lot, some days. Not today, though, thankfully.

Cub decides quietly to himself that lingering in moments like these could be alright. It’s surprisingly easy for him to breathe as Scar lifts Grian so Scar can settle himself in a sitting position with Grian on his lap. Scar’s chin slots into Grian’s hair and his arms loop around Grian’s waist, a comfortable fit that Grian doesn’t object to, instead leaning ever so slightly back into Scar. Their actions truly don’t feel like a play being put on for his sake, these easy moments between the pair and the casual invitation to bask in their radiance. The invitation to take part, in his own quiet and steady way.

Scar launches into an enthused rendition of a story Cub’s heard a thousand times before, a familiar comfort to round out the pleasantness of the day.

It’s not all that long before Cub takes the initiative to drop by Scar’s train, this time for nothing more than the company. A few days have passed since their lunch, since the fragile seeding of a sliver of optimism. Enough time spent alone in his own work that Cub feels the mild twinge toward companionship, and lets it carry him forward.

Scar takes the time to give Cub a tour of the area, happily chattering away about perspective and gradients and all the usual things that go in one ear and out the other untouched for Cub. Though he does manage to get Cub to tune back in for the lapis tree that glitters new and different among Scar’s other trees, surrounded by little redstone flowers that give off a soft glow. Those, Cub wants to study, and Scar promises him samples of them when it comes time to harvest.

Hours later into the visit, back inside the train, out of a comfortable silence that suddenly shifts less comfortable and more impending, Scar takes hold of Cub's hand. Cub shouldn't let him do that.

Cub lets him do that.

Scar takes it for granted that Cub won't fight back, and doesn't wait to pull Cub's arm close, splaying the fingers on his own chest, onto the skin over Scar’s heart, easily reached through the undone buttons of his shirt.

"You deserve to know." Scar says, softly. Cub knows that smile is one that Scar puts on when he doesn't want any sadness to show through. It's tantamount to an admission that Scar thinks this might break everything they’ve managed to build so far.

He pushes Cub's hand harder, pressing it into his own skin. If he doesn't stop soon, the skin will probably split- Scar's chest would give way before Cub's hand would. It’d potentially make for an interesting new scar there.

Scar's heart pumps loudly under his hand.

For a brief moment Cub loses his thoughts to imagining letting his claws out to sink into the flesh there, burrowing in and stealing back the heart that was stolen from him.

"Cub." Scar whispers his name, a hint of seriousness to it.

"Fine."

Cub has known what Scar wanted from him, and now he finally gives it, that little mental twist that makes his hand sink, intangible, into Scar's chest.

The heart is one of Scar's seats of power, and there's clearly something he wants Cub to analyze there.

Cub frowns, his fingers brushing against a cord of magic.

"That's not right." He says, squinting at Scar.

Scar doesn't seem to like hearing that, but Cub feels him breathe deep and let it go.

"This is your bond to him." The words from Cub are not a question.

Scar nods.

Cub's hands are instantly fully claws, testing one sharp edge against that cord.

Scar goes still, jaw locking closed. His throat bobs with a swallow. Terror dances in his eyes, too-wide.

Anyone else would think that means Scar had only just realized the situation he'd put himself in. Cub knows that couldn’t be further from the truth.

If Scar had found himself in this situation without thinking, Cub would already be laid out flat under Scar's words, Scar's terror yanking the reins.

No, Scar had quite obviously taken time beforehand to steel himself against this terror, to force himself to endure it silently. Scar had chosen to give Cub this extremely tempting opportunity. Whatever he wants Cub to figure out has clearly been deemed to be worth this risk in Scar’s opinion.

Cub is nothing if not terminally curious.

And he's already got a taste for something being wrong about the bond. It's not only the pure blue of Vex magic, nor is it at all the stupid purple of that vile Watcher working. It isn’t spider-silk.

Cub rubs the pad of his thumb over it. Scar's hands twitch. Cub ignores it.

"Red." He says, as he figures out the secondary color of it. It had been hard to pick out, from the rest of the crimson tides of the inside of Scar.

Scar nods, a carefully controlled motion when the rest of him is still as the grave.

"It isn't just a summoning bond." Cub muses aloud, his thoughts rumbling against one another.

Scar nods again, another tightly controlled motion.

Cub tests his claw against the bond again, and feels the faintest wisp of it fray. Scar's heart pounds right through his fist, and an answering terror-anger vibrates down the cord to Scar as if it were a network cable.

Scar fumbles for his phone, blindly sending a message without shifting his torso or head by even a micron of distance.

The anger under Cub's fingers builds, reaching a heat-mirage shimmer. But the cord doesn't slacken any, doesn't move at all.

Cub can guess that Scar was telling his summoner not to come. Probably reminding more than telling, given how short the message was. Cub wonders how long he'll play at listening. Grian was never good at being obedient, in Cub's experience. Though Scar spins a different tale of him, one painted in red and green and gold.

One that ends in blood and fire. The only way Scar would want his courting to go.

Cub slashes across the top of Scar's thigh with his free hand, hitting several nerve clusters that work overtime for Scar, but skipping the vital roads that would let him bleed out with any speed.

Cub tunes out Scar's momentary pained confusion and indignation, which fades quickly anyway because Scar knows that he's like this when he's on the scent of a theory.

No, what Cub is listening for is that distant vibration. Under his fingers, that cord resonates with shock and a frantic burst of panic, then a wave of clean energy. Shortly after, Scar's leg simply begins knitting itself back together, much the same as if he'd taken a potion. Which Scar clearly had not.

"I knew you'd be quick on the uptake." Scar smiles at Cub, plenty of practice making it easy for Scar to smooth out the wrinkles that pain tries to leave in his expression.

"You always did like using flattery that was true when trying to keep people from getting mad at you." Cub speaks coldly, calmly. Right now he has the power. Right now he has Scar's soulbond in his hand, and any wrong move on Scar's part or right move on Cub's part could end it.

"There's never been a greater lie than the truth, gets 'em every time." Scar closes his eyes, understanding that he's still in trouble. Understanding that the tightrope he's walking is fraying one strand at a time. Scar has clearly gone all-in on this final performance, with no safety net below.

"I hate him even more. That's your soul, he already tried claiming it once." Cub tries to put words to the rough feelings surging in him. The words don’t do them any justice at all.

"I can't." Scar lets the raw honesty of it roll off his tongue. Even Scar doesn’t seem to be certain how long that's been true, simply that it irrefutably is.

Cub swipes his free hand through the blood on Scar's legs, then holds his hand up in front of Scar's mouth. Scar immediately leans into it, unwilling or unable to stop himself from chasing that comfortingly simple taste of blood, even though the movement forward against Cub's hand in his chest saws one more tiny bit of the way through that cord.

Scar's tongue laps warm and eager against his fingers in silence for a bit.

"Beg." Cub orders, without magic.

Scar pulls back from Cub's fingers as if there were fingers in his hair dragging him.

"Please, Cub." Scar opens his eyes, shimmery and damp. "I'll be good. Please. I can. I will." The words have no art to them, Scar knows it hits Cub harder when he speaks shameless tumbling words. When Scar lets his desperation fill him up until any order is a good order and he'll do anything to please. And Cub needs Scar to be desperate enough, in order to be able to pull the unrefined honest truth out of him right now.

"Would you let me do it?" Cub asks, deadly serious.

Scar's breath catches and the struggling beast of panic claws inside Scar's chest-

Crack.

Cub clenches his fist, claws slicing clean through the soulbond, severing it.

Scar wails an agonized distraught mourning note that brands itself permanently into Cub's brain, eyes rolling back unseeing. Dozens of new eyes peel open on Scar’s skin with darting gazes, hundreds of wings writhing behind his back, his howl goes on impossibly long beyond all lung capacity.

Something that makes Cub's brain scream with wrongness unfolds itself into the room, taking up too much space, all of the air, even the air in Cub's lungs. Cub's hands are removed from Scar by unruly geometry that does not try very hard to be hands. His eyes are bleeding.

Scar is gone and Cub is alone.

Later, just once, Cub hears his voice. 'I guess the way it shakes out is that I forgive you but I can't trust you. Don't look for me.'

He never finds out if that was real, or his guilt-burdened imagination.

Scar never returns.

Cub is alone, waiting for an inevitable countdown to his death. There is no relief.

Crunch.

The world rushes in to reassert itself.

Scar is here, the cord under his claws is whole, Cub isn't alone.

Scar's eyes don't leave his, and he knows beyond doubt that Scar experienced that same fracture as well.

"Yes." Scar answers his question from a lifetime ago, simply, honestly. "I would." Scar bares his throat.

Another version of Cub, he thinks, would still do it regardless. Cub should do it regardless, he thinks.

Instead, Cub withdraws his no longer clawed hand from Scar's chest so very carefully, before reaching up to cradle Scar's cheeks. He brings Scar’s face down to press their foreheads together.

"I can't lose you." Cub whispers. It's pure weakness. Cub isn't sure he cares anymore.

Looking back, Cub would say that was the precise moment when his Maybe dissolved into a Yes. Everything else after is simply the details of his mind and body catching up to that fundamental reality.

The logic is simple, really.

Cub cannot lose Scar.

Cub will lose Scar if he breaks the bond.

Cub will lose himself and maybe Scar if he accepts it, but at least what’s left of them will be together.

It’s simple probability, to take the option with most chance of positive outcome, the only one with any chance of livable outcome.

Still, he doesn’t want to rush into it. He can’t just commit himself to this monumental action on a moment’s whim of weakness, or even on that clear simple logic. He needs time. He needs to make sure there’s nothing he’s missing.

One day waited, he starts with. A day to see if he still feels the same after sleep and meals and room to breathe.

A good thing, that one day, given that it reminds him there is another option, one he’s let himself forget about ever since it had gone dormant. A connection faded but not gone entirely.

Cub lets his body walk, thinking only of teal twinkling in silent darkness. His legs will take him where he needs to go. Down into the caverns, moving confidently with neither torch nor lantern to light his way.

The scent of the deep dark welcomes him like a home, engulfing him in familiar comfort. He closes his eyes, stepping out onto the thickest part of the glistening sculk. It knows him, and is in no rush to reach up to him. He knows it, and is in no rush to reach down to it.

Cub patiently takes the time to attune himself to the subtle flows of magic down here. Most people think of the magic in these places as weak on account of being barely detectable. Cub knows better. Sculk is slow, careful, and ever so patient. Its power runs deep under the still waters of the faint surface currents. It does not need flashy shows of power, especially not in its own domain. Cub can feel the glow around him pulse in time with his breathing, vines swaying in time with his heartbeat.

The deep dark whispers welcoming open arms to him, the extended offer of complete quiet oblivion, if only he will reach out to grasp it. In the depths of his soul he knows there would be no coming back from it this time, if he did. There would be nothing of Cub left to be rescued, just a willing mind and ready pair of hands subsumed in the will of the sculk.

He could choose this. He could spite the summoner, putting himself forever beyond their reach. Erasing what’s left of himself for this offer of peace and belonging and steady work. Relinquishing all the bonds he’s formed, the rituals he’s built, the entire self he’s eked out of a soul never meant to have one. Choosing to give up control on his own terms, to his own pick of masters.

Choosing.

Cub makes his choice.

“Thanks.” Cub’s voice is a bare whisper, not even loud enough to vibrate the air beyond his own personal space. He doesn’t have to explain any more than that, the sculk understands.

Cub turns and leaves. The sculk lets him, eternally patient.

At home he carefully scrubs his boots clean, like none of that ever happened.

Cub gives himself a further final forty-eight hours holed up alone after that to see if his decision wavers any. A reasonable amount of time to come to terms with the idea he is choosing to turn over his hard-won freedom into hands that have no reason to like him, he thinks.

When all forty eight agonizingly slow hours finish exactly, his rockets are already in hand, carrying him in a direct beeline to Scar. He has absolutely no further reason to delay it, now that his mind is made up and he’s done his due diligence.

“Yes.” Is all the greeting he gives, and Scar understands. He can tell from the wash of emotions that come over Scar’s expression, from the way Scar’s landscaping tools drop forgotten from his hands.

Scar brings him to Grian right away.

Cub closes his eyes, then decides to open them again. If this is going to end, he wants to see it through to the bitter final moments, learning every last thing he can about the process. He’s never had foreknowledge and calm to focus on it before, so he might be able to see something new.

The magic slips into Cub without warning, as he’d asked.

Despite accepting it, choosing it, taking that step himself, it is still a pitched struggle with himself to not fight off the summoning magic when he feels it attempting to take root in him. Too many times his instant reflex to fight it saved him, for him to have an easy time wrestling down the instinct. Cub doubles down on focusing to open gaps in his defenses, preferring that active participation over the thought of simply allowing the magic passively tear through his protections. Thankfully, as soon as the summoning magic has the slightest foothold handed to it, he doesn't have to fight anymore, it sweeps through him with such thundering force that nothing could resist it.

It unmakes Cub, down to base particles, and pulls him through a web of purple and void, to remake him as it pleases on the other side of the room.

As always, when arriving at a summoning, he still feels like himself, just with slightly different priorities. His Summoner and the old familiar braying urge to spill blood and be praised for it being the most prominent currently.

Next to him, his fellow vex is a shining presence. A comfort and an aspiration. After a moment that presence backs off and there's a sheep in front of him. His Summoner gestures with intent and he kills the creature with a flick of his wrist at the command. Minimal effort, minimal mess.

The sword in his hand is brand new, formed by the magic of his summoning as if it were an extension of himself. He'd not been sentimental like his fellow vex, choosing to destroy his old sword rather than repurpose it into his new life. He gets the feeling this one will be sticking around a lot longer, but it's not easy to consider the future or really think at all right now.

"Good vex." His Summoner speaks, and that familiar tide of all-consuming contentment rushes through him. It's a lot, honestly, stripping him bare of what few thoughts he’d gathered in favor of complete overwhelm of violent bliss.

But it does quiet those sharpened urges his summoning had slammed his brain with. Now he’s filled with the quiet sound of lapping waves as he sinks beneath a warm sea inside his own mind. He’s remarkably aware that he’s drowning, warm waves of magic and euphoria washing away every lingering trace of who he’d been. Stealing his breath and his thoughts, his self. It’s not the worst way to go. Certainly not as bad as he’d feared it would be. Almost gentle, his oblivion. Cleansing.

A hand on his wrist. His Summoner.

An arm around his waist. His fellow vex.

"Come back to us now. Come be Cub again."

The name, gifted back to him in his Summoner's voice, his command, sparks Cub's thoughts to race. The ocean inside his mind still cradles him, soothes him, but he's floating comfortably on the surface of it now, breathing. Thinking.

Scar's arm holds him steady as his legs try to give out under him at the weight of becoming a whole person again in just a couple moments.

Fuck. What the hell.

For all that Cub had chosen this, he hadn't truly expected them to go through with bringing him back from that brink.

He thinks Scar knows that, with the way Scar tucks his face into Cub's neck. Like Scar's only now letting himself realize how close he'd come to losing Cub to a Cub-shaped hollow void. That Cub had been willing to give up his entire self, to stay with him and see him happy.

"How are... you feeling?" His sum- Grian, asks, awkward as hell again. The confidence he’d shown during the summoning seems to have abandoned him now.

"Fuckin’ great, if I'm being honest." Cub answers, easily enough. He knows he should be scared or upset or any number of other things. But he's here, he made it out the other side of the summoning intact, and Scar's here, and there's so much magic thrumming inside of himself. Cub plans to be an outright unrepentant nuisance interrogating Grian about that later, certainly.

But overall, it feels good. He feels great. Like a weight off his shoulders. Like a danger looming over them for years now has finally passed for good. Like they get to live for real now, without the lingering certainty it would all be torn away with a single slip-up.

"Thank you. Thank you thank-" Scar sounds like he can't stop repeating those words, and Cub just reaches to ruffle his hair. Emotional dork. He knows he just has to let Scar get it out of his system, it's fine.

The hand still around his wrist leads Cub to a bed, and Cub pulls Scar along as well. He lets himself flop into the inviting softness, and feels two bodies curl into his sides as sleep claims him.

Cub end up in their den- their bed, as often as not these days. He doesn't consider it to be a problem.

He's pleased to have the casual and frequent proximity with Scar after so long at odds, and the thing he shares his skin with purrs delight in his mind to have proximity with their summoner. Being here makes it easy to appease both at once, calming his mind. And if he knows Scar likes having both of them curled around him, well, that’s a small bonus.

"Still that strong, huh?" Scar cards careful fingers through Cub’s hair and Cub hums in a way that doesn't disagree with Scar's words.

Scar presses a kiss to his forehead.

"At least you got him already broken in." Scar stage whispers, giggling.

"I'm pretty sure someone here should be offended and I think it might be me." Grian pipes up, appearing over Scar's shoulder.

"Oh come on, you super benefited from a practice round. You were way less freaked out about summon-bonding Cub." Scar bumps his cheek against Grian's.

“You’re gonna freak him out, Scar.” Cub warns, purely for smug points later when Scar inevitably ignores his warning. He knows already where this line of chatter goes, and Scar’s gleeful divergences from common morals.

“Nu-uh.” Scar says, eloquently.

Grian snorts.

“Anyway, he turned out to be a great summoner with like, barely any nudging at all.” Scar carries on, undaunted. “It’s a compliment.”

“Dude, people trying to be human, even if it’s a kind of pathetic-cute sort of trying, are way less casual about that kind of thing.” Cub informs Scar. Grian squawks in the background as Cub casually degrades his efforts at being humanly.

“Nah, it’s fine, he’s into it now. I think he kinda already was, but like, in a deny himself everything he enjoys kind of way.” Scar talks as if Grian isn’t right there, even though Scar is pressed cheek-to-neck with him. In fact, Scar takes the moment to kiss Grian's neck.

"Excuse you, I am very good at being human." Grian protests, indignant.

Cub levels him with a witheringly clinical look, which silently throws into sharp relief exactly how someone who truly was good at it would never think or say that.

"He's as human as he needs to be." Scar chimes in. "And he’s drop dead gorgeous when he gets all unknowable and space-breaky. One of these days I'm gonna bite the concept of righteous fury itself!"

Grian smushes his open palmed hand into Scar's face. "Not today you aren't."

"One day." Scar repeats, happily taking to gnawing at Grian's hand. Grian allows it, hardly even seeming to notice.

Cub lets the silence settle, he'd never realized there could be so much peace in this. Scar and Grian are so stupid together, true, but he doesn’t mind it as much as he’d thought he might. Still, right now he's waiting for Grian to crack. He’s sure-

"Okay come on you have to explain more than that-" Grian speaks into the silence as if the conversation hadn't stalled minutes ago. Cub wins his bet with himself.

"Do we~?" Scar trills.

"Yes." There's a testy tone in Grian's voice. It's not yet a Command, but it audibly inches closer to one as a threat. Not all that long ago ago, that would have had Cub tensing up, but it's becoming less scary by the day. Soon, he thinks, it might even invite that curl of warmth.

"Hmm, I dunno. What have you got to offe-"

Grian winds a hand into Scar's hair, and forcefully takes his lips with a kiss. Cub watches. Grian's fingers in Scar's hair pull just enough to make Scar whimper needily, and Scar strains against them to throw himself into kissing, desperate and with complete abandon.

Grian presses relentless bruising kiss after kiss onto Scar's lips, until Scar's gaze goes glossy and his lips hang open even when Grian pulls back to look. Seeming satisfied with what he sees, he turns away, facing Cub instead.

Grian pulls harshly on Scar's hair, dragging him to give Cub a better angle to see exactly how affection-drunk Scar is.

"I think that show is worth a bit of information." Grian addresses Cub, ignoring Scar entirely. Scar shivers, giving a soft gasp. Apparently, being treated like nothing more than a pretty thing for Grian to use to get what he wants is really doing it for him. Being useful is a hell of a drug for them, after all.

Cub considers Scar's expression. It truly is spectacular. He reaches up, brushing his thumb over Scar's lower lip. Scar lets his lips be parted, and slips his tongue out to lap at Cub's finger.

"What do you want to know?" Cub asks Grian, though his focus is still on Scar.

"He mentioned nudges, start there." Grian has learned by now, how to keep that commanding edge out of his tone when he wants to. Mostly when Cub or Scar obeying of their own volition is a more meaningful than automatic compliance would be.

Another thing Grian has learned, it seems, is how much Grian doesn’t know about what he’s gotten himself entangled in. Sure, Scar does his best to answer questions, no doubt, but even then Scar had left a good chunk of the remembering parts to Cub, learning enough to know how to take action and letting much of the rest fall by the wayside.

Cub doesn’t mind Grian’s questions, though. Even though he’d initially been bothered by them. Nowadays, Grian listens while studying him with those shrewd eyes, and usually manages to come up with interesting or at least relevant questions.

Granted, Grian hadn’t been too good at listening well at first, initially needing Scar to occasionally shush him when Cub’s word were slow to form and Grian’s additional questions were stepping on his thoughts. Grian was a quick enough study, though, already getting better at telling when Cub was quiet because he was putting a dissertation of words together versus quiet because he didn’t have anything further to say without prompting.

"To explain that, you have to understand more about the summoner and Vex bond. The things we've figured out with painstaking study." With too many close calls to ever quite rest comfortably. It’s still unreal to think about resting safely now.

"Then explain that." Grian's patience is getting shorter, Cub notes Grian’s fingers tapping against Scar's arm.

"Summoners generally have a choice of creating a Vex or bringing forth and binding one that already exists. Creating one is safer and easier, but they tend to be weaker. Binding one that already exists... Well, that is more of a high risk high reward sort of situation." Cub lectures dispassionately, pressing his thumb down on Scar's tongue. He wants to use a claw to split it right down the middle, and watch Grian kiss away the blood. Hm. A later consideration.

"So a lot of the ones we face are probably made bespoke, then?" Grian asks, thoughts obviously turning over in his brain. It’s still odd for Cub to have an attentive listener participate when he’s explaining one of his topics of study. He’s adapting to the change as well.

"Yeah. They go down with just a bit of fight because they're just like barely more than a bit of magic and intent stitched together. But if they outlive their summoner, or if a summoner is particularly powerful and chooses to discard them, or if they’re a human-Vex, then they might become available for someone else to summon. Well, if someone gets to them before they die from being unconnected." Cub speaks without emotional investment in the words, though he notices from the restless energy that Grian is feeling a whole lot of ways about them. The thing sharing his skin also has a lot of feelings about them, and that isn't Cub's problem either.

"Wait, back up-" Grian tries to stop Cub, eyes wide.

Scar whines with unease, showing himself to be not fully disassociated from the words around him.

"No. That conversation comes later." Cub refuses Grian firmly. They should talk about that when Scar is with them, anyway.

Grian looks to be about to protest again, but Cub just slides his finger further into Scar's mouth. It barely takes him the slightest press of magic through the pad of his thumb, before Scar is fully glazed over. Much better, the old memories won't haunt Scar, that deep. Scar's head lolls down and to the side, fully into Grian's support.

"Don't worry your handsome little head." Cub murmurs to Scar, before finally turning back to Grian and resuming his train of thought as if there’d been no interruption. "It takes a lot of power or a lot of luck to manage to summon a human-Vex, especially unwilling. Once that bond is formed, obligations and expectations are placed on both ends."

Grian doesn't look happy to have his question deferred, but he does look at Scar's soft expression with a sickeningly fond gaze. His hair-wings tip toward Cub, channeling the sounds to his ears, and showing continued attentiveness despite his gaze being elsewhere.

"If a summoner does not have the power or willingness to control and command their summoned Vex, well. That leaves what happens next in the Vex's hands instead of the summoner’s. Generally if they're lesser Vex, they'll simply eat and kill the summoner." The order of those words was deliberate. "If they're one of the more complex Vex, they might realize that they need a bond to survive, on some level. That's the best explanation we have for why some Vex would instead choose to simply use their magic to... adjust their summoner, to fit their needs." Cub watches Grian's reactions intently as he speaks.

For his part, Grian does take some time to mentally chew over the information, though he looks a bit like he bit into a dried morel. Leathery and odd and overwhelming in flavor, but not necessarily a dealbreaker in food.

"So the claim he made is that he... adjusted me, because I was not being a suitable summoner." Grian speaks careful words. Seeking understanding with a detachment Cub can't help but respect, a bit.

"Scar, shirt off." Cub orders, casually, at the same time as he presses a slowness and weakness charm into Scar's body. It results in Scar fighting a protracted battle through molasses, fingers clumsy as he struggles to undo his buttons, but entirely focused on his task. Cub enjoys the show.

Grian hums, taking the extra time and show in stride. It gives him more time to process.

"If you are like he said you are, then I'd guess you were more reluctant about the whole situation than he would like." Cub muses. It would be useful for Scar to be present in mind, to ask him about it, but Scar's occupied right now. So his guesses will have to do. He is very good at guessing about Scar.

"And he... changed my mind about that?" Grian still sounds wary.

"Mm. Possibly. Given his tactics with me, I highly doubt he just reached in there and rewired you to like anything you didn't before. His techniques tend more toward..." Cub considers his words. "Encouraging people to be more open to things they already had in them."

"I know he did... something to me, a few times. I don't have a super clear memory of it, though."

"Your loss. It's pretty hot." Cub shrugs, and Grian chokes on his own spit.

"You-!"

"Oh yeah, easy called shot. You've got a bit of a soft spot for when someone can keep up with you and push you around. Bit of a freak, summoner-wise." Cub chats amiably despite the words he’s saying, and in that moment it's crystal clear to see how close he and Scar are, carrying one another's mannerisms, when the moment calls for it.

"You can't just say-" Grian’s whole face radiates heat, and his head-wings are puffed to nearly triple their initial size.

"Scar, pin Grian down." Cub cuts Grian off with the command, delivered with all the casualness of ordering takeout. He takes back his magic dulling Scar's movements.

"Cu-"

Scar turns, quicksilver-slick, levering his weight until Grian in pinned in place on the bed. Grian writhes as much as he can, which isn't much. Scar's eyes show no light of recognition or awareness.

“Oh, that does something for you, doesn’t it?” Cub croons the words, turning to face Grian, smiling in a perfect cold counterpoint to Scar’s warm bliss. “Trapped by him, your own Vex, while he’s blissfully unaware and obedient. Pinned in place, made to take anything my hands can spin. How fast do you think he can make you cry from the pleasure? How long can you last in the face of his unending devotion?”

Cub runs a hand through Scar's hair, very carefully using his claws to scratch Scar's scalp. Scar purrs, leaning slightly into the touch. Scar would never harm his summoner, even like this, but he’d be more than happy to give pleasure as directed. And there is so much that can be done with that.

"I can-"

"Scar, tell him to calm down." Cub punctuates his words with a little tug of Scar's hair, sending a shiver through Scar's whole body that Cub knows Grian can feel in every point of contact.

"Grian, calm down. Relax." The honey of Scar's voice, filled with that compelling magic, spills forth, pouring onto Grian.

It's such an extremely rare treat for Cub, to get to truly and clearly watch it take hold of someone else. And even then usually only ever someone they plan to dispose of, never someone Cub's had an actual interest in keeping around before.

Grian struggles, which only makes it more satisfying to watch each individual line of tension bleed out of him, no matter how he tries to cling to them. Tiny bubbles of anger and fear rise up and vanish as soon as they show on Grian's face.

Cub pulls himself away from Scar, so that he can cup Grian's cheek instead.

"Stay with me." Cub orders, not backing it up with magic. Just steady eye contact, demanding Grian focus on him. "Really feel the magic taking root. Think about it, about you being good for him, while he's being so perfectly obedient for me."

"Cub." Grian's voice wavers, even over just that one word.

"That's my name." Cub grins extra sharply, extra wickedly. "And it sounds so good on your lips. I wonder, has it occurred to you yet?"

Grian's eyes glint defiantly, and he manages to push out the word "Trap."

"Oh good, you are as clever as he gushes about." Cub pinches Grian's cheek with his claws, then licks the resulting drop of blood off of Scar's cheek. Scar sways, but his hold doesn't loosen any. "And I'd make the perfect trap for an inexperienced summoner, wouldn't I? Too appealing, too dangerous a target to remain loose, so much better to acquire me, place me inside your defenses instead of against them."

Grian's breaths rise and fall evenly, his heart running at a casual pace. Cub knows that feeling well, his body being the first to betray him as Scar's magic keeps it loose and relaxed, making it so hard to hold onto any panic in his mind. Not even little jolts of pain work for long.

"Me, whose touch he melts into so naturally. Me, who knows how to wield him, clean and sharp, to get whatever I want. And I have got what I want, haven't I? I have him. And I have a near-infinite wellspring of power." Cub leans down and kisses the droplet of blood on Grian's cheek, letting it stain his lips, but not tasting it.

Cub watches Grian's reactions intently, studying him. Little shivers run through Grian's body, unable to take root anywhere but leaving him flexing his toes or twisting his spine. Cub knows those motions as well. Pressing up into Scar's hold to feel the strength of it, testing it just to feel how secure it is, then the sighing relaxation into the hold.

"All you have to do is lay back and be a good little summoner for me. You will be good, won't you?" Cub purrs, just for a moment. He still doesn't particularly like doing so, but he knows it sells the moment, the image of a wicked beast, snapping its jaws shut around you.

"Won't." Grian flings the word out, defiant.

"Even better. You'll learn. We'll teach you, we have all of forever to get you right." Cub runs the pad of his thumb across the skin under Grian's eye. "We'll just have to start with planting the seeds of the right ideas in your sleepy head. What an intriguing garden you'll make in our hands."

Grian stills, in the way one instinctively does when feeling something dangerous against something vital. So his eyes are a seat of his magic. Good to know.

"Scar, put him to sleep." Cub orders, after stealing a kiss that paints Scar's lips red as well.

"Sleep my angle, sleep Grian." The words tumble from Scar's lips, crystal clear droplets of sugar-spun sweetness that melt into Grian's mind before anything can stop them.

Grian, of course, fights it. Inside, Cub is impressed with each second that Grian manages to remain conscious after the command.

"We'll be seeing you in your dreams." Cub promises, his smile hungry as Grian's eyelids finally win the fight to close.

Cub's wake up call in the morning is pointy knees digging into either side of his ribs and curved claws curled hard into the flesh of his shoulders. He's laid back flat on the bed, and he can feel rough hands holding down his own hands, warm lips pressing against his wrists in little kisses.

Honestly, he could get used to waking up like this.

"What the hell was that." Grian's voice comes from above him, aggressive. Cub doesn't open his eyes yet, enjoying imagining the fury painted there. Delectable.

"A called shot." Cub repeats with lazy confidence.

Grian digs in his claws further and Cub gives a sweet little sigh. Scar stops kissing his wrists, moving to nose at the blood beginning to ooze around Grian's claws instead.

"You can't just- Just- What did you do?" Grian demands.

"I think you'll find I can, I did, and I will again. When I feel like it." Cub finally opens his eyes, meeting Grian's gaze. Silently challenging him to do anything about it, if he really disliked it.

"He likes to play." Scar volunteers, apparently not too distracted by his licking at Cub's blood to track the conversation.

"You can't just call that play-" Grian protests.

"It's as good a word for it as any. Though test might also work. Cub likes testing things." Scar muses back at Grian's protest.

Grian's mouth snaps shut again, and he studies Cub. So that's what Scar had meant by particularly interesting bug, Cub can see just a hint of it in Grian’s gaze. Yeah, he can work with that. Cub doesn't shy away.

"You passed, with flying colors." Cub grins, smugly. Just for the reaction.

Grian hisses at him.

"Spicy." Okay, Cub is definitely seeing where Scar is coming from on the riling Grian up front. Very amusing. Scar giggles, still holding Cub's hands down. Cub wonders if that was an order, or Scar’s own contribution.

"...if I threaten to make you not able to do that again, you're going to get off on it, aren't you?" Grian’s tone has shifted to apprehension.

"Yep! Now you're getting it." Cub beams up at Grian. He’d have made finger guns if he could.

"I have the worst Vex in every single possible world." Grian slumps, mushing his face into a clean spot on Cub’s shoulder to muffle a groan.

"And you love us!" Scar chimes in.

"You didn't tell me he's into this stuff-" Grian throws Scar a harsh look.

"In my defense, you didn't ask." Scar sounds unrepentant.

"Why would I ever even think to ask that?" Grian’s voice hops almost half an octave up.

"Because you're matchy-matchy with him?" Scar counters like it’s the most obvious and natural thing to him in the world.

Cub half-chokes on a bark of laughter. Grian lunges to actual-choke Scar, his claws carelessly tearing free of Cub's skin.

Free show. Sweet. Cub’s morning keeps getting better and better.

“I told you so.” Cub tells Scar.

Scar answers with a choking gurgle that Cub chooses to interpret as total agreement.

“Your cane is different.” Cub notes aloud, when Scar lays the end of it just touching up against his leg. Cub’s not super into being touched by people today, so the cane thing is a compromise they’d come to for days like that a long time ago.

For Cub, the light resting of the cane doesn’t register as a person touching him. For Scar, the cane might as well be a part of himself, so it satisfies both the desire to give tactile affection and any stray buildup of urges to cause trouble by touching what he’s forbidden to. It works for them both.

And it’s not like Scar is lacking in contact, what with Grian laid out on his lap. Scar continues picking at Grian’s hair, humming a note. “Yeah. Felt right.” Scar answers, simply.

The change is just a single new etching of a feather decorating the handle, usually hidden by Scar’s hand, easy to mistake for scratches and scuffs at a distance or when in motion. Even Cub hadn’t noticed it until recently. Cub’s eyes tend to rest on the etched stars coiling around the shaft just below the handle, when he looks at Scar’s cane.

Cub arches an eyebrow and waits silently.

Scar snorts a chuckle, graciously caving to the request for elaboration. “Well, you know how it is, had a little feral episode, kind of forgot it down in some caves. It despawned, of course. I know, I know, shocking I even remembered to bring my head back with me at that rate. Anyway, this little idiot went down there and blinded himself to get it back.” Scar’s voice drips affection, his jovial tone belying the seriousness of what he’s saying.  It's easier for him to speak about it, that way, light and breezy and slipping past his own defenses. Grian seems too out of it to really notice he’s being spoken about, which may have had something to do with the calculated way Scar had given Grian scalp scritches as he spoke.

“Sentimental.” Cub’s voice remains neutral, but there’s something deeper in his gaze when it drops to Grian this time.

“Yeah.” Scar agrees, before lapsing back into the comfortable quiet.

"Get on with it." Cub grouses, still not tired of the novelty that is backtalking his summoner and getting away with it. Though even that amusement is beginning to wear thin as his patience is tested currently. He doesn’t regret asking for this, of course, but he’s beginning to wonder if Scar could have perhaps done a bit more encouraging Grian to embrace this stuff.

"If you're sure." Grian looks over Cub. Again. As if another time will reveal that Cub has any doubts or hesitation when he does not. As if a few more seconds will result in Cub deciding to walk away when it won’t. It’s all getting a bit irritatingly drawn out, in Cub’s opinion.

Cub turns away. "Scar-"

Scar perks up, even though he was already watching the pair with fascination. "Yes, Cub?" His smile says he knows mischief is waiting for him on the other end of that question, and he’s enthused to answer that call.

"Get him to do it-" Cub gestures sharply at Grian. It’s mostly an empty threat to light a fire under Grian, really. Mostly.

"No no no, I will be doing it myself just fine!" Grian snaps, over anything Scar could say. Scar pouts, and is promptly ignored. Cub will think of some mischief for them to get up to later to make up for it.

"Then do it." Cub remains cool, collected, and gives a mild air of impatience.

Grian takes in a breath, longer than people should be able, and then pushes the air all back out again. When he's done, his eyes shimmer in shades of purple and lilac.

Cub notes it for study later.

Grian takes Cub's wrist in his claws. "Here." Grian intones, his voice eerily calm and dispassionate.

Cub rolls up the sleeve of his labcoat, and keeps watching. In the space beside his thoughts, the eager thing that craves this is clamoring for attention. It unspools their magic eagerly for Grian to grasp onto.

Grian's claws hook into his magic, mingling it with Grian’s own and beginning to work methodically slowly on the back of Cub's wrist. First, carving first a semi-circle, and then rays away from it, each one filling with blue-purple light rather than the expected blood.

Cub shivers involuntarily, as the thing he shares his brain space with croons in delight. For himself, the feeling is... grounding. Stabilizing. As Grian works, binding their magics with the mark, Cub somehow feels more real.

And then Grian leans forward, sealing the working with a kiss, just a light brush of lips.

"It’s done." Grian suddenly sways after speaking, and Scar is already in Grian’s space, looping an arm around his waist to keep him upright. "Okay, I was expecting slightly less participation, but I guess that's our blessing." Grian mumbles through what must be a rather killer headache, if his expression is anything to go by.

Scar grabs for Cub's wrist with his free hand, and finds the marks entirely sealed and healed up. Scar clicks eager delight and Cub takes mercy on him to click back amusement and contentedness.

On the back of Cub’s wrist, in simple lines, is the purple mark of a closed eye. Scar moves Cub's hand to be next to his own open-eye mark.

"Ooooh, we match, that's so cool." Something in Scar looks relieved, and Cub guesses he'd feared it might be the exact same, a guilt eating Scar at not wanting that even though Cub is his partner in crime.

This is better. Cub knows his place in Grian's life isn't as prominent as Scar's, he doesn't need anything fancy or ornate or active. Just something to show he's properly claimed. Something to calm the thing in his head, and to link him more usefully to his summoner.

It doesn't hurt that he doubts most even slightly sane people wouldn't choose to tangle willingly with someone Watcher-marked.

Obviously Scar and himself missed the day that sanity was handed out.

"Yeah, it's pretty cool." Cub agrees

Watcher magic dances in the corners of his vision, but he’s practiced in acclimating to it by now. It feels close enough that he could reach out and use it, so he makes a mental note to try that out later. After a bit of rest.

The raid shouldn't have been an issue. Cub didn't think it should have been an issue.

It was one of his things, when he got too up in his head about stuff. A ritual to remind himself of his own power and ability to focus, to clear out the cobwebs.

He feels the omen lift off his shoulders and the war horns start. Easy.

And it actually was easy, honestly. Far more so than usual. He hadn’t factored in his new power when considering his usual activity. His wings don’t falter or struggle to fight momentum, his claws never dull down to fingertips. He doesn’t get tired at all.

So he keeps at it, longer than he usually would, wave after wave. Losing track of which one he’s on as he lets the smooth glazed frenzy of death consume him utterly.

What snaps him out of his groove is the way the world abruptly wrenches sharply sideways, sending him crashing back to the ground on his hands and knees. Iron-toothed maws rise of to greet him, sheering his leg clean off below the knee. He can’t think or hear, all he can feel is something crawling against his skin, into his skin, and trying to ‘fix’ his magic, his mind. Panic races through him, a flashfire.

He thumps hard onto his shoulder as his wrist gives out, burning enough that he thinks it must have also been bitten off. He reaches for it with his other arm, and finds it… Whole. Uninjured.

It’s the work of whole minutes to turn his head and focus his eyes, and yet more eternal endless minutes to move his hand off of gripping his own wrist. His body fights him like it isn’t his own.

The eye is open.

Purple light sparks, then glimmers, then pours out of it, scorching every part of Cub it touches, burrowing into his every sense. Understanding slots into place as his mind finally clears enough to recognize the rightful touch of his Summoner’s magic, searing away the evoker magic that had infiltrated his systems in an attempt to claim him.

Cub forcibly pulls himself upright with great effort, his wings balancing him and making up for the missing leg. He distantly wonders if he should take a death to respawn before it sticks, or if he should go for making himself a cool cyborg limb. It would match his whole science aesthetic. But it might be infringing too much on Scar’s legs thing. Hm.

While he’s been pondering this, the raid is still currently ongoing. He spots the now-fuming evoker, seated atop a ravager. It must be an especially skilled one to have a position on such a mount. Cub really should have caught it sooner, paid more attention, but oh well.

Something tells Cub this won’t be his problem for very much longer.

The storm approaching does not need winds to herald it, only endless multitudes of mindbending shapes that give the impression of wings. He wonders if his eyes will bleed for real this time. It’s not like he’s going to do anything silly like look away. How often does he get the opportunity to view a Watcher in their full aspect? Nobody else gets to study this like he does.

Scar slots into his side, arm around his waist as usual like it’s always belonged there, a cool comfort in matching tones of pale blue. Scar is here to watch the show and make sure nothing slips past to further harm him, not to study, so Cub’s earlier statement still stands.

“He really is gorgeous like this.” Scar sighs fondly, watching a perfect ratio spiral of loosely collated teeth tear clean through several ravagers, blood spilling out bright and fresh into the light.

“Do you think that what we see is what’s happening, or are our brains just making something up because it’s not possible to comprehend it?” Cub answers, fully having a separate conversation.

“And he’s ours, isn’t that wild?” Scar rests his head on Cub’s shoulder.

“Was that the abstract concept of numbers spilling out of its guts? I’ve never heard one of them make that sort of noise before.” Cub goes up on the tiptoes of his foot to see better. Scar gently tugs him back down.

“Yeah, I’m super really happy too.” Scar hums idle tunes.

Cub is pretty sure that the last raider simply exploded without even being touched. He’s already got dozens of new questions filed away to ask Grian later.

And then the impossible thing is surrounding them, enveloping them, having skipped the approaching step to simply wrap itself around its vexes. Scar lazily snaps his teeth and gets his mouth shut for his troubles. Cub touches his own eyes, checking and finding no blood. His practice with channeling Watcher magic must be paying off. The feeling of the raid fades around them.

Cub’s wrist is in what passes for the thing’s mouth. He feels a faint prickle, and the light from his mark fades, before he’s given his wrist back again. The eye there has closed again, though there’s now an extremely faint set of pinprick scars in a semi-circle below it, where the bottom line had been when it was open.

Loose and wriggling geometry that tries with moderate success to be hands touches the stump of Cub’s leg. With a jarring abruptness, his leg becomes both present and not present. That tingles. Huh. He’ll have to see what he can do with that superposition when he gets back to a workshop.

Cub runs a hand through endless wings surrounding them, direly curious as to the sensation of them. Under his fingertips, he feels a jolt and then suddenly familiar sensation, which he runs his fingers over the edges of. Smooth arches and precision without feathers, just smaller. He doesn’t really think much about it, aside from that he likes it, it feels right.

“Welcome to the Vex heretics club.” Scar’s breath is cool on his cheek.

“A pleasure.” Cub hums, idly taking his hand back and running his fingers over the bracelet on his unmarked wrist, soothed by the texture of braided vex-wing leather under his fingertips. He doesn’t really quite entirely understand what he did, but he figures it’ll make more sense once Grian calms down enough to stop making his brain kind of itch when looking at him. That seems logical. Watching a dervish of teeth and feathers blend up illagers had been kind of cathartic, though, so he doesn’t mind waiting.

“Yeah, turns out when they don’t have all the leverage to just make you want only whatever they want, they’re way more willing to negotiate. It’s nice to not be going through a middleman, it’s nice.” Cub flexes his arm, showing it to Scar, and the teal in the dark patch along it twinkles. The whole thing swirls with energy in Grian’s expanded vision. He’d been trying to meditate when Cub had showed up in their room.

“Grian! Cub’s trying to sell his soul to the sculk again!” Scar hollers over his shoulder in Grian’s vague direction, before turning back to resume the cheerful conversation with Cub. “It is very stylish, though.” Scar nods, sagely.

“I am not selling my soul, I am time-sharing my soul to the sculk, thank you very much.” Cub corrects. “They’re nice company on grinds.”

“I’m going to microwave you both.” Grian threatens, groaning as he pulls his vision back inside his own body, before approaching to look Cub over personally. His vex are the death of him, now doubled.

Cub just as contentedly shows off his fresh sculk to Grian, even pulling up his pant leg to show- Well for a moment it shows a completely normal leg, then Grian feels the tiny twist of magic as that switches over to instead being a coiled mass of sculk-vines in the approximate shape of a leg, filling all the space where Cub’s leg had been bitten off in the raid. Grian is torn between a feeling of pride at the absolutely impossible mark he’s left on Cub, and a feeling of fond exasperation at what Cub has done with it.

“You know the deep dark can’t be tamed.” Grian grouses, trying to stave off a headache by rubbing his own temples. It’s not helped by the sensation that he’s having a conversation that he can’t quite hear, layered on top of the actual conversation going on.

“Yeah, that’s half of what’s so cool about it.” Cub enthuses. Well, he says it mildly with a faint cyan twinkle in his eye, which might as well be enthusing, for Cub.

“I’m not even going to ask about the other half.”

“I am so glad you asked about the other half- Okay, so picture this.”

“I will not.” Grian is already waiting to see what Cub has come up with.

“Okay, so maybe you’re not the most intimidating person in the world, but get this, get this. Imagine this.” Cub looks to be trying to pull his words out to share the idea, but he keeps coming up empty, as if he can’t make the shapes properly pleasing to himself enough to speak them.

Grian squawks his annoyance at the insult to his intimidation factor. He is very intimidating, he can be so intimidating when he needs to, this is slander in the highest degree. How dare.

Scar hooks his chin over Cub’s shoulder from behind, tipping his head a moment to listen to the silence and humming appreciatively.

“Okay, so get this.” Scar picks up the thread of words from where Cub had left it. “You have someone you want to intimidate perhaps. You have someone you maybe can’t quite get away with going all.” Scar waves his hand, before settling it tucked comfortable around Cub’s waist. Grian is beginning to suspect that may be Scar’s favorite way to hold people. Just a hunch. “Concept-y on. You have them looking down on you, probably literally.”

“I’m hating this entire narrative so far, thanks.” Grian huffs. And yet, he keeps listening, despite showing his irritation with the twitches of the tiny new head wings he usually keeps tucked hidden under or inside his previously existing pair. The new set is featherless, soft and blue and geometric in the perfect shape of the swoops. He’s come to enjoy them, in private moments with his vex.

“Maybe they give you a little shove. And perhaps you stand a bit firmer than they expect. Maybe they think to go to shove you again, harder, but now coming out to flank you are your friends. Well, upon closer inspection they aren’t really quite your friends, so much as your beasts.”

Grian would protest that description if Scar didn’t sound so viciously proud of it.

“Maybe simple things like claws and teeth and deathly pallor are so common as to not leave an impression with people these days. But to one side you have overflowing purple light that hurts to look too hard at but is impossible to tear your gaze away from, enough wings to take up ten times the space. To the other side? Dark streaks dripping over blue skin, blue twinkling deep into the darkness of vines moving under skin. Balanced, and completely in your hands. Maybe these interlopers get a five second head start before you allow us to hunt.” Scar laughs like it’s a hunting call itself as he spins his tale to a close.

“Yeah, what he said.” Cub nods, satisfied with Scar’s telling of his imagining. He leans slightly into Scar, probably the only sign Cub will give that he was appreciative for the help with his words rather than irritated by it. Grian still hasn’t figured out how Scar can tell beforehand which it’ll be, but he’s studying it. He’ll crack it eventually.

And. Well. Okay. Grian doesn’t have to admit aloud that perhaps that story did pick up midway and by chance might have landed on a bit of appealing imagery. It could really be an alright story after all, maybe this sculk stuff isn’t the worst possible thing to happen. And if both sets of his head wings flutter a little bit, well, he is not looking he does not see it.

“There is power in the deep dark. And if they’ll allow Cub to draw on it while remaining ours, I see no reason not to take advantage of the excellent deal on offer.” Scar flashes a grin. “Between you and me, I think they like his persistence.” Scar stage whispers the last bit conspiratorially to Grian, not moving away from Cub at all.

“They like that I understand how to appreciate a good quiet.” Cub huffs a half-laugh.

“Can-” Scar starts.

“Only if you hurl it up afterward.” Cub counters, not even letting Scar finish.

Scar ponders it. “Worth it,” he nods finally. He and Cub shake on it, as physically awkward as that is to do with Scar behind Cub.

“I don’t want to know.” Grian mutters to himself, shaking his head. He begins herding the pair into their nest. Cub had better not leave any sculky Cub-crumbs in the bed, or Grian’s going to do something about it. For now, though, he’ll let it be, since he can just barely brush the edges of a sense of prideful satisfaction in himself. The conversation must have gone well.

Still, the standard operating procedure has well since been set, and now must be followed. Because Grian says so. A new magic means nest-preen-nap, in that order.

So his vex are actual complete lunatics, it turns out. Like, Grian knew that already, and it’s not that he isn’t living in the largest and most ostentatiously ornate glass house himself, but that fact is still thrown into sharp relief for Grian every now and again.

Scar laughs, boisterous and unrestrained, while Cub gives a lower chuckle. The bed is already warm as Grian nestles in and immediately begins preening Cub’s invisible wings by touch alone, feeling Scar’s fingers taking up running through his own feathers shortly after.

Grian trills to them, affectionate despite his earlier grouchiness. Covet-keep. Flock. Home. Their answering clicks scatter sparks in his heart and blanket contented peace on his mind.

Grian’s never bored, never hungry, with them at his sides.