Chapter Text
Everything happened so quickly, and so long ago.
Grian was young and alone after it all. The plague that ravaged his village had wiped out his mother, his father, and all three siblings. He’d been left to bury them. His neighbours were too afraid to bring whatever ailed them into their own lives.
He was the only Slayer left, but it wouldn’t last long.
They’d decided, long before he ever opened his mouth, that Grian was to blame. Guilty since he had lived through the illness whilst his family lay rotting around him. All it took was one man’s words to decide his fate. One man claimed to have tangible evidence that Grian had bewitched him and subsequently poisoned all those who trusted him. Father, mother, brother, and sisters included.
He was a witch, and that was really all there was to it.
So, still weak and barely able to walk to the noose, Grian’s recovering body was dragged to the last place it would be attached to his soul. He stood, the chains around his wrists equal in weight to him, and waited for his accuser to approach.
Strangely enough, Grian thought as the man strode towards him, he was glad. Glad that the man who had determined his death would have to face him and watch. Would have to stare into his eyes and see the absent soul he was about to be responsible for.
Even better, the empty eyes of someone he used to love.
The man stood before Grian, feigning stoicism, but his hands were darting all over. Like a boy preparing to talk to his angry father after breaking something precious. And he did, Grian supposed.
The man turned suddenly, facing the crowd and bellowing: “The penalty for witchcraft is death by hanging!”
The crowd responded, shouting towards the accuser rather than at Grian himself. A way of convincing themselves that the young man they had seen grow up, the one standing before their very eyes, wasn’t there. They weren’t killing him. Just a witch. Some amorphous witch.
“Confess. Or burn in hell for all eternity.” The man swivelled back to face Grian, tone lowered but still well within reach of the crowd, who hollered back agreements.
“My soul will not rest in hell yet.” Grian stumbled out, withered and unsure of where the strength came from, “It has a greater purpose.”
Whilst the crowd roared in anguish, the man had the decency to look genuinely taken aback, his frozen state giving Grian the space to lean in and whisper one final message into his ear.
“I shall be your curse. I will follow you for eternity, in every lifetime, in every waking moment. My soul will shadow yours forever.” Grian spat out, “I will never let you go.”
He was then pulled back harshly by two stronger-willed men, and the rope was brought tight against his neck.
“Until we meet again, Scar Thymes.”
And then Grian, the last remaining member of the Slayer family, the final beam of light from a collapsing sun.
The witch.
Died.
-----
Every life since Grian’s soul had kept its promise.
His first rebirth was sudden and bloody. The moment his memories of that wretched noose returned to him, the same moment in which he’d died a lifetime ago, he was twenty years, ten months, and one day old. And the very next day (twenty years, ten months, and two days) the new Scar Thymes was dead. Unrecognisable, scattered, and deserving of every second it took to get him there.
For a while, he’d stared up at Grian with eyes that knew. Something akin to sadness, but not quite there. Not anger at his death, nor horror, nor any attempt to get away. Nothing Grian had expected. Just a still sense of resignation. A rabbit that lies back and lets the fox tear it to shreds.
The next few lives were a similar ordeal. Equally painful, equally bloody, but not nearly close to satisfying.
All because of that damn sadness Scar had every time. He never fought. Didn’t shout or kick. He just died. Grian didn’t want him to just die.
Grian wanted Scar to suffer. To hurt and live.
Live in pain and then die.
Lives four, five, and six were spent giving him just that.
He’d commanded a naval ship with Scar as the unfortunate deck hand, stumbling around sick and tired and often coincidentally falling overboard for just long enough to be rescued, but not a moment sooner.
He’d surrounded himself with as many friends and family as he could find whilst ensuring anyone who got too close to Scar disappeared. Bribed or otherwise.
He’d flaunted through polite society whilst Scar begged on the street next to his house.
And he enjoyed it.
Life number seven was different. Because Scar found Grian first.
Before they remembered. Before Grian was supposed to die. Before Grian could regain his inherent hate for the man who had killed him.
Scar weaselled his way into Grian’s shrivelled little heart, and he refused to leave.
They were together the night the memories came back.
Scar was dead by morning.
And Grian regretted it. Truly regretted it. Sickeningly so.
Because Scar didn’t remember. Not like he had before. He’d talked to Grian, his friend, scared and confused. Talked about how he knew he’d done something, but not what, knew Grian was upset, but not why. He’s seen the reincarnated anger in Grian’s eyes and asked to talk about it, work through it, fix it. And he just made it worse.
“You killed me, Scar.” Grian cried, his throat tearing apart in the process. Past a certain point, he didn’t know whether the tears were from the memories or the fact that Scar didn’t share them.
“Okay. Okay.” Scar stumbled over his words, hands up in a surrender as he tried to keep Grian and the knife he was wielding away from him, “Okay. But how many times have you killed me in return at this point?”
Scar’s poorly timed laugh only aided in boiling Grian’s mind further, “That’s not how it works!”
Grian spent the rest of that life thinking about that night. It was something he rarely did, choosing instead to live out his Scar-free lives in a strange sort of peace. But not this time.
The utter confusion, the cluelessness which Scar usually feigned, was real this time.
Eight lives in, and Scar, the one Grian knew anyway, was gone.