Chapter Text
It didn’t take long to figure it out, once Grian was actually trying to figure it out. Five days. Five days for Grian to crack what Doc and Xisuma hadn’t made a lick of progress on in twice that time. Five days for Grian to figure out why he couldn’t see his sister (or, more accurately, how to fix it).
Xisuma didn’t know how Mumbo had convinced him to approach it with such fervor, but boy he was glad he had.
Xisuma wondered if they would have ever figured it out without Grian’s participation… he doubted it, honestly, as much as he hated to admit it. X was a good admin, (“The best!” he could hear Keralis insisting in his mind), but the things Grian was saying about code were almost comically over his head. He felt like a kindergartener being taught astrophysics. And the fact that Grian didn’t want this knowledge— this knowledge that so many players would do anything for—
Grian was trying.
And when Grian put his head to something, he put his head to it . He was the definition of commitment to the bit. (“It’s not as though I have anything else to do!” he had shouted when Xisuma brought this up. “You guys will barely let me out of bed!”)
The block on Grian’s mind was a combination of magic and code, he’d explained. That was the intersection Watchers worked at— that much Xisuma had already known.
It was genius, in its own fucked up way, not that Xisuma would say that aloud. It was diabolical. Grian himself couldn’t access the block, but it was designed so that it could only be undone by a Watcher. And what Watcher would do that?
“It cannot be that simple,” Grian had exclaimed when he’d figured it out. He had put down the notebook he’d been scribbling in. “No way it’s that simple. No fucking way.”
“What?” X had asked.
“We need code and magic. They didn’t account for goddamn teamwork .” He’d looked up, then, a light shining in his eyes that Xisuma hadn’t seen in a while. “You’ve got code. Who do we know that can access magic?”
__—__—__—
Scar wasn’t offended!
What reason did he have to be offended? Sure, everyone else seemed to know what was going on with Grian, even Doc, and Doc didn’t even like Grian— and that may have been a bit hyperbolic, but that’s how it felt! Doc and Grian weren’t close friends, at the very least. Not like Scar and Grian.
But Doc knew things and Scar didn’t, and even though Scar had chosen not to know anything in this circumstance, it still stung. Just a bit. Because when he’d said that he didn’t want to see Grian until Grian wanted to see him, he’d sorta kinda thought that Grian would… want to see him.
Weeks went by without a word.
Until.
“So… you need me for some magicky do-hickeys?”
Xisuma nodded. “Grian thinks your magic should be compatible. It seems like it’s going to be… difficult, but apparently your part should be easier than mine. Grian will walk you through it. You do need to be physically present, though.”
Grian wanted to see him.
(Grian needed his magic.)
((There was no universe in which Scar said no.))
…
Scar stared at the portal in Grian’s mansion. It was alive in his chest, just as strong as the day he made it. Pulling. Tugging. Aching.
He hoped that Grian wasn’t mad at him for the spell that had created this portal. It had saved his life , or so Scar had been told. Still, it was a pretty intense connection to forge without talking to the man about it first. Still still, it wouldn’t have worked if Grian’s soul really hadn’t wanted it to. Still still still, souls were weird and not to be trusted. Still still still still—
Maybe he was overthinking it. Just a little bit.
Xisuma said something that didn’t quite reach Scar over the roaring in his ears and stepped through.
Scar followed him.
And just like that, the aching that had been plaguing him for the last five weeks was gone .
Gone gone gone and his chest was empty empty empty but satisfied satisfied satisfied .
He wasn’t just imagining it, either! Because when he turned around, he just caught sight of the portal vanishing into the ether whence it came.
“Oh, so that’s how it closes!” chimed Scar. It made sense— it had spawned to bring him to Grian, and it had finally done its job. It could rest, now. Scar rubbed at his collarbone.
Xisuma blinked at the empty space. “I guess I’ll have to ask Grian to actually whitelist us now. I don’t know how that will work for Pearl if this plan doesn’t work.”
Scar shot him a grin. “It’ll work!” He held out an arm. “Lead the way, admin man!”
…
Upon stepping into Grian’s shack, there were several things Scar noticed.
The first was how tired Grian looked.
‘Tired’ didn’t give it justice, actually, but Scar never was the best with words.
He had dark bags under his eyes. His hair was longer than he usually kept it, and a tangled mess. His skin was sallow and pale. He’d lost a noticeable amount of weight.
It was a bit of a shock. Scar almost wished that Xisuma had warned him. Then he wondered if Xisuma had even noticed! It would be hard not to, but it was different to see the slow changes (as X had) than it was to see Grian like this after so long of not seeing him at all. The last time Scar had seen him, he’d been… Well not, healthy , exactly, because he’d clearly (well, clearly to Scar, anyway) been hiding how much pain he was in, but lively at the very least.
Xisuma had said they were past the worst of it, when he’d given him the barest outline of what had happened; that had been one of the few parts Scar actually comprehended, in between talk of amputations and comas and magic sister-blocking. Scar wondered what the worst of it must have looked like.
This version of Grian looked a little bit like a corpse. Scar didn’t like the thought.
The second thing that struck him was the wings.
He couldn’t not notice them. They had been the giant question mark in his mind since this whole thing started. They were big and red and yellow and blue and vibrant and nothing like his old ones and Scar couldn’t get a full view of them from this angle but he thought that they were the most beautiful wings he had ever seen.
(Though, he probably would have thought that no matter what, by pure virtue of them being Grian’s.)
He realized he’d been staring for a few seconds too long and put on his best grin. “Why hello there, G-man! Long time no see. You’re looking positively ravishing.”
Grian gave him a forced smile. “Hey, Scar.”
Scar clasped his hands together. “So, what’s the plan?”
__—__—__—
Grian wanted to rip his hair out.
He was this close to getting his sister back. World-tiltingly close. Mere inches away. And yet he was being foiled by the pure incompetence of GoodTimesWithScar. (That was harsh and he knew it. But, fuck , did it feel that way).
“And that’s what you need to do,” Grian explained for what must have been the hundredth time. He gestured with his pen at the paper he’d been attempting to diagram it on. “Make sense?”
He could tell just from Scar’s face that it did not, in fact, make sense.
“Could you… Could you run through it one more time?” He at least had the decency to sound sheepish.
Grian was going to scream.
“Can you at least try it?” he suggested. “Maybe you understand it more than you think.”
He could feel Scar’s hesitancy, but the man closed his eyes nonetheless, and Grian felt his magic flutter to life. It brushed up against his own— so different and yet so the same in ways that he doubted either of them could put into words.
Grian was jealous of Scar’s magic, not that he would ever admit it. Scar liked his magic. He used it for good. It was bright and buzzy, not like his own deep and heavy burden. Scar’s was also one of the few magics that he could withstand the sensation of interacting with.
And then Scar’s magic proceeded to do… nothing.
Grian’s eyes shot open. “ Scar .”
“I’m sorry, G! I just…. I don’t know what you need me to do.” He put his hands in his lap from where he was sitting facing Grian on the mattress. “Maybe… Maybe we could call Xisuma back and he could try explaining it?”
Grian didn’t understand. It was fairly complicated magic, sure, but not the most difficult thing in the world! The code was the complex part, but only Xisuma needed to worry about that. Scar didn’t even need to get rid of the magic, just shake it up a bit. When Grian had been taught this magic, he—
Okay. Stopping that train of thought before it even started.
Grian had been taught with abusive methods and hadn’t wanted to learn, and had still managed to grasp it. That didn’t make it Scar’s fault that he was struggling to understand. He and Grian were different people. They were different types of learners .
Grian needed to stop explaining it in the way he wished he’d been taught and start explaining it in Scar Terms.
He took a very deliberate deep breath.
“I’ve seen you do powerful magic.” He let out something akin to a hysterical chuckle. “Absolutely insanely powerful and complex magic.” His managing to find and create a way to get to Grian from worlds away was just an example, if the most relevant. It was also probably something they should talk about at some point, but Grian was going to put that off for as long as possible. “How did you learn those spells?”
“Uhmmmmm.” Scar put a finger on his chin “I kind of just… picture what I want to do and then… do it? I’m not really into the technical bizz! If I can’t figure it out, I usually get Cub to learn it first, and then have him explain it to me. Maybe… maybe he would be a better person to help you with this?”
Grian physically stiffened at that.
It wasn’t that he had anything against Cub! But… he wasn’t Scar. Grian trusted Scar. He wanted it to be Scar .
Grian wasn’t a visual learner. He couldn’t picture things in his head— that’s why he had to build them. He and Martyn had bonded over that mutual trait, way back in the day. Scar, on the other hand, was undeniably a visual learner.
“Okay. Okay.” He took another breath. “Picture a wall.”
“A wall?” asked Scar.
“A wall.” Grian tilted his head back toward the ceiling. “X was wondering if it was more like a dial or a switch, but it’s like a wall. So… you have Pearl, and if everything was working good and proper, my eyes would see her, and then my eyes would tell my brain, ‘Hey, look, there’s Pearl!’ Same with other senses, but we don’t need to complicate it that much. So if someone was trying to stop me from seeing Pearl, they could either put a wall in between her and my eyes, or in between my eyes and my brain.”
Grian didn’t know how one would go about putting up a wall between her and his eyes, but he hadn’t known this was possible either, so…
“In this case, it’s in between my eyes and my brain, so my eyes can’t tell my brain she’s there. So when she is there, my brain is just left with a blank spot that it tries to fill in however it can with the context it has, which is how most of the brain works anyway, so nothing appears particularly off.”
Scar was watching with rapt attention.
“And that wall is always there— it’s just a permanent fixture. Which is why we can practice trying to take it down without her being here to ‘activate’ it or something.”
“What type of block is the wall made out of?”
“It’s— it’s not a real wall, Scar. It’s just a metaphor.”
“I know! But that’ll help me picture it.”
“But it’s not—” He sighed. “You know what, yeah, sure, whatever. The wall is made out of two things. The wall itself is made of code, which you can picture as, uhmmm… bedrock. Yeah, picture it was bedrock.” The irony was not lost on Grian. “X-I-suma will be using code to get rid of the bedrock. But the base of the wall— what’s keeping it up— is made of… obsidian. Magic. And you, Scar, have a fully enchanted diamond pickaxe. Theoretically.”
Scar opened his eyes, squinting. “But you can get rid of obsidian with code, too? Heck, it’s probably easier to get rid of that than bedrock!”
Grian waved a flippant hand. “It’s not gonna be a perfect analogy! Just close your eyes and picture the wall!”
“Okay, okay.” He put his hands up in surrender. “Picturing the wall.”
“And the really really critical thing about this wall, Scar, is that— well, the wall is always trying to fix itself, see. And it is a thick and well-constructed wall. So by the time you mined through it, it would have already fixed itself. But . We’re not trying to take down the whole wall.” This was the part he needed him to understand. “Xisuma is going to chip away at certain relatively weak spots in the code, and at the same time, you’re going to shake the base as much as you possibly can, and hopefully —”
“It will all come crumbling down,” finished Scar.
Grian snapped his fingers. “Exactly.”
Scar opened his eyes and grinned. “Well, why didn’t you just say that to begin with!”
Grian wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. “So you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Perfect. Great. Okay, then—” He picked up his original diagram. “What you’re going to do is—”
“I thought you just told me what I’m going to do?”
“The wall isn’t real, mate. It was just trying to give you… a framework through which you can understand the actual explanation.”
Scar waved his hands. “No no no, the big fancy words aren’t gonna make sense to me. Destabilize the obsidian between your eyes and your brain— I get it!”
“But, Scar, that’s not how…”
“Just let me try?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. He had no clue how Cub put up with this. “I guess, sure. Go for it.”
Scar closed his eyes and muttered something to himself about a wall. His magic fluttered to life yet again.
Grian was prepared for it to remain stagnant like his last attempt, but after a few moments, when he was about to say something…
He felt it.
His instinct was to push back against it, though he tried not to. He didn’t like people in his brain, but this was necessary and Scar . He couldn’t even describe what ‘it’ was, other than… Scar doing exactly what he said… He was shaking the base of the wall.
Scar pulled back after a few seconds, eyes wide and hopeful. “Did I do it right?”
“How did you even…” Grian blinked at him. “ Scar . Do you even— you did that without understanding any of the proper instructions. Do you have any idea how powerful you could be if you…” He trailed off. He got the feeling Scar didn’t want to be any more powerful than he was. How he did things worked for him. “Absolutely insane.”
“So I did it right, then?”
Grian leaned forward and hugged him.
Scar hesitated before hugging back, and there was something there. Something important in that hesitation that Grian couldn’t quite put his finger on.
It was probably that he was afraid of hurting Grian’s back as he returned the gesture. Yeah, that was reasonable.
“So, now what?” Scar asked as Grian eventually pulled back.
“Now?” Grian pulled out his Comm. “If you’re ready, we message the others and see how quickly they can get here.” He grinned. “And then, you’re going to do exactly what you just did again while X does his part. And then I’m going to hug my sister.”