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Scott’s taking a walk. A walk in the woods. On his own. Far from the academy. It feels wrong, he knows that, but he needs to be alone right now. Needs time to think, needs time for some sort of emotional release.
And none of those are things he'll currently be letting someone else be witness to. He wouldn't force that burden—the burden of seeing him fall apart—onto anyone.
Pyro and Maddy are back. They looked awful, both still holding up, still fighting, but skinnier than they were before, obviously starved. Scott noticed the dip in Pyro’s cheeks before anything else. Noticed the sag of his clothes, his belts tied tighter than normal. Noticed the exhaustion in his eyes, the angry red patches on his hands and face.
Cindy and Ambi were, relatively speaking, fine. They were disheveled, of course, but Maddy's heavy armor did a better job at hiding the withering of her body. To be honest, though, Scott could hardly focus on anything other than Pyro in that moment.
Pyro left him again. And for it he got punished, got kidnapped and starved and tortured for a whole month. Part of Scott’s mind huffs, arms crossed, touting that this is what Pyro deserves, this is what he gets for trying to leave him again—
Another part of him hates himself for even thinking that. Wants to claw his skin raw and crack his joints until they ache and chew his cheek until it bleeds and he tastes the metal for days. Silent self-punishments that no one will ever see and he will feel for hours at least. His tongue hurts from dragging it, part self-soothing and part self-punishing, across the edges of his teeth.
He’s glad he left Aurora at the academy. Told her he’ll be back, left her with Shelby and definitely ignored the wind mage talking to the dragon foisted upon her and saying she’ll take his dragon to see Pyro.
A twig snaps to his left.
He’s alone in the woods—gods know how far from the academy—and a twig just snapped to his left.
He pauses, turns, half-hopes it’s a regular forest critter. He isn’t surprised by the gleam of diamond armor and a body made of shadows.
And, just to top it all off, he's outnumbered, too, by the looks of things. He glances around, sees four more of them. Five-on-one. They don't speak—they never do—and one lunges for him.
His blizzard kicks up before he can even call it to mind, the razor-sharp ice shards and freezing winds whipping around him, catching his attackers off guard. Scott doesn't bother reaching for his sword, a fist balling up, an elbow drawing back, and a torso swinging with his full weight before the thought of a sword can even pop into his head.
His fist connects to the shadow of a jaw with what would be a deafening crack, if not for the roaring winds around him. Their head snaps to the side, they stumble, and he swings again.
He feels bone break with the force. He doesn't feel anything else in that moment. Scott's free hand grabs a piece of shoulder armor, concrete and firm unlike the wobbling shadows of their body, to keep them in place.
The shadow doubles over, shivering and shaking. Scott hears a sword draw behind him, side-steps, and it slashes across the shadow he just beat. He swears he hears a distant shout and accompanying curse. He lets the first shadow drop.
He reaches out, grabs what feels like a jaw. The shadows feel cold through his glove. He shoves, putting his weight into it, and their head crashes against a tree. He changes his grip, holding their head with both hands—so tightly, it feels like he could pop their head like a piece of overripe fruit—to pull their head up, and smash it right back into the tree.
A sword clatters to the ground and phantom hands grasp at his wrists, forearms, flinching and growing weaker with every following slam against the dense wood. Bark splinters, cracks, and breaks off at the impact point. He drops them only when their hands fully let go of him.
Three left. Maybe four, if that first one hasn't keeled over dead just yet.
And Scott still feels nothing. Still holds no sympathy, no remorse, for these things—he isn't even sure if they're people, honestly, no one knows what these shadow people or rebels or whatever even are.
Part of him wonders if this is the right decision, if he's a bad person, or a monster, wonders of the consequences.
He finds he doesn't care. He finds that these people—if they even are people, if they even are human—are so horrible, so selfish, so cruel, that murdering them is the right thing to do.
He's doing this for Pyro. He's avenging Pyro. He's giving them back all that pain they gave to Pyro. This is what they deserve. This is what Scott is supposed to do. This is all for Pyro.
Wasn't it always?
He feels his blizzard die, feels the spell thin and the chill fizzle out. He blinks and finds he's standing over another of the rebels, one heavy winter boot-clad foot stomping into where their chest should be. He feels hands clawing at his calf. He doesn't hear the cracking of bones, doesn't hear the shadow choke on their blood—in fact, as far as he can see, there hasn't been a drop of blood drawn so far.
One of the remaining two rushes for him, sword drawn, pushing through the chill of frostbite, and Scott's arm snaps up, his hand gripping their neck. They try to stab him, but their sword barely even grazes him, not even cutting through his clothes. He holds them as far out as he can, and while they could aim for his arm, they flail instead, suffocation-induced panic clearly overwhelming their senses.
He gives the shadow under his foot one last firm stomp. Feels them jerk under him. He leaves them to finish dying, his free hand swinging into the choking shadow's face. He can feel their pulse against his hand, feels their head jerk with his punch, feels the muscles of their neck spasm.
He swings again. And again. And again. Feels bones break, feels breaths weaken. Finally, he actually hears something: a wet, terrified, shaking sob coming from behind him. Still holding the now-mostly-limp shadow in one hand, he turns, lilac eyes staring into pitch darkness and diamond blue shapes. It's the last shadow, whatever magic shielding their appearance waning enough—maybe with fear, maybe it's just the spell wearing off—that he could hear that one single sob.
They're shaking.
Good.
Scott drops the shadow, fully turns towards the shaking one. They turn and run, and he chases. Scott never thought he'd be the type to chase someone through the woods with the intention of murdering them, but he also never thought he'd murder someone—nonetheless several people—in Pyro's defense, either, so it turns out he can change.
He can already imagine Pyro's shiteating grin with that admission. He ignores the twist in his gut that the image brings. He sets his focus back to the shadow he's chasing.
He's gaining on them, and it isn't long until he reaches forwards, hooks an arm around their neck, and skids to a stop, pulling the shadow tight against him. They flail, one hand reaching for their sword, but Scott grabs it first. He holds it tight as he moves his arm, grasping their shoulder and shoving them forward.
He crouches, kneels above them, and plunges the sword into their back. They jerk, they struggle, they try to crawl away. He pulls the sword back, they wiggle onto their back like they intend to fight.
Scott wants to puke when he sees the rough shapes of Pyro's face form from the shadows. Silvery blue eyes and tanned skin and dark eye bags just familiar enough, just similar enough to make him sick.
But the shapes are wrong. The eyes are too soft, too scared—Pyro would never let Scott see him so vulnerable, not anymore. The skin tone is patchy, paler in some places, darker in others, mixing and blending in real time. The nose bends in the wrong places, the mouth stretches too wide. Too-dark shadows fill gaps that shouldn’t exist. The illusion is a desperate attempt at patching together not-quite-right traits as a last-ditch effort to save themself from the pain they rightfully deserve.
Do they think him so easily distracted? So easily dissuaded? They could've killed Pyro, and now they wear his face to, what, make Scott spare them?
He stabs the shadow's sword into their gut. Grabs not-Pyro's loose amalgamation of a face—partway shadow, partyway Pyro—like he intends to rip off the visage of the person he cares for so much more deeply than he'll ever let himself admit—
"Take his face off, you monster!" The words are spat out like venom, like acid that ought to burn Pyro's face off the shadow. He leaves the sword, pulls out his axe, shifts his position, raises it, and, as the shadow's hands reach up to stop him, brings it down. Their head rolls with the topography of the forest floor. He grabs it, examines with eyes too wide—they burn, they ache—and he sees nothing but shadows. Pyro's face remains no more. He drops it, satisfied.
He stands. Slow. Sluggish. He only now realizes how heavily he's breathing, how tense his body is. He doubles back, finds he didn't have to chase as far as he thought—a respectable distance, but not admirable. He's greeted with a surprise: the first one is still alive.
And they aren't made of shadows anymore.
They look young, around Scott's age. Black hair, peachy skin, green eyes. They're desperately, through the wooziness, trying to "wake up" any of their companions. They wear dark clothes, plain like a uniform, with a slash across their middle from their own ally's sword. Their jaw is loose, obviously broken, muddying and garbling their attempts at speech.
They turn to Scott, horror in their eyes, and he sets to finishing the job.
They try to run, they trip over a slowly-revealing corpse, Scott leans down to grab the back of their collar. They sob, defeated, as Scott pulls them to their feet, shoves them back to where they were before. One hand reaches for a sword, Scott readies his axe.
A vision of chopping firewood back in Tegrith comes to mind as he cleaves into their shoulder, flesh splitting from their body similarly to a log cut in half. They scream, bright and sharp with pain—and falling upon deaf ears.
This is what they deserve.
They fall to their knees, trying to hold their severed arm in place. All they succeed at doing is getting blood all over their hand. Scott kicks them in the gut, and they cough blood onto his pant leg. He kicks again, and they fall over. He thinks they're trying to beg, for mercy or for a faster death, Scott isn't sure, nor does he care.
Their fate was sealed when they hurt my Pyro.
He grinds his heel into the wound in their chest. A bloodied hand grasps at him, smearing their blood onto his clothes. He presses harder, leans down for another punch to connect with their face, he doesn't care where it lands, but he does hear their nose break.
They gasp. They sob. With each pained hack, they cough up blood, some of it splattering onto Scott's bent knee—his heel is still digging into their wound—and some onto his chest. They pass out after a few more painful minutes, and Scott leaves them with an ice shard shot into their chest, just to make sure they never wake up.
He pulls back. Looks around at the mangled corpses. Part of him wishes he'd made them suffer even more, wishes he could've dragged out their deaths even longer. He tries to ignore that bloodlust, putting his bloody axe away.
He starts the walk back to the academy. He thinks on the way back, thinks on his rage, on how quickly he lunged into combat. While he did say that, when it came to the rebels, he was a "swing first, ask questions later" type, never in his life had he been so angry—upset, sure, there are moments that rank higher than this, but angry? Scott usually gets sad, bitter, lonely, not so furious and vengeful that he murders five people in the span of… probably less than twenty minutes.
Pyro brings out some of his worse traits, he knows that, but this isn't just that. He thinks of Pyro's face from earlier that day, the sunken cheeks and dark, determined eyes. The red, blotchy flush and dried sweat from overexposure. He thinks of the newfound bagginess of his clothes, not terribly extreme but so noticeable to him. The image fills him with swirling, tangling emotions he can't even begin trying to separate from one another.
Among them, though, with terrifying clarity, stands relief. Catharsis. The churning anxieties that have been eating him alive for the last month have stilled, quieted. The tension in his shoulders and back has eased up a bit. Turns out slaughtering Pyro's kidnappers is a fairly effective form of stress relief.
He wonders if his hair's gotten even bluer after all of this. Wonders if he's lost even more of himself to the effort of protecting and caring for those he lov—
He doesn't realize he's back in the Vulpes dorm until he hears a gasp, sharp and familiar. With a blink, his eyes focus on Shelby, Boa, and Juniper. They all look horrified, shocked, and confused—to be fair, he has someone else's blood drying on his clothes.
"What happened?!" Shelby rushes over, being the closest to Scott of the three. He sees Juniper take a couple steps back, sees Boa draw her arms close to her chest.
"I took a walk. A few of the shadow people attacked me. I… I defended myself." He, very pointedly, does not say "I defended Pyro."
"Well… at least it was those jerks, not someone we care about." Shelby sighs and her shoulders drop, relieved, then looks up at him with worry in her golden eyes, "Did they hurt you?"
"No, no, no. I'm fine. Don't worry about me, Shelby." He places his hands—hands that just killed people, that broke jaws and a nose, that held swords and axes to stab through and hack apart bodies—on their shoulders. He gives Shelby a firm, fond grip and what he hopes is a casual smile.
Past the redhead’s shoulder, Boa fidgets with her hands, glancing between Scott and Shelby, Juniper, and literally anything and anywhere else. He can see gray bark forming across Juniper's knuckles, leaves forming in their hair. The tension and stress are palpable, heavy on Scott's tongue, and he hates it.
He needs to change the subject.
"How's Pyro holding up?"
"Take a look for yourself." Scott's head whips over when he hears Pyro's voice—rougher and raspier than the smooth tones he remembers. He finds the man leaning against one of the support pillars, casual as ever. Cindy and Aurora idle near their feet, the latter looking at Scott with wide eyes. She runs over when he takes a step closer.
"Well… how are you?" He hears Shelby quietly pull Boa and Juniper away from the two of them—probably for the best.
"Fine, I suppose. About as good as I can be right now; Cindy's in good health, and I'm managing." He talks so casually. Like his well-being isn't the reason Scott just murdered five people.
"… good. I'm glad." Scott leaves it at that, picking Aurora up and heading for his dorm. Pyro doesn't say anything. Doesn't stop him from walking away.
Scott goes back to his room, locks his door, sets Aurora on his bed, changes into a spare set of clothes—comfortable, casual, pale blue and loose fitting and mostly used as sleepwear. He'll clean the blood off later. He curls up with his dragon, and she snuggles up without question.
He sets himself to staring, ruminating, overanalyzing every single thing he's done in the last however-long-he-was-gone-for.
He decides he is woefully and undeniably fucked on every level.
He decides to sleep it off, pulling his blankets up over him and Aurora and falling asleep with her safely curled against his chest.
Briefly, in the moments before sleep takes him, he wishes it was Pyro against his chest instead.