Chapter Text
The first thing Martyn noticed when Scott approached the walls was that he was alone. The second was that his hands were empty.
The third, when he grew closer, was how utterly wrecked he looked.
It made something twist in his throat, but it didn’t stop him from aiming an arrow at his chest, ready to let go the moment he made a move. Etho, beside him, did the same.
“Lower your weapons,” Ren said with a voice like iron, and he did so instinctively, Etho only a half-second behind.
“What’s he doing?” Etho whispered under his breath, as Ren stepped forwards to greet him, hands empty of any weapons.
Martyn hissed back, “It might be a distraction-”
“Where is he?” Scott demanded, and Martyn cut off as abruptly as if he’d been shot. Etho inhaled sharply.
“Follow me,” Ren said, and there was something about it that was heartbreakingly gentle.
Ren showed him to the small room where Jimmy’s body lay, and Scott slipped inside. Before the door shut behind him, Martyn caught a glimpse of the way he knelt, like a puppet with its strings cut.
Ren stood in front of the door, guarding it, eyes a silent challenge to them. It wasn’t one Martyn was going to fight- he had no intention of intruding. From the look in his eyes, Etho didn’t either.
Martyn had carried Jimmy’s body away, after- they’d decided immediately that it would be wrong to leave it there, with Scott and Grian both gone and Scar more interested in running than taking his body. And Martyn had held him, and gotten his blood on his armor, and even through the adrenaline rush and the fact that they had won he’d still been struck by how wrong Jimmy looked lying motionless with an arrow through his throat.
When he’d gotten a chance between battles, he’d taken it out, wiped the blood from his skin and wrapped a bandage over the wound, brushed the sand out of his hair and off his clothes, closed his eyes.
He’d considered burying him, but it felt wrong. Jimmy wasn’t of Dogwarts, and burying him beside Skizz…
They weren’t the ones who had loved him. Martyn had respected him, not wished harm on him any more than he did any of their opponents, could care for his body, but they weren’t the ones who had loved him.
He’d considered, briefly, calling Scott over to retrieve him, but there hadn’t been time and it was likely that he’d have thought it was a trap. Besides, he didn’t have the final call- as far as anything went inside the walls, it was up to Ren.
The door opened, and Scott emerged. He didn’t look like he’d been crying, but his expression was devastated.
He was wearing Jimmy’s jacket.
“Do you have a piece of string,” he said, and his voice was rough and quiet and held so much pain that it punched the breath from Martyn’s chest.
“What for?” Ren asked.
Scott opened his hand. A golden ring sat in his palm- a wedding ring. The pair of the one on his finger.
There was a long moment of silence, and then Ren took off one of his own chains, holding it out to Scott. Slowly, he took it.
Scott’s hands shook enough that it took him three tries to latch the chain, but eventually he managed it, tucking the ring beneath his shirt. Then, his expression firmed, hands curling into fists.
“I’m taking him home,” he said, and his voice left no room for argument.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Ren pointed out, and Scott’s expression shifted to rage so abruptly that Martyn’s hand instinctively dropped to his sword.
“I’m not waiting. I am going to take my husband home, Ren.”
Ren didn’t seem afraid, even with the tension running through Scott’s every movement, the lethal rage in his eyes. “If you won’t wait, let someone come with you. You can’t carry him and defend yourself from mobs at the same time.”
“I don’t want your help,” Scott snapped, and there was a look in his eyes like shattered glass, sharp and broken. Like the world had been torn from beneath his feet and now he was flailing for any sort of foothold.
Martyn let his hand fall from his sword.
“Be that as it may, if you try to leave now, alone, you will not make it home,” Ren said, calm and soothing.
Scott was silent for a long moment, breaths harsh and uneven, and ran his fingers over a tear in Jimmy’s jacket briefly.
“If you would like, Martyn can go,” Ren said, and Etho sent him a startled glance but Martyn didn’t argue. “Both of you are yellow. You can’t harm each other.”
Scott scoffed. “You say that like the rules still apply.”
“It’s more of a guarantee than you’d have with me or Etho,” Ren said.
Scott looked at him, and Martyn met his eyes, trying not to flinch at the fury there.
He wasn’t sure what Scott was looking for, but he must have found it, because he said, “Fine,” and went back to Jimmy.
Jimmy’s body looked wrong hanging limp in Scott’s arms, head lolling against his shoulder, still and quiet. Scott wasn’t looking down at him, gaze carefully directed away.
“For what it’s worth, if that’s anything at all,” Ren called as Scott walked away. “I’m sorry things turned out this way.”
“I don’t care,” Scott said, and then he was gone, walking out through the gates.
“Martyn-”
“I’ll get him home, my lord,” Martyn promised, and ran to catch up.
Scott didn’t seem to be paying attention to where he was going, or to the mobs approaching, so Martyn pulled out his bow, picking off the ones that got close. When a skeleton raised its bow, he dodged forwards to put his shield between the arrow and Scott, rocking back slightly with the impact.
Scott didn’t even flinch. Martyn swallowed back the urge to ask if he was alright- he already knew the answer. And even if he didn’t, he was probably the last person Scott wanted to hear that from.
They hadn’t always been fighting. Towards the beginning, they’d gotten along, been friends, even. And they’d known that it couldn’t last forever, that only one of them would end up alive at the end of it, that when lives started being lost they’d have to draw lines and it was unlikely all of them would end up on the same side, but they’d all been green and that had felt so distant, so unreal, that they hadn’t cared.
They’d been friends once. They’d loved each other once. And then everything had fallen apart, and now Martyn was the Hand of the King and Scott was a widow and it hadn’t been his arrow to kill Jimmy but it still felt like his fault.
Scott’s eyes looked dead, tired and broken and empty, and maybe he had made a mistake, loving Jimmy so much. They’d picked each other, even though they’d known from the beginning that it wouldn’t last. Eventually, one of them would have to lose the other.
And Scott had and now he was walking through the woods like a ghost with a body in his arms, and maybe it had been foolish of him to love so much but if it had been Ren lying in the sand with an arrow in his throat and his blood staining the floors, Martyn knew that he would look just as lost and angry.
He would walk into the heart of enemy territory to bring him home. He would carry him through the forests and it wouldn’t matter if it was night. He would burn the world down in his grief.
So maybe Scott had made a mistake, loving anyone at all on this server enough that their death left him so shattered. But Martyn had made the exact same one. He’d just been luckier, for now.
Scott stopped at the entrance to the valley. “You can’t come in.”
“Fair enough,” Martyn said, and watched him walk through, sword hanging uselessly in his hand.
He almost turned away, back towards Dogwarts, but Scott was setting Jimmy down in the grass and he looked so… lonely, there, standing over his husband’s body. Illogically, Martyn thought he looked like the last person left in the world.
He couldn’t go in, but he could climb the walls and sit down, overlooking the valley, the quiet lake. Mostly, he picked off mobs before they could attack him or shamble through the entrance, but he kept an eye on Scott as he turned.
He looked up at Martyn, and he still looked so angry but after barely a breath it crumpled into exhaustion, heavy and tired and empty, and some kind of unconscious understanding passed between them.
Scott turned away, back towards his house, and left Jimmy in the grass.
It was less than a minute before he returned, and he held Jimmy’s body carefully as he picked his way up one of the mountains that framed the valley. When he reached the top, he started to dig.
It looked slow, and painful, and arduous, especially when the shovel in his hands broke with an audible snap. He didn’t falter, just started to dig with his hands, and Martyn almost went to help him when he saw the way his shoulders were shaking but he didn’t.
Scott crouched at Jimmy’s side for a moment before he shot back to his feet, swaying as he stumbled back down the hill, far less careful than he’d been going up. When he was nearly there, he slipped on a muddy patch and crumpled, landing hard at the bottom.
Martyn shot to his feet, concern sharp in his throat as Scott lay unmoving, reaching out uselessly towards him. It hadn’t looked like that far of a fall, but maybe Scott had landed hard or on his head, or maybe he’d misjudged it-
Scott shifted, dragging his hands over his face, and Martyn sat again, heartbeat settling.
He was fine. He wasn’t hurt. He didn’t need or want Martyn to step in.
Martyn kept an eye on him as he picked off the few mobs that he could hear outside the walls, waiting with his heart in his throat for him to stand. Long minutes later, he did, and fell to his knees by the lake, dipping his hands in the water.
To get the dirt off, he realized. Washing the dirt off after he’d dug a grave with his bare hands.
Scott stood, and headed back up the hill. After a moment’s consideration, hands brushing across Jimmy’s face, he lifted him into the hole he’d dug and started to slowly, painfully push the dirt back in.
He started to sob partway through, bent over the grave with his hair falling in his face, and the catches in his breath were audible even from Martyn’s place on the wall, raw and sharp.
Martyn couldn’t do anything. Scott was breaking in front of him, and he couldn’t do anything, because even if the one who’d ended Jimmy’s life was gone the weight of his death was still on the Red Army’s shoulders. His blood was on Martyn’s hands and he didn’t get to run from that.
It hadn’t been his arrow to kill Jimmy, but he had watched as he’d died, with his feet on the ladder. He’d stood aside and thought it just.
Jimmy’s death had been for Dogwarts. During the battle, it had seemed so much more necessary than it did now, watching Scott weeping over his grave, bent over so far that his forehead nearly touched the ground, like a prayer, like he was begging the universe for mercy that wouldn’t come.
Martyn watched as he got to his feet, muddy and tear-stained, and walked down to the valley. He hesitated in front of Jimmy’s door, kicking at the grass, resting his hand on the door and stepping away. Eventually, he pushed it open and entered.
For a while, everything was silent.
Scott emerged a few minutes later, every movement heavy with exhaustion, and blocked up the door behind him. Then he stood by the lake, watching the rippling water, motionless.
As suddenly as if he’d been stabbed, he crumpled to the ground and screamed, and it was the most awful sound Martyn had ever heard, worse than Ren’s body falling to the ground, worse than the static when he’d died, worse than the choked noise Jimmy had made when the arrow pierced his throat. It was raw and animalistic and echoed over the empty place that had once been a home and trailed off into sobbing, so harsh and ugly that Martyn’s first thought was he’s not going to be able to breathe.
He wanted to leave, give Scott privacy in his grief- it didn’t feel like something that he should be seeing, not when he was to blame, not when any love between them had been buried with Jimmy.
But he wanted to help, wanted to go to him and ease the pain however he could, wanted to do anything he could to stop Scott looking so devastatingly alone. He wanted to wind back the clock and go back to when they were all green and whole and brilliantly alive, he wanted to tear the server down and build it back kinder this time, he wanted to tell Scott he was sorry.
He was frozen, watching Scott scream himself to pieces in the grass, and then there was a hissing and scuttling and a spider crawled over the walls, headed straight for Scott. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d nocked an arrow, pull back, release, and Scott turned to look as the spider shriveled and died.
He looked up at Martyn, eyes glossy with tears, face cracked open with heartache, and for a moment he thought he was going to scream but he just stared, horrified and lonely and utterly lacking the rage he’d expected.
Martyn swallowed, almost stepped back off the wall.
This was something he was never meant to see. This was something that was for Scott and for Jimmy and never, never for him. He wasn’t meant to see the way Scott collapsed, unable to stand anymore. He wasn’t supposed to be watching as his enemy grieved, screamed and sobbed like he was being taken apart.
But Scott fell to his side, face turned towards Martyn, and as awful as it felt to be intruding it would be worse to walk away, leave him on his own. He couldn’t step in, couldn’t help, but he could stay, pick off the mobs that tried to approach with more brutality than was strictly warranted, and defend Scott as he mourned.
They would be missing him back at Dogwarts, most likely. It had been far longer than he’d planned to be gone, and even though they could see the lack of death messages on the communicators Ren and Etho would probably be worried. He’d be more useful for the war if he went home and rested.
Tomorrow, they’d be enemies again, and Martyn would bow to his king and take up his vow to give everything for him. Tomorrow, they would battle again, and Scott wouldn’t have time for grief and Martyn wouldn’t have time for remorse.
But for now, the war could wait.
He didn’t leave, not until the sun stretched golden across the water.