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There is nothing more numbing than standing over your own decaying body.
A certain grief about seeing the blood drip from your own wounds, a shiver of breath against the cuts you press your fingers to. An agony in the desperate cries of the living, silver flashing as trembling hands gently lift to touch your cheeks. A whispered plea under the laughing, unrelenting sun.
Jimmy couldn't feel it. Yet, he found himself reaching up to mimic the ghostly touch each time, a search for comfort nothing could provide anymore.
He was dead. And that had been the absolute truth for the last 100 loops.
Under different circumstances, he would have laughed about it. Cruel immortality, a fate worse than death, a practical joke any of the others would have attempted to trick him with. No one could live forever. But was it truly living, if his time on earth was living hell?
No, it was a mockery of living. The once gentle breeze carried nothing but lost moments and time between them.
Maybe he lied, and true numbness came with the passage of time, and the insanity of trying everything but still failing, knowing he would have to watch his husband break down in a 100 different ways and be powerless to his grief. Maybe, he simply felt indifferent to fate. But his heart was hollow with age, and so he could only listen. And watch.
Watch, as the games unfold in the same way every time. He dies first, the omen of death, and Scott chases his own demise. He searches for his husband to no avail. Two intertwined souls face each other on the top of a hill, and his vision goes static with every hit amidst teary apologies.
Nothing.
And then his mind would resurface, dizzying in speed, and his hands would feel warm, and he would open his eyes to a smiling Scott with his hands in his, the same damning question on his lips.
"Are you ready to win?"
If there was a game to be won, he had lost it all a long time ago. And somehow, he knew he was never meant to be the victor.
Sometimes, when the inevitable truth got too heavy to bear, he would indulge himself in these loops. He learnt that if he played his cards right, he could get Scott to agree to stay out of the deadly fight and hide in their home. For a while, he could close his eyes, feel Scott run practiced fingers through his shivery wings, and pretend nothing was wrong. But the desert would still fall, and the silent rage in Scar's eyes would force his feet to plant itself in front of Scott, wings spread protectively, taking the killing blow in his place. Have a perfect view of the misplaced sorrow in Grian's eyes.
Other times, he would insist that Scott stuck with him, afraid of letting his actual death be seen by his husband but more afraid of dying alone. Selfish for a change. But Skizzleman's arrow never misses it's mark, no matter where they hid, and it took only a few loops for him to realise he never wanted to see such terrible devastation up close again. Even if Scott would forget by the next loop, that grief-ridden look would never escape his own fracturing mind.
But now, something changed.
He watched, as Scott chose not to chase after Ren in a mad rage, watched as he stood still for a few long seconds. Wondered what changed this time. Was it real? Was it the smile he forced as blinding pain erupted from the same sore spot on his chest? Was it the white lily he plucked from the ground and pressed into Scott's hands before they left, a last ditch attempt to make him understand?
So preoccupied with his own musings, he almost missed Scott turning to leave hurriedly, leaving him to scramble after the man on a mission. He was determined to keep Scott company til he died, too, and was not about to let him out of sight. And in silence they walked, a growing rift between them that felt too final to be broken. A march unbroken in step, identical in rhythm, sealed in fate.
Eventually, they end up at the ruined gates of their home, smoke still billowing from her walls. Home sweet home, he silently scoffs. They both ignored the damage, though, instead walking deeper into the valley in tandem til Jimmy faltered first, seeing where they had ended up.
A hasty grave, marked with a feather, a familiar name etched in stone. Jimmy.
Him.
"I'm tired, Jimmy." Scott speaks, suddenly. Jimmy jolts in his place, wings spreading to accommodate the motion, rushing forward to join the man knelt beneath his headstone in prayer. And for the first time in his death, he took a good look at the man he'd come to love. Looked carefully into eyes haunted with something that promised danger, blood that Jimmy knew could never be washed off still clinging to his robes.
He looked every bit like the soldier he had become. Nothing like the kind man who spun a wreath of flowers for him, perhaps a long time ago.
"I don't know what you want from me. I see you in the corner of my eye, sometimes, and you always look so sad." Scott says, quieter this time, nails scratching the dirt. Jimmy wishes he could stop him from staining his own pure soul. "You looked the same before we left, like you knew. Did you?"
I'm here, he wanted to say, eyes stinging with phantom tears. I knew, he wanted to shout, I know how this ends. But grief shows no mercy, and after so much time he knew better than to try. Nothing he did now would affect the man crumbling before him.
They sat there in silence, the only sounds coming from distant shouts beyond the valley walls. In here, it was safe. Jimmy sat against his headstone, facing the kneeling man before him, seeing a hundred different emotions flit through his eyes. Anger. Sorrow. Love. Beneath it all lay resolve so strong that Jimmy doubted would fall to anything but itself.
Scott's eyes sparked of dangerous intent.
"I wish to burn the world, for you." Scott whispers like a promise. Jimmy's heart breaks. "The red army will pay. But today... I will give myself permission to grieve."
Only after such a terrible admission does the man truly break, puppet strings cut as he collapses against the headstone, body shaking in wracking sobs. And there's nothing he can do, really, but Jimmy stills wraps his wings around the man in way that feels familiar in his hold. And though his eyes stay firmly dry, and his heart no longer beats for the man in his arms, he thinks he can almost feel something.
For a while, he pretends the eyes at the back of his head do not exist.
"As long as I'm here with you,
Then, Darling, I'll cry with you."