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BigB couldn’t find his teammate anywhere. It wasn’t the weirdest thing, Pearl had the same tendency to wander off and do her own thing that he did. Part of what made their partnership work was that neither of them insisted on staying together, and neither of them really questioned what the other was planning on doing unless they were asked to go along. She had an uncanny sense for knowing where he was anyways, which made him feel like she might be following him sometimes. Normally, he would find it a little grating to have a teammate that close by, but it was something he was grateful for after the incident with Jimmy.
The issue, if it was really an issue, was that it was raining hard on the server. Like, the kind of rain you measure in inches, that floods any cracks in the ground and flows in streams downhill. The frogs would be eating well when it was over, surely, given the worms that had been flooded out of their homes, leaving BigB to hop over them as he headed back to the tower. Even with the bloodlust that came with a red life, BigB didn’t really want to step on bugs for no reason. Thunder cracked in the distance and he decided to hurry back before he lost an hour to lightning.
In this kind of downpour, BigB just wanted to be sure that Pearl was okay, and not caught out in it. She could take care of herself, but even if he wasn’t always the most reliable teammate in other series he still knew that a good teammate keeps the other safe. He had done his best in alliances before, even if they were temporary or if he hadn’t been entirely contained to one. Cleo’s warning from the beginning of the series for Pearl stung, even if he had shrugged it off. And Pearl was different anyways. Maybe it was the space she gave him, maybe it was some guilt left from what happened at the Box, but she was easy to want to be loyal to. Easy to care about and to want to keep safe. She did the same for him, he knew. Her insistence on getting him the win despite his own ambivalence towards the idea proved it.
Once he was back in the tower, he quickly headed up the ladder. The bottom floor with it’s tall stone walls was drafty and cold, water seeping in from the door and into the gravel to create mud. Somewhere, deep below the ground, was Pearl’s cat. It would live past any of them down there.
Their bedroom was far warmer and far better insulated despite the open windows. He shut them quickly anyways, cursing the fact that they hadn’t seen the rain coming this morning. The furnace was going in the corner, smelting up some iron. Pearl had to be around here somewhere then, and had probably just gotten back from a mining trip. The furnace’s heat was welcome as BigB untied his bandana and took off his shirt, replacing the shirt with his normal blue button up and placing the wet clothes by the furnace to dry. His own iron gear came off, the metal freezing cold from his walk.
“Pearl?” He called out, looking around. It wasn’t like there was anywhere she could be in their tiny space. Both of their beds were empty, and there wasn’t really any other space. Maybe he had missed her downstairs, or she was under the base? “Where are you?”
“Up here!” The response came, unexpectedly, from above him. He could barely hear it through the closed windows and the pounding rain.
“On the roof?” BigB questioned, incredulous, “Are you crazy?”
He flinched back after asking. Maybe not the right words. The barely healed wounds of last series still stung for her, he knew. She had admitted as much late at night after the amnesia incident, that she was afraid that she was losing her mind for real, or that she had already lost it and everyone had been right about her.
“Maybe!” She seemed good humored in her reply, but it was a little hard to tell. She may not be crazy, but she certainly got an unhinged tint to her when she was red. It was a little scary, to be honest. “It’s nice up here!”
“There’s no way! You’re gonna get sick!” His voice was starting to hurt from having to call up to her.
“We’re only alive for a little bit more! How badly sick could I get?” He laughed, the reminder of their impending deaths somehow making him giddy with adrenaline. Maybe someone else would feel dread, but BigB wasn’t everybody.
“I guess you’re right!”
“So come join me!” He shook his head, but laughed. May as well. Like she said, it’s not like they were going to get sick enough for it to matter in the week or so they had left.
He grabbed what little leather they had and made some more water resistant gear. Looking around he could see Pearl’s iron gear laid out on her bed, meaning she was probably out there in her normal hoodie and shorts. Like he said, crazy.
It wasn’t all that hard to clamber onto their roof, but the rain certainly made it more difficult. BigB struggled to get a proper hold on the ledge, the wood slick under his hands.His heart beat quickly. A death right now would be a fourth of his time. Just as he was afraid he was going to slip, a slim pale hand caught his. With a shocking strength given how slight she was, Pearl pulled him up next to her.She grinned at him, her red eyes meeting his own, and her smile was kind despite the mildly unsettling edge that came with last life bloodlust.
Just as he suspected, Pearl was wearing her hoodie. The normally bright color was darkened to a crimson, and he was sure it was incredibly heavy with how soaked through it was. Her shorts looked nearly black and he cringed at the idea of wet denim. He was glad to not be wearing his own jeans right now, and to have his clothes covered by the leather gear. He would have offered her some, but she didn’t always react well when he tried to give her things. More than anyone else in these games, BigB understood the need to take care of yourself in this sort of situation. He had been doing it since before Pearl joined the series.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” She asked him, pulling him out of his thoughts and gesturing out towards the rest of the server. She handed over a spyglass, this was a true opportunity to Watch, Her eyes glinted purple for a second, in a way that was familiar for both of them. Evo had left a little bit of itself in all of them.He was sure his own eyes were doing the same. They weren’t Watchers, but they were allowed to Watch and even sometimes to Listen.
He looked out at the landscape and couldn’t help but agree with her assessment. Despite the darkness, it was nice to get a good look at everything when everyone else was inside. There was no noise other than the rain, no movement other than the mobs that were spawning. Occasionally, a flash of lighting lit up everything. Light curved around the Mean Gils’ hourglass, it outlined the Clockers’ tower, it reflected on the flooded pool below the Bad Boy’s Bread house. Sometimes it struck the very top of TIES’ base, and he was sure the four of them must have their hair standing on end.
Some distant part of him worried about how high up him and Pearl were, lighting being attracted to tall places and all, but Watching tended to dull such feelings. The two of them were extending themselves to places that they shouldn't be able to actually see. He wondered if Grian would want to join them, or Martyn or Jimmy. All five of them had it in them, even if only Grian and Martyn tended to use it. The rest of the server probably didn’t even know there was anything odd about the way BigB and Pearl Watched them, unless a teammate had told them.
The rain had slowed by early evening, though a light rain kept up. The lighting was gone at least, and some of their server mates began emerging from their bases. Like BigB, many of them were wearing leather, though the most paranoid stuck to their iron and diamond. With everyone on red, he understood the urge. He pulled back his Eyes and began to peer at them normally through the spyglass. The gasping breath beside him told him Pearl was doing the same. It was standard procedure for them, as Watching people was too invasive unless you really needed to. Spying normally? That was just a bit of fun.
He could have kept observing forever, except that Pearl’s breath turned into a huff, and her teeth were audibly chattering. At some point she must have drifted closer to him for warmth, and the drenched fabric of her hoodie was soaking wet and trembling with her.
“We should head inside. I don’t know about you but I’m chilly,” He suggested, putting his spyglass away. His gear had kept him warm and dry for the most part, though his hair was soaked due to the no helmets rule. He lied, however, for her sake. A quick look saw that her long hair was soaked even under the hood, the cloth only holding so much water before it started to leak through, and her lips and fingertips were tinted blue.
Pearl, he had learned, had very little sense of temperature, hot or cold. It was a consequence of last series, she had explained. Whatever tolerance she hadn’t built from her powdered snow escapades and the resulting frostbite, she had gotten from the dead tissue left by Scott blowing them both up. Burn scars went up her legs to the knee, and up her arms to the elbow. Once, when she was yellow, she had leaned against a furnace while it was cooking and he had to pull her arm away when smelled something burning. She hadn’t even felt it, but she had a bandage wrapped around the area where it had left a mark on her bicep.
Maybe it was a winning thing, BigB thought. He didn't have any visible scars from previous games, and certainly no lasting tolerance for anything except maybe pain and fear. He almost wished he had gotten to keep more than just the memories from these games, some proof of pain. Then again, the way Pearl cringed when she traced her scars told him that it would probably be more painful than anything,
“Yeah, inside then. Don’t want you freezing,” She clapped a hand on his shoulder before swinging down, easily and casually. He could hear the thump of her landing on the floor inside.
BigB’s own descent was slower and more careful. He had less time than her, he couldn’t waste it by falling. He had none of her grace, but it was still an impressive feat of strength to watch him lower himself slowly back onto their window ledge.
Before she could lay down, he stopped her.
“You should change, it can’t be comfortable to lay down in those clothes,” She tilted her head to the side at the suggestion, almost dog-like. It was like she hadn’t even considered the idea. With a shrug and a toss, her hoodie joined his own wet clothes by the furnace, which he restocked to turn some wood into charcoal, if only to keep it hot now that the iron was done. BigB turned to look outside while she removed her other clothing to do the same. “You done?”
“Yeah,” He turned back around at her response. Unlike him, Pearl actually brought pajamas to the games. She had proper pajama pants, moon and stars pattern and all, and a tank top. BigB didn’t see a point in it, the t-shirt he normally wore under his button up and the shorts he had on for his red life this season worked just fine. It was still a little chilly, and he shivered as a draft came through the tower. Pearl reached under her bed and grabbed her regular navy hoodie. “Here, you look cold,”
He would have pointed out the irony, her lips were tinged blue, but there wasn’t a point. She probably didn’t even feel it. He just took the hoodie, grateful that Pearl wore one that was oversized because it just about fit on him.
“Alright then, dinner time?” He suggested. A hot meal would do them both some good.