Archive of Our Own ^beta

Scott was, above all else, a survivor.

He wasn’t the fastest, the strongest, or the smartest, but he had a desperate attachment to life that stayed true even during the end of times. As people faster, stronger, and smarter than him kept falling into the grasp of the infected, he clung to that desperation and lived. At times barely so, but he did.

It had been almost one year since the apocalypse started. One year since Gem came back home wrong, a black void-like substance dripping from half her body and unnatural purple eyes staring through him and Impulse. She told them to stay away from her for a while. That she’d been feeling unwell since a trip she had taken a few days prior.

Scott remembered trying to call a doctor and getting the phone slapped out of his hands so hard it smashed against the floor. That was the last conversation he ever had with Gem without a knife pressed to his throat, though it didn’t feel all that different.

Impulse fell a week after. Scott remembered seeing him cheerily stabbing some poor guy in the street, eyes shining as he looked to Gem for praise that she was far too eager to hand out for such a horrific act. He never tried to hunt Scott down at least. Even when given the chance, gun in hand and Scott lingering a moment too long, he stepped back.

Perhaps their friendship had been more profound. Or maybe Scott simply gave Impulse less chances to stab him in the back. After all, he never went back to their little apartment building to try and reason with him like he did with Gem. And Gem hadn’t attacked him either up to that point. Maybe he just pushed too much.

Regardless, it had been months since he’d seen either of them.

He’d been on the move the whole time. In one year he had ended further away from Life’s pink capital than he’d ever been before, even for the band tours. The city that homed his first breath, all his formative years, and the slow rise to a decent level of fame for Gem and the Scotts didn’t feel like home anymore. Leaving it behind had been easier than he thought it would be.

He tried to set down his roots a few times, but it turned out to be impossible. The infected were nothing like the stupid slow-moving zombies in movies that burned up in the sunlight. They were people still. Dead, but their minds were unaltered aside from their newly found uncontrollable bloodlust. They knew how to search buildings meticulously, how to set up traps, and how to use technology. Cities weren’t safe even if one was as careful as possible.

Scott only entered towns when he needed medical supplies, which was always a dangerous gamble, but an inevitable one if he didn’t want another kind of infection to take him out prematurely.

Aside from that, he’d gotten pretty good at making his own tools and building himself temporary shelters out in the woods or bunkering down in caves out in the mesa. He was a decent hunter, and he brought along a couple of books on edible roots, plants, and berries to help with the gathering process. Sure, maybe he could say that he would have killed for some salt to give his food some kind of taste after a year of plain flavors, but he had far bigger concerns than that. Besides, the acidity from berries did wonders to add some spice to his life.

He’d come to form a sort of routine in his nomadic life. An order. Something to keep his mind busy and not let the loneliness of his existence consume it.

With his new rigid mindset, he hadn’t even thought of looking for other survivors. He didn’t think there were any. Well, he was wrong.

On a random mountain he only scaled because he figured no infected would bother looking up there for a while at least, he found a whole ass settlement. Tall stone walls had been erected around a house, a few fields, and some animal pens. And a woman with bright red hair, green stitched-up skin, and leaf-green eyes stood guard behind a gate with a shotgun in hand. A shotgun that was immediately trained on Scott.

The hilarity of what looked to be a real-life zombie seemingly being one of the last survivors of what was akin to a zombie apocalypse wasn’t lost on Scott. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t manage any fear at the sight of the weapon, too focused on that ironic twist.

The woman squinted their eyes at him, quickly realizing that his own was a baby blue and far from the glowing purple of the infected, and they quickly lowered their weapon and opened the gate. “You’re not one of them” they pointed out baffled, rushing to his side to grab his hand. “What are you doing out by yourself? Come in!”.

Scott let himself be dragged because his brain still couldn’t compute the fact that he found others. That he wasn’t the last survivor left. Maybe the last human, yes, as the woman was clearly anything but. But he wasn’t alone in delaying the inevitable.

They passed by a sheep pen that seemed to be well-kept and Scott wondered how the Heck they’d managed to keep all of that going with the infected scouring every inch of land little by little. Were they truly so out of the way that they’d managed to live undisturbed for a whole year?

“Cleo! What are you doing?! We don’t know if we can trust him!” a shrill voice belonging to a short guy with a red cardigan, dirty blond hair, and dark blue eyes broke him out of his thoughts. The guy was running at them, hands twitching nervously by his side as he eyed Scott with a justified level of suspicion.

Honestly, Scott wasn’t sure why this Cleo person had brought him inside either. Sure, he had no ill intentions toward them, but she couldn’t know that for certain. Not even with him undeniably being a survivor like them. After all, he imagined that jerks still existed on their side of the apocalypse too.

Cleo didn’t pay the protests any mind. “We could use an extra pair of hands and eyes after BigB” they simply stated with a small shrug.

The blond’s shoulders fell slightly and his protests quietened. He didn’t seem happy about it, but it did look like he reluctantly agreed with that point.

Scott didn’t know if it was because of the months without social interactions or if he’d always been that awkward, but in a completely brainless moment, he had the brilliant idea of asking: “Who’s BigB?” as if it wasn’t abundantly obvious that it was a sensitive subject.

Two pairs of eyes fixed on him suddenly. Icy blue eyes were glaring daggers at him. If only stares could kill he’d be six blocks under. Cleo’s green ones meanwhile just looked hurt, and that was maybe even worse.

Scott could deal with anger.

The infected were nothing but angry all the time. Shouting at each other and him with equal ferocity. Swinging their various weapons with abandon in an attempt to soothe the rage boiling just beneath their skin. Not to forget Gem’s cold detached smile, sharper than any blade, as she decided that it was Scott’s time to join them too. Her words: “I only want to hurt you” still haunted all his nightmares.

He didn’t know how to deal with hurt though. Not his pain, and definitely not others.

He hadn’t received any comfort in months, and, by then, he’d forgotten how to dish it out as well.

The best he could do was offer Cleo an apologetic smile and hope they’d get it without him having to put into words something he couldn’t even muster up in his mind.

Thankfully, Cleo seemed to be a perceptive one. They sighed and looked away, somewhere in the distance. “He was an ally of ours” they explained. “The last in a long list of losses”.

So they hadn’t survived unscathed either… Scott wondered if he was a horrible person for feeling a sort of relief at that realization. He wasn’t happy that they lost someone dear to them, of course, just that… he hadn’t been alone in his suffering. His sacrifices hadn’t been easily avoidable. There were no winners in the apocalypse, only broken people doing their best to survive. It soothed a deep-seated uncertainty he’d been dealing with from the start. The idea that maybe he wasn’t built for this. That others could do it better with ease. That, maybe, he should have given up when offered the chance.

Instead of saying all of that, he did the acceptable thing and offered his condolences.

Cleo took them with a curt nod. She didn’t look annoyed, more so as if she was trying really hard to keep any tears threatening to fall under lock and key. “It’s fine. I’m sure you’ve been through much the same. After all, I would imagine you didn’t start out alone…” there was an attempt at an olive branch there. A prompt for him to share a vulnerability of equal caliber. Something for them to hold onto to confirm his humanity.

He wished he could give them that.

“I… I did…” Scott looked down, unable to meet their heavy gazes. “Well… one of my best friends was patient zero. The other joined her within a week. Kinda makes sense that my whole social circle didn’t take long to fall… and then I just avoided human settlements like the plague. I didn’t even know there were any other survivors” he confessed, hoping that it would do in place of sharing his own grief.

A hand squeezed his left shoulder soothingly. Looking up he was met with nothing but understanding in Cleo’s eyes.

“Oh yikes. If you have trauma from your friends being infected you may not want to meet Etho…” the blond said with a complete lack of tact, quickly destroying the atmosphere of camaraderie that had formed between Scott and Cleo.

Scott turned to him with a confused look and a raised eyebrow.

He didn’t have to ask who ‘Etho’ was, as a third person stepped out of their house to see what the ruckus was all about. He had white hair and a dark blue mask covering half his face, and a metallic headband covered another quarter. All that was left uncovered was a glowing purple eye trained on Scott with unblinking focus.

“What the-” Scott swatted away Cleo’s hand and quickly took a step back, hand inching toward the stone axe hanging loosely by his side. He usually only really used it to cut down trees as he wasn’t really the violent type, not even when it came to infected, but it still would do in a pinch. At the very least to intimidate them somewhat if they tried to bar him from reaching the exit. Not that he could do too much against Cleo’s shotgun, but he could try.

Etho, seemingly understanding his nervousness, took a step back and raised his hands up in a placating gesture. “I’m not gonna kill you. Unless you try to hurt Cleo or Grian, then it becomes justified” he assured Scott.

Neither Cleo nor Grian seemed to be too worried by the presence of the infected. As a matter of fact, Grian had taken a protective stance against Scott instead, placing himself between his teammate and him, sharp eyes locked on Scott’s, and hand firmly holding what looked to be an invisibility potion. Which wasn’t a weapon per se, but, then again, Grian didn’t necessarily look like a fighter either, and providing his teammate a quick and safe escape route was just as effective of a defensive strategy.

For his part, Etho looked completely relaxed. The usual aggressiveness and bloodlust that distorted the faces of the infected into unrecognizable husks of their former selves was nowhere to be seen with him.

Heck, even at the very beginning, when she still had some self-control, Gem had looked far more threatening.

This begged the question, did the infection truly make it impossible for those affected to control themselves or was that just an excuse they gave themselves? Because, if Etho truly could choose, then what stopped everyone else from doing the same? What stopped them from simply not killing? What stopped Gem from not stabbing him during their very last encounter?

All the doubts were hurting his brain.

He looked back to Etho, fear gone now, leaving only a very familiar sense of despair behind. “So… you didn’t hurt anyone. They seem to trust you and I doubt they would otherwise. But that means that all along… they could just choose not to hurt me? Not to hurt anyone?”. His voice broke slightly toward the end. If he wasn’t too dehydrated for tears, as clean water was a rare and precious resource, he would have probably been crying.

Etho shook his head, flooding Scott’s heart with some relief. “It’s really hard at the start. You’re compelled to pass onto the infection. I haven’t killed anyone, but I participated in infecting a good friend of ours-”.

He was interrupted by Cleo scoffing. “Talk for yourself, I never liked or trusted Joel”.

“I liked him, definitely didn’t trust him though” Grian piped up as well. “Honestly, even without the infection I have a feeling he would have eventually snapped and started a killing spree” he added on nonchalantly.

Maybe the one infected guy was the only one he wouldn’t have to worry about in their trio…

Etho didn’t look bothered by their interruptions. He wasn’t too expressive in general, perhaps because three-quarters of his face was covered and the one eye he left out looked too alien for Scott to read. Maybe in time he’d get used to it and he’d learn to read the man well enough. “Be it as you will, I helped infect him. But, after that, I didn’t really feel the desire to kill everyone else seemed to have. I mostly just wanted Cleo and Grian to be okay. That’s all. So I kinda sneaked around, found them, and then we came up here and made a life for ourselves here. That was months ago and I still feel none of the famed bloodlust” he concluded.

Scott’s shoulders slouched once more.

So it was a choice. Once she infected some other guy, Gem could have come back to them, free of all of her compulsions. They could have been happy. They could have all thrived together just like the trio in front of him was doing.

Maybe they could have found some other mountain to set up a shack. And Impulse could have put his mechanical skills to use, he could have set up some farms like Cleo, Grian, and Etho had. They could have gotten some animals. Scott could have dedicated himself to farming like he always dreamed of doing as a kid before music and the prospect of fame entered his life. And Gem could have let loose on all her pent-up anger and frustration fighting off the other infected when they came too close.

At the end of the day, they could have still been a team.

“If it makes you feel better, we don’t know if that’s what it’s like for everyone or if it’s just an Etho thing” Cleo said after a moment, squeezing his shoulder reassuringly once again.

Scott shook his head. “Impulse chose not to attack me before when it would have been easy for him to just follow along with the rest of the mob of infected. That never sat right with me. It didn’t work with the whole ‘uncontrollable bloodlust’ thing”. He sighed, shaking his head in an attempt at dispelling his thoughts. “Whatever. I don’t need them anyway”.

Grian cheered loudly. “Yeah! Join us instead, we have explosives and Cleo”.

Cleo rolled their eyes. “You say that as if there’s anything threatening about me beyond my appearance”.

“Don’t say that Cleo, you can be plenty scary when you want to be” Etho chimed in, trying to be reassuring but only coming off as slightly mocking.

Cleo turned back to Scott with an exasperated expression hiding just a tinge of fondness underneath it. “You see what I have to deal with? I need someone normal here”.

Yeah, maybe they were a bit unhinged. But Scott got the impression, reinforced greatly by Etho choosing to be with them, and Cleo and Grian accepting him back with open arms, that they were loyal. And that, above all else, was what he needed after his most recent discovery.

And maybe, later down the line, he would have some fun with explosives together with Grian. But that was a future Scott matter to deal with.