SaltedSalamander

Ashura's inn was running on the warm side today. Loud in the comfortable way, not the 'there are six voices in my ear and they all sound miles off' kind of way.

The smell of stew and fresh bread clung to the air, and Reth was leaning over the chef’s counter with a knife in one hand, a cutting board under the other, and just enough attention to work on his mincing technique while ruminating over the same thoughts that invade his mind every day.

Tish was doing better. She'd just stopped in to grab 'brain fuel' for her and Jel to munch while getting creative. His debt to the cartel was paid. Had been, for months now. Although he still felt the kick to check if Zeki dropped off any packages for him to deliver. Reth's eye always strayed to the usual drop point when on break. Although his nerves hadn't yet conjured an illusion of some new contract to bind him.

Reth runs through his mental checks. He slept about four hours the night before. Which was good by his standards. Sifuu hadn't started another bar fight, thank dragon. Last week Tish had to replace three stools.

Ashura even mentioned giving him a small raise the other night. Never said why, but Reth could piece it together. A hint about 'getting him signed up a bank account so he could save for the future' here, another about keeping a bit of spending money to 'take his partner in crime on a date' there.

Speaking of, he got to see you earlier in the morning. Apparently you were off to the Royal Highlands on some special Order business with Subira. Reth was still waiting for her to put him in cuffs for his work with Zeki, but he was happy you were starting to get some answers about the whole 'humans popping up out of nowhere' business. Even if he barely understood most of it. Maybe with his newfound freedom, he could help out somehow and repay a bit of what you've done for him.

That is if he could convince Jina to teach him about humanity. There aren't many books in the library. He checked.

All Reth cared about was your happiness on that front, and you looked thrilled to explore the Royal Highlands. So he packed up a portion of hearty vegetable soup with a sliced baguette, kissed your cheek, and sent you off with the comfort of knowing you still hadn't realized how much of a mistake he was.

Everything was good. Pushing up sundrops, really.

The worst of life, the ugly, grinding, humiliating worst of it, was supposed to be over.

So why is there this...foreboding gloom hanging over his head? Why can't he just be happy?

He still didn’t know what to do.

Freedom felt too much like standing in an empty room and waiting for the door to open again.

“Reth, can I get one chappa masala to go?” someone called from nearby the hearth, and he lifted his head with practiced ease, ready with some lazy reply. The usual two-finger salute before getting a fresh order slip.

It was in that moment that time seemed to slow down. They say that seconds can feel like years when tragedy strikes, and he believed it. Felt it back when his parents never came home, when Tish's condition worsened, when he sat to let these dragon forsaken runes be carved into his skin with nothing to dull the pain.

Just because Reth's used to it, doesn't mean he's prepared. Never.

Shouting burst outside the inn's open doors, followed by heavy footfalls running up the outer stairway. The sudden scrape of urgency breaking through the heavy evening.

Reth frowned, knife pausing in his grip.

Through the swinging doorway came Subira’s commanding voice, sharp with alarm.

“Chayne—!? Chayne, I need you!”

Her panic cut through the inn like a blade.

Reth straightened to attention, stew forgotten despite needing a stir.

Across the room, Ashura was already moving, foregoing the steps down from his podium with one hop and rushing out with the kind of speed that showed he was still a trained solider even in his silver years. Reth caught the expression on his face for only a second — focused, grim, assertive — and then the inner doors banged behind him.

“What should I — ?” Reth started, but the offer died in his throat.

He should stay. He knew that. The inn was his post right now with Ashura gone. His job. His responsibility. He had a dozen plates halfway done, patrons still seated, and every sensible part of him knew he ought to keep his head down and his hands busy.

Instead he moved, leaping over the counter with one arm.

Because Subira sounded scared for the first time since she arrived in Kilma and he knew. Deep down, Reth could only think of one thing that might shake the Watcher and force her back from the Highlands investigation prematurely.

Because Chayne was not in the tavern taking his usual nighttime tea, which meant he'd been stalled by something far worse than a stubbed toe.

Because somewhere in the back of Reth’s mind, the part of him that spent too many years always braced for impact already started to say 'I told you so'.

The new breed of bad was here and peace was just an illusion.

The thing that strikes when you get comfortable.

He stepped out onto the porch just in time to see Chayne hurrying across the road, robes swaying in his wake, expression intent and troubled. Reth’s stomach dropped before he even looked past him.

Subira stood near the path, breathless, dirtied, and tense from the temples down, and in her arms —

For one endless second, Reth’s mind refused to understand what he was seeing. His gut was right.

You.

Limp in her arms. Face pale beneath the dirt and surface bruising. Your body draped in a way that made something cold and violent lurch through his chest.

Not dead. Not yet. He knew that because he would have known if you were already gone, wouldn’t he? He had to know that on sight at least. He had to be right.

But you looked so broken. Not at all like the sweet cheek he kissed just that morning, flushed under his attention and giving him the buzzy feeling that made each day something worth tackling.

Rather than those butterflies, all Reth feels right now are parasites eating at his stomach. He'll never be able to smell stew again.

Subira was saying something rushed before Chayne gestured down the road. She gave a curt nod before taking off in the direction of the healer's pavilion with you stolen away with her. Reth watches your head bob over her forearm and waits for your eyes to open. She disappears before they can.

Ashura’s voice cut in low and steady. Someone else was speaking too, maybe, but Reth couldn’t make sense of it. The sounds came at him from far away, like he’d slipped beneath the surface of a Lake Kilma and was hearing life through dense water.

He stayed rooted on the porch.

Couldn’t move.

Couldn’t make his legs work.

It was absurd, really. He carried trays full of hot food through crowded rooms, ducked knives and egos and the occasional exploding temper, survived enough terrible days to know how to keep a face on. He should be useful. He should be doing something.

Instead he was standing there like an idiot.

Dragon, why was he such an idiot.

His fingers twitched in the air, grasping at nothing.

No.

Not now. Not ever, really.

Not after everything.

Not after the cartel.

Not after Tish.

Not after all the nights he’d lain awake with the kind of dread that never really leaves, only changes shape. Not after resigning to be nothing, just to get a cruel taste of what freedom looks like. It had your face, your scent, your voice, your laugh, your touch, your...

Not after he had started, impossibly, to think maybe he could have a life that was just his life, and not a countdown to pay his due.

His gaze stayed fixed on the spot Subira once stood. You were here and not here. A body. A breathing thing. A person. The sight of you struck him in some old, buried place where hope and fear were tangled together so tightly he couldn’t tell them apart anymore.

This was it, wasn’t it?

This was the price.

Every small joy, every stolen laugh, every half-remembered moment of feeling safe in with your hand in his, of hearing you tease him through the storage room door, of seeing your face across the counter and thinking, against all reason, that maybe he could keep this. Maybe he could keep you.

He hadn't deserved any of it.

That thought came suddenly, sharp as a hook beneath the ribs.

All the things you had given him. All the new chances. The security. The patience. The way you looked at him like he was not a problem to solve or a burden to bear, but a person. He had not earned it. Not properly. Not nearly enough. He had not said the things he should have said. He had not thanked you enough. Hadn’t told you how often he thought of you when the night got too quiet, or how much lighter the world felt when you walked into the inn, or how he had started measuring days by the possibility of seeing you again.

Reth thought there would be time.

He thought he could be clever about it. Play it cool. Let things develop in their own time.

Dragon, there's never time. What made him think there would be now, when the universe was set to punish him for the sin of getting used to happiness.

His chest tightened so suddenly it hurt.

No, he thought again, but this time it was smaller. More frightened. Childish, almost. Like the voice in his head belonged to someone much more lanky, reading a report from the coastguard about a ship lost to the tides.

He didn't remember taking a still breath.

He didn't remember when his hands started shaking. Only that the air felt thicker.

“Reth.”

A rich, commanding voice, snapped straight through the haze.

Reth blinked hard, and the scene shifted into focus by degrees. Ashura was in front of him now, one hand braced on his shoulder, the other steadying him before he could even realize he was unsteady. His brow was furrowed with concern, the kind that came from someone who already made a dozen hard decisions before noon and still had room left to worry about other people.

“Hey,” Ashura said, low and even. “Listen to me.”

Reth stared at him, empty-headed.

Ashura’s grip tightened gently. “You need to hold down the inn for me, alright? I have to get Chayne what he needs but I'll be right back. Chayne will take care of them, okay? Just breathe and wait for me here.”

Your name carried weight across every syllable as Ashura spoke. If anyone knew the sinking feeling of half your heart being torn out, it was Kilma's gentlest innkeeper.

Reth swallowed, throat thick, grating, and useless. He could hear nothing clearly except the pounding of his own pulse.

Ashura said something else then, an apology maybe, or an explanation, but it washed over him without meaning. Reth barely registered the words. What he registered was the pressure of Ashura’s hands on his shoulders, the certainty in his voice, the fact that someone was still telling him what to do because he had not yet fallen apart enough to be spared responsibility.

Hold down the inn.

Yes. Right. Of course.

Useful. Be useful. Keep moving.

It was the only thing he knew how to reach for.

“Yeah,” he said, and the word came out thin. Crooked. “Yeah. Fine. Go. You can count on me."

Ashura searched Reth's face for one more second, as if he might object, and then nodded sharply. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

He let go and was gone almost immediately, already turning toward Chayne’s house at a speed Reth was sure would aggravate Ashura's bad knee later on. He'd only gather enough to care later, when this was over. It had to be over at some point.

Reth stood there a moment longer, staring after him, not because he was calm but because he had nothing left to do with his body. His hands felt far away. His legs felt borrowed. Everything inside him had gone still in the way a room goes still after lightning strikes nearby.

Then the world lurched back into motion.

Inside the inn, a chair scraped. Someone asked a question. A murmur of concern spread through the room, but Reth could not hear the words. He turned mechanically, like a puppet being tugged by a string, and went back in on legs that didn’t quite belong to him.

The smell of burning stew hit him again, warm and unbearable. He jumped the counter to turn off the burner.

His cutting board sat where he’d left it. The knife, too. The vegetables. The dirty bar rag hung on its hook. Ordinary things. Things that had no right continuing to exist while the rest of his world split open.

Reth put his hands on the counter and stared down at them.

He was still shaking.

He tightened his jaw.

Nope. Not here. Not now.

He picked up the knife and pulled out strip chaapa. Got to cubing it and grabbed an order ticket. Because what else was there? Because if he stopped, the image of you in Subira’s arms would keep replaying itself, over and over, and the breaking sound in his chest would turn into something messier and harder to hide.

A customer spoke to him and he answered automatically. Somebody asked if the tea was ready and he nodded. Another voice. Another plate. Another task. Another attempt to drag the world back into a shape that made sense.

But inside, he was still on the porch.

Still watching. Thinking.

I'm such an idiot.

I knew better.

I should've asked Jina sooner, should've asked Subira for details, should've begged them to stay - made an excuse. Been there.

Please.

Dragon, Pheonix, whoever you are ... if you're there.

Please.

Don't take them from me.

The word lodged in him like a splinter. Please let them live. Please let Chayne be able to fix this. Please let there be something in this world stronger than all the bad things waiting their turn.

Please don't let him lose the one person who's become the center of his life without him noticing until it was already too late.

And if there were gods—if there were any kind of listening power at all, any mercy tucked away behind the stars—then now. Now would be a very good time to prove it.

Because Reth could not do this again.

Could not stand by another bedside and wait for a voice to say there was nothing more to be done.

Could not hold himself together with jokes and flour and duty while the person he loved slipped out of reach.

Could not.

He pressed his fingers into the counter until his knuckles ached and kept his face angled just so, because the customers still needed feeding and the inn still needed him and if he looked too closely at anyone he was certain he would break. Their lingering eyes suggest they expect him to, and he won't slip.

But inside, where no one could see him, he was already broken.

Hassian:

Hassian considered himself one who exists with peace. In harmony with the world he inhabits. Yet that does not mean he is comfortable enough to take tranquility for granted. To exist in peace.

No.

Hassian is intimately aware that every day is different from the last, and that one's life can be ripped mercilessly out from its roots if there are roots lain down to do so.

While it is by the dragon's grace that he has comforts to lose, it is also by his cruelest will that those we cherish can be stolen for no reason other than circumstance.

It is not fear that claims Hassian. Not even grief. Of that he holds nestled between his seventh and eighth ribs, an urge to persist. It is not blood or hunger or the ache of long winters spent whittling in his grove and longer hunts as the game thins. Those were familiar changes.

Honest uprootings. The world had always been full of sharp edges, and he learned young how to move between them.

But peace?

Peace felt like standing on unfamiliar ground and being told not to brace for it to crumble. Hassian could not find it in himself to slip into peace.

Until now.

For a few hours, he had everything he would ever need in the palm of his hand. Every root lain in his garden, tucked safe under the ground, making their beds in Kilma’s soil as they should have twenty years ago.

Taylin. Mama. By some miracle, the Dragon returned her to Sifuu and him. Rather she was never claimed in the first place. For twenty years, she was just out of reach.

Yet he did not care to let that thought sink. None of it mattered.

Not when she was here with them now.

Alive.

Breathing.

Resting in the healer's pavillion after Chayne’s careful hands cleaned the worst of her wounds, after the impossible had become real and the ground cracked open just enough to let life sprout new roots. Sifuu hadn't let go of Taylin once she returned to herself, and Ulfie — who had been a stranger only yesterday and now felt like a new root in Hassian's family — stayed close too, quiet and watchful in a way Hassian recognized. Tau curled at the boys feet and waited his turn for pets.

The five of them sat together in that passing moment, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, Hassian's heart was not divided by loss.

It's become whole.

Even the open room seemed different for it. Smaller, perhaps. Warmer. Medicinal herbs never had such a welcoming aroma. Or maybe that appreciation was only the shape of his own disbelief.

There was so much to catch up on.

So much to learn.

So much to unlearn, too, from all the years he spent carrying the weight of a mama-shaped absence and calling it strength. And yet there was something gentle in it, too. Taylin looking at him like she was memorizing his face. Taking in all he'd become, yet still seeing the image of her little boy who'd look at the stars with hope.

Sifuu sat beside her, steady as stone. Barely holding back from sharing every little detail of their lives these years and straining not to ask Tailyn for her story. Not yet.

For a short while, the world felt almost complete. Only missing one piece to make the picture whole.

Just think of the human and they shall always come, just as Hassian's grown used to.

So he waits.

He waits.

He takes in these otherwise perfect, terribly short, hours.

He waits and he trusts you'll seek him out once your work is through.

Tau's head lifts at the sound of rushed footfalls, and Hassian can't help the twitch of his lip. Like clockwork. They're a bit frantic and lighter than your usual stride but it has been an eventful day. No one is entirely predictable, as you've proven time and time again.

He waits a little more.

And by dragon, if Hassian could take back the summons, the thought of you, then he'd do anything to make it so.

At first, he thought it was only another fevered trick of exhaustion.

You were with him only hours before, standing at his hip with that certainty of yours that guides a hunt to finish, alive and smiling and warm with a heart on your sleeve that makes him feel as though the world had one less thing to question. Even if you were full of them every day.

Your eyes, glazed with tears of happiness for his family reunited, and a brush to his arm brace as if to say 'Go. I've got it from here. Be with them'. He wouldn't have left you alone in the middle of unfamiliar territory under any other circumstance.

Yet even then, he should have lingered just a moment beyond that silent exchange. To ensure the security of whatever task you'd throw yourself into without him. Based on the trials set to gain access to that ancient mansion, he saw first hand that it would be neither simple or safe.

Yet you always pull a miracle. His mama come home is a prime example.

No matter what trouble you got yourself mixed up in - of which, Hassian is certain there are many he's unaware - you always find him later on, come the end of each day.

Later.

A word that only seemed solid enough to trust because of you.

When Subira came rushing into the infirmary, Hassian's first thought was annoyance at the interruption. With the way Tau perked, Hassian was certain it would be you rushing up the path. Emotions may have rattled the hunter's instincts, but his pluumehound's senses were never wrong.

His second thought was a vague, dreadful understanding that something was terribly wrong. Watchers are trained to maintain their calm under distress and yet one well-ordained is missing her footing.

His third thought, broaching reflexes dulled by everything that had already happened that day, stalled to static at the body clutched in her arms.

To the battered, limp shape of you.

For one long second Hassian's mind refused to name what he saw.

Then his gaze drifted to the hollow lavender tint under your eyes, a shade he knew did not belong on human skin, and so he tried to look away. Yet every inch of flesh was caked in dirt, soot, and splotches of maroon that he once again could not dare to name.

Is it true that humans bleed the same as Majiri? Of course they do.

So why, like a child who once thought the stars held all answers, could he not grasp the metal stench clinging to you.

Subira’s urgency murdered the peace Hassian no longer found himself in. Chayne had already stood, already crossed the threshold, already commanding with the wisdom of someone who had no room for panic because panic would help no one. Sifuu let go of Taylin's hand for the first time. The empty cot beside them was cleared.

Your head rolled to face him as Subira laid your body down. He expected your eyes to sliver open, your hand to reach for him from where it draped useless off the bedside.

Hassian felt Tau's muzzle nudge into his open palm, and it was enough for him to let go of pointless expectation. Peace wasn't even with him anymore. It abandoned them all.

Then, he moved.

Every little detail he allowed to exist without thought now assaulted him. He remembers the truth behind herbal scents in the air and clean cloth cut to strips, the meaning behind each creak under his feet, the harsh, terrible fact that these cots meant for healing can also hold bodies too broken to merely be resting.

A house of hope, can just as easily become a house of woe. One cannot exist without the other.

Balance of scales, the realist in him thought.

He got his mama back, and in the same day he would lose you.

His life had been perfect for a few short hours. That's more then most get. He could ask the dragon to take him instead, but it would do no good.

Nature does not bargain.

It demands its due.

It takes and takes and takes until one dared to think they've been spared. It takes them too. No one escapes in the end.

And now there was only this.

Your blood. Your bruises. He wraps your fingers in gauze and lets his fingers stray to your wrist. A pulse, but weak. Not the thrum of a hummingbird he was so used to counting when your skin was offered to him willingly.

Your spirit fading, with him hopeless to stop it. Hassian knew before Chayne spoke the words.

Hassian could feel the old instinct rising in him, the one that had kept him alive in the wilds, the one that had taught him to track the signs of danger before it struck. But danger this time was not something he could hunt. Could not shoot. Could not chase through the trees or stand between with bow in hand.

"Tell me what to do, Chayne. Anything. Anything at all, and it is yours."

The look in his Shepp's eye conveyed the answer Hassian knew to be true. 'There is nothing we can do, but wait' yet for all the patience he had when stalking prey, Hassian could not muster a drop of it.

Chayne must sense that he needs an order. A direction. He gives an order for materials from his house.

Hassian obeys.

Chayne asks him to escort Ulfie to Tamala's in Upper Bahari. The child shouldn't be alone right now. Hassian obeys, he barely spares her a look once the boy is indoors.

Change your bandages. He obeys. Deliver tonics for other patients. He obeys.

Anything to stay moving. Anything to keep from looking too closely at the shape of your face. Anything to keep from admitting that the feeling in his chest was not anger, though it was close to it, and not fear, though fear had its claws deep in him.

It was the awful, naked knowledge that he had just gotten you.

Just gotten this life.

Just begun to imagine a future where there would be more of you in it. Where he had a hearth to call his own and a family to sit around it.

And how each day that passes, the chance of that future fades with you.

No.

The thought came with violence Hassian rarely embodied.

No.

His jaw tightened hard enough to ache.

Please.

He had not meant to think the word, or to beg. Begging never helped when Taylin disappered. No one answered -- that's wrong. Twenty years it took but someone finally answered. It wasn't a god either. It was you.

So if he was going to beg, and plead, and cry. Let his voice break through, raw and unguarded, leaving him more exposed than any would could. If he was going to submit himself to prayer.

Then Hassian would pray to you. To reach wherever your spirit walks.

Please do not leave me.

Please do not become another absence.

Please do not become another loss I must learn to survive.

I can't live without my heart, and it beats with you.

Hassian holds your hand in his until the sun rises, and until it sets. Willing his words to reach you as he reads from books and recites poems he once thought would never reach your ears. Yet unless Chayne needs him to or his mothers voices carry enough for talk, he remains where your spirit can feel him calling.

Because if there was any strength in him at all, it would be used now in service of keeping you away from the stars. Your story is not ready to be written among them. Not yet. Not without him.

Nai'o

By the time Nai’o made it home, it was well past two in the morning.

The Elderwoods was left behind him, the long dark roads and leaning signposts finally left in the care of the moon. He checked them all. Tightened what needed tightening. Marked what needed marking. The kind of work that made his shoulders ache and his eyes blur a little by the end of it, but which still left him feeling useful, and being useful had always been the easiest way for him to sleep soundly.

The barn smelled like hay and work and the faint comfort of home. He cleaned up there the way he always did, moving on muscle memory more than thought, and by the time he pushed open the front door of the farmhouse, his body was asking (more like demanding) for sleep.

He expected quiet and toed off his boots carefully after sparing a quick look at Auni’s treehouse.

Maybe Ma’s awake with another book she pretended not to be too invested in. Maybe the soft creak of the old house settling around him as he walked the floor seams. Maybe Pa snoring so loudly upstairs that Nai’o would roll his eyes and smile despite himself.

What Nai’o did not expect was both of his parents sitting in the little living room without any light, locked in quiet conversation until he crossed the threshold. Both Ma and Pa looked right at him and he felt like he was 13, caught sneaking out to throw rocks at Kenyatta’s window all o er again.

Except Nai’o certainly wasn’t 13 anymore and surely hasn’t done anything wrong. Maybe. Not that he knows of?

Ma’s face was carefully composed in the way it only ever was when she was trying very hard not to fall apart. Nai’o can’t remember the last time he saw her like that. Her eyes were rimmed red. Not by much. Just enough to make his stomach drop straight through the floor.

Badruu held his straw hat to his chest, fingers curled around the brim like it was the only thing keeping him anchored.

Nai’o stared. His mouth opened, then shut again.

“Aaah,” he said stupidly, because his brain hadn’t yet caught up past getting his boots off. “Hi?”

Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.

Nai’o looked up just in time to see Auni peeking over the banister, then ducking back out of sight.

That was when Nai’o’s heart started to pound.

Auni was usually asleep by now. He didn’t stay in their shared bedroom anymore, complaining that Nai’o snored too loud. If he was awake here and not in his treehouse, it usually meant he was scared or Ma asked him in.

The thought made a cold little knot twist low in his chest.

“Ma?” Nai’o asked carefully, shifting between them. “Pa?”

Delaila inhaled through her nose, slow and steady. Which, for her, meant this was very serious indeed.

“Is everything okay?” Nai’o asked again, though even he could hear the uncertainty in his own voice. “We’re not losing the house, are we?”

His mind immediately went to the worst, but they weren’t behind on payments the last he checked. You helped them meet their quota last month too.

Badruu’s expression only got tighter as he rubbed a soothing hand over Delaila’s back. Why wasn’t anyone talking? What could be worse than losing the house?

Then Auni came tumbling down the stairs in a rush of oversized socks and nerves, nearly missing the last step entirely. He landed in the foyer, blurted your name out in a rush with his hands flying high, “There was an explosion! A bomb! The whole town was freakin' out!” and then froze like he had just run headfirst into a wall.

Nai'o was no better, his mind barely picking the right words out in a fight against exhaustion.

His family knew what you meant to him. They would never make that kind of thing up just to tease him after a long day. Or any day.

Because they loved you too. He knew that as surely as he knew the shape of his own hands. His ma smiled whenever you came by, asked if you'd been eating well up on that hill by yourself. His pa always found some excuse to ask how you were doing, test out a new pun, or send a bit of extra hay for your animals, even when he was busy. Auni thought you were the coolest person in the world and didn't act embarassed to admit it.

And Nai’o...?

Nai’o loved you in the simple, open way that never made much room for pretending otherwise.

You’re family. His future.

You’ve become everything and it almost felt like you’ve always been here. A steady, bright presence in the middle of all the things in his life that could be uncertain. When he saw you, he felt steadier. Better. Like the world was a little less likely to topple over.

The axis was tilting.

His breath left him in one hard, silent rush.

And then the fear became motion.

Nai’o was moving before anybody could catch him.

He was halfway out the door, hopping back into his muddy boots, when his mother called his name, but he didn’t slow down.

He was moving, his exhaustion burned clean away in a single rush of panic so sharp it almost hurt. He didn’t stop to ask for details. Didn’t stop to ask who was with you or whether Chayne had already seen you or what exactly had happened.

You were hurt.

You needed him.

That was all his body understood.

“Nai’o! Dear, hold on just a moment —” his ma started, but he was already at the door.

He heard Pa call after him, something about being careful, something about taking the good lantern, but he was gone before the words could settle. His boots hit the dirt path with a speed that shocked even him, and then he was running through the dark, one thought pounding in time with his steps.

I should have been there.

I should be there.

He’s been out working overtime. Checking the little things people relied on him for because that was what he did best. And while he had been out there, doing his job, doing what he was supposed to do, you were in danger.

That was the part he couldn’t quite fit into his head.

He knew you did important work, even when compared to the other new humans. He knew you were helping the Order, helping the village, doing things that mattered. Your work was so much bigger than him. Not a day passes where Nai'o doesn't wonder what you see in him.

Yet he never thought of that greatness as something to fear. He thought of it as one more reason to admire you. You were brave, and kind, and strong in ways he was still trying to understand.

But now he could feel the shape of that bravery in his chest like a bruise.

Nai'o has seen how people look while they processed loss. When Hodari lost Letha, and his daughter was injured - the two went months without visiting Kilma for anything other than food. When Ashura lost Sabaine, Kilma mourned a good woman. That’s right. Nai’o remembers now. That day was the last time he saw his ma cry so openly.

Nai'o didn't think he would feel that type of loss until his parents met the dragon. He never thought it would be you being carried into the dark like this. Not you, lying still. Not the crying eyes of Kilma meant for you.

Nai’o reached Chayne’s shrine at a speed fast enough that he had to catch himself on the entryway before he stumbled inside.

And there you were.

The world seemed to stop.

For one brief, stupid second, Nai’o forgot how to breathe again even as he gasped to reclaim it.

Ulfie was sitting near your bed, startled by the sound of him coming in too fast and too loud, his face going instantly panic-struck at the sight of Nai’o. Nai’o would apologize later. He would. He’d probably apologize a lot, actually, because the poor kid looked like he might bolt.

But right then, all Nai’o could see was you.

Bandaged. Bruised. Your eyes closed with the same expression you'd take when catching a quick nap on one of the hay bales in the barn.

He wanted them to open. Look at him with that warm expression that told him everything was going to be okay. Open your arms for his daily hug that felt like torture to go without.

His whole body went cold and hot at once.

Dragon, if a hug could heal you, he'd never let you go.

The thing about Nai’o was that he felt everything.

He did not hide it well, and he never really wanted to. When he loved someone, he loved them with his whole chest. When he worried, he shook. When he was happy, everyone heard his hollering. There was no point pretending otherwise.

So when he reached your bedside, all that openness turned into a kind of helpless honesty.

His knees hit the floor before he fully realized he was kneeling.

He took your hand in both of his, like that alone might anchor your spirit here.

His eyes burned terribly. Worse than when Butterball kicked up sand.

Then he blinked hard, but it did not help. Tears spilled anyway, hot and useless and eating at the exhaustion creeping back in the most soul crushing way. He did not care. He could not care. The sight of you like this cracked something clean open in him, and there was no pretending it didn’t hurt like it was his spirit being ripped in two.

“Oh, no,” he whispered, voice shaking around the words. “No, no, no, hey—hey, you’re okay, right? You’re going to be okay.”

He did not know who he was asking.

You. Chayne. The room. The Dragon. Anyone.

His thumb brushed carefully over your hand, as if he could feel for proof there that you were still here. Still warm.

He wanted to say so many things.

That he was sorry he wasn’t there for you.

That he should have come home faster.

That he would have run the whole way back from the Elderwood if he knew.

That he was scared in a way he’s never been scared before, because this wasn’t crops drying out, a broken wheel in the middle of nowhere, or even money running short before the duchess demanded her due payment.

This was you. This was someone he loved lying injured in front of him, and he had no practical skill to fix it.

But he also knew, with the simple certainty of someone who hadn’t yet learned to distrust hope, that you were still here.

And because you were still here, Nai’o could keep believing. Chayne says your spirit is what needs time. That’s fine. He has all of it in the world, just for you.

His tears kept coming, but his voice evens out just enough for him to speak clearly.

“I’m here,” Nai’o whispers, squeezing your hand gently. “I’m here now. I should have been here before, I know, I know, but I’m here now. When you wake up, you can scold me all you want. I'll listen. Promise I will."

His lower lip trembles, and he laughs once in that sad, breathless way people do when they are trying not to cry harder. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he if sleep is what you need then he won’t disturb you.

“I’m not going anywhere, okay? I’m right here.” He promises, “When you’re better, we’ll take that trip with Auni into Bahari City. All on me. I was planning to surprise you with it but that’s okay. It would’ve slipped out…you know I can’t keep a secret…”

Behind him, he heard Chayne moving to tend to whomever was in the cot beside you. Heard Ulfie shifting in his seat, before Nai'o felt a small hand pat his shoulder. Heard the quiet, careful sounds of a room full of people doing their best to help.

At some point Kenyatta came in to do her work, but she wasn't shocked to see him sitting there. They shared a weak greeting with each other before she pulled up a stool for him to sit on.

Nai’o felt guilty, relaxing once the pressure was off his knees, but the pinpricks in his calves were the only distraction from how his heart ached.

He only let go of your hand for Kenyatta to check your vitals.

He might not be smartest person in the room. He might not always have the right words. He might be useless to the entire situation — No. He certainly is.

Yet.

Nai’o just needs to be here when you opened your eyes. He can be here for you. He’d sooner abandon his path and sell shoe shines by the sea shore than let you wake up to an empty room.

He’ll make sure you smile and know that everything is going to be okay.

And later, when you were better and he had his voice back and his heart is not rattling around in his ribs like a loose stone, he’ll talk your ears off about how unfair all of this was and how very much he hated seeing you hurt and how he was definitely going to be more annoying about reminding you to be careful from now on. He might've thought you were some type of super human before, but just wait.

He'll hug you longer each day. Take the detour up that hill every night before going home, just to make sure you're safe and taking care of yourself.

Nai’o won't let you forget that he's there, even if he isn't as important to the grand scheme.

But for now, he will hold your hand and wait for you to rest. He won’t go anywhere.

Because you’re family to him in everything but name. That’s only a matter of time to change too.