#1001-5000

Lia's wounds must have reopened in the escape. She doesn't know when it happened—or, maybe she did, but she assumed it was the same stitch in her side that she always earns running for her life. Maybe it was the wall coming down, or the sprint, or one of those guards got a lucky shot at her before she was out of range. All she knows is that as the rest of them break the boat's tethers, she touches her side and feels sharp pain radiate from that spot, a wave of nausea accompanying it.

Damn cultists. They'd put in the minimum amount of effort needed to keep them alive after torturing them. None of them had been spared even a weak potion or a touch of healing magic, though Lia might have bitten any hand that offered it. They'd torn her open and taken some pleasure in stitching her back together just as painfully while she tried not to run out of curses or to pass out. Her bandages were dirty when they'd wrapped her up, dried dark red by the time they'd dragged her back to the cell and shoved her to the ground. The first thing she remembered after the pain stopped blinding her was Cal crouched around her, between her and the cultists who were already wandering back to their duties.

(The fact that she hadn't been able to stand again without Cal supporting her weight still flushes her body with shame. She should've walked it off, like she is now.)

The bandages are damp with her blood. She reaches under her shirt to check and grimaces. They don't have time to stop; it's a one-way boat out or nothing. She takes a breath and readjusts her corset belt to hide the way her shirt is starting to stain. Later.

Cal grabs her hand. She's been lingering too long, and she only has just enough time to hope that her hand isn't slick with her own blood. "Come on," he calls her, breathless from the excitement and the taste of freedom. She lets him tug her down into the boat. It rocks under her unsteady feet, but Cal draws her to his side as they push off. Not a moment too soon. Lia watches their saviors, the same people who'd come to their aid at the Grove, stay behind to buy them time. That's two she owes them, now. It's getting to be a pattern, but not one she regrets, not when they're finally out of that cell. Cal sighs with relief and slumps against her. She bears her teeth against a grimace as he jostles her wound.

The dank smell of the water should cover up the scent of blood, or if it doesn't, they're all covered in enough of it—old and dried; the cultists didn't leave anyone out of their torture, and they didn't provide anything to wash with—that no one should be able to tell. She'll fix herself up when they get to safety, without Cal finding out. She won't have him guilty about this.

(The cultists had hurt Cal enough, and she could handle the pain in his place. Rolan would have understood.)

She takes labored breaths under the guise of exhaustion. Each one leaves her side throbbing. Her shirt's fabric is growing heavier, damp, clinging at her skin. She elbows Cal to get her arm free.

She undoes the knot of her corset belt with clumsy fingers and tightens the lacing up. The pressure will hold the wound until they're safe.

"Are you sure you should lace it that tight?" Cal asks. She flicks her ears twice like that'll clear up how far away his voice sounds, like she's hearing him through a poorly enchanted sending stone. "You're breathing pretty hard." She elbows him again. Her side spasms.

"Shut up, Cal." She's fine. She'll breathe through it. Every rock of the boat sends new splinters of pain through her body, but the pressure is helping somewhat. She should be bleeding slower. She's got a lot of it to lose, if being tortured by those cultists taught her anything.

She's had worse. She got jumped during their stint in Avernus. Clawed up. Bitten. Anything that could go wrong, did. Her head swims as she remembers Rolan throwing an imp meters away with one overwhelming shockwave of power, just because it had torn out some of her hair. She chuckles. That clump still hasn't grown back all the way. Cal puts his arm around her, and she lets her mind wander—strung between painful rhythm of the boat, rising, falling, rising again, and her brother rubbing her arm like he's afraid she'll disappear if he stops.

Landfall jolts her to vicious awareness. Her head rings so loudly that she can't hear what anyone's saying. It's like the knives are back, freshly tearing her open, and Lia gulps down air-

"I told you not to lace it that tight," Cal says. He tries to undo it, and she slaps his hand.

His flinch stings. Sorry, she wants to say, but the word is stuck somewhere in her lungs, tossed about by every difficult inhale she manages.

"Let's- Let's just find Rolan, okay?" Cal says, carefully, and it's hard to tell if he's acting like she's fragile or volatile. Both, maybe. She often feels like both; anger's just more useful than fear, she's always known that. Elturel made it clearer, and she wouldn't let the Absolute's bastards drag anything out of her but rage.

She needs to snap at him to leave her alone so she can patch herself up, but the shock in his eyes when she slapped him, the confusion that gasped out of him, and Lia can't tell her brother no when he looks at her like that.

A few more minutes. They'll find Rolan. Deal with Rolan. She won't let Rolan find out she's hurt either. He'd make a scene about it. She can do all of that, so long as she can stand up. She tests her legs, and they're weak enough that she trips getting out of the boat. She falls into Cal, and the world keeps tumbling for a few moments longer.

"Never got my sea legs," she manages to joke. Cal steadies her. He looks… worried. That's not part of the plan. She has to be fine. She can show him, straightening her back and carefully watching her steps. One foot after another, that's it. She doesn't have room to think about anything more than that, so she's glad Cal takes the lead.

And her hand. He didn't let go after she stumbled. If he needs it, she'll let him hold on. She wraps her other arm around herself, pinning it close over her wound to keep more pressure on it.

She's freezing. She expected the inside of the inn to be warm, but the hearth must not have been fed enough.

Rolan yells.

That's familiar. That's almost comfortable. It's easy to meet him there, to be angry at him for playing the fool and running off into the shadows to save them like she was told he tried to while he's angry they were captured in the first place. She can't feel the pain as sharply when they're going at each other.

"Lia," Cal tries to interrupt.

Lia ignores him, leaning towards Rolan with her teeth bared. He's giving in, the argument's over barely after it's started, but she needs the fight. It's keeping her grounded. It explains why she's shaking so much, if she's furious. Gods, why is it so fucking cold! Couldn't this place be any warmer than a dungeon? And dim, too; she thought this place was safe from the shadow curse, so why is it getting so dark?

Does she say that all out loud? She's not sure. Words fill her mouth up like bile.

Rolan's making a stupid face at her.

And then, all of a sudden, she's not looking at Rolan's face. She's pressed facefirst against Rolan's shoulder with his arms around her.

"Lia!" Cal shouts as she tries to get her bearings. She grabs at Rolan's robes haphazardly in an attempt to haul herself back up, but her arms are numb and weak, her fingers barely able to cling to anything she reaches for. Rolan readjusts his grip.

"What happened?" she hears him say. "Why is she-"

"She's bleeding." One of them pulls her corset belt away from her wounded side. Lia hisses out a warning, but whoever it is lets go because of the burble of blood that follows the pressure being let up. Her shirt is too soaked to take it. It spills warm down her waist as her she struggles to think. It's almost like she's falling asleep, little by little; first her limbs, then her mind shutting off thought by thought, until her eyelids are too heavy to keep open.

"Get help," Rolan says, "now!"

Her legs give after that. Rolan can't hold her up.

They've tried before. Cal can carry her or Rolan, if he has to, but when she'd picked Rolan up once, she'd dropped him on his arse, and Rolan hadn't even attempted lifting her.

He tries very hard to this time. She doesn't hit the ground. She just meets it, slowly.

She groans into Rolan's shoulder as her side burns with pain. It's the only heat left in her entire body.

"You knew, didn't you?" Rolan says. She can hear him, and she can feel the words rumbling from his chest. Her eyelids droop. "Damn you, Lia." There's a dull pressure against one of her horns that she can't place, and then Rolan's hand slides over her side to the source of her pain. "Hold still."

Rolan's magic patters over her skin like rain, and it sneaks into her mouth, warm and sweet like cinnamon, even though Rolan always flushes and insists his magic isn't something she can taste. He's wrong, though. It's home, wherever they go. Rolan is murmuring at her, and she can't catch the words, just the strain in his voice as he focuses through them.

The pain lightens. Lia exhales and lets her eyes slide shut all the way. 

Rolan jostles her rudely. "No, that was just to make it stop hurting. You need to stay awake until Cal gets someone who can heal you." Lia grumbles. "Stay awake," Rolan orders.

"Piss off," she says into his robes. His magic is sweet, but he smells awful, like he's been drinking and hasn't cleaned himself up with that cantrip he always uses to get out of doing real work. 

That's not like him. Lia frowns.

"Lia, don't you dare ignore me," he says, voice growing tighter.

"You're scared," she slurs to tease him, struggling to get the words out. "Thought great wizards don't get scared."

"Most wizards don't have you for a sister." Lia fists his robes. She tries to hold on as tight as she can, like it'll keep her conscious so long as she doesn't let him go. He might smell like he's been drunk, but she smells like blood, and dirt, and piss. It was a small cell. Not a lot of privacy.

"I want a bath," Lia says. "Warm bath. Rolan."

"I'll heat a bath for you, if you promise not to fall asleep." She nods. She can do that. "What happened to you?"

"Me or Cal." Words roll around in her mouth like wads of cotton, leaving her tongue dry and thick in their wake. "Pissed them off, so it'd be me." She blinks with great effort to keep her eyes open. Rolan needs her awake. Rolan's an arse. She's so tired, she can't feel her legs.

"Of course you did." Rolan sighs.

So would I, is what she chooses to hear, and she smirks.

Slowly, so slowly, her eyes slide shut again. Some part of her remembers she's not supposed to let that happen, Rolan needs her to- To do something, for some reason, for- A little rest won't hurt. He won't even notice if she curls up so that he can't see her face.

"Lia," she hears, too far away to care.

"Lia!" She fights. Rolan needs her. She can't pry her eyes open, no matter how much she struggles. The shadows are reaching for her, hungry for-

"Thank the Gods," Rolan breathes. She can only hear him. The other voices are nothing but meaningless sound. A hand curls around her as if to tug her away from Rolan.

"No," Lia whines into the dark behind her closed eyelids, "no, let go. Rolan!"

"Let her see your wound." She relaxes. He's still there. "It's scarier when you're listening to me. Will she be alright?"

He must get an answer. There's a gentle coolness against the injury, nothing like the cold that's been creeping into Lia's body. It soothes her like Rolan's magic did, even if it's nowhere near as familiar.

"He's better at magic than you," Lia tells… someone, proudly. She's pretty sure they start laughing. Or maybe Rolan starts laughing.

"She's alright." Cal. Everyone's safe, then. "She'll love being reminded that she said that."

Distantly, she remembers that she was trying not to make them worry about her. She'll probably care about that later. Right now, it's nice that Cal's holding her hand again, and Rolan's letting her lay on him. It can't be comfortable. She's almost certain her horns are digging into him somewhere.

"Thank you," Cal tells someone. Her healer, she assumes. It's nice to not be bleeding out anymore, even if her whole body still feels weighted with lead.

"Now you can go to sleep," Rolan says. She's almost certain it's his fingers in her hair, combing through the dirty tangles. Lia nods as best she can. There's only warmth to fall back into now—no shadows, no numbness, no fear. She lets it embrace her, and into her dreams, she only brings the fuzzy echo of her brothers' voices.

Below her, Karlach can hear the Elfsong falling asleep easier than she is. Late midnight patrons stumble home under the stars, and the bardsong peeters out to the whistle of a flute, barely audible through the slats in the floorboards. Karlach's hands sit over her stomach, tapping away as she waits for exhaustion to win. Tomorrow (or maybe it's already today, a few hours from sunrise) will be a bright morning.

She keeps promising herself to live in the moment while she's still got moments to live, but that's easier when the sun's up and they've got so much to do that she can't think about the way her ribs feel like they're being melted down into glass, tiny fractures running through the bone that make her more fragile with every passing day. She can't afford that. None of them can. She can't break yet. Someone's got to stand on Wyll's blind side to keep opportunistic assholes off of him, and someone's got to be able to haul Gale over her shoulder when he forgets he's not as durable as the rest of them, and someone's got to stomp to death anything that would dare lay a hand on the people she loves.

Karlach covers her face, digging her palms in against her closed eyes until the pressure creates off-color spots in her vision. If she could just have some real quiet- But her engine keeps thumping. She hasn't been alone with her own thoughts for a decade. 

That's probably going to be the last thing she ever hears, and that shouldn't scare her as much as burning up. It does, though. It scares her until she can't thinking about taking her axe and breaking open up her own chest. Couldn't burn up if she dismantled herself. Wouldn't have to hear that endless grinding where she should have had a heart. 

Wouldn't stay alive long enough to enjoy either of those things. She's still got things to do. Promises to keep. People to hold onto until it gets too dangerous for them to stand so close to her.

She lowers her hands and stares at the ceiling again. Sleep ducks and weaves from her tired grasping. Her tail twitches restlessly.

Karlach rolls over. Maybe a new position. Maybe a dozen new ones. She'll turn herself like she's roasting on a spit, and she'll probably be just as awake at the end as she is now. She-

In the dark, Lae'zel's eyes reflect the pale moonlight that trails in from between the curtains.

"Shit," Karlach mumbles, "am I keeping you up? I'll-"

"Your troubles are mine," Lae'zel says, simply and without room for argument. Not like Karlach is in the habit of arguing with her, much. "And you've been sleeping fitfully since we arrived in this city." Karlach starts to say something before she pauses, eyes narrowing at Lae'zel.

"Then something's been keeping you awake enough nights to notice," she says. Lae'zel's mouth twists, and Karlach tastes something bitter on the back of her tongue as the now disconcertingly familiar link in their minds briefly connects. Her companions all come as sensation to her when the tadpole connects them—as the smell of dead rot and fear or a warm meal laid out with affection, as a sudden stab of pain or the phantom grip of a hand firmly holding onto her, as poison coating her mouth or a sweetness she'd forgotten was possible to taste in the Hells. Karlach drinks them all in too greedily, good and bad. She doesn't have the time to get choosy about what parts of them she gets to keep.

Lae'zel sits up, pushing her sheets down to wrinkle at the foot of her bed. "Vlaakith's eyes are upon me," she tells Karlach, quietly. "I won't let her send warriors after us in the night." Karlach can picture it perfectly—Lae'zel pacing the perimeter of their camp every night when everyone else has finally taken to bed. The Elfsong's got four walls and a ceiling, so even if it isn't actually all that safer than where they've spent the past few months camping, it's at least easier to believe it is. Maybe that's why Lae'zel thought she could trick herself into falling asleep, too.

Gods, they could both use a break.

Lae'zel swings her feet over the side of her bed, stretching her calves against the floor. Karlach rests her cheek against her hand. She finds her gaze drawn down to them. Lae'zel's feet are bare, from toetip to arched heel. 

She's fucked Karlach a dozen ways since they met. Karlach's stood beside her as she betrayed everything she's ever known. And somehow, this—seeing Lae'zel roll her ankle to release some tension, the subtle flex of muscle, the way she focuses on doing so to ignore the exhaustion written across her face—is an intimacy Karlach wasn't prepared for. About as much as she's prepared for Lae'zel to stand up suddenly. 

"Where are you going?" Karlach asks. By the time she's gotten the words out, Lae'zel has crossed the small gap between their beds.

"Nowhere far," she answers. Karlach stares up at her for a moment. This woman, once abrasive and alien, who she now doesn't want to imagine life without. 

There's nothing… good about what's coming for her. But in an awful greedy way, Karlach can at least hold on to the fact that she never will have to live without Lae'zel.

When Lae'zel peers down at her, Karlach welcomes their minds' instinctive connection again and she can taste the tea Lae'zel's taken to drinking in the morning, slightly nutty, sweeter than expected. One piece of this world she's come to love. Karlach's moving over to make room before she stops to think about it.

The bed is too small. It's too small for Karlach, full stop, and definitely too small for Lae'zel to join her. It gives a creak like it's cursing them both out. Lae'zel ignores it, pressing her body up against Karlach's.

She's not as warm as some of their companions and not haunted by that empty chill that comes off of Astarion until he leeches up Karlach's heat for himself. Lae'zel will barely warm at all when she's next to Karlach. (Gith, she has explained before, have a perfectly regulated internal temperature, another way in which they are indomitable survivors. Karlach mostly likes that she can press her cheek up against any part of Lae'zel and briefly feel cooled.) Karlach welcomes her, her tail already curling up around Lae'zel's thigh and trying in vain to tug her closer. 

She waits eagerly for what comes next. First, Lae'zel's hands on her chest to press her back and flat to the bed. Then her thighs spread around Karlach's. A hand between Karlach's legs to coax her arousal up. The bed might not survive it, and their companions won't thank them for the ruckus, but if anything will get Karlach to sleep-

Lae'zel doesn't move. She puts her arm around Karlach stiffly and lays there.

Karlach stares at her. Lae'zel stares back. 

Don't let her break this by accident. She'd rather die right here than scare Lae'zel off.

Karlach pets down Lae'zel's arm, playing it off as absently as she can, as if something as simple as a hand around her waist doesn't still send tingles of pleasure up her spine. As if the little huffs of Lae'zel's breath against her bare skin aren't enough to make her want to sing. Lae'zel makes another cautious encroachment. She pushes at Karlach's shoulder until she rolls onto her back and curls in closer, pinning Karlach's arm in place as her whole body presses flush to her side. Karlach's inhale shudders painfully, perfectly, through her.

Lae'zel is all muscle from head to toe, lean and hard, and where she isn't, she's pointy, sharp elbows and knees. Her chin pokes into Karlach's shoulder once she's settled. She's a terrible cuddle buddy. Karlach just grins. Getting touched this much never stops being dizzying. 

"Is this to help me sleep, or…" She trails off. She very, very badly wants to ask if this is what Lae'zel wants, night after night. If this can be for more than bouts of insomnia. 

Lae'zel has only now gotten comfortable with kissing her in front of the others. If she stops holding Karlach right now, it feels like the world will end and in a way worse than any evil giant brain could come up with.

"This…" Lae'zel's fingers spread over Karlach's stomach. "This is new, and you have taught me to embrace new things." As if in emphasis, she curls her hand over Karlach's side and squeezes.

After a moment, she adds, "This would be easier if we weren't in a bed." Karlach laughs as she tries to scoot a little closer to her edge of the bed, to give Lae'zel that tiny bit more room so that she doesn't feel like she's hanging on to Karlach to keep from falling backwards off of it. It really doesn't do much. It's just not a very large bed.

"You're not getting me to sleep on the ground again," Karlach says. She considers that for a second. "Not for a little while, at least. The novelty of having a mattress has to wear off first." Her tail coils and squeezes up Lae'zel's calf. The little hairs on her leg prickle the sensitive skin of Karlach's tail. She brushes the tip under Lae'zel's knee, against the ligaments. Lae'zel's leg twitches only the first time Karlach does it.  "When I was a little boy, and I mean really little, I thought all families slept in one big bed like mine did. Turned out my parents were doing their best to hide how little we had, but… I missed that when I got older." She speaks it softly to the ceiling and only wonders briefly whether, behind the partition separating them, Gale or Astarion might be restless, too, and listening. She wouldn't mind. 

Lae'zel's ears are perked forward to listen before they relax again. "In my créche," she begins, and then for the first time that Karlach has ever known her to when she speaks about her people, she stops. "No. you wouldn't want to hear that. Not now. Rest."

"Yeah, I do," Karlach promises. 

(Sometimes, Lae'zel will share the worst thing any child could have been forced through as though it was only a natural part of growing up and with so much pride that it hurts. Sometimes, Karlach will tell her a story from the Hells that she knows she should be ashamed of but that meant she survived and she's still so breathlessly glad, whatever she had to do.)

"In créche K'liir, a clutch will share a bed after hatching. When we were strong enough to push each other out, we did. When we were old enough to test ourselves in combat, it made more space." Lae'zel press down on Karlach's sternum where the heat starts to really build. "I slept beside throats I would grow to slit." More than anything, Lae'zel sounds lost, as if she is trying to find anger or remorse or something to drive herself with from the memory, but all that's left is an old scar that refuses to bleed again. Karlach wonders if any Githyanki grow up without nightmares. Maybe that's part of their training, after a full day of being beaten and burned. 

"I wish I could give you a hug," Karlach says. "Little you. Sounds like she needed one."

"A good way to find yourself disemboweled, istik," Lae'zel murmurs, though fondness undercuts every word. "She wouldn't have appreciated the gesture."

"Too bad. I'd try anyway." Karlach shifts. "We could probably have a little more room of I laid on my side right now." She plans to do exactly what she promised, roll over and wrap herself around Lae'zel with every limb she can. 

To her surprise, Lae'zel hums assent and then starts prodding her to turn over and face away from her.

Karlach's too used to giving Lae'zel what she wants. It's a good thing she's not going to use that power for evil any time soon. 

Lae'zel drops her arm around Karlach's side and  lays her foot across Karlach's ankles. She pressed every inch of her body against Karlach's back, burying her face in her hair for a few seconds before huffing and turning into her shoulder. Karlach swallows thickly. 

It's… It's been a long time since she's felt small and safe in someone else's arms, that's all. 

"Sleep," Lae'zel commands. She lifts her head and exhales against the shell of Karlach's ear. Her breath is ticklish, curling strands of Karlach's hair over her cheek. "Dream of how we will celebrate our defeat of the netherbrain."

To think about an ‘after' at all the past few days has been a one way trip to plunging into dark places she swore she'd never revisit again, not here, not outside Avernus. Karlach clutches for Lae'zel's hand. 

Lae'zel speaks again, firm, as denial or naive optimism are not Karlach's only options, as if this is possible because Lae'zel wills it to be and she has spent every day since the crash they tied them all together willing impossible things, "You will be there, and you'll be there in a year's time when the city worships its saviors on our day of triumph, and you'll be there,"—With that, Lae'zel grips Karlach's arm and presses her thumb down hard into her flesh, and yet, when Karlach holds onto Lae'zel's little gift of pain, she can breathe easily again.—"to share in our lives afterwards." Lae'zel moves to nip at Karlach's ear. "You will, because I would find this world unbearable without you."

"Liar," Karlach mumbles, "you'd still have everyone else."

"And none of you could replace another," Lae'zel responds. "I have chosen the foundation of my life for the first time, and I'll need every pillar as strong as the last." 

Karlach isn't sure she could have made it this far if she only had herself to fight for. Burned out or burned down, but she's had them. She can be strong enough for someone else where she might have broken under her own life's weight. If Lae'zel needs a foundation, then Karlach will lift her up to the sky until she reaches high enough to make Vlaakith bleed.

And if Lae'zel says she's going to live to make that happen, then… then Karlach's going to let a little part of herself believe that. Not enough to ruin her if it can't be true. A promise of hope kept at the very bottom of her soul where it'll be safe.

Karlach twists her head. She whines plaintively when she can't reach Lae'zel to kiss her, no matter how she strains her neck. Lae'zel takes mercy and leaves kisses on her temple, down her cheek, to the side of her chin. She deftly ducks Karlach's horn to nip her ear again for good measure. The lobe might be a sweet-swollen shade of red tomorrow, enough for Karlach to touch and feel the sting from how much Lae'zel loves her.

"You get some sleep, too," she tells Lae'zel, "or tomorrow, I'll lay on top of you until you're forced to."

"I promise to rest." Lae'zel traces her fingers up and down the little trail of hair leading over her stomach. "You may do that anyway, if you choose."

"Really?" She tries, not very hard, to suppress the excitement in her voice.

"Yes," Lae'zel promises, like being squished is a small price she'll gladly pay to make Karlach happy. Karlach shuts her eyes and lets Lae'zel's body against hers become the whole world. Even the flute-playing downstairs has finally quieted. Lae'zel continues to touch her, slowly, as though taking her time to count every ridge and scar that rises across Karlach's skin. Slower still, as Karlach listens to her breathing deepen. Her tail uncoils from around Lae'zel's leg with one sweep upwards in farewell as it goes for Lae'zel's arm instead, loosely wrapping around her elbow. 

After that, the next thing Karlach remembers is the sunlight peeking through the windows and Lae'zel pulling away. Karlach's still too asleep to remember that it's alright, that Lae'zel is always early to rise. She catches Lae'zel's hand and holds on a little too tight. "Don't go," she says, or thinks she says. 

Lae'zel pets her sleepy face. The bed creaks. She comes back to Karlach. 

Jayadeep is watching the morning sunlight slowly drape itself over Evie's bare shoulders. It must be coming through a fog, as it paints the room in gentle grays and whites. Evie has her face hidden from the window, buried so deep in her pillow that he'd be a little worried she wasn't able to breathe if he couldn't hear the quiet whistle of her inhales and watch her back rise minutely with the rhythm. Her hair is an expanse of dark waves, and he dips his fingers in, drawing them down to the ends and repeating the motion absently. Sleep tangles come undone beneath his fingertips.

He knows she's not awake, not only from the steadiness of her breaths or how she doesn't stir beneath to his touch but because if she was, she wouldn't have let the sun rise as far as it has without getting out of bed. It's not so much that Evie doesn't know how to relax—though, getting her to do so is still difficult—but that there's an energy that brims beneath her skin, driving her towards her goals at all times. He adores her for that, but he likes these quiet moments, too. Evie sniffles, nestles deeper into the pillow as if in protestation of the morning's encroachment, and settles under Jayadeep's watch.

He runs his hand up her back to her shoulder, from the shadow to where the light falls. He savors the difference between the warmth of her body and the slow warming of her skin under the sunlight. What are you doing when you wake up before me? Evie had asked, once, and it had been the first time he'd taken note of his own habit of doing so.

 Counting your freckles, he had answered, mostly for lack of a better explanation, but she had chuckled.

He could, if given all morning to do so, if Evie remained very still, if he didn't get distracted by other parts of her body. He slides his finger between them, connecting them in a dozen different constellations. They dwindle the further down her back he goes, as he slowly draws the covers to reveal her. He reaches around her side and curls his fingers against her ribs until Evie makes a ticklish noise in her sleep and shivers.

"I wish this could last for hours," he tells her, though in the safety of a language she doesn't understand much of yet. "Let me be selfish. I miss you the moment you're gone." If she was awake, he might be able to claim that it's for her sake; Evie is still unsettled by declarations like that, a habit that she trusts him to break and that he will persist in until there's no trepidation behind her eyes when she faces love. If she was awake- But she isn't, and he needs to feel the weight of these words in his own tongue. "I want to share this life with you for as long as that may be."

Evie doesn't stir. His voice is little more than a gentle breath against the span of her back as he bows down to kiss her spine.

"You're beautiful," he continues, and he presses a smile into the small of her back. "You’d laugh if you were awake, but you are, even when your hair is a mess and your face is squished into a pillow." He runs his hands up her back again, parallel to each other until he reaches her shoulderblades. Those are easy to plant kisses on as well. He rubs his thumbs into her muscles, always a little stiff, even when she's meant to be completely relaxed.

Evie inhales deeply as he works the tension out of her shoulders. She doesn't move.

"Meri jaan," he murmurs, brushing her hair out of the way and pressing his lips to the top of her spine. "Evie, meri jaan."

Evie hums. "That's new," she says, sleepily. Jayadeep pulls back, heat rising to his cheeks. "Did you say something else, before? I was still dreaming. I couldn't make it out."

"I- No," he says. Evie twists her head to peer at him, eyes hooded over a disbelieving smile. "Just that."

"Meri jaan." She makes a very good, if imperfect, attempt at echoing him. "Would you tell me what you're saying?"

"What do you think it was?"

"I hope it was something kind," she answers, "because you said it between kisses, and something to do with me because I heard my name, but there's every possibility it isn't. Jacob used to recite vegetables at girls he fancied when they wanted sweet nothings in Welsh. If you're calling me a cabbage-"

"I'm sure you never stooped so low."

Evie doesn't answer for a moment. "Well," she finally says, "not with you."

"I'm not calling you a cabbage," Jayadeep reassures, laughing under his breath. "It would mean ‘my life'." Evie's eyes open a little wider. "Less literally, it might be closer to ‘my love'."

"Oh," she breathes.

"Is that okay?" It had just come so easily, and he hadn't thought about-

"You mean that?" she asks, and here's an Evie that only exists at dawn in the safety of their bedroom, allowing herself to expose her own soft underbelly. "You're sure it's not a vegetable?" she adds, as though the joke is nearly enough armor.

"It's not."

"Why that?" Evie asks. Jayadeep is going to give what he thinks is an honest answer-

And suddenly, in his mind's eye, he sees his father approach his mother, sees her take his face in her hands and lay kisses down his cheek on a path to his lips, and hears, softly, meri jaan, meri jaan. It was a common sight in his childhood. He hasn't thought of it in years, and as for hearing the words, tinged either with his father's smile or his mother's teasing affection… he'd rather not think about that.

"Jayadeep?" Evie asks, a little more awake now. The boy lost in his memory hears his name, but it's the man who responds, shaking himself a little.

"Because it's true," he answers. He's very good at hiding things, and Evie is equally as skilled at catching the scent of a secret. She rolls over onto her back to peer up at him.

"Come here." She beckons him forth. Jayadeep covers her body, straddling her hips and holding himself up on one arm. The other busies itself stroking Evie's hair, gathering a bunch to the side of her head, where Jayadeep goes to bury his face. Evie rubs her cheek against his as he breathes in. A faded, sweet scent lingers in her locks, the remnants of the last time she combed oil through them. Roses, he thinks. He rises again, and Evie takes his face in her hands.

"Hi," she says, after a silence that lasts a moment too long.

"Good morning." She breathes a laugh, a warm puff against his face, and lets her head fall to the side for a moment as she gathers herself.

She turns to face him again. She strokes her thumb over his cheekbone.

"Tell me the truth?" she asks. "I'll keep it safe."

He lets his eyes slide shut. He wants his senses to be hers alone, the scent of her in his lungs and her touch leaving tingling paths in its wake and the soft sound of each breath she takes.

"It's what I used to hear my mother and father call each other." Jayadeep holds the sentence inside for as long as he can, until it aches in his chest and he has to let it free. "They probably still do." He doesn't know. He can't know. He half-expects Evie to find it strange and to now tell him to stop. Instead, she tangles her fingers in his hair to think.

"Were they…"

"They loved each other." If that was ever in doubt, it feels as though it was his fault. Evie's brow furrows slightly, and he only realizes she's mirroring his own expression—one he didn't realize he was making—when she runs her thumb over the bow of his lips. He tries to shake free of that net of emotions before it drags him down. It's easier with Evie there, who doesn't look at him as something shameful or something to be saved. "So," he begins again and quells a shake in his voice by kissing her thumb, "so, it must have slipped out. I used to hear it so often that they were the first words that came to me."

The sunlight gives Evie's eyes a lustrous glow. She guides him down until their foreheads are pressed together, until their lips are a breath apart, until his chest is pressed against hers and she can feel his heartbeat. "Evie," less of a word spoken than a defenseless sound, lured free of his throat by her touch.

"I like it," she admits in a whisper. Any louder and she might have to hear herself and reckon with her own feelings.

He's going to smile so widely that it hurts later. She lets him go, lets him move back again. She yawns, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth to cover it, and he adores the way her eyes scrunch closed.

She glides a hand down his arm. She averts her gaze.

"My love," Evie says for him. He knows instantly that the words don't fit her. They're true, but they also aren't Evie's. Still, he savors hearing them this time.

Jayadeep cups her cheek and kisses her forehead. "My love," he says, and it's almost perfect. Evie's eyes shut. He kisses the bridge of her nose. "Meri jaan," he says, and he could repeat it a thousand times without losing what it means. He kisses her. "Meri jaan." The words fit so naturally in his mouth, like he has always been waiting until he can let them out.

"Jayadeep," Evie breathes. There's not a thing else she needs to say when she fills his name with more affection than she ever realizes.

"Do you believe me now?" he asks.

"Definitely not cabbages," she agrees. He rolls over to her side, leaving a hand to rest on her stomach, rising and falling with each breath she takes. He'd love to linger here forever, but she's awake now and he can already see the way she's shifting her feet restlessly beneath the sheets.

"You know, Jacob claimed he could teach me endearments in Welsh," he mentions. "For you." Evie narrows her eyes at him.

"Jacob's been trying to teach you swears," she says. It's not a guess.

"I thought so." There will be other mornings, and he still has a few more minutes to savor of this one, he thinks, as he gazes at Evie until she finally gets up for the day.

The sink drain in the motel bathroom is clogged. It fills slowly, bubbles rising from the darkness below the sink stopper, too thin and far between to keep the water from collecting. Old hair lifts out of the drain and settles in tangled clumps at the bottom. The black grime crusted into the seams between the drain and the sink is never washed away, no matter how it floods.

And Sam watches Gabriel lean over the pooling, dirty water and peer down at his reflection. The porcelain, once white and now an off-yellow, distorts him even further than the constant running of the faucet water does. The water is halfway up the bowl. The bathroom light glares, unforgiving.

Sam should say something. He’s the reason Gabriel is alive.

He takes a breath in to start. Gabriel turns on him.

There’s a weight to how he moves now that wasn’t there before. Sam notices; he’s been seeing it more and more in Castiel with every passing day. A slump of his shoulders, a bow in his back, like his own body is getting harder to carry. Gabriel hunches like a cornered animal, fingers dug into the porcelain, which doesn’t so much as dent.

Gabriel glares at him with the dull, resentful eyes of a hunting trophy, stuffed and mounted on the wall, skin and fur stretched thin over a mockery of life that can never be returned. It’s not killing him that Sam has to feel guilty about. Gabriel made that choice all on his own, all heroic posturing and brotherly spite, and Lucifer made his. (Sam doesn’t know that side of the story, how it went, because he didn’t look back until it was too late. How did Lucifer kill his brother? In anger? With love? Both? Sam can’t ask Gabriel, but sometimes he wishes he could bring himself to. It’d almost set the world right if Gabriel mocked him about whether he was looking for pointers.)

Sam’s choice was preservation. At all costs. Sam’s choice was gratitude.

He took what was left of Gabriel that Lucifer had burned into the world as a memorial, and he ripped it apart, piece by piece, and stitched half of it back together. He amputated the parts he couldn’t understand well enough to save. He brought some of Gabriel back to life.

He can’t really blame Gabriel for hating him. Especially when he doesn’t feel guilty about it.

“You need sleep now,” Sam finally says, as the water rises dangerously. “You’re going to pass out on us again.”

“How many days?” Gabriel asks. Sam frowns.

“Three or four since you last slept, just-“ Gabriel makes the wrong noise in the back of his throat. It’s a wheeze like the last breath in a corpse’s lungs escaping when they’ve been pressed down on. He does that often. He gurgles; he chokes; he hacks up sounds like broken glass. They aren’t the ones he means to make—They’re jokes to himself in a language Sam took from him.—and he’s only got a human tongue left in his mouth. (He won’t even have that if he wakes up seizing like the last time he passed out, when he nearly bit right through the flesh, like whatever preservation kept a person from injuring themself had never been something he needed to learn. Sam had to pry his jaws apart with his bare fingers before he could bite down, scratching Gabriel’s gums bloody.)

“How many days are you going to keep this up?” Gabriel spits at him. Sam doesn’t look him in the eye.

“I’m was trying to save you,” he says. “I did save you.”

“Over a year. I don’t remember how many months we spent at the afterparty before you begged me to stop.” Sam would have to push past him to turn off the faucet. He knows that he could, easily. Gabriel’s made of breakable bones. He can’t bring himself to risk touching him. “You plan on doubling that?” Eyes narrowed, he adds, “I wouldn’t go this low for a punishment.”

“Yes, you would,” Sam says before he can stop himself. Gabriel’s good at pulling his resentment out of him.

This was supposed to fix things. Gabriel was supposed to be grateful. He was supposed to help them end the apocalypse, and Sam wouldn’t hate him, or fear him, or pity him. Sam wouldn’t want to see him squirm like a worm on a hook, drowning in mortality and speared on a savior complex.

Gabriel doesn’t laugh. He’s all teeth, but he never laughs. That might have been one of the things Sam threw out.

“I killed Dean because I was trying to help you,” Gabriel says.

His ‘help’ is immortalized in the scar on his heart, the one Sam and Dean could never get to stick, the one that Lucifer made permanent, but a wooden stake would do him in now. Anything could.

Sam could just bring him back again. There’s nothing Gabriel could do to stop him.

The corpse of an archangel eyes him, and there’s only life in his eyes when he gets to see Sam’s disgust at his own thoughts. A sickly gleam; like recognizes like. Sam’s picked some very just deserts.

The water begins to spill over the edge and around Gabriel’s hands.

“What do you plan to do about me, Sam? Keep me?” His eyes are underscored with deep, bruised exhaustion. Sam drags the weight of him around behind all of them, while Dean gets angrier every day at the waste of time and Castiel averts his eyes from the thing Sam made Gabriel into. (Gabriel stares at Cas, though, in recognition, not with pity. Cas got his choice in this, after all. He’s willing to let his grace turn inside his vessel like a rotting fruit.) “That’s not gonna work out once you say yes.”

Sam doesn’t bother telling Gabriel he won’t. He doesn’t even tell himself that anymore. They’re all trudging down the same muddy road to the same place they never wanted to be.

“Lucifer will keep you, too,” he says.

“Lucifer’s a merciful creature,” Gabriel says. “He’ll make it quick. I don’t know why I ever thought you had anything in common.” The water pools on the floor around his bare feet. It claws at Sam’s shoes, and he steps back.

“Turn that off,” he says, too late.

“Make me.” Gabriel is powerless, and Sam is nauseous breathing the same air as him. He’s almost just as afraid that shoving Gabriel aside would make things easier. All it would take is one move to have his throat under Sam’s hands. Sam can suffocate his own fear.

Why else is Gabriel still here?

Gabriel wouldn’t try to run. He made the choice already. The least Sam could do is respect it.

Instead, Sam shakes his head, and when he leaves, he shuts the door behind him. Gabriel doesn’t come back out.

The puddles come from under the door and turn the shaggy motel carpet as dark as blood.

"He doesn't look much like me," Lucifer says. He's quiet enough that Gabriel second-guesses what he heard and doesn't bother to respond, up until the silence gets to Lucifer and he pushes, "does he?" Gabriel opens his eyes. He's sprawled out over the back of the picnic bench, and without turning, he can see Lucifer's shoulder and the back of his head. The sky takes up most of his vision. It's strikingly blue, barely a wisp of a cloud cutting through the middle of it. The sun is a warm, bright reassurance of freedom, and, not for the first time, Gabriel wonders if Lucifer feels the same way about it. He was stuck in Hell for a lot longer.

Gabriel still doesn't answer for another minute, letting his thoughts collect into something more coherent than the lazy mess they've become, but he makes a noise so that Lucifer knows he's thinking about it. Lucifer leans back, resting one arm on the table.

Gabriel's exhausted. He must be getting old, or maybe no one's immune to being run ragged by their baby nephew, not even archangels. It's Raphael's turn with Jack, now. They're teaching him to fly.

Michael wanted to be here. Lucifer almost allowed it.

They'll have time to figure that out later.

Gabriel's a little surprised he's allowed around Jack. Maybe he and Lucifer have finally hurt each other enough that it evened out. He knows that can't be the case (or else, wouldn't Michael fall into the same category?) Still, there's a certain satisfaction in the idea that they each took their licks and can let bygones be bygones.

(He envies Raphael sometimes, for getting out of the game before it got worse, but then he remembers how the Empty felt, how it-

No one won. Except Dad. Until he didn't. Really should have paid attention to how the rest of them went down and realized that you don't fuck with the Winchesters, no matter how big you are, because they make sure you fall harder.)

"He's blond. Darker than you, but close enough to count," Gabriel says, finally. He runs his tongue over his lip, feels the minute indentations of the skin. It's soothing, so long as he doesn't think too hard about why that is. "You have the same smile," he adds.

"I wasn't talking about my vessel." Gabriel shifts and rests his hands over his stomach. One very brave mosquito buzzes up to his ear. Gabriel flicks his head, once, twice, but the little daredevil doesn't scare easy. He sits up, crossing his legs under him.

"I know you weren't," Gabriel says, waving the mosquito away. "Shoo. I taste bad."

"What?" Lucifer turns to look at him. The mosquito drifts towards his neck, and Gabriel swats at the air beside it. It finally catches the hint and flies away.

"Not talking to you." Gabriel can actually see Jack and Raphael now. He'd like to say that Jack's a natural, but he's far from it.

Michael used to tell stories about Lucifer as a fledgling and about how awkward of a flier he was for decades. Gabriel was never able to square that with the older brother he knew; he was so graceful, so beautiful, so perfect. Now, he looks at Jack, and he thinks he can see it in every mismatched flap of his wings.

"Weren't you in a different one, anyway?" he asks. He knows bits and pieces of the story. The funny parts.

"I don't want to talk about it." Lucifer's tone turns sharp and upset, and Gabriel stows the taunt he has on the tip of his tongue about Lucifer slutting his way through prospective vessels. Above them, Jack tumbles, one wing beating slower than the other and sending him into a nosedive as he frantically tries to correct himself. Lucifer jumps up, watching Jack. Gabriel reaches out to grab his wrist and stop him. His eyes are on Raphael, who plummets faster than Jack and spreads their wings below him to cushion his fall.

Jack lands against one, rolls back against the third pair, and by the time he hits the ground, his momentum has been broken. Gabriel and Lucifer can both hear him laugh as Raphael settles on the grass beside him. Gabriel catches the hint of a smile on their sibling's face, and he's reminded that it's not just him who missed taking care of the younger angels. Gabriel relaxes his grip, and Lucifer sits back down.

"It doesn't matter. You were throwing grace into the mix, not DNA."

"But he doesn't-" Lucifer cuts himself off. Gabriel eyes him.

"Are you doubting he's yours? You need Maury to announce to the world that you're the father?" Lucifer chuckles, which catches Gabriel off-guard.

"I know he's mine." Lucifer's voice is soft, affectionate. Familiar to a part of Gabriel that's centuries out of use. "He's perfect."

Gabriel would beg to differ. The kid was raised by Winchesters, killed a couple people, declared himself God, the works.

"He's good," Lucifer whispers. "He's nothing like me."

Oh, Gabriel thinks. It takes less than a minute for his pity to twist into a scowl on his face. Jack's right there, and Gabriel can see it on his face that he wants something with Lucifer. There's a place in his life for Lucifer to be his father, and Lucifer, instead of taking it, is sitting back and watching from afar. He's so scared of corrupting Jack by getting close to him that he's going to make the kid wonder what he's done wrong when Lucifer is willing to make amends with his brothers, but not with his own son.

"Lucky for you, you come by being a deadbeat dad honestly," Gabriel snaps. He expects Lucifer to get angry with him for that comment, not to stare at Gabriel like he's stuck a knife in his back. Some of that pity stirs up to soften Gabriel's blows. "What do you want more, Luci? To put him on a pedestal so high you can't see him, or for him to hug you whenever you come around?"

Lucifer watches Raphael help Jack to his feet, their wings brushing against his as they run their hands over the arch like they're making sure he isn't hurt. Of course he isn't. Raphael would never let that happen.

"I want him to be happy." Gabriel nods his head at Jack.

"Then, look. He's happy," he says, "and if you spend time with him, I promise, he's not going to hate you and become miserable." Lucifer doesn't move, and Gabriel loads his final argument and aims where he knows he'll hit hardest. "Besides, what a way to stick it to Dad." Lucifer looks back at him, and he smiles. Gabriel wasn't lying about the family resemblance there. Raphael and Jack take to the sky again, and after a moment of watching them go, Lucifer stands.

Even their wings could have been perfect mirrors once, but Lucifer's are more scars and hellfire now than the shiny pearl coloring of Jack's feathers. Lucifer follows them, cutting a jagged path through the air, not the awkward fledgling that Michael remembered nor the graceful older brother that Gabriel looked up to. If Gabriel told Jack about those old ghosts, he wonders if Jack would believe that Lucifer was ever like that. If he could square who he was once with who he is now.

Gabriel pushes himself off the bench and spreads his wings. They groan protest. He really is getting old.

He flies after Lucifer.

The unfortunate thing about being the creator of demons is that Lucifer is forced to always listen when they call. There are few times he feels he understands his Father, but when he has voices pleading and praying for his attention from all sides, he knows he does.

On the other hand, now that he's been freed, now that he answers calls instead of them slipping through the bars of the Cage, the demons have learned very quickly to only invoke him if they know they have something valuable to give in return. Meg was the first to learn, and maybe, out of any of them, she's his favorite. (If he can have such a thing. Her competition is long dead, anyhow, Azazel and Lilith and Alistair and... Is he forgetting anyone? If he is, they probably weren't that important.)

The one who calls him is not Meg. He doesn't think he's met it before, but it knows him. They all know him. It gazes upon him with its ruined eyes.

"Lucifer," it whispers, the way someone might say Lord. He looks at it, expression neutral, withholding any praise or feigned affection until it gives him what it promised.

"You have Sam?" he asks, and it nods. It looks like it might weep to be acknowledged by him.

How tired he's growing of reverence.

Finally, Lucifer looks at him.

Sam looks confused and terrified. His eyes skate over Lucifer as though searching for something, and Lucifer mimics him. He hasn’t gotten much of a chance to admire the body they’ll share. He was… busy the last time they met. He has all the time in the world right now.

”That’s him?” Sam says, or… Lucifer tilts his head and frowns. It’s more of a squeak, really. Not much at all like the furious, beautiful being who’d stormed into his ritual and threatened to tear out his heart. (Lucifer’s vessel responds to just the memory of the encounter. Its heart beats faster while the blood vessels around its stomach paradoxically constrict themselves.) 

“Sam,” he says, softly, “it’s been a while.” He has never wanted Sam to be scared of him.

“He’s ready to say yes to you,” the demon buzzes in Lucifer’s ear. He takes a moment, lets his expression soften, and turns to it. 

“Thank you for bringing him to me,” he says. Its true form cracks and puffs itself up. He bows to kiss its forehead and anoint it with his grace. He knows it burns them when he touches them. None of them seem to care, welcome it, even. Meg wears the scars his grace leaves on her with pride, flaunting how numerous they are in comparison to any other demon. 

He wonders if she’ll be jealous that another demon got to Sam before she did. She’s been working so hard to find and catch him for Lucifer.

The dogs can eat each other over the scraps of his attention later, for all he cares. He has Sam. 

Lucifer turns back to him. Something is bothering him, but he can’t place it. Sam feels… off. He looks right, the body perfect and unharmed, the soul right there and shining through, but last time they met, Lucifer felt pulled to him. It was hard to resist going to Sam’s side, but he’d had a job to do and knew Sam would understand the importance of that. Besides, his vessel had still needed space. He wasn’t ready in Carthage. He’s ready now.

So it makes no sense why Lucifer feels nothing towards him. He searches for the gravity of fate that guides them together and comes up empty. 

For the first time, a sprig of doubt grows in his mind. Why doesn’t it feel right? Sam is going to say yes. What if this continues? What if Lucifer has him, body and soul, and still feels incomplete? His Father would be that cruel, dangling the only thing Lucifer has left right in front of him and then taking it away.

”Is that true? Will you say yes to me, Sam?” It’s so early, too. The stage isn’t set yet. Killing Dean will easily send him to Michael, and with Sam finally where he belongs, it might push him to say yes, too. But now? Lucifer has barely had time to enjoy his freedom. Sam is his only way to keep it, but at the same time, waiting for him to say yes feels like the walls are closing in.

”Um…” Sam hesitates. He looks behind Lucifer at the demon. “I do that, and… you give me anything I want?” 

Lucifer stares at him.

Oh, it’s a joke. He smiles. There’s something so comforting in knowing Sam remembers their interactions, wants to banter back with Lucifer about them. He steps forward into Sam’s space, curious if he’ll be allowed. He’s not sure why he wouldn’t, when they’re about to be tangled together as waves radiating through the atoms of his body, intimacy so deep it will forever change them both. Sam swallows nervously. 

“Of course,” Lucifer says. “Anything. Everything.” Sam is right here, and Lucifer can touch him all he wants. He should feel greedy for it, but… He placed the blame elsewhere, not on Sam, never on Sam. He’s overly aware of the demon watching them with its intrusive eyes. He reins in his irritation enough to gently advise it, “You should leave now. Let others know what’s to come.”

“Wait!” Sam says, panic in his voice. Lucifer and the demon both look at him curiously. “No, she’s- She’s got to let go of her. My- She has to leave her body.”

”Are you sure that’s kind?” Lucifer says. Demons are not careful with their hosts. Not like he will be with Sam. There’s no telling what damage has been done to the girl it’s wearing. Sam nods quickly. Lucifer considers that for a moment, then leans in towards Sam, whispering to him. “Let me in, and we can do more than send it away.” Sam’s ear is millimeters from his lips, his pulse only an inch further, and Lucifer… 

He’s wondering why his vessel isn’t reacting as strongly to Sam now. Where’s the giddy, fluttery feeling from his stomach? Where’s the desire to press his mouth against Sam’s skin, to kiss him or eat him alive or both?

”Okay,” Sam says, his voice shaking again. “Okay. Uh. I- Yes?”

His body is open for Lucifer to take it. Lucifer feels nothing.

Sam coughs.

Lucifer reels. How can it not be right? He turns the roiling fear into anger and searches around for someone to direct it on. Michael’s vessel is a prime target, but Lucifer can recognize he had nothing to do with this. 

There’s the demon. It still hasn’t left. It should have.

He turns on it. It shrinks back. It is learning what it is to be a disappointment to a wrathful god.

"What did you do?"

"It is his body," the demon begs. "I thought without Sam to resist-" Lucifer quiets it with a gesture.

Demons. All they understand is meat. Sam is his mirror in every way, not just the flesh they'll wear. The person behind Lucifer, the one in stolen skin, the one who has dared to take what belongs to Lucifer, to Sam, and try to sell it as his own, chokes in fear. "Oh my god," he says, "please don't kill her, please, she's in my friend."

"Be quiet," Lucifer orders, "and be thankful. The body you took is too precious to me to rip you out of it."

"Oh, god," he babbles, and somehow he makes Sam's voice sound grating, "this wasn't supposed to happen, I just wanted my life to not suck for five minutes, you aren't even supposed to be real-"

"Liar," the demon hisses, "you were going to kill Dean to get what you wanted, does that sound like someone who didn't believe-"

There are not words for how little Lucifer cares about this argument.

"Where is Sam?" he interrupts. He doesn't need to raise his voice for them both to fall completely silent. He waits.

"I think he's tied up in my friend's basement," says the person who is not Sam.

"Why do you need him?" the demon questions. "That idiot said yes. The body is yours." There's desperation clinging to its words, an unspoken and I brought it to you. Lucifer feels no need to explain himself to it. It welcomed being burned by him once. Why should it fear being killed for its failure, when it will get to feel his grace burn through it a second, final, time? Have faith, he thinks but doesn't say.

"Take me to him," Lucifer says, "and I'll let Sam decide who gets to survive this encounter." Sam will like that. Either way, he'll feel like he's saved someone or like he's gotten his revenge.

Lucifer's heart beats fast in his chest. He's going to see his soulmate again.

They leave Dean at the motel. He only ever makes things more complicated, especially when it comes to Sam. He'll muddy Sam's sense of justice with his own.

Lucifer can see the demon panicking and plotting to escape. It knows that out of the two of them, it has the lowest chance of surviving. Lucifer isn't going to let it leave. It wanted him to come. It prayed for attention from its god. Its getting what it wished for. The person in Sam's body — Lucifer hasn't learned his name and isn't going to ask — comes quietly, frozen and wide-eyed like a deer in headlights. Every time he looks at Lucifer, he shakes and forces his eyes away. Lucifer sees him unconsciously rubbing the back of his hand, the same place where the skin of Lucifer's vessel has blistered. As though Sam's body would ever fall apart that way.

The spell has done a good job of disguising the souls it swapped, for now. Lucifer can see through the illusion more clearly when its trying to cover up Sam's soul. Sam's head snaps up at them when they arrive. His eyes go to Lucifer first.

He doesn't look scared of Lucifer. He looks angry, and calmed by his anger, focused.

"Did you say yes to him?" Sam snarls. The person in his body flinches.

"He tried to," Lucifer answers for him so that Sam's eyes will remain on him. Sam looks like he wants to wrap his hands around Lucifer's throat. Lucifer smiles at him. Fury makes his soul shine in such a pretty way.

"So why are you here?" Sam snaps. "To gloat?"

Lucifer tips his head. The ropes holding Sam disintegrate. He's on his feet in an instant.

"I'm a little insulted," Lucifer says, letting a little of his genuine hurt leak through. He can't understand why Sam doesn't trust him. He's never lied to Sam, never done anything to force his hand, never even pursued him beyond introducing himself. He's waited for Sam to come to him every step of the way. (Maybe, he's let his demons know that he'd like for Sam to be put in situations where he has to see Lucifer, but if they act on that, it isn't his fault. They're demons.) "Don't you remember what I told you?"

"That you'll get a yes eventually."

"That I'll get you to say yes," Lucifer corrects. "That's a promise, Sam. I will take no one's consent but your own, fully informed, fully willing." There's only a few feet between them, but when Lucifer steps forward to cross the distance, Sam takes a step back. Lucifer sighs. "Let me put you back where you belong. You don't look comfortable."

Both bodies drop. Lucifer shoves the interloper soul back where he came from. He kneels next to Sam and smooths his soul down into his body.

Sam's body remains open to him, the yes given not able to be revoked, not even with his rightful soul back in place. It doesn't matter. Lucifer won't take what Sam hasn't given him. (Mostly. He does allow himself to cup Sam's face just once before Sam's soul wakes his body again. Sam will never know. It's just for Lucifer.)

Sam kicks Lucifer when he sees him hovering over him. It doesn't hurt, but Lucifer lets it create the distance Sam wants. They get to their feet.

"There's one more thing we have to settle," Lucifer tells him. Sam glares.

"I don't want to die," whimpers the teenager on the other side of the room. The demon makes a face like its barely holding back from begging for its life, too.

"No one is going to kill you, Gary," Sam mutters.

"That's your choice," Lucifer shrugs. "What about that?" he points at the demon. Sam looks at it. Lucifer sees a flash of regret across his face.

"I-" Sam works his jaw. "I don't know if you can hear me in there, but I'm sorry, I can't- I can't." Lucifer watches with interest.

"Can't what?"

"You know what," Sam says. Lucifer doesn't enjoy his anger half as much when its directed inwards. Doesn't Sam know that he is perfect? Doesn't he understand that there is nothing he could do that would make him unworthy? He is so cruel to himself. When Lucifer has him, he's going to shower Sam in love until he forgets how to be.

Lucifer could hold the demon here for an exorcism. Sam will remember that's another option soon.

"You don't need demon blood to draw it out. I can help."

"You'll kill her."

"I'm not like my brothers, Sam. I know how to be delicate." Sam's nostrils flare. He wants so badly to save this girl, despite the damage she helped do to him. Lucifer wishes Sam would let himself break things when they hurt him. Lucifer would happily be his weapon, but this way, he still gets to be close to Sam. This is why he left Dean behind. It's not a choice Sam could make with his brother watching.

"You aren't possessing me."

"I don't need to."

"We pull it out. We don't hurt the person its possessing."

When Lucifer comes close, Sam flinches. Lucifer hooks his chin over Sam's shoulder, presses his chest to his back, and slides his hand down to cover Sam's. He can hear Sam's heartbeat, rapid. Scared or excited? Sam goes to lift his hand, but Lucifer stills it. "You don't need to," he murmurs. "Don't ever give away that you're about to attack." Sam draws in a breath. Lucifer listens to it, leaning in further. His other arm wraps around Sam's waist. He lets his grace seep into Sam's skin, not possession but sharing. He is as much Sam's to use as Sam is his. Sam reaches out with Lucifer's power to buttress his own weakened abilities. The demon panics, but Sam holds it fast.

"Don't hurt her!" Lucifer jerks his head slightly, and the teenager passes out again. He settles back into the crook of Sam's neck. Sam is breathing harder now, flexing psychic muscles he's been avoiding using for months. It comes back to him easily. Lucifer eases the strain that should be there with his grace, letting Sam get a little taste of what they'll be like together. This is just one demon. Lucifer will burn the world for him. With him.

Sam's intention was to exorcise the demon. Lucifer can feel when he switches to wanting to kill it, when he feels that he can with Lucifer supporting him. Lucifer can feel what Sam feels. The power is intoxicating. He has the ability to play savior and executioner with a single thought, and he loves it. Lucifer turns his head and brushes his lips against Sam's pulse to feel his blood pumping under them. Every offer he's made Sam so far has been theoretical. Now, Sam understands.

Lucifer loves him, and Lucifer will give him everything.

Sam burns the demon alive.

When it's over and Sam is catching his breath, Lucifer retreats before he can be pushed away.

There's a small part of him that hopes Sam will turn around and say yes, yes, yes, let's do that, let's be that forever. A much larger part of him that knows Sam won't. The girl is unconscious too, now. Two passed out teenagers, and, Lucifer passes his eyes over the basement, one dead one. It could have gone so much worse for them.

"Can you erase memories?" Sam asks. Lucifer is surprised, but he nods. Sam won't meet his eyes.

"It's like it never happened," he promises. Even the corpse disappears, from dust it came and to dust Lucifer returns it, floating haphazardly through the air of the basement. "Do you want me to take you back to Dean?"

"I can find my own way," Sam says.

"You don't have a car," Lucifer says, "and if your brother wakes up, he'll go looking for you, end up here with questions these two can no longer answer..." Sam flinches. Lucifer's only trying to help.

"Fine," he says, "take me back."

Dean is awake, it turns out. He shoots Lucifer. Lucifer knocks him out cold again before he can pull the trigger twice. He can feel Sam starting to panic. The way Dean's eyes had flicked between his brother and Lucifer had been both scared and accusatory.

Sam forces out, haltingly, "Can you-"

"Done." Lucifer says, with only a tendril of grace through Dean's mind, permission given to take away whatever he wished that could hurt Sam.

Sam doesn't thank him. Lucifer doesn't need him to. He knows Sam is grateful.

So, when he leaves, he allows himself to be greedy again. He caresses Sam's face and kisses his cheek. Sam freezes under his touch.

It's alright. He should know he's safe with Lucifer. After all, Lucifer has the yes he needs to take Sam's body, but he won't use it. He'll wait for Sam. He's going to come to Lucifer eventually.

Her little tower smells. This whole place smells. The river, Samuel told Emily, draws in the stench of death and rot and things she doesn’t want to think about. It seeps in through the walls until the room sweats with it. It’s in her nightmares and clinging to her skin when she wakes up.

She’s sat up in her bed, staring blankly at Callista in the dark. Still shaking, and she’s not sure why; it’s never cold, and she can’t really remember what she was dreaming about. Doesn’t want to. She wishes there was a candle, so the darkness wouldn’t trick her into seeing figures that aren’t there. One of them seems to claw for her, and Emily flinches away before she realizes that it’s only the shadow of a cloud crawling across the wall.

The tower stinks, and her bed is stiff, and she wants her doll. She wants- She wants to throw a fit until everyone is forced to listen to her. There’s a scream trapped inside her, like it has been for months since she realized that crying wouldn’t help her and it made her too tired to plan her escapes. She locked it inside tightly. She’s not sure she remembers where she put the key.

It’s not behavior befitting an Empress. Besides, it would wake Callista up.

She folds her arms around herself tightly, like she had all that time with nothing else to hold on to. Sometimes, she was scared even that would be taken away somehow, that she might wake up in The Golden Cat and find that she was no longer Emily, that everything good that she remembered had been a dream and the nightmare was all that was left.

She wonders if Corvo would have recognized her. If he still would have rescued her.

And like a gasp of air upon breaking the water’s surface, Emily knows what she wants more than anything else in the world right now.

She has to be as quiet as a whisper. Callista is a deep sleeper, but even she will wake up if the tower’s door creaks too loudly. Emily doesn’t put on her shoes. She steps like Corvo does, slow and deliberate at first until she’s sure she can balance her weight in such a way that her footsteps won’t make a sound; though he has never formally instructed her how, she has spent so much of her life on his heels and copying the way he moves that his silence comes naturally to her. She’s glad Callista doesn’t lock the tower doors. Emily’s not sure she’d ever get any sleep if she knew she couldn’t leave.

She pushes the door open slowly. The night air is more pleasant than the slog of wading through the daytime humidity. There’s even a hint of a breeze up high on the catwalk. Emily watches where her feet go extra careful in the dark.

The nightmare may be real and never-ending, but she’s not alone in it. That’s easy to forget. It’s only changed so recently, and before that- She didn’t believe them. She didn’t. They said Corvo was dead like Mother, but that was different. Emily saw her- So Corvo couldn’t be dead, and Emily hadn’t believed them.

She knew he would come save her because he always would. She’d just been scared that was how they would take him away from her, too. Make her watch. Force her to believe this time that he-

Emily grips the catwalk very tightly. Her throat hurts.

She doesn’t go through the window gracefully. Her legs are too short. She clatters and stumbles and manages, at least, to land on her feet on the other side. She’s proud of herself for that.

She pokes her head through the doorway to Corvo’s room.

The room is too dark for him to have been awake, but Corvo is up on his feet already. He turns on her quickly with his sword outstretched. His swordarm sways slightly. Emily watches the cold expression on his face melt away in an instant, his eyes widening and mouth falling open slightly in surprise.

“Emily,” Corvo breathes, as he lowers his blade, and Emily wonders why he looks so unsettled. It’s not like he ever would have used it; it’s only her. “Why are you here? Are you alright?” He puts his weapon aside and holds out his hand to her to invite her in.

Emily tries to find the words but they stick in her throat. She swears she can feel them, hooked in deep and refusing to be dragged out any further. Corvo watches her with concern as she swallows repeatedly in an attempt to dislodge any sound at all out of herself. Crying would be easier, if she could only do it, but that’s trapped inside her, too. She’s bound to explode at this rate, leaving little pieces of herself all over Corvo’s walls. She shudders, but she can’t stop picturing it once she’s started—her blood staining the floor, and all over Corvo, and when Mother died, did she bleed like that, why they tried to lie to Emily that Corvo had killed her, because he was covered in-

She thinks she remembers what her nightmare was about.

She’s too wrapped up in her horrors to notice Corvo come closer when she doesn’t. He gets down on one knee, watching her with worried eyes. She has to get herself under control. No one will let a scared little girl be Empress. She has to be like Mother is- was, strong and never scared and all grown up.

Corvo touches her cheek gently, and Emily lets out a shaky breath. She might shatter.

“Can I sleep in your bed?” she finally manages to whisper.

She never knew how bad her nightmares could get before. She’d gone begging Mother to let her sleep in her bed for childish dreams like her tutors surprising her with tests she didn’t know about. (And sometimes Corvo was also in Mother’s bed when she went. Emily liked those nights best of all, even if Mother and Corvo both acted very silly whenever Emily found them and made her promise never to speak of it. She didn’t mind, never told anyone except Mrs. Pilsen—who couldn’t very well gossip about it with anyone else—and snuggled in with Mother on one side petting her hair and Corvo on the other, listening to them both whisper once they thought she’d finally fallen asleep, until she really did.)

Now, Corvo’s bed is too small. Emily is being selfish. It isn’t that bad in her tower, and Corvo needs his rest even more than she does. His face is furrowed with deep lines these days and heavy shadows hang under his eyes. This is how an Empress is supposed to think, to remember what everyone but her needs. It’s why Mother ate after everyone else at dinner, ‘I always serve myself last.’

But Corvo says, softly, “Yes, you may,” as he tucks little stray locks of her hair behind her ear, and Emily is not Empress just yet.

She hugs him. Corvo smells like he’s had a bath, which is much nicer than when he comes back in off the boat with Samuel and stinks like the river, or of worse things. She takes a deep breath of him, and remembers, guiltily, that for her part, she had run away from Callista trying to put her in the tub for hours until she had given up. Emily pouts. She probably doesn’t smell that bad, right?

If Corvo cares, he doesn’t show it. He wraps her up in his arms, and Emily remembers that’s the safest place in the world to be.

She would stay there forever if she could. Corvo lets her go reluctantly, leading her to bed by the hand. It really isn’t big enough for two, but Emily is still small and Corvo can fit himself well into cramped spaces when he wants to.

When she is Empress, she’ll have the biggest bed in Dunwall. No, the world. And the most comfortable.

Emily gets into bed first on the side that’s closest to the wall, and Corvo makes sure that she’s comfortable. His pillow is worse than hers are, but she holds her tongue. The bed gives a low groan as he settles in between her and the rest of the room, blocking her view of the dirty windows or the drab walls. Corvo watches her quietly, and Emily’s eyes flick between his own and his bare torso. It’s strange to see him unarmored these days. If you had asked Emily, she would have said he always slept hidden under layers of leather and black robes. (She had caught him passed out in his bed fully-dressed at least once. At least he had remembered to remove his mask, though by the indents it left pressed into his skin, he’d only done so barely before exhaustion had claimed him.)

Silently, Emily puts her hand over a scar on his shoulder. Her fingers trace the slight smooth rise of it from his skin until it becomes imperceptible again; she finds another, and another, and another. Corvo lets her catalogue them in near silence, only broken by the sound of their own breathing. At first, she thinks maybe she’s imagining things or that she doesn’t remember correctly, but the longer she stares, the more certain she becomes: Corvo didn’t have these scars before Mother died. Many, yes, but not these.

There’s only one thing she can assume: Wherever Corvo was, they were hurting him.

She trembles with a fury too big for her body. Corvo puts his arm over her, pulls her close, and murmurs, “You’re safe here.”

“So are you,” she says, wishing she could do what he does and make everyone who has ever harmed him pay.

Corvo rubs her back. “I am. And when I leave, I’ll stay safe for you, I promise.”

“You had better.” She curls her hands around nothing. If they were home, if it was then, it would be Corvo’s arms around her and one of her mother’s placed just so Emily could hold onto her, or her mother hugging her and Corvo’s hand tugged up against Emily like she’d hold one of her dolls. “Corvo,” she whispers as he shifts to press a kiss to her hair, “will I be a good Empress?” Corvo sighs heavily, but Emily’s fear that might be his answer is allayed quickly.

“Yes,” he promises. “Try not to worry about that, Emily.” She doesn’t see how. It’s in everything she does now, every lesson and every conversation and in all the eyes of the Loyalists as they stare at her. They call her a little Empress already, and when she thinks of her mother’s throne, she knows she will sit too small in it. “When your mother ascended to the throne, she was scared she would never understand how to rule.”

That, Emily thinks, is simply not true. Mother was born to be the Empress; To Emily, it was as if she had never doubted herself. That would be like saying Corvo is not the bravest, strongest man in Dunwall. Impossible. Emily knows this.

(Then why is Mother dead? says a voice inside her that makes her feel like she’s going to choke.)

“You won’t be alone. Your mother had advisors,” Corvo says, “as will you.”

“Advisors? Like Admiral Havelock?” she asks. She wrinkles her nose. “Or Lord Pendleton,” she adds, dragging out his name dramatically. “I don’t like Lord Pendleton, you know.” He resembles his brothers too much. “He never looks at me when he’s talking, and he’s always yelling at Wallace. And Lydia says he has a little too much-” She pauses so that she can make the same gesture Lydia does, tilting her cupped hand towards her mouth. When she had asked what that meant, Lydia had told her she wasn’t to eavesdrop on her and Cecelia anymore.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Corvo says, as though he’s trying not to laugh. Emily nods a little too fast. She hasn’t heard him sound like that in what feels like forever. (She had thought the months without him when Mother sent him for aid were the longest months of her life. She’d had no idea, none at all, how agonizingly time could pass.) “I don’t like him much either.”

Emily considers for a moment. “Can I make him stop being a Lord when I’m Empress?”

“Yes,” Corvo answers, “but that wouldn’t be very nice.”

“He’s not very nice.”

“He did help free me”—Corvo taps the tip of her nose.—“and helped me to find you.” Emily huffs.

“I suppose he can stay. I won’t invite him to any parties, though. I’ll invite Wallace instead. And Lydia.” She glances at Corvo, and she wishes there was something she could do to take the sadness from his smile. She snuggles back into him, in the hopes that might help.

She could cry again if Corvo did, too. Then again, she’s not sure how she would survive hearing him cry.

Maybe… Maybe Corvo is thinking the same thing. Maybe he’s waiting for her to cry first. Maybe he doesn’t know how he would handle it either.

Emily is tired, and they might both be left waiting a long time.

Corvo’s arm is heavy. Emily can feel the weight if it every time she breathes in. She tucks her knees up as if she could curl in closer to him, get so very, very small that she could burrow into his chest and sleep safe next to his heart and not come out until he’s made the world a kinder place. Corvo would probably let her, if he could.

“You’ll still be Lord Protector, won’t you?”

“Why would you ask that?” Corvo sounds genuinely surprised, and that settles Emily’s fears without even an answer.

“Admiral Havelock,” she mumbles into his chest. “He said you might want a new title and to retire. That I’d need someone new.”

“Did he,” Corvo says, flatly. Emily nods.

She can get people in trouble with Corvo now, and she likes it.

“I’ll have a talk with Admiral Havelock,” Corvo says, petting the back of her head. “We’ll have that cleared up. I won’t leave you.”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” she says. “As your Empress—“

“Not yet,” he whispers, soft with regret.

“—I order you not to ever, ever quit.” Despite himself, Corvo chuckles. She touches her cheek to his chest, and she can feel the sound. It could lull her to sleep paired with the rhythm of his heartbeat.

“Even when my hair goes grey and my bones start to creak?” he asks.

“Even then,” she says, stubbornly.

“I am yours to command, My Lady,” he says. Emily giggles in return, and Corvo sucks in a quick breath as though the sound startles him.

Emily yawns. “Your Majesty,” she corrects. When she is Empress, she will make Corvo sleep in her bed every night, and she will never have nightmares.

Corvo doesn’t say her future title back to her. He seems to hold on to her tighter.

Emily feels him combing his fingers through her hair and blinks heavily as her eyelids droop further and further. Corvo presses a kiss to the crown of her head. As her thoughts begin to unravel, she wonders foggily why it is so much cooler at her back than she’s used to, but she can’t carry that thought to the end of its hurt as her eyes slide shut a final time.

Emily nestles in. The warmth of his arms around her will keep her safe more than blades or bullets.

For what faults Connor has, (and Achilles can generously name a few: wet behind the ears, stubborn as a mule, more impatient than his current skill affords him the safety to be) tardiness isn't one.

"Connor!" he calls from the doorstep of the manor before making his way out towards the edge of the woods. The boy's not in his room; he's not with his books; he's not with the horse. He's never acted a wastrel. He knows the precious necessity of every hour spent training. That's a lesson Achilles never had to drill into his head.

That fact is why Achilles grips his cane a little tighter than he'd like to admit. 

Connor can take care of himself. He's more than proven that. He doesn't need Achilles worrying after him, and frankly, Achilles doesn't need the stress. He gazes out into the woods beyond the manor. It's early, still, but the birds are well awake by this hour as the sunlight gilds the leaves with gold. Achilles squints. He's getting worse with distances, and the tree trunks blend into each other, brushstrokes of rough and mossy browns. The shrubs hide what little he can tell apart. Hints of movement that draw his eyes are only squirrels or hares running between hiding places, nothing larger. 

But there's worse hiding deeper in the land. Achilles hears howling at night. 

He shakes his head. Connor knows better than to tangle with wolves. He's too smart to let them get the jump on him and too fast to not be up a tree before they run him down.

But one missed jump, he can't help picturing, one termite-eaten branch, one slip from the lofty boughs of a pine-

He knocks his cane against the ground and tries to banish his imaginings. What will you do if it happens? he admonishes himself. Do you plan to carry his broken body back? Now, there's a way to get ambushed by wolves, if you even made it that far. "Connor!" he calls again, as loud as his voice can manage. "If you can hear me, you'd better be making your way back." For another minute, there's no change in the forest scenery except for a hare rising to its back legs and twitching its ears in the direction of Achilles's voice before darting off into the underbrush.

Suddenly, an awareness, nearly unconscious, creeps over him and turns his head. He grips the cane to swing, just in case, but it's only Connor, coming up from the side of the manor where Achilles wasn't looking. He made it very close without Achilles hearing him. He pauses for half of a step, then comes forward. His palms look grimy and roughened like they always do when he's been climbing. He doesn't meet Achilles's eyes as he nears, but his head remains unbowed. 

"And where have you been? We should have started at sunrise," Achilles demands. 

"I'm sorry," Connor says. "I lost track of time." It isn't in Connor's nature to lie, and therefore, the lack of practice makes him particularly bad at it. The roughness of his voice doesn't help matters. It only encourages Achilles to peer closer at his pupil. Though Connor won't look at him, he won't hide from his gaze either. 

He looks exhausted. If Achilles had to guess, he'd say he hadn't slept a wink the night before. The look is only exaggerated by the puffy swell around his eyes, rims of red just visible around the edges.

The boy's been crying.

It has been some time since he came to the manor. Long enough for scraps of his past to escape, however hesitant Connor is to let them go. By now, Achilles knows the story, knows that the mother Connor lost is someone Achilles once called a friend. That was too many years back for Achilles to remember Kaniehtí:io's face clearly, if not for the way he sometimes thinks he sees her in the way Connor smirks, in the way he holds himself. Some part of him wishes he had anything to give the boy that Connor doesn't already know, but he doesn't. Connor knew his mother better in four short years of childhood than Achilles knew her in many years of working together, and Connor keeps the details of who she was close to his heart. Achilles doesn't even know the day of her death.

What he does know is that it's not something Connor is likely to forget.

One day. He misses a few hours of training because his grief demands no witnesses. Just this one. He's waiting to be rebuked—another sign Achilles cannot ignore because Connor is apt to argue his case when scolded if he feels he has good reason to—and Achilles won't. From the tension of Connor's balled fists as he anticipates it to the tight set of his jaw, Achilles can't hold this against him.

How easy it is to forget how young the boy is when he wants so badly to change the world like a man.

Achilles sighs. He starts past Connor back to the manor's front door. Connor's tension rises, as if he thinks his punishment is to be barred entry to the house, (That was one time, not counting their very first meeting, and Achilles had been in a particularly sour mood. For reasons Connor might understand, for the same reasons Achilles understands why Connor can't be blamed for his absence today. They will have to learn to live around each other's griefs.) but when Achilles doesn't say anything, he relaxes.

"Wash up," Achilles says, when he's a little past Connor, enough that the boy falls into following him, which Achilles prefers to him trotting ahead and looking back for Achilles every few seconds like he might otherwise. "Then, I have something to show you. Something you'll enjoy." Something that will take your mind off of vengeance and loss both, he doesn't say. 

"What is it?"

"It's called Fanorona." Connor frowns. 

"Is that a new way to fight?" A fair question, given the variety of ways Achilles has shown him how to use his body, every form he was once taught and could move through with ease. (It's a point of pride for both of them how Connor has taken those lessons and commingled them into one fluid style of his own.)

"No," Achilles answers. "It's a game, and I haven't had a good opponent in a very long time." He makes a show of looking Connor up and down. "But I suppose in the meantime, you'll do." Connor's mouth twitches. It's nearly a smile. 

He loses to Achilles four times in a row, and with each, he learns. First he copies Achilles's opening, then he counters it, and then, he chains half of Achilles's pieces into his hands in one move.

On their fifth game, they play to a draw. 

It only takes him a few more weeks before he starts to win.

(Many times, as Connor deliberates over his next move, Achilles considers asking him to tell him about his mother. But that would be a cheap tactic, he tells himself, to disrupt Connor's playing with memories like that. Another time, he always thinks, another time.)