is the shaking just from the wind? he’ll say it is so, that hands are merely trembling from the cold air, from the ride, from anything but him - try and call himself a rebel and the word tastes too strange in his mouth; stranger still on his skin. he doesn’t know what to do with it other than to hold it in his hands, shaking. 

it doesn’t belong to him, this title. bodies reject it and won’t stop trembling. 

but he finds her easily, presence calming - close his eyes and they’re just sitting down for lunch, on dirt for cloud gazing, on beds for daydreaming - use the smaller girl as a grounding, try to take steps steady when he follows the team into the palace. 

remembers the mission, tries to breathe. smiles uneasily at her when they’re told to start looking. 

“team?” he says, as if there was ever a question of it. “i’ll look up and you’ll - well, you can take the lower ground. if we go around the space together we won’t have to come back again to double check for the areas we can’t quite see.”