#syf

He didn’t waste another moment watching them, twisting the space around him and emerging on the far east side of his woods.

Virgil’s pace had been dogged for the past few days, digging his fingers into nooks and crannies as he climbed and hauling himself over steep ledges, never pausing to sit and rest the way Janus had seen many a traveler do.

(At the time, he’d thought it strange, a waste of energy and disregard for self-maintenance. Now, he wished the path had been smoother, the human’s efforts more fruitful; the distance between him and his pursuers seemed far too small.)

Currently, however, his progress seemed to have ground to a halt. He’d moved since the previous evening, but not far. He was only a handful of yards away from the stretch of ground where he’d previously knelt.

The reason was obvious. Even as he sat with his back pressed against a boulder outcrop, eyes closed and head tilted back, his leg was carefully angled so that there wasn’t any pressure put on the back of his calf.

It had been bandaged, at least, though Janus didn’t hold any hope that the makeshift fabric was particularly clean. After all, his shirt had been sacrificed to make them, going by the missing right sleeve. Days of travel tended to leave behind layers of dirt and sweat, and his current clothes had certainly seen better days.

Janus watched him for a few long moments, and then sent a loose, cold breeze that way, rustling his hair and tugging at his clothes in a silent encouragement to keep moving.

Virgil breathed in deeply, and then dragged himself to his feet, his face twisted into a silent grimace all the way up. He glanced over at the woods, gaze once again landing eerily close to where Janus stood, and then began the arduous process of walking along treacherous terrain with an entire limb out of commission.

In light of the situation, it really wasn’t that surprising that he stopped to lean against a heavy rock only a paltry twenty minutes later. It was, unfortunately, still very frustrating to watch. Janus sent another breeze.

They played this game of stop and go for another few hours, Janus peripherally aware of the mercenary party continuing to grow closer, and only when they stopped to camp for the evening did Janus finally relent and stop battering at the human with winds chilled enough to keep him awake and on the move.

He left Virgil to curl up and sleep in peace, following his steps back to do what little he could to make the terrain harsher, less forgiving. Still, even with all his effort, it wasn’t enough to halt the party for anything close to a significant amount of time. They were traveling outside the reign of his forest, his control, and he’d sworn noninterference with human matters.

(The oath had been easy to make, a bitter satisfaction in it. He’d expected it to be just as easy to uphold. He hadn’t imagined anything like this.)

–

When he returned the next morning, unsatisfied with the night’s work, he perhaps made his gale break upon Virgil’s sleeping form a bit too harshly. He repressed a wince at the misplaced anger.

It didn’t end up mattering. The human didn’t stir, not even an inch.

A jolt of electric panic ran down Janus’s spine. He couldn’t see the human’s chest, not all curled up against the stone as he was. Was he breathing?

He stepped up to the edge of his territory, a new sort of alarm spreading through him, but even now he couldn’t shake his suspicion. If he went out there and this was a trap, a long con intended to get his guard down, he could be killed. Along with his own life lost, he’d be leaving the forest undefended, with a group of mercenaries as witness. Spreading the word of a forest full of vulnerable myths would be the least of what they could do.

He should leave the human to his fate. It might even be a sort of mercy, granting him a less painful death. That was something his pursuers surely wouldn’t give him.

Virgil continued to lay there, more motionless than he’d been since first appearing at the forest’s border.

Janus scowled, and stepped carefully past the barrier, his invisibility fading away as he moved past the pines.

If Elli– who had indeed been trekking through the forest with bullheaded determination, asking anyone they saw where they could find the guardian– found their friend like this, the results wouldn’t be pretty. That was the only reason he was checking. It was on behalf of one of his residents.

Besides, there wasn’t much that one human could do to harm him when he was in this form.

(Janus pointedly wasn’t thinking about the few things that one could do.)

He crouched next to the human, his shadow completely enveloping the little figure, and reached out with a cautious hand to prod Virgil onto his back.

At the first touch, his heart jumped. He’d half-expected to meet cold, stiff flesh, but instead found he was practically burning up. He could also feel the chest under his fingertips rising with strained breaths. Still alive.

Alive, and likely suffering from an infected wound.

Janus carefully worked his fingers underneath the human’s back, scooping him into his grip fully with all the gentleness that handling someone so small required. He was well-practiced after decades of handling human-sized myths, but they were also usually a bit more durable.

Virgil was decidedly not, this fact only emphasized by the inflamed skin and weeping pus revealed when Janus pulled back the bandages.

To make matters worse, the wound’s scabbing had dried against the bandages, meaning that pulling it free had caused another fresh wave of bleeding from the long gashes in his calf. The human twitched, the pain finally enough to wake him where being battered by winds and picked up by a giant hadn’t.

Janus forced his face to remain neutral and cold as Virgil’s eyes fluttered open, knowing exactly what the human would see. Even with most of his more monstrous traits tucked away, he still had the pointed ears, slit pupils, and curved fangs long enough to poke past his lips. Those features, combined with the giant form that each guardian was blessed with, were sure to send any human screaming.

How irritating. With a sigh, he curled his hand into more of a cup, intending to pre-emptively prevent any falls from thrashing.

Virgil took a long moment to blink, visibly trying to focus his gaze on his surroundings. Eventually, he seemed to find Janus’s face, more or less.

“H‘lo?” he asked, squinting. “Who…?”

Janus raised an eyebrow; this was possibly the most sedate that he’d seen the human ever. Not the reaction he’d expected. The fever had certainly taken its toll, in a different way than he’d expected. “I am the forest’s guardian.”

Virgil’s face did something, probably an attempt to smooth out into a mask of his own, but only succeeded in going lax enough that every little twitch of emotion was exceedingly easy to read.

Right now, the primary emotion was hurt.

“Not inside,” Virgil replied, and it took Janus a moment to realize it was a promise, rather than a request. “Leaving.”

That was right, the last time he’d been confronted with a myth outside these woods, they’d been trying to kill him. Janus moved his assessment of Virgil’s sedate reaction from ‘weird’ to ‘concerning’.

The human in question tensed, like he was going to try and get up and show Janus that he was, in fact, doing his best to continue away from the woods.

Janus had enough foresight to see how badly that would go, and set two fingers against Virgil’s torso and upper legs, keeping him in place. Jostling that injury by trying to stand would have the human in a world of pain. “I know. You’re not in trouble.”

Virgil’s face pinched slightly in doubt, but he didn’t fight against the hold. He didn’t seem to have the energy to try.

Another moment of hesitation. Janus knew he couldn’t treat the wound like this. Healing was delicate work. He’d have to bring himself to Virgil’s level. Could he?

Virgil didn’t seem concerned with his silence. He curled slightly against Janus’s palm, wrapping an arm around one of the fingers pinning him in place. He was just seeking heat, shivering with the false cold that fevers brought. It didn’t mean he wasn’t scared.

But he was staring up at Janus’s face, still, and there was nothing in that look but idle, hazy curiosity.

Janus hissed lowly to himself, and Virgil’s face went pinched up again as he hissed back, the human version of the sound made even more pathetic by how little force was put into it. Virgil looked confused afterwards, like even he wasn’t sure what point he’d been trying to prove with that.

It wasn’t funny. Janus wasn’t charmed, not by the ridiculous responses or the utter lack of fear.

He wasn’t even fooling himself, at this point. It was his choice that decided whether the human lived or died here, and despite everything, this was one human he didn’t want to watch die.

–

Janus left Virgil briefly to retrieve what he would need to treat him, leaving one glove to insulate the human from the cold stone ground upon seeing how miserably he attempted to cling to Janus’s fingers.

All that was left was to take the form that he hadn’t worn in years. The one that bore the traces of far more memories than his normal guardian one. The one that he needed if he was going to keep Virgil from dying any time soon.

It’s just one human, he told himself, and folded himself down into the shape that had once been his only one, in his life before this sanctuary.

It was like a layer of confidence, of false bravado had been stripped alongside his size. His gait was stiff, his jaw clenched tight, but he forced himself onwards, past the safety of his woods. The only one around to tell on him (to hurt him) was nearly delirious with fever.

He approached with audible steps, which stuttered just the slightest bit as the human turned to face him. He looked undersized in the heap of yellow fabric that Janus had been wearing on a single hand earlier in the day, but from this angle, Janus suspected that the human would actually be taller than him.

Thankfully, for both Janus’s nerves and his own health, the human didn’t attempt to stand up, only staring up at him for a long moment, frozen like a deer in place.

“I’m here to help you,” Janus attempted to reassure, the usual sly silkiness gone from his voice. He’d known this would happen. There was no hiding the scales along his skin or the scars carved into his face. Not in this form.

The moment his voice split the air, though, the tension left Virgil as though it had never been there in the first place. “Y’re back,” he managed, the words coming out sort of lopsided but still legible. He sounded pleasantly surprised, of all things.

(If not his identity, his appearance, what exactly had frightened Virgil about this form? What had made him go still and alarmed when even his giant self hadn’t elicited that sort of reaction?)

Janus blinked, and then shook his head, forcing himself to breach the few meters of distance between them and crouch beside his patient.

Virgil didn’t protest as Janus slowly maneuvered his leg out and into the best position to be treated. He did make a low pained whine as Janus continued the process of peeling the stuck bandages away, but he didn’t lash out or pull away, and the process was eased once Janus had dampened them.

Cleaning the wound was significantly more painful, and this time Virgil did lunge forward, but it was only to grab onto one of Janus’s hands, squeezing it with force as he rode through the pain of the disinfectant.

(Janus continued to wipe away dirt and grime from the wound, pretending that his heart hadn’t skipped a beat in sheer learned terror for a moment there.)

It was a hassle to go through each task one-handed. His grip was borderline-painful. Still, Janus didn’t pull away.

Once the wound had been rewrapped (with clean bandages, this time), all that was left to do was wait for the fever to break. The human could do that on his own. Janus was no longer needed there.

He stared down at the hand gripping his, clinging on firmly even as the human slipped back into sleep after the exhausting ordeal, and sighed a long, dramatic sigh.

There was no harm in sitting here for a while longer.

(He had plenty of memories of gentle touch, of friendly contact. It shouldn’t matter that all of them were from after he’d become a guardian. It shouldn’t matter that in this form, the sensation of a warm hand in his was new and unfamiliar.

It mattered anyways.)

–

When the human woke the next day, his fever had broken. Mercifully, he’d woken before too much of the day had been lost.

He also woke alone.

Janus watched as Virgil climbed blearily to his feet, slow but not nearly as hindered as he’d been before. Watched as he put weight on his injured leg and found that, properly bound and with the application of a little healing water, it didn’t hurt nearly as bad. Watched as he took a moment to stare down at his hand, flexing it open and closed for a moment as though feeling some phantom sensation.

When Virgil set off again, Janus turned away to return to his duties.

The human was healed, and with a blessing set on him that would obscure his trail and make it near-impossible for human trackers to follow, the mercenaries were sure to get frustrated with the tangled, hostile path Janus had so kindly created for them, and they would give up. Virgil would make it past the whole of the forest without trouble.

The problem had been resolved. There wasn’t any need for him to interfere further.

At his side, he kept his own fist clenched.

–

For the next couple of days, Janus forced himself to focus on other tasks, namely requests made of the guardian, of which there was an unending supply.

The only attention he allowed himself to dedicate to the human was a slight awareness in the corner of his mind, tracking his progress as he continued along the perimeter of the woods.

Well. That, and avoiding the repeated requests for a meeting with Elli that other denizens kept passing along to him, often with an unimpressed stare when he completely dodged around the subject.

Ultimately, Elli brought the meeting to him, instead.

Janus was pinged by several of the sanctuary’s residents at once, and he paused only long enough to set aside his current task before slipping between two trees on one side of his forest and emerging from a completely separate set on the other side.

He couldn’t really call it a fight, since one participant was warily backing up, and the other was being forcibly restrained from lunging at them. Still, the intent was clearly there, and against his rules.

“What did you do to him?!” Elli was shouting, voice cracking as they forced it several levels louder than they normally spoke. They’d been lifted clear off the ground by one of the other bystanders, arms pinned to their sides, but this didn’t seem to cool their ire even slightly.

“What’s it to you?” Heidi growled defensively, her hand hovering over the knife strapped to her side.

Virgil’s knife. Ah. Yes, that would do it.

“Tell me!” Elli kicked out futilely, their face twisted up in desolate anger and tears budding at the edge of their eyes. Janus stepped forward before they could reply, his presence immediately drawing the attention of everyone there.

“Curator,” Heidi greeted, already looking frustrated. “This one was not my fault.”

Perhaps normally he would have doubted the claim– she’d started more than her fair share of disputes– but not this time. “I’m aware. You can work out your differences with our new arrival and the company they keep at a later date. Right now, I believe they’re owed a long-overdue conversation with me.”

He held a hand out and Elli didn’t argue as they were lowered back onto their feet upon it. In fact, they hardly even waited for Janus to move them to a more private setting before starting their petition.

They cleared their throat, eyes still red-rimmed. “Curator, th-there’s someone who needs sanctuary from you–,”

“I’m aware of what you want from me,” Janus cut in smoothly, “and I cannot grant your wish.”

“Why not?” Their voice was softer now, but there was still that underlying thread of steel.

“Humans are not granted access to these woods.” That was the simplest way to put it.

“Why not?” Elli repeated, brow now twisted with confusion.

Janus tapped one finger lightly against their leg, the one that had been injured when they’d arrived here at Virgil’s side. “Don’t you already know?”

Elli frowned. “Virgil didn’t do that. He helped me.”

“Do you think you’re the only one here who’s been hurt by humans?” Janus proposed the question without the cutting edge he might have normally given it, and waited for it to sink in before continuing. “Your friend is alive. He’s traversing the edge of the woods, and he’ll be free to continue on as he pleases once he reaches the northern trade path. You can head there and accompany him, or stay here in the sanctuary, but he isn’t welcome.”

The naiad had sagged with relief upon hearing that Virgil was still breathing after all, but Janus’s ultimatum made them shoot him a stung look, so full of betrayal that he had to work to keep his firm expression from slipping.

Elli stepped back, shaking their head in silent condemnation. “Let me down.”

Janus lowered his hand to the ground, and they scurried off as if the touch burned. They turned to face him again before speaking, their head tilted back to maintain eye contact.

“This isn’t the sanctuary we believed in,” they told him, chin lifted up in a stubborn jut. “Not if you’re willing to let good people get hurt because you’re afraid.”

Janus refused to react, still as stone, and Elli left him behind to walk northwards.

‘The sanctuary we believed in.’

What kind of human was Virgil, to hear tales of a forest full of monsters and think of safety?

—

In the end, it was pure luck that he hadn’t been too late.

A flare of magic near the barrier had caught his attention, and he’d followed it curiously, expecting a wary myth testing his magic or signaling for aid.

(He was pointedly ignoring the little voice that told him he could check on Virgil’s process while he was on that side of the woods.)

There hadn’t been a single sign before this moment, no warnings that he could have noted.

Even so, there was no disputing the band of mercenaries that stood before him, visible from the barrier’s edge.

They stood in a loose semicircle, their backs to the woods, surrounding the last person he’d wanted to see there and the only possible person he could have expected. Virgil.

There had clearly already been a fight, and Virgil had just as clearly lost. He was on hands and knees, posture curled in to brace for a blow, and one leg was held up gingerly, as though the wounds on it had been freshly reopened.

Of course they were. He’d been up against five fully armed men, and he didn’t even have a knife.

“… just tell us what we need to know,” the apparent leader was saying in a faux-coaxing tone. He held a glowing wooden trinket in hand, the source of the magic flare up, and Janus cursed his own stupidity. He hadn’t thought bounty hunters would stoop so low as to use enchanted tracking tools, hadn’t accounted for it in his blessing.

The leader stepped closer, impatient with Virgil’s lack of response. “Come now. Everyone can see how quickly your little ‘friend’ abandoned you, and you’re still defending it?”

Virgil muttered something, and when the leader leaned in closer to hear, he lifted his head and spat directly in the man’s face.

The whole group rippled with violent intent, and the leader let out an unamused bark of laughter before backhanding him hard enough that the sound of it echoed. Virgil rocked with the force of the blow and then wavered in place, looking close to passing out.

Janus couldn’t look away. He felt a sharp, icy anger sweep through him, the trees creaking ominously as his temper swelled. Some of the mercenaries glanced over their shoulders at the forest, visibly nervous.

The leader didn’t seem to notice. “We’ll do it the hard way, then. We’ve waited this long, we can stand to keep our patience a little longer, see if a little fresh meat won’t bait out a monster worth our time.” Virgil twitched at that, his breathing going shallow, and the mercenary laughed. He pulled a wicked-looking knife, the edge ridged like a saw blade, designed to hurt. “We might even make a dime off the leftovers if we’re careful. Turns out traitors like you don’t look so different from the monsters on the inside. I’m sure your guts will be convincing enough to scam a few amateurs, at least.”

The wind kicked up sharply, clouds blotting out the sun, his fury creating an unnerving harmony of rustling leaves and hollow whistling, but it was all cosmetic, surface-level. If Janus stayed hidden, it was also all he could do.

But if he went out there, he’d be vulnerable to those mercenaries, to humans that had already proven they had magical tools and were willing to use them.

At the feeling of the breeze through his hair, Virgil lifted his head and locked eyes with Janus, past the barrier, past the veil of invisibility draped over him. His lip was split, one eye swollen and crusting with blood. The other had the unnatural sheen of true sight, the sort of gift Janus had watched humans use to hunt down myths in hiding for ages.

There was no fever haze to obscure the truth this time. Virgil could see right through Janus, all the way down to the paltry, scarred little being he’d been before this forest.

Yet there was no disgust there. No greed. No hatred.

Janus stepped forward despite himself, despite everything.

And Virgil— Virgil’s good eye widened, just slightly, and gave the tiniest shake of the head. The near-unnoticeable motion was belied by the vehemence in his gaze. ‘Don’t come.’

He recognized Janus as the guardian. He believed in the forest’s sanctuary. He wanted to protect it.

The least Janus could do was return the favor.

He let himself fold down into his original form, and dropped his invisibility, looking every bit as vulnerable as he’d been years ago. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The distraction worked, the men who had been watching the trees warily shouting out in alarm, and for a moment every eye turned to him.

Virgil went tense, seeing the misdirection for what it was, but when he angled his body to run, he did it in the wrong direction.

Really, was it too much to ask that Janus’s abrupt change of heart simply be an understood thing? Must he really communicate it himself?

Without breaking eye contact, Janus lifted his arm and held his hand out, fingers splayed. A beacon. A lifeline. An extension of trust.

Virgil reached back.

He darted past the broken ranks of the mercenaries, his pains ignored in favor of one final fight-or-flight rush, and streaked directly towards the barrier, bolstered by the wind at his back.

Janus could see the fear in him, had witnessed it lingering in this human the entire time, but it was abruptly overshadowed by sheer, dumb courage.

It was in the way he didn’t slow down, already intimately aware of how the barrier’s refusal had felt and forcing himself forward anyhow. The way he believed in that outstretched hand enough to take the chance that this was a trick. To leave the crevice. To give up the knife. To be small, vulnerable.

For the first time, the barrier parted for a human hand. For the second, a hand grabbed on to his.

At some point in the middle there, they both realized that approaching at a dead sprint wasn’t conducive to a graceful collision.

Janus stiffened up for impact, a tactic that worked significantly less well when he wasn’t a giant invulnerable magic forest guardian, and Virgil twisted so that his momentum was sent to the side rather than hitting Janus head-on.

They went spinning, a dizzying series of rotations, and despite Virgil’s best efforts to keep them on their feet, they shortly ended up hitting the ground in a tumble of limbs.

“Ow,” the first human to ever set foot in his forest said plainly.

Janus let out a hysterical giggle, one that he would henceforth deny to the end of his days.

They made eye contact, and Janus realized that their hands were still clasped. Virgil offered him a tentative half-grin, but a moment later his gaze shifted to something behind them, and then he was shuffling to cover as much of Janus as possible with his longer frame.

Janus followed his gaze, finding that half the mercenaries had advanced while the others waited warily behind. One had a crossbow loaded and aimed at them, and another had tested their luck against the barrier and was now clutching a burnt hand to his chest.

The leader stood there, a scowl on his face, knife still in hand. “You think you’re safe there? It won’t be safe for long. No magic is impenetrable.”

“Why bother with all that work?” Janus asked, his lips curling into something self-satisfied. “I can let you in right now, should you truly wish to enter.”

He disentangled himself from Virgil, who protested and attempted to follow him to his feet with no success. He was clearly feeling the effect of moving so much while injured. That was fine. Janus could stand and face their opponents for the both of them.

“Oh, but…,” he tapped a finger against his lips thoughtfully. “I should greet you properly, first.”

Between one moment and the next, he was once again towering over everyone there, as vast and implacable as the mountain and its grove. He crouched over Virgil, placing his hands on either side of where the human sat and leaning on them, a show of faux-casualness.

“As the guardian of the forest, it would only be fair to return any intentions you have towards its inhabitants. What was it they said?” He directed the question down to Virgil. “That they wanted to provide fresh meat for those who live in my woods?”

There was a pause, and for a moment Janus worried he’d miscalculated, that this was too much, and then–

“I’m pretty sure they were saying that human organs are pretty valuable if you hand them over to the right people,” Virgil mused, lips tugged up into a smirk. He leaned back against Janus’s wrist, happy to play into the act. “I wonder how many they have between the group of them?”

“We could certainly find out,” Janus practically purred, and what little color remained in the mercenaries' faces drained away. “Please, do come in.”

He moved, the slightest shifting of weight forward, and two of the mercenaries turned and bolted, bravado visibly snapping. The rest, abandoned by their greater numbers and outclassed in every other way, were soon to follow.

Once they were out of sight, Virgil burst out laughing, a hoarse chuckle that immediately cut off with a wince as he jostled his wounds.

“For goodness’s sake,” Janus frowned at the fool, shifting back to give him space but keeping his wrist still to support his weight. “Haven’t you re-opened enough wounds?”

Virgil rolled his eyes, staying right where he was. “Hey, it wasn’t my idea to get the crap beat out of me by a bunch of assholes. Give the credit where it’s due.”

“If they ever show their faces here again, I certainly plan to,” Janus replied, voice saccharine. He then paused for a moment before slowly curling a hand around where Virgil sat. “We should get you treated.”

The human blinked up at him as well as he could with one black eye. “What, I’m… I’m staying? This wasn’t just a one-time, scheme-based entry?”

His tone was forcibly kept light, but Janus could see the badly-hidden hope in his posture.

“You’re staying,” he replied, as trustworthy as he could manage. “If you want. I’ll warn you now, the others may take a while to… adjust.”

Virgil cracked a grin, shrugging slightly as Janus’s fingers moved to support his back. “Hey, between you and the lady who stole my knife, I’ve convinced two out of two people not to murder me so far. My streak could continue.”

“Nobody will be murdering you on my watch,” Janus told him, and then tried to distract from the utter soppiness of that statement by lifting Virgil up. “Besides, you haven’t even accounted for your greatest proponent.”

Virgil shuffled, getting comfortable in Janus’s grip, and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” Janus said, turning to set off to where he could feel a stubborn presence hiking up the mountain. “I''m certain Elli will be more than willing to counter anyone that wants to trouble you.”