every careless word

Koa

Don't you just wanna wake up dark as a lake
Smelling like a bonfire, lost in a haze?

The first thing he finds when he gets back to Stormbreak is the letter at his door.

He thinks it's a trick, a trap by the Family. This is how they intend to be rid of him: by baiting him out and then killing him quickly, knives in his back and his heart. It's clever, he has to hand it to them, cruel and subtle and underhanded. There is no way that the letter's real, no way Sohalia is alive and summoning him to Kings End.

And yet.

And then he's on a skyship, the paper crumpled in his shaking fist, a short reply already sent ahead by bird. It's a trap, he knows it, and yet he falls in neatly, barely an hour's hesitation before the decision is made. A quick note scrawled to Anju about his whereabouts is the only insurance Koa has to rely on, and even that, he knows, carries no weight. She's not going to be there. The letter wasn't real. Sohalia is gone.

And yet.

And then he's standing outside the inn, his heartbeat thunderous in his ears. Pip isn't here - he may be walking to his own doom, but he'll be damned if it'll be hers, too.

He thinks: An inn seems like an odd place for murder.

He thinks: I shouldn't have come here at all.

He thinks: If I go in, I won't come out again.

He thinks: And yet...

Inside, it's cozy, cramped and crowded, and yet that doesn't matter at all. Because Koa sees her immediately, recognizes her without even trying: the gold hair, the shadowed profile, the slope of her shoulders, the glint of her eyes. And for a moment he's breathless, frozen, disbelieving, because this can't be real, it can't be here, she's lost and gone and probably dead---

And then he's through the press of strangers, standing over her with his mouth agape. And the only thing he can say, can think, can feel, the only thing that chokes past his closing throat and into the heavy air between them, warbling with the weight of emotion it carries, fear and relief and heartbreak and joy---

"Soh," Koa croaks, his copper eyes stinging. "Soh. You're alive."

If you're drunk on life, babe, I think it's great
But while in this world I think I'll take my whiskey neat