When the bones are good

After what had felt like an endless night, dawn had come at last.

Jigano had wished his friends in the Temple well - some old, some surprisingly new - and been one of the first out the door when it had opened to let the first rays of sunlight stream across the threshold. Isuma had soared above him, relishing the feel of the warmth on her feathers and fur again as Jigano had taken himself swiftly over the melting snow, first at a walk and then at a lope, heart pounding in his chest with hope and fear alike.

The gryphlet had flown ahead, unburdened by armor and weapons and lanterns that held the souls of the lost, her pale body painted rose and gold by the rising sun, but even her flight was only a little ahead of the oracle who ran like the freshening wind, sure-footed even as the snow softened and made him work for every stride.

He never should have left.

If he hadn't, he might not have been able to gather the souls.

How could one weigh a soul - even dozens of souls - against a heart?

He ran until his breath came in gasps and his sure feet finally stumbled but still he didn't stop. Not as he rounded the last hill and the farmhouse came into view. Not until he reached the yard, cleared of trees where it kissed the woods, the snow fading from bloody red to pale pink and pearl and nacreous blue. Not until his hand landed against the rough wood of the frame and he leaned against it gasping, praying, hoping, fearing.

Isuma perched on a fence post, trilling greetings to the hounds, but it was the fox who raised a shaking hand to knock against the door, having to clear his throat twice before he could call out. "Rory? Rory are you... are you there?"

That the dogs were out were a dead giveaway of the fact that Rory had not perished during the night. Who would've let them out, if he wasn't around to?

And if he had died, who would've beat Jigano to his cold, dead body?

No, had Rory died in the dark, had he opened the door to his sister and instead been torn apart on his front porch, it would've been Jigano (or Amalia) who would've found the mess.

So come to think of it: had he died during the night, the dogs definitely would've been out, because he wouldn't have been alive to close the door once he let the monsters in.

He still sometimes thought of Wessex's body, torn apart by the Spire Demon and strewn around in the snow like bits of some dog's beat-up chew toy. Strips of flesh and cloth—

But no, Rory was still whole, at least on the outside. He sat on a stool in the kitchen area, and it could've been any other fucking morning: there was a fire going, he was warming up his feet in his thick, woolen socks, the smell of coffee in the air but there was a disarray with the mugs, he couldn't tell if there were too few or too many.

There was a knock on the door, a cruel reminder of another knock. How many hours ago had it been now? Rory?

(Am I here?)

His eyes slid to the door. He didn't find it in himself to get up.

This time, he did not want to be the strong one.

"Yeah," he finally said—not sure if Jigano would even hear it, for he didn't find it in himself to raise his voice.

He felt hollow.

He hadn't intended for his ears to shift, but in his worry for the man he loved they had done so while he leaned against the door. His heart was in his throat (impossibly so, since his heart was in the house, and had been for all of LongNight), pulse racing with hope and fear in equal parts as he felt the rough grain against his cheek and closed his eyes, breath held as he waited for an answer.

Any answer, so long as it came in Rory's voice.

The ear against the door flicked at the whisper that made it through the wood. Relief weakened his knees as he fumbled for the latch, and slowed his step as he slipped inside. Deepfrost was not so quick to release its grasp upon the world, and he vaguely remembered to close the door behind him before he kicked off his boots and abandoned his cloak on the peg that waited for it, where it had hung for several seasons now, more often than not.

Rory was alive, but the giddy rush of seeing his lover's blond head again faded just as quickly as he took in the hunter's listless posture on the stool, fresh worry welling up to eclipse it. "I'm home," he said quietly. Unnecessarily, but it was true in so many more ways than one. Jigano padded on stocking feet to grab another stool and pull it up next to the farmer, settling onto it so that his leg pressed against Rory's and he could try to slip an arm around his lover's trim waist. He wanted to coax the blond into leaning against him, offering his shoulder for that tired head so that he could turn and press a soft kiss to a pale temple.

"What happened, love?" He had seen no claw marks on the door or shutters, no tracks in the melting snow. Not all monsters attacked with fang and talon, however; some were far more insidious in their hunt, and left wounds no healer could reach.

Quiet as a fox the other man came through the door, and stole across the floor: soft socks instead of soft paws, no click-click of dull nails across the floorboards to give him away. Rory heard it but—selfishly, though he was too pragmatic to rarely give in to that—did not raise his head.

For once, he wanted every insecurity laid bare.

He wanted every flaw in the stark and pallid light.

He wanted Jigano to see every scar. He wanted Jigano to know that he was wounded and weak. He wanted Jigano to see him and wanted (cruelly) for his heart to skip a beat as his mind mayhaps asked the question that Rory had asked himself when he kissed him goodbye: would he be tempted to open the door that night?

He didn't want Jigano to feel guilt, for Rory had chosen to stay alone in the dark. He had given his partner his blessings to go elsewhere, after all, but he wanted Jigano to know that he was hurting for so many other reasons—

His strong body was easily coaxed and manipulated, his side falling against Jigano's, his head rolling onto that familiar shoulder as he stared at the opposite wall. For a moment the question hung in the air, answered only by the crackle and spit of the fire, and Rory wondered how he could possibly put what was in his heart into words. How does one explain the combination of regret, relief, fear, hope, and utter, complete despair? How does one phrase that strong desire to run away, into a different life, a different body, as he had seen them do time and again?

The feeling of not being enough?

He wished Karlia was a fox in the night, pale gray in the moonlight, yellow-eyed and sharp; he wished she was in a better, happier place, where she did not have to feel any of this.

"Karlia was at the door," he finally said. His sister was a subject he had routinely avoided even with Jigano—she had been an ending chapter by the time he came around anyway, and there had been little reason to bring her up. And any time she had been brought up, Rory had (not ungently, but firmly) shut down the conversation. Karlia was a wound too fresh, and one he had not wanted to share before he knew. (He still didn't.) "There's a blanket in the barn. An indent in the straw. Tack's polished."

His voice was clipped. His heart was heavy. What he didn't need to say was this: but had it really been her?

Jigano had survived two nights. He would know it was implied.

The silence stretched and Jigano let it, the words he usually hid behind, used as shield and sword and poisoned knife gone still and quiet in his breast when Rory was in his arms. He had first earned the leatherworker's friendship without words, and grew to return it with his love, knowing that here, with this man, it was not the silver of his tongue that mattered so much as the fire in his heart. He held his lover as close as the stools would allow and Rory would permit, resting a bronze cheek on golden hair and closing his eyes to better soak in the warmth of his partner's body and his familiar, soothing scent. They fit together easily now, bodies that knew each curve and jut of bone, each swell of muscle and softer places to rest a weary head, and the fox tucked his mate against him as if to protect him as much as support him in their quiet half-embrace

It was easy to be patient when he knew that whatever had happened it had left his love alive, despite all the fears to the contrary that had haunted him through the past week. His fingers tightened on the curve of Rory's hip as the forbidden name was spoken, however, a flex of worry at the tricks the monsters could play. He knew so little of his partner's family, of the sister who had vanished even before the barrier had fallen.

He knew that Rory loved her dearly, deeply, painfully so. The bard had been curious but willing to wait, testing the waters from time to time to see if the wolf-souled man was ready to talk about her, but willing to drop the subject when it proved to be too soon.

It had always been too soon, but that was the way of grief and uncertainty, and he had thought - in the warm days, the bursting life of Flowerbirth, the endless days of summer - that there would be time later. On a brisk Leafchange night, perhaps, or curled up beside the fire some Deepfrost morning, sipping tea and sharing a blanket against the frost that clouded the windows before they went out to tend the horses and goats. But then there had been blights and portals and murders and LongNights and always a reason to put it off until later, later, later.

Until it came knocking on the door when he hadn't been here. When he had left Rory to face the past (his sister? his monster?) alone.

A blanket. An indent. A favor. A curse? Or a blessing? A muscled arm tightened around the treasure he held, as did pearly teeth in his fox-sharp jaw. "I survived a few days in that barn," he said softly. "I'm sure she could, too, if she had to." Had she even been there at all? "I can go out later and check for a scent," he offered after a moment's hesitation. He wouldn't recognize it as one he knew, but if a human other than Rory had been there he would smell them. If it had been a monster, though... "As long as she isn't Ascended, she should have left that much behind."

He was out of words, having pulled the ones already spoken from the depths of his soul, and they had hurt coming out. Just the shape of them had made his heart and mouth ache, a foolish confession (that I believed it at all) only made possible by the safety of Jigano's embrace, his strong and slender arms, the long stray strands of white hair moving in his vision.

He wanted silence.

He did not want hope.

He was already raw from that.

Hope and good intentions; he needed Amalia's doubt, her clarity, her life lived with these things which tore you apart when you peeked into the dark. He needed someone who knew Karlia, who knew that she would not have just left, who knew that she would not have come in the dark like that, who.. someone who could possibly understand...

But it was not Jigano's fault that he had been born elsewhere. It was not Jigano's fault that he was kind, and loving, and wanting only to help.

The sigh leaving Rory was frustrated and clipped, but he did not move from where he was, merely pressed his cheek harder against Jigano's narrow chest.

"It's pointless," he said, hollow, "Ella would've noticed if she smelled off, so either she smells like herself, or like nothing." He wanted to say yes, to accept, to let him find that day-old trail and follow it to the ends of the earth (where do the monsters nest, when the sun beats down?), but...

What was the point? It was hope that had nearly killed him.

"If it had truly been her she wouldn't have left," he said, low and husky, as if defeat itself sat in his throat.

He knew from the tension in the silence that he had said the wrong thing, but he had meant the words, meant that he would help however he could, however Rory needed him to. He wrapped his arm more tightly around his partner, friend and lover, needing to hold him close and feel that he was still here, still alive in the dawn and a part of the bard's life. They had lived together for seasons now, and still he learned more about the man who held his heart every day. There was usually joy in that discovery, but sometimes there was pain.

As long as Rory didn't pull away, Jigano would hold him close, offering the warmth of his body and the strength of his shoulder for his mate to lean on, turning his head to press his lips to blond hair at the despair in the voice that always called him home. His heart contracted at the ache in that voice, though, the loss and self-recrimination that twisted through the shadows between each word. Karlia was a mystery to him, her disappearance a wound he didn't know how to heal, but her return? Of her ghost or her doppelganger, the sweet nightmare that had called to Rory through the door, it was a cruelty almost beyond bearing.

"Yes," he said softly, agreeing with the man who knew his sister best, because Jigano had no idea of her and what she would or wouldn't have done. He couldn't imagine anyone willingly being so unkind as to taunt her brother at the door during LongNight and then not be there when the sun rose, but he still would have tried to find her if Rory had asked. Now, though... now he wanted to make a pot of tea to ease Rory's raw throat and bundle him back to bed to rest in the safety of the sun's light after the week of darkness that had nearly killed them both. It would require moving, though, and that was something he wasn't willing to do yet as he cradled his love against him.

"Thank you," he said instead, closing his eyes as he focused solely on the feel of Rory, solid and warm and real against him. "For being here. For not leaving me behind." He didn't want to think anymore of what he might have found: an empty house, a cold fire, hounds and horses unfed and no footprints in the melting snow. His own wandering feet roamed to the Settlement and beyond, stalking the breadth of the Hollowed Grounds still, but every night hooves or wings or paws brought him home again, to wrap around the man who gave him peace and filled his heart with joy even when the world threatened to fall apart around them. "So many were already lost this year..." Caiside's death hurt the most, for he could have prevented it if only he'd acted sooner, opened the door faster... but he had grieved during the long week after his friend's death, and he turned all of his attention on Rory now, rubbing his partner's side slowly in silent comfort.

He could've sat there for hours—just staring into nothing, watching the play of light over the grains of wood, listening to Jigano's heart and feeling the rise and fall of his flank. Partially because it was soothing (because he finally had him back, after the longest week of his life) and partially because it required absolutely nothing of him.

No confessions. No hope, no emotion, no strategy, no plans, no future—

He felt the darkness sit in him, spreading through his veins, winding and wrapping itself around every sinew and tendon. It felt like sleep, like when your brain just detaches from your body and you realize that you can't actually tell if that part of your body is still there until you move it and yeah, sure, it's still there.

Only it was more like he wasn't sure it was his soul that was still there.

Thank you Jigano began to say and Rory pressed his eyes shut. It was hard to accept it when everything in him had wanted to fling itself into the dark, to feel it rake along the inside of his skin and sear his veins and—and what if he could've fought it?

What if he could've .. but what good would it have done? Could he have destroyed something wearing Karlia's face, even if it attacked him? "Mmh," he hummed into the silence, feeling the need to acknowledge it but... It was difficult. It hurt that he couldn't say of course like going into the night had never been an option, but he was too honest.

After a moment he sighed, sensing the pain behind the words, something unspoken, like.. Rory slowly raised a hand to rub at his own forehead, as if that would chase the apathy from his soul. He was not the only one to suffer in the dark, and if he had any clue at all about Jigano, he would've suffered his fair share of horrors.

So he pulled himself together, because what else was there to do?

"Mmh?" he said again, this time a prompt.

His love was silent in the circle of his arm, bearing a burden far too heavy even for his sturdy shoulders. Jigano wished he could share the weight of it in some way, but Rory had always been jealous of his pain, not hiding it but hoarding it close, a creature of sunny days and sullen storms when the thunder rumbled amidst the low clouds but no lightning made its way to earth, only a steady grey drizzle of despair. It was offset by those nights when his eyes gleamed with mischief and his grin stole the bard's breath with its beauty, when laughter rolled like the tide, like their breath, in and out, back and forth, with playful brightness that put the moon to shame.

He loved the man at his side in darkness and in light, in good moods and bad, but it still ached to see his lover brought so low by the world's cruelty. If all he could do was hold him and remind him that he wasn't alone anymore, that he had survived another week of darkness and that light would, eventually, return to his world, then that's what he would do.

Because Rory's wordless hum was frightening measure of just how close he had come to being left. Not from a lack of love, he knew, but in the face of a lost sister's voice? Her shadow against the door? How easy it would have been to crack the door just an inch to see her face one last time...

His mate shifted against him and he hesitated at the indefinable sense of space those simple movements put between them. Interpreting the soft sound of inquiry he sighed, nestling his cheek against his partner's hair, letting the simple joy of being together again soften the pain of those lost to the dark. "In the town, Ezra and Cera. I don't think you met them, and I only knew them briefly. Caiside, though... he was one of my guild, and a good friend." There was a quiet undertone of grief in the words, for the pain was still fresh, but not so sharp as it had been in the dark while he sat deathwatch over his guildmate's body. His voice was steady in the face of it, his mourning underway and healing a ways off but within sight, as it had not been in the dark. "And... Roana, too," he added, not quite an afterthought, but without the weight of emotion that the smith's passing had carried.

It was more than enough, though he didn't think Rory knew any but the last. He let silence return but for the crackling of the fire and the soft susurrus of their breaths in and out, letting the names sink in or slide away as his lover needed and giving them both room to simply be together again.

{Fin}