Part of him wished Rory would say something, but... words had never been the largest part of their friendship. Expression and touch and action had filled their encounters, with words - and silly songs - important but... less so. Not least because the human had to do all the talking for both of them. It had created an imbalance that itched at the fox's heart; he knew more of Rory than the hunter did of him, and it made for a wistful sort of sadness when he thought of how much he didn't dare to share if he was to keep their relationship as sweet and carefree as it had been.
As it could no longer be, or at least, not in the same way.
But still Rory didn't shy away from his touch, or from touching him. The hunter's palm was warm against Jigano's cheek, his callused fingers feeling different against bare skin than thick fur. If he had just allowed the lorekeeper to share his warmth for a few moments the pale-haired man could have found contentment in that, but the brush of a callused thumb over his cheek offered an acceptance - a welcome - he hadn't dared to hope for, even back when he'd had dreams.
His breath shook as he exhaled, soft and slow, as he strove with every sense and all the strength he could muster to imprint the moment indelibly into his memory, painfully aware of how fragile it was, and how desperately fleeting. His eyes fluttered open again at last, blue gaze partly veiled behind silver lashes as his own thumb slid gently over the back of Rory's hand in echo of his friend's touch.
"I..." he started, and then paused, feeling the weight of the moment, the terrifying chance for disaster and the faint, irrepressible spark of hope balancing on his words. Everything about what was happening was so new and unfamiliar to him. He had done and experienced so much on his world... and none of it had prepare him for so personal, so intimate, so precarious a choice. "Would you prefer it... if I went back?" he asked, voice still soft enough to be between them alone, wistful and worried for his friend, and for what any answer at all might mean for him - for them. "To the fox again?"
Touching a fox was so much more innocent, not at all unlike petting his dogs, or charming the cats living in and around the Settlement. Even if he knew there was a human mind behind it, it didn't matter quite as much—it was like allowing Remi to perch on your arm, and he had known other Attuned who enjoyed a good, shifted scratch. Some had liked to wrestle in their animal forms, or race. Sometimes, with the larger shifts, they had taken bets on how long someone could hold on to them as they bucked around to their heart's content.
Touching a man was different.
But touch was what their friendship had been built upon, so it was what he'd turned to, but it was so much more complicated than that. It was smooth skin under his rough palm; it was his wild and fleeting pulse; it was.. it was everything he tried to stay away from.
He didn't know what it meant to Jigano. He didn't know what it meant for himself, either, the trembling in his veins and his hand upon warm human skin—that he still was touching Jigano, even after that initial shock.
That he was touching him again.
This time, as Jigano's eyes fluttered open, Rory forced his gaze to remain on his face. He didn't quite meet his eyes, but he was taking in the rest, feeling a little thrill of something travel from his hand up to his chest as Jigano's thumb stroked the back of his hand. Again, he wondered, what does it mean? Did they even know? His breath caught in his chest as Jigano began speaking, the voice and face so unfamiliar. But his eyes... They were the same blue of the fox that had helped him dig up Wessex's belongings, of the fox that had yowled along to a silly song about Queen Owlkitten.
Rory wanted, and want was not something he allowed himself, rarely examined; and so, he did not do that then. Instead, he shifted the gryphon into his lap, freeing up his other arm. He could've died, out there by the perch. He didn't care that Jigano had bitten him; it probably hadn't been a sane decision.
He could've died. Much as he refused to acknowledge how close to dying he had come, waking up in an Infirmary bed, with blisters and burns snaking up his neck and face, lent him some perspective. Or rather, a sense of recklessness.
He was alive.
It was okay to want.
He placed his freed hand on Jigano's other cheek, gently holding his face between his hands. "And why in Caido's name would I prefer that?" he breathed.
He had seen those blue eyes bright with laughter and misted with tears. He had seen them weary, wondrous, bright, and shadowed. But he didn't have a word for what he saw in them now, as Rory's gaze took in the humanity that lay beneath the fox, and the fox's heart within the man. But for all that words failed him their connection remained in the hand on his cheek, and in the way neither of them wanted to pull away.
He cared for this man. That, he had admitted to himself when he had asked Ludo's protection of the Abandoned, all those weeks ago. He cared for other people as well, but... he cared for Rory enough to trade his dreams for his friend's safety. He cared enough to follow him out into the night, amongst the monsters that waited there, ready to coil into their minds.
He cared enough to show his transformation, that most vulnerable, most cherished of his secrets.
Oh, how the ice fairy who had given him Isuma's egg would laugh at him if she could see him now... but she was as far from his thoughts as the rest of the world just then.
Isuma yawned and rolled over as she was shifted, snuggling more comfortably into her new position with the deep sleep of the very young and the very tired. She missed how Rory's hand rose to capture the fox-turned-man, and missed how Jigano's eyes closed - not in hiding, but in a relaxation of tension, a surrender of trust to the hunter who held him so gently. Blue eyes opened at the soft words, the hope that had begun to flicker before growing stronger and warmer in them. "Well..." he started, then paused, unsure of where to go until a flicker of a phrase surfaced in his mind. Blood and rage tickled the edges of the memory as well, but... blunted. And it seemed right to take a little light from the darkness that had almost cost them everything. "I thought... you might want your emotional support fox back," he murmured, tilting his head just slightly to nestle his cheek against Rory's other hand, ears perked forward but relaxed in silent testament to how the hunter had soothed the Attuned's unspoken fears.
All of this was forbidden.
Rory had some very simple rules, and those rules he had lived by for many years. They made his existence easy, relatively carefree, relatively pleasant, and relatively lonely. But they kept him safe, heart and soul and body and mind.
And this Long Night, he was about to break almost all of them.
Jigano's face was warm between his hands. Rory was no stranger to touching—that wasn't the point of it all. The point was that it was Jigano, and the point was.. well, somewhere in the realm of the forbidden, stowed away in that place he did not look at. He was not thinking, merely feeling, doing.
And when Jigano's eyes opened again, Rory let himself meet them: hesitant, cautious, warm.
Rory's flimsy justification for keeping the (arguably) useless fox at the scene of the perch was turned back against him, and hearing the words aloud again felt like something out of a dream. He was lucky Amalia hadn't yelled at him for being an idiot and joking about it at such a time, especially because he was pretty sure it was after Jigano had bit him. Despite how strange it was to hear the phrase again, he felt a small smile curve his lips, partially at the words, partially because of Jigano practically snuggling into his hand.
"Well," he began in response, lifting his other hand from the man's cheek. "He's right here, isn't he?" And with those words he gave Jigano's nearest ear a light tap on the back of its tip, intending only to make him flick it to prove Rory's point (whatever that was).
Much as his mind was still very focused on the man-fox in front of him, and much as his body kept whispering all sorts of things in his ears, there was something else he needed to know. It was important too, very much so, and as it seemed they had established that they were alright.. well, it left room in his mind for this other concern to rise, and it also served to keep him from trying something stupid.
"Amalia and that other girl..." he began; the fluttering in his chest now was for a different reason, the feeling in his veins sick and worried. "Did they..? Are they..?"
He couldn't even finish the sentence, just peered into Jigano's blue eyes, looking for an answer.
Somehow, some way... things were going to be okay, weren't they? There was light in Rory's blue eyes, an echo of the warmth in his own. They were alive, together, and not only had the hunter not rejected him for his secret, but he made clear in the way he touched the weary lorekeeper that he wanted him to stay. If he still had dreams, the good ones might have gone like this... minus the burns and bite wounds and the nightmare that had preceded it, of course.
But that smile - familiar, cherished, sought-after - chased away the Long Night ghosts and drew a tentative curve of the bard's own lips in response, as he could never have managed with his foxy muzzle. He was relaxed and completely off his guard when Rory tapped his ear, and the hunter would get to see the human version of what a startled fox looked like, as Jigano's eyes widened and his ear did, indeed, flick away from the contact - and then right back as the white-haired man ducked his head against the widening of his smile. "That he is," he murmured, feeling a swell of emotion in his chest that he didn't dare examine too closely. Not yet. He had so many shadows in his past but, for now, for this moment, he gave himself over to the present and the giddy lightness that seemed to be bubbling up from somewhere deep in his heart. He shifted to settle his hip on the cot beside his friend so he was no longer awkwardly leaning, though he kept his head held low enough for Rory to touch his ears if he wanted to. "Here, with Queen Owlkitten's bravest knight. And she is very fond of you, for helping her fly," he added, looking up again with the smile still on his face.
The lightness faded from Rory's expression in increments, slowly enough for Jigano to sense the return to solemnity, and he wasn't surprised at the worried question that came next. He released the hunter's hand, reaching back along the blond's arm to find Isuma and stroke her kitten-fuzzy back. "Amalia was badly hurt," he admitted, though he didn't look away, letting his friend see the reassurance in his eyes. "But Edy got her to Vervain in time. She's still asleep, in the room next to this. Edy and I..." He winced now, looking away guiltily. "We weren't really hurt by... by anyone. More that I... that we were used, like weapons, against the two of you. Maybe because we're outlanders... or just... not as strong as you two were, in resisting them." He glanced to his friend uncertainly, his hand reaching up to hover hesitantly an inch from the bite wound that had savaged his friend's shoulder even as the claws melted self-consciously back into blunt human nails. "I am so very sorry for this, Rory..."
Rory had never seen anything like it before: the fox ear growing from the man's head flicked at the touch, looking both so other and so .. given, as if they belonged there, in the white hair. And somehow, this did not surprise him. Jigano was most likely not from Caido, but Caido was—he had learned—not the only strange and wondrous place in the universe.
He chuckled as Jigano's head ducked, his heart warm at seeing the smile the other tried to hide. Warm, and taking flight, dangerous and wild.
If he stayed like that—if they stayed like that—whatever frail resolve he had left would break, and.. and.. it could ruin so much.
This wasn't the moment.
But this was the moment when he had an excuse: delirious, drunk on relief, drunk on pain.
Jigano shifted to sit next to him, a pose that put him not exactly further away, but out of Rory's control. It was not quite so suggestive to his mind anymore, and his shoulders throbbed: invasive, insistent. It had been drowned out by the flood of excitement and relief, but now that those waters thinned, it fell again like hammer-blows on an anvil, to the rhythm of his heartbeat. "I'd be happy to help her with that many times," he murmured, wondering what sort of commitment lay in those innocent words.
So with his rush, his thrill, fading to worry and pain, he let his hand leave Jigano's cheek when it was released. Not because he didn't want the touch, but because he couldn't justify the strain it put on his sore muscles; it half-fell, half-trailed, until it was back on his lap, gently curled around the gryphon.
He swallowed his anxiety as best as he could.
The fox's eyes kept him steady: promised him a good end to the nightmare story they had woven and spun between them. And still the void yawned and gaped inside his gut, warning and premonition, Jigano's voice slowly forcing it closed again.
And then his hand hovered above that which had threatened (and failed) to tear them apart; Rory watched with wonder as the blunt, large claws melted back into harmless, soft nails. Listened, in wonder, the first time he heard his name spoken by that voice.
"It's alright," he said firmly, because it was: he was alive, Jigano was alive, Amalia was alive, Edy was alive (and named).
Then he snorted, which he had held back from doing when Jigano told him of what had happened. It seemed to him the words had needed out, and he had been loathe to interrupt, but the truth was this: he was no better. The darkness had not discriminated between Natural and Outlander. "And please," he said, his voice a growl that only the initiated would know as embarrassment. "I shoved Edy and tried to hit Amalia. I thought about strangling your secret out of you. I-"
He cut himself off. Looked away. Licked his lips. Looked back; the shadow gone from his face. "This was a much nicer way of learning it," he murmured, finding his free hand hovering over Jigano's thigh, fingertips barely touching it.
Rory made himself look up, to those blue eyes.
"The point is," he went on, some of the darkness returned, "I was just too useless to cause anyone harm. It's not your fault. I'm just glad we're relatively okay—all of us."
Somehow the fragile moment had stretched and strengthened until he found a way to smile again. Rory had made it clear that he wasn’t angry or afraid of what the fox had done under the control of the madness, but it still made his heart skip a beat – surprised, joyful – at the implied offer of many more days spent together. Whether as man and fox or… something else, now. Jigano nodded acceptance of the offer, closing his eyes and letting his smile soften as he squeezed the hand against his cheek.
This moment - their moment – couldn’t last forever. There were others they both cared about whose fate Rory needed to know, as badly as Jigano had before. Though he regretted the loss of contact between them with an ache he dared not try to understand yet, his cheek swiftly feeling cold as Rory’s hand fell away, he didn’t want to strain his injured friend either.
The firm reassurance meant more than the bard could have predicted, the knot of tension and guilt and pain and self-loathing for what he had done unraveling a little further as Rory forgave him. Or at least, something close enough to it for Jigano to look up with gratitude in his blue eyes. He hadn’t expected the sound that Rory made next, though, or the low growl that sent a shiver down his spine. Not fear, no, something else entirely that had no place at the side of a wounded friend, and the Attuned firmly shoved it down and away. Hearing that the hunter had wanted to strangle him for his secret had him blinking, drawing in a breath of surprise. He held it as Rory looked away from him, but when their eyes met again there was a spark of humor there, and a smile flickered at the edges of the bard’s lips.
He let his fingers trail over Isuma’s wing until his hand was half on her, and half on Rory’s beneath. It felt so strange, this desire to be touched even in his human form. A little exciting, and a little frightening, too, at what it meant. Might mean. Could mean, if he let it. If this moment turned into a minute, an hour, a day, a season…
But, for now, he’d take each moment as the gift it was. ”Useless? You did more than any of us,” he reminded his friend, gently but firmly. ”You were the one who fixed the crosspiece so it could be raised again, and it was your magic that saw it secure. Wounded as you were, you even helped with the raising of it.” He cocked his head to the side, one ear canting halfway down to match his lopsided smile. ”You were braver and stronger than I. I wish…” He hesitated over those two most dangerous of words, the ones that could destroy a civilization or a heart. He bowed his head, finding his words and courage both before he looked up again, blue eyes searching Rory’s for something he didn’t have a name for. ”I wish I’d shown you – found a way to tell you – sooner. I… was a coward. Afraid that if I did… that things would change between us.”
It felt like if he didn't confess then and there to what spiteful things he had been thinking, then it would have festered between them: a secret, a wound, guilt over something which he ought not to have felt guilty over.
And at the same time he found himself wondering why his brain framed it like that, why his thoughts circled around a bond that went beyond niceties: a friendship that had slipped through his carefully constructed defenses and run away with him. It had been so long since.. well, since a lot of things; he thought about the long line of dead bodies littering his life, little markers and milestones, and the desolation they left behind.
He thought of his sister, drifting away in her own pain, seeking a way out of her hurt, but only drawing the poison deeper into her lungs and veins.
He thought of Jigano's human form, so foreign to his mind's eye, as the bard's slender hand laid across his own. He tried to picture him dead and broken, strips of flesh like Wessex had become, and he allowed his hand to fall onto the man's thigh, palm resting against flesh and bone and skin and fabric.
His defenses had not been made to keep a fox out.
So he had gone straight through them, passing easily through the fencing, and now he stood there, white-haired and radiant and blue-eyed, on the inside of Rory's heart. (You don't even know him—)
As Jigano tried to point out what Rory had done, the blond merely grimaced. He knew well enough what he had done; that had been beside the point entirely. He hadn't been fishing for compliments, or even reassurance, but perhaps his habit of only saying about half of what passed through his mind had made his point less obvious than he thought. And still, as Jigano's head tilted and one of his ears came sideways in such a vulpine expression, Rory felt a slight flush heat his cheeks. Briefly he looked aside, pulling in a breath of cold air through his teeth. "I meant I was useless offensively, or I would've hurt them," he murmured, before sensing Jigano's eyes searching his face again. He didn't turn to face him fully, but enough, so that their eyes could meet.
Change.
Things were always changing.
It just went faster now.
He thought of everything that had happened in Caido: he thought of the monsters that had practically been a rarity in his childhood, he thought of the hunters going out to remove beasts so crippled by their mutations, and how it had gone from a mercy they engaged in on their free time, to something that was either forgotten, or practically a job.
Rory was silent for a moment longer, his eyes slightly narrowed in thought, until he sighed and turned his face entirely against Jigano's again. "I can't blame you," he said softly, knowing what it was like to treasure something, and to be so afraid it would fall through your hands regardless of what you did. "And of course things would change." He lifted his hand from Jigano's thigh, his lip twitching as his shoulder protested slightly when he raised his arm to try and put his fingers around Jigano's chin, just in case the other felt like looking away. "But things always change. That's just how it is. These past seasons have not been easy for me, but I'm coming to understand that fighting the change is pointless. It's happening, whether I want it to or not."
He let his gaze fall, and his hand with it, index and middle finger extended to lay their tips lightly against Jigano's chest, over his heart. "And sometimes," he went on quietly, thinking of how drastically his world had changed in just a few months, "it changes for the better."
Jigano knew he’d misunderstood something when Rory grimaced. They were too close, too aware of each other, to miss the way the other man blushed, but it could have meant so many things – embarrassment, anger, discomfort – and the sometimes-fox tried to ignore the way his own heartbeat increased in reaction to it. ”The deer would argue differently,” he teased gently, remembering their group hunting trip. ”I rather desperately wish I’d been more useless, myself, when it came to hurting you and Amalia.” The joke hurt, striking far too close to the truth and leaving a chill in his bones at what might have been if his rage-maddened instincts had gone for eyes or throats. It was a blessing, at least in this, to have had the power to help but not to harm… but Rory knew the effects of the monsters in their heads, and if he could forgive the fox, maybe Jigano could start to forgive himself.
He couldn’t know what was going through the blond hunter’s head; the memories he had yet to hear about, the past he wanted to spend weeks and seasons and years learning. But he could at least give his friend the time to think while his pulse fluttered like a hummingbird through his veins, hoping that his cowardice wouldn’t turn the hunter’s quiet strength away from him.
Fearful that it might.
Fox’s ears caught the soft voice and the understanding that struck quiet harmonies within him. Fox’s eyes caught the movement from the edge of his vision of a hand that rose once more to capture his chin. He had never been more willing to be trapped, though, and while pale lashes fluttered closed for a moment as he drank in the warmth of his friend’s touch the intensity in Rory’s voice captured his gaze once more, with a wisdom that tugged sweetly, painfully, on the strings of his own heart. ”Yes,” he agreed simply, a wealth of meaning in that single word. The past few seasons had brought him to Caido, had turned him from a Fae to a human and stolen his magic… but had given him new friends, new purpose, and someone who showed him a glimmer of light through the armor he’d placed around his heart, the darkness he’d chosen as atonement, seeing no other options. To protect others… to protect himself… to honor the memories of the fallen…
But at what cost?
Nor was Rory finished speaking, his words chasing Jigano’s thoughts and turning them away from the chasm he had teetered on the edge of. The touch against his heart – truer than the hunter knew, physical fingers pressing warmth to the Attuned’s chest and deeper still, to something less tangible and far more fragile – called him back to the present-
called him home
-and he found himself smiling, ears relaxing back. It was the most natural thing then to lift his hand from Isuma, to lean closer so he could caress gentle fingers over Rory’s cheek and brush a strand of burnished gold back behind his friend’s ear, though he let his touch linger. ”Yes,” he said again, more softly but with far more warmth and something suspiciously like hope in voice and eyes both.
He didn't even remember seeing Jigano go for Amalia: it was likely something that had happened while he was out in a haze of pain, when he had swum towards the stars (for he remembered those; how could he not?) and laid in their placid glow. But Long Night held no stars. Long Night was an endless darkness, as foreign and alien as it was heavy, oppressive.
So he merely shook his head dismissively, his fingers making a motion like don't worry about it. Whatever thing had slid so effortlessly, so insidiously, into their minds had cared little for their strength of will. No matter how fiercely he had known he was among friends, the blackness had still blotted out his thoughts and drowned them in a torrent of suspicion and rage.
Wishing things had gone differently wouldn't change the fact that they hadn't. They could just work with what they had, and move on from that.
At least, that was how Rory saw it.
”Yes,” Jigano agreed, and Rory wondered what he thought of; what he related to. Who he was, and where he came from. What he liked and what he wanted and what he needed.
Rory knew him only as a fox, knew only his actions, the sincerity of his gaze, the steadfast presence even in the face of danger.
It had been enough, but now that things had changed, he found himself wanting more.
But he had never known how to ask, and in the silence following his words Jigano leaned forward. The breath got stuck in his throat, a silent thing, the rhythm disturbed; his gaze went rapidly from Jigano's eyes to his lips to his fingers, extending towards his face. As they touched his skin he shivered. Released the breath. It felt like a trail of fire left across his cheek, a memory that was equal parts hot and cold. ”Yes,” Jigano said again, and Rory wondered, in a distant way, what they were talking about.
What they were agreeing to.
His gaze left what little he could see of Jigano's wrist, went back to his face instead. Fox eyes, fox ears; Rory's fingers fell to his thigh again.
"Where did you come from?" he found himself asking, voice soft.
Of all the questions that Rory could have asked in that moment, Jigano hadn’t expected the simplest and most basic of them all. But where else should they start, now that they’d found a new beginning? As much as he cherished their connection, they only knew each other in the present. In stolen moments and touches and actions, and a few words shared by a hunter to a fox who couldn’t speak back. It was more than enough to know that he wanted to know more about this man who had touched his heart in spite of his best defenses.
And, more frightening, that he wanted to be known by him.
He flicked his ears uncertainly, wishing he could leave his fingers tangled in his friend’s hair a little longer, but he was afraid his hand would start to tremble. He ran his thumb lightly over the hunter’s cheek in an impulsive caress before he let his hand fall slowly back to Isuma’s soft feathers and his Rory’s hand. A safer contact, and in truth any touch of skin to skin was a balm and a breath of exhilaration he barely recognized.
”I come from a place called Numeria,” he said, smiling a little down at the lightly-snoring gryphlet. ”A northern country of steppes with long winters and short, beautiful springs.” His expression sobered a little as he looked up to meet Rory’s eyes again, feeling a pang of… not homesickness, and not relief, but something that held a bit of both, that the hunter would never see his homeland. ”It was a harsh place, ruled by a distant sovereign. I was born in a town called Torch which was the closest thing to a freetown our country had.” And how did he explain the eponymous torch the town was named after, that burned as hot and constant as the heart of a star? …until the day it hadn’t, anymore, and five of the town’s young people had gone into the caverns beneath the town to find out why. ”My father was a smith, and my mother an Oracle of Life. A… healer and a wisewoman, I suppose she might be called on Caido. I had no siblings. And… my parents died when our town was attacked in retaliation for something I had a hand in.” It hurt to admit even now, but for all that he kept his past held close-
afraid that he would be cast out if they ever knew why
-Rory had been one of the first to see behind the human mask he had shown the world for almost his entire life. The first on Caido to accept him as something – someone - other than human.
The very first person he had been able to accept having that knowledge, without fear or shame.
”Will you tell me about yourself, too?” he asked softly. ”Your family, your favorite things… whatever comes to mind?” he added with a little smile, hoping that even if some memories were painful that others would bring joy.
Again, Jigano's fingers touched his skin: again, Rory shivered, his nerves clinging to the touch. Even when nothing but air touched him it echoed in his memory, fainter and fainter with each passing moment. The entire moment was bizarre: he had ridden into the Long Night dark, had been burned and bitten and watched his friend merely drop to the ground, the life robbed from her body. He had woken up inside the Infirmary, again trapped in the compact, pressing darkness of Long Night.
He knew that Amalia lived. He knew that Edy lived. He knew that he lived, although he was in pain, and yet all he could think of was Jigano.
It felt wrong to crave that touch, to want it all over his skin, in such a moment.
He wanted to lose the pain and the worry and the relief and the regret in it.
He wanted hands on his body, to fire up every nerve and drain every last bit of energy from them, until touch was merely touch again and no longer a wildfire burning just beneath his skin.
He wanted distance, so that each touch did just that: sparked and sparked and sparked, every time.
He put it out of his mind, let it be forced down by the weight of Jigano's hand across his, tempered by the dull ache that was the backdrop of his existence.
When he asked where Jigano came from, he did not know what sort of answer to expect; or if he should expect one at all. And even so.. the man sitting on the edge of his sickbed was—was from another world entirely, or at least another.. another what? Continent was a word that came to mind, but to someone who had never even seen a proper lake, the concept of it was hard to grasp. He knew that there had been more out there, once, beyond the barrier, but he had no sense of it, couldn't fathom it. He was born within his circular wall, and perhaps he did not understand just how lacking his prison was, because he had never tasted truly fresh air, or watched the waves foam upon the ocean's back, or watched plentiful, bountiful meadows, dotted with bright flowers, roll effortlessly from horizon to horizon.
And so Jigano told of a place called Numeria, a northern country that likely neither of them knew exactly where it was anymore. Rory had no concept of planets and dimensions. Rory had.. no real concept of anything.
He tried to picture it, but how could he, when all he knew lay within their dusty grounds? He thought of a place vast enough that a ruler could be distant, wondered what it was like to bow beneath the will of another.
He could not understand it, not in any way that was meaningful.
Yet like the stories he had been told as a child—stories from the Atheneum, stories made up, stories adapted for a child's ears—he soaked it all up, and wondered, wondered about so much that he could never know.
His eyes grew soft and sad as Jigano spoke of his parents: Rory had none anymore either, but to know that you had indirectly caused their deaths... But before he knew where to take it from there, what way to shape his thoughts into words, Jigano went on, voice soft, only it was on a different subject. Rory blinked a couple of times, looking to those fox eyes, and his smile was gentle. "All in due time," he responded. Then, "I'm sorry about your parents."
He looked down for a moment again, at the sleeping gryphon, about their hands nestled together. It was intimate in a way he wasn't used to.
"How did you come here?"
A shiver went through his friend, one that left Jigano feeling oddly vulnerable in spite of being unhurt. He wanted to stretch out beside the hunter, to soak in his warmth through skin, not fur, and rest his cheek against sun-gilded hair. He wanted more than that, and was afraid that he wanted it. Rory’s blue eyes were filled with emotions the fox didn’t know how to read, in spite of how they echoed in his own heart, and he knew that if he gave them a name he wouldn’t be able to go back to what they had been… or even what they were now, in this moment.
He was blind, for all that he knew dozens of tales of lovers and those who had fallen in love, endings both happy and sad, stories of courtly grace, of bawdy comedy, of legendary courtships. He had never opened his heart so fully before, nor so unknowingly. No… that wasn’t true. Part of him had known, deep down, but he had refused to see it, didn’t want to acknowledge or admit it. He had been so afraid of wishing for something that he knew was out of his reach that he had focused all of his energy on treasuring what he already had. And, as a fox, it could never have become anything more than that…
But now Rory had seen him as something other than an animal – as a man, with all his flaws and failings. Or at least… he would see them soon, in the coming hours and days and weeks. All Jigano could do now was to turn away, to run, and save himself a little of the pain that awaited.
Or… he could trust Rory, as he had trusted no one since before a would-be god had fallen, and the friends who had become the bard’s family had held his life upon the edge of a bribe.
Fingers brushed soft feathers, earning a contented, sleepy peep from the gryphlet cuddled trustingly in Rory’s hand, the other man’s skin warm against his own. He could have pulled away then, put distance between them, tried to rebuild the walls that had once protected him. Instead he left his hand where it was, a point of connection, a bridge of trust built half from fear and half from hope, and he began to speak.
He read the empathy in Rory’s blue eyes, and his ears dipped in silent acknowledgment even before the blond spoke. The other man had his own secrets, perhaps, but he had also nearly died on the ground of the Sanctuary beneath an empty perch, and on the cold stones of the Temple floor. And… they would have time after this. Time to talk, to learn one another in new ways, to find how they fit together when one of them wasn’t just a particularly clever fox… time for wounded hearts to find some measure of healing together, perhaps.
He stroked his thumb again as he smiled down at Isuma, a caress that passed over human skin and gryphonish feathers with equal care. ”I was walking between towns, heading south,” always south, away from the memories of blood and iron, ”and between one step and the next I tumbled through a portal between our worlds. I found myself in the woods…” He hesitated, then shrugged a little, smile turning wry. ”Not knowing who had done it, or why, or where I was, I took my foxform and began to explore. I’d been here a little over a week before I met you… I never found out what you were doing out there that day,” he admitted ruefully. He tilted his head, about to ask another personal question, then bit it gently back. His smile softened, ears perking forward once more as he met Rory’s eyes, clear and deep as a mountain tarn that the hunter had never seen… but maybe would, someday. ”Were you hunting?”
It was not that Rory didn't want to speak of himself (well, in a sense he didn't), it was just that the time he had spent getting to know the fox had been verbally one-sided. Rory had told him things, had told him of Wessex, of this and of that, had sung that song about the gryphon—had shown him tidbits of his life. And all that Rory had known of Jigano was silly, empathetic fox.
But now he, too, had words, and a voice, and Rory hungered for them.
Just as he hungered for a town called Torch in a distant land called Numeria, a dream away from here: away from this compact darkness, this abysmal place, where happiness and joy grew sparsely on their hard and dusty fields. Some place without the Long Night. Someplace new, where he hadn't walked every inch of the land already, where the things he could discover were benign, not bizarre, a place .. a place that wasn't here, and now that there were Outlanders in Caido, he felt like a traitor for those old, familiar daydreams.
Jigano's fingers moved across his hand again; gryphon feathers and skin, a tingle through his nerves. Not quite a jolt anymore, just—
Something he had no words for. Something he wasn't ready to have words for. Something he had been able to frame as another bizarre and bemusing thing when it had just been a fox, but was so much more dangerous when a man sat right next to him, white hair, fox ears, a sharp, refined face.
".. and between one step and the next I tumbled through a portal between our worlds ..."
Just like that
between one step and the next
Like someone walking down a hallway, disappearing mid-step, never to come back. Utterly, completely gone, leaving nothing but a mystery behind (ghosts), an empty space in the shape of their body. Rory's hand twisted slightly beneath Jigano's, desperate to feel movement again, some kind of friction, reassurance that he hadn't suddenly disappeared in the same way—
And the words turned to that first day they had met, Rory with his greatcoat and pike, Jigano with his four dainty paws: the forest and the whole cavalcade of gourds. A slight, wry smile curled his lips, and he heard the question embedded in the words. Again, there was the fox, nosing for aspects of Rory, and he had to suppose that while he had always had words, it would make sense for Jigano to be curious now that he could ask things...
"After a fashion," he responded, then falling silent for a second or two as his eyes glittered and he smiled cheekily—for like half a heartbeat, before wincing as it tugged on his burns. Still, that day in the woods was still a fond memory, and what he had done before, or after, didn't matter quite so much. It took him a moment to remember. "I was looking for mushrooms, actually."
And I found a fox.
Again, he moved his hand. "I.. can't imagine what it must've been like, just disappearing like that..." No siblings, parents dead—but surely he hadn't been all alone? He thought again of someone leaving an empty space the shape of their body. Had he had close friends? People who wondered where he had gone, mourned him as dead? "Do you miss those that you were taken from?" he asked, softly, quietly.
Thinking that, yes, it was a stupid question, but he had no better way to phrase it.
|
