one and only

RONIN if there's one thing i'm good at, it's surviving "Or that, yeah. But it's a long time until the sun goes down again and I don't want to be naked and arguing with you all day." Ronin frowned gently, feeling thoroughly useless that he couldn't even move the hand that had clutched at the scruff of his clothes. What had happened to him on his plummet through the cosmos to make him so weak? He stumbled as he was shoved, rubbing at his chest and throat and watching, both wounded and understanding all at once as Remi backed off and glared at him. Drawing a shuddering breath and letting it out again, he wondered if perhaps he should have told Ashe to stay, to explain things before he barged back into the alchemist's life. But then something subtle shifted in his mind, something he had thought all but snuffed out. No - that was his dragon, the one he'd rescued from the Oasis in the middle of Deepfrost - and damn had he missed her. Remi would notice Sugar clinging to one of the inner doorframes to glare out at the intruder after he explained the apparent situation, and at first it seemed as though Ronin was about to become a living, breathing popsicle. But then something seemed to shiver through the reptile, Sugar letting out a soft trill that hadn't escaped her since Ronin had been alive. Chirping a sound of elation and joy, she leapt from the frame to soar outside, wings spread as she crashed into the waiting ex-captain. Laughing, Ronin found himself blinking back tears again as he cradled the dragonling close like a baby, her silvery ribbon of a tail coiling around his forearm, her claws raised and wings tucked in for belly scritches. "I missed you too," Ronin crooned. "Look at you, all grown up and biting ankles."