![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
AND YOU WERE THERE, and YOU were there....
He wakes up in the wrong place. That, he knows. He knows it the same way he knows his cheek is resting against stone, the way the air tastes like night time and high altitudes.
Slowly, he blinks his eyes open, staring at the wall of the alley for several long seconds until he realizes that's what it is. He's in an alley, with cobblestone paving, with architecture that he doesn't quite recognize. Everything aches, everything, from his crown to the bare soles of his feet.
He rolls onto his side, then it's onto all fours, onto one knee, stand. He doesn't walk so much as lose his balance in a forward direction, stumbling into the street in an emerald green suit that would be quite at home in 21st century Manhattan.
Slowly, he blinks his eyes open, staring at the wall of the alley for several long seconds until he realizes that's what it is. He's in an alley, with cobblestone paving, with architecture that he doesn't quite recognize. Everything aches, everything, from his crown to the bare soles of his feet.
He rolls onto his side, then it's onto all fours, onto one knee, stand. He doesn't walk so much as lose his balance in a forward direction, stumbling into the street in an emerald green suit that would be quite at home in 21st century Manhattan.
no subject
"Um. We're headed underground, I'm taking you to a friend, I trust her - "
On the bright side, his flustered stuttering doesn't matter that much. He can feel Neal going limp in his arms, and he knows better than to panic over it. Frankly, this might be better; it means that the poor man can rest, and that Zerxus can - just not think at all, as he dashes through the streets.
He knows every entry to the Meridian Labyrinth by heart. It was one of the first things he learned as First Knight, and it saves them quite a bit of time now.
no subject
She glances over as he comes in, goes back to work, then looks over again with sudden sharp interest.
"Why are you bringing me someone who looks like he needs a healer?"
no subject
There isn't a hint of shame or fear in Zerxus's gaze, but he does look raggedly overwhelmed, in a way he'd hide with almost anyone else.
He also doesn't ask before maneuvers - very delicately, despite the unconscious human in his arms - towards the cot Laerryn uses when she sleeps here. (Which is, he suspects, officially more nights than she doesn't these days.)
no subject
"Who in the Ring knows? And what did the wizards want, and who is this anyway?"
She moves past Zerxus to pull back the blanket and sheets, giving them a quick and hardly surreptitious sniff to make sure they've been recently changed. They have, and she honestly didn't expect anything less, but you never know.
no subject
"His name is Neal. I don't know much for certain, and what I do know is because of - he's connected to someone. Or possessed, maybe." Which should have him fiercely determined, as a paladin, but he sounds achingly uncertain. When he straightens and turns to meet her gaze again, his expression is balanced between desperate hope and crushing desolation.
She hasn't seen him look like that since Evandrin started fading away.
no subject
Hells.
Her mind, busy at the best of times and chaotically busy at the worst, slams to a complete halt as she stares at that expression.
"N... H...."
'No,' cut off; 'how' unspoken.
It doesn't matter.
"We can-- He's alive, he can reach us, so that means... we can reach him. We can... we could-- we will."
She will get him back, for herself and for Zerxus. More than anything, to her own surprise, for Zerxus.
Her eyes blaze as she looks at Neal, unconscious on the cot, mentally shifting her project calendars and considering what research she'll need to start.
"First we need to find out if it's connection or possession or something else entirely."
no subject
He wasn't sure if she'd question his certainty, if she'd insist on hearing Evandrin herself before she believed him. That she doesn't, even for a moment -
His breath comes ragged for a moment, before he swallows hard and nods. His gaze shifts to Neal, too, and he raises a hand to rest it on his arm. "Evandrin sent him here, to Exandria. To us. But he was - " His hand twitches. He doesn't let his grip tighten. "They wiped his mind, Laerryn."
There's a protective growl to the words that he doesn't try to soften.
no subject
"Patia...?" Does she know, is she involved. Either or.
On the cot, Neal draws in a slow, deep breath, and exhales heavily as he settles a little more against the cushion. His eyelids flutter briefly. Laerryn leans closer, looking for traces of some working or tool.
Neal breathes, slow and deep. He shivers and curls onto his side.
"The wizards you fought. What did they want him back for? Did they hint?"
Academics can never resist a fucking hint at what they're working on, trying to entice anyone in earshot to ask about it.
Neal twitches in his sleep and then shivers again.
no subject
"They wanted information - to know how he got here and why. What gave him the power he has." He's looking at Laerryn again, thinking about anything else they might have let slip; he hasn't noticed that his hand is stroking Neal's arm, slow and soothing. Evandrin had had nightmares too, sometimes.
Finally, he shakes his head. "We didn't give them a lot of time."
no subject
She has so many questions, but certain concerns supersede them for at least the next ten seconds.
"Who was involved that you know of?"
Neal, for his part, breathes a little deeper and starts to relax under the repeated gesture.
no subject
But none of that is important. The gentleness is helping, so his hand begins to move; Laerryn is asking a question, so he answers. His lips curl disdainfully around the lieutenant's name in a way that's definitely familiar; and he can name the Dean, but not the other wizard.
His eyes glint a little bit when he says, "Evandrin knocked down both of them."
no subject
She's relieved when Zerxus names the responsible parties, both because his mood seems to shift and because--
"Patia's not involved. That idiot has been jealous of her for years, if there's any way he can get what he wants from him," she jerks her chin at Neal, "without her? He'll try every other option first."
Laerryn's focus comes to rest on the stranger again, and for the first time there's a prick of jealousy that Zerxus got to see Evandrin and she didn't. Or at least, a part of her hisses, whatever is inside this man pretending to be Evandrin.
She steps closer and rests a fingertip against Neal's temple, starts to murmur a spell, and is taken abruptly by surprise as something bright and numbing floods her senses. Laerryn yanks her hand back and shakes it out like she's been badly shocked.
"What... the fuck."
Neal doesn't wake up. He does stir, just enough for Evandrin's pendant to slide out from under Neal's shirt and pool with its chain in the hollow of his throat.
no subject
But in the periphery, he catches that movement.
"What happened? How do you feel?" Even as he asks, he's glancing back, and -
"Laerryn." His voice has gone hoarse again.
no subject
She trails off at the sight of the pendant. There's a strange somersault of emotions in her gut. Anger is the quickest and easiest impulse, fury that someone who isn't Evandrin or Zerxus or at least part of the Ring would dare... But that's just it: no one would dare.
It's very hard to breathe. Like something heavy is sitting on her chest and making her work for each inhalation.
"Fuck," she whispers. Reaches very tentatively toward the necklace. She wants to confirm, verify somehow.
She touches it, and that burning white glow she felt before in the corners of the stranger's mind surges. Blinds her as the stranger--Neal, Zerxus said, didn't he?--stirs.
He opens his eyes, but they aren't a pure bright blue. There's a hazy smokescreen of amethyst in the iris and the white, winks of green.
He--Evandrin, not Neal--takes in a slow breath and smiles brokenly at Laerryn, even as he searches for Zerxus's hand. "Hello, stranger."
Laerryn takes several steps back, the frost of shock rushing through her. That's not a demon, not an illusion.
"Van?"
A pained smile, before he's looking at Zerxus again. "I didn't know if the... the pendant as an anchor would work, but it seems to. There's another problem though, I-"
He grimaces, has to stay silent a moment until the wave of pain passes. Then he goes on with a gasp. "It hurts him when I do this."
no subject
He's ginger at first, careful not to squeeze too hard, but then -
It didn't matter, before. It didn't matter how fiercely and desperately he held on to his husband. That doesn't stop him from trying, even if there's no magic left to surge through the connection.
"I'm here." It's a strained, almost broken murmur, and he feels his stomach drop when Evandrin confirms what's happening.
"How - how badly?"
no subject
He grimaces as a crackle of pain goes through the borrowed body. "That you were- were working so hard to heal him made a difference before too."
Laerryn hasn't said a word, staring silently at Evandrin in the borrowed body, shock processing as she runs through what exactly all of this means.
no subject
Except -
"Laerryn, if you can call Quay and Nydas - they can't heal as much as I do, but - " It's something, and maybe enough to prevent permanent damage.
The responsible thing would be to tell Evandrin to let go of Neal right this moment. That's what he should do as a paladin, as a knight of the people -
no subject
Settling somewhere closer to functional and farther from shock would be ideal. She reaches out gently and touches Zerxus's shoulder with one hand and almost, almost touches... Evandrin's cheek before she falters. About face. She walks to the other end of the room to get whoever in the Ring is awake.
Evandrin keeps talking softly to Zerxus as she walks away.
"I wish- I wish I could-" This time the pained expression is more emotional than physical.
"There's something happening, in another city, I can't tell where, but it's... Someone is amassing power, a lot of magical power, and Zerxus--"
He gasps, and there's blood in his mouth, a thin red patina that he chokes on and then spits to one side. "It's going to... come to Avalir. A cataclysm, a-"
He doesn't get a chance to say the title, wheezing from internal pain instead.
Again it's selfish. It's so, so selfish, but-
Evandrin lifts his free hand to the back of Zerxus's neck. "I want to kiss you again so badly."
He makes a sound like amusement. "What does it say about me that it's all I can focus on?"
no subject
It's not that he isn't listening - his nod is fervent, he's storing all the detail he can - but everything else seems so far away. All he can see is the pain contorting his husband's borrowed body, and squeezing his hand and leaning in close barely helps. There's nothing to protect him from.
Again.
Still, some of that tension dissolves at his husband's touch, enough for a ragged chuckle to clear his lips. "That you're an incurable romantic." It's an old joke, one that became horribly bleak in those last couple of months.
no subject
"Never a hopeless one, though."
Laerryn returns. She stops at the end of the cot, her fingertips resting on its corners. "Nydas didn't answer."
A pause, a long one. "Quay is coming."
The words can best be called wooden, and the feelings behind them can stay as unexamined as possible.
Evandrin smiles at her, blood caught in the wrinkles around a stranger's mouth, and she has a horrible, horrible sense of being crushed by something inside herself, also best left unnamed.
"Zerxus," she murmurs. Her eyes are on Evandrin's borrowed face. "Can I- Can we-"
Evandrin takes pity on her and looks at his husband. "Give me a moment with her, love?"
no subject
But Loquatius is coming, and he distantly registers how wretchedly complicated that is and how Evandrin wouldn't even know and -
As always, his husband's voice brings him back to himself, to his best self; it's barely a heartbeat later that he murmurs, "Of course," and resists temptation just enough to place his kiss on Ev - on Neal's forehead before pushing himself up on unsteady legs.
"I. I'll watch out for Quay." One last squeeze of Evandrin's hand, and a much lighter one to Laerryn's elbow, and he's given them their space.
no subject
Laerryn barely standing until he's out of sight, when she crumples onto her knees at Evandrin's bedside.
Tears on Neal's face that don't belong to him, tears on his hand as Laerryn clutches it against her lips.
An apology, whispered over and over, and Evandrin waiting until she can stop repeating it to say I forgive you.
Not because there's anything to forgive, in his mind. Because she needs to hear it more than he needs to tell her she didn't do anything wrong.
That's what he doesn't see.
When he comes back with Quay, he'll see Laerryn sitting calmly on the cot, stroking Neal's hair absently, less like a mother and more like someone preoccupied by their neighbor's cat. She's not looking at him. He seems asleep.
She glances up when they walk in, her expression as neutral as possible when her eyes are still a little too bright.
"I think he's gone."
no subject
He most have heard something, in Laerryn's voice. There's a grim intensity to him now, a focus sharpened into something uncanny, and those gleaming silver eyes only turn more piercing as they take in his friend's expression.
"What's going on?"
Zerxus explains as much he can, walking Quay up to the room, but he can feel the moment it all really hits: seeing Laerryn there, clinging to composure with her fingernails, tender and brittle and so horribly, beautifully stubborn.
"Well, fuck."
no subject
She stands. "His breathing doesn't sound great."
She could clarify that she means Neal's, but clarifying means further assertion that Evandrin is gone.
A spark of rebellion lands on something in her spirit and starts to burn. Gone, but not out of reach.