AND YOU WERE THERE, and YOU were there....

[conning]

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.

Comments

[conning]

"Think of it like holding fire in your bare palm without protection, spiritually speaking." Evandrin does not sound happy about that. "It- It can wear him away. And it does physical damage. The fact that he's willing helps, but I--"

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.

[withintenfeet]

It's the last thing he wanted to hear, and exactly what he was expecting.

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 -

[conning]

"Yeah. Yeah, okay."

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?"

[withintenfeet]

That he even registers Laerryn's touch, right now, says a lot about how anchoring it's been through the worst moments of his life. There's a glance, a flicker of strained gratitude before he's focused entirely on Evandrin again, even though he should be just as focused on Neal, suffering through all of this just because he wants to help.

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.

[conning]

Evandrin makes a cracked little sound of amusement and rubs his thumb against the nape of Zerxus' neck.

"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?"

[withintenfeet]

"Never." It's a fractured whisper, and he takes a moment to steady his breathing again before looking up at Laerryn, taking in what she's saying just a beat too slowly. Nydas - is busy, or sleeping, is almost certainly fine but it's another thread of anxiety in a maelstrom of restless dread.

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.

[conning]

Here is what Zerxus doesn't see:

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."

[withintenfeet]

Almost always, Loquatius is an effervescent whirlwind of a person. Zerxus has seen him waltz through battles of words and blades and fireballs alike, heard him puncture centuries of tension with a dozen words or less.

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."

[conning]

She blinks, like someone waking up as they start to nod off, and the curse gets the briefest ghost of a smile. Only the people who know her best would even be able to see it, in the way her eyes crinkle so very very briefly.

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.