Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

i am so blind, i am so holy

i know all, but it’s you i don’t know

at the edge, i’m playing the music of heaven

but who the hell knows who i am?

“Would you mind if I sat here?”

Lon’qu has zoned out some time ago, half-paying attention to the heated debate between Stahl and Frederick on the merits of sword against lance on horseback. Heated on Stahl’s side only – Frederick seems to be regarding the younger man the way a grown snowcat would behave around a rowdy kitten. It’s rare to see Stahl more than half-awake, but horseback fighting, among very few other things, has this kind of effect oh him. Now Lon’qu snaps back in, the faded ambient noise around him growing sharper and less homogenous as awareness returns.

Libra is standing next to their table – next to Lon’qu’s bench, to be exact – with a soft, inquiring look on his face, as if it is a genuine question and not a polite formality. There is plenty of space on his bench for Libra to sit, but Lon’qu grunts and slides to the left, freeing up some more room. 

“...Not if you consider how wide your angle of effective reach would be, and don’t even get me started on dual wielding – wait, aren’t you hungry?” Stahl, who only gave Libra a cursory glance before, now actually pauses the conversation when he notices that he has arrived empty-handed. 

“Oh, I am, Stahl,” the man smiles. Like all Ylisseans, he pronounces the name with a st instead of the sht Lon’qu is used to, with a hard l at the end. “Sumia asked me to wait for a bit. I got delayed at the healers’ tent, but it’s nice to see that there is still company even this late into dinner.” Libra half-turns to Lon’qu and his still mostly-full bowl, his face a perfect display of humble appreciation. “Thank you for allowing me to share it with you.”

Lon’qu grunts again in acknowledgement as the conversation across the table resumes.

Lon’qu doesn’t like Libra. He doesn’t not like Libra, either – he just doesn’t know the man well enough to form an opinion, even though they’ve been traveling together for close to two weeks now.

Lon’qu knows that he is a man – a fact made worth noting by a fairly embarrassing incident – and that he is a priest, albeit the kind who wields a weapon as surely as a healing staff. He knows that Libra is entirely too devout and earnest to be in any way deceitful, and with how things have been among the Shepherds, the small group only just starting to heal from the world-shattering catastrophe of the Exalt’s death, Lon’qu frankly hasn’t had the time nor visible reason to take a closer look. 

Libra hasn’t been mingling too much, locked away in some private universe most of the time – doing what needs to be done, of course, following orders and being useful, but always with this almost invisible layer of polite detachment. Lon’qu sees the ripples on the tranquil surface sometimes, wrinkles that warble it into something pained before being forcibly smoothed out. But he and Libra are barely acquainted, and even if they were anything close to friends, Lon’qu isn’t the kind to pry. He notices things, stores them in his memory, and lets go. It’s safer this way. Clean. If Libra is a private man – well, that makes two of them.

Sumia arrives in a whirl of faded silks, decorative feathers, and apologies. Lon’qu clicks his front teeth together – seven times, quietly and in less than a second, unnoticeable to anyone around him.

“Libra, I’m so sorry! We ran out of stew, and Miriel was supposed to make more but she ran off to uh, ‘write something down’, I think, and so I had to improvise a little – here!” Sumia plonks down a bowl in front of Libra, almost making the contents slop over the edge. “Oh dear, I’m so clumsy… Anyway, I’ve picked some mushrooms earlier, and Ricken was really helpful in sorting out the poisonous ones, so I threw this together with some more veggies – I hope you enjoy!!” She has to pause for breath here, anxiously waiting for the verdict.

Sumia is always so full of nervous, jittery energy, the same kind that plagues thoroughbred horses and hounds, Lon’qu has to wonder how she makes it through every day. Lon’qu could be almost tricked into believing that the anxiety he feels in her presence is simply a reflection of her own.

Libra glances at the steaming bowl and then back up at Sumia. His hands, Lon’qu notices, are deliberately relaxed, palms flat against the table. He thanks Sumia, and she rushes off, presumably to feed other stragglers. 

Lon’qu returns his attention to the food and the debate. By now Frederick has already been goaded into a friendly match, a hint of something steely – threatened pride – entering his generally peaceful-looking stature. Lon’qu allows himself a smirk – with entertainment like this, it’s really easy to forget to actually eat. 

A lack of activity to his right catches his attention. Libra is staring at the bowl with a slightly pinched expression on his face. Under the sheen of sunburn his skin has taken on a greenish hue.

Hm.

“A noble's cooking?” Lon’qu offers in what he hopes is easy to read as a joke.

“A deep trauma regarding totally-not-poisonous mushrooms?” Stahl chimes in, leaning around a now quietly fuming Frederick.

Libra glances at them, an expression of distress quickly pulled inwards and covered up with a smile. “No, not at all! No tragic backstory here, I’m afraid. This looks – wonderful,” another look at his bowl, and he turns even greener. “I just – have had an unpleasant experience regarding mushrooms. Recently. The memory is quite fresh, and I would rather not…” Libra catches himself and straightens up, prim and quietly mirthful again. “In fact, I think I’m not hungry. I would rather leave it for someone who might…”

“How fast can you eat?” Lon’qu cuts in. 

Libra looks at him, momentarily startled – Lon’qu has been told, on multiple occasions, that his stare can be quite intense. “Beg your pardon?”

“How fast can you eat?” Lon’qu repeats, nodding towards his own bowl, cold but still mostly full – and completely devoid of mushrooms.

“Oh,” Libra follows his nod, whips his head around to where Sumia has run off. A smile – a genuine, surprised one – blooms on his face when he turns back to Lon’qu. “Pretty fast.”

Wordlessly, Lon’qu swaps their bowls, leaving the spoon in his, then takes out a pair of chopsticks and dives in. It’s not too bad. Lon’qu has eaten far, far worse, and anyway, food is food. “If you’re too slow, I’m not covering for you.”

Libra looks at him with the same unguarded smile, then mutters a quick prayer and starts demolishing his own food.

When Libra is done in less than two minutes, only barely outpaced by Lon’qu, Lon’qu mentally pauses until he can place the recognition. An ability to scarf down food like that without visible discomfort – it doesn’t come from a good life. He would know.

Lon’qu feels a belated prick of curiosity, berates himself for it, leans in anyway.

Chapter Text

my poor ruptured heart is beating way out of rhythm,

i mix up my gestures, sing a prayer instead of a concert

Lon’qu is good at paying attention to details. 

He is quick to learn that Robin’s impatient head bobbing means that a battle is playing out in a sunburst of probabilities inside their head. He knows that Panne disappears every evening to stalk beyond the perimeter of the camp even if she isn’t on guard duty. He knows that Gaius whistles when he feigns nonchalance and plays with coins when he doesn’t. Everyone’s little quirks and habits and ticks, from Vaike’s mouth twisting when he is annoyed, to Tharja’s sidelong glances of piercing scrutiny, to Sully bouncing her leg whenever she has to stay still – Lon’qu notices all of that. 

It’s not idle curiosity that compels him to be observant, but an almost-lifelong habit, honed in situations where noticing something would make the difference between life and death or an injury, or – well.

Lon’qu hasn’t spent so many years championing for Basilio just because he is good with his sword: learning the enemy is half the victory. Now, he can reliably predict his fellow Shepherds’ actions and reactions and way of thinking, knows how to take them down in one-on-one combat – in a detached, theoretical way, as an exercise of an idle mind.

The other half is learning one’s own self. Lon’qu knows his own compulsions, tiny offerings to powers he doesn’t believe in, from teeth-clicking when a woman arrives (because if he does it before he has to speak to her, she won’t come to harm because of him) to firmly squeezing the fur lining on his wrist guards before unsheathing his sword for the first time since waking up. So it’s easy for him to recognize these compulsions in others, and it doesn’t take him long to pick up on Libra’s patterns either, once he actually starts paying attention. Especially when they start becoming closer, a tentative bond forming after that mushroom incident. Especially when Lon’qu discovers Libra’s ticks to be the kind similar to his own.

Tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in (highly impractical, in Lon’qu’s opinion) off-white clothes, Libra stands out even in their ragtag little group. But his presence stretches far beyond physical appearance. He tends to glide where others walk, gaze where others might glare, and if Lon’qu had any religiousness in him left he could even say that Libra fills the very air around him with… holiness is probably the right word. He doesn’t literally glow, no matter what some might say when his blonde waterfall of hair catches the light just so, but there is…something. Lon’qu isn’t surprised to see that people flock to him – sure, in a crisis, some stick closer to Lon’qu too, but where he provides brute protection and a level head, Libra offers – reassurance. Calm. Peace. No wonder people lean towards him.

Lon’qu is curious to discover that Libra leans away.

Not literally, maybe, or at least not forcefully enough to be obvious, but somehow there is always a protective bubble of space around Libra. Lon’qu notices him suppress a shudder when Cordelia passes too close behind him. Pays closer attention and watches it happen again, a twitch of the shoulders like he’s shrugging off an itchy cloak. 

Some people grow restless and find something to occupy their hands with, be it hair or clothes or small items. Libra fidgets too, rubbing the pad of his thumb along the other four fingers, often with a mildly displeased expression on his face, but Lon’qu connects it to his previous observations when Libra almost absent-mindedly pulls a small vial and a soft folded cloth out of a separate pouch and wipes his hands. Once it happens with Lon’qu close by – standing in the corner of the healers’ tent, needing his sprained wrist wrapped but content to wait – and a strong waft of alcohol hits him. Libra does it after healing someone – less often when a person doesn’t need to be touched directly, and always when they do. Sometimes he does it seemingly for no reason other than to ease some invisible discomfort.

Lon’qu takes in Libra’s aversion to touch, observes, accommodates. When the Shepherds are lucky enough to spend the night in a village, with actual tables and benches and sometimes even beds offered by the locals, Lon’qu makes sure to save a spot at the end of a bench for Libra, and to keep his distance once Libra sits down. It’s easy to do the same thing when they camp in the wilderness and benches become logs. It comes as no surprise to him that Libra reacts poorly to being crept up upon, and, as a light-footed man of few words, Lon’qu concedes by making his footsteps fall heavier when approaching Libra. Used to relying on non-verbal cues to call on someone’s attention, Lon’qu compromises by brushing the fur on his cuff against the back of Libra’s gloved hand.

Libra doesn’t ever point it out, but it doesn’t go unnoticed, and his eyes crinkle with a genuine smile every time. Some nights, when they sit together and slowly bond over talking military strategies and meager camp gossip, Libra moves to sit a little bit closer, leaning in to hear the low rumble of Lon’qu’s voice. Lon’qu watches the licks of campfire dance in Libra’s eyes and paint the strands of his hair the colour of spun gold, watches the small, secretive smile curve Libra’s lips, as if they share some massive inside joke, as if there is nowhere in the entire world Libra would rather be, and for once Lon’qu doesn’t analyze it, for once he just lets it be, there, right next to him.

Lon’qu does startle him once. To his credit, it’s entirely by accident.

The chain of events begins with Maribelle’s horse, Dandelion, stepping into an animal hole while on the march. They have enough healing magic to fix whatever got torn or pulled, but Cordelia rattles off a long stream of jargon about long-term consequences and hidden damage, coupled with the patient’s inability to articulate it, and while few (namely, Sumia) have the knowledge to fully understand her, Chrom calls for a layover.

Which is how Lon’qu, not scheduled for cooking or guard duty, ends up wandering off into the woods and subsequently stumbling upon Libra on his private training session.

Libra has shed his cloak and armour and is training only in his black turtleneck. His hair is put up into a high ponytail, swishing around him on every turn. He doesn’t look disheveled or tired, the grass of the small clearing it still mostly untrampled – he hasn’t been here for long.

It only takes Lon’qu a second to take it all in, because in the next second Libra finishes his turn and notices Lon’qu.

“Ah!” he yelps – actually yelps – in surprise, and then something in his countenance changes with a start, the focus slides away from Lon’qu and inwards. “Oww,” he adds with a pained frown.

“I apologize,” Lon’qu ventures, unsure of what is happening. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s perfectly fine, don’t worry – ow.” Libra rests the head of his axe on the ground and bends his back with a grimace, like he’s trying to crack his spine. Whatever he does, it doesn’t seem to help. “Owww.”

“Are you injured?” Lon’qu asks and steps closer, unable to keep concern from creeping into his voice. Their latest run-in with Risen was two days ago, and Lon’qu doesn’t remember anyone getting hurt worse than a couple of scrapes, but has he missed something?

“No, it’s – an old injury of mine. It’s somewhat odd.” Libra’s apologetic smile stretches awkwardly over gritted teeth as he leans onto the axe’s handle to relax his back. “A torn muscle didn’t heal right, and now it sometimes – flicks out of place, if I move too carelessly,” Libra moves his shoulders from side to side and grimaces again, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment.

“Why don’t you heal it? If something like that happens in the middle of a battle, your life could be in danger.”

“It never happens if I warm up first,” Libra glances up at him. “I couldn’t heal it when I first injured it. It’s too late now.”

The quiet seriousness of his tone makes Lon’qu pause. Peer into the chasm. Walk around it. 

“Can I help you? You said it ‘flicks out’ – can it be put back into place?” Pulled and knotted muscles are something Lon’qu is good at dealing with after what feels like a lifetime of championing for Basilio.

“Uh,” Libra straightens up in what seems to be a reflex, shields his back. Relaxes his posture in what, in turn, looks to be a conscious effort. “Yeah – you probably can. It’s between my left shoulder blade and the spine, it’s – easy to find. You just need to kind of – push it, and it will snap back.” Suddenly self-conscious, Libra runs a hand through his hair, snags on the leather band, frowns. “It’s a bit tricky to reach on my own.”

Lon’qu nods, tilts his head to a side. Libra shoots him a grateful smile and turns around. Lon’qu steps closer, not for a moment unaware of the level of trust put in him.

Even despite the turtleneck it’s easy to see that Libra has a well-defined back, a sturdy core of an axe-wielder, tight coils of compact, no-nonsense musculature. Lon’qu suddenly realizes he’s never seen Libra this – undressed, so up close. He smells of clean cotton, warmed in the sun, and of crushed grass blades. Libra shifts his weight and slowly rolls his shoulders, the muscles sliding under the thin black fabric. Lon’qu follows the movement with his eyes and is overwhelmed with the urge to touch, with the monumentality of being allowed to, the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of doing something for the first time.

“I’m – going to touch you now,” he warns and suppresses a wince when his voice rasps, throat suddenly dry.

He actually hears it when Libra swallows, watches the hair move and cling to the fabric when he nods.

Libra runs a lot hotter than Lon’qu imagined – or it could be a combination of warming up for training and the thick, syrupy afternoon sunlight pooling in the spaces between the leaves. Lon’qu places his palms on Libra’s shoulders and slides them down – purely businesslike, of course. His fingers tingle from the friction, and it feels good, but Libra is getting twitchy, so Lon’qu focuses on his task – and raises his eyebrows then his left hand brushes the unmistakable bump of the contorted muscle.

“Found it,” Libra grits out. Lon’qu can’t see his face, but his whole posture is tense. Braced.

“Try to relax,” he tells him, mapping out the area around the bump, following the rise and fall of surrounding muscles – to the edge of the shoulder blade on one side, to the vertebrae on the other.

Lon’qu digs in, noting the suppressed twitch as Libra instinctively arches his back in an attempt to move away. Without thinking, Lon’qu grabs onto Libra’s shoulder with his free hand to keep him in place. Libra’s hair brushes his wrist, obscuring the area, and Libra pulls it impatiently over his shoulder. 

A twist of Lon’qu’s fingers, and Libra released a punched-out moan, a sound Lon’qu could never imagine him to make, and it takes him half a second to remember what he is doing, to consider their position – Libra before him, with his head tilted back and spine arched, Lon’qu still holding him by the shoulder. Lon’qu isn’t the one to blush easily, but this is – a very near brush. 

The muscle is pulled taut, rock-hard, but after some coaxing Lon’qu manages to knead it back into place. Libra makes a small sound and after a tightly wound moment relaxes, taking a deep breath and checking the slide of muscles against the expanded ribcage.

Something catches Lon’qu’s attention, not obscured by hair anymore, and he lets his hands fall away. A scar stretches up from under the collar of the turtleneck, cleaving the hairline at an angle, its narrowing tail disappearing into the hair. Though obviously old, it looks angry, a raised mottled mass of red and raspberry-pink and sickly white, as wide as two fingers. It looks so out of place on Libra that for a second Lon’qu fails to even comprehend what he sees. Before he knows it, before his actual brain kicks in, he’s already raised a hand towards it, in childlike almost-wonder at a strange sight.

Libra throws a look over his shoulder at Lon’qu’s frozen face, whips around in the next moment. His face is stone-cold, and it takes Lon’qu another moment to realize that Libra is furious.

“Leave me alone,” he speaks, and the slightest tremble in his voice abruptly makes Lon’qu think of a nascent earthquake, frothing and churning deep under the soft layer of soil.

Then he thinks of an ancient Chon’sin legend about stone warriors as tall as the sky, protectors of the land whose wrath could shatter mountains and turn entire armies to dust.

“Lon’qu,” Libra’s head is held high, the ponytail swaying behind him again like a wave. He is an echo of that legend, a stone warrior made flesh. He is beautiful, Lon’qu realizes with a start. “Leave me be.”

Lon’qu snaps out of it, only somewhat surprised not to see scorched earth around them. “Forgive me,” he says, offers Libra a short bow, and strides away without another word.

Libra approaches him later that evening, after hours of skittish glances from the periphery, both of them sizing each other up, neither knowing the next step. He looks uneasy. His hair hangs loose.

“Lon’qu, I wish to apologize,” he says with his eyes downcast.

Lon’qu places the emotion on Libra’s face – it’s shame. It wasn't fury that he saw a few hours ago – or not only fury, at least. That confuses him. Why?

“My reaction was out of proportion. I did not mean to be so harsh.”

Libra looks younger somehow, frowning like this, still not meeting Lon’qu’s eyes. It feels off.

“I’m the one who should apologize,” Lon’qu disagrees. “I crossed a clearly established line.”

Libra does look at him then. Their unspoken agreement on touch hangs between them, carefully stitching itself back together after the breach. Libra looks uncomfortable at the mention of it, but pushes through, gracing Lon’qu with a smile from the other side.

“Thank you.”

After that, Libra’s hair is always down. But their first contact – or maybe the unintended intimacy of Lon’qu glimpsing something Libra hadn’t meant for him to – changes the tune of their dynamic, bridges a gap like the first dandelion seed in a plot of fertile soil. Sometimes, Libra presses back against Lon’qu’s cuff in acknowledgement until their knuckles brush. Sometimes, when they lean their heads together to converse, Libra allows their knees to touch.

Lon’qu feels like he’s standing on a precipice, like he did so many times on the cliffs of Chon’sin as a child. The sea churns beneath and ahead of him, as far as the eye can see, vast and unknown.

Chapter Text

it’s hard to believe what happened yesterday

how we drank crimson wine, taking the sacrament

“...And then I told him, I said, ‘But of course, kind sir, if only you could explain to me why you have people flying here as if they’ve sprouted wings!’ But you can imagine, he didn’t have much opportunity to respond, with his face stuck inside a grilled boar’s head like that,” Virion mimes wearing a helmet with tusks and a snout, prompting a huff of laughter from Lon’qu. “A remarkable man, truly remarkable,” he adds with a shake of his head and gets up from his barrell to move the half-full pot of tea closer to the smoldering fire. The deck sighs under his feet like a great slumbering beast as the ship sinks deeper into the hissing waves.

Being on a ship is… not a thrilling experience. Lon’qu tamps down on the queasy sensation, brought on half by seasickness and half by the memories of the last time he was crossing these waters. Around them, the sea breathes noisily, runs icy fingers along the hulls of the many ships, their ghostly shapes swallowed by the darkness, shadows of negative space against the pinheads of the stars.

Lon’qu and Virion are sitting under an awning on the main deck, the main-mast creaking somewhere above their heads. Most of the Plegian sailors are asleep in their hammocks belowdecks, but someone always has to keep watch, and Chrom was happy to volunteer the Shepherds for the task. Not everyone was happy with his decision, but Lon’qu is grateful for the continuing routine, on a long journey with little else to do and nowhere to go. The ship’s captain, a tall, scarred woman, was displeased with the idea of them keeping a fire going all night, every night, but habit and stubbornness won out in the end. They keep the fire contained in a massive iron skillet, keep the deck around it wet, use the wood sparingly, and there’s that.

The first night shift passes without complications. Lon’qu spends it peacefully, mostly listening to Virion tell amusing stories about wherever the flow of his thought carries him. The man has a way of making an army supply list sound fascinating, and Lon’qu doesn’t mind people filling the silence with chatter.

Sully arrives for the second shift, yawning and scratching her scalp, unsteady on the heaving deck, and Virion’s face lights up, betraying more than his usual cordiality. Lon’qu has been told that the two used to have a tense relationship at first, but since Sully has rebuked his courtship and Virion had the good sense to respect it, they have settled into a much more amicable dynamic.

“Who are you paired with for tonight?” Virion asks, offering Sully a mug of hot tea once she more or less ceases her sleepy grumbling and settles on a small barrell.

“Libra,” Sully scrunches up her nose and reaches up to scratch it. “I’ve shared shifts with him before, he’s normally on time. Weird. Maybe he overslept or something.”

“Do not judge a man of the cloth so swiftly, for his duties are much more vast than ours!” Virion raises a finger to the sky.

Lon’qu lets out a short soundless laugh, losing it safely in the rush of the waves. Virion has this manner of speaking that turns everything he says into either a theatrical line or a teachable moment. Or both.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Sully picks up a stick and pokes at the embers, shoving and stirring them until a half-burned log catches fire again. “Can’t do a shift on my own though, Frederick will kick my ass. Even though this is probably the safest we’ve been since, like, forever.”

“I will wake him,” Lon’qu volunteers, already stepping out of the illuminated circle and from under the awning.

“Take your time! I shall gladly keep the wonderful Sully company until your return,” Virion says with a flourish.

Sully snorts, rolling her eyes. “Please don’t take too much time though.”

Chrom was offered one of the bigger ships, with a whole level dedicate almost exclusively to cabins for passengers. Libra’s cabin is closer towards the farther end of the corridor, in the area commandeered by the healers. Lon’qu pauses before the door. The ambient noises of the sea and the creaking of the wood fall away easily, and that’s when Lon’qu discerns something else, coming from inside the cabin. He furrows his brow for the second it takes him to place them – the small, urgent sounds of Libra’s voice. Like he’s struggling with an ache, or -

Lon’qu bites down on the unexpected image, feeling his ears grow warm. Surely Libra wouldn’t be missing a shift to..?

Something louder, a cross between a whine and a mutter, reaches Lon’qu, and he lets out an abrupt sigh of both relief and concern. Nightmares are something he’s more familiar with.

A knock on the door seems to have no effect, and so Lon’qu tries it – it’s unlocked, of course – and steps inside.

The cabin is as small as Lon’qu’s, fitting only a narrow bed and a dresser, with barely enough room for two people to stand without touching each other. Moonlight is seeping through the porthole, falling in a warped circle across Libra’s shape under the blanket. He’s making awkward, aborted motions, like he’s fighting an invisible battle. Lon’qu can just about make out the deep frown on his face.

“Libra,” Lon’qu crosses the space in barely two strides, hesitates whether this is a situation where he should touch. “Libra, wake up!”

Libra comes to with a cut-off gasp, freezes mid-motion. Wide eyes lock onto Lon’qu’s in a terrified stare. A few beats pass, and he exhales, pulling himself up into a sitting position. His damp cheeks with strands of hair plastered to them catch moonlight as he moves.

“Bad dreams?” Lon’qu offers him an opportunity to speak.

Still wordlessly, Libra shifts his legs to the side of the bed. Lon’qu accepts the invitation and sits down, half-turned to Libra.

Libra takes a shuddering breath, then another, worries the edge of the woolen blanket.

“It’s – yes,” Libra winces as he stutters to a halt, then continues. “I dream – of Plegia. Of the desert.”

It’s not hard to glimpse the wound behind the simple word. “Your brothers and sisters?”

Libra shoots him a grateful, miserable glance. For a minute he just breathes, as if preparing for a dive into violent waters.

“It is just so – unbelievably strange, you know,” Libra begins, “to be here, now, alive, when they all are -” his lips twitch in a humourless smile. “Did you know that Vaike has exactly the same laugh as Brother Xekome does – did? Or that – or that the shape of Nowi’s face is the same as Sister Nessa’s…” he brushes stray hairs away from his face, suddenly agitated. “They are here, they are – they are with me, and no one else is left to carry their memory, no one can share that memory with me – when I rinse pots with pebbles or when I watch the birds fly low before a storm – when I am reminded of something my brothers and sisters taught me or told me or had the habit of doing – their ghosts stand before me and – and -” Libra curls in on himself, the blanket gripped in fists, his whole body going rigid, “and no one else sees them. No one else knows them like I did.”

Silence. Outside, the waves throw themselves against the ship’s wooden ribcage. The circle of moonlight crawls towards Libra’s face, throwing sharp shadows on his anguish, the freezing emotion rising up his throat. Lon’qu waits, recognizing that it wasn’t the whole thing – it so rarely is.

“I am alone,” Libra whispers, hugging his knees. “I don’t know how to – I don’t know what to do, I wake up from a dream about – about Brother Fujadt begging for water, and there is – and there is nobody I can tell about it who will understand, who was there too when he was -” Libra’s strained voice finally breaks here, “dying of thirst.”

Something tugs at Lon’qu’s memory, further buoyed by the water, and he pulls on the thread before he can catch himself. A flight into the sea. A baby crying. Fire engulfing a patch of the horizon, hurling great chunks of rock from the cliffs and into water. Cold waves, steel-gray, rising higher and higher until they tower over the boat, until every roll of them feels like a tomb’s doors threatening to slam shut.

Lon’qu suppresses a shiver and snaps back to reality, to the solid presence of Libra’s calf warming the small of his back through the blanket. Makes his mind slide to more recent, safer memories.

He remembers the day Libra joined them, eyes shining in a strange, manic way on the sunburned face. The brittle expression on it as he reported to Chrom for the first time, a transplant from one group into another, the transition happening on the cusp of a bloodbath. Remembers how Libra walked along on wooden legs as they fled the place of Emmeryn’s death – he assumed the same hammer-like grief that was crushing all of them, assumed bone-deep exhaustion of a long march and a grueling fight, but it was different. It was so much more.

“I have – I have been writing letters,” Libra wipes angrily at his eyes with the sleeve of his nightshirt. “To the next of kin. It’s taking me a very long time, but I’m going to finally – I’m going to send them once we arrive in Valm, I can’t put it off any longer. I’ve – never had to do that before, I don’t know if I’m doing it right, and I have no one to ask.” 

He pauses to take a shaky breath, wraps his arms tighter around his knees: his knuckles strain against the skin. “There were twenty-five of them – twenty-five , and fourteen of them had families or distant relatives or someone who cared, and – and it’s all here, in my head,” he jabs himself in the temple, as if he is angry, as if he expects to be doubted, “but if I forget something, if I can’t remember – a sibling’s name, or if they’ve moved, or if I should rather write to a friend and not a relative – there is nobody, nobody who can make sure I do it right. Not a living soul. And the rest of them, the eleven who had, like me, only the order to call their family? What happens to their memory when I die? What – what will happen to them?”

Libra weeps, finally giving in to the buildup of tears, choking on the vice tightening around his throat. He is quiet, swallowing his sobs, letting them shake his form instead. Lon’qu shifts, unsure if he should give Libra privacy, but a hand shoots out and grabs his without warning, cold and damp with sweat. Lon’qu glances up but can’t make out his face: Libra’s let his hair fall forward, the curtain deepening already thick shadows. But he’s clinging with a desperation that has to be painful, and so Lon’qu folds his own fingers over Libra’s in response, in what he hopes is a comforting gesture. Libra cries harder.

Lon’qu sits in silence, focusing on the movement of air, on a heartbeat hammering in their joined hands. There are no words to be said. He recognizes the grief in Libra, the kind that can only be helped by time, that can only be soothed by a friendly presence. And so he stays, and waits, and lets his mind flow over the once-razor sharp edges of his memories, ground smooth and velvety with time and the cautiousness of his touch. Counts his nightmares like so many faded scars, fitting him now like well-worn clothes.

After a minute or maybe ten, Libra slowly unclenches his fingers and retreats. Rubs his face with both hands.

“Forgive me,” his voice is hoarse and still thick with tears, those which failed to make it to the surface. They weigh it down, keep it low and monotone. “I am late for my shift – I will come to take over in a moment. If you could. Give me some time.”

Lon’qu recognizes Libra’s plea for a chance to pull himself together. Libra still looks absolutely miserable, but already straightening up, packing it all away and letting it settle on his shoulders again. The action makes something in Lon’qu shift in response, something as ancient as the moon calling on the tides, as natural as two hands finding one another in the dark.

But Lon’qu never knew how to wield words, so instead he closes the short distance between them, cranes his neck, and places a kiss on Libra’s forehead, in a small hope that Libra will understand anyway.

Libra’s eyes glisten in the dark when Lon’qu leans back, trained on him, unfailingly attentive. Lon’qu notices his shoulders droop just a little, and so he gets up and exits the cabin to let Libra collect his thoughts.

Back on the main deck, Lon’qu has to adjust to the light-hearted tone of Sully and Virion’s banter. Thankfully, they ignore him, too busy parrying each other’s quips and double-bluffing their feints, and so he quietly scoops up some lukewarm tea with his mug, stares at the moving surface for a long moment, drinks.

Libra arrives only a few minutes later, looking awake and proper. His eyes are still puffy, but Sully and Virion either don’t notice in the unreliable orange light, or mercifully don’t mention it. Lon’qu refills his mug and offers it to Libra.

“Thank you,” he says quietly as he accepts it in both hands. Looks up at Lon’qu to make sure he’s been heard. “You helped,” he adds in an even softer voice.

He doesn’t mention the kiss, but Lon’qu didn’t expect him to. He doesn’t know yet what to think of it, either.

“You are welcome.”

Chapter Text

we wished to love everyone and to dance in the squares,

to die in the rapturous moment that comes after ‘amen’

Lon’qu is cautious about who he lets near, and his observational skills usually save him from accidentally letting in someone harmful, even if the person seems anything but.

With Tharja, that’s definitely not the case – she makes no effort to hide her moods, her opinions, her loyalties – or lack thereof. This honesty is something Lon’qu can respect – and he does, but also can’t fathom being interested in taking a closer look. 

Which is why Lon’qu is surprised the first time he sees Libra approach her outside of a battle. Doubly surprised when the two sit together after a messy run-in, talking about something in low voices. Tharja looks – disdainful and self-assured, squinting her eyes at something in the distance even as she speaks. Libra listens to her with a pinched expression, leaning in as if he’s afraid to miss a word.

Lon’qu decides firmly that it’s none of his business. Strange, of course – he wouldn’t be able to imagine a more bizarre friendship even if he tried – but there is a first time for everything.

He vaguely remembers it beginning some time after the Shepherds have made land in Valm, when they got ambushed and Tharja leveled a patch of the forest in a terrifying display of powerful dark magic, crumbling to ash trees and people alike. She was later praised for reacting so quickly and decisively – but Lon’qu remembers the way she did it, without reluctance or restraint. He knows this particular kind of itch: Tharja wasn’t battle ready. She was bloodthirsty.

Another thing he remembers was the wild-eyed look on Libra’s face, the pure revelation of it. So that’s where it probably began.

As time goes by, Libra appears more and more troubled. Lon’qu sees him seeking out Tharja with a lost expression as he turns to her for answers to whatever questions plague him. Watches him come back, looking even more lost, but obsessed, single-minded, losing sleep, hiding his hands. Uncomfortably, it reminds Lon’qu of an addict’s behaviour.

Lon’qu offers his ear, but whatever it is, Libra doesn’t want to talk, and Lon’qu doesn’t push, conflicted – right up until the night before the final day.

It’s not a secret to anyone that tomorrow everything is going to come to a head: the very air feels charged with dark magic, wisps of it seeping through the earth and rising upwards, and the rocky surface of the island seems to vibrate under their feet. The island is the perfect arena, too: abandoned, just wide enough for the two camping armies to see each other’s twinkling pinpricks of bonfires on the horizon. Exactly the distance to keep them guessing.

Lon’qu’s head is humming with pressure.

Everyone is waiting. Chrom and Robin keep talking in hushed voices, arguing about something, and people around them, entranced by the weight of tomorrow looming above their heads, forget to try to listen in. Some sharpen their weapons and perform superstitions for luck, others leaf through their books and meditate to restore their spells. 

Libra storms through the clearing, very nearly clipping a guard with his shoulder. His face is red – and that’s all Lon’qu has the time to notice before he disappears into the trees, where Lon’qu has previously seen a goat trail up to the cliffs.

Tharja materializes in that unassuming way of hers, sits down just at the edge of the circle of light cast by the fire, pulls out a tome.

Lon’qu quickly puts two and two together, sends Tharja a scathing look – she doesn’t meet his eyes, but her lips curl, so she must have noticed – and takes off after Libra.

He finds him at the top. The guards and the lookouts are posted lower, where the trees offer some shelter from the gusts of wind. Here, it tugs and pulls at the sparse greenery, reaching inquisitive fingers into cracks between the stones.

Libra is sitting on the ground with his elbows resting on bent knees. He throws a glance behind him when Lon’qu approaches, but doesn’t say anything.

Lon’qu squats down next to him, impatient and frustrated. “You need to talk about it.”

Libra lowers his head and pulls up his shoulders in response, as if in an attempt to appear smaller. He looks like Lon’qu has just slapped him, and Lon’qu deflates, chastised.

“Look,” he tries again, softer, “whatever it is, you don’t seem to be handling it well. You need to talk to someone about it – it doesn’t have to be me, but whatever Tharja is telling you – it’s not helping,” he pauses for a moment to see if Libra replies. When he doesn’t, Lon’qu continues. “Tomorrow – tomorrow is going to ask everything of us. Please, Libra,” the tone of his voice makes Libra’s head snap up. “I don’t want you to die because you’re too deep in your own mind.”

Libra holds his gaze, smiles ruefully, shakes his head. “I really did choose the worst timing,” he says and looks at Lon’qu again. “Sit with me?”

Lon’qu lowers himself next to him, and they sit quietly for a while, shoulders pressed together against the chill of the breeze.

“I would like to tell you something,” Libra speaks. His gaze is carefully trained ahead of him. “It’s – it might sound unrelated, but it will make sense. It should.”

Something in the determined set of his shoulders alerts Lon’qu. He nods in acknowledgement, noticing Libra’s eyes flicker in his direction for a moment.

Outside of their bubble of silence, the waves thunder as they crash into the cliffs.

“My parents – they weren’t… they weren’t ready to be parents, I think,” Libra begins. Swallows, worries the edges of his black fingerless gloves. “So much so that they – threw me out, when I was still a child.”

The wind feels colder. Lon’qu fights the sudden impulse to stare at him, so instead he watches Libra pluck restlessly at a loose thread in the fabric. His fingertips look dark, as if stained with something, but Lon’qu doesn’t have time to place it.

“Do you remember my scar?” Libra asks suddenly, looking over at him. His eyes shine strangely in the sparse moonlight. When Lon’qu nods, he continues. “The day it happened – I don’t know how old I was, maybe four or five. Maybe six. I don’t have anyone to ask. My father – he took me on horseback across the city – or maybe not even across. I knew so little of the outside world that I wouldn’t know better anyway.”

Libra jerks the thread loose and stares at it morosely for a second, then lets it be carried away by the wind.

“I remember I was hungry – I was always hungry. I sat on the withers – Father was a soldier, and his horse was old and bony, it wasn’t comfortable. He grabbed me by the back of my shirt, dropped me down, and – uh.” Libra pauses again; his frown deepens, the corners of his mouth pulled down by the weight of emotion. “And then he kicked me. I think he intended to push me away from the horse, to get me going, but the, uh, the steel toe of his boot – it came away a little, and the edge cut into my skin. It left a wound on my neck, a jagged cut.”

Lon’qu thinks back to the one time he saw the scar, the grotesque mass of it. Imagines it as a fresh, bleeding wound instead, the torn sides blooming open.

“I picked at it obsessively for weeks, months even. I wouldn’t let it heal. The moment I woke up, my fingers would go to undo what’s managed to crust up overnight. It hurt so much, and I hated myself for it even as I did it, but I couldn’t stop.” Libra rubs his throat in rhythmic motions, visibly restraining his hand from going farther back. “It itched and burned and felt like an evil, living thing eating into my body, and I wanted to tear it out so badly. I felt like it was my father still punishing me for being alive even after they’ve discarded me.”

Libra pauses again, swallows against the hand still on his throat. He looks half-empty, as if the heavy, loaded memories are draining him word by word as they spill from his mouth.

“It nearly killed me, in the end. Winters in Ylisstol can be severe, though uh – obviously not like the ones you must be used to,” Libra shoots Lon’qu an awkward look. “But – yeah – I didn’t have proper clothes to weather the frost, I had no reliable shelter, so the cold kept me awake most nights. I had a lot of time to tear at it and little else to do. So it got – bad. The horrible creature that I could never see but could always feel sat gnawing at the back of my neck and head, giving me fevers so violent that I saw disturbing shadows and couldn’t keep my body from shaking.”

Libra’s voice grows unsteady as he is talking, wobbling over some of the vowels, and Lon’qu is seized with absolute, all-encompassing pity for the child Libra used to be. With him sitting like this, knees pulled up to his chest and shoulders bunched up against the chill, it’s the easiest thing in the world to imagine him younger, and smaller, and hungrier, and utterly alone.

Lon’qu pushes his shoulder tighter into Libra’s, wishing that he could tear through time, and Libra gives him a small, watery smile in gratitude and pushes back.

“I still have no explanation of how I ended up at the doors of the monastery, other than Naga guiding my steps – I certainly have no recollection of it,” he speaks again after some time. “But the monks took me in and tended to me, and offered me a place to stay when I was too scared of rejection to ask for it. Mother Ioh has healed the wound itself, but my skin has suffered too much – the scar stayed.” Libra pauses and rubs his face with both hands. Lets out a steadying sigh. “The reason I’m telling you all of this – I have had a lot of time to think. To search for a reason for why they would – treat their own child like that. I was hungry, and Father was away for a long time, fighting, and Mother – she was always so tired, so – as if she were a shell of a person. Disinterested, always. She would only grow agitated when I cried and then it – wasn’t good. I cried so much, and she would lock me in – in the empty pantry, and I only cried more and uh, threw myself at the door.”

Libra runs a head through his hair, pulls at the roots with a grimace. He’s fidgety, blurring around the edges, burning with a strange, staring-into-abyss kind of energy.

“They – thought I was possessed,” Libra takes the plunge. “They thought something took their child and left a monster in its stead, left – me .”

“You can’t believe this true,” Lon’qu’s breath leaves him in a punch. He knows it’s tender to the touch, knows a raw, unhealing kind of wound when he sees one, but – not Libra, not Libra of all people…

“What else am I to believe?” Libra’s smile is crooked, fused over his teeth. “I try to do good, I try to do right, I ask Naga for guidance and do my best to follow it. But there is – there is, truly, a darkness within me,” his eyes glance over Lon’qu, a glint on a glass shard. “I questioned if my parents were wrong, but I do see it now. And it calls on me, and sometimes – sometimes I can’t think of anything else but to answer.”

“Our thoughts don’t define us,” Lon’qu ventures. Suddenly, he is on unsure ground: the picture feels incomplete. He shifts his feet against the stone, seeking purchase.

Libra flexes his hands, looks down at his palms. Cups something invisible. “But that is the issue. It’s not just – thoughts.”

He opens his palms as if to release that something into the air, and with an ice-hot, piercing feeling Lon’qu recognizes the gesture. Tharja’s invisible shadow falls over them. Libra’s fingertips are blackened with the release of dark magic.

“Tharja has let me try out a couple of things – very small, very – tame – and I’m good at it. At this kind of spells. It scares me how much. It scares me how – comfortable it feels. Comforting, even.”

“It scares you,” Lon’qu points out. “Would you be scared if you were truly beyond salvation?”

“Were you never scared of change?” Libra counters. “Were you never scared of – what you could be? What it could do to the ones you wished to keep from harm?”

Lon’qu almost misses what he says as his head still spins from just how – downright ridiculous it all feels. A demon inside someone like Libra sounds about as appropriate as fire burning underwater.

But then he catches up, and the perspective shifts – and with it, Lon’qu knows what to say.

“I would like to tell you something,” he echoes Libra.

Libra tilts his head, confused, but nods with a tight smile pinning his lips.

This is going to hurt. But maybe, just this once, it’s going to be worth it.

“I had a friend – in Regna Ferox. Her name was Ke’ri,” he watches Libra frown momentarily at the dissonance of the staccato of a Chon’sini name. “I’ve known her almost since birth. When we were both twelve, she was – killed.” 

Lon’qu isn’t a storyteller, can’t dance and weave around painful words the way others might. Ghosts of ancient, enormous trees draped in snow rise around him. A careless dare, a crunch of snow, many wrong pairs of eyes. 

“I tried to save her, but failed – nearly died myself. A patrol found me before I could freeze or bleed to death, whichever would get me first. Word spread – that’s how Basilio discovered me and continued my training.”

He feels himself falling, sinking into the snow. Looks up and half-expects to see a broken branch dangling above his head, but finds only stars.

“I’ve asked myself many times since then if I was cursed. If my actions, my decisions, my sole presence could bring harm to people around me. It was because of me that Ke’ri and I were there on that day – it was because of me that we got caught.”

Before Lon’qu’s eyes, memories flare and die like sparks from a fire, memories from both before and after Ke’ri. Flashes of people: falling, bleeding, burning, drowning, lying down and never getting up again. Him as a common denominator in all of them. His indecisiveness, his weakness, his poor judgement.

A press of Libra’s shoulder into his returns him to the present.

“You can’t possibly think that,” Libra says. His face is drawn, his jaw is set. “You can’t possibly think it was your fault – Lon’qu, you were a child. What happened to your friend – it was awful, and I am so, so sorry. But this terrible thing that was done to you – it’s not your fault. It can’t be.”

Part of Lon’qu wants to cry at the earnestness, the firmness in Libra’s voice, at the way his eyes burn under his knit eyebrows, the intensity of his belief. He wants to cry and accept the relief and just be for a while, in the present, far, far away from Chon’sin and Regna Ferox and the long trail of bodies left in his wake.

But he can’t afford it now, doesn’t have the time or the strength to spare, not when tomorrow is rising from the ocean with brine cascading down its flanks. Instead, Lon’qu picks his guts off the ground, seals them back in his abdomen, feels them settle again. Closes off that part of his mind in a familiar exercise of will.

And then he gives Libra his best disarming smile.

Libra stutters to a halt and looks lost for a second. Lon’qu watches him as he rifles through what he said and sees the exact moment understanding dawns on Libra’s face.

“Oh, you – look what you did!” he laughs helplessly, a disjointed, breathy sound of tension releasing. Then, something more vulnerable, a lighter tread. “Oh Lon’qu, is that – how you see me, too?”

Lon’qu is grateful for the thin moonlight as he feels his face grow warm, quietly and without really meaning it curses Libra for understanding him a bit too well.

“I know that there is still a lot of good that’s waiting for you to bring it into this world.”

Libra looks startled for a beat before he glances away – shyly?

“You think too highly of me, Lon’qu,” he says quietly. He’s been repeating Lon’qu’s name a lot. “I am no saint.”

“But neither are you a monster.”

The reply comes easily, flying off Lon’qu’s lips before he can think. Libra looks at him strangely for a moment, then his eyes flicker down, and then – and then he leans forward to kiss him.

It’s a soft press of lips, a touch of a cold nose, and he is gone again, and the darkness that greets Lon’qu when he opens his eyes is inky and thick – but not enough to conceal Libra’s wide-eyed look.

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately. “I should have asked.”

“Then ask.” Lon’qu replies in the same breath. Anything that will remove this enormous distance between them as quickly as possible.

“Lon’qu,” Libra’s lips fit perfectly around the syllables, their shape a promise. “May I kiss you?”

In a stroke of genius, Lon’qu realizes that he can get back to kissing Libra sooner if he uses it as a response instead of words.

Libra is soft, and warm, and every touch, every point of contact feels like coming home. It’s a balm, and a symphony, and a rest at the end of a long day. It is everything. He is everything.

After what feels like years and years and years, suspended in amber, they part, with cold air rushing in between them. Time resumes and stretches, and every crevice is filled with peace.

“What do you wish for?”

Libra is looking at him in this all-encompassing way he does, like the entire universe narrows down to the connection of their gazes and then expands back within it. A moment passes, worlds hatching and unfurling and crumbling to ash in the span of a breath. Suspended, for a private eternity Lon’qu forgets to speak.

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. Bites his lip. Watches Libra watch the movement. “What about you?”

Libra sighs, shifts his gaze to the island stretching out below them.

“I wish for more time,” he whispers.

Lon’qu considers his answer, amends his own. “Yes.”

Chapter Text

this is how you leave your home, heaven-bound,

this is how you go to war and come back from war

The battle is gruesome. The flow of it rises and falls and rises further still, and Lon’qu flows along, locked in the meditative state of slashing and ducking and parrying. His field of vision expands to the point of near-pain and unfocuses, his limbs grow loose and precise, and his mind rests in that particular rest that comes from becoming concentrated on the pinnacle of a moment and letting it go and forgetting about it immediately in order to welcome the next one.

In that place of rest, a near-forgotten memory reaches Lon’qu, a Chon’si saying: “A battle is a thousand deaths, and a thousand births, and an eye to watch over them all”. He feels the meaning of it like a needle-point scraping along his eyelids as he flies through second after second after second, hearing them burn up into nothingness behind his back but never sparing a breath to look. There is nothing before or ahead, there is only now.  

In one of those now s, Lon’qu’s sword arm grows numb, then his feet, then a hum settles between his temples, a mist stretches before his eyes, and there is no more decorum or calculation or thinking, only survival and a deadly kind of grace as the world stretches and molds around Lon’qu, shoving rock and dry grass and scorched bodies under his unfeeling feet, yanking on the tails of his coat, sneering and swearing in his face.

And then… it is over. The eternity ends. Lon’qu finds himself standing still with a memory of movement still echoing in his joints and the crooked paths of sweat drops. Around him are their soldiers, and Lon’qu almost looks on the face of a fallen enemy on the ground before yanking his gaze away.

A ragged cheer goes up, caught by the salty wind and the hundreds of smoke-burned throats. Awareness unspools slowly, expanding in concentric circles around Lon’qu. He turns his head inch by inch, like a gargoyle coming alive, takes in the world as it is regifted to him.

An enemy mage writhes weakly on the ground, clawing at his slashed throat. His eyes, a startling yellow colour, are going glassy as he wheezes in agony. A dead leafless bush smoulders a few steps away. Soldiers stream around Lon’qu, embracing each other, crying, laughing, looking over wounds. Farther away, he sees a wine-red pinprick of Miriel, surrounded and cheered by fellow mages. The afternoon sky above them is an unblemished, clear blue, and Lon’qu’s memory shimmers with a gigantic shadow falling across the expanse of it.

To his left, the ocean stretches out into infinity, the waves close to the shore shielded from the sun with the floating chainmail of debris and fallen bodies. Lon’qu hasn’t even noticed how he ended up this near to the edge. Before heading back to camp, he quickly wipes his blade and stabs the still-twitching mage in the heart.

The camp is a whirl of activity, excited and tired and grieving. It resembles a living organism in its constant movement, unscathed soldiers bustling around with hastily snatched loot, wounded getting help, followers already burning fires to feed everyone, messengers darting among them like swift forest birds. At least one person attempts to clap Lon’qu on the back.

Lon’qu finds Frederick to check in with him, and that’s how he finds out that Libra hasn’t returned.

“Is he still out in the field? Healing?” Lon’qu asks, the wheels of his mind turning. It wouldn’t be unexpected of Libra to stay back and begin healing the wounded before the rescue parties can be organized from the camp.

“Apparently the last time he was seen was at noon,” Frederick lifts a hand before Cordelia, who’s just arrived and looks eager to report, her arm in a hasty sling. “It was near the eastern shore. Maybe someone else saw him later, but I have no knowledge of that.”

Lon’qu’s mind goes cold and brittle, ringing like glass; his aching knees nearly buckle. Absently, he sees Frederick turn to Cordelia, but their voices reach him as if through murky ocean water. He discerns no words through the thick of it.

It cannot be.

Can it?

No.

If Libra is out there – if nobody knows if he is alright – then he needs help. He might be wounded, or – he might be wounded.

Lon’qu turns and glares in the direction of the battlefield. The tents fall away in his mind’s eye as he maps out the land: the cliffs, the ruins, the burning enemy camp. He judges the distance and the terrain coldly, almost clinically. Libra not coming back from the battle – that’s not something Lon’qu can fix. But to find Libra is a fairly straightforward task, and so he sets to it.

He passes people outside the camp, most of them moving in, some branching out to loot or search for their friends. A woman is crying brokenly, hunched over a body, and Lon’qu steps around to give her space, his fists clenched.

Out in the middle of the field, under the gathering clouds, it is quiet and empty, only the wind snagging on dirtied clothes, worrying the feathers tucked into dented helmets and ribbons tied to broken spears. 

Lon’qu doesn’t go east – instead, he heads straight for the ruins, stubbornly moving his cramping, tired feet. He could reason that it would be harder to keep track of a person among the long-abandoned buildings and weather-smoothed walls, but in reality – he has a hunch. And while this hunch may be wrong… Lon’qu doesn’t think he’ll be able to live with himself if he doesn’t follow it and thus loses Libra.

Soon, the ruins rise around him, the bleached yellow walls breaking up the wind and bleeding sunlight through the holes in them. A village, a temple, a small marketplace – Lon’qu recognizes their former shapes through the distortion of bodies littering the streets, as some apparently have preferred close quarters and ambushes to an open fight in the contact point of earth and sky. Lon’qu steps over a body as he circles the tall walls of the temple. What used to be a sturdy construction has now grown unstable and precarious, weathered away by the elements, and in several places its walls have caved, spilling head-sized stones into the streets.

Lon’qu stops dead, watching the scorch marks and long scratches on the remaining walls. These aren’t old injuries – and it weren’t the elements that have caused them. The battle has toppled the walls. Lon’qu starts walking again, the urgency burning the soles of his feet, casts around him for anything out of place – for anyone who shouldn’t be here, but has possibly been caught in the middle of it…

A sound reaches him, a blow of the wind or maybe – a moan.

Lon’qu knows that voice, will recognize it anywhere. Blood rushes to his head, his fingers tingle, banishing his exhaustion.

“Libra?!”

Libra is half-buried under the debris of a crumbled wall. The bigger, heavier stones, still partially wrapped in burned vines, have only narrowly missed him.

His dusty clothes are stained crimson. Answering flares start dancing in Lon’qu’s vision.

“Lon’... qu..?” Libra forces his eyes open, manages a smile that he must think looks calming, because of course he’s going to comfort, even now, even like this. “You found me.”

“Why haven’t you called for help?” Lon’qu banks the sudden rage – at Libra, at Grima, at the thrice-damned wall – focuses on it as his eyes take in a thin rivulet of crusted blood snaking along Libra’s hairline.

“Being awake is – diffic – ah!” Libra cries out, jerking weakly under Lon’qu’s hands.

Lon’qu zeroes in on where his fingers sink into the torn, darkened fabric on Libra’s thigh. There is too much grime and dust for him to see properly, and his own calloused fingers aren’t much help, but they come away sticky with fresh blood. Lon’qu swears under his breath.

“Vulneraries?” he asks. He can’t see Libra’s supplies bag anywhere.

“Used them all up,” Libra rasps. Coughs. “Staff – broke,” he says, guessing Lon’qu’s next question.

Fuck. Of course he’s spent them all already, the selfless idiot, the -

Focus, Lon’qu. 

Lon’qu peels away the crusty fabric of Libra’s pant leg. It looks like he’s been hit by a falling stone, the wounds caused by crushing and tearing rather than cutting. Messy, with big open surfaces, free to bleed. His thigh is a bloody mess – literally – the area above the knee an uneven canvas of red and purple. It smells wrong . Lon’qu sees the dust coating the torn skin, mixing with blood, and suppresses a gag. Fuck but this looks bad.

Lon’qu doesn’t have anything on him – really should have thought of it before departing on his rescue mission – so he unties his sash and tears it into two long strips. The first one he wraps above the damage as tightly as he can; the second covers the worst of the wounds, not as tight but still firm enough to stay put. Bursts of darker colour already bloom sluggishly through the red fabric – if he’s been bleeding at such a pace, they don’t have much time. Lon’qu glances at Libra’s upturned face, pale and sweaty. He’s shivering under Lon’qu’s hands, his fingers are twitching as if trying to curl into fists – Lon’qu distractedly notices that while they are dark with dirt, there is no frostbite of dark magic on them.

“We have to get you back to camp. Can you walk?”

Without waiting for a reply, Lon’qu hoists Libra up, the sense of urgency whipping him on. Libra tries to stand and has to grab onto Lon’qu with a shout when his leg buckles. He’s making small, pained noises with every exhale. Lon’qu holds him upright and watches his face go even paler, eyes squeezed shut as he yawns in misery from the sudden onslaught.

“Lon’qu, I don’t…” Libra manages before he collapses, the death grip on Lon’qu’s collar growing slack as consciousness sputters and dims in his eyes.

Lon’qu nearly goes down himself under the sudden dead weight. He clings to Libra, willing himself to stand, to beat the panic back, to think.

With Libra unconscious and Lon’qu running on pure desperation, carrying him all the way to camp is out of question. It’s hard enough to lug around a grown man wearing armour when he’s awake and trying to help – a limp body would just drag both of them down. Lon’qu will never get him help before Libra bleeds out.

Lon’qu staggers, hit by the terrible weight of the realization, nearly losing his footing. That’s it. No matter how he juggles the facts, they don’t allow for a solution. They are alone. Lon’qu’s strength is already running on borrowed time. He curses himself: should have thought this through, should have prepared for this, should have taken someone along. But now it’s too late: Libra is bleeding out, and no one is here to help. For a wild moment Lon’qu envies him: were their roles reversed, this is where Libra would pray – where he would have been praying for a while already, actually. Unwavering in his faith, firm in the belief that someone is out there. That someone cares.

Oh, please…

Lon’qu sinks to his knees, cradling Libra to his chest. Before he can catch himself, he lifts his face to the darkening sky. For the first time in years, a prayer leaves his cracked lips.

“Please… if he is in your heart at all… you have to help us. You have to help him.” It’s starting to rain – of course it is – and Lon’qu belatedly notices slipping into half-forgotten Chon’si. Reverted to a child reaching out for someone to come and fix the unfixable. “This can’t be it, it just can’t. If you want something in return – I will do what you want, name your price, any price, help me save him. Please just help me save him...”

Lon’qu’s eyes are closed. He feels Libra’s head roll against his shoulder and under his chin, matted hair tickling his nose, scalp hot and clammy. Lon’qu sticks a finger under Libra’s jaw, feels the flutter of his pulse, like a bird beating against the the bars of its cage. Lon’qu heaves out a rough sob, presses on Libra’s ribcage. Please stay inside…

“Hey, you there! Lon’qu?”

A familiar voice makes his head snap up so fast that his eyes water. Maribelle is riding up to them, already reining Dandelion in – the sound of hoofbeats reaches him now through the rush of grief in his ears.

Maribelle dismounts and crouches down next to them in one fluid motion, already assessing Libra’s state, her face pinched with concern. Grabs a salve and a length of clean linen from her bag, puts a new bandage right on top of Lon’qu’s improvised one with a grimace. Lon’qu tightens his hold, pulls Libra closer to his chest when he jerks: Maribelle is too meticulous to let her standards drop this low unless there really is no time to swap out the bandages properly. For once, Lon’qu hates being right in his judgement.

“This will stop the bleeding, but he needs a potion for blood regeneration. I will ride with him back to camp. Can you make it on your own?” Maribelle stands up, pins Lon’qu down with a scrutinizing glare, then focuses on something over his shoulder. “Isn’t that his axe?”

Shit. Lon’qu forgot all about Wo Gùn.

“You’ll have to take it. Dandy is strong, but that would be too much. Down, boy,” Maribelle nudges the horse to lie down and turns to Lon’qu again. “No more heroics, got it? We can always come find it later. Don’t die over a lump of metal.”

She turns away, muttering something about men’s general boneheadedness, and gestures at the two-person saddle. Together, they drag Libra up and into it – he moans at one point but doesn’t wake up. Lon’qu’s heart clenches.

Dandelion shifts, eager to get up, the added weight making it harder for him to breathe on the ground, and Libra nearly pitches forwards, steadied hurriedly by their hands.

“Change of plan,” Maribelle cuts. “You’ll ride with him. I’ll never hold him upright.” She pauses and whirls around to look at Lon’qu. “You know how to ride, I hope?”

“I know enough.” There is no time to argue, and Lon’qu settles behind Libra with one arm across his chest, the long saddle accommodating them both. 

“Will you be safe?” he asks after Dandelion struggles into a standing position. Maribelle looks so small from the horse’s height, wreathed in carnage. With a chill, Lon’qu remembers that he forgot to click his teeth when she arrived.

Maribelle huffs. “Against what? A handful of half-dead enemies? Scavengers on a deserted island? Insult me like that again.”

She pulls a scabbard and an umbrella from one of the saddlebags, unfolds the umbrella against the drizzle and flicks out a thin, straight blade. Gestures towards the camp with it.

“What are you waiting for? Go!”

Lon’qu finds the too-short stirrups, collects the reins in a numb hand, and kicks Dandelion into a canter. Everything in him screams to spur the horse on, to ride faster, but Dandelion has so take the time to pick his way among dead bodies and broken weaponry, and him breaking a leg or stumbling and sending them to the ground is the very last thing they need right now.

Libra is still out and unresponsive save for an occasional moan punched out of him by the cadence of the ride, head lolling to the rhythm of hooves striking soil, and Lon’qu holds him as tightly as he can and prays in a mindless, desperate stream.

Back in camp, Virion and Vaike receive Libra from Dandelion’s back and carry him off to Lissa, while Stahl barely waits for Lon’qu’s numb feet to hit the ground before mounting and riding off to pick up Maribelle. Someone else – Sumia, possibly – leads Lon’qu to a hastily set up tent, where he promptly passes out as his body gives in to the exhaustion.

Lon’qu retains little of the next few days. After the last recovery missions are complete and the island is deemed secure, funeral pyres spread out across the rocky land, the settling dust buoying back up together with the ashes. Scrap metal is sorted and packed away, to be taken to the ships. 

Lon’qu throws himself into the work until his shoulders grow numb with exertion and his vision swims, and then some more. His body wrangles every last bit of energy into endurance, and that leaves no room to think – for thinking would mean being afraid.

Libra spends those days in the firm, deep embrace of healing magic. His mangled leg has been cleaned and sutured shut, and he got pumped full of regeneration spells, but a body doesn’t just snap back from that kind of damage, doesn’t swing up from the brink of death like it was nothing. All they can do is let him rest.

Lon’qu learns all that once his work is finished and he has nothing to do but hang outside the sprawling healing tents, too afraid to ask directly, as if the too-obvious attention could disturb the fragile equilibrium. Lissa is barely standing under the bulk of work, with eyes red-rimmed from exhaustion, constantly touching her forehead as if to rub away a headache. Lon’qu offers assistance, lugs around pails of water and gathers herbs in the sparse woods. He may not be able to help Libra, but he can help those who are.

Libra wakes up on the last day before they break camp. A guard finds Lon’qu to tell him that he’s been asked for, and Lon’qu’s heart hammers in his ears as he all but runs to the healing tents.

Libra looks… worse than Lon’qu remembers. The wound that was fresh last time Lon’qu saw him has settled into him now, turning his already pale features ghostlike and grey. His chest lifts slowly and drops back, the air expelled from his lungs solely by the weight of his ribs. For a moment, Lon’qu halts, thinking that maybe there was a mistake – Libra can’t possibly be awake, he barely looks alive . But then his eyelids, veins streaking under translucent skin, flutter and lift.

Ground shifts under Lon’qu’s feet and he reels, reminded of the last time Libra’s eyes were open. He tamps down on it, hauls himself into present. Libra wavers for a moment but then steadies himself, latching onto Lon’qu’s gaze.

“Hi,” a word, or maybe a sigh.

“Libra,” Lon’qu releases a sigh of his own, the one he’s been holding throughout these several days.

The world still feels unsteady, and his muscles are taut with tension, shifting his stance as if to flee or fight, but there is no threat, nothing he can take on to fix this.

Libra moves – or attempts to. He is too tired to even grimace, but the skin around his eyes grows tight. Another exhalation, “Sit?”

He’s trying to make space for Lon’qu on his cot, the absolute fool. Lon’qu casts around for something before Libra can try to move again and brings over an empty vulnerary crate, leaning his shoulder on the side of the cot as he sits down.

“Do you need anything?” he asks. “Water? Something for the pain?”

Libra closes his eyes and shakes his head so slowly that Lon’qu almost misses it. “How are you,” he breathes once his eyes are open again.

For a second, Lon’qu can do nothing but stare at him.

“I am not the one who nearly – who got hurt,” he points out.

Libra looks at him patiently, his eyes the only sign of life on the pale marble-like face.

“I r’member… Chon’si. I think,” the words drop from his lips like chips of that marble into an overgrown well, echo-less and muted. “‘Lot of it.”

Which would make one of them – every time Lon’qu’s mind gets close to the memory of that, he scrambles away. “Yes, I was – praying. For help. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Oh,” Libra sighs in surprise. “You… to Naga? I heard.”

It’s not hard for Lon’qu to fill in the gaps of unsaid words. He nods.

Libra closes his eyes again, taking a deep breath. “Naga works... in mysterious ways,” he whispers.

Lon’qu’s mind flashes back to the dirt mixed with blood, to fever-hot skin, to Dandelion’s saddle creaking and staining red.

“As long as those ways keep you from harm,” he says through his teeth, jaws locked against the memory.

Whatever Libra sees in Lon’qu’s face makes his eyes soften. He tries to reach out, struggling against the weight of his own body, so Lon’qu closes the distance between their hands. For several long seconds, Libra just breathes, preparing to speak.

“Dear Lon’qu,” he says, the words crisper than before, important. His fingers fit between Lon’qu’s knuckles, warm and dry. “I’m... alive. I’m going... to be alright.”

‘You better be,’ Lon’qu’s mouth is locked shut, teeth grinding together, so instead he thinks it as hard as he can, feeling Libra’s fingers move in the smallest caress.

Chapter Text

i see foreign skies in my dreams,

but sometimes, i glimpse your threshold, too

Grima is defeated in spring. But Chrom’s, and by extension the Shepherds’ task doesn’t end there. It all feels like the longest epilogue to a dark, twisting tale.

But everything ends, and by the time the year rolls into early winter again, the story is over. The bandits and especially stubborn foes die, surrender, or run, the parades get walked, the allies get assured of each other’s continued support. After what feels like an eternity, Ylisse finally releases the long-held breath, shakes itself awake, and starts remembering what living in peaceful times feels like.

Which is how Lon’qu ends up standing in front of a seated Frederick as the man rifles through records and accounting sheets. He looks not quite as massive out of his metal shell, but no less formidable even as he’s had to trade the knight’s armour for the clothes better suiting the role of the King’s advisor.

“Like I said, even though it was only militia, Chrom insists on pensions. Some of it can already be handed out, which I’m going to do within the week, but the rest will have to be delivered later, possibly in installments,” Frederick looks at Lon’qu over the reading glasses perched low on his nose. “Shall I mark your address as West-Khan’s fortress in Regna Ferox?”

The quill is already hovering over the parchment – it isn’t a real question.

“Oh. No,” Lon’qu responds and watches him hurriedly wipe the end of the quill on the inkpot before a drop can fall down and ruin his work. “I won’t be returning there. Can’t.”

“You cannot, why?” Frederick’s brows are furrowed, his mind no doubt already preparing strategies for whatever threats he must be imagining.

“It’s – a cultural thing. Regna Ferox doesn’t coddle its orphans. Or victims. Or losers,” Lon’qu pauses for a moment, waiting for the words to sink in. “We are made into examples of overcoming defeat – or into cautionary tales and moral lessons.”

Understanding dawns on Frederick’s face. “Basilio lending you to our cause – was that your exile?” he asks cautiously.

“As a defeated champion, yes,” Lon’qu confirms. Realizes something. “Chrom will have to make an effort to stay on top if he wants to be able to visit Regna Ferox for political reasons.”

Frederick frowns, having obviously come to the same conclusion. Looks down on his parchment.

“Will you be staying in Ylisstol, then? Or do you have other plans?”

Lon’qu lets out a sigh. He has no plans, in Ylisstol or otherwise. After a lifetime of having a purpose, a goal, an idea of what comes next, he has nothing. The possibilities are endless, of course, as they always are, but with the grainy quality of sand running through fingers, of autumn leaves cascading from trees.

Frederick stares at him for a few seconds, narrows his eyes in contemplation. Reaches for one of the books to give a cursory glance to some of his other records.

“Have you seen Libra yet?” he asks suddenly, and for a moment, Lon’qu is completely blindsided.

Libra spent the journey east in the relative quiet and solitude on one of the ships designated for transporting the injured, while Lon’qu was stuck on Chrom’s ship, weathering the aftershocks of the passed storm and strategizing for the nearest future. 

All ships traded signals twice every day in bright splashes of colours, reporting on storages of freshwater and the recovery rates. Only those who died, unable to survive the journey and the wounds with the healers spread thin, were mentioned by name, their last legacies passed solemnly along the caravans of ships, and at dawn and at dusk Lon’qu made his way astarboard to listen in as the bunting tosser reported the news. Libra’s name was never mentioned, so he lived, but the state was unclear, slowly driving Lon’qu out of his mind with mulish anxiety.

Chrom was raring to get back to work the moment the ships touched land, their hulls heavy with ashes of the fallen – the island’s rocky mass with the thinnest dusting of soil had not allowed for a burial. But the injured had to be transported back to the city to be properly cared for, and the ashes had to be returned to the families, and so it was decided that Lissa would lead the procession, both as a healer and as a member of the royal family – to bring the regency news of Grima’s defeat and ensure them of Chrom’s well-being.

In the commotion and the bustle of an army disembarking from the ships and separating, Lon’qu only had a few minutes in Libra’s presence – he looked pale but lucid, with his grip white-knuckled on the new healing staff. He was anxious, too – not for himself, but apprehensive of the work lying ahead. Rejoicing in their victory, but tattered and tired. He slumped wordlessly against Lon’qu’s shoulder as they sat together, legs hanging from the back of a wagon, while a guard was hitching horses to it – a brief moment of calm amidst the noise.

Libra asked him if he was going to be alright, as if Lon’qu were the one recovering from a near-fatal wound, and Lon’qu told him as much. Libra shrugged: with Lissa for company and a straight road to Ylisstol, there was nothing to worry about. He was more afraid of what he would find there, how many people would be in need of help and guidance. Lon’qu thought of Libra’s path, stretching out ahead; thought back to his own, rapidly shrinking, and said nothing.

“I will see you again?” Libra asked, head heavy on Lon’qu’s shoulder.

“Of course,” he responded.

And since then, Lon’qu has been busy. Too busy to allow himself to think about Libra, too afraid to open the door that has stayed closed for so long – in case he would find nothing behind it.

But now – he has nothing, doesn’t he? Does it make the stakes lower – or higher?

Frederick quirks his lips for no obvious reason, gets up from his desk, and walks to the other end of the spacious room to rifle through stacks of paper in a chest, effectively dismissing Lon’qu.

“He lives alone at Lady Naga’s monastery. You should pay him a visit.”

Lon’qu takes the rest of the afternoon to deliberate on Frederick’s words, stretching out the illusion of having a choice until it shivers and threatens to rip.

It’s not about wanting or not wanting to see Libra. It’s about the humid Yllistol winter, heavy and dirty-smelling and suffocating. It’s about the people, hurrying by, throwing glances that are somehow both curious and disinterested. It’s about the bread that’s too sweet and the beer that’s too bitter. It’s about Lon’qu’s Ylissean, sharp and rolling with Feroxi r ’s – a well-learned but still foreign language, with another foreign accent on top of it.

It’s about feeling a tentative sense of belonging among the Shepherds, after all the time spent fighting together, and that sense dissolving into dust the moment they were disbanded. About seeing other people secure in their lives, their ideas of self and home and the way of life blissfully unchallenged. About walking their streets and entering their shops and taverns and fairs: not exactly unwelcome, but not awaited either. Useful, perhaps, but unnecessary, superfluous.

Lon’qu swallows the bitterness. The Shepherds’ barracks are empty and quiet when he comes to pick up his bag: people have long since returned to their regular duties. Lon’qu doesn’t pause in the doorway when he leaves.

He wanders the streets, committing them to memory, trying to see what he would like to keep if he never comes to Ylisstol again.

When the air starts turning blue, Lon’qu arrives in the square before the monastery. It’s big, built to house a few hundred monks. All windows are dark.

Lon’qu walks around it, noting the barred gates, the broken shingles, the small overgrown yards clinging to the outer walls. It doesn’t look inhabited – and Lon’qu is almost convinced that Frederick’s been misinformed by the time he sees firelight bleeding through a couple of windows on the ground floor.

The gate in the low wall fencing in another of the small yards is unlocked, and before Lon’qu can stop and overthink it, he crosses the yard, mounts the two steps, and knocks on the door. Flexes his fingers, grabbing tightly onto the cuffs when he hears footsteps coming from the inside.

The door opens – and then there is Libra. Lon’qu catches a glimpse of a shirt and a long woolen skirt before they are covered by a cloak thrown hastily over Libra’s shoulders. He’s pulling his trapped hair from under it when his eyes find Lon’qu’s and he stops in his tracks.

“Oh! Lon’qu -” Libra smiles in surprise, his hand leaving the hair alone and finding the doorjamb instead. “It’s good to see you.”

“It is good to see you too,” Lon’qu agrees, taking him in.

And it’s the truth: the few months of peace have been kind to Libra. The angles of his face look softer, the bags have disappeared from under his eyes. Lon’qu doesn’t see him favouring his once-wounded leg. He is healthy.

He is alright.

Libra bites his lip with a self-conscious smile, eyes twinkling at the awkward silence. Lon’qu nearly closes his eyes against the pulling, singing sensation of longing – for what, he knows not.

“I was just about to make supper,” Libra says, already stepping aside. “Would you like to stay and share it with me?”

He leads Lon’qu to the mess hall. Its windows face east; a half-wall separates the opposite side into a kitchen, with various copper pans hanging from the hooks above the counters and tables. A fireplace opens into the kitchen on one side of the wall and into what looks like a living area on the the other: Lon’qu glimpses bookcases and a couple of chairs, partially obscured by the wide chimney. Three long, heavy-looking tables take up most of the space in the dining area. Further in the southern direction, Lon’qu spots a few stacked chests and an easel, facing the window.

The combination of it all looks… odd. Lon’qu can’t quite name the reason, but for once not understanding something doesn’t feel uncomfortable, and so he lets it go.

They cook together, a simple meal of fried rice and vegetables and eggs – Lon’qu is not in the slightest surprised to learn that Libra keeps chickens. The conversation stays light, sticks to the safe topics: an exceptionally mild onset of winter in Ylisstol, Chrom’s reign and his hard work to rebuild peace, updates on the lives of ex-Shepherds; Lon’qu learns that Maribelle has ended up with Gaius of all people, surprising seemingly everyone including herself (“Imagine that!” Libra laughs, and Lon’qu is transported to the beginning of their friendship, heads bent together to gossip by the fire).

After Libra brings a couple of eggs back from the coop, built outside along the kitchen wall, Lon’qu asks about the chickens, and Libra tells him a bit about his life in the monastery.

“It was starting to get a little quiet here, after I sealed off most of the building,” Libra says, taking the pan off the fire and picking a bowl from the drying rack, another from a cupboard. “Everything is closed, apart from the eastern wing. It can be reopened, of course – I haven’t filled the doorways with mortar or anything, but it would be – a lot. For just me.”

His footsteps on the stone floor echo off the walls and the high ceiling as he walks up to the long table, places one of the bowls in front of Lon’qu, and sits down across from him with his own portion.

“Why don’t you get more people?” The question sounds coarse, too direct, but Lon’qu doesn’t know how else to phrase it. A huge monastery with only one monk to live in it – it doesn’t feel right.

Libra’s gaze slides away for a moment, then returns. “It’s not that simple, we don’t just go out and recruit someone from the street,” he says with a light laugh, sticks a spoon into his bowl. “People come to me sometimes for help, for – advice. But – I don’t know. I guess they don’t feel Naga’s call the way others might.”

Apparently something shows in Lon’qu’s face, because Libra hurries to speak again. “It’s not – I’m doing well. I look after the house of Naga, I sleep in my old cell, I keep the chickens – I help people when I can. I have the time to pray and to read, to paint. I’m alone, yes – I long for companionship sometimes – but I’m rarely lonely.”

Hours pass, unnoticed, as they keep talking. Libra asks Lon’qu about his life, but after Lon’qu not-too-masterfully deflects, Libra takes the hint and drifts back to easier topics again. It’s peaceful. Familiar, even though the place is anything but.

When evening has long since dissolved into drizzling darkness, Libra excuses himself, disappearing for a few minutes. When he comes back, he asks Lon’qu if he would like to spend the night. The bed in a cell across from his own, with a western window opening into the courtyard, it already made. Something in Lon’qu’s chest clenches at the sight. He sleeps better than he has in months.

In the morning, Libra greets him in the mess hall with a mug of milk and a loaf of bread with an almost comically huge slab of butter. And somehow, this is where it begins, the long story of how Lon’qu stays – and not just for the night. Somehow, his reedy, tattered life slots in right alongside Libra’s, without them having to discuss or even really mention it. Somehow, it’s as simple as that.

If anything, the messenger from Frederick that arrives several days later with Lon’qu’s pension, hardly seems to be surprised.

The area Libra has nestled in brings a strange feeling, stuck halfway between cozy and haphazard. The chairs in front of the fireplace are surprisingly soft but seem to come from different sets; their legs are scuffed. The pots and pans are plentiful but mismatched, some of them are dented. The space is dominated by the long dining tables, contrasting sharply with the nook-like living area and the cramped kitchen. The books lining the walls are sorted by title, but some of them strain to open, pushing their neighbours aside, their water-damaged pages wrinkling and sticking together.

When Lon’qu asks, Libra explains how he salvaged most of it all from the damaged sections of the monastery, bringing everything in one place to build himself a small home within the huge building. He chose the eastern wing because that’s where he used to live – and because of the way sunlight filters in in the mornings. It also contains one of the monastery’s two main libraries and has a direct access to a chapel, so to him it really seemed like the obvious choice. And it works, for the most part – he’d remove the tables, too, and replace them with something more appropriate, but the heavy, bulky wood has proven to be too much.

Together, they manage to wrestle the tables out into the courtyard and through the kitchen door into the southern wing. It takes them the better part of the day – it turns out that Libra is still in recovery after all, and putting too much strain on the leg brings out the persistent ache – but by the time evening rolls around, the space is freed up. 

Libra says that all the tools for carpentry have rusted over, so Lon’qu hunts down a new set in the city and builds them a new table. It’s not… a very sophisticated table, and it takes Lon’qu a few tries to get it to stop wobbling, his hands not used to holding a hammer instead of a sword anymore. But the tools fit well into the callouses left by the hilt, and in the end Lon’qu is victorious. He doesn’t, however, quite dare tackle the chairs yet, so Libra disappears into the northern wing and comes back with a couple that only need some nails tightened. 

Lon’qu fixes the chairs. Buffs out the dents in the pots and shines them. Spends three whole days unsticking the pages of the books. It’s a monotonous, uncomplicated job, but the repetitive motions of his hands, the clean smells of wood shavings and vinegar – they are grounding. They pull him back into his body. The welcome muscle aches, the sting from a splinter in his finger – they call him home through the murk, and slowly, Lon’qu answers.

The main basilica is closed off in the northern part of the monastery, but there is a chapel in the north-western corner, at the end of the twin rows of cells. Libra leads the service there at the end of every week, and people know to look for him in the chapel on the mornings of other days when they need someone to listen. Sometimes, there is a knock on the door when they are in the middle of lunch, or cleaning up after dinner. Sometimes, Lon’qu wakes up from his ever-light sleep, startled into consciousness by someone seeking Libra out in the middle of the night. People are respectful of Libra’s private time, and the night visits always seem to be truly emergencies – a newborn’s sickness, an elderly’s death, a lost, desperate soul seeking purchase on earth. Libra doesn’t complain, but he always looks exhausted the day after, gripped by heartache, trying not to stand too much when his leg acts up. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen often.

A small graveyard hugs one side of the chapel, sheltered between it and the outer wall, and that’s where Libra always goes alone. Lon’qu is invited to it once and is faced with rows of gravestones, some of them ancient, the names on them licked off by the cat tongue of time. A big gravestone is allocated its own area to a side – Lon’qu doesn’t need to count to know there are twenty-five names carved into the grey stone. Libra stands next to him quietly with his head bowed, introducing him to the only family he’s ever known. Lon’qu takes his hand, smiles at him when Libra squeezes back. Seeks out Mother Ioh’s name with his eyes, mouths his silent gratitude: thank you, thank you for saving him .

Lon’qu isn’t surprised at all when restlessness comes. Frost hits, turning Ylisstol’s streets ringing and glassy. The antsy feeling seems to rise from deep in his bones, irritated by the crackling fire, enveloped in humid monastery air. Lon’qu thinks back to his championing delegations in Regna Ferox, to foraging expeditions, to the endless march with the Shepherds.

When the restlessness ends up keeping him awake an entire night, Lon’qu comes to a decision. Early the next morning, he goes to a market and purchases, among other things, a short bow and a quiverful of arrows.

It’s still dark when he gets back home, but Libra is already awake, puttering around and making breakfast. Lon’qu tells him of his plan, puts some bread and a filled waterskin into a travel bag, and leaves again.

The forest outside of Ylisstol has been stripped bare of game during the war, as people were trying not to starve, but life has been returning, even in the dead of winter. Lon’qu spends all day traversing the hills, knee-deep in snow, huffing great clouds of air from the welcome exhaustion; the silence is deafening in a way only a silence in the winter woods can be.

Lon’qu comes back long after dark, tired and cold and barely feeling his face, with a small pouchful of salted and wrapped rabbit meat. The exhaustion seeps into his bones, quiets the caged feeling with a heavy blanket of snow.

So that becomes the new routine. When he’s not hunting, he trains, hacking an old straw dummy into pieces with his sword, runs various errands, shops for food at the weekly markets, discovering a sudden penchant for haggling, and fixes small things around the place. A few days a week, Lon’qu disappears into the woods, for several hours or longer, sets rabbit snares and shoots puffy partridges. Sometimes, he comes home empty-handed. Sometimes, he brings a rabbit, already skinned by a small fire, or a bird to pluck. After building up a small storage of dried meat, hidden in a half-buried barrel in the courtyard to keep it cool and safe from the city cats, he is careful never to take too much, never using killing as a reason to go.

There are times when Libra comes out to meet him in the forest in the afternoon, carrying an woodsman’s axe and towing a sled Lon’qu’s built, and they return home with firewood to dry. And then there are times when Lon’qu wanders so far away he arrives home later than intended, and on nights like those he finds Libra in one of the chairs in front of the murmuring fire, curled up in the most uncomfortable-looking positions and fast asleep. Something always unwinds in Lon’qu at the sight, a tender and fragile feeling that is bigger than just love.

Because – of course he loves Libra. He came to terms with it long ago, back on the battlefield, clutching Libra’s bleeding body and praying the way he hasn’t prayed since childhood.

Every day, he loves him. Every day, his soul is warmed in Libra’s light.

...One night, they kiss. 

It slips out on the tail of a shared laughing fit – the kind that lasts so long and is stoked by so many half-formed, near-hysterical attempts to stop that by the time it winds down people have already forgotten how it began.

“I could kiss you now,” Lon’qu manages when he is finally on the way down from the laughter high. 

He barely feels any alarm at the words – weighing heavily, spoken lightly. He is so rarely unguarded with what he says, but Libra brings it out in him.

Libra is wiping his tear-streaked cheeks when he hears it. The goofy grin softens into something gentler, a waterfall relaxing into a lake.

“You could , you know,” he replies.

Libra’s lips are as soft and warm as Lon’qu remembers. But this time, instead of an end, a lingering ray of light in the face of oncoming darkness, it feels like a beginning.

Later that night, Libra turns around at the door of his cell to bid Lon’qu goodnight, like he always does. This time, he pauses. Deliberates. Asks Lon’qu if he would like to come in. 

In the sanctum of Libra’s embrace, in the intensity of press and slide and secret, breathless pleas, Lon’qu unlocks the part of his heart he’s long thought buried and lost. After the endlessness of winter, it blooms within him.

In the morning, Libra is soft and pliant – and frowning sleepily at the ache in his thigh after sharing a narrow bed. Lon’qu frets briefly, searches his face for hidden meanings, for regret or disappointment, and then Libra carefully lowers his leg across Lon’qu’s and asks him, already dozing off again, if he would be up to building them a bigger bed.

Lon’qu dismantles two old but still sturdy bed frames, gets a few longer planks from a carpenter in the city, and by the end of the day the new bed is assembled in Libra’s cell, effectively taking up most of the space, save for a spot covered by a small mat where Libra kneels down for his prayers. 

Libra watches Lon’qu from the doorway as he finishes stitching three featherbeds into one, and Lon’qu can’t name the feeling hiding in Libra’s smile, but he knows it. He knows it.

Their routine, or indeed their dynamic as a whole, don’t change much – they’ve been dancing this dance for so long that its conclusion, the blinding collision of stars, feels like the only possible outcome, the only natural transition. Two rivers, flowing around each other and brushing their banks, their beds finally uniting with the glorious inevitability of time. Lon’qu flows gladly along, and for a very long time, it seems to him that there is no wrong in the world, that nothing can ever be wrong again. Libra dances through their living space as if he’s forgotten how to walk – he must be feeling the same way.

Two become three one morning when Lon’qu goes to the market and comes back with a kitten tucked away in his coat. Libra takes a look at the dirty shock of black and ginger fur poking out from Lon’qu’s collar and wordlessly raises his eyebrows in question.

“She was cold and alone,” Lon’qu says by the way of explanation. 

Libra smiles, nods, and walks off to the kitchen, coming back with a small bowl of water and some shredded meat left from the night before. The kitten gobbles it up in a matter of what feels like seconds and immediately falls asleep right on the stone floor. Lon’qu picks her up, tucks her into his shirt, and goes about his day.

“What should we call her?” he asks later the same day.

The kitten is awake again and full of pure chaotic energy. She wiggles her way out of his clothes, leaps to the floor, and gets to exploring the place.

“You brought her here, it’s your choice. You could name her something in Chon’si, if you wish?” Libra suggests.

Lon’qu mulls it over for a painfully long time, watching the kitten literally scale a wall with the kind of determination unique to tiny felines, and finally settles on ‘Sunch’i’ – ‘daredevil’ . Libra’s accent is atrocious when he tries to pronounce it, ‘soon-chee’, which makes Lon’qu laugh, which in turn makes Libra scrunch up his nose in mock-offense and laugh as well. Sunch’i yells loudly from the ceiling beams, affronted that she’s been abandoned in such a predicament.

The year lumbers towards spring, like a white bear waking from slumber. Snow still blankets the woods, and Lon’qu is grateful for its lingering cold, but it’s already crusting, cracking under his boots. In the city, where it’s warmer, streets run with mush. The air is piercingly humid and fresh, a wistful promise of renewal. Of something more. 

One day, Libra expresses a tentative hope for children, for a chance to pay forward the kindness once shown to him. He says it the way he does when he wants to seem casual and knows it’s not working. 

Lon’qu pauses scrubbing a plate for the briefest of moments, resumes almost seamlessly.

“I am rather surprised you haven’t adopted at least a dozen urchins by now,” he replies with his eyebrows raised. He is treading lightly, attentive to the motionless water surface.

Something shifts in Libra’s expression, a minute ripple confirming Lon’qu’s instincts.

“The monastery’s financial situation is not as, uh, secure, as it used to be,” Libra shakes out an emptied sack of flour, looks in to check, hiding his face for a few seconds. “During the war, while we were away, the regency redistributed the funds to boost the military – understandably so. After that, uh,” he painstakingly folds the sack in half, in half again, smoothes out the resulting square, “other things required attention – some still do. Rebuilding people’s homes, securing the borders, recovering the crops. Various guilds demanding their pay, coming to collect on the promises made when the regency was in no position to bargain.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Lon’qu watches Libra align and realign the edges of the folded sack on a clean spot of the kitchen table. The flour sits in a mixing bowl, forgotten.

“Which means there is no funding,” Libra finally concludes. “For me alone – for us, even – this isn’t a problem. People that come here to worship or to seek my help – I never ask for anything, but they bring gifts. Donations. Together with our pensions, it's more than enough.” He walks over to the other sack sitting in the corner, places the folded one on top of it. Comes back and runs the tips of his fingers through the small hill of flour. “But it wouldn’t be enough to repair the monastery – wouldn’t be enough to feed a bigger number of people.”

Even with Lon’qu, Libra still sometimes retreats instinctively, brushes things off like they aren’t important. Leans away with his mind if not with his body. Lon’qu doesn’t hold it against him and has long since learned to see the signs, to recognize the shield covering something tender and bruised.

For a minute they are silent. Libra takes a pot of warm water off the fire and pours some of it into the bowl. Lon’qu finishes doing the dishes and takes the pail with suds outside, into the icy drizzle. Libra is still at the table when he returns, poking the mixture listlessly with a spoon.

“Why don’t you ask for your funding back?”

Libra’s shoulders hitch and he throws him a startled glance. Lon’qu winces in apology. With an absent-minded frown, Libra reaches out to brush stray droplets hitching a ride on Lon’qu’s coat and hair. 

“Because it’s not that easy,” he picks up the bowl again and starts stirring so fast that droplets of batter fly out of the bowl and land on the table. “Because – because it’s just me – I mean, obviously, you live here too, but I am the only member of the order, and because there are much more important things than restoring this place. We’d need masons, and carpenters, and – I don’t even know. I can’t busy such people with this when there are much more urgent projects to undertake.”

Libra places the bowl on the table, leans on the wood with both hands, watching the bubbles pop in the batter. Lon’qu steps up to the table and puts the pail in its place underneath it.

“I can’t ask for something like that,” Libra says so quietly that Lon’qu has to strain to hear him. “For just me – it’s not worth it.”

Lon’qu considers his words. Shakes his head. “You’re wrong.”

Libra turns to him. He looks surprised, and affronted, and lost. “What do you mean?”

Lon'qu leans on the table too, facing Libra. “You’re looking at it wrong,” he repeats. “Because it’s not ‘for just you’ – you’d be helping children. You’d be offering a safe place to stay to those who have nothing. You talked about the money being spent on fixing what war has ruined – but there are now children without parents, more so than before. Are they less important than crops or guilds?”

Libra stares at him with a wrinkle settling between his eyebrows. Several emotions whirl through his face, too quickly to name, but a few seconds later the internal battle comes to a conclusion, and the eyebrows go up.

“Oh,” Libra breathes quietly. “ Oh. ”

For a few days, they leave the topic alone. Libra is contemplative, quieter than usual. A few times Lon’qu sees him disappear down the corridors with a heavy ring of keys in his hand. He doesn’t bring it up, not even when Libra spends every evening sitting in front of the fire and staring into the flames for hours on end, or poring over several leather-bound tomes that Lon’qu recognizes to be some sort of accounting books.

About a week later, Libra invites him along. Together, they walk through both stories of the entire monastery, check its kitchens, cellars, dungeons, attics. Libra points out various points of damage: a lightning strike that caused a small fire in the attic of the western wing, black mould engulfing the ceiling of the living quarters in the north, an outer wall crumbling just enough to let the elements into the library in the south. A small greenhouse, trampled; an empty treasury with its doors blown off the hinges, the contents scavenged. A few times Lon’qu takes several steps before realizing Libra isn’t following, finding him with his eyes trained on something Lon’qu can’t see. The ghosts whisper around them.

“So… what do you think?” Libra asks once they are back in the eastern wing, in the familiar comfort of their living room.

The jittery anxiety that followed him throughout their tour seems to have eased off somewhat, now that the wreckage is not rising up around them anymore, but he still looks tense, rubbing the pads of his fingers together in a constant motion.

Lon’qu takes a few seconds to think.

“It’s a lot,” he says. “But it’s doable.”

Something uncoils in Libra’s stance. “Really?”

“Yes. Not all at once, of course – maybe we could start with this wing? If we get it back into shape, it would give us space for, what, thirty people? That is already not insignificant.”

Libra stares off into the distance, mouths ‘thirty people’ with a look of cautious wonder on his face. Meets Lon’qu’s eyes again, light dancing in his own.

“No. That’s not insignificant at all.”

Libra spends the next several days preparing a speech for the local magistrate. He shouldn’t have to do it, of course – shouldn’t have to ask for the money that by all rights belongs to the monastery in the first place – but Lon’qu understands why he does it. Soon, Libra deems himself ready, and the morning after that they go in.

A few people are already in the waiting room when they arrive. Some of them recognize Libra and walk over, to greet him or ask for a blessing. Libra obliges, talking to them quietly. While he is busy, Lon’qu steps soundlessly aside and looks around the room. What probably used to be a formidable place now appears to be poorly kept. The high ceilings are dusted with cobwebs and blackened with pipe smoke, the benches for the public are dilapidated from humidity and creak every time someone moves. The few hanging tapestries are discoloured, bleached from the sunlight weaving its way in through the dirty windows.

After Libra’s gentle refusal of people’s offers to let him go first, the two settle in to wait as well. Libra is brimming with nervous energy, his fingers restless, even reaching for the back of his neck a few times. Lon’qu takes his hand and doesn’t let go until Libra takes a deep breath and squeezes back, grounded.

The magistrate is an elderly man named Gioran, with parchment folds of pale skin framing his mouth downturned in a permanent expression of distaste. He’s leaning forward in his chair, drumming his fingers on the desk. To his left, behind a separate and much smaller desk, sits a scrawny young woman with short dirty-blonde hair. Her eyes widen momentarily when they walk in – in recognition? – but then she lowers her head back to the stacks of paper surrounding her.

After introductions, Libra begins talking, and ten seconds in Lon’qu already knows that the magistrate is going to deny the request. His eyes narrow at the first mention of the monastery; when Libra points out the state of disrepair the building has fallen into, he leans back in his chair and all but yawns.

Lon’qu knows a lost cause when he sees one, so he casts casual glances around the room. It looks about as unkempt as the waiting area, with stacks of neglected paperwork collecting dust in corners and small termite hills of wax engulfing the candle holders.

He catches the scribe staring at him, but she quickly averts her eyes again. Hm.

Libra gets to the end of his prepared speech, and Gioran predictably dismisses it, claiming insufficient funds. Libra suggests indebtedness of the monastery until funds become available, and Gioran points out that the construction teams are too busy to deal with even paid work, let alone ‘charity cases’. For every proposal Libra puts forth, Gioran has a rebuttal prepared, as if he’s already had this conversation before, and more than once. He can’t wait to be rid of them.

Something irks Lon’qu about this – apart from the obvious, of course – with the struggle to pin it down similar to trying to locate an ant up a pantleg, and so he steps back mentally, taking in Gioran in his dusty, uncared-for environment. His balding head, his cold, disinterested eyes, his ring-adorned fingers, his coat…

Wait.

The cut of Gioran’s coat is familiar to Lon’qu – so painfully familiar that it’s both a surprise and no surprise at all that it hasn’t jumped out to him. It’s a Chon’sini overcoat worn by middle to upper nobility – and exclusively outdoors, of course. The patterns, the miniscule changes in the design are new to Lon’qu, but it’s unmistakably something made in what until very recently was Valm’s province. Considering the political landscape and the distance and the quality of the coat, it can be nothing but contraband.

...A very expensive contraband.

An intuitive feeling condenses into suspicion, solidifies into certainty.

“...And don’t even worry, I know very well who you are,” Gioran sneers, thoroughly displeased by Libra’s persistency. He’s leaning back still, fingers steepled on top of his stomach, under the alarmed eyes of the scribe. “I know you were part of His Majesty’s militia during the war. But I assure you, there is no point in complaining to him: no money means no money. And friends or no, he will see reason: some things are just more important.”

The crestfallen look on Libra’s face and the self-satisfied expression on Gioran’s make Lon’qu’s blood burn, entirely bypassing boiling. His hands itch for a sword, but he just smiles instead. Right now, there is a much better weapon to use.

“Do you think he will be just as understanding,” he begins, feeling Libra’s eyes on him, “when he learns about you stealing the money?”

Shock blanches Gioran’s face for a moment, but he quickly fills it in with rage.

“How dare you,” he spits. “I am an honest man. Just because you don’t get your way doesn’t mean someone else is playing dirty.”

“You are right about what you said before, that Chrom can’t just pull money out of thin air for his friends,” Lon’qu completely ignores Gioran’s words and relishes with quiet glee the look on his face at the mention of the King by his first name. “What he can do, however, is order an investigation. To make sure that the hard-won funds are spent on getting his people clothed and fed, and the government buildings looked after,” he pauses for a second. “And not on illegally imported goods adorning your private residence.”

Gioran’s mouth hangs open. He tries to recover, sputtering indignant nonsense, but Lon’qu already knows he’s won.

“I will give you two days to sort through this mess,” he gestures briefly at the landscape of paperwork, “and organize the funds for the monastery. A messenger should suffice – please don’t come in person.”

“And you won’t report me to His Majesty?” Gioran asks suspiciously. Pleadingly.

“I will. Don’t worry.”

Gioran’s entire face twists in disgust. “Then why should I do it? If you are telling on me either way.”

Lon’qu leans forward, enjoying the way the man jerks away from him, even with the massive desk between them. “Forgive me for bringing up our friendship with the King again, but wouldn’t you prefer me to also tell him how remorseful and compliant you were?”

Gioran slumps in his chair, making listless chewing motions. Finally, he nods.

There is the slightest spring to Libra’s step as they walk back home, and he’s only barely managing not to beam. Lon’qu’s heart aches with fondness.

“I would never have realized that the magistrate was a dishonest man,” Libra muses. “How did you know?”

Lon’qu explains, and Libra’s face turns solemn. He moves to ask something else, but Lon’qu weaves in, distracts him, reminds him of what they’ve just achieved and what it means. This is Libra’s day. Everything else can wait.

Once they are home, safely behind closed doors, Libra lets out a laugh of relief, standing in their living room with his arms spread. He spins around to face Lon’qu, answers to his smile with a giddy grin.

“We did it, huh?” Libra is already walking over to him, pulled by invisible strings, following along gladly.

Lon’qu catches him in his arms, holds him tight for a moment. For Libra – to see Libra this happy – going against one greedy man is nothing. He’ll do it a thousand times more. He’ll do anything.

“We did it,” Lon’qu confirms, splaying his fingers on Libra’s shoulder blades. “It’s happening.”

Libra kisses him then like he is drowning and Lon’qu is his only hope for air. The hands on the back of his head are still unbelievably gentle, holding Lon’qu like he is something truly precious.

The messenger arrives on the morning of the second day – and Lon’qu is surprised to see that it’s the scribe, with an armoured guard in tow.

“His Reverence – is he here? Oh, I mean – good morning, sir,” she stumbles over her words, immediately turning bright red.

“...Right. I assume you are here on the magistrate’s business,” Lon’qu not-really-asks with an eyebrow raised.

The guard shifts his weight and gives a grunt of acknowledgement. The scribe exhales forcibly through her nose with her eyes closed, composing herself.

“Yes, he is – honouring the agreement, ” was that an eyeroll? “May we?”

“Of course. Do come in,” Lon’qu moves aside to let them both enter.

Libra has heard them and walks out of the kitchen into the common area, untying his apron. He’s been preparing and mixing chicken feed for almost an hour now – Lon’qu steps up to him and discreetly picks a corn kernel from the folds of his shirt.

“Father Libra – Your Reverence – uh,” the scribe flounders again, apparently having not figured out how to address him. “...Your Holiness..?”

Lon’qu notices the guard wince in embarrassment.

“‘Father’ is fine,” Libra saves her, taking off the apron and folding it over a chair. “Can we offer you anything? Something hot to drink? Mornings are still quite cool.”

“Oh no, no,” she shakes her head. “I came here to give you the papers from Magistrate Gioran, and the uh, the first installment – please,” she gestures for the guard to come forward, accepts a full pouch from him, and hands it out to Libra, together with a sealed scroll. “Regardless of – reasons – there really isn’t enough money at the moment to immediately bring you back up to the level of funding the monastery used to have. But this will be enough to make a down payment to the workers.”

“Thank you,” Libra accepts the scroll and the pouch, immediately hands the latter over to Lon’qu. It’s heavy with coins. “I’m sorry – your name was..?”

“Deera, my lord. Sir. Father,” she stands at attention, or tries to, at least. “I – wanted to apologize, if you’ll allow me.”

Libra has already made to break the seal, but now he pauses, lowering his hands and focusing on Deera, the invisible but ever-present priest robe embracing his shoulders. “Whatever for?”

Deera cringes, shuffles her feet. Just a few minutes ago she reminded him of Sumia, but now the resemblance is gone. She is sharper, somehow. Pointier.

“I – knew that Gioran was stealing,” she says. “I mean, I didn’t know know, but it’s not difficult to figure out where the money goes when we can’t whitewash the building for the fourth month in a row but Gioran arrives in a new carriage. I’m sorry – I should have done something. I was going to, I really was, I was looking into how – but I needed to be sure that I wouldn’t expose myself, and if he threw me out I’d be homeless too and…”

“I do not blame you,” Libra’s words flow into her frantic stream. “You had to protect yourself.”

“I was going to come find you and tell you about him after your meeting,” Deera sighs, turns to Lon’qu. “Because I recognized you, sir – you were with His Majesty, like Gioran has said – I think I’ve seen you at one of the parades, so that’s how I knew. And I thought, you’ve staked everything you had, over and over, to do the right thing. And this, now, was another of those right things, and I knew I had to help you – or I’d never forgive myself,” she smiles self-consciously and shuffles her feet. “But then you went and figured it out yourself.”

“He will do no more harm. As far as I am concerned, there is nothing to forgive,” Libra finally starts to unroll the scroll and pauses again. “Wait. You mentioned – ‘ the workers’?”

“Oh! Right,” Deera cups her fist in the other hand, remembering it too. “Gioran miraculously found a team that could be spared… They can be sent over to look at the damage tomorrow afternoon, if you wish.”

“Oh,” Libra huffs out, in a mix of surprise and anticipation. He is too proper to gloat, but Lon’qu is glad to do it for both of them. “Yes – tomorrow would be good.”

The next afternoon, as promised, a woman arrives, bringing her assistant. She introduces herself as Ingreda and gets straight down to business, asking Libra dozens of questions about the building as he and Lon’qu show them around. Ingreda has a commanding, sure-footed presence about her, without being oppressive, with keen, professional eyes mapping out the damage and noticing things that they have missed before. She reminds Lon’qu of Flavia, and he misses her suddenly and ferociously.

Ingreda’s assistant, a thin young man named Sso, is taking notes for her as they go. Sometimes she sends him up onto better vantage points to have a closer look at this or that, when the structure seems too brittle for her frame, and Sso scales the walls with the agility of a lizard.

Together, they make an efficient team, and their circuit is completed in just about two hours. After some muttered calculations, Ingreda gives them a quota for the eastern wing, with a projection and a time estimation for the entire monastery. Lon’qu and Libra share a look: they’ve counted the coins last night. It’s enough – barely so, but it’s enough. And more will come. They can begin.

The construction work starts around the equinox. Ingreda’s team is made of two dozens men and women, and they converse among each other in a language Lon’qu fails to place until Libra points out an Ylissean dialect.

They work dawn to dusk, six days a week, supervised by a harried-looking Sunch’i and occasionally cajoled by a worried Libra to take a break and make sure they drink enough water. When the weather is good, they work on patching up the outer walls and the holes in the roof. When spring storms hit, they retreat inside and replace half-rotten doors and rusted locks.

Two months later, the eastern wing is done. The team leaves, and Lon’qu and Libra spent three whole days sweeping and washing the floors, checking the furniture, and oiling the door hinges.

And then – it’s done.

And once it’s done, they hit an unexpected obstacle: the doors are open, but nobody comes to knock. Ylisstol’s urchins have grown wary and skittish during the war, resilient against changes but also very perceptive and most affected by them, the first species to react to pragmatic, selfish cruelty and indifference. After the initial disorientation of reality not adhering to his dream, Libra eventually arrives at acceptance, once again settling into the serene calm of his faith.

“It’s going to happen when the time is right,” he tells Lon’qu without prompting, and the words have a faint echo of an argument playing out in his head. “We are ready – they have to be ready, too.”

And it does happen – when they are browsing at a market, neat piles of artichokes and radishes and young golden potatoes overflowing the stalls like treasure in a dragon’s lair. Lon’qu waits patiently while Libra picks out some leeks, conversing with the farmer. A hint of wind brings a whiff of strawberries, and Lon’qu turns without thinking towards the fresh smell and closes his eyes. Strawberries sound extremely appealing.

Suddenly, a noise of commotion and brief struggle breaks through, voices rising above the busy din. Lon’qu’s eyes snap open, he throws a look over his shoulder to confirm that Libra has heard it too, and strides off towards the small crowd already gathering nearby.

“ What do you think you are doing?” The strawberry seller snarls, her hand tight around a girl’s bony wrist. 

The child, maybe a nine-year-old, is dressed in rags, her copper hair hanging in a tattered curtain around her face. With her lips pursed, she looks at her bare feet and says nothing, only trying stubbornly to tug her arm out of the woman’s grip. Lon’qu steps closer, the crowd parting easily before his considerable height, and sees a berry’s sweet-smelling flesh smeared on the girl’s hand, squeezed out between her clenched fingers.

“I see you lurking here all the time, do you think I’m blind? Or an idiot?” The woman continues, shaking the girl’s arm so hard that her whole frame rattles. “Answer me, before I call for a guard!”

The whole scene barely lasts several seconds, just enough for Lon’qu to push to the forefront with Libra nearly stepping on his heels.

“What is this?” Lon’qu demands with carefully measured out aggression in his voice.

Libra weaves from behind Lon’qu’s back, taking in the scene.

“Caught a little thief here,” the strawberry seller says in a long-suffering voice. She is reining herself in, recognizing Lon’qu’s authority and welcoming it. “Thinking she can just take what she wants, this one.”

“I am very sorry for your trouble. We will be happy to pay for the strawberries, and take her off your hands,” Libra speaks up, stepping closer to them.

 “Really now? And why is that?” The woman narrows her eyes. “Sure doesn’t look like your daughter or nothing, not dressed like that.”

“She is… a ward of ours,” Libra says, and Lon’qu can’t see his face from this angle, but his ears are turning pink. “Please, let us reimburse you for the damage, and we won’t bother you anymore.”

The woman still looks distrustful, but then seems to realize she doesn’t actually care that much. “As you wish. Just as long as I don’t catch her here again.”

Libra gives Lon’qu a look, carefully takes the girl by her free hand, and leads her away. Stunned or maybe resigned, she follows without a struggle. Lon’qu hastily pays the woman – definitely way more than the girl actually managed to steal – and hurries after them.

By the time he catches up, Libra has found a quiet spot between two stalls and now crouches before the girl, who is regarding him with disdainful suspicion.

“What is your name?” Libra asks, looking up at her.

“Why do you wanna know,” the girl grumbles. Suddenly, she seems to remember the ruined strawberry in her fist, and shakes out her hand with distaste. The mangled pink mass drops into the dirt.

“My name is Libra, and this is Lon’qu,” Libra says, recognizing that it wasn’t a real question. “Do you know Lady Naga’s monastery? We live there.”

That gets the girl’s attention. “What? Nobody lives there,” she scoffs, “too cold. The ceilings too high. Too many holes, hard to stay safe. You bought it or something? You rich?”

“No, I – I’m a priest. And Lon’qu lives there with me. We came back from war.”

“You don’t look like a priest,” the girl says with a grimace. “You don’t dress like one.”

Libra looks down at his linen pants and shirt, suddenly self-conscious. “Oh, well, I don’t wear the robes when I go into the city – anyway, it’s not that important. Do you live with someone? With your parents?”

The girl stares sullenly. Shakes her head.

“Um. Would you like to come with us?”

The frown deepens. “Come with you where ?”

“Uh – to the monastery?” Libra smiles sheepishly. “We have beds, and food, and you can stay however long you wish, and -”

“Oh yeah?” The girl interrupts, wiping her nose with a dirty hand. “And what do you want from me for all that?”

“What do we wa– oh, ” Libra stutters to a halt, casts a panicked look at Lon’qu as he realizes her meaning. “Oh, oh gods, no, I promise – I promise , we don’t want anything in return. You just – you just won’t have to go hungry again. You won’t have to steal.”

The girl scrutinizes him for several endlessly long seconds. Libra shifts in his crouch, his leg no doubt giving him trouble for staying in this position, but doesn’t stand up.

“You’re weird,” The girl finally decides, prompting a startled laugh from Lon’qu. “You’re trying too hard. But – yeah, alright. I’ll have a look.” She glances at Lon’qu and back at Libra. “Could we get strawberries first?”

“If we get your name,” Libra offers.

The girl shrugs and rolls her eyes. “Hasith.”

And that is how the new chapter begins. Hasith alternates between lurking in the cooler corners of the wing and trying to take up as much space as possible, puffing out her chest and talking loudly at the dinner table. Libra is endlessly patient, taking to the nurturing role with incredible ease. Both of them take a step back, letting Hasith explore the house at her own pace, and slowly, very slowly, she learns to relax. She lets Lon’qu cut her hair and sometimes offers to help out with cooking. Libra accidentally finds her stash of pieces of vegetables and bread, swiped while they weren’t looking. He leaves it where he found it.

Hasith spends a lot of time in the city, and Libra makes sure to give her a couple of copper coins and some bread, and in return makes her promise not to steal if she gets hungry. He doesn’t make her promise to come back, but she always does.

It’s obvious that Hasith wasn’t expecting respect, or security, or care, but they offer all of it patiently and steadily, and it doesn’t go unnoticed. Starved for affection and rest, she latches onto them in a change that seems to happen overnight, after the last of her distrust has melted away under the readily offered kindness.

Hasith tells her friends in the city, who tell theirs. The word spreads, about two well-meaning and apparently harmless lunatics offering food and shelter to whoever needs it. Small fists knock on their door, usually in the evenings, and if it’s time for dinner Libra just wordlessly gets more bowls and plates while Lon’qu goes to open the door.

Some children, too jaded by the hand they’ve been dealt, don’t stay. They wolf down the offered food, wrap themselves in old habits Lon’qu has repurposed as smaller clothes, and disappear into the night. Some of them even steal – small things, like spoons or stray coins, "accidentally" left on benches and counters.. But others linger, emboldened by Hasith’s example, who graciously takes on the duty of showing the ropes to the curious newcomers. Sometimes, they leave anyway. But sometimes, they come back again, stay longer, eat slower.

Libra mesmerizes them, both the smaller children, for whom the gritty reality hasn’t completely eclipsed the magic of fairy tales yet, and those who are old enough to remember Emmeryn. Even the most wary are quick to shed their suspicion around Libra, and Lon’qu can’t blame them. 

But they grow attached to Lon’qu, too, insist on being carried around the house, pull him into elaborate games of play-pretend, and try to braid his hair because Libra is still too antsy to allow such intimate touch. Lon’qu is surprised by how earnestly he is trusted, how insistently they demand to be loved. Surprised further still by how easily it comes to him, too.

Slowly, a core forms. Hasith with her unexpectedly bossy streak who also won’t go to bed until she’s given Sunch’i a kiss goodnight; Mairo, a younger boy with dark skin and darker hair, gap-toothed and always covered in scrapes, bounding around with inexhaustible energy; Pei, pale and moody and fiercely protective of her twin sister Mavrikia, who spends hours picking flowers growing in the cracks between the cobblestones just to gift them to Lon’qu and Libra; Roffi, a starved boy who’s arrived so sick that Lon’qu feared for his life and Libra spent two days and three nights healing him, but who now follows Libra around like a puppy, happy to fetch things for him and hanging onto his every word. More arrive, on their own or in pairs, for a brief rest or hoping, despite themselves, for a chance at a home.

Their house changes, answering to the new needs. Lon’qu and Libra lug in couches and repair chairs, roll out a huge carpet that used to be in the main basilica, remove the chests to make space for an area to play indoors, transform a corner into benches for crafting. They even end up dragging one of the long tables back in, and it’s full almost every night. 

Every day, they have something to do. With Lon’qu’s help, the children dig up a vegetable patch in the mostly unused courtyard, and Libra teaches them how to care for the apple trees that the monks have planted for cider and explains how they’ll turn the apples into pies and compote. Libra teaches them to pray, too, talks about the principles and commandments of Naga’s followers. Some of the children are curious, and they join Libra on his morning prayers and help him out at the chapel; others aren’t, and Libra never begrudges them not hearing the call, never treats a child differently because of faith or lack thereof.

Lon’qu teaches them self-defense, and how to mend clothes, and the fastest way to peel potatoes. Libra teaches them literacy, and singing, and how to turn those potatoes into stew. Troublemakers turn to Libra to patch up a scrape and to Lon’qu for tales from his time of championing in Regna Ferox. Soft-hearted ones seek advice on meditation and patience from Lon’qu, on empathy and strength from Libra. They start calling Lon’qu “dada” and Libra “father” or “mother”, and Libra takes both in stride, while Lon’qu is always caught by surprise.

Every time Lon’qu thinks his heart can’t possibly fit in any more, and every time it expands anyway. By the time summer ends, he struggles to imagine any other kind of life – and finds that he doesn’t want to.

Libra turns out to be very good at telling bedtime stories. Lon’qu hasn’t heard most of them before, doesn’t know if Libra invents them or pulls them from what older monks might have told him when he was a child. He weaves tales about wise dragons and humble saints, brave urchins and fierce taguels, carefree wanderers and careless princes. There is magic in his stories, lots of it: a mother’s heart breaking a curse put on a child, a hound speaking in a human tongue to an elven princess, a half-incorporeal voidlike dragon engulfing the sky and getting defeated by determination and luck and the power of strong bonds.

Libra names some of the recurring characters after the children, makes Mavrikia and Pei into wyvern riders and Roffi into a mage, lets them speak for the heroes and improvises from there, hardly even having to think.

All of his stories end well. And through all of them, invariably, runs a whispered wish: Be strong. Be wise. Be brave. Above all else, be kind.

Once, Kisanto, a boy already so deeply scarred by a merciless life and yet always, always smiling, asks Lon’qu for a story as well, and Lon’qu flounders miserably, rummaging through his mind and coming up short. Kisanto presses on, “But Chon’sin is such a proud, old land! Surely it must be full of legends to tell!”, and Lon’qu tries, he really does, but is suddenly hit with how meager his supply of memories is, how painfully starved.

Libra looks over from where he is showing Mavrikia and Pei a book on pegasi with gold-embossed letters and intricate woodcuts, sees the lost, alarmed expression on Lon’qu’s face, and comes to the rescue. Kisanto is quickly appeased with a story about a king who could turn into a stork and once forgot how to turn back, and Lon’qu gets time to recuperate.

“Do you miss home?” Libra asks quietly a couple of hours later, once all the kids are tucked in their beds and the two of them settle together under the covers as well.

Lon’qu mulls it over, tries to understand the confusing cipher murmuring inside of him. Libra moves closer and lays his head on Lon’qu’s chest, breaking eye contact. Waits patiently.

“I don’t know,” Lon’qu answers eventually. Absentmindedly, he raises a hand and starts stroking Libra’s back, which prompts a contented rumble. “How could I miss something I barely even remember?”

There is too much darkness there, too much bloody, visceral fog of the violent amputation of a child from everything he’s ever known. The fog is too dense to see beyond it, only offering accidental snatches, details that are gone before they can be properly witnessed, suppressed by a mind too apprehensive of what might be lurking behind a seemingly innocent memory. The fog is too vast to try crossing to maybe see what can still be salvaged on the other side. This is the only way he’s ever known how to survive, stuck in the inbetween space where he remembers and doesn’t remember at the same time.

Libra has tried several times before to ask Lon’qu about his childhood, and he knows that he’s probably hurting Libra with what must seem like mistrust. But he can’t. He just can’t. He’s been alone in it for too long, and he doesn’t know how to ask for help, not in this.

Libra shifts under his hand, and Lon’qu, already feeling the waves of guilt closing over him, belatedly realizes he has stilled it.

Libra moves until he’s on his front, propping himself up on his elbows. Looks Lon’qu in the eyes, frowns with a whispered ‘oh, my love’ and shifts his weight so he can reach out with one hand and brush something from Lon’qu’s temple – he hasn’t noticed a tear roll down. Lon’qu sighs, giving up.

Libra gives him a contemplative gaze, lowers the hand to massage Lon’qu’s upper arm.

“Would you accept help in this, if offered?”

After a glimpsed moment of thick tendrils of fog, Lon’qu gives him a nod. Libra nods back and settles down against him once more, snuggling in closer and letting out a sigh. Something sits heavy and bitter in Lon’qu’s throat, threatening to keep him awake, but he forces himself to focus on Libra’s closeness, on the easy trust of his touch, and soon enough the comfort of Libra’s slowed breathing lulls him to sleep as well. 

A week passes, and Lon’qu thinks the topic forgotten right up until Libra comes home from his end-of-the-week service, bringing someone with him.

“Lon’qu?” he calls out, prompting him to look up from where he sits at the long table, showing Mairo and Roffi how to sew leather. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

The man is short, with dark hair and tan skin, like – like Lon’qu’s. The slant of his eyes, the shape of his face – he is Chon’sini. The realization makes Lon’qu stop short, his spine going rigid.

“Lon’qu, this is Ro'mi,” Libra introduces the man as he gives Lon’qu a short bow. “Ro'mi doesn’t come to the chapel, but a friend of his does, and so – I thought you two could talk, if you are not busy.”

Lon’qu shoots Libra a grateful look for the clear way out, considers it briefly. Even though the fog seems to tug on his ankles from one look at Ro'mi – Libra brought him here, to Lon’qu. Which means it is safe.

“Of course,” he nods. “I have time to spare.”

Children are getting rowdy, abandoning needlework in favour of roughhousing on the carpet, so Lon’qu invites Ro'mi outside, into the courtyard, while Libra stays to watch over the playfight. The air still smells of wet, ruptured soil from the vegetable patch. Suddenly, Lon’qu feels very brittle. The tips of his fingers ache from handling a thick needle.

“Would it be presumptuous to guess that you left Chon’sin during the Valmese Invasion?” Ro'mi speaks in Chon’si, nearly causing Lon’qu to start.

When asked about it in the past, Lon’qu would bristle and grow stone-cold, but what he sees in Ro'mi’s eyes is – a shared kind of understanding. He trips over it, losing the rhythm, and lowers the hackles.

“I did,” he responds, haltingly. “I was – eight years old.”

The simple words feel like rusted hooks as Lon’qu forces them out of his lungs, having stayed there for too long, grown into the tissue. He half-expects to bleed. He tastes ash and sea salt.

Ro'mi gives him time to tide it over.

“I don’t know if you are aware,” he starts again. His spoken Chon’si is fast and fluid; Lon’qu almost can’t keep up, “but we have a small community here, in Ylisstol. Both refugee families and their descendants. We make the effort to keep up traditions, to teach our children the language and the history of our homeland. It’s important to remember where you come from.”

Lon’qu swallows; the brittle feeling intensifies. He is made startlingly, painfully aware of other people’s lives and fates, of hundreds and thousands of shimmering threads spreading out from war-torn Chon’sin like paths of the stars, some tearing and falling into the sea, some bundling up and entangling and settling in great nests, to protect each other and to nurture what was kept safe. Some ending up alone, in the cold fortresses and long snowy nights, unaware of any other way to be, unaware of a ‘we’.

“We meet weekly, and it is tonight,” Ro'mi’s voice reaches him at his bird’s eye view. When Lon’qu looks at him, the man gives him an understanding smirk. “Don’t overthink it – come. I’ll tell you where to find us.”

And that’s how Lon’qu ends up surrounded with more Chon’sini than he’s seen since his flight from the continent put together. Romi has told him that one of the bigger families – a matriarch Nayaur’u and her husband Yorda, their children and children’s spouses, and a gaggle of grandchildren, some already old enough to be married themselves – form the core of the community. Their houses are built in a square, and the inhabitants spill out into the well-like yard in the middle, joined by numerous friends. They bring spicy, tart food and pour warm wine made from rice. Lanterns are strung between the windows, criss-crossing the sky, the lowest-hanging ones fluttering in the air when children weave their way in and out of the doors in their play.

Lon’qu hugs the wall, terrified out of his mind, feeling completely and utterly out of place. Rapid Chon’si bubbles around him as people laugh and call out to each other and fuss over the tables with easy, comfortable familiarity.

Lon’qu swallows the lump in his throat. Part of him desperately wants to leave; another part wants anything but.

“You came!” Ro’mi appears in front of him, drinks in hand. He offers one of the cups to Lon’qu. “Would you like some wine?”

Lon’qu accepts the cup, stares mutely at the surface. Waits for the smell to call on a memory, but nothing arrives, and he realizes there is nothing to arrive. “I’ve – never had it before,” he confesses.

“Oh. Well, there is also tea – and warm water, if you prefer.”

Lon’qu doesn’t know if Ro’mi has missed the clue or if he recognizes Lon’qu’s momentary grief, but he’s grateful for the lightness of his tone nonetheless. He gulps down the wine. It’s sweet and earthy, the vapours of it warming Lon’qu’s nose from the inside.

“Li’ayri – that’s her,” Ro’mi gestures towards a plump woman across the yard, “set up a few rice fields further south, near the coast. Ylisseans go wild for the rice wine, even when it’s not brought from Chon’sin. Li’ayri can’t visit too often because her family is always so busy with work, but when she does, we get a treat,” he salutes Li’ayri even though she doesn’t notice him, talking to someone else. “So you are lucky tonight.” he says with a smile.

“And you are..?” Lon’qu trails off, but Ro’mi cocks his head, not understanding. “Are you a member of Nayaur’u’s family?”

“Oh! I am married to her eldest granddaughter, Siwi. We’re expecting our second. I should introduce you,” Ro’mi strains up on his tiptoes, trying to spot his wife in the crowd. His smile turns excited, fond.

Anxiety spikes in Lon’qu, only slightly dulled by the warm wine, but Ro’mi tugs him along, and Lon’qu has no choice but to follow. 

He is introduced to two dozen adults and whatever children they can fish out of their games. He is offered numerous dishes to taste and experiences an absolutely surreal moment when it turns out that he still holds his chopsticks exactly the way everyone else does. He is asked about his life in Ylisstol and is cooed over when he tells them about Libra and the monastery and the orphanage, stumbling over his verbs and almost freezing every time he reaches for a word in Chon’si and comes up short. They can’t not notice, of course, but they are graceful about it. One of the children, a chubby four-year-old, takes a liking to Lon’qu and insists upon hanging off of his arm as often as humanly possible and telling him excitedly about his upcoming birthday. Lon’qu obliges, to everyone’s enjoyment. It’s exhilarating. It’s so unbelievably strange.

Lon'qu battles his anxiety every time a woman talks to him, every time a woman brushes past him. There are so many of them, confined in such a small yard, but they command the space with the easy-going confidence of a matriarchal society, aware of their standing but not arrogant about it, and that helps Lon’qu put his nerves at ease.

As darkness slowly pours in, friends and neighbours start wrestling their children away from their playmates and departing for the night. No big deal is made out of it, the way when a parting doesn’t feel like one. Dinner plans are made in half-formed sentences that don’t need to be finished, playdates are arranged by children tugging pleadingly on their mothers’ robes, agreements to barter food and crafts and favours happen as a half-forgotten afterthought. Lon’qu floats, among but not within, his grasp on the language slipping, his knowledge of the people he’s met non-existent.

The illusion tears like a paper lantern. He doesn’t belong here. Chopsticks or no, how can he ever become one of them?

One of the children flops down on the floor, unwilling to go home just yet, and in the resulting commotion Lon’qu takes his leave, overwhelmed and heartsick. It’s improper, of course, but he can’t face them and their polite compassion, not now.

“Leaving already?”

One of the women – Si’nek, Siwi’s sister – is sitting on the outer side of the archway Lon’qu has just passed through on his way out, a sleeping toddler in her arms.

Lon’qu halts a few steps away from her. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“It’s a lot, right?” she lets out a small laugh, adjusts the cradle of her arms. The child makes a soft noise and frowns at the brief disturbance. “I come out here sometimes, just for some peace and quiet.”

Lon’qu stays still, not knowing what to say.

Si’nek looks up at him, moonlight gentle on her features. “I suppose you’ve heard already, but Ti’o – the one who spent the entire evening using you as a tree –  has his birthday in a week. We are going to cook something special, have a celebration. You will come, I’m sure?”

Her dark eyes look directly at him, and suddenly, Lon’qu understands. She knows he didn’t intend to return. And now she dares him to break a second protocol in just as many minutes. Dares him not to give all of it another chance.

“It would be an honour,” Lon’qu says after a beat.

“Great,” she grins. “You should bring your family, too. We’d love to meet your partner, and the children would be delighted to have new friends.”

“It’s a big family,” Lon’qu smiles self-consciously, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. Imagines the absolute chaos that would ensue. “And none of them are Chon’sini.”

Si’nek shakes her head, undeterred. “I’m sure it won’t be a problem. Neither the numbers, nor the blood – You must have noticed mixed families this evening.” She pauses, levels him with a firm look. “You are welcome here, and so are your loved ones.”

Lon’qu bows in response, wishes her a good night, and departs. The moon hangs low and honey-golden as he walks home, and he stares at it without blinking and tells himself that this is the reason it’s blurring around the edges. For the second time this day, he half-expects to bleed from some invisible injury, from something very old shifting in a disturbed wound. Lon’qu blinks, grits his teeth, hurries carefully home.

At home and in bed, he finally cries in Libra’s arms, unable to find another way to express the relief of finding and reattaching a missing limb, the surprised despair and loss of having missed it in the first place, the confusion of not knowing what to do with it anymore. Libra holds him, making small nonsensical noises of comfort and kissing his hair, brings Lon’qu closer to his chest when the sobs hit so violently that his entire body convulses.

Lon’qu lifts his head, needing eye contact, needing to fill his entire awareness with Libra. Libra obliges, stroking his face with one hand, wiping away the tears. He is calm and serious, a shelter in a storm. He beholds Lon’qu as if he is witnessing a birth of something great. A metamorphosis.

Lon’qu tries to keep quiet, but soon Hasith pokes her head in, having probably gotten up to drink and noticed the candlelight from the stairs.

“What’s wrong?” she frowns, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Da?”

Lon’qu sucks in a shuddering breath and pulls away from Libra to let her climb in between them, but Hasith squirms her way in behind Lon’qu instead, putting cold feet against his calves and throwing an arm over his waist.

“The one who’s crying goes in the middle,” she reminds him sternly. “Why are you crying?”

“Dada has found his family,” Libra replies with a small smile, still bathing Lon’qu in the grounding serenity of his gaze. 

“Aren’t we his family?”

Libra’s smile widens. “There is more than one kind.”

“Thank you,” Lon’qu whispers later, once his breath no longer snags on sobs and his nose is unclogged again. 

The candle has exhausted itself out some time ago, Hasith is asleep, and Libra seems to be dozing, but the words force their way out of Lon’qu anyway. He needs to say them, now, nestled in the circle of Libra’s arms, Hasith’s sniffling breath tickling the spot between his shoulder blades. Needs Libra to know how much it means to him.

Libra opens his eyes, calmly alert. “I love you,” he tells Lon’qu, and it sounds like a simple explanation, like Libra’s love, a massive truth in itself, can give birth to something as titanic as well.

Overcome with the intensity of it, with the welcome weight of Libra’s words, Lon’qu doesn’t want to cry again, wills the tears back under his cheeks. Leans forward instead, offering his forehead. Libra brushes his bangs aside in a tender motion, and the lingering kiss he places on his skin feels like a benediction. They sleep.

The next week, the whole family arrives at the Nayaur’u residence for Ti’o’s birthday. The boy is so ecstatic to see Lon’qu again that he nearly trips over his ceremonial robes but still manages a running jump at him. Si’nek, responsible for ensuring that everything runs smoothly, gives Lon’qu a knowing look when she comes out to greet them.

Slowly, their family mixes in with other guests in their festive clothes. At first, the children are cautious, Mavrikia and Roffi hiding behind Libra’s puffy striped skirt, Mairo wriggling jealously up into Lon’qu’s arms to dethrone Ti’o, but soon enough the fascinating brightly-coloured lanterns and the tinkling flow of Chon’si win them over. Nayaur’u’s younger grandchildren and great-grandchildren are no less curious, and after the initial hesitation, they all quickly find common ground and take off, leaving the adults to mingle in peace.

The evening passes in surprisingly easy conversation. Libra stays by Lon’qu’s side at first as introductions are made, but later shares a reassuring look with Lon’qu and peels off, settling down with a small group of people, both Chon’sini and Ylissean. Retreated to a corner of the yard, they relax in soft chairs with teacups in hands, and Lon’qu can’t hear what they are discussing over children’s shrieking and adults’ laughter, but every time he glances their way, Libra looks completely at ease.

Ro’mi finds Lon’qu and immediately ropes him into helping out with a roast in the kitchen of one of the bigger houses. He coordinates the efforts of half a dozen men and boys, and it’s hard not to feel included when Shuk’to to Lon’qu’s left cracks a good-natured joke about Ro’mi’s desire to oversee every cut, or when Derini across the table chops up what seems to be at least a thousand onions and the whole team groans in tearful misery. The roast is a success.

When the dusk settles in, they hold a short ceremony for Ti’o, a tribute to tradition. Lon’qu finds Libra in the crowd and takes his hand as they watch the scene. Ti’o’s father brings out a new robe, folded solemnly over his outstretched arms. Ti’o’s mother shakes it out and puts it around the boy’s shoulders, to grow into and wear on special occasions until his next birthday. Everybody starts singing; Libra looks at Lon’qu with delight plain on his face, but Lon’qu doesn’t remember half the words, so they just stand closely together and hum along, Lon’qu’s arm around Libra’s waist.

After that, Ti’o is finally allowed to change into more comfortable and less valuable clothes. The children resume their games, and the adults switch to drinking fortified wine and bitter pitch-black tea.

The celebration trickles to an end close to midnight, once even the most sugar-energized children have grown tired and sleepy. Their family departs with a startling difference to Lon’qu’s first visit to this place: he is happy to say yes when Ro’mi and Shuk’to offer him to join them on a fishing trip in a few days, Libra alternates handshakes and bows, also agreeing on something, and Hasith marches up to them and declares in no uncertain terms that she’s invited at least half the Nayaur’u household children population to the monastery to play with the chickens. Lon’qu bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep his emotions from spilling out, and Hasith gives him a curious look but doesn’t say anything.

They walk home, Kisanto fast asleep in Lon’qu’s arms, the rest straggling around him and Libra, almost dozing off themselves. Mavrikia is holding onto Libra’s skirt with one hand and onto Pei with the other, blinking slowly at the moon.

“Did you have a good time?” Libra asks Lon’qu softly.

Lon’qu thinks back to the evening: to the roast, to the wine and the tea, to the robes and the singing and the excited faces of their children, the loose-limbed stature of Libra among all these new people. The curtain lifting from a world Lon’qu thought was lost, and his family stepping into it right alongside him.

“I did,” he smiles. “You?”

“Yes,” moonlight reflects on Libra’s teeth as his answering smile grows wider. “I was talking to Ba’ru – she’s uh… she’s the wife of Tain, who is the aunt of Si’nek’s husband – I think? I’ve met way too many people tonight,” he shakes his head in quiet amusement. “Anyway, she told me she’s researching Plegian mythology to write a book on the origins on wyvern taming – I’ve invited her to peruse the monastery’s library whenever she wishes.”

“I didn’t know we had books in Chon’si there,” Lon’qu wonders. From what he remembers, Ba’ru’s grasp on Ylissean is comparable to Lon’qu’s own on Chon’si.

“Oh, we have some – although it now occurs to me that I don’t know what they are about. But there are a few books in Ylissean that could be useful, I’m sure someone in their household could help her translate,” Libra casts him a quick sidelong glance, the way he does when he thinks he’s being sly. “Or you could practice your Chon’si, if you wish.”

Lon’qu huffs out a laugh and looks at him with amusement. “That’s very kind of you.”

“It’s nothing,” Libra looks back at him, suddenly coy. “I’d like to get to know them, too.”

Lon’qu doesn’t know in this moment what makes him love Libra more: his decision to make it easier for Lon’qu to grow stronger bonds with Nayaur’u’s family, or his instinctive desire to always, above all else, help other people, even those he’s just met. It’s probably both. It’s probably all of it.

“I love you,” Lon’qu tells him, because it’s as simple as that. Because knowing what Lon’qu is thinking is the least Libra deserves. Because however often gossamer strings of words flutter out of Lon’qu’s grasp, these never do.

Libra closes his eyes, savouring the moment. Opens them again, curls his fingers around Lon’qu’s elbow and steps closer as they walk, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.

“I love you too, my dear.”

The very next week, Ba’ru arrives and descends hungrily onto their library, and Lon’qu muddles along, translating for her. It’s a slow and awkward process at first, but Ba’ru’s rudimentary Ylissean makes Lon’qu less self-conscious about his Chon’si, and work starts going faster.

The two families begin growing towards and into each other like trunks of entwined trees. There are a couple of Naga devotees among the Ylissean members of the household – that’s how Libra initially got in touch with Ro’mi – and after service he invites them in for tea. Hasith leads delegations to Nayaur’u’s for playtime and brings them over to pick apples and bake together. The children get to experience another part of a normal childhood – making new friends and learning that not everyone is the same as them, and that as long as they are not cruel there’s nothing wrong with it.

In this sprawling safely net, Lon’qu slowly – painstakingly so – learns to reach through the fog. Ro’mi grows to be one of his best friends, and sometimes, while they are fishing, Lon’qu haltingly talks about Chon’sin. Ro’mi listens silently, letting him talk, speaking up only when Lon’qu casts about for a missing word. After that, he in turn tells Lon’qu about his family’s escape – and about the life he remembers from before. Shares with him a tentative dream of returning to Chon’sin one day. Their forgotten lines rip through the lithe muscles of river water.

With Ro’mi’s unwavering attention and implicit understanding, Lon’qu remembers. Later, word by deliberate word, he tells it to Libra, holding him or being held in turn, stacking his memories and storing them, all the jagged edges smoothed and squared away. He tells Libra about his flight from Chon’sin with Ke’ri’s family – and several other families, and how the four of them were the only ones who made it across the sea, the rest falling to fire and water and steel. He tells about Ke’ri’s father teaching Lon’qu the Myrmidonian techniques in Regna Ferox, urging him to remember his heritage, to honour his land with his blade.

He tells Libra about Ke’ri’s parents moving away in the wake of her death, Ke’ri’s father leaving his sword to Lon’qu as a parting gift. About the grueling regimen forced upon him by Basilio. About him eventually absorbing all Feroxi customs, everything else fading into the past.

Lon’qu cries through many of these talks – tears of release and relief and belated mourning spilling down his cheeks – and Libra holds him through every catharsis. Lon’qu wonders in these moments if Libra, too, remembers the times their roles were reversed.

Eventually, his tears run out, and the memories are bled dry. Far from true healing yet, perhaps, but drained clean of the two decades’ worth of pus. Not a recovery, but a step towards it.

Life goes on. Years rotate through seasons like a flaming wheel rolling downhill, and sometimes all Lon’qu can do is try to keep up.

Children grow up: some of them stay on to care for the younger ones and look after the monastery, a few even take the monastic vows to train as healers. Others leave to find their path elsewhere, dropping by when their way lies through Ylisstol or sending letters.

New children arrive, attracted by the promise of warmth and satiety and protection – by then there isn’t an urchin in Ylisstol who doesn’t know that help can be found in Lady Naga’s monastery, in the home of a priest and a Chon’sini hunter, whenever they need it, for as long as they want it. 

When the family grows too big for the eastern wing, they hire a team to repair the southern one, and expand once the construction is done.

The work is never over for Lon’qu and Libra – but it’s never been work to them. Every morning, Lon’qu wakes up with the bone-deep feeling that he is exactly where he should be, and every night, he falls asleep to its gentle, steady hum in his blood.

Years later, sitting outside on the steps on a warm night with murmurs of conversation reaching him through the open door, Lon’qu will suddenly recall his hurried prayer to Naga, the words, previously obscured by the accompanying mist of desperation and grief, coming back to him with startling clarity. He will remember the promise to pay any price, anything Naga would want of him, a debt he’ll long have thought uncollected if not entirely forgotten.

But then, sitting on the steps of Her monastery, a keeper of Her most devout priest’s heart, a father to the children raised in Her name, he will look up at the peaceful star-studded sky and wonder.

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