Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 Avad had many fine qualities, Erend was sure, both as a king and a man. But after their first week on the road, it was clear that being a functional human being before mid-morning was not one of them. He files away some of the more interesting bits of the former king’s profanity-laced tirade against being forcibly awakened.

“You were the Sun-King for a decade, considered to be the literal embodiment of the Sun – how do you hate mornings so much?” he asks incredulously, and receives a bleary series of blinks in return. It’s kind of cute.

No.

He shoves that thought aside the way he has so many others over the years.

“Well, I was the second son, remember? You’ll have to forgive me for rising later.”

He’d also somehow never realized what a sassy shit Avad could be before his morning tea. Spooning a generous serving of leaves into a mug, he silently thanks Nasadi again for the suspiciously large container of sunspark that had been included in their supplies.

“Do you have any idea how badly all of that-” Avad waves expansively “-gold and crown and nonsense glared first thing in the morning?” He scrubs his face with his hands, grumbling and scratching at his beard. “Sun knows I started almost every day with a headache.” Erend pulls the kettle from the fire and pours steaming water into the cup, humming with false sympathy.

“Such cruel circumstances, Your Radiance” he intones sorrowfully. “It’s truly a miracle you managed to survive being dressed by your staff every morning.”  Avad’s attempt at a glare looks more like a squint, the usually haughty bite of it ruined by his resentment of the cheerful morning sunshine. Then his eyes alight on the cup in Erend’s hands.

Got him.

If he were a machine, Avad’s eyes would be turning a Sawtooth’s whirling red, body coiled and prepared to pounce. Erend offers him the cup, lest he lose a finger in Avad’s war for wakefulness, and it is promptly snatched out of his hands with a happy avarice that had to be seen to be believed.

He waits until Avad takes his first sip, humming happily.

“Yeah, all of that shiny stuff must have really caused you pain, sir.” Pauses for another beat until the former king’s eyes are fluttering closed in contentment.

“I mean, it’s definitely not because you need glasses, or anything.”

Those amber eyes snap open, then narrow into affronted slits.

“My eyes are fine, you ass.”

The effect is somewhat ruined when Avad buries his nose in his cup, grumbling.

“My arms just aren’t long enough.”

Erend cackles and moves about breaking camp while Avad grudgingly joins the land of the living. The fire is extinguished and he’s packing the last of their gear onto one of the Chargers when Avad speaks.

“I don’t mean to be a burden, or to make you serve me, Erend” he says quietly, his crisp, courtly diction softened by shame. “I know I’m kind of useless out here, but I’m trying. This sort of thing – “he gestures around them “- isn’t really something I’m good at.”

Erend turns, brow furrowed. He’d watched Avad bear burdens that would have crushed plenty of other men for the better part of two decades, reforging a poorly tempered kingdom gone brittle and warped. And he was ashamed? Because what? He hadn’t lived rough and didn’t like early mornings?

Fuck, I shouldn’t have teased him about mornings.

“Hey, no.”

Erend swallows hard, taking in Avad’s hunched shoulders and pensive expression.

I have to fix this.

“I uh… I didn’t…”

No.

“I wasn’t trying to –“

Fire and spit, why can’t I fucking talk?

Erend sighs heavily and sits down next to his former king.

“Avad, listen” he pauses, trying for once to choose his words carefully. “I’ve served you for more of my life than I haven’t.” He’d been, what? 16? 17, maybe? He sees Avad’s mouth open.

“I wasn’t done.” It snaps shut.

“Look, I know I’m not the smartest man alive, ok?”

Understatement of the decade.

“I know I’m not like you or Marad, and definitely not like Aloy. I’ve always been a hammer for you to swing and I was good at it.”

He looks down at his hands, at the scars and evidence of old breaks and hates them.

“But even a big, dumb bruiser like me knows I don’t have to be here.”

He keeps his eyes on his hands, safe from Avad’s incisive gaze that always seemed to see right to the heart of things. Of him.

Not quite, thank the forge.

“So why are you, Erend Vanguardsman?” Avad asks softly. “I’m not your king anymore.”

You’ll always be my king is on the tip of Erend’s tongue, but it’s entirely too close to other truths that he’ll never allow himself to speak aloud and so he stifles it with the aid of long practice.

“I’m not the kind of steel that likes to change shape.” He risks bumping Avad’s shoulder with his own. “It would have to be a really hot fire for me to start now.”  And after all this time? There wasn’t a forge built hot enough, he’s certain. He’s been hammered into shape around this man for twenty years.

What would I even do, anyway?

He’d never returned to Borgrund to resume his apprenticeship, not after –

No.

He slams the lid of his mental lockbox shut as the chillwater begins to creep up his fingers despite the heat of the morning.

Well. Not after. And then he’d been forced to trade even the possibility of that hammer for the one he now carried. Avad’s chuckle brings him back to the present and banishes the chill in his hands. Erend forces a laugh into his voice.

It’s easy after all these years.

“Besides, who else would have me? Aloy would kick me right back over the border if I showed up without you.”

“She would never” Avad scoffs.

“Maybe not, but your cousin would absolutely be out for my blood, though.” Avad grins, wide and genuine, the way he only ever has in private and even then, only rarely. Erend wants to see more of it.

He deserves to smile more.

“It will be nice to see Fashav again.” Avad’s tone is wistful. The prince in question had never quite managed to settle back into Meridian’s high society and had fled west again almost as soon as the peace accords were signed and sealed. Erend has his own suspicions regarding Fashav’s true motivations, but he wasn’t the sort to idly toss around accusations, especially one so serious.

“Yeah well, let’s see if you still say that once he’s got you soused with sweetburn and getting poked with needles” he teases. “Although honestly, it probably wouldn’t be all that different if we were headed to the Claim.”

Avad stands, carefully tipping the last of the tea into his mouth before dumping the dregs in the sand. He’d gotten a mouthful of tea leaves that first morning, unused to tea that wasn’t already brewed and strained for him. Erend had tried and failed not to laugh at Avad’s spluttering face. 

 “I’ve seen some Oseram with marks – is it common in the Claim?” he asks as Erend stands and they make their way to the Chargers.

“It’s not uncommon, but…” Erend casts about for the proper words. “it’s not required or anything. Not like it is with the Tenakth.”

“So why do it?”

Erend shrugs as they swing up on their mounts, Avad managing far more easily than he had a week prior. He wasn’t quite sure how to answer the question, honestly. Ersa’s funeral had been the first time he’d been back to the Claim in years, and it had been another decade since then. And it’s not like he’d be taking his shirt off for an ink-smith anyway.

“Happens a lot with parties - weddings, funerals, and the like. You know, big life stuff. Some people get a little ale or ‘sap in them and go see the ink-smith. Some just like the way it looks.”

“Do you have any?” Avad asks with a curious tilt of his head.

He’d considered it after a few ales and Ersa’s funeral, even made it to the smith with shards in hand, and the resolve to be brave and make Ersa proud. He’d waited, steeling his nerves at the thought of being bare in front of someone. His eyes had traced the progress of the smith’s needles across the skin of the impressively muscled man laid face down on the table. And then the man had turned over, work done, and Erend turned right back around to go drink himself as close to blind as possible.

Turns out he could get pretty damn close. It hadn’t been quite enough to erase his panic at the look of recognition on Borgrund’s face, but it was enough that he’d still been sweating out the Scrappersap halfway back to Meridian.

“No.” It’s sharper than he intended, filed to a point by memories, and he watches Avad’s face fall the tiniest bit at his tone. The other man drops his gaze to the sunshawl in his hands and begins wrapping it around his head.

Shit, there I go again.

He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s not had this much trouble talking to Avad for years. Not since the very beginning, Avad newly crowned, he and Ersa dancing around each other. He clears his throat, softens his voice.

“I was young for it when I left the Claim.”

I was young for a lot of things.

“And not many ink-smiths ever leave” he smirks a bit at Avad. “Not much call for their services around you lot.”

“Excuse us for not wanting needles around our eyes” Avad sniffs as he draws the wine-colored silk over the bottom half of his face.

Erend reaches to pull up his own, enjoying the cool brush of the fabric against his skin, and urges his Charger forward. It had simply appeared in his rooms, as if by magic, the night before they left Meridian. It was an exact match to his old, worn one. In color, anyway. But the silk was a fluid fall of amber-gold in his hands instead of the familiar rough weave - serviceable and sturdy, necessary even, but coarse and a bit abrasive over long periods.

Kind of like me.

It’s undoubtedly too fine for a lug like him, but he’s never been one to question the temper of free steel.

Plus it’s done wonders for my beard.  

They ride west at the Chargers’ steady, ground-eating pace in comfortable silence.

The sun is getting low, bludgeoning heat giving way to the chill of desert evening when they find the camp. There’s no fire, camp dark and unnaturally still. Erend instantly recognizes both the silhouette of Oseram tents and the signs of a struggle.

Overturned barrels, chests, lockboxes.

He dismounts, shouldering his hammer, motioning silently for Avad to stay mounted and still.

Lanterns hanging, but none of them lit. This happened during the day.

He’s pretty sure whoever did this is long gone, but it couldn’t hurt to be cautious. He crouches and turns over the nearest body, a young woman with a Delver’s descending diamonds on her left arm, and the mark of Forgehill above it. The arrow buried in her chest, shaft snapped from her fall, tells the story of how her own had ended.

He hears Avad’s careful footsteps behind him and suppresses the irritated huff that wants to escape.

Fire and spit, he never listens.

“Bandits, looks like” he answers before Avad can ask. “Happened earlier today.” He moves on to the next body. The concentric circles of a smith from Steelspring, both his throat and eyes open to the sky. Erend gently closes the one he can. By the half-open flap of the tent, he can just make out the linked cogs of a tinker. He doesn’t recognize the settlement mark.

“All of them are from different places. Not a salvage operation. Headed for Hidden Ember, maybe?”

“Do you recognize them, then?”

He hadn’t mentioned this grimmer aspect of Oseram inkings earlier. It wasn’t one many outside the tribe were ever privy to.

But this is Avad.

He points to the young woman’s arm. “That’s a Delver’s pattern. The mark at the top is Forgehill’s. That one there” he points to the smith, “he’s a smith from Steelspring. See the circles like a hammer’s blow, and linked chain like a river? A fair few of us that leave the Claim have it done, just in case.” He still wishes Ersa had defied their father and worn the linked armor medallions she’d been entitled to, tradition be damned.

I might have realized sooner.

"Just in case?"

He swallows around the knot in his throat, then clears it, standing.

“Lets others know where to send your body, so your bones return to the right seam.”

Avad is opening his mouth, undoubtedly with another question, when something rustles inside the tent. Erend’s muscles are instantly tensing, primed with violent potential. He steps as softly as he can manage, approaching the tent with his hammer at the ready.

There’s a soft, sniffling whimper from inside. He edges around the tent flap, letting his eyes gradually adjust to the dark. When they do, his hammer hits the ground with a heavy thump.

Fire and spit, it’s a kid.

All wide blue eyes in a tiny, terrified face, the boy is maybe four or five years old, dirty and clothes streaked with what Erend desperately hopes isn’t his own blood. He’s huddled into the far corner of the tent, shivering.

“Hey little guy.” He tries for soft and soothing, but the boy flinches and it hits Erend in the chest like a hammer.

Maybe if I give him something familiar…

He sits to make himself as small as he can and pulls the sunshawl down so the kid can see his face. Erend lets his vowels broaden the way they do any time he’s in the Claim for more than few days.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He holds up his empty hands. “See?”

Another shiver wracks the boy’s little frame, as his lower lip begins to wobble.

Oh no.

“Are you cold?” Erend spies a blanket nearby and reaches for it slowly so as not to startle. He’s turning back and shaking it out when the weight of the boy hits him like a tiny battering ram. He bundles the boy up in the blanket, as little arms wrap, trembling, around his neck.

“Shh, shh, you’re ok. I’ve got you kiddo.” He feels hot tears dripping down his neck, and it nearly cracks his chest open.

What in the hell do I do now?

Silent tears rise in volume until the little boy is almost gasping for air between his sobs.

“Shhh, breathe little spark. You’re ok, shh.” He’s got more practice being sarcastic than soothing, but he’s trying. Hammer to steel, is he trying. Erend rocks them back and forth, the way he dimly remembers Ersa doing, but to no avail. The tiny body in his arms is still breathing way too fast and shaking like a leaf.

Until suddenly it isn’t, the boy going limp in his arms.

Erend yells for Avad, consumed by a burning panic, and almost breaks another Focus as he frantically tries to call Aloy. She doesn't even have the chance to speak. 

"Oh, thank the forge, Aloy. How fast can you get to a Sunwing?"

Chapter Text

Erend clutches the boy to his chest, bracing for the always-slightly-awkward landing as the Sunwing hovers, then settles with a jarring, metallic thump.

Kotallo and Beta are waiting for them at the perch. He hands the boy down to the other man before sliding down the machine’s side. He knows she’s not Aloy, not with that braided skull stripe and her black artificer’s lines but something about the familiar shape of Beta’s face was inexplicably soothing to his nerves.

“I flew as fast as I could, hammer to steel. He was breathing so fast and just went out on me! I don’t think he’s bleeding...”

Stupid lug, you didn’t check.

“All I did was wrap him in a blanket! I didn’t do anything that could have hurt him, I swear!”

Did I?

“I mean, I don’t think I did.”

He knows he’s babbling frantically, but fear is lurching its way up his throat with every minute the boy remains limp in Kotallo’s hold.

“Did I?”

All he knows about kids is that they’re fragile. He watches metal fingers gently pinch the skin of a small forearm.

“Erend!”

I’ve never been good with fragile things.

Beta grabs him by the edges of his chestplate and yanks.

“HEY LUGNUT!”

Green eyes and a battlefield yell break through his panic.

“You need to breathe or you’re going to end up like him and I can’t pick you up!”

Erend’s followed crazier orders. He takes a deep breath.

“There you go.” She pats his arm encouragingly. “Work the bellows.”

“The little one is just thirsty and exhausted, Erend.” Kotallo’s voice is calm, unruffled, and Erend’s knees go a little weak. “We just need to cool him off and get him to drink.”

Thank the forge.

“He’ll be fine, big guy.” Beta soothes. “Let’s just get him inside.”

They turn to walk into the Base and Erend follows.

“Do you know how long he was alone?” she asks softly.

“Uh, judging by the bodies, no more than a day.”

The scavengers hadn’t had a chance to get to them yet.

“No survivors?”

He shakes his head at the Marshal.

“Looked like bandits.” Erend says. “Tents wrecked, everything emptied, valuables gone. That sort of thing.”

Beta heads to the kitchen and Kotallo hums consideringly as he sets the boy down on Erend’s bed.

“I’ll talk to Drakka about sending a patrol – near Scalding Spear, you said?”

Erend nods. “Just northeast, yeah. We were probably an hour or two out by Charger.”

“We?”

“Yeah, Avad was with me when we came across the camp. He and Aloy were going to override another Sunwing and follow. There’s a flock that likes to perch nearby.”

Kotallo lifts a hand to his Focus, and Erend hears the chime of a connected call.

“A moment, Aloy?” He pauses. “Could you stop in Scalding Spear and collect some clothing for Erend’s boy? He’s too slight for anything we have here.”

I should have thought of that.

He’s failing at this already.

“Thank you. Would you speak to Drakka about sending a patrol out to the camp? Marshal’s orders.”

Fuck, the dead.

“Will you have them collect the bodies before the scavengers get to them? I’ll head back there as soon as-” he gestures to the still form on the bed.

Kotallo frowns. “Drakka’s men will bury them, Erend.” He sounds vaguely hurt. “We wouldn’t leave them out in the open.”

Right, they wouldn’t know. Even with the improved relations between their peoples, they still had much to learn about each other.

I mean I still don’t get the whole clan wars thing.

Erend shakes his head, lifts his hands in surrender.

“Peace, ‘Tallo. I didn’t mean anything by it. Of course they would, I know that. But I still need to make arrangements to have them sent back to the Claim. It’s my duty to make sure they back to the right seam, or at least start the journey.”

Kotallo’s brow furrows.

“Where they were born. Where their ‘ore’ was mined, so to speak.”

Beta returns with a pitcher of water and a cup as Kotallo speaks.

“How do you know which…seam?” Kotallo looks to him for confirmation at the unfamiliar term.” Erend nods. “Most of us that leave the Claim have marks.” He points to Kotallo’s ink. “It’s like your tags, but a trade and settlement, so we know where to send them.”

Beta’s eyes widen. “Oh, is that why Oseram keep asking me what seam I’m from?”

Erend nods, taking the water from her, setting it on the small ledge next to the bed.

“It’s not required like it is for his lot” he gestures, winking at Kotallo, the tension defused. “But pretty common.”

She pulls a cloth from her pocket, and Erend takes that too, wetting it from the pitcher. As he sits and starts wiping grime from the little boy’s face Beta speaks.

“GAIA, what can you tell us about our guest? Over our Focuses please, so we don’t startle him.”

“Yes Beta, one moment. Analyzing now.”

The voice in his ear is familiar, musical and soothing.

“The child appears to be male, approximately four years old. Apart from mild dehydration and vital signs indicating elevated stress levels, he appears to be in good health and uninjured.”

Erend almost sags in relief. “Thank you, GAIA.”

“Welcome back, Erend. I am pleased to have been of assistance. Is the child to remain in the facility with you? If so, there is an additional room open on the lower level that I believe may suit your needs.”

A refusal is on the tip of his tongue before he realizes that there’s nowhere for him to sleep that’s close to the kid.

What if he needs something?

His fear of being a burden wars with this new protectiveness.

It’s what’s best for the kid.

“I mean, as long as it won’t inconvenience anyone.”

“Not at all!” Beta chirps. ‘We’ll be neighbors!”

Kotallo rumbles his agreement.

The cool water on his face apparently wakes their tiny guest who, upon opening his eyes, immediately scrambles away from them. Erend’s heart breaks a little at the fear on his face.

“Hey little spark – remember me?” He tries to keep his voice low. He knows he’s too loud most of the time. Wide blue eyes flick to his and there’s the barest twitch of his chin.

“Hey, that’s great! My name is Erend. You’re safe here, ok? Swear it on the First Fire” he says, fingers sketching a hammer over his heart. “This is my friend Beta” he says, tilting his head in the woman’s direction.

“Hi there!” She wiggles her fingers in a tiny wave and gives him a bright smile.

“And that big guy back there? That’s Kotallo.” He watches the little boy shrink back, hears the tiny sound of distress that his fear pulls out of the Marshal.

Tenakth bandits then.

“Hey, no – I know he looks big and scary but honestly?” he lowers his voice conspiratorially, “Would you believe that he’s scared of squirrels? Big tree like him?” He gets a choked laugh from Beta and a suspicious look from the boy.

“That is an unkind comparison, Erend.” Kotallo grumbles. “Have you seen their teeth? And they jump – I’ve heard Aloy say that some can even fly!” The Marshal gives a theatrical shudder that Stemmur would have envied. It apparently sells the fiction and even earns them a small giggle.

 Erend reaches over, moving slowly, and fills the small cup with water before offering it to him.

“You’re probably pretty thirsty, huh?”

Tiny hands wrap around it and Erend just barely smothers his cheer at the signal of trust. The boy drains the cup in hungry swallows, and he reaches for the pitcher to refill it.

“Drink as much as you want, little guy. You need it.”

About halfway through the third cup, the boy’s gulps slow.

“Full up?” Erend asks, getting a small nod in return.

He already looks better.

“Well now you know our names – can you tell us yours?”

 Blue eyes dart to Beta and Kotallo, indecisive.

“Do you just want to tell Erend, little guy?” Beta’s voice is soft and understanding.

I wouldn’t have thought of that.

The boy nods.

“We will go prepare for Aloy’s arrival then, Erend. If you or our newest recruit need assistance, you know where to find me.” Kotallo pauses at the doorway. “Unless it involves squirrels, of course.”

“Yeah yeah, come on big guy. I’ll protect you.” Beta teases, patting the Marshal on the shoulder as she walks past. “Call us if you need us, Erend.”

Two sets of blue watch until the pair is out of sight, and then suddenly Erend has a lapful of little boy.

 “Well, hey there, little spark” he chuckles. “Just us now. Want to tell me your name?”

The boy’s mouth opens but no sound comes out for a moment, and then just a hoarse whisper.

“Bo.”

He swallows, takes a deep breath.

“Bohren.”

Bohren – sounds like an eastern name. Likely the smith’s son then.

“It’s nice to meet you, Bohren.”

Looks like I’m flying to Steelspring.

Chapter Text

He’d traveled to Hidden Ember first, paying passage and purchasing the necessary chillwater and machine sacs to transport his unfortunate countrymen home. The flight to Steelspring is long and cold, giving him way too much time to think.

It should feel something like home, Erend thinks as he strides purposefully down Steelspring's streets. And maybe if he were a proper Oseram, the scents of burning coal, hot metal, and machine oil would put him at ease, but they don’t.

If anything, they deepen the itch between his shoulder blades, the subtle shiver of learned disquiet like a draft in the gaps of his armor. Because when he thinks of home? It’s the sharp citrus bite of oranges and sunspark tea that comes to mind. The sun-warmed quiet of the palace’s red stone courtyards and its gardens of night-blooming flowers.

Even if the damn wine is still awful.

Even after a couple of decades, he could still only go so native. He’d missed the sound of ringing hammers, though. The bronze bells in the Tower of Songs sang out the stations of the Sun, and it had grown on him. But striking steel was a different sort of music, and he loved it as much as he once loved the forges it sang from. 

Erend quickly pushes that thought away to focus on the fire at hand. He has a duty to discharge.

First, find the ealdorman.

He follows the sounds of shouting. He remembers that much at least.

Erend removes his helmet and ducks into the doorway of the crowded hall. Someone in miner’s guild colors shouts about income and interest rates and he groans internally.

Of course I walk into the middle of a fucking tax dispute.

But, taking in the glowering thunderhead expression of the ealdorman and his clearly harried clerks, he also recognizes an opportunity. While he generally tries not to involve himself in Claim politics, he also knows that this mission will be easier with official support than without it. And besides, judging by the tempers evident in the room, the cogs of productive discourse had long ceased turning.

Time to build some goodwill.

Clearing his throat, Erend pitches his voice for a battlefield, and it booms like a cannon in the enclosed space. 

"I hate to interrupt the business of the day, Ealdorman" he says somberly, with a respectful nod to the assembled parties. "But I've come to make a notification and need your assistance."

The hall goes silent in an instant, air heavy with collective dread, and the ealdorman rises to his feet slowly. 

“You are heard - make yourself known to us.” Erend tucks his helmet under his arm and steps forward, swallowing down residual unease at the traditional words.

“Vanguardsman. Erend Vanguardsman, Ealdorman.” Recognition spreads across the man’s face.

“Garduf Ealdorman, Captain. Stories of your steel precede you." Garduf flicks his eyes to his clerks, then addresses the assembly. "Business is done for the day. Clear the room."

Erend stands silently, waiting as the uncharacteristically subdued crowd departs, taking the time to observe Garduf. 

Massive shoulders and a chest you could break boulders on. 

He deliberately ignores the part of him that whispers an appreciative 'well-forged.'

Smith, must be. Not a miner with that height, plus he’d have been more sympathetic to the guildsman.

He’d already been familiar with the flavor of shard-poisoned politics when he’d left the Claim, but if his time serving Avad had taught him anything, it was that the corrupting influence of power was nearly universal in its reach. 

Plainly dressed, so either still honest or smart enough to hide it well.

"You have my thanks, Captain. Despite the circumstances." Garduf sighs heavily, walking around the table, hand outstretched in greeting. "Well-met."

Erend takes it, clasping his forearm with a firm grip. 

Muscled. Burn scars on his hands. Definitely a smith. 

"You looked like a man in need of rescue. Taxes, sounded like?" 

Garduf groans, eyes rolling. 

"Good ears. Another mine-holder not wanting to shoulder their share." He scowls. "First time one has tried to buy me outright though."

Erend’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline. 

Oh, he must be new. 

"I take it you're fresh to the position, then?" His voice is almost wry as the grin that quirks the ealdorman’s lips as he nods 

“And here I thought the Vanguard didn’t get involved in Claim politics.”

He fails to stifle a sarcastic snort. “Don’t have to be holding the hammer to hear when something rings like mud.”

Garduf’s laugh is full and rich, like the pealing of a great bell, and the line of his throat as he tosses his head back stokes something hot in Erend’s gut. 

No.

He shakes himself bodily back to his purpose, clearing his throat, and tries to ignore the scent of hot metal lingering in his nose as icy shame creeps up from his fingertips. 

“Back to my unfortunate business, Ealdorman…”

Garduf sobers, face falling with a regretful sigh. 

“Yes, I suppose we must. Who and how?”

“That’s where I need your help - I know the how, but not the who. A smith, traveling west with a Delver from Forgehill, and a Tinker. Bandits got them maybe three days’ out of Barren Light. I assume they were headed out to Hidden Ember. I didn’t recognize the tinker’s stamp.” Erend shrugs apologetically. He’s lived outside of the Claim for decades, that’s no secret. 

“They had a child with them. Little boy - blond, blue eyes, maybe four or five years old. Called Bohren.” 

The other man pales suddenly, eyes wide with horror. 

That’s a strong reaction.

“Easy there, Ealdorman!”  He wrestles with the urge to lay a steadying hand on the man’s arm, raises his hands soothingly, and tries to set the other man’s mind at ease.

“Bohren is probably the safest little spark alive, my soul to steel. I left him with no less than a pair of Tenakth Marshals, the Savior of Meridian herself, plus an artificer besides.” Erend chuckles. “And he has them all wrapped around his little finger.”

Garduf practically sags in relief.

 He knows them.

“Do you know of him, then? I thought his name sounded like it might be from out this way, plus he and the smith looked cast from a similar mold.”   

The ealdorman nods, still visibly reeling from the news. 

“Bohden Smithsson. Little Bohren is his half-brother.” He shakes his head sadly. “This is horrible news indeed, Captain.”  

“Really? I’d assumed Bo was his son.”

“Same hammer, different forge. Their father was…” Garduf frowns, his expression pensive. “Well. Let’s just say you can consider your notification delivered.”

I don't like the sound of that.

Not for a bright little forgespark like Bo.

He deserves better.

“No other family?”

“None worth speaking of, or he wouldn’t have been headed west with wee Bo instead of taking that new journeyman’s posting at Forgehill.” His voice is bitter. “Damn shame.” 

He knew Smithsson well. 

Erend hooks his free hand in his belt, loses some of his stiffness, spelling out sympathy with the set of his shoulders and the smoothing of his voice.

"Sounds like you knew him pretty well."  

It sticks in his gears to think this way, calculating and cold. Or at least he likes to think it does. It’s come easier over the years and he prays continuously it’s a result of Marad’s influence and not his father’s. 

"Bodie and I were forged-brothers, under the same master."

Unfortunately, the part of him that is Bo's guardian needs more information and one Erend Vanguardsman, private citizen, may yet need a friendly ealdorman’s influence; So he lets sympathy dig a furrow in his brow, soften his eyes with understanding. Even then, it's only partly an act - Erend knows the acid bite of loss all too well and hates to see it eat at this man’s finish. 

Cracked hearts love a full pitcher. 

He refuses to risk either Bo's safety or his happiness and he's all too familiar with how eyes often avert themselves from unhappy families in the Claim. So he swallows his distaste.

Garduf wants to talk. Let's talk. 

Erend claps Garduf on the shoulder, riding that fine line between comforting and companionable. 

"How about you show me to a friendly barkeep, I buy you an ale, and you tell me all about it?" 

Erend has found over the years that politicians are a tribe unto themselves, superseding borders and creeds. But even having made the Sundom his home, he does often miss the generally more forthright, blunt nature of his fellow Oseram. He finds Garduf, despite his rank, no exception to the rule. The ealdorman’s face is open and easy to read, machine-metal eyes direct under dark, expressive brows as he leans on the bar.

No Sunpriests’ theatrics from this one.

The man is an excellent conversationalist, genuine and animated without being ostentatious. He’s also disarming enough that Erend finds himself speaking more candidly than is probably wise in a crowded tavern before catching himself and buttoning up his chestplate. Judging by the frequency with which the folk of Steelspring approach him with casual greetings and friendly slaps to the shoulder, it doesn’t strike him as a performance for a stranger’s benefit, either. 

I can see why he was elected.

It's certainly no great hardship to provide a sympathetic ear and wouldn't have been even without Erend’s well-meaning but nevertheless ulterior motives. He doesn't have to fake his chuckles at Garduf’s tales of their apprenticeship antics, threaded through with the bittersweet bite of loss. He feels a quiet ache of his own, wondering what it might have been like to have spent those same years apprenticed beside someone like the man in front of him. He imagines learning from and laughing together about their mistakes at the forge, instead of bleeding alone and having to cover his mistakes in dirt before burying them in drink. 

No sense whining over stripped screws.

He holds the memory of Borgrund's voice, his rumbled "good lad" and approving smiles under his ale until the bubbles stop, then takes a long drink to finish the drowning.

The ealdorman’s voice trails off wistfully, and Erend seizes the opening.

"So how did our little spark end up west of Barren Light with Bohden instead of in Forgehill with his father?"

Garduf’s face clouds. 

"It's… complicated.”

Always is.

He hates that phrase more than Avad hates early mornings and Aloy the word "no."

“People tend to say that when they don’t want to get involved in things they know they should get involved in.” Erend is wincing internally at his tone before he’s even done speaking, but there’s a part of him that’s as sure of his stance as a mountain goat, and at least twice as stubborn.

Careful, lugnut. You want him on your side. 

Far from bristling, though, Garduf appears vaguely ashamed, flushing dark as he ducks his head. 

Huh. 

"Of course, you're right, Captain." The other man's eyes scan the room before lifting his chin at a corner table away from the growing afternoon crowd.

"Pull up a seat and I'll get us another round."

He's surprised at the ealdorman’s easy acquiescence, but good luck is a rare gem and even he knows better than to chuck it out with the gravel. 

He weaves through the tables, ignoring the speculative looks and whispers that are probably a bit less quiet than their owners intended. 

There are the expected murmurs of 'Carja' and 'Vanguard' but also, oddly enough, a sly 'well-forged' that makes him blush hotly under his whiskers as he sits. He barely gets his face under control before Garduf is settling opposite and sliding a mug across the table, but if the other man notices, he is kind enough not to remark on it. 

The ealdorman doesn't mince words, just puts hammer to steel, even if his gaze is far away. 

"You're not wrong, Captain. But it's not as bad as -'' his voice trails off oddly, before he clears his throat and meets Erend’s eyes. 

"Well, not as bad as you're probably thinking, anyway, and thank the forge for that.”

What is that supposed to mean? 

He feels like he’s missing some important context, which is to say any at all.

"There were some…incidents. Neighbors found little Bohren in a bad way. "

Erend tenses. He doesn't know why the previously forthright man is suddenly being cagey, but he needs to know .

"Listen Ealdorman, I'm not trying to set fire to the seam here - I just want the boy to be safe and happy." 

The ealdorman takes a deep drink and sets the tankard down on the stained table with a sigh.

"The old man likes his drink and Bo's mother left not long after he was born, though who could blame her? Without someone there to take care of him…” He shrugs helplessly. “That’s why Bodie left Steelspring to take the posting. He and that old bastard had their differences, but he wasn’t going to let little Bo suffer for them.”

He sounds pretty bitter about that. 

Erend tucks that thought away for later.

“Only then he refused to accept Bodie’s help. Was happy enough to crow about his son the smith and how he’d finally brought him ‘home’ and to heel, but then sneered at him for engaging in ‘women’s work’ - as if he didn’t father the boy.”

“The more I hear about this chuff, the less I like.”

He considers paying the man a visit. His next stop is Forgehill, after all. 

“That’s because you’re a good man, Captain.” 

Not really, but it’s nice of him to say so.

The decision is an easy one, ultimately, and Erend sets his Strike board for victory.

“Just Erend, please. I’m… recently retired.” 

He can feel the ealdorman’s curious eyes on his face and buries his nose in ale, tries to let malt and hops wash the taste of manipulation out of his mouth. 

“‘Just Erend’, and retired…but still Vanguardsman?” The words are measured and cautious, and even then Garduf’s tone is far too casual to match the weight of their implications.

There we go.  

Erend hums noncommittally, and lets his deliberate silence speak for itself. It just wasn’t done, removing your father’s stamp like that, as he’d been constantly reminded until rank gave him sufficient excuse. 

“Might as well try to chisel the maker’s mark off that hammer there, boy. You’ll get just as far - you’re branded all the same.”

Garduf’s quiet rumble dispels the echo of old hurts and brings him back to the present. The man's blued-steel gaze grips his own - keen, sympathetic, and far more understanding than Erend would like, even if this scrutiny is bringing about the end he wanted. He wants to squirm under the earnest weight of it.

Get it together, idiot.

“So, what do we do about the little spark then, Ealdorman? What would Bodie want?”

“Garduf, Erend - please.” He’s quiet for a long moment. “He wouldn’t want him to grow up here. He would want him loved. Safe. Out of their father’s reach.” 

His voice is wistful, resigned and aching. 

“It’s why he headed west in the first place - old man has a lot of influence. Forge knows how.”

Erend wonders, not for the first time, exactly how close he and Bodie had been. 

“Are you willing, Erend Vanguardsman?” He pins Erend with a challenging stare, as if daring him to deny that is what he’s been leading the other man to ask this entire time.

Sharper than he lets on. 

“If it’s best for him, yes.”

Garduf’s fingers drum on the table consideringly, before he leans back in his chair.

“It’s an unpopular thing, letting the wee ones run around outside the Claim, I know. But I think we both know that bright little lad is far better off with you and your tinker’s stall of friends than with that barrow of bad ore.”

This man’s faith in him is as bewildering as it is humbling, and it catches him flat-footed. So he grins and jokes.

“Good, because I’m not sure the Marshals would part with him. Might cause a diplomatic incident.”

Garduf ignores his attempt at levity.

“You swear on the first fire and the Machine that you’ll do your best to make him happy?”

Erend hesitates. 

What would I know about that?

He decides honesty is the best policy.

“Soul to steel, I’ll try my best. He didn’t come with a blueprint - and I’m still learning. And I may fuck it up some, but he'll never have cause to be afraid of me."

Erend swallows hard. He'd sooner walk naked into a smelting furnace than be like his father. 

"Besides, I'll have help. From folks way smarter than me, too. He’s already halfway spoiled absolutely rotten by more aunts and uncles than you’d believe.” He grins, thinking of Kotallo’s besotted face. “No doubt growing worse by the day. And he’ll be as safe as better warriors than I can make him.”

Garduf's lips quirk, wry and perhaps just a touch sad, and he nods slowly. 

“Then I am sad to learn that both Smithsson brothers died in the West, may their works live on.”

The sense of relief Erend feels nearly staggers him.

Safe. The little spark is safe. 

“I would very much like to meet your son sometime, though.” 

Erend’s brain grinds to a halt. 

Holy fuck, I have a son. 

Somewhere, perched on a cog of the World Machine, he knows Ersa is laughing her ass off.

Chapter Text

“Fire and spit , but kids are exhausting.” Erend collapses into a chair, little Bo finally having drifted off to a sniffling, tear-stained sleep downstairs. 

“What was it this time?” Kotallo’s lips are quirked in a wry grin as he sips from a tankard, and Erend’s nose twitches at the scent of paleberry cider. It was no Chainscrape Sour but it was delicious - and better than Tenakth spirits. He would never consider himself a brewmaster, but he’s almost certain those were distilled from sheer spite and flavored with malice, besides. 

In any case, he tries not to drink spirits these days. 

“He tried to put the leaves back on the trees and got mad when they wouldn’t stick.” Seeing his little spark dive into the piles of russet leaves had been almost as much of a treat as the laugh Avad had let out watching him. Bo’s exhausted meltdown after had been decidedly less entertaining. 

Kotallo snorts into his drink.

“It was a rather impressive tantrum.” Avad’s voice is a humorous rumble at his shoulder, and a mug of cider appears at Erend’s elbow as if by magic. Later, he will blame exhaustion for what comes out of his mouth next.

“I could kiss you right now, Your Radiance.” Kotallo chokes and Avad goes very still. Erend freezes, his face forge-hot and glowing.

You stupid fucking lugnut.

“Is this a Carja tradition, trading kisses for ale?” Kotallo asks slyly, eyes glinting with mischief. “Or is it an Oseram custom?” 

Erend glares across the table before burying his nose in his cider, and tries to wash the taste of mortification from his tongue.

“Only if one wanted to start a riot, I think,” Avad chuckles, sliding into an empty chair at the head of the table, interlacing his fingers, palms up in court position. It's an unconscious hold-over that Erend finds endearing to an uncomfortable degree, even as his body shifts automatically to attention with his king now at the table. Kotallo hums consideringly, arching an eyebrow at Erend. 

When Erend dares a peek at him, the Marshal's dark eyes are fixed on his face, expression disbelieving and heavy with exasperation. 

What did I do now?

“I’ve missed seeing little ones play,” Avad muses wistfully, and it makes Erend’s chest ache with fondness. Watching him with Itamen had always made Erend feel light and happy inside, warmed by two copies of the same radiant smile. 

“You miss the real Terror of the Sun, you mean.” Erend teases. 

So do I. 

The initially serious little boy had transformed into an absolute menace within a few months of his return to the palace. Erend had half-expected Avad to be tearing out his hair at the prince’s antics, especially after the incident with the boar and the women’s baths, but he’d just laughed until he cried. 

“It means he feels safe , Erend.” Avad had whispered, eyes shining with happy tears and fragile hope. “Safe enough to cause a little trouble.” 

Erend still remembered weighing the nauseating press of potential punishment against his every action, and had quietly ordered the Vanguard not to intervene in any mischief unless the Little Luminance was in danger. 

And then the king, heedless of all dignity, had started joining in. 

“Do you remember when he wrecked the old Kestrel’s barracks “

“You mean the time both of you loosed those Watchers in their training yard?”

They’d been overridden and harmless but the guards, half asleep and off duty, hadn’t known that. 

“Oh, come on, Erend - it was just bad luck that someone left the door open!”

Watching the three machines chase the large ball around had been hysterical. Until said ball rolled through an open door and the boldest of the three machines had followed it.

That’s when the screaming started. 

“Industrious Rabad almost threw himself off the Tower of Songs when you announced you were passing the crown to the Tiny Terror.” 

Avad rolls his eyes with a wicked grin that makes Erend a little breathless. 

“He’d been the Sun’s Steward since I was younger than Bohren, he’s been ready to retire for a decade .” 

Even distracted as he is by the laughing honey-gold of Avad's eyes, Erend sees Kotallo's perplexed face out of the corner of his eye. 

“His brother,” Erend clarifies, tilting his head at Avad. “Sun-King Itamen, 15th Luminance of the Radiant Line, may he always walk in the Light -”

Avad snorts around the rim of his mug and dissolves into choked laughter. 

“-was an absolute menace as a wee lad.”

“So you two have raised a child together already?” Kotallo’s voice is a deep, amused rumble. “This bodes well for your little spark, Erend.”

Erend is saved from wondering exactly what the forge that is supposed to mean by the arrival of Aloy, loudly arguing with Fashav and -

“Chaplain?” Kotallo's voice is happy, but bewildered as he takes in the shock of white hair next to Aloy, even as he moves to stand.

“At ease, Marshal. I'm not here for you.”

Dekka's sharp eyes catch Erend's and hold.

He suddenly wonders what it is that he's managed to wreck now, the familiar feeling of squirming under Marad's all-seeing eye coming to the fore. 

“I hear you have a new son, Captain.” 

“Careful, Vanguardsman,” Fashav laughs from his newfound perch in Kotallo's lap. “You may never see your little sunbeam again once she gets her hands on him!” 

“It takes a clan to raise a child, you overgrown swamp vine,” Dekka scoffs haughtily, eyebrow raised at the seating arrangements. “That's probably why you turned out so clingy. Not enough aunts and uncles in your life.” 

Her words are sharp, but her eyes are soft even as she cuts them at the erstwhile Prince, huffing fondly.

“Well, there was the one, but no one seemed to like him very much,” Fashav drawls sarcastically.

There’s a choked sound from Avad’s end of the table and Erend’s whips his head around in a near-panic only to find the man practically wheezing with laughter into his mug of cider. 

“Yes, well - it’s a good thing your favorite cousin took care of that, hmm?” Avad smirks. 

The Tenakth contingent is frozen, eyes on the two Carja royals in their midst.

“Who says you’re my favorite, Sunspot?” Butter wouldn’t have melted in Fashav’s mouth. “The Sunhawk and I go way back.”

Steel, but Erend had forgotten how quickly these two reverted to sniping at each other like boys when they were together. 

“Yeah, the Sunhawk isn’t the one who covered for you when you broke Kadi’s arm shadow-chasing -”

“Shadow-chasing?” Aloy’s brow is quirked like the corner of her mouth.

Erend groans at the way Avad’s face lights up in mischief and heads him off, catching Aloy’s attention with a gesturing hand. 

“It’s like those trails you have back east.”

He mimes climbing at Aloy’s blank look.

“Built into the trees and rocks? You know, with the slip wires and stuff?”

“You mean the Brave trails?” she says, brow furrowed. 

“Yes! Only this is Meridian, so it's ‘chasing shadows.’ Just imagine scrambling up and over roofs, walls and jumping between the damn bridges .” 

He shudders, thinking of the drops.

“You’d be great at it, Aloy.” Erend grins as her eyes roll good-naturedly. “Me, not so much - I miss a ledge, you’re stuck calling a healer and a stonemason.”

Seeing her laugh warms his heart.

She deserves to laugh. 

“It’s big with the lower city kids,” he pauses, and eyes the bickering royals. “-and apparently the occasional pair of princes.” 

Who were still arguing over favorites. Fashav’s laugh rings out. 

“I remember that! Sun, but you couldn't sit comfortably for a fortnight.”

“Yes, well. Would have gone worse for you. There was still some advantage to being the spare, then,” Avad grumbles

Erend winces internally at darkness in his tone. The safety of Avad’s position had shifted soon enough.

The newly minted heir to the Sundom had arrived at the Freebooter camp after nightfall, bundled up against the chill like the rest of them. But the next morning? He'd risen with the sun, skin properly bared to the morning light as he led his shaky band of exiles in their sunrise prayers. Erend can still see the bruises spread dark across that bronzed skin like spilled wine, still remembers envying Avad's courage to be seen thus, his father's casual cruelty on display. He also remembers seeing sorrow in the eyes of the Carja faithful, but no surprise. 

It had been the right move, and went a long way towards convincing him and plenty of others that the prince was serious, that Ersa wasn't just being swayed by gratitude and a pretty face. 

“These bravery trails sound very… Tenakth.” Kotallo rumbles consideringly into the sudden silence, arm wrapping protectively around Fashav's middle. Erend’s stomach knots at the brightness of their easy intimacy. It feels like gazing into the heart of a glowing forge, like staring into the sun, and the burning envy at the center of it makes him avert his eyes.

“Brave trails.” Erend can hear the way Aloy capitalizes the word. “Braves are what the tribe calls their warriors.”

He suddenly realizes Aloy and the Chaplain are still standing. 

“Forgive the rudeness, Chaplain Dekka, please.” He rises, gesturing to an open chair. He catches himself bowing slightly, partly out of habit and partly because she is fucking terrifying. 

“I’ll grab us some more drinks.”

He can feel her amused eyes on his back as he beats a tactical retreat. 

At least I hope she’s amused. 

“So the Brave trails are not for children, then?” Dekka asks, voice pricking with curiosity. Erend listens with half an ear as he grabs several clean mugs and searches for the cider. 

“It’s in the cold box.” Erend jerks, almost dropping the mugs in his hand, and whips around to see Nil perched on the counter. 

“You’re looking for that fizzy fruit thing, right?” Erend nods, uncertain of his voice with his heart stuck in his throat. 

He’s not scared of the Shadow-turned-Tenakth precisely. But even a dumb bruiser like him knows to be cautious around a Stalker, no matter how tame it seems. 

“Behind the goldthorn sauce.”

Apex predator he thinks, remembering Beta’s excited ramblings about something she called ‘ecology’ and videos of something from the Old World that reminded him of a Sawtooth.

There it is. 

The cold on his face as he follows Nil’s direction eases his heartbeat down to a soldier’s quickstep instead of a flat sprint for survival, and he pries loose his voice. 

“Thanks, buddy.”

His fingers close around an earthenware jug, Utaru-make but decorated in Sky Clan pink and blue.

He misses Zo. 

“Your little boy,” Nil pauses, as if trying to choose his words carefully. “-he’s a friendly one. Happy.”

Those strange eyes lock on Erend’s, sharp and clear as a Claim winter. 

He sounds almost confused.

“Yeah, Bo’s a clean breeze in a coal mine, for sure.”

“He asked Attah to race.”

HE WHAT?

It must have shown on his face, because Nil rolls those unsettling eyes, and waves dismissively. 

“We would never let him actually race, Vanguardsman.” He uncoils, flowing off the counter with a sinuous ease that makes Erend’s spine wildly jealous. 

“Don’t you Oseram have a saying about testing steel before it’s tempered?”

Erend swallows as Nil steps closer.

“We do.”

He fights the urge to create space between them, oddly breathless at the madness shifting in that machine-metal gaze.

“Good.” Nil’s grin is more threat-display than smile. “Innocence is so hard to come by once it’s flown. Plenty of time for blood to sing to him later, if he likes the dance.”  

Erend is rooted to the floor in shock as Nil takes the mugs from his hand, brushing past him to… join the others?

Well,  that’s new. 

“Since you have a free hand, bring that bottle of Jewel Gold,” he calls back to Erend over his shoulder. “It’s always been ‘Shav’s favorite.”

How in the hell does he know that?

Erend is suddenly grateful he’d managed to acquire an entire case on his detour home from the Claim. 

“And I’m sure your king won’t mind sharing.”

A chill shivers down Erend’s spine and he tries not to think too hard about why one of Helis’s Shadows would know Avad’s preferred vintage. 

“I think Sun-King Itamen prefers ale, actually.” he bluffs, clearing his throat and leaning into ‘oblivious Erend.’ 

“He doesn’t,” Nil turns, lips curved knowingly and in actual amusement this time. “But I meant your king, Vanguardsman.” 

Grinding gears, but he's an odd cog. 

Erend reaches back into the cold box for the wine before following him to the table.

“So your son, Captain. -” 

Every time she uses his rank it makes Erend want to snap to attention, but his limbs are starting to get the pleasant kind of loose and warm that he knows make him decent company.

“Erend, Chaplain, please.” He barely has to work at the disarming smile he shoots her way. “I’m retired.”

Avad lounges in his peripheral vision - a long, lean line of bronzed skin as he chats animatedly with Aloy, separated from Nil by Kotallo’s bulk.

His bellows work a little easier for the space between them.

“Tell me more of how your tribe raises their children.”

“At Bo’s age? He’d be starting school soon, in the Claim.” He takes a deep drink to cover his dismay. 

 I really need to fly out to Hidden Ember and see about that.

“You start specialized training so young?” Kotallo sounds surprised, almost…disapproving?

What?

“Oh Forge, no!” Erend corrects quickly, once he parses the source of the confusion. “Just the foundation stones and all - their glyphs, simple calculations, that sort of thing. Apprenticeships come much later.”

“Like basic training, then?” Dekka asks, comprehension dawning in her expression. 

“Exactly, Chaplain.” He leans back in his chair, stretching the knots of a day’s riding from his legs. “Have to let the little sparks figure out where they’ll catch, after all.”

“So you apprenticed with a Freebooter, then?” Fashav chimes in from across the table. 

“A soldier.” Erend clarifies at the Chaplain’s quizzical look and tries to ignore the uneasiness stirring in his gut, fingertips cold against his mug.  

“Oseram mercenaries, some of the best.” Fashav raises his mug in Erend’s direction. “They’re the main reason His Radiance down there got to sit in the fancy chair at all.”

Erend bristles.

"Avad won the throne because he killed the madman sitting on it and saved the Sundom." His voice is the barest note shy of a collapsing mine-shift, rumbling with threat.

Easy there, lugnut.

He watches Fashav’s eyes widen in surprise and thinks to himself, not for the first time, that it’s probably fortunate the prince had remained with the Tenakth. 

Entirely too open of a face. Court would have eaten him alive.

“Peace, Vanguardsman. I meant no insult.” Fashav does him the courtesy of speaking it plainly, no courtly apologies or attempts to ‘soothe.’ The Chaplain, predictably, turns the wheel of the conversation back to her purpose. 

“So you apprenticed to a soldier, then? One of these…Freebooters?”

Burrs and fucking bolts, she’s relentless,

“Er…no. I didn’t actually…” he trails off, distracted by the sudden silence at Avad’s end of table, and looks up to find amber eyes fixed on him curiously. 

No.  

Of all people, he couldn’t know. Erend feels the phantom heat of a coal fire at his back and the cold press of an anvil under his chest. 

“I uh…left the Claim too young. For an apprenticeship.”

He hears Ersa crying but can’t feel his hands.

“What stopped you from apprenticing outside of the Claim?” Kotallo asks, voice sounding miles away. 

The healing took months.

“The war.” Erend grits out past the choking tightness in his chest and stands abruptly.

He drains his mug, tries to ignore the furrowing of Avad’s brow and the shaking in his own hands as he sets it carefully on the table. He can feel Nil’s eyes follow him.

“Excuse me Chaplain, I need to go check on Bo.” 

His ears burn with the silence he leaves behind. 

Chapter Text

Erend heads down to the room he’s currently sharing with Bo. Or he thinks he does. All he can really remember is seeing that little blond head and peacefully sleeping face tucked into the tiny woven Tallneck that had simply appeared in Bo’s bedroll their second night in the Base. And then remembers needing to get away before the burning slag in his chest contaminated his son the same way it did everything else he touched. 

My son.

All of Avad’s poetry described hope as some winged, golden thing - uplifting and wondrous. Erend often finds it nauseating, the expectation that he turn it into something a crippling weight on his shoulders. Before Bo, at least the only person he had to worry about fucking up was himself. He doesn't know how to do this.

How do people just know how to do this?

The rest of the walk is a blur of metal walls and remembered pain, slipping between flickering torchlight and the steady electric glow of the Old Ones’ lights, and it’s dizzying. 

‘You might run away to this forge, boy - and your unnatural ways.’

Erend tucks himself into the smallest, densest patch of shadow he can find, curling into the smaller target his body still remembers, just so everything will be still. 

Dark. 

Quiet. 

Safe.

His wrists ache, but Erend learned early on to cry quietly, to hold his breath. He tightens his grip on his wrists, presses the air out of his lungs against his knees, and floats in the burning of his chest. 

‘But the Machine will stop turning before you ever forget who you belong to.’ 

The darkness sparkling at the edge of his vision is comforting, a reassurance that when the pain inevitably comes? He can dive into the black and escape, his body taking over the work of breathing in his absence. He just has to wait. 

‘Every time those filthy hands of yours touch anyone, you’re going to remember this moment.’ 

Somehow, despite the spitting hatred in that slurring voice and all of Erend’s experience to the contrary, he hadn’t expected his father to actually do it. 

‘And they’re going to know that you didn’t come from bad stock, that you warped all on your own.’ 

Stupid, childish naivety, maybe? He still doesn’t know. In any case, he’d stood still - trying to run usually turned a threat into a blow, in his experience. 

‘But they’re going to know I tried my best to burn it out of you too.’

‘Just a threat’ he’d told himself, ‘Stay still, look frightened.’ He’d thought the rage would pass, even as his father held his arm to the anvil. 

‘That I took the price of it out of your fucking hide.’

Even as the scent of hot metal filled his nose, he hadn’t believed. Not even at his father’s cruel laugh as the hair on his arm curled and singed.

‘At least you’re still enough of a man to stand and take it - there might be hope for you yet.’ 

And then there had been nothing but pain, bone-achingly cold first, and then searing and screaming.

“Erend?”

He instinctively recoils from the deep voice that breaks through the burning. 

Not Ersa.

It’s not Ersa’s voice, which means he isn’t safe yet.

“Erend, can you hear me?”

He doesn’t remember this part, that voice, doesn’t know if it’s something invented by his brain on fire or one of the many things he’s tried to drown in ale. He’s too caught up in the smell of his own flesh burning, knees buckling into the sand. Still frozen as his other arm erupts in the same blistering agony. He knows this part though, remembers the rhythm of it even if the edges of his vision are narrowing, darkening now, the way they did then. 

Almost over. 

“Erend, you need to breathe.”

The world tilts and he lets it, head heavy and lolling on his neck, stuck in the cold steel of the anvil underneath his chest and the sound of rending fabric. 

‘Can’t keep you from bending over for them, but at least I can make it ugly enough they’ll only bother the once.’ 

“Fucking Ten, EREND!”

He waits for Ersa’s scream - the one that releases him. 

“GAIA, can you ask the Chaplain to come down here, please?”

There’s a voice whispering to Erend that Ersa isn’t coming this time. That she can’t, that she’s gone , and part of him deep down knows it for truth even as the rest of him holds desperately onto the faith that she will.

She has to. 

“Erend!” 

His brow furrows against his knees. 

Woman, but not Ersa . 

He doesn’t remember this part.

What if there’s more I don’t remember?

The thought shakes him down to his core, freezes the breath in his lungs. He knows he doesn’t have any more scars, though. Not from that night. Small, warm hands cover his where they grip his own wrists as, in his mind on that empty street, Ersa’s scream of rage echoes off the wet stones and he crumples to the ground - finally free of their father's grip.

“Who is Ersa?”

“Sister.”

“Alive?”

Silence. 

Then “We’ve got you, Erend.”

But Ersa was alone.

They’d been alone. They’d always been alone when their father’s wrath came calling. 

“You’re safe here.”

They’d never been safe anywhere. He’d thought maybe at the forge with Borgrund, with an apprenticeship his father could be proud of, that maybe things would be different. 

Ersa said he didn’t drink overly much, never got loud or fought. 

He’d never had the chance to find out, the dream warping like shitty steel in his father’s hands. 

Those hands slide over his forearms and something in him snaps in anticipatory terror . Erend lunges forwards, shoving past the body in front of him that isn’t Ersa, trying to escape the coming agony that he knows just hasn’t registered yet. 

Get away get away getaway getawaygetaway!

When pain is bad enough, it can take a minute to really hit . He’d learned that early too. 

“Chaplain!”

His knees crack painfully on the metal floor as he heaves, gasping for air around lungs that refuse to expand. 

Metal…floor?

“Not my first battle, Kotallo - I’m fine.”

Kotallo?

“Erend? Can you hear us?”

The voice is familiar, if gentler than he’s used to hearing it, and far away - like he’s underwater. Or she is.

“You’re safe, swear it on the Ten.”

Chaplain Dekka?

“I’m sorry, Erend - I won’t touch you again without permission.”

Lie. That’s always a lie. 

Kotallo says something about rules he doesn’t catch, tone snide. Erend hopes he hasn’t broken any rules he didn’t know about. 

“Yes yes - not the time, you scab.”

He’d always hated getting punished for those the most.

She sounds angry. 

He’s pouring apologies before he can stop himself, like a wound that just won’t stop bleeding, before he remembers to stay quiet. But he’s too hurt to take more right now, he knows that much.

I won’t be able to hide this as it is. 

“Oh Erend, sweetling.” 

It’s the sadness in her voice that brings him gasping to the surface. 

Ersa sounded sad too.

Ersa, who has been dead fifteen years now because he wasn’t smart enough to save her in time, because he was too busy being a drunken excuse for a man. 

She’d saved him. So many, many times. 

Couldn’t save her. 

He couldn’t save a grown woman, how in the hell is supposed to save Bo? The world is cruel to children - he knows better than anyone. 

“Shhh, sweetling - you’re ok.”

He can still hear his own choking apologies, feel them clogging his throat and his nose, but he can’t stop uttering them - even if he doesn’t know what they’re for anymore.

“Erend - breathe for me, ok?”

For Ersa? For Bo? For not fighting harder? Having had the misfortune to be so ill-forged that he couldn’t just be fucking normal the way his father wanted?

Erend turns blindly into that cracking, devastated voice, reaches out for a lifeline and prays it doesn’t strangle him-

Even if I deserve it.

-and lets himself cry for the first time in years. 

Chapter Text

His head aches, eyes squinting against the sunlight, and Erend is pretty sure he's had actual hangovers that haven’t reached this level of abject suffering.

Who knew crying would be worse the morning after than Scrappersap?

Between his emotional cave-in last night and the death-grip he'd kept on Bo during the flight here, he feels like he's gone four rounds with a Rockbreaker. He almost wishes he’d waited, pushed this errand off to a different day when his head didn’t feel full of rattling bolts and sloshing water. But the idea of staying at the Base, with at least two sets of pitying eyes on him?

Well that made him feel trapped.

At least the roiling in his gut had stopped, Kotallo having wordlessly forced a cup of some minty smelling tea into his hand as Bo chattered excitedly at the Chaplain over breakfast about their trip to Hidden Ember.

I suppose I really should call her Dekka at this point.  

The Tenakth might do things a bit differently, but Erend is pretty sure even they would agree that there's no real point in standing on formalities once you've sobbed and snotted all over someone after reliving the worst experience of your life. He's not sure how they got him up the stairs and to his bed; just remembers the solid wall of Kotallo at his side and Dekka's hand stroking between his shoulder blades, a comfort offered but one that still seemed to singe and blacken around the edges even as it soothed.

The point here is that he's grateful for the tea and the lack of chitchat. He doesn't want to be heaving and looking hungover for the meetings he has planned this morning.

He's not his father, after all.

“‘Rend!” The small hand tucked into his tugs. When he looks down, Bo is tugging at the toggles of his coat.

“It's hot!” Erend kicks himself a bit for not thinking of it as soon as they landed, stomach in knots about the day ahead.

“Sorry, buddy.” He kneels down in front of the little boy and helps him peel out of the heavy leather and sheepskin. 

“There we go.” Erend grins as Bo lets out a relieved little groan. “No more sky dumpling!”

“‘Reeeeeend!” Bo whines. “ M'not a dumplin!”

“I dunno,” Erend says, voice full of counterfeit skepticism. “Your Aunt Alva seems to think so - and she's really smart!”

Bo's eyes narrow. Alva had squealed happily the first time she'd seen him all bundled up against the chill of flight and the nickname had stuck.

“Still not a dumpling,” he enunciates crisply, all affronted little-boy dignity trying to avoid being tarred with that most horrible of brushes - ‘cute.’

“Not even for Aunt Alva?” Erend ask, voice full of doubt. Bo adores Alva. Almost as much as he does Avad.

“‘Cept for Alva.” he grumbles grudgingly. Erend thinks he deserves a medal of some kind for not laughing at Bo’s grumpy expression as his son concedes.

“Alright then, brightspark. Just for Aunt Alva, then.” He stands, wincing at the protesting creak of his knees. “Are you ready to go see about school?”

Erend tries to keep his voice light, encouraging. Bo starting school had been something of a sticking point for them for the last few weeks, his boy going pale and either quiet or frantic in turns any time Erend brought up leaving him in Hidden Ember for the day.

Anxiety is writ clear all over Bo’s tiny face, but he nods. Erend is so proud of him he could burst.

They’d come to agreement this morning - Bo driving such a hard bargain that Erend had been grudgingly impressed, despite being ready to tear out his own hair. Bo would do two days at the school and lessons at home, at least until he got more settled, and Erend promised to stay in Hidden Ember while Bo was with his class.

“And then tomorrow Uncle ‘Tallo is going to take you machine-scouting.”

That wasn’t to say it had been easy. Erend had discovered quickly that Bo was a sharp little thing, precocious and opinionated once he'd opened up. Even so, there had been no small amount of tears, and he’d absolutely been ready to cave and scrap the entire idea until Aloy had quietly spoken up and said she’d wished she’d been able to spend time with other children as a little girl. Kotallo had voiced his agreement in that grave tone he used when he was being serious, the one that Bo almost always heeded, much to Erend’s envy.

He should have expected that Kotallo would be as good at this as he was everything else.

Better than me, Forge knows.

Then again, he'd had far more experience - as had just about every Tenakth that he'd met, much to his surprise.

“You need to be around your age-mates, Bohren.” Kotallo had rumbled, getting down to eye-level with his sniffling son. “How else can you start picking your squad?”  He’d gestured to Erend and Aloy. “Don’t you want a squad like the Commander and Erend?”

Bo had nodded solemnly, chewing on his thumb the way he did when he was nervous.

“Then you need to start looking for them,” Kotallo had said. “And learn all you can so that you can be a good squadmate.”

It’s with this in mind that Erend holds out a hand to Bo, trying his best to project calm confidence.

“You’re gonna do great, buddy - I know it.”

Relief bubbles up in his chest as Bo tucks his hand back into Erend’s.

“That’s the spirit!” Erend encourages. “Ready to go find your squad?”

Bo narrows his eyes and scowls in an adorable imitation of what Kotallo called his ‘Marshal Face,’ then takes a deep breath and steps up beside him.

“Ready!”

The wave of love nearly takes him out at the knees, catching in his throat like joy made solid by the trusting warmth of that little hand in his. And for the first time? Erend thinks maybe he isn’t horrible at this, that maybe Bo will always stay this happy and safe and trusting.

He clears his throat, swallows down the incredulous laugh that wants to pour out of him, and smiles down at his son.

“Come on - we’ll even stop by and see your favorite storyteller first,” he says, with a gentle squeeze as they start walking into Hidden Ember. Bo explodes like a punctured Bellowback, bouncing with excitement, and starts regaling him with scattered details of Stemmur’s most recent adventure-story. He recognizes a heavily-edited account of how the three men and Aloy had drained the water from the ruin and can’t help laughing as Bo mimes a Tideripper, complete with a pained ‘roar’ of defeat and dramatic death throes.

The pair find Stemmur in his usual haunt - the open-air theater he’d built for their shows, directing some stagehands and adjusting an ember to project falling snow. His craggy face splits into a wide grin.

“The brave captain approached with his tiny charge, braving the harsh sun to bring a humble wordsmith new tales of adventure!” Stemmur reaches out, clasping his forearm with a smile before crouching down to offer the same to Bo who grips at it with glee before immediately pelting the wordsmith with a flurry of rapid-fire stories about their adventures to Scalding Spear and the Stand of the Sentinels.

Stemmur laughs, eyes soft with fondness as he listens to Bo attentively.

He seems to have that effect on people.

Erend wonders if Stemmur ever had children of his own. The wordsmith has been boots over bracers for Bo since they’d met.

“A settlement built entirely in the trees, you say?” Erend recognizes the glint in Stemmur’s eyes, and unfortunately this isn’t purely a social call. Knowing that there’s no point in trying to get a word in but not wanting to dampen Bo’s enthusiasm, Erend waits for Bo to take a breath, and interjects.

“Sorry to interrupt, brightspark - but I do need to ask him a question, ok?” He squeezes Bo’s hand gently in apology, Bo heaves the tiniest sigh, but nods and leans into Erend’s side. Stemmur chuckles as he straightens with a small groan and Erend winces in sympathy at the creak in his joints.

“Now then, Captain - what can this humble wordsmith do for you?”

"Well see, I was wondering..."

Bo looks up at him with wide eyes and Erend can feel the tiny hand tucked into his tremble. He hopes his boy doesn't -

Oh no.

Bo's lower lip wobbles, and something like panic fills his chest. Erend knows he's not forged right for a lot of things, but he definitely wasn't made to watch little faces crumple in fear. He crouches down, ignoring the ache in his bruised knees to make himself smaller and looking his son in the eye. Tries to keep his voice steady despite the Glinthawk battering his ribs at letting Bo out of his sight around so many strangers.

I'm supposed to be the calm one, here.

He's not sure when or how he'd gotten so attached to this boy that the idea of letting Bo out of his sight sends his heart climbing up into his throat, wonders if this is how he's always heard fathers are supposed to feel about their children.

"Hey hey - easy there brightspark." He soothes. "It's just for a little while. Like we talked about, remember?"

Bo nods tearfully, sniffling.

"Gotta find m'squad."

"That's right." Erend smiles with a confidence he doesn't feel, but it's hardly the first time and it seems to be helping stave off more tears. So he swallows down the urge to scrap this entire plan and take Bo home to people and places they both know are safe.

"And I'll be right here waiting for you, after."

"Promise?" Bo's question is damp around the edges, a hesitant little whisper like he's afraid - both of asking and of Erend's answer. "Not leaving?"

I'd walk naked into a foundry first.

"My soul to steel." Erend sketches a hammer over the heart Bo's just cracked in half with his insecurity before pulling him into a hug. Kotallo had warned him this might happen, that Bo's fresh loss and history of neglect might make him cling to Erend and fear separation.

Oddly enough, that was one thing he hadn't needed Kotallo to explain. He and Ersa had already clung together for survival for years before their escape. He still remembers when she was taken, though - when everyone wrote her off as another casualty of the Raids and lifted their mugs in remembrance while Erend sat in the corner shaking. Remembers the bone-chilling, cracking ice feeling of being that alone for the first time in his life and drowning in the isolating finality of it. For months after her return, his heart had pounded in his throat every time Ersa was out of sight. Dervahl and his cronies had laughed at him for it, teased him about being 'tied to her apron strings' before he'd learned to blunt his anxieties with ale and hide them under humor.

"Gonna come back?" Bo's arms are tight around his neck and the wet sniffles pressed against it make Erend squeeze him tighter until the boy lets out a tiny 'oof' and starts fidgeting.

"Always," Erend says gruffly, loosening his grip and fighting the lump in his throat as Bo pulls back. Erend watches him take a deep breath and let it out through his nose, the way he's seen Avad do for years when he's stressed but trying not to show it, and knows that Bo will never feel that same isolation again. Not with their strange little tinker's stall of a family. Even if something were to happen to him, Bo would have someone familiar - someone he knew was safe. Bo would never sit in a crowded mess tent, shaking with suppressed grief, alone in a world that Erend knows is often cruel to children.

He's already doing better for Bo, at least on that front, and the thought buoys his spirit enough to pull him to feet, smiling down and ruffling the boy's hair.

"Come on, brightspark - you'll never guess who's teaching today!" Erend teases, watching curiosity overtake caution on Bo's face.

"Who?"

Erend just smiles as they walk to the squat little building Stemmur had indicated.

"'Reeeeend," Bo whines, plaintive and wheedling. "Who?"

"You'll have to go in to find out."

Bo huffs, irritation written all over his face, and Erend struggles not to laugh as they stop in front of the door.

Bo eyes it nervously as the sound of other children laughing and deep, excited voice filter  through the door. He draws another deep breath, squeezing Erend's hand as they push the door open and walk through together. Bo pauses, tensing as all eyes in the room turn to him, and Erend braces for more tears.

"Well, if it isn't little Bohren!" a jovial voice booms from the front of the room.

"DUUUUUUUN!"

It's a happy shriek, and Bo sprints toward the figure at the front of the room just as Erend had expected, only to be scooped up by massive arms into a tight hug.

Twinkling blue eyes meet Erend's over his son's head with a wink, before setting Bo back on his feet and excitedly introducing him to the rest of his new classmates.

Bohren Vanguardson has a nice ring to it.

He'd never thought about someone carrying his name before, not with the way he'd tried his best to scrub away the stain of his own father's, but Bo doesn't object or correct him - and Erend is surprised by how much he enjoys the sound of it. He leans back against the wall, trying his best to be unobtrusive, but wanting to stay just a few minutes more. Just in case Bo needed him, of course.

But Bo turns to him with bright eyes and little wave before letting Gildun herd him towards a table surrounded by children and covered in brightly colored blocks.

Yeah, I think he's gonna be just fine.

Erend slips quietly out the door to the sound of his son's laughter and smiles.

Chapter Text

Later, as Bo's eyes grow heavy and his enthused rambling about his first day at school slows, the compressed coil of Erend's spine finally begins to relax.

Or maybe it's the cider and the easy conversation around the table, everyone having joined them for dinner to ask Bo about his day.

"Alright brightspark, your eyes are barely open, time for bed," Erend chuckles.

"But 'Reeeeend!" Weaponized cuteness stares up at him, all sad eyes and carefully crestfallen expression.

"Nope, not falling for it," Erend teases, scooping the little boy up in his arms. "Besides, if you want to go machine scouting with your Uncle 'Tallo tomorrow, you need to rest up, right?"

Bo's eyes narrow, but he pauses thoughtfully, his head drooping steadily closer to the support of Erend's shoulder despite his protests.

"Erend is right, a good hunter needs to be alert," Kotallo rumbles approvingly.

"Yeah, don't want you to end up as Scrapper-bait," Aloy teases, eyes soft. Erend is always mildly surprised at how good she is with him, considering she's never been around children much in the time that he's known her. But he figures that when one regularly seems to wake up, decide to manhandle the World Machine on its axis, and accomplish at least three impossible things before breakfast? A little thing like talking to tiny humans is probably pretty easy.

Bo sighs dramatically with the long-suffering air of one perpetually inconvenienced, and Erend struggles not to laugh, which is made rather difficult by Dekka and Aloy smothering giggles in his peripheral vision.

"Tell everyone goodnight." Erend manages, rather proud of his maintained composure, all things considered.

"G'night," Bo grumbles sulkily, the effect of which is ruined utterly by the huge, jaw-cracking yawn that follows.  Avad chuckles, an easy and relaxed rumble that seems to settle like a warm hand on the back of Erend's neck.

"If you go without a fuss, I'll come and read you a bedtime story." Avad's voice is cajoling and affectionate - affectionate enough to bring a flush to Erend's cheeks. He watches Bo's face brighten, and something flutters madly behind Erend's ribs at the answering tenderness of Avad’s expression.

"Two stories and you do the voices," his son retorts slyly - warming to the game. Bo has the former Sun-King wrapped around his littlest finger and what's even worse is that he knows it.

Avad clutches at his chest in mock outrage, as if Bo had demanded he empty the Sundom's treasury.

"Oh, here he goes," Fashav mock-whispers, rolling eyes belied by a grin as he nudges Kotallo in the ribs with an elbow sharply enough to make his mate grunt. "Vadi absolutely missed his calling on the stage."

"You drive a hard bargain, Most Compelling Bohren -" Avad's voice is theatrically grave as he shakes his head mournfully before pulling one of the most outrageously beseeching faces Erend has ever seen.

"- but do have mercy on an old man, Sunbeam?"

Unfortunately, it also involves Avad peeking up through his ludicrously long lashes in a way that threatens to strangle Erend entirely. Kotallo's voice is an amused rumble he can't quite make out, but Dekka and Aloy whisper back, giggling. Erend is almost positive he hears the jingling of shards changing hands, but then he's a little distracted by the wide-eyed pleading going on directly in front of him.

"I shall be deprived of sleep and doomed to be, as Aloy says, 'Scrapper-bait'." Avad wrings his hands entreatingly.

"Nuh uh," Bo's voice is smug, like a Strike player with what they know is a winning board. "'Rend will protect you!"

It's enough to make Avad break character, his aggrieved demeanor falling away. That laughing amber gaze flicks to his and holds and, just like that, Erend is practically paralyzed by the way his eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles. Transfixed by the subtle crow's feet that Erend hadn't ever expected to either live or be kept around long enough to see and the laugh lines that had eventually replaced the dark shadows under his eyes after those first hard years. Erend can see the span of their years together on Avad's face, in the dusting of silver at his temples - and it curls sweetly in his chest, warming him to his toes.

"Yes, he's always been rather good at that, hasn't he?" The words are soft, fond in a way that almost hurts to hear, and Erend struggles to breathe for a long moment.

"Yeah, well -" he finally manages to get out. "I'm retired now, so you should both get some sleep."

Did I really just tell Avad to go to bed?

Erend groans internally, feels his face and ears go hot, and tries really hard not to think overly much about 'Avad' and 'bed' in the same sentence.  

"Hear that Sunbeam, your dad wants us to go to bed."

Erend's brain sputters like a broken boiler for a long moment.

Dad.

It's such a small word, one syllable, and yet? It looms in the air, full of expectation and responsibility, heavy enough that Erend sees the moment Avad wonders if he's misspoken flickering across his face with uncharacteristic panic.

But in his arms, Bo is scoffing, entirely unbothered.

"Bargains beat bedtimes."

Erend almost regrets introducing him to Handa, but he couldn't imagine his son not meeting the woman that had taken both he and Ersa in after their flight from the Claim. In any case, her happy tears were worth the occasional headache her 'lessons' resulted in.

"One story tonight -" Avad raises a hand to forestall Bo's protestations. "With the voices, yes."

Avad pauses thoughtfully and Erend feels Bo holding his breath with anticipation.

"And then tomorrow after your scouting trip with Kotallo, I'll let you choose the ending, and we can write it together to practice your glyphs."

Erend tries to smother his grin as, in his arms, Bo practically vibrates with glee. If Bo enjoyed anything more than Avad's bedtime stories, it was spinning those stories with Avad.

His son makes a passable effort at keeping his excitement contained, though - even if it's laughably apparent to every adult at the table.

And most of them are, in fact, struggling not to laugh.

"Hmmm... " Bo feigns thinking about his answer for as long as his enthusiasm allows. "I gueeeess so."

It takes everything Erend has not to snort with laughter.

I'll have to let Handa know they need to work on his negotiating face.

Bo extends his hand to Avad, face as solemn and serious as a five-year-old could manage, and the former Sun-King rises to his feet in a slow uncurling of limbs that makes Erend's mouth go a little dry.

Even now that he is no longer required to walk around with what seems like acres of bronzed skin on display to prove the Sun's 'favor,' Avad still seems to be maddeningly averse to proper shirts. The open vests that he wears around as a passing nod to modesty do absolutely nothing to obscure the distracting trail of dark hair arrowing into the waist of his trousers. It draws Erend's eyes like Scalding Spear's tower and he tries to tell himself it's just the novelty, that's he's not used to Avad being so... fuzzy.

"A bargain well-struck, Vanguardson." Avad shakes Bo's hand with all the dignity of a diplomat but the warm, round tones of fond familiarity. His son turns back, struggling to yawn around a victorious grin, and wraps his arms around Erend's neck with a quiet hum of satisfaction. Erend is so caught up in the still-new thrill of hearing his name attached to Bo's and the smug smile now curving sleepily against his neck that he misses Avad speaking to him at first.

"Gathering sunbeams there, Erend?" Avad's eyes are as teasing and warm as his tone, and Erend's heart skips several beats as Avad holds out his arms. The Burrower flipping over in his stomach can't decide if it wants to flee or get closer.

"Here, let me take him - I have a bargain to fulfill after all," he chuckles, winking. Erend's heart probably shouldn't flutter madly as the backs of Avad's fingers brush his chest on their way to scoop the sleepy boy out of his arms, but there's something about the close softness of this moment that sticks his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

"Y-yeah, ok," he stutters. Erend's never had to look up at Avad exactly, the other man isn't that much taller than him. But the scant inch he has to lift his eyes with Avad this close? It makes him feel smaller, makes the air between them heavier and harder to breathe somehow, and Erend tries to ignore the curl of heat that it stokes in his gut.

"Come on, Sunbeam," Avad murmurs, so close that Erend can feel the brush of his words through the air. "Let's get you to bed so I can give you that story, hmm?"

Bo's arms uncurl from around his neck as he turns into Avad's hold, as eagerly as his obvious exhaustion would allow, and wraps them around the other man's neck instead.

"Don' forget th'voices," Bo mutters sleepily, and then his weight is gone from Erend's arms.

Erend suddenly feels like he's been stripped of a shield between himself and this odd tension, not eased in the least by the evidence of the subtle strength not many people realized Avad possessed in his frame as he shifts Bo's weight to his hip

"I wouldn't dream of it," Avad chuckles, expression achingly fond as he gazes down at Bo's head against his shoulder. It lingers as Avad looks back up at Erend and he swallows hard around the knot in his throat before clearing it gruffly.

"I'll be down in a bit, brightspark." He reaches out, almost in self-defense, and ruffles his son's hair - just to have an excuse to look at something other than the gentle smile and subtle joy on Avad's face.

He probably misses Itamen.

Bo hums a sleepy goodnight, face tucked into Avad's shoulder, and Erend chances a glance at the other man's face. Avad opens his mouth as if to speak, then closes it again, uncertainty flashing across his face so quickly that Erend almost misses it. He isn't sure why his stomach knots at whatever Avad is leaving unsaid or why there's a sense of loss swimming in the unrest, but the yearning for the return of that soft smile is as familiar as it is wrapped in shame, and he prays neither is visible on his face.

"Good night, Erend," Avad murmurs quietly, in a tone that Erend can't quite parse, and it feels intimate, somehow - like words whispered in close quiet, in the half-light between lovers. Desire punches him in the gut hard enough to steal his breath, so hard he's amazed he doesn't double over with it, the heat of it warming him to the ends of his fingers. The flush follows a moment after and Erend drops his gaze.

"Good night." He doesn't know why he whispers it, why it feels like something that should be hushed and secret, just between the two of them. He feels more than sees Avad move around him towards the stairs, and he's turning to watch before he can stop himself. He knows he shouldn't be staring after Avad like some lovelorn maid from one of those romances his king would steadfastly deny reading but that Erend has definitely seen surreptitiously tucked away amongst the scrolls and sheaves of official business. The thought of Avad devouring tawdry romance stories brings a smile to his face, even as it also brings a tinge of sadness.

Avad deserves that.

He'd braced himself for years against the prospect of watching Avad marry some court beauty, knowing that he had to get over Ersa at some point and do his duty, even with Itamen as his heir. But Avad never had, maintaining that he refused to marry for duty alone, and Erend had tried to tell himself that it was only care for his sister's memory that saw him breathe a sigh of relief as the years went on without any announcement of royal nuptials. It is the height of selfishness, he knows, feeling relief at Avad's lack of romantic entanglements.

Especially when his desire for love and romance was so obvious.

He'd seen the way Avad sometimes stared into the sunset wistfully, a book in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.

As if he wished someone was beside him, watching with him.

If Erend were someone else, Avad someone else, either of them anything other than what and who they were - Erend likes to think he'd have the courage to ask. Likes to think that a woman with Avad's dauntless heart and easy smile, his kindness and bone-deep sense of duty to all those around him might just be enough to hammer out the warped pieces of who Erend was and what he wanted.

Might be enough that he'd stop imagining what the bite of citrus would taste like on Avad's lips as the world turned the red-gold of sunset, the Tower of Songs ringing out the end of the day but the beginning of something else entirely. Erend wonders what it says about him that he imagines wooing like a Carja instead of daydreaming about crafting a courting gift - not that he could have ever made something worthy, even had Avad not been a king.

"A shard for your thoughts, Vanguardsman?" Dekka's voice is light and teasing, as if she's in on a secret, and Erend schools his face into an easy smile before turning back to the table.

"Oh, they're hardly worth all that, Chaplain," he gestures at himself wryly. "I'm a simple man."

She makes a considering sound and Erend hopes his humor smooths over the sharp edges of her inquisitiveness.

It's better to be the butt of his own joke than make everyone's ale go flat with his bellyaching, he's found. It makes him better company, keeps the atmosphere loose and warm and laughing. None of the silences and tension that always itch between his shoulder blades and make him want to draw in on himself. He wishes he could have been more like Ersa. Their father's rage had tempered her into something sharp and hard and useful instead of the brittle, pitted mess that Erend knows he his beneath his armor.

"You always do that." Dekka's words cut into the silence like an axe, the wedged head of her insight wielded like the weapon it is.

It makes Erend want to duck.

He opens his mouth to disarm and defuse whatever incisive thought it is that she's about to bring to bear on him, but she's already continuing - clearly in no need of his input.

"You wear foolishness like a shield, and it doesn't suit you in the least." He feels pinned under that considering gaze, stripped to his smalls with all of his many deficiencies on display.

"Chaplain -" Kotallo attempts to interject, voice conciliatory and eyes darting apologetically to Erend.

One of Dekka's hands flicks a sign that even Erend recognizes as field sign for 'hold' and a distant part of him muses, as Kotallo freezes then subsides into silence, that old soldiers are the same everywhere.

"No, Marshal - this has gone on too long." Her voice is firm, authority and the expectation of it being both recognized and respected written in every line of her body. Kotallo is easily twice her size and then some, and yet Erend watches Hekarro's High Marshal attend her words with visible deference.

Ersa would have loved the Tenakth.

She'd always had to fight for respect - but not the way Kotallo's people did. No, Ersa had fought the slings and arrows aimed at her back, meant to undermine her authority. Too many of them had turned to Erend for support, assuming he chafed under her hand as opposed to sheltering in it.

At least until I made enough of them eat their teeth, anyway.

"Erend?" Dekka's voice is softer, gentler this time as it pulls him from his thoughts, and he flushes with shame. He hasn't needed people to tiptoe around his feelings since he was a child.

Not that anyone did then, either.

"No need to coddle me, Chaplain." Erend replies briskly, dropping his smile even as his stomach knots wondering where he's fucked up this time, what rules he's broken without realizing.

"You're hardly the first officer that's found me lacking."

He's not sure how exactly he's offended the Chaplain if snotting all over her and knocking her the floor hadn't done it, but he wraps his fingers around the handle of a mug and collapses back in his chair tiredly. Erend fights the urge to curl in on himself as he stares at bubbles bursting on the surface of his cider, thankful for the fact that he's no longer in a position to cause a diplomatic disaster.

"Is that so?" Dekka's voice is curious and firm, but not sharp - a pillar meant to prop him up instead of a pritchel's punch to his center, and it drags his gaze up to meet hers. She gestures towards the stairs.

"Clearly your king does not agree," Dekka pauses thoughtfully. "Or is the Vanguard's captaincy an inherited position? I know the Carja believe in such...things."

The tiny wrinkle of her nose shows him exactly what the Chaplain thinks of that notion, and it pulls a rusted chuckle out of his chest before he can stop himself.

"No, it isn't." Aloy's voice cuts through the air vehemently, and the faith in him that Erend can hear in it curls warm under his breastbone.

"And no, he doesn't."  Fashav adds, voice serious and considering. "My cousin has always had a soft heart, but he's always put it aside for duty."

Erend's not sure what Avad's heart has to do with anything, but he's heartened by the show of support, nonetheless.

"If he didn't think you fit for the role, Vanguardsman, you wouldn't have been in one of the most trusted positions in the Sundom for almost the entirety of his reign." Fashav stares at him meaningfully over the rim of his mug, words punctuated by the sarcastic arch of a single brow.

He's familiar with the expression, having frequently seen it on Avad's face when someone was being particularly dense.

Erend flushes as the implied praise twists both sweet and sharp between his ribs, feeling his ears burn with their eyes on him.

"From the stories I've heard, Captain, were you Tenakth? You'd have about as much bare skin as the High Marshal, here." Dekka drawls into the silence where Erend's rebuttal should have been, gesturing towards Kotallo, who-

Is he nodding?!

"Now that is a fine idea, Chaplain." Kotallo voice is a deep, considering rumble as he and Dekka share a long look. Erend can practically see the conversation occurring in the air between them, even if he can't quite read the glyphs. "Perhaps a visit to the inker is just the thing."

Fashav straightens in his chair suddenly, as if coming to a realization.

"Sun, yes -" He turns back to Erend with a wink. "-the Savior and I were even helpful enough to set the precedent for you."

Erend eyes the jagged bands of black and teal circling Aloy's bicep and swallows.

"Besides, a little Watcher told me that you were helping negotiate some trade deals in Hidden Ember today - successfully, even." Fashav says slyly. "If you intend to do similarly with the Tenakth, having at least some of your many deeds on your skin will give you an edge."

"Only scabs or the shamed cover so much skin," Kotallo adds, grinning and gesturing at Erend's sleeves. "I thought you were like one of those Carja priests at first - just showing your face and your hands."

"Excuse me, but not everyone here is allergic to being properly dressed," Erend sputters, glaring across the table.

"But then I figured, based on what Studious Fashav here has told us of Sun-Priests," Kotallo continues, entirely nonplussed, "-that they probably don't empty a keg over an evening, and I decided that deliberately courting heatstroke must be an Oseram custom."

"You've clearly never met Mournful Namman," Erend mutters into his mug balefully. "He could give Avad a run for his shards."

Aloy cackles at his elbow.

"Come on Erend, the Liberation alone would be enough!" One of her sharp elbows catches him in the ribs.

"Grinding gears, Red!" Erend yelps, jerking away and scowling. "I'll get the Alight inked on my ass as long as you put those weapons away."

"No need to imitate the Desert Commander, I think -" Kotallo smirks as Fashav and Aloy practically howl with laughter. "I'm sure the inker will pick somewhere more visible your first time."

"Wait, first time?" Erend sputters, still rubbing his assaulted ribcage. "Hold on, now..."

"They're like bean bites," Aloy wheezes next to him, still fighting giggles. "Hard to stop at just one."

"Maybe for you -" Erend snorts. "Not all of us regularly grab the Machine by its cogs and shake it."

Fashav mutters something that sounds vaguely like 'excuses' around the rim of his mug and Erend finds himself plotting ways to explain to Avad how his king's favorite cousin ended up trapped in a Shellwalker crate.

"If you're afraid of some needles, Vanguardsman, just say so," Fashav smirks.

A Shellwalker crate in the Shining Wastes, Erend decides.

Wonder if I could get that Tallneck to kick it around a bit?

"You wish, " Erend snipes back, ignoring the small whisper of disquiet and draining his cup. "You're on."

Chapter Text

This isn't the first time Erend has regretted opening his big mouth to accept a challenge, far from it. But he trusts Kotallo, Fashav and Aloy have taken Bo climbing, and so they make the flight to Cliffwatch.  

Erend would rather have taken a Charger, given himself the time to wrangle his thoughts into something like order instead of the writhing knot of uncertainty that’s currently taken up residence in his gut. Then again, if he’d had more time to wallow in this odd mix of dread and hope? He might have thrown the gold out with the gravel and just called the entire thing off.

He’d bet shards Kotallo knew that too.

He tries his best to focus on the freedom of flight, the lack of eyes on him, and the chance to breathe. With the rising sun at his back and the lightening sky before him, Erend tries to inhale in time with the powerful whir of wingbeats to settle his jangling nerves.

Erend tells himself that surely Tenakth inkers are accustomed to scars - he's seen the shadows of them hidden within the patterns pricked into Kotallo's skin.

Erend isn't sure if he can stomach baring himself only to be told that it couldn't be done. Even if this inker didn't know the meaning of what they saw, the remnants of his father's cruelty were too symmetrical, too perfect to be anything but intentionally done. He'd considered showing Kotallo, asking outright to forestall this nauseating uncertainty. But the words caught in his throat, and there just hadn't seemed to be a good time - not that there would ever have been a good time. Erend supposes he should be grateful that neither Kotallo nor the keen-eyed Chaplain asked more questions after his episode a few nights ago. Dekka knew something, he could tell by the way her eyes frequently fell to his sleeves. Considering how he'd knocked her to the floor in his terror-soaked scramble to get away from her hands on his scars, caught firmly in the past where his skin had blackened and peeled before blistering into agony?

Well, Dekka may have been hampered by their cultural differences, but she wasn't stupid or unobservant.

I might have had an easier time if she were.

He thinks back to the inksmith in Mainspring, how he'd let the new beginning brought by the Liberation lull him into thinking maybe he could change as well. With a new name and new ink to cover the scarred, shrinking thing he'd been? The bright edge of a new life seemed just before him, his to reach out and grasp. Buoyant with the sparking promise of belonging glowing in his chest, he'd thought to reinvent himself - only for the inker to recoil in horror, anger and disgust flashing across his face.

‘But they’re going to know I tried my best to burn it out of you too.’

Erend figures this inker will tell him, one way or another, and worst case? Well, it's not like he's going to frequent Cliffwatch after all. He can just quietly fly home, and maybe Kotallo can convince them not to speak of it. He's spent most of his adult life covering the shame of his childhood - what's the rest of it, in the grand scheme of things?

Naturally, because he's always been a sticky cog in the Machine, Chekkatah and Ikkotah meet them at the landing platform.

Of course Kotallo would have called them.

His hopes of slipping in and out of Cliffwatch unnoticed, inked or not, go up in so much smoke. It's hard to hold it against Kotallo, though - not when he can see so clearly how the sun rises in his friend's face at the mere sight of his lovers. He knows how rarely their duties allow them these meetings and wonder if this is why Kotallo chose Cliffwatch instead of the Grove or Scalding Spear.

He wonders what it would be like to have someone wait for him like that.

He's not the sort to inspire that warm glow in the forge of someone's chest; never been anyone's hearth-fire. For the best, really. Anyone would deserve better than the scarred, warped thing Erend is underneath all his armor and ale.

Their Sunwings settle into stillness, spreading their wings to soak in the morning light as he watches Kotallo visibly struggle with the urge to run to them as soon as his feet touch solid ground.

He's victorious, as usual - but it's a very near thing, every step gathering speed until he crashes against Ikkotah's chest. Chekkatah is gentler, shadows of that fateful Embassy slowing his steps.

He watches Kotallo snuggle between the two men like a Burrower despite being taller and more heavily muscled than either of them.

Kotallo was gentle with Fashav, always had been - even more so in the years since that fateful Embassy. Or that's how Fashav tells it anyway, playfully needling his mate about Kotallo's soft, careful handling after their injuries and his own impending middle age. But here? With these two?

Erend watches as Kotallo lets himself go soft, the perpetual tension of a Marshal's bearing melting from his spine as he bends to nuzzle against Chekkatah's cheeks before peppering them with kisses. He turns and does the same to Ikkotah's graying temples before tucking his face into the Sky Clan Commander's neck. Erend stands silent and allows them their uninterrupted reunion, this sort of closeness not something they were generally able to indulge in public.  

The Marshals, and the High Marshal especially, were supposed to be impartial after all - even if the four of them were the most politely ignored and open secret in the Clan Lands. He watches Kotallo's hand skim along the black bars lining Ikkotah's forearm before tangling their fingers together and tucking them between their chests.

"I've missed you - both of you." The words are soft but heavy, like still waters or deep snow. "I always miss you."

The shorter Marshal tucks himself against Kotallo's back, much as Erend had once found him curled around Fashav's, wrapping his arms around that broad waist and pressing a kiss between the wings of Kotallo's shoulder blades. Erend ignores the stinging bite of envy and fights the urge to wrap his arms around himself.

Stupid to be jealous of a man like Kotallo, anyway.

Ikkotah's eyes meet his across the gap between who the three of them are together and who Erend is, caught in a trap of isolation and old shame that even a lugnut like him is smart enough to know is mostly self-inflicted.   

Would be like yelling at a coal seam over the soot.

"Well-met, Captain."

Erend nods, swallowing hard. He doesn't want to interrupt their reunion with his usual levity, but the lack of anything to say in its absence leaves him flat-footed, burning uncertainty playing the Clamberjaw along his rib cage. So he drops his gaze to the stone, giving the men as much privacy as he can here in the open.  

Bad manners to snoop at another man's smithy and all that.

Erend hears Kotallo clear his throat, the rasp of their armor as it parts, and then Chekkatah's warm voice.

"Come - she's waiting for us."

Erend's first thought is that the inker is tiny. He'd expected someone bigger to match the respectful, awed tones he'd heard from Kotallo.

"Do all Oseram wear so many clothes or are you just that thin-blooded?"

His second thought is that she reminds him of Hulda Forgewife and it straightens his spine into, if not fully 'at attention,' something so close as not to be easily distinguished from it. He doesn't know if Tenakth elders have the same terrifying skill with wooden spoons, but he isn't willing to chance it.

The cookies had been worth it, but the bruise on his hand and the burns on the roof of his mouth had lasted for a week. Ersa had laughed herself sick.

"I..uh -" his entire command of the spoken language leaves him in a rush as he realizes he has no idea how to address this clearly important woman.

And I really don't want to offend the person that's about to poke me full of holes.

"Go easy on him, Bakkala - it's his first time," Chekkatah chides, laughter lurking behind the respect in his tone. She huffs at him grumpily, but even Erend can hear the fondness in it, and when she turns back to Erend, her eyes are warmer.

"Never inked an Oseram before," she says consideringly. "Don't you dirt-grubbers have your own inkers?"

Erend clears his throat, words flowing back now that there's a question he knows how to answer.

"We do, but - " He hesitates before deciding honesty is the best policy with someone he's, hopefully, about to let poke him full of holes. "They weren't able to... they couldn't-"

Her brow furrows.

"They could not, or you could not?"

"Scars," he finally manages to spit out, his heart starting to drum the familiar beat of fear against his ribs. "They said they couldn't tattoo over the scars."

Bakkala's eyes narrow.

"Have you no unscarred skin, then?"

Erend flushes, looking down at his hands.

"It is the scars I'd like to cover, ma'am."

She scoffs.

"Scars are signs of victory, of survival. I'd thought even the Oseram would know that. Your soldiers are formidable," the inker grumbles, as if the very words pain her. "In their own way."

"Not these," Erend chokes out, chest growing tight.

Her head tilts like a curious Watcher.

"Are they punishments for a crime amongst your people?"

And isn't that a loaded question, Erend thinks to himself, opening his mouth to deflect its weight with yet another laugh at his own expense. But he meets Bakkala's eyes, and the words die a quiet death behind his teeth. He sees something of Dekka's sharp insight there, the same desire to help, and finds himself speaking truth before he can stop it, compelled by the steadiness of her gaze.

"I'm sure my father thought so."

He swallows around the knot in his throat, hears Kotallo's sharp inhale behind him.

"But no," he whispers hoarsely, and for the first time Erend speaks the truth he knows but that still tastes like a lie on his tongue. "- I committed no crime."

She nods, eyes grave. She's quiet for a long moment, considering. The silence eats at him, gnawing on his nerves until he, veteran of a hundred battles, is fighting not to wring his hands and shuffle nervously.

"An inker's mission is to prevent forgetting."

Erend's heart sinks into his boots.

She won't help me.

It had been stupid to hope, Erend supposes - usually is in his experience, unless Aloy is involved. He drops his head with a sigh.

"I thank you for your time -" Bakkala cuts him off.

"I wasn't finished," she barks, and Erend stiffens to attention again, startled eyes flying to her face.

"To show the courage of a person, their fortitude in the face of life's battles on their skin, is not only done to tell others of their deeds, but to remind themselves as well." Her eyes move beyond him to the men at his back.

"So that they remember their own strength, of past battles fought and won, when the present one feels hopeless."

She smiles, a bit sad and a bit sweet, but all of it wrapped in a keen understanding as she looks at Erend again.

"I would not help a man conceal his own crimes," she says, her voice gentle. "But the crimes of another, survived and conquered?" She gestures at his armor, and around them, as if to say, 'you've made it here'.

"Is that not, in itself, a victory worthy of being inked on one's skin?"

It's never felt like a victory to Erend. There were days, but more often nights, when ale and isolation had turned his mind into a dark and sticky pit of self-loathing, that it had felt like a mistake.

"Victories should be recorded, and if they act as armor against your mind's attacks?" Her lips quirk again, wry, as she nods at him.

"A good soldier uses every advantage to hand, do they not?"

His heart surges with hope.

"So, let's see them then, Erend Vanguardsman." He startles at the sound of his own name, not having expected her to know it. "And we will see if I can make your skin your own again."

His fingertips are cold as they work at the buttons around his wrists, fear and hope wrapping twin nooses around his throat, pulling taut and making it difficult to breath for a long moment.

"And you three." He hears a shuffle of feet behind him, and a throat clearing hastily.

Apparently he's not the only one with a perfectly reasonable fear of wizened old women possessed of a sergeant's bark, and the thought makes him smile just a bit.

"Let me get a look at you." She rises from her chair, more spry than he had anticipated, and steps around him.

Her voice fills the air, chasing out the looming silence pressing down on Erend's chest, and he's so grateful that he could cry.

It's easier without eyes on him, and the buttons slip free, one after the other. He starts with the same arm his father had.

Folds the linen back over his wrist. Breathes.

"You're running out of skin, High Marshal." Her voice floats, wry and teasing, over his shoulder. "Seems like just yesterday I inked your soldier's mark."

Fold.

Breathe.

"There's still an open spot right above his -" Erend hears the meaty impact of a hand on skin and Chekkatah's theatrical yelp that trails off into the sort of rich laugh that would normally see Erend joining in despite himself.

Fold.

Breathe.

"And you, Chekka," Bakkala scolds, albeit with a tone round with affection. "Still picking fights with those bigger than you?"

The bottom edge comes into view, and for a moment, Erend can smell his own flesh burning. He braces and he breathes, imagining the palace gardens and the smell of orange blossoms, sun chasing the chill from his hands as he moves through the Falling Sun cycle. Tries to let one memory chase away the other.

"He can't help it, really -" Ikkotah rumbles. "Everyone is bigger than him." There's a scandalized gasp and the sound of more scuffling. Kotallo's chuckle helps ground him in the present, smooth and deep and familiar.

Fold.

Breathe.

Rolling up his sleeves feels like peeling off his own skin.  But looking down feels like sewing it back together - the intake of breath and the steeling of your nerves. Gathering the courage to pierce the needle through, knowing it will hurt, but pushing through anyway because it's better than bleeding out.

Fold.

Breathe.

Done.

It's smaller than he remembers, having avoided looking as much as he could over the years, letting his eyes slide over his forearms unfocused as he dressed and undressed.

The second is easier, the way it is with so many things - hangovers or deaths or killing a man. The nausea passes, the shaking stops, you close your eyes for a moment, and then you just... get on with it. Because that's just how the world works, the Machine never stops.

Erend folds, and he breathes, and lets the bickering behind him drown out the ringing in his ears.

He turns his arms over, takes in the waxy whiteness of gnarled skin. It feels odd to see that they hadn't grown with him, shrinking on his skin while still looming so large in his mind. They're a little distorted now, but the edges are still too clean to be anything but deliberate.

"You're pale enough to take color well, at least."  Bakkala's voice is matter of fact, as if she knows gentleness would crack him down the middle, and Erend begins to suspect that Tenakth inkers are more than just artists with needles.

"May I?"

She extends her hands, palms up, and waits for him to come to her. He's frozen for a long moment, the hissing fuse of uncertainty burning in his gut, before he reaches back and rests his forearms in her hands. She hums thoughtfully, head tilting this way and that, but never closes her hands - never grips his skin.

It's as if she's telling him that he can pull away whenever he likes.

His suspicion tempers into a hard certainty, as does the realization that Dekka and Kotallo have managed him, sent him here for precisely this purpose.

"Very old," she says, face unreadable. "How old were you?"

He can't find it in himself to be angry with them, even when his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth as he struggles to answer.

"11, maybe 12?" It's a hoarse whisper, one he thinks should sound louder for the way it feels torn out of his chest by something barbed and vicious. "Just old enough to be apprenticed."

The bickering behind him stops instantly. There's a wounded little sound that seems to echo in a silence so profound Erend thinks he could hear a nail fall on a pillow - he's not sure which of them it comes from, but he can feel his face flush. Bakkala's eyes remain steady on his, even as he feels her fingers spasm where they touch his skin.

She still doesn't close her hands as his fingers curl into fists to keep from shaking.

‘Every time those filthy hands of yours touch anyone, you’re going to remember this moment.’

"Do they hurt still?" Her voice remains even and calm, and he tries to lean on it to steady his own as he considers her question with his father's words echoing in his ears.

‘And they’re going to know that you didn’t come from bad stock, that you warped all on your own.’

"Sometimes."

‘But they’re going to know I tried my best to burn it out of you too.’

"When it rains."

It had rained the night they'd fled, Ersa bundling him into the back of Handa's cart cursing and crying in the same breath. Erend remembers the rage pouring from her along with the scent of hot iron.

He remembers too that her hands never shook.

He hadn't known their father was dead for over a month, not until after the healers had plied him with Sweetsleep and trimmed away the last of the dead flesh.

"Only sometimes, though - and especially if it's cold."

For weeks, he'd stayed the kind of teeth-rattling, bone-chilling cold that saw people fall asleep never to wake up again. He remembers thinking that it would have been a kindness as his skin blistered and oozed, burying his face into Ersa's shoulder as his arms were wrapped and unwrapped over and over.

It had been years before the smell of honey hadn't turned Erend's stomach, his entire body tensing as if expecting past pain.

"May I touch them?" His entire body flinches without his permission, the world and Bakkala suddenly coming back into focus, even as he curses himself.

Of course she needs to touch them lugnut.

If all goes well, she'll be doing more than touching them shortly, and so Erend clears his throat and nods - not trusting his voice.  His arms tremble, just for a moment, in the absence of her steadying hand.

"The left first." Bakkala waits for his nod before running what looks like gentle fingers over the twisted skin. At least he thinks they're gentle - all he feels is the faintest hint of pressure. Her eyes flick between his skin and his face as she explores the texture of the scar, catching the small twitch as her fingers catch the sensitive edge.

"No feeling in the scar itself?" Erend shakes his head.

"Gets a little touchy around the edges."

"And the other is the same?" She looks to him for permission, her hand hovering over the matching brand on his right arm.

He nods, both consent and confirmation, and Bakkala repeats her examination before straightening with a sigh. Erend braces himself for an apologetic denial, for the weight of resignation to settle back on his shoulders.

"Black bands, I think -" she says confidently, "if you want them hidden entirely."

Bakkala continues speaking, grumbling something about colors and 'not my usual style' but Erend is too stunned to catch most of it.

"You mean -" his throat closes around the words.

"Yes, Erend," Bakkala smiles gently. "It can be done."

Erend's first thought is that this is impossible, that things like this don't happen to him - and yet? There's no trace of a lie or a joke on that wrinkled face. Elation crowds the air out of his chest, rising up his throat into a laugh that's damp around the edges. 

"When can we start?"

Chapter Text

Erend finds it odd that the inker expects him to talk.

"Tell me of your battles, Erend Vanguardsman," Bakkala had demanded - brisk and businesslike as she set up her implements, but with a kind set to her mouth and curiosity in her voice. "Not the ones in the West - all know of those."

She pauses, thoughtful.

"At least not yet anyway."

So just to be contrary, and not at all because the rest of a half-spoken truth still sticks like tar in his throat, he'd started in the middle.

Somewhere between running from an exploding warehouse with a madly laughing Aloy and fighting resurrected terrors of black metal and glowing red eyes atop the Alight, she'd begun working. It hurt less than he expected, which was a rare gem in Erend's experience - the bite is usually worse in reality, even when you're used to it. But like most pain, he found once he settled into the rhythm of it, breathing it in and then out?

It became background noise, the tapping of a bird at a window, or a hammer at a distant forge - too far away for the scents of hot metal and smoke to curl around his lungs like a Slitherfang and squeeze.

The band on his left arm is beginning to take shape as he describes the smoke and blastpowder madness of the Liberation, the hope for a new world, and the sound of Meridian's gates falling. He leaves out the part where his heart thumped like a frightened rabbit at the warmth of Avad's hand on his shoulder, but not in the way he was used to. Doesn't mention the danger posed by the laughing amber warmth of those eyes, or the burning helplessness Erend had felt at the bewildered bleakness of them as Avad had risen to his feet with a bloody sword in his hand, devastation in the set of his shoulders and his father's crown on his head.

He figures there are some battles a man should probably keep to himself.

Erend shoves the thoughts aside, instead peering curiously at this almost-foreign stretch of skin. It feels strange, makes him almost uneasy after decades of deliberately letting his eyes skate across it without allowing his gaze to settle there - like one of those drones Aloy had nearly given him a heart attack chasing down years ago.

Stark spikes of black extend up from his wrist in a jagged crown, or maybe a wall of dark teeth - the longest of which already reaches halfway to the bend of his elbow.

The Spire.

"Does everyone in the east have some sort of blood feud with walls?" Ikkotah grumbles, bewilderment evident in every syllable.

"You, this Forgewoman, and the former Sun-King took cannons to the walls of Meridian - which my mate tells me dwarfed the Bulwark even when it was still whole."

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches the older man begin ticking off incidents on his fingers.

"Then, of course, the Champion reduced the mighty Bulwark to so much gravel - not to mention her penchant for causing explosions in general."

"Didn't she bring half the Spinebreak down on her head, too?" Chekkatah adds to Ikkotah's enthusiastic nod. "I heard that's how she met the Utaru."

Kotallo hums in agreement as Erend flinches, needles tapping sharply enough into the hollow of his elbow to take his breath. Bakkala chuckles sympathetically, and his face burns . He was hoping to get through this without embarrassing him-

"That spot gets everyone, boy," she huffs, interrupting the thought with a roll of her eyes, but they're kind and crinkled at the corners. "You're taking this very well - a soldier to match your reputation, certainly."

Erend ducks his head to hide a pleased flush as, behind him, Kotallo adds his handful of shards to Ikkotah's tally of destruction.

"I think that was an Old Ones' ruin, actually -" the High Marshal corrects them before continuing. "Although she did clear the Spinebreak, eventually."

Erend can practically hear the grin in his voice.

"And I believe there were some explosions involved."

The older men chuckle as they lean against each other in Erend's peripheral vision. It's a comfortable, easy sound that curls under his breastbone - warm like sunshine but filed to a wicked point by the rasp of his own envy.

"And then Beta finished the job, once the Chief opened the Stillsands to Oseram caravans - officially."

"Listen," Erend chimes in, distracting himself so that he doesn't twitch away from her needles, and resolving not to let jealousy win. "You can't count the Oseram - it throws off the averages. Most of our stories start with an ale and end with a 'boom'."

To his relief, Bakkala moves on from the bend of his elbow, and his grin comes easier.

"Most of the good ones, anyway."

"Speaking of stories," Bakkala grumbles. "I'm supposed to be hearing yours, Vanguardsman."

He hadn't registered the absence of her needles tapping ink into his skin, distracted by Ikkotah's commentary on "blast-happy foreigners."

"My apologies, ma'am." He uses his most polite court-voice, the one that always worked its charm on those scheming noble matrons who, somehow, always seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of unmarried daughters or sisters or cousins.

"Where were we?"

Judging by the unimpressed arch of one blue-streaked eyebrow, Tenakth matrons were made of sterner stuff and immune to his wiles.

"You were already a soldier before this...Liberation, then?" There's a curious lilt to Bakkala's words, a current of unease threaded through it that’s echoed in the whispers behind him. Erend hums affirmatively around a mouthful of the cider Kotallo had quietly pushed into his hands while Bakkala had readied her tools and ink.

Good thing, too - all of this storytelling had proved thirsty work.

"Ersa and I had been with our crew for..." Erend closes his eyes and thinks back. " -four or five years, maybe? When Avad came to us."

The inker resumes her tapping with a quizzical grunt and he lets one sting drown out another.

"My older sister," he clarifies. "May her ashes rest warm in the forge."

Bakkala nods sympathetically,

"I wasn't on the payroll proper, not at first."  

His arms had taken almost a year to heal, even longer to stop cracking and bleeding with the life they'd led on the road.

"But once -" Erend tips his mug, indicating the arm Bakkala is working on. " - all that healed up enough, I started training. 

Someone behind him sucks in a shuddering breath that Erend tries to ignore.

“Had to pull my weight, you know?" 

Ersa had burned herself down to embers, making sure they had the shards for the healers Erend needed before Dervahl signed them on officially and they could depend on the crew's own as part of their contract. Still, he suspects he owes Handa his life even if the old dame would never discuss with him the deal she'd struck with Ersa that night.

"So we both signed on with Dervahl's Freebooter crew."

Ersa had been making a plan for them, he knows - hiding away her shards from working the tavern like a Scrounger with scrap. But their father's body in the street and Erend's blackened and blistered skin had changed things - and quickly.

In the present, Bakkala is tapping a red sunburst rising between the ring of dark teeth and Erend's elbow.

"The Raids were starting to gain steam, then."

He remembers worried tones and hushed voices while Ersa thought he was snoring off the Sweetsleep or the Scrappersap or whatever had helped get him through the evening's bandage changes without screaming.

"The Carja coming further north, all the time."

None of them had believed the stories coming out of Meridian at first.

"Before the Raids, you know, Freebooters were mostly just hired to protect caravans from bandits and run-ins with the occasional machine herds that weren't on the maps."

But then they'd seen the drawn, pale faces of craftsmen and tinkers quietly begging for an armed escort back to the Claim, always in the middle of the night, their frightened families huddled together behind them like freezing birds on a branch.

"We started protecting more and more caravans headed back to the Claim. The Mad King may have sacrificed under his precious sun, but he came for people in the middle of the night - at least in the beginning."

Their fear and helplessness loom large in his memory, layered as they'd been over his own similar hurts.

"Preventing panic, probably. But then even the Claim wasn't safe."

There was always something uniquely terrifying about being dragged out of a deep sleep and into the middle of someone else's rage, he'd found.

"We weren't even used to fighting proper soldiers-"

Not that they'd actually been proper soldiers after the first year or two - mostly boys just a little older than him, but twice as green. He'd quietly buried himself in ale the day Avad had ended the conscription of the Sundom's boys into the army.

"- much less defending settlements or repelling sieges."

He uses a large gulp of cider to patch the crack he can feel threading through his voice, thinking of a town that's no longer on any map, anywhere - now just as much a boneyard of old beams and bitter echoes as any crumbling ruin of the Old Ones.

"But we learned quick enough."

But they hadn't been quick enough, not really. Not when they'd sent monsters like Helis who had stacked the bodies outside the walls of Pitchcliff until they'd made a ladder.

"And then Dervahl had the idea to take the fight to them."

He breathes through the twist in his gut at the memory of Dervahl's predatory smile as he'd described his plans for captured Carja.

"That's when they took Ersa."

Bakkala pauses, giving him room to work the bellows of his lungs until he no longer feels the edges of the world closing in on him. It's a silent kindness he could hug her for  - if he felt like risking a blade between his ribs.

"She was on some raid or other - breaking the supply lines, you know?" Bakkala nods in understanding.

He'd been uselessly elsewhere instead of by her side.  He should have known better - bad things had always happened when they weren't together, watching each other's backs.

"Everyone had written her off as dead - people didn't come back from the Sun-Ring."

His voice cracks, and her tapping doesn't resume, the lack of pain pulling him fully back into the now - to Cliffwatch and a life he never expected to lead, even if Ersa is still gone. His eyes burn, face hot and tight as he tries to focus on Bakkala's face.

"I'm sorry," Erend apologizes hoarsely. "This isn't what you asked for."

He's mortified to find his eyes welling with tears, tries to swallow them down.

"I asked to hear of your battles." She leans back in her chair, eyes steady and unflinching on his.

"And all here know they don't always end in victory." She lifts her chin to indicate the men behind him. He turns, tries to stifle the urge to hide from the grave understanding he sees their faces. Tears have tracked their way through Chekkatah's paint as he leans into Ikkotah's side, and something burns in Erend's chest - secondhand shame and jealousy maybe?

He wonders what it would be like to feel that safe, that sure of comfort.

But he's a grown man, not that lonely boy sitting alone in a mess tent while people raise a funeral toast to the only person that ever protected him - he shouldn't need it now.

Ikkotah is as stoic as ever, but his eyes are soft and sad. Kotallo moves in his peripheral vision, far too silent for a man his size, and the warm bulk of him is settling next to Erend on the low bench before he can react. Erend stiffens, anticipating questions he doesn't want to answer. But they never come - just the cautious press of Kotallo's shoulder into his, as if he is unsure of his welcome.

Something is rattling in his chest, vibrating like a badly seated bolt, but he tries to relax into the warmth of a body next to him - unfamiliar as it is.

"There is a reason we don't see the inker alone, Erend."

Kotallo's voice is low, quiet, and Erend can almost feel the rumble of it where they're pressed together - knee to hip, hip to shoulder.

"Things come to the surface with the blood." Kotallo nods at the red beading on his arm from Bakkala’s needles.

"You knew this when you sent me here." Erend's voice is thick, not with accusation, but something heavier, carried for longer.

"Yes," Kotallo sighs. "The Chaplain and I weren't sure what else to do."

Erend lets himself relax fully into Kotallo's side, tensing as an arm wraps around his shoulders - but shakes his head when Kotallo starts to remove it.

"Don't."

The heat of another body is sinking into his bones, something in the taut tripwire of his spine relaxing for the first time in what feels like it might have been forever, and it's like the moment after the battle-high leaves. Exhaustion, soul-deep and crushing, hits him like a hammer.

"Please," Erend whispers, letting his eyes fall shut. "It's good."

The arm around him tightens.

"Does her story end there, Erend Vanguardsman?" Bakkala's voice slips softly into the silence instead of splitting it. "Does yours?"

It's a loaded question, but in the way a cart is loaded instead of a cannon. Silence reigns for a long moment, but it's the kind of silence that is loud - full of invisible words waiting to taste the air, for lungs to breathe them into being and free them.

"There is no wrong answer, Erend." Ikkotah's voice is the warm press of a hand on his shoulder - steadying and sure.

"There would be no shame in stopping here, for now."

Chekkatah.  

He turns to look at the Marshal, remembers the protective curl of his body around Fashav's as they lay bloody on the ground outside of Barren Light. Sees in the man's eyes that he remembers Erend arguing to keep them together - to the healers behind the walls and beyond.

"No," he finds himself saying. "No, her story didn't end there."

He extends his other arm to Bakkala who nods, the beginnings of a smile on her face, and feels Chekkatah settle against his open side.

"And neither did mine."

Ikkotah's back presses into his, a quiet support and promise of safety, his eyes on the door.

"Tell me," Bakkala says gently.

And so Erend does.

Chapter Text

Erend finds, over the next week, that he can't stop staring at his own skin - red and tender around the raised edges of Bakkala's patterns at first, then peeling and itchy. 

Sweet fucking forge, the itching. 

The inkbalm helped but he still wanted to scratch his skin off half the time. Once or twice, only the perfectly reasonable terror of Bakkala finding out he'd disobeyed her instructions stayed his hand. Kotallo had handed him a small stone pot, painted in Sky Clan blues and pinks, with a strange sense of gravity - one that left Erend feeling he'd like he had missed something important. But neither Ikkotah nor Chekkatah had commented, the latter gently leaning to bump their shoulders together with a fond smile on his face. 

Erend sighs in relief as he works it into the peeling skin of his forearms.

Ikkotah's gaze had been deep, dark, and quietly considering - keen in a way that would normally have made Erend want to hide. But he'd remembered the warm press of Ikkotah's back against his, its quiet reassurance of safety, and felt oddly sheltered by that gaze instead of exposed.  

He's lost in thought, delicately tracing the jagged spike of the Spire and the red sun above it, when there's a strangled noise from the doorway. Erend's head snaps up in alarm to find Avad frozen and red-faced, wide eyes fixed on his forearms. 

Erend flushes and starts to roll his sleeves down. 

Avad had been oddly quiet about Erend suddenly decorating his skin, staring for a long moment before congratulating Erend in a strangely strained voice and and quickly excusing himself. 

"Don't- " Avad blurts out, raising a hand. "- please." 

There's something fierce and hot in his gaze that wraps itself around Erend's lungs and squeezes, tightening with each step Avad takes into their shared room. 

"I've not actually had a chance to look at them, you know." The lightness of his voice doesn't match the intensity of his eyes, but Erend swallows and rolls his sleeve back up.

"Ah -" Avad's brow creases suddenly, his gaze dropping to the floor. 

"Unless you'd mind, of course."

"No!" Erend blurts out, desperate to see that anxiety disappear from Avad's face. It echoes a bit, amplified by the metal floors and walls, and Erend winces. 

"No, of course not," he continues in a more moderate tone. 

Even if it did feel a bit like being stripped naked. 

Don't think about 'Avad' and 'naked', lugnut. 

Especially in the close quiet of the room they shared with Bo, looking up at Avad from the edge of his bed. And wasn't that a trial of it's own, listening to Avad's quiet breathing in the night, soft exhales loud enough in Erend's ears that he could imagine him even closer. 

Next to him, even. 

He pushes that thought away, hoping Avad can't hear the pounding of his heart. It's somehow easier to think of these things now, some of his shame bled away by the relentless pricking of Bakkala's needles and the soft reassurance that Kotallo and his mates didn't know they provided. Easier to believe that he isn't warped beyond repair.

At least, it seems, when it doesn't involve Avad. 

"May I?" Avad shifts uncertainly in front of him, as if unsure of his welcome.

Silly man.

Erend, the affection burning in his chest pushing him to boldness, gestures at the space next to him instead of just holding his arms out for inspection. There's something complicated happening in Avad's head, Erend can tell. 

"Your eyebrow is twitching." It comes out as more accusing than he intends, but Avad's eyes fly to his. "What's sticking in the cogs?"

Avad scoffs like Erend hasn't been watching his face and deciphering his moods for twenty years. 

"Nope - I've been watching you do that for years. You're overthinking something."

Worry begins to tangle in his stomach, and Erend stands.

"It's your only tell." 

Did he need me for something?

"Is there something-"

Avad huffs haughtily, interrupting Erend and rolling his eyes.

"I do not have a tell." 

Erend grins, settling now that they're back on familiar ground with no new disaster brewing in the barrel. 

"Whatever you say, Your Radiance," he drawls, recognizing the laughing eyes behind Avad's theatrical scowl.

"Vile slander!" Avad mock-growls. "And treason, besides!"

A small hand tugs at his belt as Erend fights to control his laughter, and turns to look down at his son.

"What's tw-" He watches Bo stop, turn the word over in his mouth for a moment, and Erend's chest fizzes with pride as he watches Bo enunciate the word carefully. 

"What's treason, 'Rend?"

Erend has been incredibly impressed thus far with the quality of Bo's education by the rotating roster in Hidden Ember, but particularly in terms how confident Bo has become in his speech. Stemmur Wordsmith has always had a gift for oration, and his enthusiasm has shone through in his teaching of it if Bo is any indication. 

'Well -" Erend casts about for an age appropriate explanation, but Avad is already bending to scoop a laughing Bo into his arms and into the air.

"Treason, young Vanguardson, is when your dad says horribly mean, absolutely untrue things about his king," Avad declaims dramatically, with the injured air of the unfairly maligned. 

Bo's bright copper giggle wrapped around the husky shiver of Avad's laugh is a sound that Erend is coming to realize that he wants to hear every day for the rest of his life, but he can't ever say that out loud - not in a way that wouldn't hammer his feelings plain to everyone around him. He best he is allowed to hope for is...this. 

The Carja might be comfortable reaching for their Sun, but any Oseram knows better than to stick their hands into the heart of a glowing forge. 

No, he'll have to be content with the warmth of Avad's eyes as he looks at Bo and his quiet breathing across the room at night. 

"Os'ram don't have kings, silly," Bo giggles again, as Avad squeezes him tightly before settling the boy on his hip. 

"No, but I do." 

The thought zips out from behind his teeth like a tenacious Burrower before he can stop it, and Erend watches Avad's eyes blow wide as they shift back to him in surprise.

Bo's head tilts at him like a curious Watcher and Erend can see the little cogs turning even he feels the tips of his ears go red.  

But before he can say anything to defuse the sudden tension and Bo's inevitable curiosity, Avad speaks first - again. 

"Do you know what a king is, Bohren?" His son turns to look at Avad, responding to the shift to seriousness in the man's voice, but he doesn't tense the way he had those first few weeks. The hammer of Erend's heart misses a strike as Avad smiles reassuringly at his son, slowly reaching up to gently tap Bo on the end of his nose.

"A king is someone who has a lot of responsibility -"

Erend recognizes the cadence of his words from when Itamen was young - careful and kind, but unflinchingly honest. 

"Like Uncle Tallo?" Bo interjects eagerly and Avad raises a gently chiding eyebrow. 

"Stemmur would not approve of you interrupting, Sunbeam." Bo looks suitably chastened, but not crushed - another improvement Erend is thrilled to see in him. 

"But yes, like Marshal Kotallo. Even more like Chief Hekarro."

Bo's eyes widen.

"But he's the boss of all the Tena-" Bo stops, nose crinkling in irritation, and Erend barely manages to hold in a laugh. The last syllable still gives him trouble. 

"Boss of all of the Clans," he amends, stubbornly. Avad's lips quirk, holding in a chuckle for the sake of Bo's pride.

"Just so. A king is the same. They have to take care of people because they have power - because that's their responsibility." 

Avad's gaze turns to Erend, soft and steady and full of something that feels like standing on the edge of the Mesa and looking down. 

"But even kings need help."

Avad speaks to Bo but his eyes never leave Erend's. 

"Because a king is just a man in a fancy hat without people that believe in him."

There's no air left in the room, somehow, not pinned between the anvil of Avad's eyes and his own hammering heart. 

"To help him when his responsibilities are too heavy for one person."

That's fine, though, Erend can't seem to make his lungs work anyway. 

"And 'Rend helped you?" 

"More than anyone." 

Erend is burning, consumed by the exploding forge of his chest, and finally looks into the heart of what he's known for years. 

"I couldn't have done it, couldn't have been king, without him."

I'm in love with him. 

"But you're not king anymore?"

Erend hears Bo's curious words as if from a distance, still reeling from what feels like a world-ending explosion - and he's pretty familiar with those at this point. 

"No, my brother is."

"So he is Erend's king then?"

I'm in love with Avad.

"No." Erend's voice cuts into the space between his son's question and Avad's answer - a hoarse, rasping sound squeezed out around the knot in his throat. 

"No, he isn't."

Avad's eyes blaze into his, almost gold in the dim light of the room. 

"So you're still 'Rend's king!" Bo asks, with the satisfied air of someone that's solved a mystery. 

"Yes," Erend blurts out, throat closing around the words caught in his chest - at once both desperate and terrified for Avad to hear the words he isn't saying. 

I love you. 

"He's still my king." 

At least not yet, not out loud, and maybe never - but finally saying it to himself feels more like freedom and less like fear than he ever expected. 

He watches as Avad inhales sharply, then releases a shaky breath, and for the first time in decades - maybe in his entire life, Erend lets himself truly hope. 

Bo huffs grumpily and breaks the burning golden strand holding their eyes together. When Erend looks at him, Bo's brow is furrowed, scowl fixed firmly on his face. 

"This king stuff makes no sense." 

Erend laughs, the tension not... broken, exactly. But as Avad's eyes soften, intensity fading like the gentle melding of colors at dusk, it eases into something lighter and easier to bear. 

The easiest it's ever been, maybe. 

Because Erend is staring into it now, the heart of twenty years of denial and longing, and wishing he were braver. Wishing he had Ikkotah's surety and Chekkatah's ease. Wishing he were more like Fashav, who had seized a new life with both hands and transformed himself into someone comfortable in his own skin and Kotallo's arms. 

Wishing he could look into a mirror and say, truthfully, that he is ok with who and what and how he is. With what the world, his life, and this man have made of him.

Erend isn't quite there yet, he knows. Still gets caught in the dark stickiness of past pain, still hears cruel echoes, still wakes in the night with his heart pounding and his hand reaching for a weapon. 

But he might just be closer than he's ever been before, and doesn't that just take the keg?

"Yeah, buddy -" Erend wrestles back control of his voice by sheer force of will, and looks at his son. "I know - the king thing takes some getting used to." 

I love him.

"I've just had a really long time." 

Chapter Text

Don't worry, this isn't a bait and switch or an announcement that this fic is on hiatus:

So originally, I was keeping Erend and Avad's POV separate in "Talk Me Through the Damage" and "In a City of Ice" respectively, but then some aspects of this story grew some plotty legs, and I ended up wanting to pull it all back together in a single narrative for clarity and coherence. And since both fics were at a good place to stop without it being too jarring, I thought it best to go ahead and do it here.

All of this to say: THERE IS A NEW CHAPTER OF THIS STORY!

Bandage Up the Trenches

Thanks for sticking with me and this story - hopefully, no longer trying to weave three different timelines together in this series will help speed up the updates.

💖