Chapter Text
It would have been a beautiful day, the sun was shining and the nightingales were singing.
Too bad it wasn't, at least for Aristotle, who was covered in green blood and had a small dragon attached to his arm like a bracelet, while the boy had already given up trying to get it off and had even given it a name: Racso.
He had no idea where Arthur was, and more importantly, he had no idea where he himself was, given that he was was walking downhill in the forest.
Racso didn't speak, didn't even make the usual dragon noises, he stayed silent and kept curling around his arm as if he didn't know how to do anything else.
Aristotle hoped that was true, but at the moment all he needed was someone, or in this case something, to talk to so he wouldn't seem crazy.
He thought he might be crazy anyway, when he saw an arrow fly past him and, instead of hitting him, strike one of the many trees around him.
"Damn it."
A little earlier, Pygmshyre
Aristotle and Arthur were crouched side by side behind a bush, beyond which sat what looked like a bomb mushroom.
Well, that wasn't its actual name, it's just that Aristotle had seen it many times but he never managed to find its real name, so he'd come up with one himself, and, as the name suggested, it was a mushroom that exploded when it got too hot.
The two boys watched it as if it was an actual bomb, with curiosity but also caution, neither of them getting closer.
A few days had passed since Arthur had seen that flower whose name Aristotle couldn't even remember, and yet the subject had never come back up.
That was just fine for Aristotle, he actually preferred it that way.
Conversations already scared him enough, let alone the serious ones, where you had to talk about feelings or things buried even deeper.
So when Arthur woke up the next day as usual, joking and laughing loud enough to wake a hibernating bear, Aristotle let out a sigh of relief.
"What if I tried setting it on fire?" Arthur asked, whispering and looking at Aristotle the way Frankenstein had probably looked at every single person he told about his idea to create the monster.
'What if I made a human out of dead humans?'
Yeah, he could absolutely picture Arthur dressed as a mad scientist asking something like that.
"That would be like killing a creature" Aristotle replied. "They have organs, blood, and sometimes even emotions. I met one once that, after I walked past it, waited until I was gone before it exploded."
"What a polite mushroom."
Aristotle rolled his eyes.
"I'm telling you that, as much as you love setting fire to everything you come across, this time I'd rather not get covered in mushroom blood."
"Come on!" Arthur exclaimed, having long since given up on whispering. "It probably won't even notice."
"I just told you it has emotions, idiot!"
The mushroom made a noise, and Arthur suddenly spun toward it.
"Since when do mushrooms make noises?"
"Oh, they don't" Aristotle glanced quickly at Arthur before finding something else to look at. "I told you, this isn't actually a mushroom, I just called it that because it's shaped like one, but I still haven't figured out what it actually is."
"And then you say I'm the nerd?"
Aristotle pretended not to have heard that, since he had never actually called him a nerd.
He'd said Arthur was crazy, back when they first met, and he didn't regret a single one of those thoughts.
Right as he was about to open his mouth again and change the subject, they saw a dragon.
It wasn't big, quite the opposite, it looked like a gecko, small and clumsy, with wings that were barely even formed. Its tail was partially burnt at the tip, but otherwise it was red, orange, and yellow.
Arthur stood up, as if ready to attack the little dragon, but Aristotle stopped him, putting a hand against his chest to push him back behind the bush.
"Stay still," Aristotle told him, keeping his eyes fixed on the dragon as it approached the mushroom.
"But it's a dragon!"
"What's with this bloodlust you've got today?" Aristotle shot him a confused look. "You're usually all peace and hippie!"
"First of all, I'm not a hippie," Arthur began, putting a hand to his chest as if just being called a hippie was some kind of insult to him. "And second, I don't want to kill it, just scare it off."
After a long, murderous glare, because Aristotle couldm't manage to fake being nice, mostly to Arthur, he spoke.
"I really hope so for your sake, otherwise this time I'm actually leaving you—"
Boom.
It wasn't really a boom, what happened, but it was the closest sound Aristotle could attribute to the situation, given that the mushroom exploded.
Both boys ended up covered in what was the mushroom's blood, except, instead of red, it was green.
In front of them, the little dragon, also now covered in green, was nibbling on the mushroom.
Arthur finally stood up, running a hand over his head and face to wipe off some of the bomb-mushroom blood.
"Eugh" he said, cleaning his glasses with his dark green jacket, which, having stayed behind the bush, hadn't gotten dirty.
Too bad the dragon didn't appreciate his choice to clean up.
Or maybe just didn't appreciate his existence, since it leapt straight at him.
Arthur let out a yell, trying to get the dragon off him as it jumped onto his face, but before he could manage it, or before Aristotle could help, he fell.
Not onto the grass or a rock, worse, down a steep slope.
The moment he fell, the little dragon let go of him and instead latched onto Aristotle, though not the way it had with Arthur.
This time it wrapped itself around part of his arm and stayed there.
Now, if Aristotle had been the good, empathetic person he hoped to be, he would have thrown himself down the slope immediately to go find Arthur without a second thought.
Instead, he just stood there, glancing back and forth between the little dragon and the slope.
Then he sighed.
"You think I should go?" Aristotle asked the little dragon, lifting his arm to get a better look at the little creature staring back at him. "I mean, this would be the perfect moment to leave, but... I'd feel a little bad, you know? I've known him too long by now, I don't like betraying people. Not that I've ever actually done it."
Why the dragon wasn't making noises or attacking him, he couldn't explain, it was like a little statue, an adorable one, though.
Sure, maybe he should have told Arthur that dragons didn't like surprises, but then again, Aristotle didn't like them much either, and Arthur never cared enough to stop.
"You attacked him like a rocket, or maybe a rock... a rock-rocket" Aristotle said, looking at the dragon as if it might reveal something useful to him. "I'll call you Racso, it sounds..like something, so you're Racso, at least until you decide to leave my arm."
With that, Aristotle started making his way down the slope.
It was steep, so he held onto the trees around him to keep from falling, careful of the arm with the little dragon on it.
He couldn't quite explain the decisions that had led him into this half-hearted rescue mission, he probably just didn't want the first thing a baby dragon ever saw from a human to be a betrayal straight out of the Shakespeare's Ceasar play.
Not that he thought Racso would even remember it either way, the creature could probably outlive him, especially if it didn't go wandering through forests risking a broken leg over some half-crazy guy.
Sure, if he ever had a kid, he didn't think betrayal would be the first thing he'd want to teach them.
But why was he even thinking about that? He didn't even want a kid, a plant, maybe, at most.
That had better odds of staying alive with him, since taking care of people clearly wasn't his strong suit.
The fact that he was about to leave Arthur behind proved that quite well.
And yet, the fact that he wasn't actually doing it might be opening a new chapter in what he thought of as the book of his own life.
A very short book, he was just nineteen years old, after all.
Traveling made his forget how old he was, sometimes.
Racso still wasn't speaking, still wasn't making any normal dragon noises, just staying silent, coiling around his arm over and over as if he didn't know how to do anything else.
Aristotle hoped that was true, but right now all he needed was someone, or in this case something, to talk to so he wouldn't feel like he was losing his mind.
He thought he might be losing it anyway, when he saw an arrow fly past him and hit one of the many trees around him instead.
"Damn it," he said, before ducking behind the tree he'd been leaning against.
Another arrow flew, but this time Aristotle also heard a voice.
"Who's there?"
"You know, Arthur, if you stopped shooting arrows at me I'd actually come help you," Aristotle replied, stepping out from behind the tree. "But right now I really feel like turning around and going back up!"
It was in that moment that he saw Arthur, sitting with his back against a tree.
He looked at him, confused, almost in disbelief.
"You came," he said, lowering the bow and letting go of the arrow he was holding in his other hand.
Aristotle stood there looking at him for a while — he wasn't sure how long, before walking over.
"Racso would never have forgiven me."
Aristotle approached Arthur, adjusting his backpack on his shoulders.
"That thing's name is Racso?" the boy asked, pointing at the little dragon, who was now baring its teeth.
Aristotle ran a finger over its scaly little head.
"When it jumped at you it reminded me of a rocket, but then also a rock, so I found a middle ground."
"I thought you'd named it Oscar backwards, but this is cooler."
At that point, Aristotle crouched down in front of Arthur.
"Are you okay?"
"Just wonderful," the other replied sarcastically, before putting a hand on his right leg.
"I basically smashed my leg against a tree, but everything's fine."
"...So not everything's fine, then."
Arthur started laughing, doubling over, before letting out a small groan of pain and leaning his back against the trunk again.
"I was being sarcastic, Strawberry, so no, everything is not fine," he said after a moment. "Mind giving me a hand?"
"Not like I have much of a choice, I'm already here," Aristotle said, before moving closer to Arthur and putting a hand behind his back.
"Hold onto me," he said, lifting Arthur up, who seemed to actually listen to him for once in recorded history, leaning in and putting his arm around his shoulders.
"You're not going to carry me like a princess?" Arthur said, dramatically. "What kind of hero are you?"
He wasn't one, and for now, that was enough for him.
At the end of the day, heroes were never happy, or in particularly good shape in general.
He already wasn't either of those things, and adding the desire to be a hero on top of it definitely wouldn't end well.
"There's a risk you'd get even more hurt if I tried that," Aristotle replied, glancing at him quickly without turning his head before looking away again. "This is better."
An hour later, Clawbay Hospital
What had started as a beautiful day was now a dark night.
Arthur lay on the hospital bed, asleep for the first time since they'd arrived looking like two survivors of a war, and the doctor had stared at them for a beat too long before sending them both off to get checked.
Aristotle only had a sprain, since they had both fallen while climbing back up the slope, while Arthur's leg was in much worse shape.
As for Racso, they'd put a bandage on his half-burnt tail, since there wasn't much else to be done, and the creature, without meaning to, had gotten a bandage of his own too after finally letting go of Aristotle's arm, now sleeping curled up next to Arthur on the bed.
Aristotle, meanwhile, was sitting on a chair beside it, with his book open in front of him, though he hadn't actually been reading for longer than he wanted to admit.
Instead, he was watching Arthur, lit only by the moonlight coming in from outside and a small lamp Aristotle had switched on in the corner.
All he found himself hoping was that no one was out there looking for Arthur.
Like most adventurers under twenty, he had probably run away from home.
Aristotle hoped not.
After all, he himself was under twenty too, but the worry of being searched for wasn't really there for him, but he didn't actually know Arthur that well. Not really, not yet.
He didn't need more problems, especially not problems like that, but as much as he could see Arthur as a problem, he found himself hoping, at least in that moment, in that small hospital room, that Arthur would never disappear.
Aristotle let out a sigh, before closing his eyes.