Chapter Text
“Brennan, this thing won’t leave my house.”
The sun rests low beyond the window of Xaden’s living room. Gold rays stain the carpet by his toes, yet none of it reaches the silver cat affixed to the corner of the room. A plate of wet, mashed up tuna sits neglected before it. What a waste of life.
“Is that a problem?” Brennan crouches down to meet the cat’s gaze. “It’s cute.” He offers a finger to it. For sniffing purposes.
The cat unfurls in one smooth motion, padding over to Brennan. Its nose twitches. He smells of ginseng.
“You should probably get…” he lifts the cat to look at its underside “…her spayed and checked for diseases.”
The cat hisses, kicking her feet into the air.
“Okay okay, I’m sorry. I’ll put you down.”
She slides back into her dark corner, pulling the plate of tuna closer with a curled paw and digging in with a passion.
“Why do you think I brought you here?” Xaden huffs, loosening his tie.
“Xaden, I’m not a vet. I’m a mender.”
“Aren’t they basically the same thing?” Xaden asks as he drops into his sofa with a thud, kicking his boots off.
“No, they’re not the same thing.” Brennan lifts an exasperated hand into the air. “That’s like saying that Ridoc should know the name of every plant just because he’s a florist.”
“Well, shouldn’t he?”
Brennan sighs. “I don’t know how you won us a war.”
“You sure you don’t know?”
Brennan rolls his eyes. The silver cat meows low in distaste.
“Anyway—” Xaden interrupts. “Do you know anyone who’d want to adopt a cat?”
“Why don’t you keep it?” Brennan asks.
“I can’t take care of a stray cat.”
“Come on. Cats don’t need that much attention.” Brennan joins the cat in her corner, petting between her ears. “Plus…” he pauses, staring “she kinda looks like her, don’t you think?”
The silver cat screeches, bits of tuna flying out her mouth as she runs whirlpools in front of Brennan.
“Oh look! I think she can do tricks, too.” Brennan chuckles.
The silver cat yowls low, exhaling a small puff of air. She bumps her head against the wall and flops onto her side.
“Hah. Weird cat.” Brennan reaches out to pet her again, but she bats him away. Rejected by the cat, Brennan returns to look at Xaden.
Xaden rests his temple against a curled fist, looking in the direction of—but not at—Brennan and the cat. His gaze flickers to her.
“Xaden?” Brennan asks.
“…No,” Xaden whispers, “no, the cat doesn’t look like her. Not even slightly.”
The squares of sunlight on Xaden’s carpet creep out of view, slinking away through his window. He pushes himself up by his palms, turning away from Brennan to retrieve a container of flint and steel. For all his corded muscle and brooding disposition, Xaden moves quietly.
Brennan clears his throat. “How’ve you been doing, anyway?”
Xaden kneels before the hearth, striking his flint once. Then twice. Then a third time. Not a single spark forms. He isn’t trying, not really.
“I’m fine,” he mutters. Four. Five. Six.
Brennan watches. “You talk to Garrick recently?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Xaden says, “this morning.” Seven. Eight. Nine.
“No—you know what I mean.” Brennan gets up. “Not for work. Just as a friend.” He squats in front of the hearth, snatching the flint and steel out of Xaden’s hands.
“He—hey,” Xaden grumbles, voice cracking for half a beat. “That’s my flint.”
Brennan strikes it once—downwards, in a single motion—committal, like snapping a neck. “Xaden…I don’t know how much more I can handle of him coming into my office, pretending to be sick, just to ask about you again.” He blows on the embers, transferring the flames to the hearth. “Your friends miss you,” he says, dropping the flint back in Xaden’s hand.
Xaden squeezes the flint and looks at Brennan. Properly looks. And by the glare of the fire, he sees it—
Did the war do to you what it did to me?
Somewhere in the hearth, a log cracks and shifts, rolling off the top of the stack and settling below. Brennan startles imperceptibly. Xaden doesn’t move.
“The war’s over,” he says eventually, “they should move on with their lives.”
“Not without you, they won’t.” Brennan pauses. “Fire’s going to die if you don’t—”
“Yeah, I know.” Xaden breaks off small twigs, tossing them into the hearth. Then larger ones. Then logs.
As the fire stabilises to a self-sustaining pace, Xaden says, “you should go. It’s late.”
“Okay.” Brennan retrieves his coat from the hanger and stands in the doorframe. There’s so much he wants to say. But he’s already said too much for tonight. Instead, he gives Xaden a hug. Then, a tight squeeze. And finally, two pats on the back, like he doesn’t remember hugging protocol.
“You can talk to me anytime. About anything.”
Xaden sighs, returning the hug. “When did you become a counsellor?”
“I’m a mender,” Brennan smiles. “Basically the same thing, right?”
Xaden shoves Brennan’s shoulder. “Go.”
He watches Brennan walk past the lake, back towards town. He really should be calling for Marbh to take him back—it’s not a short walk. Xaden doesn’t understand why he prefers to go on foot, let alone why he bothers to come out here to see him.
From deep within his gut, an ancient rumble emanates, cutting his musings short. No time to think. Need food.
Xaden squirrels back into his cottage, yanking his pantry drawer open and tossing a handful of cashews into his mouth. A man of his size should really never go more than a few hours without food.
“Keep the cat.” Regal and unhurried, Sgaeyl’s voice enters Xaden’s mind.
“First Brennan,” Xaden answers through a mouthful, “now you?”
“The mender boy knows you well. As do I.”
“Yeah, alright.” He rummages through his cupboards, looking for anything edible, anything he can use to put a decent dinner together. He really needs to visit town soon. “How’s Tairn?”
“Weakened, but alive. His condition has been improving since returning to the Vale. Being around the young ones has done good for him. Perhaps it’s time you healed, too.”
“Sgaeyl, I don’t need healing.”
The cat leaps up onto the counter, wordlessly judging Xaden as he lays out a few greying potatoes, limp carrots, oil, cumin, crushed garlic, and…dried ration powder.
“It’s only one cat. Doubtless it’s a better hobby than fussing over your garden all day.” Sgaeyl doesn’t bother waiting for Xaden’s retort before dipping out of his mind.
Xaden flaps his hand at the cat. “Shoo, shoo, off the counter.”
“Ek,” the cat complains, batting a pouch of salt towards him.
“Stop playing with the salt.” Xaden takes the pouch away. “That’s expensive.”
The cat doesn’t listen, insistent on batting the salt towards the pile of ingredients.
Xaden huffs, stares at the cat, and makes his decision. Before she can pounce away, Xaden scoops her up off the kitchen counter, holding her tight to his chest, and marches towards the door. She yowls and thrashes as he shoves the door open and lets her go over the grass.
Xaden makes a few clicking sounds with his tongue and points towards the town, in the direction of Brennan’s departure. “Go, go,” he whispers. Then, he shuts the door, trying to ignore the sounds of claws on wood.
He feels bad immediately.
Xaden picks up his knife and gets to chopping the potatoes, doing his best to drown the sound out. It’s a cold night. But cats aren’t like humans—they have their own natural fur coats. She’ll be fine, he reasons.
The carrots are verging on inedible—as floppy as they are. They’re so soft that Xaden could cook them as is. No chopping. He picks the knife back up anyway.
He’s halfway through the carrots when he realises that the scratching sounds have stopped. He pauses, but doesn’t dare look at the door. For what reason, he couldn’t say. For the length of time that it takes him to cook his dinner, he manages to forget about everything—Brennan, the cat, and her.
He leans over his stove, picking the softest bits of potato out of his pan and chowing down, burning his tongue in the process. He isn’t activating a single tastebud, but he doesn’t care.
Then, he hears it—
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
Xaden drops everything to investigate, crossing his living room and materialising at his front door in six strides.
There she is again, looking up at him with amber eyes and a minnow between her teeth. Her head dips down as she drops the minnow by Xaden’s feet. A peace offering. The minnow is barely the length of Xaden’s palm. A pathetic catch by human standards, really.
“You want to stay here that bad?” he asks.
“Meow.” The silver cat rolls onto her back, offering herself up for pats.
He reaches out, running his hand along the plush fur of her belly.
“Fine,” he obliges with far too little resistance. “You can stay.” He picks the minnow up and dangles it in front of her. “Now eat your fish.”
Unprecedented; such is the only word appropriate to describe how long Tairn has outlived his human. That is, if spending most of his days trapped in deep sleep can count as living.
Xaden, in all his stubbornness, finds his own way of refusing Malek’s call.
From the coat hanger, Xaden retrieves a fresh roll of rope, tying knots into it at regular intervals—each one the length of his wingspan. It’s been hours since Brennan left his cottage. The surface of the lake bears a thin film of light, reflecting the moon. He knows he won’t make much progress in these conditions. But this isn’t what it’s for, anyway.
He walks past his violets, padding barefoot onto the grass as he strips down to his undergarments. He’s well familiar with the sturdiest rock by the edge of the lake by now—the one half his height and jagged all around. The friction is good. Makes it less likely to slip. One end of the rope goes around the rock, the other secured around his waist.
Curious, Violet follows him across the grass, chasing the rope as if it’s a live snake. She knows it isn’t one, but she can’t help it.
Xaden pets her head once, ruffling the fur between her ears—the kind of tenderness he reserves for when he thinks no one is looking. “You stay here,” he says.
Violet tilts her head in question.
“I’m just going for a swim.”
To his friends, Xaden says that he’s acquired a brand new hobby of diving; something to pass the time while he waits to die. But in his heart, he knows this is far from a hobby. This is hope—its last thread—hope that one day he’ll dive into this very lake and retrieve her, that he will pull her to the surface and feel the rise and fall of her chest, precisely as he failed to do so many months ago.
But hope against all odds is merely delusion. Xaden understands this, and dives anyway.
Gentle currents fold him into the water, welcoming him. He’s logged nearly a year’s worth of diving in this lake and the cave systems beneath it, yet countless pathways remain unmapped.
Violet perches on a flat stone by the edge of the lake, watching over Xaden. Waiting makes her restless. She isn’t sure whether it’s a cat thing, or if she’s simply worried for Xaden, as she’s learned to be through years of war. Nonetheless, she knows waiting around will do nothing to quell her anxiety. And so she skitters back into their cottage, hooks a towel between her teeth, and returns to the lake, ready to fuss over him when he emerges once again.
She still remembers how it felt to die here. Remembers scrambling to hold on to Tairn’s scales as she slipped off. Remembers the thundering blow of the water—she didn’t know water could be so loud—and the deafness that followed right after.
Underwater, Xaden hears everything.
Just one knot’s interval away, he spots something white and stick-like. A bone? He needs to investigate, but he is, in the most honest sense, at the end of his rope. And as he swims ahead, coarse fibers tug at his waist, holding him back.
Xaden doesn’t hesitate—doesn’t even rip his eyes away from that narrow sliver as he fumbles with the rope, breaking skin on the pad of his thumb as he tears the knot open. He kicks toward the object, his right hand chafing down the remaining length of rope until just his fingertips are holding it. He reaches with his left foot, hooking it between his toes and bringing it towards himself.
And there it is—just a piece of wood—bleached an unearthly shade of bone-white from the underwater dark. It’s soft now, so close to falling apart. There isn’t a trace of her on this thing, but he can’t bring himself to let go.
Not another lookalike.
By now, Xaden has heard every witness account and theory around Violet’s death except her own. The most popular—and well reasoned theory—is that she sank to the bottom of the lake and has been decomposing ever since.
Yet her body was never found. And Tairn remains alive. So maybe—
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe Violence is still—
A broad current from a deeper channel shoulders past him, knocking the stick from his hand. His chest aches, tender and fleshbound. But he doesn’t have time to watch it drift away. He’s been down here too long and is starting to feel it; his breath running out. He doesn’t have the leisure of re-tying the rope around his waist. Instead, he grapples up, dragging himself to the surface, knot by knot, feeling the burn in his arms and lungs.
The surface air smothers him—you never realise how everywhere the air is until you’ve been without it for too long. He coughs and sputters and swallows the air, nose burning as he tips his head back to breathe. Then again, and again, and again. Coughing and wheezing and burning and breathing. And breathing, and breathing, and breathing.
Breathing.
Xaden stills, floating on his back in the center of the lake, hand vaguely feeling for the rope. It’s dark and his limbs are warm and soggy from exertion. He could fall asleep right here—just drift away while thinking of her.
“Mrreoow!” Violet nags, scratching at the rock to get his attention.
Xaden groans. “Shh. I’m trying to sleep.”
Violet does not shh, instead batting her paw on the surface of the water, splashing frantically and forming ripples that nudge Xaden. He drags an eyelid open, creaking his neck to look at her.
“You hungry or something?” he asks, giving up on his nap. “How much does this cat need to eat?” He follows the rope back to the grass, flopping over onto the edge like a baby seal and lying on his side.
Violet kicks the towel towards him.
“How the—” Xaden squints at the cat, then at the towel, then back at the cat. “Y’know what, nevermind.” He pats his hands dry and slumps back on the grass.
To Violet, Xaden’s half-assed attempt at drying himself is highly unsatisfying. He’s going to catch a cold if he doesn’t dry off properly. This total absence of self-care is unbefitting of a grown man. Violet rolls her eyes (as best as she can) and drags the ends of the towel open with her teeth, throwing it over Xaden’s face, and yowling at him.
You look like a sad pile of kelp. Dry yourself off or I’ll do it myself.
“Mrreow!” Violet nudges the towel with her nose once again. She doesn’t have a lot of syllables to work with, but Xaden gets the message.
He grumbles unintelligibly, patting his body down as he shambles back towards his cottage, rope and clothes abandoned. He’ll deal with it tomorrow. Rest is fleeting, but the lake will always be there.
So it falls—that pale twig, splitting apart by the whims of the current, falling back to the earth again, dissolving into silt, until there’s nothing left.