Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE
Janai’s the one who realizes it first.
The newfound knowledge surprises her but it’s something that she pushes away in lieu of what just happened.
It takes her hours to fully comprehend the implications of her prisoner’s situation, but as they’re all standing at what was once the Breach and is now just a close view of the lava waterfall, she watches as the human General lowers their gaze to the ground and raises their hands.
The human looks defeated, and tired, but Janai knows in her bones that they must’ve accepted that fate the moment they had decided to attack her.
Her guards order the human to fall on their knees, and they are met with nothing but stillness and silence.
The General is still obstinately looking at the ground, almost preparing themselves for what’s to come.
Janai hates humans, but she’s a warrior and she has a code: that person just saved her life, she’s not going to kill them like an animal while standing next to a canyon of lava.
And yet, the General doesn’t look up, and doesn’t kneel.
One of her guards pokes them in the leg with the spear and the human looks up, confused, then glances back at Janai.
“Kneel.” Janai repeats, and she sees clearly how the human looks down to her lips and how those brown eyes color in understanding. Immediately, the General looks back at the guards and kneels.
Before her guards can cuff them, Janai steps in front of them and studies their face.
“Can you hear me?” She asks.
The human seems relieved at the question and shakes their head.
Janai glances back at the Breach, or what’s left of it, and wonders if the explosion has impacted her prisoner’s hearing.
Apparently, her confusion causes the human to chuckle. Janai looks back at them as they shake their head with a sad smile.
Despite her guard’s objections, they lower one hand, using the index finger to point at their own chest, then raising it to their temple and moving it toward their chin.
“Deaf.” The General mouths as they do this.
Janai grits her teeth. The situation has just gotten harder: she can speak human language, but she has no idea how to speak human sign language.
“Cuff them.” She orders, her face toward the human to make sure they understand.
She then storms off, leaving the guards to obey her instructions.
“And send word for Kazi. I need their help as soon as we reach Lux Aurea.”
As they travel to the city, Janai stays clear of the prisoner.
A couple of her soldiers know a few signs of the Katolis language, and they manage to collect some not-so-relevant but still good information.
The General identifies as a woman.
She is deaf from birth.
Her name is Amaya.
Janai nods to the soldier who reports to her that night. She sends him to sleep.
As she glances up to where the rest of her soldiers are setting camp, she meets the dark brown eyes of the woman they’ve captured.
The General -Amaya- grins cockily at her and winks.
Janai feels the fire inside of her ignite, out of control.
She hates the human.
For her guts, for her apparent lack of fear. For having blown up half the Breach.
And also, for being so stupidly good looking.
Janai thinks it’s really unfair that a human is so attractive.
She grits her teeth and storms back into her own tent.
The interrogation is not at all going like she’d originally planned.
Kazi is doing an amazing job, of course, but the human is not at all cooperating.
The General doesn’t seem to be worried at all about the situation she’s in. It doesn’t seem to worry her the fact that she’s in enemy territory, in the most heavily guarded part of the most heavily guarded city of the Sunfire Elves reign.
It doesn’t seem to bother her that she’s a prisoner, and that she’s most likely going to be sentenced to death.
As she stands outside the ring of fire, right after the woman has so nicely offered to shove her sword up her ass herself, Janai stares at the human and secretly admires her.
As much as she maddens her and irritates her, Janai appreciates a good warrior when she sees one.
And where her sister might see a threat, Janai sees an opportunity.
Unfortunately, where here sister might also see an enemy, Janai realizes that she’s seeing a person that is more similar to her than she’d have ever imagined.
“Fuck.” She mutters, turning on her heels to leave.
She finds herself rolling over in bed, unable to catch any sleep.
She wants to tell herself that it’s because she’s too used to the uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, she has had at the Breach to actually rest on the comfort of the capital, but she’s too smart to lie to herself like that.
Janai has always proud herself of the ability to get any prisoner to talk. She’s always been able to get her way with things, with words.
That’s why she’s made it in the Army. As sister of the Queen and second in the line of succession, she wouldn’t have been able to take the arms, let alone lead the whole battalion the Sunfire Elves owned.
But she’d convinced her sister to give her a chance, and together with her prowess and her ability to wield the sword she had gotten what she had wanted.
She is the Golden Knight of Lux Aurea. She is the Commander of the Sunfire Army. She should be getting any information she wants out of every prisoner she captures.
And yet now words fail her, and her sword has been beaten by another.
General Amaya of Katolis has not only defeated her while fighting but is now not able to communicate what she wants to hear.
Or worse yet, she is able to communicate, while Janai is not able to understand.
Somehow, Amaya has defeated her twice.
Angrily, Janai kicks away the soft, light blanket and rolls out of bed.
Without even slipping on her boots, she wanders out into the halls, in search of answers she doesn’t know the question of.
She finds herself in the library, going through book after book with her eyes only, looking for a title or an author that might trigger some sort of revelation inside of her.
Nothing comes.
Instead, her feet take her to a section about languages, and maybe, Janai tells herself, maybe Lux Aurea and its extensive library does have a solution for her problems.
Wide awake, she starts looking for books about sign languages, and once she finds the shelf, she starts picking all the ones that look like they might help her understand the Katolis one.
She finds a smaller one, written by an author Janai has never heard of, and she briefly wonders how many of the volumes she’s read in the past were in fact written by humans.
This undoubtedly is, since the drawing on the cover depicts a humanoid with five fingers for each hand.
Janai opens the book, finding with satisfaction that is filled with drawings, little explanations of Katolis’s sign language.
It seems to be written in the human alphabetical order, which makes it fairly easy to navigate.
Janai turns a few pages, looking at a few words that she could use to string together a menacing sentence to direct toward her prisoner.
As she flips through the pages to find the sign for Damage, which the dictionary is sending her to as a synonym for Threat, her eyes fall on the page right next to it, where the last C words are depicted.
There is Cut, and right after it, Cute.
Janai stops.
Her eyes narrow.
She tries to go back to analyze the word Damage, but her gaze keeps darting back to that single four lettered word.
Janai growls, frustrated.
She berates herself for her own feelings, for her own desires.
Once again, she’s too smart to lie to herself: the human is attractive, and in more ways than one. She’s not just incredibly hot, with toned muscled shoulders and a fluidity in her movements that makes it impossible to look away.
But when she smirks and then act all innocent, when she looks around in the ring of fire with more curiosity then worry on her face, Amaya looks like a child during the celebrations of Midsummer.
She is the embodiment of that same word Janai can’t take her eyes off of.
Cute.
Before realizing what she’s actually doing, Janai brings index and middle finger of her free hand toward her chin, just like the picture shows, while keeping her thumb extended.
She brushes her chin once, and that seems to make her snap out of her reverie.
She blinks, then stares at her own hand like it has betrayed her.
She doesn’t have too much time to think it over, because the footsteps of another midnight visitor make her freeze on the spot.
Janai snaps the small book closed, slipping it inside her robes, then quietly leaves the library.
Amaya passes the judgment of the light because of course she does.
Of course, she’s pure of heart.
Contrarily to her sister, Janai is not one bit surprised by the outcome.
What shocks her, and absolutely flips half of her world upside down, is how quickly Amaya she has trusted her when she’d told her to look straight into the light.
Janai knows that, without one of her senses, Amaya must rely heavily on the other four, sight in particular.
And yet, even with her hands bound and everything else stripped away, even after having spat on the Queen herself -Janai had specifically told her not to do anything stupid, so of course Amaya had spat on the Queen- even after all that, Amaya had watched her lips moving and had trusted her. Blindly, for how ironic that is.
Janai can’t shake that thought off her.
As she leads a blind, shaken human out of the throne room, she watches her stumbling, and leaning against her, and she wonders how does Amaya trust her after all she’s put her through.
As they reach the entrance of the dungeons, Amaya trips on her feet and Janai catches her before she can actually fall.
As she steadies her, Amaya’s body starts shaking and the woman ducks her head, trying to contain the sobs.
Janai doesn’t think it twice, and wraps her arms around the human’s shoulders, hugging her.
Amaya clings to her like she’s her anchor, and Janai feels something bubbling in the pit of her stomach.
The dungeons are deserted, but Janai thinks she would’ve done it even if they’d been full of people.
She bends her knees and picks Amaya up bridal style, leaving the dungeons and heading for her own room.
Amaya turns her face and hides it in her chest. She cries silently, and Janai once again wonders what she’s done to earn this strong woman’s trust.
As she places her on her own bed, Amaya shakes once again, and blindly grabs her wrists to prevent her from leaving.
Janai can’t find in herself the strength to move away anyway.
She sits next to her and Amaya releases the grip on her hands.
She brings her fists in front of her and her body shakes just so, before she opens her hands, palms facing her chest and fingers almost touching.
She repeats the sign, over and over again, and Janai wishes she knew more to figure out what Amaya needs, to figure out how to help her.
Amaya keeps repeating the sign, until Janai grabs her hands in her own and holds them, unable to watch her desperately try to communicate without any successful outcome.
She smooths her palms out and holds Amaya’s hands in hers.
Amaya’s body relaxes, and the woman’s shoulders slump a bit. She sniffs and takes a deep breath, then collects her knees to her chest and stares forward, in what must be a horrifying void.
“I’m sorry.” Janai says, helplessly. For what she’s saying sorry, she doesn’t know. She thinks it’s more than just one thing.
“I’m sorry.”
When Kazi sneaks in the room, the door closing softly behind them, Amaya frowns.
Janai is more and more impressed by her sense of space awareness, and gently pats her on one knee before getting up to talk to Kazi.
The elf has brought medication with them and is already disposing them on the bedside table.
“Kazi.” Janai starts, hesitantly. She waits for them to look up before repeating the sign Amaya has made a few minutes before.
“What does this mean?”
Kazi’s face drops a little, and their lips tilt downward. They throw a glance in Amaya’s direction and sigh.
“It means ‘scared’.”
Janai’s stomach somersaults.
She turns to look at Amaya, still rolled up with her knees against her chest, and she feels anger toward herself.
Here’s a woman who’s literally fought through lava and flaming swords.
A woman who’s voluntarily thrown herself into the enemy’s hands in order to save her people, who’s treated her with warrior’s honour and walked with her head held high in the middle of an elven court.
A woman who’s cockily told her captor to shove her sword up her ass.
A woman who has never shown any sign of fear in front of absolutely anything.
And Janai has put her in front of yet another loss in her life. She and no one else is responsible for forcing the fear in this fearless warrior.
The fact that the blindness is temporary does nothing to quell Janai’s guilt.
Kazi clears their voice and gestures to the herbs, the water and the pieces of fabric they’ve brought.
They take turns changing the herb infused cloth on Amaya’s eyes, once an hour for the rest of the day.
Janai doesn’t speak but feels Kazi’s gaze on her the whole time.
Once Amaya regains her sight, they sneak her back into the dungeons, raising the ring of fire once again.
Amaya is quiet. She always is, of course, but something in her behaviour has shifted.
She’s less prone to egging Janai on when she tries to ask her questions.
She’s less prone to answering anything at all, really.
She just stares at her with something in her eyes that Janai can’t quite pinpoint.
Every night, in the quiet of her room, Janai flips through the sign book she’s found in the library.
She tries out different signs every night, learning the alphabet and practicing her finger spelling. She doesn’t tell Kazi this, but she pays close attention to the gestures they make when they translate her questions.
Every night, in the quiet of her room, Janai flips the pages back to the end of the C words and stares.
The little humanoid drawing for “Cute” stares back at her unflinching, unchanging.
Every night, in the quiet of her room, Janai slams the book closed and goes to bed for a restless sleep.
Khessa walks into her room a few days later.
Janai almost flings herself off the chair in the haste of hiding the book back in the top drawer, but if Khessa notices how weird she’s being, she doesn’t say anything.
At first.
She asks her about her day, prompts for updates about the Breach and the interrogation of her prisoner, and Janai is nothing if not thorough in her answers, but she carefully keeps her tone as flat and disinterested as possible.
Khessa nods, pacing around the room, lost in her thoughts.
She leans with her back against the desk and crosses her arms, then stares at Janai with something akin to awe.
“You like her.” She says.
Janai freezes. She keeps her hands clasped behind her back, back stiff and straight as a rod, and she’s proud of how she manages to keep every emotion off her voice and face.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Khessa scoffs, then blindly reaches for the top drawer and snags it open. She picks the book up and holds it in front of her.
Janai doesn’t move.
Khessa’s eyes, still locked in hers, start to glow, and the marks on her face, neck, arms and hands light up.
The hardcover of the book she’s holding in front of her heats up almost immediately, and a thin puff of smoke rolls up from where the Queen’s hand is holding the paper.
It’s about to be set on fire, and they both know there is nothing that’s going to save it if that happens.
“Please, don’t.” Janai says, softly.
Khessa’s eyes go back to normal, and her body heat is turned down once again.
After a few seconds, the book stops smoking.
Khessa places it back on the desk, her expression unreadable.
Janai can’t hold her gaze, lowering it to the floor, afraid of what she could find if she was to look her big sister in the eyes.
Khessa might be a hard ass, and she might be teasing her more times than she’s not, but Janai loves her deeply, and cares about her judgement more than she cares about anyone else’s.
She can’t lift her eyes off the floor, not even when she hears the Queen’s footsteps approaching.
Khessa’s fingers graze her chin, forcing her to lift her head and meet her eyes.
Janai sees confusion, and a bit of anger in them.
But she mostly sees love, and acceptance.
“I do not understand how this is possible. How you could be falling for a human.” Khessa says, and she doesn’t bother keeping the disgust out of her voice at the last word.
But her features soften, and her fingers splay on her cheek as she cups Janai’s face in her palm.
“But you are my little sister, and I trust you and your heart.”
Janai feels like she could cry.
She hasn’t let herself linger in what these feelings might be, and she has pushed every thought of Amaya so deep in the corners of her brain that she thought she’d successfully squished down the idea that she might be falling for her.
But her sister’s words, her acknowledgment that this is indeed happening, and her acceptance... She feels like her stomach has been ripped open, and she’s not sure she’s prepared to handle the rush of emotions that floods through her.
Janai simply nods, swallowing a lump of tears. She doesn’t break. She rarely does.
She’s still afraid of what people might think, of how they could react if they were to find out.
The Golden Knight of Lux Aurea, successor of the Queen herself, infatuated of a human.
They are still at war with humans, and she can’t see how her people would be accepting of her feelings.
But she looks up at her big sister, and she nods.
“Thank you.” She says.
Her secret is safe with her.
Khessa sighs and shakes her head.
“Don’t thank me yet. Just don’t bring more humans to my court, please.” She mutters, heading for the door.
She stops with her fingers on the handle.
“Be careful, Janai. I will not lose you to this war.”
Janai barely has the time to turn around before the door closes behind Khessa.
It is the last conversation they manage to have, before everything goes to hell.