Work Text:
When it is all over, when the fallen tower fades back into only-memory at the end of the world, Rilla leads the way back to the Swamp. Her eyes are hard and staring at the path ahead while Arum and Damien trail behind, a tense reticence resonating between them like a tenuous wire. Arum almost hopes it is not being channeled through the child; clinging onto a hand each, Olala swings between the two of them like a hammock swaying in the breeze, letting her strain their throbbing muscles even after their perilous climb. She is surprisingly chipper, after the ordeal, and her babble even manages to draw a smile out of Damien once or twice. They do not last long though, and every time his gentle gaze of fondness slides off her onto Arum, his face hardens, and the two are left staring strictly at the back of Rilla’s head again.
The journey is still hushed, strained, and the tension grows to the point where even Olala sinks into an uncomfortable, impatient silence. It is cut blessedly short the minute Damien gestures for Olala to convey a message to the man three feet away from him – it is the only time Rilla looks back at the two of them, hair whirling and her features clenched in a tight sort of rage as she snatches the bag of soil wordlessly from Arum’s waist and sprinkles it across the ground. The Keep obeys her command for a portal, whether by its partiality or its sensing the anger in her voice, and the thought of telling her not to waste the resource easily fizzles from Arum’s mind when she all but stomps towards her and Damien’s hut and slams the door hard enough to shake the ground beneath them.
“Oh, my Rilla,” Damien whines, a kind of gentle concern that sounds of admonishment at her seclusion. Arum can barely keep himself from rising to the test of his annoyance at the gutless way the knight strings along in her wake, only to hold his tongue when he realizes he doesn’t have much choice himself.
“Amaryllis,” he states. He marches past Damien, almost cross-eyed as his nose all but brushes against the door. He raps the door with two insistent fists, and again when there is no answer.
“Leave me alone!”
“Amaryllis, you are being ridiculous.” A hand moves down to the doorknob, jiggling it adamantly as if he didn’t notice it was unlocked the first time. “Come out now, before your irrationality manages to challenge that of Sir Damien’s.”
“I said leave me alone!” she repeats, and Arum hisses at Damien as he steps forward before he can hiss at Rilla through the door.
“You cannot keep running away like this, like – like some fool, when you do not get your way,” he snarls, and he’s almost sure her scoff is more than sob this time.
“I sure can,” she says. Arum is slightly taken aback, at that, but not at her words; it is the lilt of her tone that makes Damien surge forward from behind, a sort of stubbornness taking the sound of a desperate plea. “Since you’re so happy to let me do so in the first place, instead of, I don’t know, actually owning up to anything!”
“M’lord,” Olala pipes in, and even he jumps, almost embarrassed to have forgotten her presence. “I do not think Lady Rilla is in the mood for guests.”
Damien sighs. “Well, if that is the case,” he says gently, “then perhaps you should move on to the Keep, Olala?” He gives a pointed look at Arum over her shoulder. He’s convincing, persuading in everything he does, Arum will give him that. “I’m sure it would be more than delighted to have your company.”
It’s an easy sell, and the two watch Olala skip off merrily towards doting vines and singing chords before turning back to face the hut’s front façade. They stand there silently, refusing to look each other in the eye. Arum clears his throat.
“Well,” he finally speaks. “I believe that one of us has to atone for his faults against Amaryllis?”
Damien scoffs out a laugh, raising his eyebrows incredulously. “Am I to believe you are referring to me?”
“I hardly know what I could have done,” Arum offers, and he watches Damien’s eyes grow wide, his shoulders rise in offense. “Despite stating the obvious, not that the two of you ever heed my words.”
“Unbelievable,” Damien breathes. “You are unbelievable! You-!”
He stops, scrutinizing Arum as if staring suspiciously at an unconvincing bait, before seeming to deflate. His jaw clenches as his face falls, and he deliberately moves past the lizard – a pressing of bodies that is more of a bump, of a confrontation, and an inkling of a memory forms in Arum’s head from when that used to be endearing, a task he took Damien to with racing heart and rigor – and enters the hut in front of them. “It does not matter, you being so – so insufferable – I do not need to continuously remind you of that while our Rilla is despairing.”
“Well, of course,” Arum sneers, the new floorboards creaking under his feet as he passes the threshold. “As if anything of my concern has taken the forefront of your mind in-”
He knows his words will fall onto deaf ears, so there is nothing to resent when he loses his train of thought as he submerges himself into the sunset dark hues inside Damien and Rilla’s hut. He almost expected the thought to be stopped in the first place, perhaps by Damien’s chatter or Amaryllis’ ire, only to be surprised when he is stopped by – nothing.
No – not nothing, he corrects himself. He does observe Rilla, braced on the kitchenette’s counter, hunched and shaking amid half empty cupboards and a counter clean even in the neat little rows of test tubes that sit like soldiers on one side of the basin. She is the only thing in this house that would normally catch his eye, and yet it is precisely the reason he cannot look to her first. Instead, his eyes are left to linger across the walls and floors and furniture. They are built sturdily, he knows - not doubting Rilla’s competence in the design of her former home, nor their combined craftsmanship - the oak beautiful and sanded pristinely, and he can still smell the sawdust on his tongue. Still, they seem to stand blankly, and he is almost afraid to reach out and find they lack any substance, have entirely lost their materiality in the ghostly way it barely reflects the lives within its confines.
It all feels remarkably unlike the cottage he had first fatefully snatched Rilla away from all those months ago. Little dons the walls, a distinct lack of tapestries and charts. The floor remains uncluttered by her papers and books, or either of their clothes, every surface clean of debris and stains of Saints-knows-what that never come out. It is all strikingly utilitarian to him, especially for a couple he knows for all their little extravagances. As he watches Damien weave through all those little insignificances to reach her, something unknown but pressing sits heavy in his gut, because for all his lack of criticism for what he knows is a house more than formidable, he is struck with the knowledge that this is yet to fully be a home.
“My Rilla,” Damien sighs, his voice breaking the dread that is slowly creeping in at the edges of Arum’s mind. It gives him another emotion to focus on, to press down, down as he reminds himself that he is angry at this man, this foolish little human, even as the lilt of his words never fail to make his heart stutter. “Rilla, my dear, please-”
There is a distinct sentiment of disdain in the way she sucks her teeth at him. Anger flares in her eyes when she tries to turn to them, only to flail an arm out in exasperation even as she wordlessly protests for them to leave.
“Can you just-” she chokes, laughs darkly to herself. “Of course – of course neither of you ever listen, that seems to be the last thing either of you ever want to do anymore.”
“You don’t seem to be prioritizing that yourself, Amaryllis,” Arum says.
“I said to leave me alone.”
“Rilla, please,” Damien pleads as he approaches. He reaches out a tentative hand, tries touch her shoulder.
“Don’t touch me!” she snaps, and finally fully whirls around to stare daggers through the two of them. Damien starts, jumping back a couple steps with alarm in his wide eyes, his chest heaving with labored breath.
“Rilla-!”
“I do not want your Saints’-damned sympathy right now, Damien, let alone with how badly its misplaced,” she begins. Her voice rises in pitch and Arum can only be happy the child is not here to watch what happens next. “I don’t need either of you coming to me, as if I’m being unreasonable, as if I have no reason to be upset,” she steps forward, her bottom lip quivering as she bares her teeth, mimicking Arum’s words “That I’m merely being ridiculous, being impossible just because I’m the only one who actually tries to fix things around here!”
“And what is there to fix, exactly?” Arum snipes, exaggerating the way his tongue flits out to taste the acrimony on the air.
Rilla throws her arms in the air again, utterly maddened. “Are you kidding me?! After everything that’s happened today, after you to almost got crushed, or could have fallen who knows how far – we could’ve died today, or worse, and you still want to play this stupid game?”
“Me?” Arum gives a short bark of a laugh. “Maybe if you asked Sir Damien-”
“Don’t you point those dastardly claws at me!” Damien interrupts. “Rilla and I have no time for your cruelties.”
“Excuse me?” Arum says, growling in irritation. “As if I am not justified in my criticisms, or should I sit idly while you, Sir Damien-” he stresses the title, jeering – “flounder about with all your inanities, and hang-ups of duty-”
“And I should lay myself low enough to listen to the insults of a monster?” Damien scoffs. “You and all your fiendish melodrama, why I should have have seen how brutish you were from the beginning!”
“My insults? Of all people to say they are victim of insult-!”
“ENOUGH!”
Rilla’s bellow stops Damien and Arum in their tracks, the two glancing towards her as their hearts hammer in their chests. She is almost shaking, the tears trembling on her cheeks with her as she fails to hide her own heaving sobs behind gritted teeth. There is a moment of silence, of a palpable tension wrapping around them that Arum could slice through with the tip of a claw like gossamer, like silk, and he waits for her to break the suffocating silence –
She steps away from the both of them, the two men taken aback as she marches away with a stubborn determination. Before one of them can think she is leaving, she stops at her pack, left haphazardly thrown against the wall when she had first raged inside, broken machinery and bedroll still stuffed inside. She tears it all apart with a kind of fierce precision – the strong, definite chop of her arm as she slams each item down beside her, the way she stands ramrod straight when she finds what she is looking for, each booming step as she trudges her way back to them.
She has her recorder gripped in a clenched fist, and her jaw is set with a new steadiness as she starts fiddling with the buttons. Damien and Arum merely watch her as she attends to it with rapt attention, a series of clicks and whirs as she twists the knob to build up its power. She holds the recorder out to them, and it takes a moment for Arum to realize it is not a motion to speak once her tinny voice talks back to them from its little speaker, picking up in the middle of a word. No, what Rilla presents them now is not an offer but a challenge, and a serious one, should anyone dare defy the evidence of her science.
“-plainable, and I still haven’t factored out the possibility of cross-contamination…” The three are still as they wait, the two men for an explanation in audio, Rilla for the moment of her supposed vindication, as it continues on through what Arum is about to excuse as a simple research log until –
“Probably the urn Damien dragged in here yesterday.” Arum jumps at the sharpness of of his own voice.
“Oh, be nice,” recorder-Rilla placates. “It was a sweet gesture.”
“I don’t see why you should value the intention when the gesture itself is at best meaningless.” He remembers this, now, in flashes – Rilla, frowning at orderly rows of petri dishes, miniscule spores spoiled and curdled on the agar as she picked her brain for explanations, a thatch of wildflowers newly wilting in a vase by the windowsill. And Arum as he listened, his own irritation felt in the crinkle of his nose thick with the scent of pollen. “Plucking up living things as if he owns them, not even considering proper botanical care – he might as well be hunting and killing everything he thinks we’ll find pretty…”
The rock-heavy weight of dread and guilt that sat unsteady in his stomach grows as large as a boulder as Rilla presents the recording. He doesn’t turn to Damien, ashamed to meet the aching and tearful gaze that is sure to greet him if he does. He thinks he can hear his breath hitch, the wet gasp as he opens his mouth to speak his heart, when Rilla clicks it off.
Not completely. There’s another whir, the click of gears and tape as she skips through again.
“-wouldn’t be so disjointed, if you didn’t have such a penchant for intruding on my tale at every opportunity!” It’s Damien, this time, and Arum can hear how his gasp rattles in his throat. “There’s no point in a good story if you need me to spoil you with every single description, those paws of yours must be much sharper than your mind, an apt comparison considering they have not marred me yet in combat-!”
The recording is cut short with another click. “Rilla,” Damien breathes, his voice bordering on a weeping song. “Please, you don’t-”
“Be quiet,” she tells him, and the whir of the tape on the reel heralds in a new memory, another one Arum thinks is better left forgotten.
“-believe Damien is off speaking to his dear imaginary friend-” Arum physically curls into himself at that, shame burning behind his eyes and he cannot think to look at Damien, he can’t – “if you are so eager to interrupt him-”
Another click, and the voices stop, another whir and they begin again.
“-I can go fetch the equipment, if your work is truly too sensitive to have your eyes part from them. Although you may need to tell me in terms the Keep will understand, considering its translator is off sulking like a petulant-”
Another click. Another whir. Rilla’s chin begins to wobble dangerously again.
“-much as your scientific method intrigues me, I do not think I can listen in to another one of your logs, having just endured another one of Damien’s longwinded neuroses-”
Click. Whir.
“-more like a child than a monster, how he defines his ‘free will’ – doing just as much as he pleases only to stomp off snuffling and sulking back to his mother when others do exactly so-!”
Click. Whir.
“- can get another sample from Damien, if you wish, just the other day he was off terrorizing the creatures here. Hunting, he calls it, as if you can call something so callous-”
Click. Whir.
“That’s enough,” Damien interrupts, his voice surprisingly firm and steady. “You’ve made your point clear.”
“Have I?” Rilla asks. She doesn’t turn it off, leaves the last entry to ramble on to its conclusion before it clicks away to the next one. “Is it? Is it really enough, because as much as you hate to hear yourself talk I still have to make sure you two are actually listening-”
“I said that is quite enough!” Damien exclaims, his voice almost cracking as it rises in pitch. “Turn in off!”
The fact of Damien raising his voice, submitting to yelling, startles Arum away from his deduction towards the fact he cannot look at him - mustn’t look at him, lest the gaze he finds breaks him – and it does. The knight, his words still ever steady even as they threaten to warble, trembles where he stands. He’s pressing the knuckles of his palm firmly to his mouth, hiding the muscles working furiously in his jaw, his eyes overflowing and red with tears. They meet Arum’s, who feels his eyes burn in turn, feels his whole body burn all over in shame and in his own steady confrontation of the man before him. And when they look at each other…
It’s – the ill-will still remains, is still present as Damien’s face crumbles behind his hand. But it is softer, now, not a glassy, impermeable shield that reflects every sting and jab like before, melting away to a willing vulnerability that takes Arum’s breath away in a sob.
“Is it,” Rilla repeats herself. The recorder finally clicks off into accusatory silence, Rilla’s watery glare oscillating between the two of them in equal measure as she watches them shrink into themselves. “Have you had enough, hearing this? Just these few bits? Because it has been weeks, and weeks of this,” her voice cracks, and she closes her eyes to steady herself, two tears willful against them as they fall. “And I think I have had my fill of hearing this crap over and over again!
“And still, you two…” and she watches them, watches them watch each other. “I know we’re having our issues, and I know it’s been difficult and frustrating and we keep finding ways to hit every single nerve. But we talk and we talk and we talk but do you guys even listen to each other? To yourselves?” And they haven’t, though none of them says it aloud, known even if it remains unspoken. “I don’t understand how – how you two can be so spiteful to each other, so unwilling to understand or to make a compromise, and you go about the Keep and you wander and pray like nothing is wrong! I don’t understand why you act like this is normal! Like you can talk to each like this as if its okay!
“What the fuck happened to us?” There’s a pause, and Arum can’t tell if she is waiting for an answer. There is only the sound of the blood rushing cold in his ears, of Damien’s quiet sobs and Rilla’s heavy breath. She punctuates it by thrusting the recorder at them in a shaking, white-knuckled grip, punching the air like she was leading a one-woman revolt through the streets. “How can you even think to speak to each other like this? How can you treat each other like this and lead me to believe that you love each other?
“How is this trying us?” she cries weakly, and Damien is the first to inch towards her, hesitant, watching her fully shatter. “I thought we made a promise, that we would try, that we would really try to make this work, that we wouldn’t give up because the three of us were worth the effort, and I don’t understand!”
Rilla repeats those last few words into her hands as she covers her face. She cries loudly as she sinks into one of their little rickety kitchen chairs, folded over with the force of each sob like she wants to retch, or press her head between her knees and scream. Damien reaches out, stepping forward so he can kneel down by her feet. When he tries pull her hands from her face to hold them in his, she wrenches them away violently.
“Don’t – let me go!” she says feebly, but there is more of a grim acceptance in her than conviction, so when Damien takes her hand again she lets him. “You don’t – you don’t listen to me and I don’t understand…” His other hand shifts to cup her cheek, a thumb tenderly brushing away the wetness there even as his own tears roll down his face.
“Oh, my blossom,” Damien whispers, pillow-soft against the bob of his Adam’s apple in his throat. The lilt of his voice is hypnotizing, and it pulls Arum towards the two humans with that same magic he could never deny it has always possessed. He approaches tentatively, slowly moving to steady Rilla from behind. One hand braces itself gently on her shoulder, claws wary of the tangles in her hair as he weaves his fingers through – he can smell the traces of dust and rubble in it as he presses his snout to her cheek, unable to tell if it is real or merely part of the ghostly memory the four had escaped just hours ago, and only now does he appreciate the bone-tired ache in all of their faces. One pair of them wrap around her middle, holding her tall against the backrest of the chair between them, the fourth reaching down to grip where Damien and Rilla’s hand meet.
There is a tight, desperate squeeze, the rough scrape of bowstring calluses against the setae of his fingertips, and Arum breathes heavy and deep into Rilla’s hair to keep the sobs at bay as a little of the weight his lifted from the bottom of his heart.
“I can’t lose us,” she manages, quietly repeating the words that had been lost on the brutal winds and tides of the Terminus. “I know there’s so much wrong, and I don’t even know if we can fix it anymore, but I can’t lose us, I can’t lose you two.” A sob breaks through, her whole body shaking. “I love you.”
“We love you,” Damien says, and the two humans laugh in Arum’s arms because he doesn’t even realize he said it at the same time. “Oh, my darling Rilla,” Damien continues, his words broken up as he presses his face to hers; Arum cannot see his face behind the black curtain of her hair, but he suspects he must be peppering her with kisses. “Oh, I love you, the both of you-” Arum does not notice Damien trying to meet his gaze as his tongue stutters across those words, looking up towards the ceiling to relieve the burning behind his eyelids – “we love you, so much it hurts to see you distraught like this. Speak your heart, my dear, please, we can make this better, please-”
“I know,” she says. She sniffles loudly, wiping the back of her hand across her face before Arum can offer her the handkerchief in his pocket, deciding to just let her feel safe in his arms. She sits heavy in them, almost slumped in her exhaustion; no wonder she’s fallen this deep into her sorrow, with no choice but to let it out through tears. “I know we can, but I don’t know how, and I need you guys to help – I need you to help me figure out how but I don’t even know where to start right now.”
“How can we help,” Damien continues, almost a plea. “Anything, anything to make us better – to make you better, oh my dearest I loathe to see you like this! What do you need?”
“I-” she clears her throat, sniffs again, and when she speaks she’s laughing in that sardonic tone that means even she realizes she’s being a bit silly. “I wanted to be left alone! I don’t think that would’ve been better, but-”
“You cannot possibly think that we would leave you like this,” Arum says. “You’ve worked yourself up all on your own, so you should at least let us help you out of this state.”
She laughs again, scrubbing her face and letting Damien wrap her up in his arms, and even through her tears the sound is soft like bells, lights up the beat of Arum’s sore and heavy heart. So he works through the guilt, steadies Damien with a taciturn claw on his bicep as he watches him work through his nerves, and moves away to take the first step.
There is little chatter, sweet nothings and small questions taking the form of gesture or lost to the quiet din of the swamp outside. Damien slips into their room for a set of clothes for the two of them, Arum shuffling through her pack for the remnants of her provisions, too sluggish to make a meal; there is a worryingly ample amount left, enough for the starving three of them and more, and she doesn’t protest as Damien lectures her for burying herself in her research and single-mindedness to the point she neglects to eat.
Rilla does not stay to address the new tension on the air between the three of them. The two of them would not have let her, even if she had tried to fight the weariness in her body and the heaviness of her eyes. Instead, she lets Damien lead her back to their room with a gentle hand at her back, and Arum sits quietly and tries not to eavesdrop on the little frantic whispers and the soft sobs he hears muffled beyond the door.
Damien reemerges, the door creaking behind him as he leaves it slightly ajar, taking one look back into the room that Arum cannot see. He closes his tired eyes, sucks in a heavy breath, and then makes his way to the front door. It is left open, as if Damien expects Arum to trail behind, and Arum watches through the entryway as he takes one, two steps outside before he all but slumps down on the front steps, his arms on his knees and his head hanging.
Arum slithers beside him. Violet eyes watch his stilted movements with concern, his hands pressing into his face and up through his hair, back and over to rub the back of his neck with a heavy sigh before finally moving forward again. He clasps them in front of his mouth, tired eyes slipping closed as his lips form the words of a quick, silent prayer against his ink-stained knuckles. His eyelashes flutter, watching the lizard intently over his joined hands before Arum recognizes he is finished.
“I do not intend to interrupt you,” Arum reassures, quietly. He looks out into the mixed greenery, the last bits of sunset slowly slipping from the gaps in the foliage and submerging them into the blue hours of the evening. “If you wish to continue, perhaps muster your calm, your tranquility,” he attempts, somewhat clumsily, and feels embarrassed relief as wry amusement flits across Damien’s expression, “I will let you resume undisturbed.”
Damien hums out what Arum thinks might be a laugh, though it sounds too sad, too contemplative to hold any joy in it. His hands fall from his face, bracing himself against the ground. When he looks to Arum again, his face is etched in true sorrow.
“Oh, Arum,” he says. A deep breath, a second – controlled, in a way Arum has been conscious to recognize and learn, is now careful not to disparage. “I think we’ve broken our dear Amaryllis’s heart.”
It’s a punch to the gut, a physical pain like he wants to vomit, and it only makes the statement just as undeniable.
“I,” Arum’s voice is caught on an embarrassingly high pitch, clearing his throat to try and speak a second time. “I believe that she might not be alone, in that.”
“Oh, Arum,” Damien breathes, and Arum reaches down to take his hand as his voice takes on a familiar, frantic edge. “Oh Arum we have truly, utterly mucked this up, haven’t we?”
Arum laughs darkly, closing his eyes to the swamp before him, letting the murmur of amphibious chirps and the leaves in the breeze lull him into a steadier rhythm, a scrap of peace so he can move forward. “I don’t think there would be any point in denying it, honeysuckle.”
“Don’t-” Damien says quickly, his voice thick with tears. Arum turns in alarm, wondering what could have him riled up so suddenly, but the knight will not look to him once he has found his words again. “Don’t – don’t call me that.”
“H- Damien?” Arum begins, carefully inching forward.
“You do not need to call me that,” he says, as if reassuring Arum through his tears. “In fact, I would prefer if you did not indulge me in that name again, if you merely wish to placate me – I beg you not to speak it if you do not hold its sentiment any longer.”
“Do you really think I would not want to refer to you with affection anymore?” Arum asks – truly asks, because Damien’s words have untethered him and he is beginning to feel adrift without the certainty of the answer. “Damien, I – I want to, we are still learning our errors but we know they are there, did you think I wouldn’t want to – that the reason our disagreements hurt so much was because something other than the fact I still care for you? In all this, as difficult and bruising as it has been, did you think I had lost any of the love I had for you? For you and Amaryllis?”
“I don’t know,” he sobs, and his face his crestfallen, contorting in the wave of misery that takes him over. He hangs his head, a hand covering his eyes as his body shakes. “I don’t know! We’ve given each other nothing but wounds, with our poison words, with our biting silence, and it hurts, hurts to think of what you have said – what I have said in return! And hypocrite that I am, I do not know how to pardon all that has happened between the three of us, of all that has been lost, and yet all I want is your forgiveness for my wrongdoing! For my cowardice, my constant fear-”
“Damien, you need to breathe,” Arum consoles, finding himself parroting Rilla’s own methods. “Please, Damien, nothing can be made right talking of yourself in this way.”
“And yet you have said it all yourself – and I do not say that to incriminate you, I do not wish to do so, I only say it because you were speaking truth-!”
“Honeysuckle, that is-”
“I told you not to call me that!” Damien exclaims. He launches up to his feet, his hands gesturing and distorting as if he can clutch something to anchor him out of the air. “I do not want your empty words; I cannot accept them, nor do I deserve them!”
“And did I not just say that I meant it? That I still do?” Arum replies. He stands with him, one pair of hands reaching for Damien’s own. “It is true, that you do not deserve those empty words, and that is why I continue to speak them, because they are not empty. I will call you by that name as many times as it takes you to believe that I intend every single letter of it.”
“And what else did you intend?” he asks. There is nothing accusatory in his eyes, when he looks up at Arum; only the bright hazel flashing bright in their ever-dimming surroundings, swimming underneath tears. A steadying breath, and he continues. “Did you intend – when you refer to my cruelty, my ignorance and weak will - were those words, even for a moment, ever said in earnest?”
Arum cannot speak for a moment, his mind stumbling over the memories – the sound of each gritty glitch in Rilla’s recordings; the burning stench of parchment and ink curling and crumbling to ash under flickering flame; the biting sting of every remark of every beast slayed and in return the guilt of every alliance, every friendship broken in penance; and still, the sight of Damien’s face in a rare moment of tranquility, his eyes closed in sleep or in prayer, Arum cannot decipher the two anymore. He cannot speak through the heaviness of each memory, of each thought weighted down with all that they are and all of the ways they have tried and all of the ways they failed to.
“Damien, I-” he stutters. Damien pulls him close, and he trips over his tongue for the words he is almost envious of his love for weaving so masterfully and yet so casually. He tries to find the answer in Damien’s eyes and finds it is not there – instead he sees the comfort of his vulnerable gaze and the love residing within, nodding as if allowing Arum to continue with the knowledge that however he responds, it will not be held against him.
“I don’t know, honeysuckle,” he chokes. Damien gives a quiet sob, one hand trying to reach up to brush Arum’s cheek before faltering, deciding better of it. His other hand is still interwoven with one of Arum’s, his thumb brushing over the scales of his knuckles. “I do not know what I meant and what was merely callousness anymore, because all I know for certain is my hurt, and the knowledge of yours that I truly do wish to make better. But it would not be fair, for either of us, to say for certain if there were never things I meant in the moment, and I can only hope you can accept me in spite of it, or move forward with that knowledge.”
“I…” Damien says. He closes his eyes, moving closer even in his pain to press his forehead to Arum’s chest. Arum wraps the second pair of arms around him in one furious movement, claiming him greedily. “I don’t believe I could say any differently of my own cruelty, these past few days.”
The two fall quiet, uneasy but at least content in their mutual embrace and understanding, if not a full solution. Damien leans deeply into Arum, half-boneless as another tide of exhaustion reminds them of the trials of the mere hours past. He counts their breaths, feels the brush of Damien’s stubble as his lips mouth words of poetry and prayer against his skin. The last of the sun slips from the pockets between the leaves, plunging them into darkness. Arum is still able to discern the finer details beyond the slim bioluminescence of the nocturnal scene, but even so, his eyes burn with fatigue, and he is ever-aware of the fact he will have to help Damien navigate through the night, primitive human vision and all.
“Come, turn in with me,” Arum suggests, the first to break the embrace. “You may – the Keep will allot you space for the night to your liking, if you wish.”
“That would be wise,” Damien ponders. There is a hint of uncertainty in his voice as he remains standing on the spot, his eyes lingering towards the darkness where his and Rilla’s hut stands. “Though – I know Rilla is asleep, I saw to her comfort myself, yet-”
“I think it would be best to leave her until morning,” Arum says, trying to assuage his anxiety. He clears his throat, a hand behind the knight’s back as he leads him away, conscious not to do so forcefully. “If you think otherwise, however,” he adds carefully, gently, “I will not keep you from sleeping in the hut, as you prefer.”
Damien hums, lowering his gaze to the ground. “I think you are right, this time around.” Arum spies the soft, sweet smile that curls at the corner of his lips, and is both bashful and relieved that Damien recognized Arum’s offering of an out – whether it be to tend anxiously to Rilla, or to acknowledge the possibility of discomfort of dwelling so close to him on Damien’s part, he doesn’t know if either of them know it to be of one reason or both. “I think it would also be pertinent to see that Olala is well?”
Arum snorts. “Way to remind me of what turmoil still lies ahead after today, honeysuckle. Though between the child’s penchant for chaos, and Amaryllis’ ire-”
“Definitely would prefer to tackle the child, first,” Damien chuckles, taking Arum’s hand in his to let himself be guided. “As for the three of us… a moment to gather our thoughts, before we continue to address them.”
“Of course.” Arum squeezes Damien’s hand, relishes the heat of it. “Now come. We will try again, in the morning.”