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Roza is… alive again.
It’s a relief, as much as they barely have time to process his death in the first place. One moment he’s lying in two pieces—and that image will forever be seared into Canach’s brain, white bark burnt to charcoal and sap-soaked organs outside where they shouldn’t be and Kasmeer’s scream—and the next he’s glaring at them with something close to vitriol, daring them to call him a ghost.
Canach would have made a joke if he hadn’t wanted to throw up.
But they're on the airship back to Amnoon now, and it’s fine, it’s fine of course. Kas has been crying, with little soft hiccups, but that’s fine. Rytlock won’t talk to any of them, and that’s fine too. Canach can’t concentrate because of Roza’s sheer emotional cesspool of rage-fear-worry or whatever the fuck he’s feeling, and that’s just dandy.
He wants to close his mind off, just to have a little privacy. He’s not very naturally empathetic, but Roza is, he’s let slip once, and Canach doesn’t want—he just doesn’t want. Not right now. But he can feel the weight of Roza’s stare, taking in so much more than he deserves to know, and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it. It’s like having an unwelcome but completely invisible intruder be privy to the bowels of his vulnerability. Canach hates it.
Face your fears or I’ll make you face them, Roza had told him once.
He heads to the bow of the ship, where Roza is gazing out over the desert, hands crossed placidly behind his back. He is the picture of forced stillness. Not calmness, because that will never be him. Canach takes a readying breath.
I’ll be right there with you when you do, Roza had told him also.
“Commander, if you have a moment,” Canach calls out.
Roza’s head turns just enough to glance at him. “I do,” he replies, indicating the space next to him with a sweep of his eyes.
Canach goes up to him, but remains some ways back. “So, the place where you ended up. The Domain of the Lost, was it? What does that mean, exactly?”
Roza looks up at the sky. He takes a slow, deep breath, letting it out as a misty exhale that disappears into the air as quickly as it forms.
“The Domain of the Lost is the place where souls who died too traumatically go after they die,” he says, voice simple and detached. “A purgatory of sorts.”
“Oh.” Canach wants to question too traumatically, but decides to make his wise decision of the day, and doesn’t. “I didn’t know we ended up in any sort of afterlife,” he says instead.
Roza shrugs one shoulder, a small shift in his back. “The sylvari spirits I saw there were real—I could feel their essences. I don’t know if one day they’ll go back to the Dream. I know I didn’t want to.”
The admittance pricks Canach’s ears. “You didn’t?”
Roza looks at him. His eyes are hollow. “What, and end up shattered fragments of memory to be absorbed by sprouts? No. I want to keep my soul.”
“Surprisingly autarchic of you.” Canach crosses his arms, raising one sardonic eyebrow. “Are you hoping to end up in the Mists, then? I’ll admit, you do seem the type to want to spend eternity alone.”
He feels the sharp jitter of Roza’s umbrage exactly a second after the words leave his mouth, and it takes him another one to realize why. Before he can so much as put his metaphorical hands up, however, Roza is replying.
“It wouldn’t be alone,” is all he says. His tone is a warning.
“You can’t think that…” Canach trails off. That he’s there, is what he was going to say. That he would still want you like this, is also there, crueller.
He doesn’t even have to finish his sentence. “I didn’t ask for your input, did I, Canach?” Roza whirls around. “Now, if I’m done with your boorish probing into the second worst moment of my life, why don’t you go be emotionally constipated with Rytlock in the corner? I’m sure that by the time we get back to Amnoon, the two of you can come up with a plan to run away to yet another continent like cowards rather than face your problems.”
Back off, says the black glare of his eyes. Canach doesn’t need to be told thrice. He wants to argue, because that’s just not fair, but he knows how to pick his battles, and he doesn’t want to say something he can’t take back. It’s there on the tip of his tongue, ready to bite, but he forces himself to swallow it down.
He heads back inside to sit with Kasmeer. He supposes that when one steps into the fire, one can expect to be burnt. Still, he can control the size of his own flames.
Kasmeer leans against him. He puts an arm around her shoulders. “He didn’t mean that,” she whispers, her voice still wavering from whatever shrouded conversation she had had with Roza earlier. Nearby, Rytlock glances at them before looking away.
Canach presses chaste lips to her head, and says nothing. He finds himself glad, not for the first time, that mesmers can’t read minds.
~*~
Canach is sitting on the outskirts of Amnoon in a quaint little makeshift shade he has made out of his propped-up tent. He is reading Woven Hearts I: Solace and Sorrow; a rather terribly written novel, if amusing in its mediocrity. He has just gotten to the part where the aloof yet deeply romantic norn warrior confesses his love to his wobble-kneed asura companion when a shadow crosses his page.
“Canach,” Roza says, casually as ever, “I want to fight you.”
Canach dog-ears his book and sets it aside. “Colour me surprised, Commander. Are you finally admitting that y—”
The sand at his feet heaves, and before he knows what is happening he is flung prone to the ground, his breath ungracefully fleeing from his chest in a low wheeze. He looks up to see Roza standing there, Caladbolg spinning idly in his hand.
“Get up,” he says simply. He doesn’t smile, but Canach thinks he can feel faint amusement trickling from him.
Prick.
He gets up, spitting sand. Roza waits patiently as he collects his sword and shield, but the moment he readies them, he strikes again.
Canach blocks the jagged shadows he throws, then swings with his sword. Roza lazily shadowsteps out of the way.
They continue in a similar pattern. After a short time, Canach begins to get the odd and irritating feeling that he’s being toyed with. Roza is about as annoying to fight as a mesmer, and he doesn’t seem as keen on getting a hit in than he is on wearing Canach out. After about five minutes of swiping at shadows and stamping on sand, Canach is just about ready to actually sink his blade into one bored-looking, smarmy necromancer.
“Are you actually going to come here and fight me, Commander, or are you going to let the desert do all your work for you?” he calls out. It isn’t very strong, as taunts go, but if this keeps up, he’s going to tire himself out before too long.
“Hm,” Roza says neutrally.
Sand rises around Canach, blocking his vision. Then it burns with eerie green flame, and he makes a split second decision to roll through it just as sharp glass shards impale the area he had occupied just seconds before.
He looks back at them, panting. Then up at Roza, who’s smiling that curling, noxious smile of his.
“Oops,” he murmurs, voice oily.
Canach charges him. Roza claws his hand up in a fierce motion, and sand lifts Canach off the ground, immobilizing him. Higher, until Roza is at his feet. Higher still, until it would be precarious to jump.
Roza slams him to the ground, hard. The impact buffets the air out of his lungs. His mind reels and he shakes his head, hefting himself up by his elbows.
A fistful of sand sprays in his face and Canach chokes, coughing hard. A playful, if obnoxious way of reminding him that Roza could fill his lungs with sand from this position, if he wanted to. He can almost hear the ‘Dead,’ drawled carelessly in his ear.
Thorns, Canach hates him sometimes.
He gets up, only to see Roza tapping his foot in an overdramatic show of impatience. Oh, how Canach itches to punch that mock pout off his face.
He lobs a random grenade, if only because he isn’t worried the commander will actually get caught in the blast. It turns out to be an oil one, which is fantastic, really. He doesn’t need to let himself look any more idiotic, really. Roza has the audacity to actually laugh at him, and he waves his torch—
The oil catches alight.
Which isn’t all too surprising. That’s how oil works, after all. But it isn’t necrotic flame—Roza isn’t controlling the blaze. It’s bright, burning orange, smelling of smoke and sulphur, untamed in its fleeting existence.
Roza stares at him through the blaze and his face is—frozen.
Canach sees his opportunity and pounces. Yes, it’s a smidgen unfair, because he’s already worked out what’s happened. But he isn’t going to kill him, and Pale Mother knows the bastard has it coming. He throws his sword through the fire, aiming somewhere to Roza’s right—
The sheer weight of panic and terror in the magic that hits him is more than enough to knock him off his feet, even without the physical blow that comes with it. Then Roza is gone somehow and there is a demon in his place, a creature of magic and malice and fear, and it is killing Canach, draining the life force out of him and sucking him dry. His limbs lose their feeling, his body its strength—his eyes roll up as he tries to get out a word, a name, a plea—
“Canach?” A whisper.
“Canach!” The draining stops, and that is Roza’s voice, he recognizes it now, filled with genuine distress that Canach would ordinarily relish in hearing. The weight lifts off him all at once, the darkness around him fading with it. Roza’s hands press to his chest, channeling, and Canach experiences the strange sensation of life force being funnelled into him.
He waits until he can feel his fingers again before kicking him hard in the stomach.
Roza folds in two. Canach picks up his sword, dragging it over to his curled form. He is just about to plant it next to his head when a force of dark energy hurtles into him.
Well, Canach thinks as Roza rises off the ground, at least he can recover quickly.
He tells himself that he was just testing his reflexes, that he just needed Roza to see that he has vulnerabilities—but that is paltry comfort when he is quickly being bludgeoned into submission by nothingness. It doesn’t help that Roza is simply hovering there, one hand outstretched, occasionally flicking more than one finger or making an irritated noise when Canach ducks out of the way.
Canach tries to move towards him, and his own shadow winds around his legs and trips him. Something that feels suspiciously like a boot punts him in the stomach, although Roza is still half a dozen yards away.
“Sweet brother,” whispers his shadow, “Yield.”
Canach spits out sand. He strains against his shadow—traitor—but it doesn’t give. “Sometimes I understand why you don’t have—” He coughs. “—any friends.”
“Hm,” says Roza neutrally.
Sand starts to pour on Canach’s ear. And keeps pouring. And doesn’t stop.
“What the—” Canach breaks off with a curse as some of it gets into his eye. He squeezes them shut.
“Yield or it goes up your nose.”
“You are despic—Ugh!"
Now that is painful. Sand up the nose should be a renowned torture tactic.
“Fine!” Canach barks when he can breath again. “I yield. You win. Good f—”
He starts to hack. Damned sand got everywhere.
He hears Roza let out a pleased sigh. “Thank you, Canach. I think I needed that catharsis. You really are incredibly irritating sometimes, you know.”
“There’s something wrong with you,” Canach grumbles back. He gives his head a shake, sending a small mountain of sand tumbling down his face and into any unfortunately open orifices.
He doesn’t say Sorry for making you relive the second most traumatizing moment of your existence, and Roza doesn’t say It’s alright, that was my violent forgiveness, but the dialogue is implicit. At least, Canach would like to think so.
“What brought this on, if I may ask, Commander?” he mumbles into the ground. He… will get up. Eventually. When he doesn’t feel like one giant bruise.
“Do you remember when you thought it would be funny to get Laranthir to beat me up because you were too scared to?” Roza replies. “Because I certainly don’t.”
Oh, Canach knew that was going to come back to bite him in the ass.
He feels a shadow fall over him. Roza’s presence crawls into his personal space as he kneels down next to him. Cool fingers brush tenderly over his cheek.
“Rest well, dear brother,” Roza says, voice soft as a blade sheathed in silk. “And next time you make a betting pool on me, I get half.”
The fingers tap once, light as a feather, before disappearing. Canach turns his face into the sand as his shadow fades, leaving harsh sunlight to beat down against his bark once more.
~*~
“Uh… Canach.” Rytlock’s gruff voice is oddly tentative. “What’re you, uh… doing?”
Canach glances down at his hand. A winning one, if he plays his cards right.
“Savouring the short vacation I have before I am dragged into battle against another Elder Dragon,” he says. “Why?”
Rytlock’s pause is telling. “Roza got hurt,” he says finally.
Canach ignores the frisson that goes through him at that. “We get hurt all the time,” he says. “Hazards of the job.”
“Yeah, but he got real hurt. Shot in the plant vitals, apparently. It’s… touch and go.”
Canach hears an odd noise from his table partner, and realizes that he’s crushed his cards in his hand, now a fist. He unclenches it abruptly.
“Where are you?” he demands.
Rytlock tells him.
Canach is debriefed in the Hall of Monuments, and he finds himself taking it all in—Aurene, Almorra, Bangar, Braham’s apparently more lupine nature—with surprising ease. He patiently listens to Rytlock explain what happened, and only after he finishes does he fix him with a glare.
“So what I’m hearing from all of this,” Canach tells himself he doesn’t growl, “Is that in the midst of another dragon whispering inside his head, his own allies not trusting him, and him having absolutely no choice but to trust in your judgment, you nearly got my little brother killed.”
“Oh,” says Rytlock.
“Yes, ‘Oh.’” Heavy sarcasm drips from Canach’s voice. He crosses his arms.
“Look.” Rytlock huffs out air through his nostrils. “I know, okay? I flaming know. I’ll… talk to him. Happy?”
“You had better,” says Canach. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Rytlock’s eyes shift. “I ain’t looking at you like anything, twig.”
“Rytlock, I am not in the mood.”
Rytlock sighs. “You know, uh,” he says, “Roza can take care of himself. He doesn’t need…” He waves ambiguously at Canach.
“Me?” Canach says archly. “Of course he doesn’t.”
“No,” Rytlock says. “The whole… older sibling thing. You don’t have to do that.”
“Oh,” says Canach.
“I mean…” Rytlock sighs, a guttural sound. “Burn me, Caithe tried. She really flaming tried, Canach. Roza avoided her like she was… I don’t know, like she had rot or something. It’s a miracle Destiny’s Edge even reunited.”
From what Canach had heard, save Rytlock and Logan, they barely did. “What’s your point?” he asks.
“My point is that if he doesn’t want you there, he’s going to be blunt about it. You might not want to get close. Not when he’s like this, at least. Be any more brittle and he’d shatter and impale you with the shards.”
It takes Canach a long, painful second. When he finally understands, he can’t keep either the disbelief nor the ridicule out of his tone. “Tribune. Are you worried about my feelings being hurt?”
Rytlock growls. “Look. All I’m saying is that—”
“You are!" Canach crows. “Oh, Tree give me strength. I don’t know whether to be delighted or horrified.”
“Would you shut your stupid maw for just one second, you yapping piece of lettuce?” Rytlock snaps. “Ugh, I knew this was a bad idea. Look, Roza’s a solid leader. Good friend, even. Trust him with my life and more. And if you get too close, he’ll bite like a motherfucker.”
Canach smirks at his belated flinch after that last sentence. “Speaking from experience?” he asks snidely.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rytlock grumbles.
Canach uncrosses his arms to sigh. “Tribune. It’s not that I don’t trust your judgment. But contrary to popular belief, he needs people to care about him, and he’s perfectly capable of returning the favour. I’m willing to risk a burn or two to put out the fire.”
Rytlock gives him a long, searching look. He still seems uncertain, so Canach points out, “He’s probably angry with you.”
Rytlock sighs. “I know,” he says lowly.
“He’s not going to be very nice about it,” Canach continues.
“I know,” Rytlock repeats, something like resignation in his voice.
“Then why are you still here, if we should all be so selfish about our feelings?”
Rytlock stares at him, then snorts. “You know what, I’ll give you that one, twig.”
Canach gives him a somewhat nasty smile. “Tribune. Just in case it wasn’t clear: I don’t particularly care if Roza tells me to go throw myself off a cliff and never speak to him again. I’m not leaving him here like this.”
“Huh,” Rytlock says after a pause. “That strong, huh?”
Canach makes a neutral noise of agreement. “That strong.”
“Good.” Rytlock’s nostrils flare. “He’ll need that.”
~*~
“Just to clarify,” Canach asks, “You attacked him with Sohothin? Your flaming sword?”
Rytlock gives him a look.
“Lovely,” says Canach.
“I know,” Rytlock grumbles. Then, “Fix it.”
“Apologize.”
“… I will.”
~*~
“He gave me Caladbolg,” Canach says.
“Oh,” Rytlock replies, and it’s different. There’s a pause. “I gave him Sohothin.”
Canach drops his head into his hand. “Tribune.”
“Trust me,” Rytlock growls, “It’ll help.”
~*~
“I don’t know how to use a sword,” Roza says to him, blank and honest.
Sohothin is in his hand, as on fire as ever. Roza is holding it away from himself, but it is in the manner of someone who is untrained with their weapon, not someone who is afraid of it.
Still, he’s always been very good at hiding that.
Canach raises a thorny eyebrow. “And what am I supposed to do with that information, Commander?”
“Will you please help me?” Roza asks.
Canach drops the knife he has been sharpening. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
Roza looks at him with quiet eyes. “Will you please help me, Canach?” he repeats. “You’re the best swordsman I know, and I trust you not to hurt me.”
Mulch, he of all people shouldn’t be allowed to say such simple sentences and have them be so… have them be so much. Canach picks up his knife, tucking it back into his belt, and stands. There is a strange tightness in his chest.
Roza’s gaze drops. “I understand if you don’t want to. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for how harsh I always am to you. I’m not—”
“Stop,” Canach says. He doesn’t know what’s in his throat, this thing that is thick and viscous and tinged with nausea. “Stop doing that.”
Roza crosses his wrists in front of himself. Sohothin burns at his side. “Sorry,” he says.
“Stop apologizing,” Canach snaps, and he doesn’t know why he is getting so worked up. Something about this feels so wrong.
Roza never says “Sorry,” anyways. Roza says “I apologize,” and it is never with remorse. Canach can feel that remorse now, gently radiating from him.
“You’re angry.” Roza nods, as if he had expected that. “I understand. You must feel unappreciated, after all these years and after all that you have done for me. I’ve never shown you the gratitude you des—”
“I said stop!” Canach doesn’t mean to raise his voice. Roza goes silent, however, staring up at him with black eyes that are all too knowing.
“Thorns,” Canach says thickly. He strides forwards and throws an arm around Roza’s back, grasping him in more of a wrestling hold than a hug. He hears a muted clatter of metal, however, and then thin hands are crawling over his armour, settling into its narrow points. His brother’s head leans gently against his shoulder.
Canach shoves him away after about half a minute. “Say something irrevocably callous,” he orders.
Roza gives him a small smile. “I love you,” he says.
“Fuck you,” Canach returns.
Roza bends down to pick up Sohothin. Canach slaps his hand away and yanks him into another hug.
Roza’s breath flutters against his armour. “I’ve never said that before,” he muses. “It feels… nice.”
Canach lets out a shaky exhale. “Fuck you,” he says again, with feeling, and buries his face into Roza’s cloak so he won’t feel the wetness of his eyes.
~*~
Roza is alive again.