Work Text:
The sounds of snarling echoed in Razor’s ears as he raised his greatsword to the pair of masked figures in front of him. “I’ll hold them off,” he had said hardly a minute ago, telling his companion to stay safe too in the meantime. However, the task proved to be more difficult than he initially thought.
Years-old memories, buried away, lurched out of his body as he remembered the last time the abyss mages had come to hurt him. He always stayed away from the places where they lingered for fear of a scenario like this.
Bennett began to pant heavily at his side. He dodged skillfully and avoided the bursts of fire the mage created. He never used his Vision, for it would be rather pointless to try burning through its already flame-powered shield.
“Okay?” Razor asked, too in a hurry to formulate the entire three-word sentence. He wasn’t quite as afraid for his life as he was for his partner’s — with Bennett’s exceptionally bad luck, things could go wrong very quickly.
“I hope,” was the reply that came back to him as the snarling noises continued. His hand skidded against the ground as he made himself fall to dodge a slash that could have hit his head. When he nearly got cornered with one mage on each of his sides, Bennett came up in front of him to pierce the one on the left with his sword.
From slightly below, Razor watched the other mage send up a flame, and he pressed his body into the grass to avoid the heat.
Bennett let out a sound of pain and recoiled, finding himself on the ground too.
The wolf-boy asked himself, Am I going to lose him too?
“Bennett?!”
He winced and turned his head toward Razor, but it seemed as though he wasn’t looking at him straight. The burn, which left an inhuman-looking wound where the fire had hit, covered a large patch of skin on the adventurer’s upper arm.
If Razor wanted to stop the beasts from inflicting even more harm, he could do almost nothing for his partner.
Picking him up or getting the bandages from the adventurer’s satchel would give the monsters a chance to keep attacking, and continuing to fight would mean leaving his partner to suffer. He stood up and chose the latter option, hoping that the blows from his heavy weapon could have a chance to break the mages’ powerful shields.
“Don’t worry… Please…” Bennett’s voice sounded pained, and when Razor turned his head to glance at him again, he was halfway to laying down in the grass, his injury exposed.
Any flame of rage he’d felt at the masked mages had been put out with a torrent of grief and regret.
. . .
“Razor!” The blackness of unconsciousness faded to reveal an uninjured Bennett kneeling over him.
“Finally, you’re awake. Razor, are you okay? You were tossing and turning a bunch, and I just wanted to make sure everything was fine.”
He was back in the adventurer’s green tent, back in the forest outside of Springvale. They were safe. Still, it would be a lie to say that everything was fine.
In Razor’s mind, human language couldn’t quite explain the dream he’d just had. From what Bennett, Lisa and Fischl had told him of dreams, they were often pleasant, fascinating, or just straight nonsense.
But, this wasn’t any of those three things. It was a terrifying possibility.
He sat up with his knees closer to his chest and looked at Bennett, whose face was barely visible in the darkness. “I… Uh…”
The explosions of flames and the swinging of swords and that image of Bennett lying helpless on the ground would not leave him. It made his heart pound and his breath unsteady. Even though that exact event had never happened, it became a memory he knew would never want to leave him alone.
Bennett must have noticed his shaky breath and trembling body because he slipped his hand under his partner’s massive silver mane and gently caressed the back of his neck in an act of reassurance. “Was it a nightmare?” he asked.
Silence. If the word had come up before, he hadn’t committed it to his vocabulary.
“Like, a really bad dream?”
The wolf-boy guessed so and nodded. “Worse, though,” he added, his voice instantly shattering.
“Was it about…” At some point he had told the adventurer boy about the fate of the Mondstadt wolf pack he used to know. It had been when they went adventuring in Wolvendom, and Bennett had asked out of curiosity, why Razor refused to join him on commissions that involved getting rid of abyss mages. Razor didn’t like to tell people about the incident — not even Teacher Lisa knew — but Bennett was already close enough to him by that time that he wasn’t afraid to open up.
Now, the adventurer boy seemed to have connected the dots the right way around.
Razor only brought himself to nod again as small tears rolled down his cheeks. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell Bennett it was him that had gotten hurt by the abyss mages in his… nightmare.
“Hey, it’s okay,” his partner murmured, changing his position to instead have his arm all the way around Razor. He held him tight as sobs escaped the wolf-boy’s lips. “I’m not going to jinx anything, since there are a few of those… things… in Mondstadt, but just know that we’re safe right here.”
“They—” his words were stopped short by a convulsive gasp — “Could return.” Razor wouldn’t have thought so before, but that experience, no matter how false, contained shreds of truth within it. Those creatures were not far from anyone’s reach; they populated every nation in Teyvat and could come to ambush him or Bennett if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He hid his face, hugging his knees to his chest and continuing to cry. He felt Bennett’s hand on his back and tried to pay attention to that instead of the horrific pictures in his mind. He’s safe, everyone is safe, the wolf-boy told himself.
“If they do, we’ll be ready. I’m sure of it.”
It was a comforting statement to Razor, but that was all it was. How sure could anyone be?
Bennett didn’t say anything more, didn’t even shush him when he kept gasping through tears, battling a whirlwind of emotions. He just sat there, hugging the wolf-boy from the side, his cheek pressed against Razor’s shoulder.
Breathing shakily in, his sobbing seemed ready to die down, but he was still too scared to sleep.
“I trust you,” he said to Bennett, showing his face again. By saying those words out loud, he felt he could believe them.
Bennett let out a soft mm-hmm. He got closer to Razor’s face, probably to see if he was still crying, and let his nose brush against his partner’s cheek. “Are you going back to sleep?”
The wolf-boy shook his head. “Not now.”
“Then I’ll stay right here.”
And he did.
. . .
Minutes felt like ages to Bennett, gazing at Razor’s face in the almost-darkness, hoping he was at least somewhat at ease. He’d known that the Mondstadt wolf packs were the only family Razor had as a child, and to see them killed in front of him must have haunted him for the months and years to come. Come to think of it, he was surprised something like this hadn’t happened sooner.
He kissed Razor’s cheek and was glad to see the light returning to the wolf-boy’s eyes. He didn’t look cheerful by any means, but he seemed at the very least relieved.
As luck (or his lack thereof) would have it, the moment he thought this, Razor seemed to be forcing himself to hold in another sob.
“Deep breaths, Razor. In… and out. It’s gonna be okay.”
Bennett listened as the wolf-boy inhaled and exhaled with slow, quivering breaths. The rest of the night wouldn’t be very relaxing for either of them, it seemed, but the worst of it was long over. Razor looked up, rubbing his eyes and brushing his hair away from his face. He leaned into Bennett’s embrace — his silent way of asking, please don’t let go.
His eyes met Bennett’s. They still bore evidence of tears, looking puffy and swollen, and his nose and cheeks had gone red.
“Hey,” he whispered. “You feel any better?”
“I’m still scared,” he admitted. “But I will try my best.”