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Orym’s never been gifted at magic. Plenty of people had tried to teach him, back in Zephrah. Will’s mother was always a gifted healer. Other members of the Tempest Blades had been just as deadly with spells as with a sword and shield. And of course there was the Voice of the Tempest; he’d seen the things she could do by calling on the energy of the world around her. He’d heard stories of the battles she’d won. But druidic magics had never come naturally to Orym. He’d been alright with that; he liked focusing on his body, on building his skills the old fashioned way. His power is a solid thing, something he works for every day, something that grounds him to this world that he loves so much.
The one thing he’d longed for as a child was flight.
Growing up on the cliffs of Zephra, it was impossible not to get a taste for the wind. It was what his people were meant for, after all; to understand the element, to learn to shape it and use it, to prevent it from harming the rest of the world by falling out of balance.
Yes, Orym can shape the air a bit; just a gentle gust of wind, nothing that many Ashari children aren’t capable of. But he’s never been able to take to the air. Never felt the freedom of wind against his face with nothing beneath him to hold him up. He and Will used to wonder what it was like, when they’d watch the more magically gifted druids shift their bodies into a shape capable of flight. They used to joke about flying up to the moons together, taking their places in the sky.
The first thing Orym thinks when he’s hurled overboard is at least he finally gets to experience this before he dies.
It had been close to what he’d imagined, practicing the Zeph'aeratam balanced on the edge of the airship’s prow. But there’d still been the solid wood under his feet, the tug of the rope he’d secured around himself.
This plummet is something else entirely. Not flight, he supposes; he has no control over his rapid descent, and as soon as his body realizes that, his stomach drops and wonder is replaced with fear.
Will, he thinks, the familiar half-elven face appearing in his mind as he closes his eyes. I’m sorry. See you soon.
And then a cool darkness engulfs him, eerie but not maleficent, and he feels the air around him slow, no longer tossing his hair about viciously, but almost cradling him as he sinks towards the earth. Laudna, some intuition tells him. This magic feels like her. If he makes it out of this alive he’s going to hug her bony frame as tightly as he can without breaking her in half. He doesn’t know much about magic, but that’s clearly what this is, some ability she has to ease his fall. But he doubts it’ll hold until he reaches the ground.
He’s just trying to figure out a way to use this to his advantage, to get back to the ship before Laudna loses her grip on him, when a heavy, blunt pain smacks him from behind. He’s dazed for a moment, the dizzying spinning in his head only made worse by the fact that now he’s rotating in the air, still moving slowly thanks to the cool grip of Laudna’s magic, but now in a sickening spiral. He doesn’t even have time to try to catch hold of the sail, to stop himself, before he’s fallen past it, the airship moving along its course without him.
His head and shoulders ache from the impact, and his thoughts are moving as sluggishly as he is, drifting through his mind like feathers spiraling to the ground. A memory surfaces.
Home. The sun is setting over the cliffs, bathing everything in an orange and pink glow. The cherry blossoms are blooming, filling the air with their sweet scent. Will is there. Orym is curled against him; back pressed to Will’s chest, Will braced against a tree trunk. Sweat is drying on Orym’s bare skin, a remnant of what they’d gotten up to once they were done training for the day. Orym can feel Will’s chest rising and falling evenly, his breath and heart rate slow again, now they’ve both had time to recover.
Breath ghosts through Orym’s mussed hair. He feels the press of Will’s lips on the top of his head.
“What are you thinking about so hard?” Orym asks, tilting his face up so he can look at Will without twisting out of his grip. He’s not sure how he can tell; maybe it’s the fact he’s known Will their entire lives. Maybe it’s how many times he’s stood next to him in combat. Maybe it’s sleeping next to him at night, the way Orym knows every inch of his body just as well as he knows his own. Regardless, there’s something on Will’s mind. Something he hasn’t told Orym about, which has always been rare, even before they became something more than childhood friends.
Will sighs, and Orym thinks he can feel his heart beating faster. He’s definitely right, then. “It’s impossible to keep a secret from you, you know that?”
Orym does know. He’s been told plenty of times by just about everyone who’s ever met him that he’s too perceptive for his own good. A frown creases his forehead. Will doesn’t keep secrets from him. Never has. “What’s going on?” He asks, turning in Will’s lap so he’s facing him.
Will’s already shaking his head. “Nothing, little moon.” He says, voice placating. He lifts a hand to smooth Orym’s hair, although Orym suspects it’s near useless. There’s something warring behind his eyes.
“Then what’s this secret you’re thinking about?” Orym asks, leaning into the touch even though he refuses to be placated right now, not until he knows there’s nothing going on that he needs to be worried about.
“I’m thinking about…” Will smiles, all the uncertainty fading from his expression, “how much I want you to marry me.”
Orym blinks.
“How much you… what ?” He breathes, stunned. “Will, are you…”
Will nods. “Yeah, I… gods, my sisters are going to kill me for ruining the surprise. They planned a whole thing, which is nice, but this has sort of been burning a hole in my pocket,” He leans over, grabbing his discarded belt from the haphazard pile of clothes nearby and fishing in his pouch, “and I…well. I kind of like that it was just us.”
He produces a small leather band, offering it to Orym, who takes it with trembling fingers. “This is…” There are cherry blossoms stamped into the leather, the delicate work finer than anything Orym’s seen Will make before. “You made this?” He breathes.
Will nods. “Yeah. I, uh. Can help you put it on. If…if you want to put it on.”
Orym blinks again, confused, because of course he wants to put it on, when he realizes why Will looks so nervous. Orym hasn’t said yes.
“Oh! Yes, of course I do, Will.” He surges forward, pressing his lips against Will’s, and it’s perfect, exactly how the world was meant to be, the two of them together, holding onto each other like they’ll never let go.
“Hold onto me, I’m not strong!”
Orym blinks, shocked back to the present by Imogen’s voice. “I’m not either.” He tells her, even as he wraps his arms around her shoulders and clings as tightly as possible. Then it occurs to him. “You’re flying.” He blurts out. “Since when can you fly?”
Imogen’s hair is floating around her as if lifted by a gentle breeze instead of being buffeted wildly like Orym’s was. There’s a white glow to her eyes, and the lightning marks on her hands are crackling with purple light. She looks…powerful. For a moment, he’s reminded of the Voice, the few times he’s seen her really let go. Imogen isn’t nearly as powerful as her, of course. But he can see the potential.
“I don’t know.” Imogen answers, shaking her head as they glide back to the airship, which is turning in its trajectory, coming back for him, he realizes. “I just saw you fall, and I…” Her feet touch down on the airship, and she sets him down gently. As soon as he’s standing on solid wood again, his knees feel like they’re going to buckle beneath him, the reality of what just happened slamming into him like gravity, pulling him down again. He almost died. He’d been ready to die, in that moment. He thinks about Will. A part of him aches. He’d been so close to seeing him again. And that’s…something he needs to unpack, later. For now, he clings to Imogen’s hand, and Laudna’s.
“You two saved my life.” He breathes, and despite whatever else he’s feeling, he’s glad . “You saved my life.” When he looks away from them, finally, he finds Ashton’s gaze glued to him. He meets their eyes, waiting.
***
Ashton watches Orym. from their position at the ship’s rear ballistae. He goes from clinging to Imogen and Laudna to leaning over the edge of the ship, sending Ashton’s heart back into their throat. But the halfling holds on as he vomits off the side. It reminds Ashton of last night; how the pain in their head and the distress from their uncovered memories had made them nauseous, and Orym had been there. Orym had saved them from themself; made sure they got at least a little bit of sleep before what was shaping up to be a really fucking shitty day. How they’d been falling again, trapped in the worst moments of their life, and Orym had pulled them out of it. Given them a safe place to land.
And all Ashton had been able to do as Orym plummeted was watch. If Imogen and Laudna hadn’t been here, Orym would have fallen. Orym would have died. They watch him collapse onto the wood floor, staring dazedly up at the clouds and all they can do is cling uselessly to the chain they’d been loading in a desperate attempt to catch Orym in the air and reel him back in, head spinning. The rest of the Hells are moving about, taking care of post-battle business. FCG is healing people, because of course they are. Imogen and Laudna share a charged look that Ashton’s too distracted to try to read right now. Fearne and Chetney are poking around at the bodies, up to no good if Ashton had to guess. He’s frozen where he is, feeling like if he so much as breathes wrong, the ship will fall out from under him and he’ll be falling, too.
It’s not until Orym’s been lying on the deck for a long moment that Ashton feels solid enough to move.
They drop the chain and stumble their way to the halfling. “You look like shit.” They tell him, leaning into his line of sight.
Orym chuckles dazedly.
“You need anything, buddy?” They ask, fighting to keep their voice even when they can feel panic pounding through their veins.
Orym blinks, like he’s trying to focus on Ashton’s face. “Just…eight hours.”
Ashton nods. Someone else is talking; Imogen, he thinks, but he can’t focus on anything but Orym’s face and the way he’d disappeared off the edge of the ship and gone hurtling toward the ground and Ashton knows that feeling. Knows the drop of your stomach when there’s nothing to stop your fall, and he’d almost lost Orym to fucking gravity, the same thing that took his last family away.
But no, it hadn’t been gravity that made the Nobodies leave him. It had been their choices. And looking at Orym where he lies on the floor of the airship, Ashton can’t imagine choosing to leave him behind, not even if they thought he was dead. That realization burns through them, leaving grief and anger behind. They’re not sure they deserve this kind of loyalty. But Orym does, and Ashton might be the worst possible person to offer it, but that isn’t going to stop them from trying.
“Do you want to go back in? You want to go inside?” They offer, kneeling beside Orym, hands hovering over his body, not quite touching, although they can already feel that they can. There’s something about someone needing help that overrides whatever block exists in Ashton’s fucked up brain. Like when they were running from that tower, and he’d lifted Dorian and dragged him along. Every touch they accept feels like a debt they’ll have to repay, but Ashton gives their own hands out for free.
Orym’s blinking at them, still dazed, and he’s asking, absurdly, about whatever weird portal shit they’d done in the fight. They don’t have answers, and that bothers them more than they’d care to admit, so they brush Orym off.
“Oh, which—?” Imogen and Fearne are there, too, everyone is staring at them, because apparently they’re the leader now, and it’s too much, they still feel like they’re teetering on the edge themself, they need to get some space before they fall, and everyone sees that they’re a lot more fucked up than they’ve led them to believe. “I don’t know, I had a weird dream last night, and was like ‘fuck it,’ and yeah, that was weird, but cool, alright.” They have no idea if they’re making any sense, although if Chetney’s exasperated laugh is anything to go by, they’re not.
They don’t wait for follow up questions. Instead, they scoop Orym up off the ground and start carrying him towards the door that leads to the airship’s cabins. Out of the corner of their eye, they see Imogen hold out a hand, to stop Fearne from following. She must be seeing the dizzying race of their thoughts and how badly he needs this, and they can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a really really bad one.
It’s not until they’re halfway inside that they realize they’re talking to Orym. “That’s okay. You did good. You flew. You flew. Come on.”
“That was really a non-answer.” Orym points out quietly, as Ashton pushes the door to the halfling’s cabin open.
“Yeah, well, if I had a fucking answer I’d probably give it to you. But then I’d have to push you off a flying airship.” He sets Orym on the bed, clenching his empty hands into fists to hide how they’re shaking.
Orym laughs. “Yeah? Well, I like my odds with that. I’m one for one.”
Ashton sits on a crate shoved in the corner of the room. They cover their face, huffing in surprise. “Don’t even fucking joke about that, Orym.”
They hear the sound of rustling fabric as Orym sits up. “You joked about it first, Ash.”
Ashton shakes their head. “Yeah, well, I’m a fucking asshole, so you shouldn’t really follow my lead, should you?” Their heart is fucking racing. Why they’re freaking out more now that Orym’s safely belowdecks they have no answer for, but they feel like they can’t fucking breathe. “You could have died. A fall like that…”
“Ash.”
“And I was fucking useless.” Ashton barrels on. “I mean, my plan was to shoot at you with the fucking ballistae and reel you back in, but that’s…that was such a bad fucking idea, I could have killed you, I…”
“Ash.” Orym tries again, but they’re beyond listening now. Their brain is spiraling towards an inevitable impact, and they don’t even know how to brace for it. Their breath is coming ragged and their hands are shaking and the room’s a fucking light show, which Ashton knows Orym knows means something’s wrong.
“If I would have just hit that asshole again it couldn’t have thrown you off like that, but I’m useless when shit flies,” They’re paralyzed, like they’d been when they landed on the stone below Hexum’s balcony. Like they’d been when they watched Orym tumble towards the desert floor. They’re barely in their body; instead they’re falling and watching Orym fall, and they can’t tell which is fucking worse. “I don’t know how that portal shit works, and it got away from me. It could have killed you and it would have been my fault. ” And that thought is pain, cracking them open. They’ve got no fucking clue what’s going to spill out.
“ Ash. ” Orym’s up, all the dazed loopiness gone from his expression. He’s looking at Ashton with a knowing sadness. Great. “Breathe for me, okay? In,” He demonstrates, taking a deeper breath than someone of his size should reasonably be able to manage. Ashton tries to follow suit, the air stuttering into their lungs, “and out.” Orym exhales, and the gust of it brushes against Ashton’s face, the ghost of a touch. Orym demonstrates again, and Ashton does their best to copy him, the two of them frozen there with just enough space between them that their breaths mingle in the quiet.
“Think they’re planning that mutiny up there?” Ashton murmurs, when they can make their mouth work again. They’re going for a joke, but they’ve never been good at hiding shit, and the brokenness of their voice is clear as fucking day.
Orym, for what it’s worth, smiles anyway. “Nah. They know I’d have your back if they tried.”
Ashton huffs. “Sorry, for…” They gesture between them. These days it seems like all Ashton does is freak out on Orym. “Usually best to let the one who just almost died have the panic attack.” His voice is thin, all fake bluster they know Orym sees right through. “Don’t know why FCG made that shit up about me being the leader. You’re the leader. And we almost…” His voice cracks. “We can’t do this shit without you. We’d all get ourselves killed.” I can’t do this shit without you, he wants to say, and doesn’t.
Orym gives him that look again, the one that makes Ashton feel like Milo replaced all their skin with slag glass, and Orym can see every bit of their insides. The one that makes him feel seconds away from shattering. They look away.
“I saw Will.”
Ashton jerks his head back to face Orym, confused. He’d been expecting Orym to tell him exactly what he was thinking, to say he knows why they freaked out like that, and make some argument that their overblown reaction makes sense, considering. They would have brushed that off, argued or straight up walked away from that dangerous dose of compassion. But this…they have no idea what to do with this.
Orym keeps talking. “When I was falling. I remembered the day he asked me to marry him. And I thought…I thought I was going to see him again. Finally.” He clears his throat, closing his eyes for a moment. “And a part of me was okay with that. But another part didn’t want to leave all of you. Especially not like that.” Orym gives them a long, steady look.
“I was alone for a long time, after he died. Six years, I wandered Exandria. I couldn’t stand being at home, where everyone knew me as half of a broken pair.” He sighs. “But it was more than that. I could have found a new community somewhere. I had it offered to me plenty of times, in the places I stayed. A home. A family. But I didn’t want it. I…I closed myself off, for a long time, from caring about anyone. Because it meant I could lose them. And I couldn’t…” His voice cracks. Ashton blinks, surprised. Orym is always so composed, so stoic. They haven’t dug down to the roots of his grief.
“But then I met Dorian and Fearne. A few other friends, too. And…” He chuckles. “Well. You know Fearne. She doesn’t take no for an answer.” Ashton nods. “The first few times we got into a scrap together, I was terrified. All I could think about was Will, and how I didn’t protect him. I’d sit awake for hours after they all went to sleep, just…wound up.” He frowns. “I wish I’d trusted them with my fear, cause I realize now it was the biggest way I knew how to show that I cared about them.” Orym meets Ashton’s eyes. Steady. Seeing. “I’m glad you trusted me with yours.”
Ashton hesitates for a long moment, letting Orym’s words soak into their skin. It’s slow-going; the stone is thick and stubborn as the hells. But Orym’s voice is like sunlight, like persistent roots, determined to dig into infertile soil and grow there. “I’m glad Imogen and Laudna caught you.”
Orym smiles. “Me, too.”
They stand up. “You should lie down. You still look like shit.”
Orym sighs, but he sits back down on the bed. “I know I said I wanted to sleep, but I think I’m too keyed up for it, honestly. Are you going back up? I’ll come with you.”
Ashton shakes their head. “No offense, but I think we need to keep you as far away from the edge as possible for a while. The adrenaline will wear off soon and you’ll crash. We…I need you rested for the shit we’re about to deal with.”
Orym studies them for a long moment. “This…are you going to be okay? Going back there?”
Ashton sighs. “Honestly? I don’t know. The last thing I wanted was to come back.” He hesitates. “I’ll be better if I have you backing me up, though. So. I dunno, do you have any of that tea that’s good for sleeping? That shit worked for me, so…” He trails off, a little awkward.
Orym laughs a little, which makes Ashton’s face heat up. He likes that laugh. Likes it even more when he’s the cause of it. “Lavender and chamomile.”
Ashton nods. “Right. Do you, uh. Need me to heat up some water?” He knows Orym doesn’t; he’d managed fine the other night, with the small druid fire he’d conjured under his kettle. But they have the urge to feel helpful, to do something with their hands now that they’re not shaking anymore.
Orym seems to understand. “That’d be nice.” He fishes in his pack until he comes up with the same kettle as before. Ashton accepts it and makes their way to the small kitchen. Fortunately Denalia isn’t inside; the space is cramped with just Ashton there, and they don’t really feel like that much contact with a stranger after…everything. They fill the kettle and place it on the stove, lighting it and waiting until the water boils before carrying it back to Orym’s room, careful not to spill.
Orym is perched on the side of the bed, scooping small lumps of herbs into a small metal strainer. The scent is partially familiar; the soft floral note that had been pleasant, even through their throbbing headache. There’s a different scent on top of it this time; something sharp and fresh. Ashton doesn’t know how something can smell cool, but the purplish-blue buds Orym scoops do.
Belatedly, Ashton realizes Orym is preparing two mugs with the tea. He waffles in the doorway, uncertain.
“I’m ready for that, if you want to pour it.” Orym tells them.
“You didn’t have to make me any.” They say.
Orym shrugs. “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want it. But…I thought you might need some help relaxing, too.”
Ashton is suddenly painfully aware of the tension in their shoulders, the way their jaw is locked shut. They’re surprised their head hasn’t started its pounding, honestly. Although they may yet ache when they try to go to sleep tonight. How had Orym noticed all of this before they felt it in their own body?
“Guess I might as well relax now. We should all be tense as fuck when we land in Bassuras.”
Orym nods, watching them as they pour the water.
“I will, you know. Have your back.” Orym says. Ashton blinks. “All of us will, sure. But.” He shrugs. “You don’t have to ask.”
Ashton takes a sip of their tea, and it’s good. They kind of hate how much they like it. “Thanks.” He murmurs, trying not to feel like he’s signing his life away with that simple word. Somehow Orym always manages to make these exchanges feel like an even trade; like Ashton is giving as good as he gets, so he’s not going to come away owing a debt he can’t possibly repay.
They go to sit back down on their crate, and then pause. Take a step closer, feeling bold, and perch on the foot of the bed, far enough down that Orym can stretch his short frame out on the mattress without touching them. They think they see Orym smile.