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Ashton looks awful. If he thinks about it, Orym’s not exactly sure how he can tell. There’s not much on the outside that’s different; the same smooth green skin; thick as ever, though not completely unbroken. The same golden veins that catch the bright Bassuras sun (and Orym’s breath, at the beauty of them). The same flicker of kaleidoscopic light from the hole in their skull, maybe a bit faster than normal, like sparks trying to catch Ashton on fire from the inside.
It’s something about their eyes, maybe. Or the way they haven’t stopped moving, even now the battle’s over. Their head tips to the side every few seconds, like they’re constantly checking their blind spot.
They seem a little unsteady on their feet. Looking him over, Orym can’t find any wounds from whatever that illusionist did to him, but he’d seen the way he nearly collapsed, like whatever he was seeing scooped half his insides out. At least, he thinks they saw something. He recognized the wild look in their eyes from his own experiences. Dusk had asked about vivid dreams, and Orym has plenty of experience with those; the kind he doesn’t want to wake from as well as the kind he claws his way out of like his life depends on it. Both linger long after he’s woken up, and Orym imagines he can see the threads of whatever mental web Ashton had been caught in still clinging to his body.
When Ash stalked up to the half-unconscious figure, his illusionist robes draped limply around him and his staff hanging precariously from his open hand, Orym had thought they were going to kill him. He’d seen the anger still rolling off of them in waves, clinging from the heat of battle and whatever had happened in their head. He’s not sure what he would have done, if Ashton had gone farther than scaring the guy and rifling through his pockets. They had let Orym take their hand, but he’s sure they wouldn’t have appreciated being held back.
Orym shakes his head to rid himself of those thoughts. He knows Ashton better than that, even in the short time since they’d met. Ashton’s not one for excessive violence. He remembers that long night in the museum; how Ashton had insisted on stopping to help the other party, after Imogen had…
He sighs. That’s another thread of worry he needs to follow to its source eventually, but he simply doesn’t have the energy. He looks over his shoulder instinctively, as if Imogen would have to be close by to be listening in on his thoughts. But no, she wouldn’t invade his privacy like that. He doesn’t believe she would. And anyway she seems…distracted, by the loss of her hair and the clumsy attempt at a wig Dusk had made. He frowns at the space between her and Laudna. Normally his strange dark-haired friend would already have Pâté out, making a show of how appealing he found her new look. But instead Laudna is hovering several feet away, watching like she’s afraid Imgoen will snap if she gets too close.
So. There’s definitely something going on there. Orym sighs again, massaging his temples as if he’s the one with a magically induced headache. With this group there’s always several somethings to be worried about, it seems.
Which reminds him. He looks back to Ashton, trying to decide if this is a time to step in or if they need space. He can see they’re still hurting, and badly, and as much as Orym loathes the unnecessary taking of life, his own anger boils in his small body at the way Ashton’s pain so clearly paints the air around them. They cast it in hues of anger and intimidation, in the scream that startles the other man so badly he faints again. The sound makes Orym ache.
The others are talking to Dusk, but Orym only has eyes for the genasi. He watches them tuck all the shit they’d collected from the would-be thief into their various pockets, not even bothering to look at it. He’s closing the distance to check on them, space be damned, when Ashton catches his eyes, and a wall goes up. Orym hesitates. What’s that about?
Before he can make his way over to Ashton to check on them, Fearne is there. She murmurs to him, and then a warm green glow emanates from her hand, where she rests it lightly on their shoulder, only touching them enough to let the healing take root in their body. Ashton relaxes a bit as the light fades, and Orym can tell he feels much better, that the ache in his head that had nearly knocked him prone is gone. But a haunted look remains in his eyes when Orym manages to catch them for the briefest moment before they look away quickly.
He tries not to feel hurt by Ashton’s closed expression. Dusk seems…friendly. Harmless, despite their repeated assertions that they’re a “capable warrior.” But they’re still a stranger. He sighs. Hopefully he can carve out a little privacy at A Taste of Tal’dorei, to check on Ashton properly.
He gives Fearne an appreciative nod, half expecting her not to understand how grateful he is that she’s helping him look after Ashton. But to his surprise, she winks in understanding.
It’s not until the restaurant appears at the end of the road that Orym realizes neither one of them bothered to pickpocket the other.
***
Just as Orym suspected, Imogen is struggling. He knew there was something going on with her and Laudna, and he still doesn’t have the full picture. She did something to break my trust, Imogen had said, but Orym can’t imagine Laudna betraying her favorite person on purpose.
He sighs. A part of him wants to grab them both and shake them, to scream that they have no idea what they have, how fortunate they are, how they’re wasting time that Orym would give anything to have back. Maybe they’d both deny it. Orym had heard Dusk asking Imogen about her relationship with Laudna, had heard how tight her voice went when she told them that no, they weren’t a thing.
Orym knows she’s lying to herself. He wonders if Imogen knows it, too.
He might have pressed her, after Dusk put some distance between themself and the tension rolling off of Imogen in waves, if he hadn’t been so worried about Fearne. He looks over the darkened room, where everyone else seems to be asleep. Imogen and Laudna are on opposite sides of Fearne. He almost laughs. It’s just like the faun, to be passed out peacefully right in the center of all that tension. He can’t decide if she’s oblivious to what’s going on between the other two witches, or if she simply chose not to let it bother her, as she seems able to do with so many things. He wishes he could let things go so easily.
Actually, Orym doesn’t think he’s stopped worrying since the airship set down in Bassaras. Mostly it's been about Ashton. The genasi is doing their best not to let on, but Orym knows a little bit about leaving home and what it costs to go back. But it seems as if the whole group is determined to make it onto Orym’s list of worries.
He’s still not sure they talked enough with Chetney about the cost of his transformation. Orym’s injuries from that night at the museum have long since healed, and he’s forgiven the old gnome. But concern still twists in his belly every time he thinks about how little they really know about his “gift.”
Fresh Cut Grass hasn’t given Orym any specific reason to worry (at least not lately) but they’ve seemed on edge ever since they arrived in Bassaras, too, and Orym doesn’t trust that they would ask for help if the needed it, so he feels like he has to constantly keep an eye on them.
Then there’s whatever is going on between Laudna and Imogen. Orym rubs at his temple, remembering the feeling of Imogen’s anxiety driving like a spike into his skull. He knows he should check on her again. Maybe even try to get Laudna to tell him her side of what happened, although he suspects that’s what she pulled Grass aside to talk about earlier, back at the restaurant.
Then there’s Fearne, who seems determined to get herself stuck—in rodent form—under every door this group comes across. Why her default solution when faced with a military fortress is to run in on her own he has no idea. He wishes he could say he doesn’t understand the need to throw himself head first between danger and his family. But he also wishes she would stop throwing herself into these situations without at least fully putting together a plan first. He should ask her about her parents. Seeing them again after so long…he was only away from Zephra for six years, but there was still a bundle of nerves when he visited, and saw his mother again. Fearne and Dorian had helped him through that. He should return the favor.
Then there’s Dusk, whose entire being is worry-inducing. Orym feels like he’s back in Zephra, chasing around a toddling niece or nephew, trying desperately to herd them away from the cliff’s edge. Having a new person around takes him back to when he, Fearne, and Dorian had first met this group, which gets him started worrying about Dorian and his brother. How are the rest of the Crown Keepers? How was Kymal? Orym’s been so distracted lately that he hasn’t been checking in every night.
He frowns. One thing at a time. He’ll check in with Dorian when his watch is over and he lies down to sleep. The others seem to mostly be managing, at least for now. Except for Ashton, who’s doing a poor job of faking sleep on their mat stretched out by the door, just a few feet away from where Orym has set up to watch for the night.
Orym sighs. This, maybe, he can do something about. “If you don’t wanna talk I’m not going to make you, but you can stop pretending to be asleep.” Orym murmurs, low enough that he doubts it will wake the others.
They groan, roll onto their back so Orym can see their face in the dim light of the room, and open their eyes. “Fuck. I used to be good at that. Was I that obvious?”
Orym shrugs. “I don’t think you realize how much you relax when you sleep.”
“I don’t think you realize how much you have to do with that.”
Ashton blinks, going abruptly silent, like the words came out before they’d realized what they were saying.
Orym stares. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding me since we got here?”
Ashton sighs, sitting up and leaning against the wall, their head tilted to keep him out of their blind spot. “I haven’t been avoiding you.” They mutter, tugging at a buckle on their vest. They’ve been all nervous fidgeting and bravado since their feet touched sand. He can imagine a younger version of them; skin not patterned with lines of gold, two clear eyes and an unbroken skull, strutting through these streets, pretending they had everything together so no one would question them.
Orym raises his eyebrows.
Ashton shakes their head. “It’s just…it’s fucking weird, being back here. There’s a lot of shit I don’t like thinking about. I like to keep the past in the past. And that fight today…it stirred stuff up.”
Orym nods. “That spell. It made you see something that wasn’t there. Right?”
Ashton’s jaw tightens. They turn their head, staring straight across the room, avoiding Orym again.
“Look. I’m not going to insist you talk about it if you don’t want to. There’s plenty in my past I don’t want to relive, either.” He thumbs at his tattoo.
Ashton must not have turned completely away, because Orym feels their eyes on his arm. “ You wanna talk about it?” They ask, nodding towards his shoulder. “I mean…I know you haven’t really said it, but this whole investigation you’re doing…it’s a revenge mission, right?”
Orym sighs. “Yes. In a way. It’s more…” He takes a long moment to collect his thoughts. He hasn’t talked about this with anyone. Fearne is too … Fearne , and as much as Orym loves Dorian, he hasn’t seen enough of the world to understand. And there hasn’t been time with Chetney, since Orym told him the full truth of what happened that day. He looks at Ashton; takes in the golden scars on their skin and the cloudy opalescence of their left eye, and he thinks they would understand. It’s more than that, though. He reads the earnest curl of their shoulders; towards Orym, so he knows they’re listening. The matter-of-fact way Ashton talks about this with him, not like he’s a bomb to be tiptoed around. Yes, Ashton will get it. Even if Orym doesn’t know how to explain it.
“I did a lot of traveling, after Will died. As soon as I was well enough to travel, I left Zephrah. Spent five or so years on the road, alone, just…watching people.” He shrugs. “I don’t know what I was looking for, not really. But what I found…” He frowns. “The Voice of the Tempest has done a lot of work to make sure people around the world are connected. But I didn’t really get it until I left home.” He pauses, wondering how Ashton felt, leaving Bassurus. If it was anything like the way Orym felt. “There’s a lotta families out there. Plenty of people who are just as in love as Will and I were, as impossible as that felt when I…” His voice breaks. He squeezes his arm. “There are families with kids just as adored and promising as the Lumas twins were. Almost everybody out there is special as hell to somebody else.”
He takes a moment. “I don’t know what these things are after. But if I can keep them from hurting anyone else, then that will be…that’s worth almost any price I have to pay.” He looks back to Ashton, who is watching him in the dim light, expression nearly unreadable. “That’s what this is about.”
They’re both silent for a long beat, and Orym briefly wonders if he’s pissed Ashton off. They’ve been irritable all day, so it wouldn’t have been difficult to do. And he guesses the subject of mattering to somebody is a touchy one, especially sitting in the city that tossed him in a state home before spitting him out on the streets. He’s about to give up on the conversation when Ashton finally speaks.
“You must’ve seen a different world than me.” He murmurs. His voice isn’t angry, like Orym half expected. Instead, he sounds…sad. Tired . Orym looks at them, and finds them staring past him, at the wall. “Nobody I’ve ever given a shit about has mattered to anybody else.”
Orym raises an eyebrow. “But they mattered to you.”
Ashton closes their eyes. “Yeah. Fuck. Not like that’s a big fucking prize.”
Orym frowns. “I think it is.”
Ashton’s eyes snap to him, now. They look like they’re trying to read him, to see if he’s fucking with them or not. Orym stares right back, face open wide. Ashton looks away first.
“Do you miss it? Home, I mean?” Ashton asks, and Orym doesn’t begrudge them the change of subject.
“Every day.” He admits plainly. “But I’m still glad I left. Or…’glad’ isn’t really the right word. But I still think it was the right thing to do. I couldn’t breathe there, after Will died.”
Ashton nods slowly, like they’re thinking hard about that. “I’m glad I left Bassurus. This place was never really home anyway. Didn’t care where I was as long as I was a Nobody.” His face falls.
Orym slides a little closer. “Do you want to try to find them? I know we talked about it, but that’s your call. I’ll stand behind whatever you decide. Boss.” He offers a small smile, hoping to bring back the warmth Ashton had offered him on the airship.
They roll their eyes, but Orym knows them well enough now to know that’s a fond expression on their face. “Don’t know why FCG said that.” He mutters. His face sobers. “I don’t know. I want answers. They’re pretty much the only people who can give them, since I can’t trust what’s in here.” They knock on their own head, causing the dim light to flicker briefly. “But…” He shakes his head. “This is so stupid.”
“What?”
Ashton sighs. “I don’t know if I want them to see me like this.” They curl in on themself, just the slightest shift of body language. It’s the most self-conscious Orym’s ever seen them. It makes them look vulnerable and small. For a moment, he’s struck with the image of a younger Ashton, curled in a bed somewhere in this city, feeling like no one in the world cared about what happened to them. It makes him want to grab his shield and go to war.
Before Orym can say anything, though, Ashton shifts again, and Orym sees the mask come back up. Or, not a mask, exactly, because Orym believes them. But armor. “It’s not that I’m ashamed of all this. I like it. I think it’s…scars and shit make us who we are, and I wouldn’t change the way I look even if I could. But…” He shakes his head. “I still don’t know what Milo did. I don’t know what that shit they poured into my skull is, and I don’t know…” their voice breaks. “Everything I’ve ever gotten has come with a big fucking other shoe, and I’m scared of what the price is for this.”
Debt, Orym thinks. Just like what Jiana had held over their head. “You’re not going to have to pay it alone.” He says.
Ashton laughs. “That’s nice of you to say, and all, but it doesn’t mean shit. You can’t promise that, when you have no idea what any of this is.” He takes a deep breath. “That asshole on the street hit me with some kind of magic, right? It hurt like the fucking hells, and it made me see shit that…it made me see me . But a fucked up me, like the price for all these powers come to collect. I guess I’m just afraid if I see the Nobodies again, it’ll be a reminder that this shit is borrowed, and I have no idea who I owe or what they’re going to take from me.”
They’re breathing fast, and Orym realizes they’ve been mulling over this all day. At the restaurant getting to know Dusk, when they went to stake out Treshi at the Seat of Disdain, this whole time, Ashton’s been carrying this fear around, heavy as their hammer, weighing them down. It breaks his heart. He wants nothing more than to lift the burden from their shoulders.
“Hey, Ash, breathe.” Orym murmurs, watching their whole body tighten with the quickened pace of their heart. They’re not looking at him; they’re staring at the wall, that same expression on their face he’d seen in the alley, like they were seeing something that wasn’t there. “You’re okay. We got you out of there.”
“No.” It comes out pained, through gritted teeth. Orym has to physically ball his hands into fists to keep from reaching for him. That would only make things worse, he knows. “No, get out of my fucking head! ”
“Ashton. Look at me. The spell’s gone. You’re safe.”
Ashton’s eyes snap to Orym. He flickers a small flame into his palm, the way he’d learned in Zephrah, offering a little more illumination. It’s something to do with his hands. Ashton’s hands are gripping his head, like they’re trying to hold themself together. Their eyes are wide and panicked.
“It wasn’t real. You’re just you. I’m just me. We’re both okay.” Orym remembers the first few days after the attack in Zephrah, how small sounds or smells could set him off, and he’d find himself curled into a corner, covered in sweat and trembling. His mom could usually talk him down, given enough time. The sense memory of it gives him an idea. He whispers into his hand again, and chamomile and lavender bloom in his palms. He extends them towards Ashton, letting their sweet, earthy scent reach their nose. “Take a deep breath.” Orym instructs. His mother’s baking could pull him out of a panic attack faster than almost anything else. The scent of Dorian’s soap mingling with oleander blooms grounds him after a nightmare. He has no idea what a calming scent would be for Ashton, so he has to go with the first thing he can think of. They’d seemed to enjoy the smells of Orym’s tea. He hopes he hasn’t misjudged.
Ashton does their best to listen, inhaling the scent of the handful of flowers several times. “That’s it. Keep breathing. It’s just Bell’s Hells here. And Dusk. And everyone else is asleep. We’re all okay.”
Finally, Ashton’s breathing evens out. They close their eyes, leaning their head back against the wall hard enough to make a dull thud of crystal on wood. “ Fuck. ”
“Yeah.” Orym murmurs. “You good?”
Ashton nods, then groans, holding their temple. “Fuck. I think so. I just…I dunno if that was leftover from the spell or just me being fucked up, but I saw that shit again. Ow.” They massage their stony skin, grimacing. “The flowers helped, weirdly. How did you know?”
“I didn’t.” He murmurs.
Ashton barks a surprised laugh. They both wince, watching the others stir in their sleep for a moment. But no one wakes up. Ashton sighs, scrubbing at their face. “Fuck. I don’t remember what we were talking about. Sorry.”
Orym shakes his head. “You don’t have to apologize. I’m glad I could help. I…doesn’t happen to me super often anymore, but I used to end up right back in the middle of the attack, in my head. It’s awful.” Ashton nods. “Look, I know…very little about magic, if that’s even what your powers are. So I know I can’t promise you much. But…we’ve told you before, this group, we’re not leaving you behind. So if whatever is going on in your head comes to collect, it’s going to have to get through me. Okay? We’ll figure it out. You are not on your own anymore. You matter to a whole lot of people.” Orym extends his hand; an offer, with no expectations. “You matter to me.”
Ashton studies his palm like it might burn them. They look up at Orym’s face, silent. Then, slowly, they reach out, long fingers curling easily around Orym’s hand.
They sit there in silence for a long, long time. Orym leans against the wall again, watching the rest of their group sleep. He should have woken his replacement to watch a long time ago. But he doesn’t move; just lets Ashton hold onto his hand. He’s not entirely sure if they’re still awake. Part of him is afraid to turn his head to look, as if the small movement will shatter the moment. Something about this city has Ashton’s walls up, but they’ve lowered them just enough for Orym to clamber over, if only for a moment.
He’s about to slip out of Ashton’s loose grip and wake Chetney when warm solid fingers tighten around his hand.
“You matter to me, too.”
It’s quiet, barely a whisper. One feeble moonbeam creeping through the window to hint at what’s inside. Orym smiles. He only caught a glimpse, but it’s enough, for now. A home takes time to build.