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Cyno lifted the leaf curtain door with the back of his hand. Everything around the spare hut was dark and only the soft light of the drizzling rain from the entrance made things barely visible to see. He stepped inside, invading the space's quiet ambience of rhythmic breathing with his heavy footfalls, although when he soon realized it, he tried his hardest to saunter to the edge of the bed with light steps.
But he knew it didn't make any difference when he saw the fennec's ears twitch. He heard him. Yet he made no move to greet him, he just laid there, facing the wall, his back turned on him.
Instead of sporting his usual attire, he only had that white garb hanging loosely around his torso while tightly securing itself on his right shoulder. This revealed the unsightly branching marks on his pale shoulder blade.
His jaw tightened as his eyes traced his marks, hesitant to do it with his fingers; afraid to touch him; afraid that it would hurt.
It was large but it wasn't a gash or a bruise of any sort when he heard he was injured when fighting the fatui. It was odd too when there was the fact that Dehya was with him. She couldn't have easily let it happen considering her guarding capabilities.
These were...electro marks. He swallowed.
And they were fresh.
An electro vision user? How could they have get to him? Before everything would have gone dark, he remembered what the other two said.
The balladeer.
So he was responsible for this. That fake god in the making. It made his stomach churn in repulsion of the events that happened back then.
He sat on the edge of the bed when he could no longer feel the energy in his legs. His hands instinctively sought the other's touch for both of their comforts. And before he knew it, he was mindlessly feeling the ugly mark on his skin which steered the other a bitten groan.
"The traveler," Tighnari said in great effort, almost pained when he tried, "they're in a stable condition. Don't worry. They just depleted their energy so for the meantime, they can recuperate in my hut."
Cyno didn't respond to it. And Tighnari had an inkling to his prolonged silence. He probably felt guilty for what happened to him.
Even with his back turned, he could see the cross in his eyebrows. In an attempt to brush it off, he light-heartedly commented, "So that's how it feels to get struck by lightning."
But he, himself, could hear the wince in his words.
Cyno, on the other hand, was in over his head. He was stiff and an unreadable expression loomed under his distant gaze. Something in the air shifted. It felt thick; crackling.
Tighnari uncharacteristically flinched. Seeing it made Cyno snap out of his state and profusely apologized. Then the look of horror dawned on the man.
Lightning... And he just activated it right in front of him. Cyno took steps back, ashamed and horrified of what he had done.
But before he could spiral down to the pits of guilt and self-blame. Tighnari spun around to catch his wrist, a tender expression, one of that Cyno always knew that accompanied a soft murmur, assured him of the opposite. "Come here."
"Tighnari... I-"
He shushed him. Using his feeble tugs, he managed to pull him back to his side. "I'm okay. It's just fresh. But I'm okay."
"But-"
"Can you help me apply the salve? It helps that it would lessen the mark it will leave."
Cyno opened his mouth but couldn't find anything to say. Instead, he wordlessly obliged while Tighnari sat up with his legs crisscrossed, his back facing the matra.
Even when Tighnari braced himself of the cool paste, he still flinched, making Cyno hesitant for the third time. He urged him to continue but the other was so cautious like a crystalfly that the faintest of movements would make him pause for a long time. At this, Tighnari sighed.
He faced him. "Cyno." The latter stopped. The fennec reached out to brush the white bangs that covered his eye, then tracing down the side of his face before cupping it. "I know what you're thinking. I'm not afraid of you."
Tighnari looked at him straight in the eye and Cyno had no choice but to comply. Then he looked away and sighed, resting his forehead in the crook of the fennec's neck.
He circled his arms around him, lightly hovering skin to skin as he didn't want to aggravate his pain. He inhaled his scent. Intoxicating mixture of the deepwood. And the freshly applied salve.
"The doctor... did he do anything to you?" He asked quietly, a tone unused and unfamiliar except for Tighnari's ears.
He hummed as he brushed the other's silver locks, finding the texture rough to his fingers but oddly pleasing. "No, he only wanted Haypasia."
"But what about the fatui? The balladeer? How was he able to do this to you?"
"The fatui only showed up after the doctor left. As for the balladeer, what happened between him and Traveler, stays between them. He was the only one who was able to converse with him. In the realm of consciousness, perhaps. After that, he controlled the weather," Tighnari narrated everything he wanted to know. He also added a few tidbits of his interaction with the doctor, in case they were to ever face him again, Cyno would know what to expect.
All the while, they stayed like that. The sounds of the soft pit pats of rain on dewy grass. The sky faintly rumbled but never crackling like the last they heard. It eased Tighnari a little. And with the warmth enveloping him, he found comfort in the other's presence as they stayed like that in a cold rainy day.
It was a new samsara for Sumeru.