Chapter Text
Migal has to squint to convince himself that he can see the movement of what were once his fingers, now a phantom form he still didn't understand. He only knows that it will spread, and he will join those in the lake beyond the quarry soon.
Tomorrow, if the plan he laid out proceeds as he intends.
He has lived his entire life waiting for its unavoidable end. In his youth, it was a question of which day the Renans' tyranny would finally become too much; in adulthood, he wondered if he would die defending Lord Dohalim or protecting people from stray zeugles; now, he knows when it will be, and what it will be.
Was it a curse or a privilege to have such knowledge? Migal weighs the options as he stares at the shimmery silver that spreads a little further down his hand every day.
Footsteps are loud in the cavern-like rooms of the Gold Dust Cats' hideout, so he hears Lagill's approach well before she reaches his room. He hastily pulls his glove over his hollowed hand; every time he sees Lagill's eyes drawn to it, his resolve to expose the truth wavers. She would never say that she opposes what he is doing, and her silence on the matter only makes it harder. Silence just isn't honest coming from Lagill, who has unabashedly spoken her mind from the second Migal met her.
It had been a shriek that made Migal stray from his preferred route home, the narrow alleyways that the Renans' bulky armour suits couldn't fit through.
"You Renans think you are so fucking powerful, but torturing us beaten-down slaves just shows how small your dicks are!"
With his back pressed to the building, the edges of the bricks abrasive against his shoulders, Migal peeked around the corner. He saw the blood first, filling the cracks of the cobblestone around a teenage girl's feet. Two armoured guards loomed in front of her, and a Dahnan woman's body lay lifeless and bloodied on the ground between them.
"You're old enough to know your place, girl!"
"Fuck off!"
Migal considered himself a cautious person. Rage burned in his chest whenever he witnessed persecution of Dahnan youth, but the rationality of his mind would pour water over that fire and he would wait until the Renans had gone before stepping in to pick the Dahnan kid up and offer his help. But this girl was going to get herself killed before then, so Migal's feet acted against the will of his mind and he ran out and pulled her by her arm back into the alley.
"Let me go!"
"Are you out of your mind?" Migal hissed, tightening his hold on the girl even as she thrashed, elbows jamming into him and feet desperately pushing off of the ground. She was about a head shorter than him and was frail, just skin over bones like most of the Dahnans, so she would never break free no matter how much she struggled. "They'll kill you!"
"So what?" Her voice had lost its fight. She stopped flailing, her limbs falling limp. Migal loosened his hold and the girl sank to the ground, her head in her hands. "What do I have to live for? That was my mother. We only wanted food."
Migal was able to look at the girl properly for the first time. Her hands and forearms were scraped up and fingernails lined with dried mud; her black hair was tied back with a strip of burlap, dusted with dirt. She must have worked in the fields outside of the city. "I'm sorry. Sorry that she's gone and sorry I can't give you a reason for living." The girl lifted her head and looked up at Migal. She looked a little younger than him–he was seventeen then, so she was what, maybe fifteen?–but her eyes were like every other Dahnan's, drained of the vivacity of youth. "I can give you some dinner and a roof over your head, though," he said, extending his hand to her.
The girl's gaze strayed from his face to his hand, and he was sure she was going to accept it…but that wasn't who she was. She smacked his hand away and pushed herself to her feet. "I don't need you to lift me up," she huffed, brushing the dirt from her knees. "But I'll take you up on the other offers."
"Good enough," Migal conceded. "What's your name?"
She hesitated, her eyes darting around the alleyway and up towards the rooftops. "Lagill," she said at last.
"I'm Migal." He held a hand out to her again, this time in a greeting instead of an offer of help. She sighed and shook his hand. "Our names kind of match, don't they?" he said with a chuckle.
"What a stupid thing to say."
~
In the absence of her mother, Lagill attached herself to Migal. She joined Migal and his sister Kisara in the living quarters that had been assigned to their parents years earlier. The abode had become as close to a home as they could make it, welcoming any Dahnan children who had been orphaned under the Renans' rule. Migal was the oldest by several years, and with Lagill joining them it finally felt like there was another force to get a handle on the others to keep everyone safe. Even with the added help, however, he could never keep a hold on Kisara, whose strong will was a challenge day in and day out.
"I'm gonna go to Talka Pond!" Kisara proclaimed, a shoddy, basic fishing pole over her shoulder and a wooden bucket in her hand.
Before Migal had a chance to object, it was Lagill who spoke up. "The hell you are," she said, grabbing the younger girl by her shoulder and yanking her back. Kisara stumbled and dropped the bucket.
Kisara always picked herself up quickly, though. She hugged the bucket to her chest. "I want to help…" she mumbled.
Migal walked over and tousled the girl's hair, but she just looked at him with irritation. She was twelve years old at that time, nearly a teenager; it was difficult for Migal to remember, considering he was only eighteen but felt like he had already been an adult for ages. "You are helpful. We don't need fish today since we nabbed some of those reject vegetables from the farm. Why don't you come up with a way to use them instead?"
"Fiiine."
Yes, Kisara was growing up and was very, very skilled at faking resignation. Although she disappeared into the kitchen space, when Migal checked in on her later that afternoon she was nowhere to be found. Nor were her fishing rod or bucket. He strode back into the living space and towards the door.
"What's wrong?" Lagill asked, jumping to her feet.
"Kisara snuck out."
"Whoa, whoa, hold on." His hand on the door was covered by Lagill's. "Migal, she isn't a little kid. Let her make her choices."
She was a kid. They were all kids…except for him. He had to protect them better, shelter them from the harsh reality of Menancia as much as he could.
"Hey. Migal." Lagill's hand tightened over his. For how scrawny she was, her grip was strong, so strong that he knew she would keep him there out of sheer persistence. He might have seen a light pulse from her embedded spirit core, just for an instant, like it was pulling the strength of that determination from her. "Am I just another little sister to you, or what?"
Right, he wasn't alone in watching over the others… Lagill was there. When he looked towards her, she turned her stare to the floor but still held on to him. It wasn't fair that they were all being forced to grow up too fast, but the girl at his side was more like a co-parent than a child. She always had been, from the day after she first set foot in that home; after a night of sobbing and struggling to keep down the few bites of food they could offer, she got up the next day and set to work on breakfast for everyone there. If I'm going to stay here then I'm going to contribute, she had said stubbornly, never taking more time to grieve. Migal admired and pitied her at the same time, but somewhere along the way it changed to only admiration.
"No, you're my partner."
The words felt strange to say. Migal felt like he had skipped an entire stage of his life when his mother and father died, going from child to guardian and losing the years when a person was expected to make friends and have crushes. Where were the warm feelings that were supposed to flutter in your stomach when you felt that way about a person? What about the clumsiness and stammered words that older Dahnans always joked that teenagers were afflicted by? Migal didn't feel any of that when Lagill's eyes lit up as she looked back up at him. There wasn't any hesitation when he turned his hand around so he could hold Lagill's, or when he brought his face closer to hers…
Of course that was the moment the door swung open and Kisara stared at them in confusion, her fishing pole tucked under her arm and her bucket heavy with one decent-sized tilapia.
"What are you two doing?"
They really were more like parents than anything else, fated to rarely have a moment alone.
~
"I'm going to be so mad if I get pregnant."
Migal couldn't see Lagill's expression as she said that, only felt her breath against his neck where she had her face buried. "Any reason for that this time in particular…?"
She lifted her head up. "Have I not said that before? I think it a lot."
"Is that so?" Migal mused, bringing his hand up to play with her ponytail that was half-undone. Even having never heard her speak it so straightforwardly, they always made a point to take precautions.
"I don't want to be a liability," she said, poking a finger at his chest, then she repeated the motion with a second finger, "and I don't want to give any gifts to the Renans."
True, having kids would be like a gift to the Renans - another body to drain of every ounce of astral energy until it lost its usefulness to them. So Lagill and Migal refused, not falling into the pattern of Dahnans before them who hurried to have families and squeeze whatever artificial happiness they could out of the experience before they inevitably died too young.
It became such a habit that it continued even after they found new freedom under the next lord's reign. They had been together for over ten years by that time, and old habits die hard.
The longing for a family was sown in the new peace of Elde Menancia, however, and Migal began to consider it. He was employed in the guard and had a steady income, Lagill regularly ran errands in the city and had her own lodging, and he wasn't bound to living in the guard dormitory if he chose not to. They could feasibly make it work, create a normal family like the ones described in so many stories.
"Would you still get mad if you got pregnant?" he asked Lagill one night when he stayed at her apartment.
It took her longer than Migal was comfortable with to answer. He began to worry that their thoughts were no longer in line with each other, but then, almost sounding grumpy at herself, Lagill said, "No. I actually wouldn't."
Before they could make anything of it, Migal began noticing things that raised his survival instincts once more. He noticed the looks that some of his Renan colleagues gave him, the way some would always refuse to join him or any other Dahnans for a drink. He heard rumours of Dahnans getting ill and taken to a special medical facility, but no one ever seemed to return. The peace that had briefly seemed like a fertile place for a family to take root was false, just a layer of prosperity over a bedrock of the same hate Migal had always known.
As much as his heart wanted to dedicate his life to Lagill, he would always be the one who pulled others to safety before he could let himself rest.
Lagill grasps at the empty space next to her when Migal gets up from the bed. "Where are you going?" she mumbles, half-asleep.
"Just outside. I don't want to sleep." It feels like a waste of the precious, short time he has left.
"Migal…" She doesn't say it, but she wants him by her side for as long as he can be.
He reaches down and takes her hand in his. It's always been like this, them reaching for each other when they see what the other needs–to pull the other away from danger, to hold them back when they're pushing themselves too far, to reassure the other when the burdens pile up. "I'll be back before you wake up." He pulls his hand away a little, but entwines his pinky with hers. "Promise."
Lagill doesn't protest, only tightens her pinky around his for a moment before letting go. She's already asked to accompany him the next day, and he will continue to refuse. It would make him waver, and it would break her.
He has never heard Lagill cry since that first day they met and she shed a lifetime's worth of tears over her mother, but as he walks towards the doorway, that old echoey room betrays the sobs she tries to quiet.
He hates his fate, but he is too far gone to live a normal life by Lagill's side, so this is the best that he can do for her. The best he can do for everyone.