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It seems that Harrow has been sitting beneath the stone dragon for hours. He has watched the snow pile in flurries around him and the sun try to cast its feeble light between the grey clouds, now a growing darkness is cutting through the sky, and still he waits for Viren.
He has tended to his wounds, bandaged his thigh where he fell from his horse, lit a fire against the bite of the winter cold and he has had hours to ruminate on the destruction he and Viren have unleashed.
There is no ignoring the huge shadow of the dragon that falls across the land, it is the same one that has gnawed at the edges of his mind for years now. It is dark, no light will ever quite reach it and he is tired, can feel the burden of time on him.
So many times he has had the same dream, relived that one moment, the moment when Thunder had struck, the helplessness he had felt as the lightning smote down. There was a desperate inevitability to it, two small humans alone against the might of the heavens, the hopeless horror he had felt watching their retreat.
That day will always be seared on his memory, moments of time that return and can never be altered. The bold courage of his wife, the resolute set of her face when she had ridden away. She had turned her back to him and spurred on the horse, and he had known, even then, felt the death of her somewhere within himself, had been certain that the dragon would strike, no real way for it to miss.
He had watched Viren alone emerge, battered from the rubble, and the only surprise was that he too had not perished.
He has lived with that loss, it has changed him, taken something he couldn’t even name exactly and left a rock weighted in its place. Every day since then has had something of the colour leeched from it, just a little less joy than he knows there should have been.
It has changed things with Viren too, somehow the two of them had fallen into an ocean and instead of holding each other afloat they had seemed to drag one another under the water. He has watched Viren change, little things that seemed slow at first until they built up their own momentum. He wonders now if he could have stopped it, he thinks that if Sarai had lived none of this would have happened, because she would never have allowed it. They had lost their bright core, it had been something good before, not perfect because nothing is quite perfect, but there had been love and warmth and friendship and it had withered slowly away.
He doesn’t know if it distresses Viren. He thinks perhaps it does, that it is part of the reason he shuts himself away for days at a time, never shares his troubles anymore, closes himself off, has become like a stone statue of the man he’d used to be. Viren has lost something of the warmth he’d once held and Harrow has let that happen because it is easier. The sadness that he feels is bearable when he doesn’t see it reflected in the eyes of his oldest friend, when he sees it in Viren he feels the crack of it right through the centre of him, and there is nothing but pain.
Now he has seen other things too, now he knows the shadows of Viren, the damage that years of magic have taken, the toll that he has willingly absorbed and it distresses him. He can’t help thinking of the boy that he’d once known, his fierce, bright beauty, it had always seemed fragile somehow, seemed like something that the world could crush, and it had. The same way he had watched Viren crush the wings of moths to make beautiful things, the world had taken him and squeezed out all the life and Harrow had watched it happen.
He had turned his eyes to some goal that was always some way off in the distance and had lost sight of what was right in front of him.
Now he sits with the stone of their latest endeavour cold and unforgiving against his back and he doesn’t know if anything will change, if there can ever be enough death to fix the ways in which the world is broken. He had had such hopes once, had believed that anything was possible, that he could make a difference and it had all turned to rubble around him, become nothing more than dust. He had let Viren go up the spire to destroy the egg, to do what he felt was necessary, but Harrow no longer knows anymore. Now he just waits, and the hours pass slowly by until worry begins to wear away at his heart.
He hears Viren before he sees him.
The slow scrape and clank of his staff along the rocky mountain path and Harrow is glad to finally get up and walk to the base of the mountain to meet him. What he sees when Viren rounds the final twist in the path is not quite what he’d expected though, his staff seems to be bearing most of his weight, there is a jagged line of blood on his cheek, and he sways, leans himself against the rocky side of the spire and Harrow finds his feet moving rapidly towards him.
“Viren?”
He catches his arm before he falls, the sleeve of his jacket is wet with blood, its dark crimson soaked into the grey fabric, it leaves Harrow’s hand stained red.
“Damn Viren, what the hell happened up there?”
“I ran into a few… difficulties.” There is a slowness to his speech and Harrow has to strain to catch the words.
“Difficulties? Did you do it?”
“Harrow…” and his knees seem to give out. He slumps forward into his arms and Harrow finds himself bearing the full dead weight of him, he has to half carry him back to the fire, and it casts its rusty light over Viren’s pale face when he lays him down beside it.
Viren would know exactly what to do in these circumstances. Positions reversed he would have Harrow fixed up in a matter of moments, but Harrow isn’t completely useless. He has spent enough time on the battlefield to see most injuries treated, helped with some, tended to his own. He starts to undo Viren’s cloak and jacket, hauls them off and bundles them under his head. He slices his shirt open with his dagger, it is covered with blood, there is nothing to salvage.
Harrow grits his teeth while he evaluates the damage. The worst injuries are what looks like a stab wound to his shoulder and a slice to his side that is bleeding freely. There are other smaller nicks and bruises as well, and Harrow is left wondering what on earth Viren encountered up there.
He scrambles to get their supplies, empties out bandages, needles and gut, finds the half-drunk bottle of rye they had bought with them from Katolis. They are in a pinch and he’ll have to make do, he places a needle to the flame of the fire until it burns hot and white, sloughs liquor over it and into the wound on Viren’s side which brings him to with a gasp.
“Alright Viren, you could help me here…” He is threading the needle and the catgut slips in his fingers. He watches Viren’s eyelids flutter. “Or we can do this the messy way? I’m sure you’d prefer it to be neat.” Viren’s eyelids stop moving and Harrow sighs, pinches the wound and starts to pull the needle through his skin, draws the frayed edges of flesh together stitch by slow stitch. He tries not to think of the ragged path of the needle through skin and muscle, Viren’s blood covers his fingers, soaks into his hands, dyes them red and sticky and Harrow swallows, keeps the needle moving.
“Viren?” He is looking for the slight twitch of the pulse in Viren’s neck, any indication that he is still with him, and he can feel his own heartbeat thrumming in his ears.
“Dammit Viren, you remember when we ripped that tapestry from Neolandia?” When he looks at the row of untidy stitches on Viren’s skin that particular memory comes back to him so clearly it is almost as if he were there again.
It had been a fine diplomatic gift, had hung proudly in one of the castle’s halls and Harrow had accidentally sliced a rent in it while showing off his swordsmanship to Viren. They had been nothing much more than boys then and it feels so long ago.
“You remember how we tried to stitch it back up again and it was such a fucking mess, we actually made it worse. Do you remember that Viren?” He can acutely recall the panic that he had felt, it is not too dissimilar to now.
“It was one of my mother’s favourite things and we made it look like a total massacre.”
He has reached the end of the wound, the flesh is drawn together, it is serviceable, the stitches are tight at least, he pours more alcohol on a cloth and wipes the worst of the blood away. Harrow sighs and moves to Viren’s shoulder, cleans the wound, this one looks deep, and he hesitates for a moment before the needle punctures the skin.
“You remember how you fixed it with magic? You said there wasn’t anything you couldn’t mend. There’s always a way Harrow, that’s what you told me. I was so happy, so happy I wouldn’t get in trouble for ruining that stupid fucking gift.” His hands keep moving, he ignores the shake in them, takes a swallow of spirits instead, ties off the sutures one by one.
“I remember.” Viren’s voice is soft, but he feels an overwhelming relief on hearing it.
“Good...” He lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “You’re a fucking mess you know.”
“Mmm.” Viren’s eyes flicker open, meet Harrow’s in the firelight. There is a certain blankness in them, a smoky darkness and Harrow watches the shallow rise and fall of his chest.
“Alright, you have to stay with me Viren. I fucking forbid you to die... I… I need you.” The words are soft on his lips as Viren’s eyes close again. He can’t be certain that he’s even heard.
Now they alone are here, now just the two of them remain, and he isn’t sure he could bear to lose him.
It is one thing to drown with someone else beside you, and quite another thing to drown alone.