Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was obvious that something was going on.

As far as Merilwen could tell it had started on the last night that they'd spent in a tavern, rather than camping on the roads in between the various towns they kept getting run out of on their way to the coast. Prudence and Corazon had been late coming down to breakfast the following morning, both of them looking like thunderstorms and flinching away when they accidentally brushed against each other, and that hadn't changed in the intervening handful of days. They seemed to be keeping at least one other person in between themselves at all times, and their usual banter -- always easy, even the insults -- was strained and always seemed to cut off abruptly as if they'd suddenly realized that they were talking to each other and didn't want to be. Neither of them had offered any hint about what might have passed between them -- a concern all on its own, since they were usually so eager to complain about each other -- but clearly it had been ugly and was, at the very least, going to need some time before they could get past it. And Merilwen might have been willing to let them have a little more time before she stepped in, except they were taking it out on Egbert, too.

"It's not just me, right?" Egbert asked Merilwen as she helped him towel ale off of his scales. He'd been good-natured about the round that had landed on him rather than down his gullet, and for once the Guild had made a good enough impression on the townspeople that the other patrons of the pub were happy to chip in for replacement drinks, but there had been no mistaking the cause of the 'accident.' Tripping him up and sending him flying had been the closest Prudence and Corazon had come to working together in days. Egbert flicked the towel gloomily. "I know people tend to get cross with paladins from time to time, and those two are always a little bit grumpy, Prudence especially, but this still feels a bit much."

"No, it's not just you," Merilwen agreed, returning the sodden towel to the barkeep with a grateful nod and nudging Egbert towards a small table where they might be out of earshot of the rest of the group. He deserved a moment of respite from whatever was likely to happen next while those two were still in a mood. "I mean, it is just you, and that's why it's so weird, but it's not just you who's noticed it." She took a pull on her own fresh pint. "And it's not just you wondering what's going on there."

"Well, that's good news," Egbert said. "Or, not good news, because my friends are being grumpy at me and won't tell me why, but it's good news that I'm not imagining it, I guess." He huffed out a frustrated sigh that came with a wisp of smoke from his nostrils. "They could just say something," he groused. "I know I make mistakes, but I can't not make them next time if people don't tell me I've made them in the first place."

"And it's not like them not to point out every single mistake anyone around them makes." Merilwen's voice was wry but touched with sympathy. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure it's not actually about you. Not entirely, anyway. There's something else going on there, I'm pretty sure. Which does make it even weirder that they've picked you as the scapegoat." She stared into her pint for a bit and tilted her head at him. "Not that I'm suggesting you're actually to blame for whatever this is, but are you sure you can't think of what might have set them both off?"

"Not a clue." He stretched his head up and put a hand to the back of his neck, giving his scales a thoughtful scratch. "Unless maybe it was something back in that last tavern we stayed in? You know, the one where we practically had to drag them downstairs in the morning. It feels like maybe that's where this all started."

"The one where you decided to practically drag them downstairs in the morning, against my advice," Merilwen corrected him, but she also nodded. That lined up with when she'd started noticing the problem, too. "I did warn you about waking them up," she added, and then stopped herself. It couldn't be that obvious, could it? "You don't think they're still holding that against you, do you?" she asked with a raised eyebrow, lifting her pint. "Even they wouldn't be that petty."

He gave a little bark of laughter. "I might understand it if I had woken them up," he said. "Some of it, anyway. Nobody likes getting woken up before they're ready. But when I opened the door they were definitely not sleeping."

If the drink Merilwen had taken had been any bigger, Egbert would have been wearing ale for the second time that day. As it was, he still had to slap her on the back to stop her from choking. The time it took her to get back her breath and her composure was still not time enough for her to form a coherent response to that comment, though. Or to the mental image that it conjured, which was a hell of a thing to have dropped into her head without warning. He couldn't possibly mean that the way it sounded, if only because if he did then even he couldn't be dim enough to be confused about why they were still mad at him. She cleared her throat, coughing up a last bit of startled spit, and gave him as calm a look as she could manage. "And by that you mean...?"

"Well, they were already kitted out and ready to move," he explained, still patting her back. "They looked like they would have come down to join us in a minute or two even if I hadn't gone to fetch them. '' He leaned back and closed his eyes, making a thoughtful sound like he was casting his mind back to whatever he had seen. "They really did seem perfectly normal," he said. "Except that Corazon was quite red in the face, even if he said it was nothing. And..." Another pause, his brow furrowing and eyelids scrunching, and Merilwen leaned in so far to hang on his every word that her rear was no longer touching the chair. "D'you know when you're a kid, and you're having a bit of a scrap with someone, but then an adult walks by and you have to step away from each other really quickly and look like you weren't doing anything so you don't get in trouble? And you're kind of standing too far apart, and not looking at each other, but, like, on purpose not looking at each other? It was kind of a little bit like that, maybe." He looked back at her suddenly, eyes widening with new concern. "You don't suppose they were having a row, do you? Only I'd think that I would have been able to hear it down the hall."

"Could be," Merilwen managed to respond eventually. She could picture the exact scenario he was describing, the furtive and guilty look of two people trying to look like they hadn't just been up in each other's personal space, and she had been that guilty party on multiple occasions. Except that most of the time, especially as she'd gotten older, she and the other person hadn't been having a row . Which brought them right back to that spit-take mental image, although with context it was more understandable that it would have gone right over Egbert's head, and no matter how hard she tried to reject the thought it explained far too much about the way they'd been acting towards each other -- and towards him -- since then. She cleared her throat again, bringing herself back to the conversation at hand and vowing not to breathe a word of where she'd drifted off to. "There's definitely something going on there, at any rate," she said vaguely, hoping to give off the impression that she couldn't even begin to guess at what that something could be. Egbert still looked far too confused and worried for her to just leave it at that, though, and so she reached out a hand and patted his arm reassuringly. "For what it's worth, though, I am absolutely certain that it's not about you. Or that it's not your fault, anyway. They'll come around soon enough, and if they don't then I'm going to have a thing or two to say to them. Just... maybe stay away from them for a while, yeah? Leave them alone to sort it out."

The worry and disappointment didn't entirely leave Egbert's face, especially at the recommendation that he try not to help his friends work through something, but he still managed a smile. "Thanks, Merilwen. I think I just needed some outside perspective so I didn't think I was going completely crazy. It's a load off my mind, really, just knowing that it's not been just me noticing that something's off. I'd hate to think I was just... I don't know, projecting some kind of ill will on them."

Merilwen tried and failed to imagine a situation in which someone might assume the worst of Prudence and Corazon and be wrong about it. "Don't worry about it," she said with only a little bit of irony in her voice. "I'm always happy to be the voice of reason."

"And I'm always happy to need one," Egbert returned with his usual cheer. He clapped her on the back again. "All right, then. What do you say I get you another drink, and we're going to stay well out of it until those two get their heads on straight."

"I certainly won't say no to another drink," Merilwen agreed, eyeing the pint that was probably mostly spit at this point, and said nothing about the second half of that sentence. There was no 'we' about that part. He was going to stay well out of it, because there was no way in which his trying to poke around further didn't end terribly for all of them, but she was going to get right in the thick of it and find out just what the hell was going on.

*

"Now, we don't know for certain that the museum is haunted," the old man said jovially, having just rattled off a very long list of strange happenings that had done nothing to convince Corazon that it was, although Corazon was also willing to concede that Necropolis-On-Sea was so freaking haunted that his baseline for ghost activity was probably higher than most people's. "There are no local legends here in Wellspring to suggest anything unusual about the land or any of the artifacts, and even the fire a few years ago didn't do anything more than a bit of structural damage. We could well just be experiencing the kind of noise and damage that you'd get in any old building that needs a bit of work. But we do need to be certain of that if we're going to continue to allow the museum to be open to the public, and that's why we need a team of paranormal investigators of your caliber. And don't worry if you do find something unnatural in there," he added with an indulgent laugh. "I assure you my Tessa can handle anything!" He slung an arm around the very pretty young woman at his side. "Isn't that right, Tessa?

Tessa gave him a strained smile. "Yes, of course, Uncle Cuthbert," she said with a little sigh.

A warm and hearty clap on her shoulder. "Hah! That's my girl, just as brave and brilliant as ever. Now, you let these adventurers give you a hand, won't you, my dear? They'll figure out what it is we're up against, if there's anything to be up against at all, and then that lovely sparkly gold magic will take care of the rest. You've still got my ring, haven't you?" Tessa, looking thoroughly steamrolled, held up her hand to show the signet ring that barely fit her finger. "Excellent! You show that to any merchant in the city and they'll give you whatever you need for your ghost hunt, on my tab. And that goes for your associates, too, although I'm sure such a seasoned team already has everything they need for as simple a job as this!"

"Well, actually..." Corazon started, stopping as another voice echoed his. Of course Prudence had had the exact same thought, and spoken in practically the same breath. She was the only other person here who would recognize what a perfect opportunity they had here, with an old man who was far too friendly and far too credulous and far too happy to replenish their 'supplies' on his tab. He risked a quick glance at her and she was looking back just as furtively, and as soon as they caught each other at it they both immediately snapped their attention back to the mark. Er, the client. Corazon tilted his eyes up towards the ceiling and huffed out a quiet, frustrated breath. He didn't know how much longer they could go on like this.

Cuthbert gave another hearty laugh. "Shrewd minds, just what I'd expect from investigators of your obvious caliber," he said approvingly, giving them a wink. "Best of luck to you all, and you take good care of my niece! Not that she needs it!"

When her uncle had left the museum's office, the smile fell from Tessa's face. "He's always like that," she said with a great and heaving sigh, slumping into his desk chair. "Any time the city has a magical or mysterious problem he calls me in because he's so sure that I'll be able to solve it with a snap of my fingers." She snapped her fingers for emphasis, and in her uncle's defense a little spark of gold did fly from them.

"It's always difficult to feel like you're disappointing your family when you know they're so proud of you," Merilwen said with understanding. Corazon made a skeptical sound, immediately dubious of the entire concept of one's family being proud of them, and once again there was an echo from Prudence.

"Right?" Tessa said, ignoring the doubters. "And, I mean, I suppose it's flattering that he thinks so highly of me, but he doesn't understand how magic works at all. "

Corazon leaned on the desk and gave her a wise and sympathetic nod, the picture of someone who did understand how magic worked and was here to listen to her troubles and also possibly get close enough to get a better look at her uncle's signet ring. "It's so hard to get the non-magical folk to really get what you're going through, isn't it? I mean, obviously I understand it, as a powerful magic user myself, but other people don't realize that just because you make it look effortless doesn't mean that it is . Well, I mean, it usually is for me, mostly, but still." He let a couple bubbles of colored light swirl around his hand for emphasis, not about to be outdone by her little finger-sparks.

Tessa didn't seem to be terribly impressed by this display, which just showed how distracted and worried she must be, but nevertheless she made a little sound of relief. "You get it," she said. She brushed her hair back and favored him with a brilliant smile. "The Lady smiled on you when I first spoke to you, and now I understand that she knew that you were exactly what I needed. All of you," she added, addressing the rest of the Oxventurers, but it was clearly an afterthought as she kept her attention on Corazon. Which was as it should be, really, but it still didn't totally sit right with him for some reason. "The fact that there are five of you is going to help all on its own. A proper adventuring party, just like I tried to tell Uncle we needed. He doesn't understand scale any more than he understands the rest of it, really. It's all, 'You don't need backup, Tessa; you've got an otherworldly patron granting you the power to work miracles,' but what good does the touch of a wise and ancient hoof do when there's only one of you and half a dozen of whatever it is you're facing down?"

Egbert immediately brightened up at this, pushing in towards the desk and crowding Corazon. "What kind of a wise and ancient hoof?" he asked eagerly. "Have you been staring at the sun, too?"

Tessa was staring at him now, with a blank look that was the appropriate response to Egbert in most situations, but she managed to turn it into a polite smile. "I'm afraid I don't know quite what you're referring to, my good... man," she said.

"Oh! Well then," Egbert said, his disappointment brief before he started patting at his armor. "I'm sure I have a pamphlet around here somewhere..."

"What my associate means to ask," said Prudence, who was playing it cooler than Egbert but who had nevertheless had a clear spark of interest at this statement, "is, who is this otherworldly patron?" She was also starting to lean in, but she made a furtive glance at Corazon that she probably thought he didn't notice before keeping her distance.

Tessa brightened, an expression that Corazon recognized as finally, someone is asking me about the thing I want to talk about . Her hands went to the pendant around her neck, a flower made of yellow gemstones. "I am the favored one of the wise and lovely unicorn Lady Moonblossom," she said with obvious pride. (Merilwen completely failed to suppress an excited gasp at this, and even Dob seemed to find new interest in the conversation. Corazon tried to ignore them both; he had no intentions of becoming part of this if there was going to be a fancy horse involved.) "She came to me when I was quite young and told me that it was my destiny to change the world for the better, and she was going to give me the power to do so," Tessa continued. "And even if it's not as much power as Uncle seems to think it is, because I'm only one person and there's only so much power that one person can have responsibly, it's changed my life. And even more than the magic, I've benefited so much from her insight and her guidance. Unicorns can sense things about people, you see, and she always points me in the right direction towards the best sort of people." Impulsive and earnest, she reached out and clasped Corazon's hand in hers. "And she recognized you right away."

Corazon patted her hand with his free one -- goodness, that ring was just rattling around on her finger, wasn't it? Likely to slip off at any moment -- and gave her his most winning smile. "Well, naturally," he said. He'd used weirder stories to get in good with a mark, and most of the time he had to make them up himself. This time all he had to do was go along with what someone else had already decided was true about him. "Obviously your Lady Moonblossom is an excellent judge of character, and she understands exactly what kind of seasoned adventurers you need to set you along the path to fulfilling your destiny."

He could practically hear Merilwen rolling her eyes behind his back, but he was used to tuning that out by now. The delicate cough, however, was harder to ignore. "So... what is it about a person that attracts a unicorn's attention?" she asked entirely too innocently. "Because I know what I've always heard..."

There was no immediate response to that, mostly because Corazon was trying not to choke on the sudden embarrassment and indignation that was the only possible response to a statement like that. He forced a weak laugh and a smile for Tessa's benefit before dropping her hand and turning to give Merilwen a warning glare, feeling the heat rising off his face. Merilwen shrugged, unfazed by both his reaction and the looks she was getting from the rest of the guild. "What? We were all thinking it."

To Corazon's great annoyance, the sounds that the others made in response suggested that they had to admit that, yes, they had all been thinking that. He started to open his mouth to salvage the situation -- and possibly to disown the rest of his crew -- but Tessa cut him off with a sweet and awkward laugh. "Oh, that's certainly not-- I mean, I have no doubt that she'd know , but she certainly wouldn't tell me; it's none of my business." And potential mark or no, at the moment she was Corazon's favorite person in the room. Even more so when she continued to beam up at him like he was made of sunshine and rainbows and whatever else it was that unicorn people liked. "But she does know how to recognize someone who's pure and noble of heart."

Okay, so the chorus of dubious and sarcastic sounds that followed this declaration were a little more understandable, but still . The least they could do was be a little supportive of his efforts to grift them into a nice pile of cash or at least local credit. Corazon turned the charm on for Tessa again, but Merilwen's little quip had put him out of sorts. Or possibly it was just the reactions that had done that; Merilwen could speculate as uncharitably as she wanted, but he wasn't thrilled about that speculation spreading to anyone else. No one in particular, just... other people, generally. It was a moment before he could manage eye contact again, and he let his gaze land briefly on Tessa's pendant, with its brilliant yellow gemstones.

The same brilliant yellow as Prudence's eyes. Damnation . "Well, I do my best," he said, all self-effacing charm, and even he could hear how weak it sounded. False modesty had never been his best look, even if it was the best that he could manage now, with his mind very much elsewhere and far more concerned about someone else's opinion of him.

"He's noble of something , at least," Merilwen said, her usual levels of Corazon-related sass somehow rising to an unexpected high, and had he actually done something to her to earn this kind of response? Like, recently? He shot her another quick what the hell, Merilwen? look, but before he could actually say anything, rescue came from an unexpected source.

Prudence sighed from her corner of the room, sounding lavish and bored. "He doesn't like to advertise his noble birth," she said. "For obvious reasons. Everyone would be trying to get their hands on him."

Okay, maybe less of a rescue and more... well, what even was that? She wasn't even looking at him when he tried to catch her eye, examining her nails as though she hadn't said anything. She'd said enough for Tessa, though, who nodded as if this explained everything. "Obviously Lady Moonblossom is very wise," she said, "but not everything works the same way on the Celestial Plane as it does here. It doesn't always translate the way you'd expect. But that hardly matters," she added, "because the important thing is that if you've got the credentials then she's going to be happy to have you along, and therefore so am I." She beamed, and whatever other magical abilities she might or might not have the girl could beam with the best of them. It was a complicated feeling that seized Corazon then, as it did whenever the subject came up, and he was torn between wanting to be entirely too kind to her because there was no joy in lying to someone so naive as to think being born to the 'right' people made him inherently more honorable, and wanting to fleece her even harder for it.

"Oh, well as long as the unicorn likes him," he heard Prudence say behind him, and there was a faint coolness to her voice that made him feel unexpectedly indignant. It wasn't his fault that he'd attracted a very weird sort of attention just when things had gotten... complicated between them. It wasn't even entirely his fault they'd gotten complicated, come to that. And she couldn't possibly be jealous, not of someone she so clearly outclassed in every possible way, so he couldn't imagine where this might be coming from. But even with that tone to her voice she was still just as much herself as ever, and she still knew an opportunity when she saw one. "And if this crew is up to her standards then I'm sure that she -- and you -- will find our rates very reasonable." That was much more like it.

"I believe my uncle's extension of his line of credit is more than reasonable compensation, but we can discuss that further as we work out exactly what you'll be doing for him," Tessa said confidently and dismissively. She tore her attention away from Corazon long enough to take a good look at Prudence, sizing her up with cool disinterest, and then her entire face changed. It was like she was actually noticing Prudence for the first time, and she didn't seem to like what she saw. "Oh," she said, suddenly stone-faced. "She recognizes you , too. I didn't realize this was going to involve one of your lot."

Right, so they were going to be taking everything she had and more. If she survived the next few minutes. " Hey now ." Corazon stepped back from his casual lean on the desk, putting himself between Tessa and Prudence and resting a hand on his rapier. Behind him he could feel the rest of the Oxventurers getting into position, all of them ready to square up and/or throw down if Tessa tried to do anything unwise. Well, more unwise than what she had just said, anyway.

Tessa ignored the warnings, even going so far as to crane her neck to look around Corazon's shoulder at Prudence. "You're consorting with one of the foul Old Ones," she said accusingly. It was, of course, not the first time they had heard anyone say it like it was a moral failing, but there was something particularly personal and vicious when Tessa said it.

Not that Prudence seemed fazed by it at all. She was still standing comfortably, arms loosely folded, and she didn't even bother to look disdainful when she responded. "Yeah? And?"

Tessa didn't seem to know what to do with this lack of reaction. She drew back in new shock, looking to the others as if for confirmation that she wasn't the only one hearing this. "But they're so horrible !" she exclaimed. "They're all so evil and monstrous and impossible! And they're icky ."

Prudence gave a condescending roll of her eyes. "You can't be evil if you exist well outside the bounds of mortal morality," she said. "I mean, yeah, I'm evil, but that doesn't apply to Cthulhu. At least get it right if you're going to clutch your pearls over it."

Tessa's hands were clenched in the lacy neckline of her blouse, as if she might really be clutching her pearls if she was wearing any. Her expression was far closer to fury than fainting, though. "So you admit it," she said. "It's your lot, with all the forbidden knowledge and eldritch violence and gore, that's making the rest of us look bad by association. You're the reason I can't even tell people I'm a warlock without them backing away like they're waiting for me to do something horrible!"

Prudence made a low and soft sound. "Oh, I see ," she said, her voice dark with both relish and scorn, and Corazon had to recalibrate his expectations for this encounter because he didn't see, and it was clear that the others didn't, either. Everyone knew what to do when someone came after Prudence for being a tiefling -- arson was always a favorite, although other forms of violence were of course available -- but if this was a warlock thing then there seemed to be a silent agreement among all of them that they should just stand back and let her eviscerate Tessa, hopefully only verbally.  "Someone gave you a little bit of power, and a little bit of prestige to go along with it, but now you don't want to actually use it and risk getting your hands dirty. And you've got a helicopter patron who's going to let you get away with that and not actually push you to go out and work her will in the world, because all you actually have to do is take care of the sad little problems that people bring to you and that's going to be enough to make her look good by association. Even if you can't solve them you can always charm someone else into helping so you'll still get the credit, right?"

(Behind them, Corazon could hear Egbert whispering, "What's a helicopter?"

"Dunno," Dob responded, equally quiet. "Must be a warlock thing.")

"I'm not trying to take credit for anything!" Tessa retorted, her voice rising to a squeak. "That's the entire problem!"

"Right, right," Prudence returned, her hellish rebuke alive and scathing and beautiful. "Convenient that you feel so bad about something you're not going to make any effort to stop. I'd heard that that was one of the perks of the Pact of the Trust Fund."

Corazon drew in a quiet breath. Would it be inappropriate to drop to his knees and propose marriage on the spot?

This was further than Tessa seemed capable of responding to, the fury rising in her and cutting off all of the well-meaning sounds that she had been making so far. She still seemed to see Corazon as some kind of leader or authority that she could trust, which was potentially useful but also so far beyond charmingly naive by this point that it spoke to a severe lack of self-preservation instinct. "You're supposed to be noble ," she accused him. "And yet here you are with her ?"

I'm with her in whatever capacity she'll have me. The words caught in Corazon's throat, which was a good thing because they shouldn't have been able to get that far in the first place. No matter how beautiful and terrifying and perfect she was in this moment, and no matter how cool it sounded in his head, this wasn't the time or place to lay his heart on the line. Not without a much cooler setup, and not in front of someone who was never going to appreciate just how dramatic a moment it was. (And also not while his mouth was suddenly dry, his vocal cords so tight his voice would probably crack like a teenager's if he tried to say anything. The room must be incredibly dusty and he just hadn't noticed yet.) "Yep," he said instead, cutting off the word to keep from choking on it but hopefully sounding like he was just bringing the conversation to a definitive end.

"We're all with her," Merilwen said, and now she was standing just at his shoulder, part of the protective barrier that they all knew Prudence didn't actually need but weren't going to leave her without. "The Oxventurers are a package deal, so unless you want to send us on our merry way and hope that another adventuring group happens to wander through town to deal with your haunting problem..."

Tessa went pale briefly before closing her mouth and squaring up again. "I need this problem solved," she said, firmly enough to be a little bit impressive. "And more importantly, my uncle needs it solved. But I have no interest in working with the forces of darkness."

"That's fine," Merilwen shrugged. "It sounds like the forces of darkness don't really need your help, anyway." A sideways look at Prudence. "We've got this on our own, yeah?"

Prudence made a great show of barely looking at her, as if she couldn't be bothered. "What, a little museum haunting? We can deal with that in our sleep, no 'local expertise' needed. If it even is a haunting," she added in a scornful afterthought. "You haven't convinced me that it's not just rats. Although from the look of things around here you'd probably need our help to deal with a few rats, too."

"You can leave this one to the professionals," Corazon told Tessa, being sure to sound just patronizing enough now that it looked like they were still taking the job. "All you have to do is let us into the building tonight, and then you can leave. We'll take care of your little problem for you, and you don't have to be anywhere near the forces of darkness or even know exactly what they did to clean the museum out, yeah? And then in the morning we'll tell everyone that you were impressive and indispensable, and we'll take our payment, plus whatever extra you decide we've earned for our discretion, and we'll leave town and you'll never have to deal with us again" He patted her hand and gave her a pointed look. "Does that sound reasonable, or do we have to start getting un reasonable?"

"It's a good deal," Egbert added. "I mean, if they gave me the option to go home and take a nap while they did all the work... well, I probably wouldn't take it, actually, because then they'd be having all the fun without me, but I'd still appreciate the thought, and everyone needs a rest sometimes, even us."

"Yes, thank you for your contribution, Egbert," Corazon said through gritted teeth. He raised an eyebrow at Tessa, less roguish now than outright ruffian. "Even the big guy with the even bigger mace thinks it's a good deal," he said reasonably. It had the same shape as a veiled threat, if you didn't know Egbert.

Most people would have at least shrunk back at this kind of onslaught from the entire Guild, and the fact that Tessa hadn't did admittedly make Corazon feel the slightest touch of respect for her, or at least for her faith in the protection of Lady Moonblossom. She twisted her uncle's ring on her finger, glaring fiercely. "I thought you were good people," she said, and it was a little bit plaintive but it was far more icy.

Dob sighed. "Yeah, we get that a lot."

*

By the time they actually got to the museum Prudence's mood had improved a bit. With Cuthbert's signet ring to hand the various shops in the town were just as generous as he had promised they would be. Everyone's packs were full again, and while they had stuck to the essentials for now -- Tessa was still hanging around, so they were limited to what could be justified as legitimate business expenses -- they were essentials of a higher quality (and possibly a more flexible definition of 'essential') than they would have managed to land on their own. She'd even eyed up a few items as potential targets for a second pass through town once they managed to separate the ring from its babysitter, and the silent and significant looks that had passed between her and Corazon on the subject hadn't even made either of them flinch or look away suddenly. Things were starting to look up now that there was something else to focus on, until she really remembered what they were going to be focusing on.

"Just don't wreck anything," Tessa said sullenly as she unlocked the massive doors and hauled them open, revealing a dreary and cavernous lobby that immediately made the entire world a little more depressing just by its existence. "I'll be back for you at sunrise, and not a word to my uncle."

"Oh, take your time," Merilwen said icily. "Please."

Tessa glared silently as the doors closed behind her, and Prudence didn't bother concealing a grin, making a mental note to wreck something at the soonest possible convenience and blame it on the alleged ghosts.

Dob took little notice of this drama, immediately bounding across the lobby to examine the directory mounted on the far wall. "Gosh, it's hard to know where to start," he said. "Maybe we should split up."

"Or maybe we should make the world a better place by burning it down," Prudence muttered, kicking a toe at one of the ragged carpets.

"And blame it on the ghosts?" Corazon suggested, also under his breath, and she managed the barest smile at him before even that was a little too much.

"Splitting up sounds like a good idea," Merilwen said, joining Dob at the directory. "I'd say we should go in pairs except for, you know, the math."

"Pairs sounds fine to me," Egbert said. "There are six of us." He patted Seal Gaiman, who was sniffing about the place as if there might be a dusty bag of souvenir popcorn left in a corner somewhere. "And I've already got my buddy."

"I suppose that works," Dob said. "There's a display about the history of fishing in the east wing, anyway; maybe Seal Gaiman would be helpful with that. And the other two closest exhibits are... Farm Equipment Through the Ages and the Hall of Textiles. So if anyone has any preferences...."

Prudence was trying very hard to be patient with the whole process of what was sure to be a pointless charade, but her breath came out in a little huff nevertheless. "My preference is whatever gets us through this the quickest," she said.

"Probably Farm Equipment Through the Ages, then," Dob said, unperturbed. "The fire was closer to the Hall of Textiles, so that will probably take a little longer to examine thoroughly. I don't mind taking that one on; do you want to come with me, Merilwen? And then, Prudence, you and Corazon can look at the farm equipment."

Prudence's blood went cold, and then hot, and then all of it seemed to rush to her face and chest. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Corazon startle and stiffen, and when she tried to turn her head towards him they were once again in that state of not being able to look at each other for more than a second or two before hurriedly turning away. He looked just as flustered as she felt, barely keeping it in check in the hopes that nobody else would notice. This was the chance they had been waiting for, a perfectly legitimate excuse to sneak off together into some dark corner where they wouldn't be missed or disturbed, and then...

And then what? She'd spent the past several days envisioning so many tantalizing potential answers to that question, but for every tempting fantasy she conjured up there was an equally terrifying scenario waiting at the edges of her mind to suggest itself when she least expected it, to say nothing of all the ones that somehow managed to be tempting and terrifying at the same time. Another careful, desperate glance at Corazon, who shifted his weight on his feet like he was fighting some internal battle of his own, which might or might not bear any resemblance to hers. She was careful not to make eye contact but she could still feel his eyes flicking towards her, like he was waiting for her to be the first one to respond to this suggestion. Which was massively unfair, as she'd been planning on waiting for him to say something first. She didn't dare speak up to be the first person to agree to this plan, but she also couldn't bear the thought of turning it down.

Before the gap in the conversation could turn agonizing enough for anyone else to notice it, rescue came from an unexpected source. Merilwen made a dubious sound, biting her lip and looking thoughtful. "I don't know," she said. "If we're going to be splitting up to go ghost hunting, there should probably be someone in each group who can heal, just in case. I'll take the farm equipment with Prudence, and you two can start in the textiles room." A nod in Prudence's direction. "That sound good?"

It sounded comparatively uncomplicated, which it turned out was the top of Prudence's priority list right now. "Yeah, sure," she said with a shrug. "I can't remember the last time I saw a pitchfork that wasn't being waved by an angry mob; it might be a nice change of pace."

"That's settled, then," Dob said, nodding firmly at this very simple interaction that hadn't been confusing or complicated for anyone at all. "We'll all take a look around and meet up to share our findings in a bit. Or, you know, if anyone starts screaming we'll reconvene on that instead."

The Hall of Farm Equipment Through the Ages was probably not any more empty at night than it was when the museum was open. The whole building had an abandoned, dusty feeling about it, the air hanging still and heavy and swallowing up the sound of their feet on the floorboards now that they'd gotten away from the general noise of the larger group. "So, definitely not haunted," Prudence said, looking around the exhibit with distaste. "Even the ghosts would have gotten bored with this place ages ago."

"They could be the ghosts of boring people," Merilwen suggested. "We have to at least check it out." She tapped a wall and then bent low to examine the baseboards, her head dipping low and the rest of her body following in sleek cat form. She gestured with her head for Prudence to follow and started a slow circuit around the room, her nose working all the while with a little snuffling sound that was occasionally punctuated by light sneezing.

Prudence rolled her eyes, but she followed Merilwen's lead enough to cast a quick Detect Magic spell and make a circuit of her own. "There's nothing here," she confirmed almost immediately. "There's absolutely no magic anywhere, and I mean that both in the 'actual magic' sense and the 'interesting or inspiring things' one. I mean, look at this! There's an entire wall dedicated to different kinds of rakes!"

"No rats, either," Merilwen said, shaking herself back into her usual form. "Not for a few years, at least, judging by the smell." She looked around aimlessly and blew out a slow breath that was so contemplative that Prudence was immediately suspicious. "I guess there's nothing more to do for now, just wait until something manifests that we can investigate."

Prudence raised a wary eyebrow. "You're the one who said we had to actually make an effort and check this place out," she said.

"And we did!" Merilwen said entirely too cheerfully. "We went around the whole room and didn't find anything. We made a good-faith effort to find any ghosts who might be lurking around, so now if they want our attention they'll have to come to us. If it's as haunted as the director is sure it is, I don't see how we can possibly miss it if they decide to appear."

That made sense, and it was a perfectly logical response to a haunting claim that was as dubious as the old man's had been, and so Prudence was immediately suspicious. "So you want to, what, sit around and wait while everyone else does the work? Maybe engage in some recreational vandalism while we're here, just to class the place up a bit? Because I'm all for that, but it doesn't really seem like your thing."

"Sort of yes to the first bit, definitely no to the second bit." A tidy little bench sat along one wall, presumably for patrons who were overwhelmed by the wealth of information on display, and Merilwen settled comfortably on it. "I just thought it might be nice to get a moment to ourselves." She patted the seat beside her in an inviting gesture. "You know, just to check in."

Yeah, this was going nowhere good. "I'm fine," Prudence said with a shrug, pretending not to notice the invitation. "I'm not thrilled about the current job, or the current client for that matter, but other than that I'm fine. Unless there's something you wanted to get off your chest, but you wouldn't bring that to me first if you did."

"I might; you don't know," Merilwen protested. "Depends on what the problem was, really. But that's not the point right now." The raised eyebrow as she said this carried a silent and you know that perfectly well. She sighed. "I was trying to give you some space to open up on your own, but the thing is, you've been acting edgy and mean for days now -- like, even by your standards -- and I'm worried about you. And I'm worried about Egbert."

Still going nowhere good, but in an unexpected direction. "What does Egbert have to do with anything?"

A very pointed look. "You've been mean enough to him in particular that he's noticed. "

Prudence concealed a wince, trying to ignore the stab of guilt that brought with it. "He--" She let out a frustrated hiss. "He interfered with something. That's all you need to know."

A slow nod. "Something involving you and Corazon?"

Well, that was all the blood in Prudence's veins gone to ice again. She scoffed, quickly putting her hands behind her back to keep from doing anything fidgety and obvious. "First you tell me it's about Egbert, and now it's about Corazon? Where, exactly, are you going with all this?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Merilwen said. "You both started acting weird around each other and also around Egbert at the same time, so it's not a far leap to guess that something happened with you two. And if it was just the two of you I'd let you be and let you work it out yourselves, but if you're going to take it out on someone else..." She looked gently serious. "Egbert thinks he did something terrible, and he wants to know what it was so he can make it up to the two of you."

"And you want to know because you want the gossip," Prudence retorted. She brought her hands back to the front again, folding her arms firmly and putting up a defiant wall against all of this invasion of her privacy.

Merilwen made a noise that didn't actually deny that. "Fine, if you don't want to tell me," she said. "I'll just have to guess."

There was a threat there, and what had Prudence worried was that she couldn't actually tell what the threat was. "Doesn't sound like my idea of fun, but knock yourself out, I guess."

"And once I come up with a shocking and improbable enough guess, I'll tell Corazon that that's what you said happened, and I'll ask him if it's true."

Prudence's hands flew to her mouth and then clutched at her chest. "You wouldn't, " she gasped, the words barely stammering out, and Merilwen's only response was a benign smile that said she very much would. "That is... absolutely evil. " Overcome with emotion, she rushed forward and threw her arms around Merilwen. "I am so proud of you! And also I hate you so much right now, but I'm still proud."

"I learned from the best," Merilwen said fondly, giving her a squeeze and holding on a little longer than was necessary, politely pretending that it wasn't obvious Prudence kind of needed a hug anyway. She pulled away and gestured to the bench again. "Come on," she said, as gentle and sympathetic as she had been cruel a moment ago, as if she wasn't still holding that sword over Prudence's head. "Tell me."

Maybe it was possible that, deep down, Prudence actually wanted to pour some of her troubles out. And if she absolutely had to talk to someone, then even if she was being evil about it Merilwen was probably her best choice. Which did not make her resent the situation any less. She slouched down onto the bench in defeat, burying her face in her hands., and when she spoke her voice was muffled and sullen. "I almost kissed Corazon."

She couldn't actually see Merilwen's reaction, but the way the silence stretched out told her enough. "The thing is," Merilwen eventually said, slowly and thoughtfully, and with a heavy sigh in her voice, "that I thought there was a good chance it might be something like that. And yet I was still not even a little bit mentally prepared to hear you say it."

A low groan escaped Prudence. " Why. "

Merilwen made a sound like a vocal shrug. "I'm only calling it obvious in hindsight, admittedly, but you two went off alone together and then suddenly started acting all awkward and edgy around each other and getting snappish with someone else. And if you put those facts together, and in that order..." Prudence groaned again, mostly because she'd meant that why as more of a general lament to the universe than an actual call for an answer, and Merilwen put a comforting hand on her back. "What happened? "

One last groan that turned into a resigned sigh as Prudence raised her head out of her hands. "It was the morning after that last night we spent in an actual tavern. The one where I got so drunk and depressed that he practically had to carry me away from the bar. And when he did, he was just... sweet." She actually risked a smile at Merilwen then, feeling some of the weight in her chest lift, because that part felt like by having said it she'd made it more real. "You lot have got me used to people being nice to me, sometimes, but sweet is another thing altogether. And that's what he was doing, fussing and worrying and wanting to make sure I was all right, but also complaining the whole time like caring was some horrible burden that someone else had forced on him."

"I'm familiar," Merilwen said with the weary sigh of someone who didn't find it anywhere near as charming as Prudence did, but she relented with a little shoulder nudge and a conspiratorial look. "He's bad at pretending he doesn't care about anyone else, but he's really bad at pretending he doesn't care about you, " she conceded.

Prudence made a face, because she had noticed that -- and had taken a very long time to convince herself that she wasn't imagining it -- but she wasn't keen on the thought of anyone else having noticed. She pushed a bit of hair behind her ear and continued. "And then, after he'd done all the fussing and worrying that could possibly be expected of him, he stayed with me. Just... stayed, and nothing else. Because I asked him to." She had to look away as she said that part; admitting that she'd asked at all was more difficult than anything else she'd said so far. "He was kind," she said quietly. "And in the morning, he was still kind." Another little smile turned up on her face, this one far less soft, a little growl curling into her voice. "And also just waking up, so he was all rumpled and vulnerable-looking, and his shirt was--"

" Yes, that's enough, thank you, " Merilwen cut her off, throwing her hands up in the air and stopping just short of putting them over her ears. She shuddered. "There are some mental images I don't need."

"Your loss," Prudence sniffed, bristling only a little at this response and the implied judgment of her exquisite taste. "But we talked for a while, and he fussed over me a little more, and... I kind of fussed over him right back. And it was nice. And then 'nice' turned into 'flirty,' and then 'flirty' started to turn into something else before Egbert had to show up and stick his great bloody snout into it!" She punctuated that sentence with a solid fist against the back of the bench, sending up a little crackle of eldritch energy and leaving a few scorch marks that she would have to blame on the ghost if anyone noticed.

Merilwen was quiet for a moment after this declaration, her hand still resting kindly on Prudence's back. She gave one last pat, lost in thought, before she pulled it back. "So," she finally said. "You're not so much mad at Egbert as you are... intensely frustrated."

Prudence buried her head in her hands again. "You're not helping."

"Sorry," Merilwen said, and she almost managed to sound like she meant it.  She sighed, and while it was a little impatient it wasn't unkind. "All right, so Egbert doesn't actually have to know the details of just what he did to get on your bad side," she said.

"You think?" Prudence managed to choke out, the words coming in a bubble of mad and desperate laughter. "Bad enough that you know any part of it." A lament that carried with it yet another terrible thought, and she turned a baleful eye on Merilwen that had made far larger and meaner enemies than her cower and flee. "And I trust I don't have to tell you that nobody else needs to know about it, either," she said

Her voice had been all dark implications and terrible warnings and not even a little bit desperately pleading, she was sure of it, and yet Merilwen continued to give her that wry look. "Please. I barely want to know any of this myself; you really think I'm going to burden anyone else with the knowledge?" A soft nudge in the ribs. "I'm not going to spill any of your secrets, and I'm not going to tell you to have a heart-to-heart with Egbert. But lay off of him all the same, all right? It's not his fault that this happened, and you're not going to accomplish anything by making life harder for him even if I understand the impulse."

"It'll make me feel better," Prudence sulked listlessly, but even that wasn't true anymore. Maybe the first time she'd tripped him up or spilled something on him had had a little bit of catharsis to it, but now it was mostly to try to distract herself from her own thoughts. She sighed long and loud, reminding Merilwen that she was the most put out and put upon person in the whole of Geth and she was making a great concession by going along with Merilwen's unreasonable demands. " Fiiiiiiiine, " she groaned. "I'll leave Egbert alone until the next time he screws something up, which may well be any minute now. Will that make you happy?"

"It's a start," Merilwen said. "The question is, will it make you happy?" When Prudence glared at her, both annoyed and confused, Merilwen put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. "It wasn't not about Egbert, me trying to get you alone for a conversation," she said. "But you know I was worried about you too, right? You're my friend, and I don't like to see you unhappy. And when you are unhappy, I want to help. So just... remember that you can talk to me, all right?" Prudence made a sound of distaste at the very thought of that, scrunching up her shoulders in protest, but she still leaned her head down close to Merilwen's and made a not actually unhappy grumbling sound as she endured the terrible inconvenience of being cared about. "All right then." One last very solid little thump on the arm, and Merilwen let her go and let them both go back to just sitting next to each other in a comfortable sort of way as if they were there together for no particular reason. There was a sort of waiting feeling on the air, though, that had little to do with the anticipation of whatever ghostly activity wasn't going to happen next, so it wasn't actually all that surprising when Merilwen gave her a rough nudge that was more like a shove. "Corazon? Really? "

Prudence squeaked in protest, batting her away. "What happened to 'you can talk to me'?"

"Oh, you can," Merilwen said with utmost sincerity that didn't hide the little spark in her eye. "And I promise I will listen to you and support you and be your friend. I never promised I wouldn't judge you."

Prudence didn't even have another dramatic groan in her; she just drew her knees up to her chest and pressed her forehead into them. "You are the absolute worst, " she complained. "This is why I normally just kill people instead of trying to be friends with them."

"I'm sure you'll kill us all one day," Merilwen assured her, and it had that ring of mixed sincerity that responses to her threats so often did these days, like her friends didn't actually know how much they should believe her but they wanted to support her nevertheless. "But first you're going to have to deal with... this whole thing. You can't just leave it hanging like this, not least because it's going to drive the rest of us completely mad."

"I'm not, " Prudence protested. "We didn't just slink off in opposite directions and vow never to speak of this again. We already said we're going to pick up where we left off when the timing is better. When we know we're not going to be interrupted." She had unfolded herself and her hands were resting in her lap, and now, completely unbidden and with her apparently powerless to stop them, her fingers twisted together in restless anxiety. "And maybe when I know what actually happens next."

There was a pause, delicate and longer than it should have been, and Merilwen cleared her throat. "I feel like there's a couple ways you could mean that," she said slowly.

Another, shorter pause while Prudence put that one together, and then she choked. "Not like that, " she finally managed to protest. "Absolutely one hundred percent not like that."

"All right, all right," Merilwen said, holding up her hands for peace. "No shame in it, just wondering if there was a different conversation that we should be having."

"Just because I was raised by a hermit," Prudence muttered, feeling a flush rising in her face, and it hit her that this little burst of insecurity must be what Corazon felt like all the time. "I've been around, all right? I know what I'm doing. And if that's all I wanted to do, just drag him into a dark corner and do unspeakable things to him, then I would have done it by now."

"Again, there are mental images that I don't need."

Prudence ignored this and pulled her cloak into her hands, as if that would make the way they were fidgeting less obvious. "The complicated part is all the bits that aren't that," she said, and her voice was too quiet and gave too much away. "The part where it's not just about wanting someone, it's about wanting to keep them after."

Merilwen's wordless response was soft and fond and -- for all of her previous sarcasm and her dramatic disgust at the very thought of the whole situation -- full of a very gentle sort of understanding. "I'm sorry," she said after a moment. "I thought it was just... I didn't realize it was that serious." She shook her head, resigned. "You really like him, don't you?" When Prudence only managed a sad, slightly damp squeak in response, she sighed kindly. "Then it's no wonder you're so nervous."

That heat in Prudence's face continued to rise. "I'm not nervous ," she insisted. "I just can't stop thinking about what's going to happen next and how it might go wrong, and then sometimes if I think about it for too long then my stomach gets all wobbly." She closed her mouth into a thin line and folded her arms around her stomach -- which was feeling pretty wobbly already -- and couldn't even be properly grateful that Merilwen wasn't saying anything this time. "Feelings are stupid ," she grumbled. "They're all weird and complicated and hard , and how do you people deal with them?"

A wry laugh. "The complaining helps, sometimes," Merilwen admitted. "But really, the only thing that makes having feelings any easier is being honest about them. Which means that if you want... something to work out for the two of you, whatever shape it takes, you're going to have to tell Corazon how you feel about him."

The stomach wobble got worse, and Prudence discreetly bent forward to curl herself protectively around it. "That's the most appalling thing you've ever said to me."

"I know," Merilwen said, and the sarcasm Prudence had been expecting was absent in favor of sincere commiseration. "It's the worst. Even when you've done it before, the first bits are still the absolute worst."

Prudence made no effort to deny the implication that she'd never done this before; Merilwen would know it was a lie and it would just drag this out further. " Every part of it is the worst," she muttered.

"Yeah..." The word came out in a long and wandering syllable, and there was a faraway look in Merilwen's eye for a moment, as if she was being drawn back into some distant and pleasant memory. For a moment she seemed to show her age, reminding Prudence that even if she was still quite young for an elf she had still lived longer than any of them by a wide margin, and had undoubtedly done and seen more than they could possibly imagine. She grinned, almost to herself. "It's worth it, though."

Prudence attempted a sarcastic, carefree scoff in response, but somehow it seemed to stick in her throat. "Sure it is," she said. "That's why you keep reminding me of how dramatically dismayed you are by the whole idea of... you know. Me and... him." The stomach wobble got even worse when she tried to put Corazon's name in that sentence.

"Only because it's my solemn duty as your friend to give you grief about your terrible romantic taste," Merilwen returned, light and carefree once more, and the word romantic meant it was Prudence's turn to be dramatically dismayed, which got her a particularly dry look in response. "Look, I'm not going to stop calling Corazon the absolute worst, not while he keeps going out of his way to be the absolute worst and nobody else seems to be willing to call him on it. But I'm still his friend, somehow, and I still see those little flashes sometimes that hint at there being a halfway decent person buried somewhere under all the rubble. And that halfway decent person obviously cares about you a lot and wants to make you happy, and if that's what you want then that's all that matters and I won't say anything further about it." A pause. "Okay, we both know that's a lie. But I'll try to keep my commentary to a minimum, all right?"

Prudence actually laughed at that, much to her own surprise. It was nice to be reminded sometimes that her friends could be just as terrible as she was, just in different ways. Her hands still twisted, though, as did her stomach. She scoffed, cheerful and unbothered. "What would I even say to him?" she asked with breezy indifference. Or that was the plan, anyway. What actually happened was that the knot in her gut caught the scoff and bent it into a sort of mad hiccup, and her throat tightened around her voice until it had to squeeze out in a desperate squeak that sounded like she was actually begging for an answer, or at least begging to be assured that there was another way.

A little snort. "That is very much between the two of you," Merilwen said with that little shudder again. "Don't get me involved in the details." When the answering silence seemed to clue her in that this was oddly comforting but not actually helpful, she gave another little shoulder nudge. "You already know what you want to tell him, or at least you know what you want him to know. The actual words... well, all right, they matter, but they're hardly the most important part. You're the most important part, and the words will find some way out when you need them to."

The last time Prudence had wanted so desperately to believe someone's promise that everything was going to be all right, it had been the cold and unearthly voice rising from the night sea and offering her power and acceptance in exchange for worship and blood. She clung to the hope of that memory, but hope was a thin and nervous thing, and there was only so much that could be asked of it. "What if it doesn't work out?" she asked in a small voice, and the worst part was that she couldn't even be worried about something specific.

"That could happen," Merilwen admitted, and while she sounded like she was making a sincere effort to take the question seriously there was a definite undertone to her voice that said Prudence might as well have asked What if the moon falls from the sky? or What if Dob starts bathing regularly? "And if it does happen, then you'll have friends around who care about you and want to support you and will help you get through it." A pause, looking thoughtful, and then she reached out and took Prudence's hands in hers, squeezing the fingers gently and stilling their restless movements. Her grasp was warm and comfortable, and as Prudence squeezed back Merilwen smiled, but with a very pointed sort of glimmer in her eye. "I think the question you should really be asking is, what if it does work out?"

Prudence's stomach twisted again, and with it her fingers clenched, tightly enough that Merilwen gave her a startled look. "Then that will be an entirely new set of things to worry about."

Merilwen actually laughed at that, even if it was quiet and a little bit tired. She squeezed Prudence's hands again and leaned in like she was about to tell the most important secret that the world had ever known, and Prudence leaned in with her almost unconsciously and hoped that, maybe this time, the words would be the ones that actually worked. And that was when the screaming down the hall began.

Chapter Text

The Hall of Textiles would have been hard pressed to hold Corazon's attention even if he wasn't preoccupied with other matters. The exhibits all had a distinctly gnawed look that suggested that this place needed an exterminator rather than an exorcist, the chill was less 'spectral' and more 'this is a very old and drafty building,' and the only weird and mysterious sound was Dob chatting away at him, and that was a sound he was good at ignoring. Corazon poked around the edges of the room, searching the walls for secret panels of hidden doors or anything even a little bit interesting, anything that might prove valuable or just give him something to think about that wasn't the fact that he could have been spending this time inspecting farm equipment -- or, possibly, 'inspecting farm equipment' -- with Prudence instead.

He should have jumped at the chance. In a really cool and laconic way that nobody else would actually notice, of course, but he should have agreed to Dob's initial proposal for the split before anyone had time to suggest anything else. He had wanted to say yes, with every fiber of his being, but he'd been waiting for Prudence to say yes first. And she hadn't. And then he hadn't. And then the moment had been lost, both of them letting it slip from their hands. He closed his eyes. Was she regretting that now just as much as he was?

"Corazon, listen to this: It says here that Wellspring was the first place to figure out that mohair goats could be taught to spin cocoons!"

Corazon snapped his eyes open and gave a sharp and hissing sigh at the sound of Dob's excited chatter. Couldn't he even be left to brood in peace? "Dob, shut up."

Dob took to this in his usual fashion, which was to be confused and concerned rather than as affronted as he should be, his good nature as unflappable as ever. "Sorry, Corazon. Did you need something?"

Yes, obviously Corazon needed something; he needed Dob to stop talking. And possibly he also needed Dob to provide some kind of bardic wisdom that might offer some new insight on his current predicament, but he didn't think he was that desperate just yet. But now that there was a break in the sounds and his thoughts had been brought back from their wandering, something rose at the edge of his hearing. A faint rustling sound that had nothing to do with the moldering cloth in the exhibits. He held up a hand, still and silent and listening. "Do you hear that?"

Dob stopped and listened, his brow furrowed, and after a moment he tilted his head up towards the ceiling. The sound was louder now, gone from a rustling to a hurried pattering, and for something so soft it seemed to echo, coming from everywhere at once. "Rain?"

It did sound a little like rain, and that would fit with the way the various fabric displays were starting to ripple as the wind picked up, but then again that didn't actually make any sense at all because they were indoors . And now the soft pattering was turning into a much more insistent tapping, accompanied by a chattering clatter of squeaks that was rising in volume and getting closer from every direction at once and gradually turning into a rumbling rush as all of the little sounds ran together into one solid wave of noise. The wind picked up along with the sound, and one by one the moldering old fabrics blew loose from their exhibits, converging into a whirlwind of rags and rising sickly blue light at the center of the room. From every crack in the floor and every knot in the walls poured thousands of shimmering spectral bodies, a squeaking and scurrying mass that rippled like running water. The tide rushed in towards that central light, the chatter dwarfed by a rising roar from the heart of the vortex that bypassed Corazon's ears entirely and resonated in his bones. A section of the fabric-wrapped swirling light protruded from its center like an arm, aimed solidly at Corazon and Dob, and the roar turned into a deafening shriek that sounded like a command. The rising tide that covered the floor turned, the squeaking grew more concentrated, and as Corazon finally gathered his wits enough to run, the ghosts of a hundred generations of rats bore down on him in a drowning wave.

There was no outrunning the swarm, but no matter how densely the spectral bodies massed they could only reach so high, and there was higher ground to be had for those who knew how to look for it. Corazon bounded through the bodies at a sprint towards one of the frames that had previously housed a fabric display that had now become part of the something in the middle of the room, his feet barely touching the floor, and he scrambled up one of its posts just as he would one of the masts on the Joyful Damnation. The entire structure swayed precariously under his weight and the press of the swarm as he reached the crossbar and hung upside down from it like a sloth, but he knew how to keep his grip and his balance. He had weathered stranger storms than this one. He had a moment's concern for Dob now that he wasn't entirely focused on getting himself out of immediate danger, but a dazzling power chord told him that Dob was holding his own. The echoes of the music mingled with the startled squeaks of the rats that had been forced back by his Thunderwave, and the clear space they left behind included one of the pillars holding up the ceiling. Dob jumped at it with a back flip that seemed to take him halfway to the top before he even started climbing, and within seconds he was much further from the floor than Corazon had managed to get. Show-off. He leaned out from the pillar towards the vortex, one hand shading his eyes from the weird blue light that was getting brighter by the second. "What is that thing?" he shouted over the din.

How should I know , Corazon started to reply, but the shapeless mass was pulling itself into a clearer shape now. The swirling bits of cloth flattened themselves into a patchwork skin around the blue light, leaving cracks where it still showed through and illuminated the room, and now it was a rat at least twice the size of Merilwen's bear form. It rose up on its haunches, turning its apparently eyeless head upward and sniffing the air, whiskers quivering and ears swiveling. The smaller bodies of the swarm scuttled in the blue light that pooled around it, flowing in and out of it like they were all part of the same substance, like this was one giant soul made of the collective being of all of those thousands of rat souls. It roared again, and Corazon thought that actually it wasn't so much a roar as it was the biggest squeak that the world had ever heard. "Rat Queen!" he shouted up at Dob, tightening his grip on the post.

Dob leaned out even further from his pillar, as if from his vantage point the giant creature was somehow difficult to make out. "Is that even a thing?" he shouted back.

"You tell me!" Corazon sputtered. "You look at something like that, what else are you gonna call it?"

A short nod as Dob saw the logic in this. He pulled himself into a less precarious position and held his lute out like he was sighting down the barrel of a weapon. "What do we do about it?"

Corazon had been trying to put that together himself. If the Rat Queen was hunting by smell then there was no way to hide from it even if he could draw the swarm off of him enough to open an escape route, which he couldn't see an obvious way of doing anyway. And there was nothing in his vast arsenal that could reach it from this distance, if it was even vulnerable to being stabbed or set on fire or just really devastating insults. "You're the bard; can't you sing at it or something?"

Dob just shook his head, although after a moment's thought he raised his free hand to his ear and looked out across the room with a distant, unfocused expression, the look that usually accompanied a Message spell. "Yeah, we've got a situation in the Hall of Textiles," he said. "Mind the floor; we need ranged attacks and also probably fire." So the others had already known there was a problem, probably because of all the frantic screaming that someone -- no need to go into details about who -- had been doing as they tried to get off the floor. Good, because it was growing clear that, while Dob's pillar seemed to be just fine, the frame that Corazon was clinging to wasn't in much better shape than the fabric it had previously housed had been. It was not so much swaying now as rollicking, and he could hear the entire structure of it creaking and groaning even over the noise of the swarm. He suppressed a shudder. The ghost rats were obviously solid enough to affect the living world, and already he could imagine them flooding over him, scrabbling and biting and clawing...

The door practically exploded off of its hinges, bits of wood raining into the room. "Hi, guys!" Dob called out cheerfully. Corazon, facing away from the door in his precarious position, carefully craned himself around the post to see the arrival of their companions. Merilwen was briefly frozen in the doorway, even her love of all creatures great and small challenged by the sight before her, and she took a moment to make a few noises of horrified disgust before raising her bow and aiming at the Rat Queen's head. Egbert seemed happier to literally wade into the fray, swinging his mace in front of him like a pendulum and clearing a path that afforded him just enough room to move forward and closed as soon as he had done so, the swarm flowing back even after being thrown about and scattered. Corazon could just hear him giving a surprised little laugh. "Glowing mice! D'you think they're related to those bioluminescent worms that live in caves?" Corazon heard Merilwen's sigh, less shocked that he still refused to believe in ghosts than that he knew the word 'bioluminescent,' but only faintly, because his attention was immediately drawn elsewhere.

Bathed in torchlight and with her eyes burning even more brightly, Prudence looked like Hell itself had sent her for vengeance. The aura of joyful carnage that surrounded her glowed, cutting through the pale,all-pervading light of the Rat Queen and making her into a beacon. She moved with purposeful and deadly grace, a sight that Corazon would have happily watched all day if he wasn't hanging for his life over a sea of spectral vermin, but when she caught sight of him she suddenly froze. Time stopped and stretched between them, and from across that gap he saw her half raise her hand towards him, reaching out uselessly for him with a look that, from this distance, might have been desperation on anyone else. And then it was gone and she pulled herself up with cool determination, the look of purpose in her face going from reckless chaos to intense focus. The hand that she'd raised to him aimed higher now, a bolt of energy shooting past his head and towards the Rat Queen, but it seemed almost perfunctory, with her barely waiting to see if it hit before she turned her attention to the ceiling with a calculating look. She said something indistinct to Merilwen, and in a moment she was already halfway up the wall, her Spider Climb taking her off in a direction that Corazon couldn't follow from his vantage point. He closed his eyes and hoped , though for what he wasn't entirely sure. That this wasn't going to go as wrong as it already seemed to have done, that she had a plan. That, no matter what he had seen in her eyes, she hadn't seen the fear in his. His arms, already starting to shake from the strain, tightened around his post. He couldn't fight, he couldn't hide, and he didn't know how much longer he could hang on.

A sharp whistle from above in the rafters finally cut through all of the noise and violence and straight into his head, and when it forced his attention upwards he could feel a grin rising despite the perilous situation. From her perch on the rafters high above him Prudence returned the grin, fierce and fearless and full of that joy of teamwork and violence, the most uncomplicated look he had seen from her in quite some time. Finally, the tide was turning in his favor. Once she knew she had his attention Prudence nodded, her reckless delight tempered by a look of solemn promise, and she unclipped the coil of rope from her satchel to lower it down to him. A silent voice in his head, soft but fervent. Hang on. I've got you .

He swung one arm more firmly around the crossbar to leave his other hand ready to catch the rope, and that was the moment when something finally got the Rat Queen's attention. Maybe one of Merilwen's arrows had gotten into one of the cracks of its rag skin or maybe Egbert had finally remembered that he could teleport close enough to it to land a direct hit on it. The details didn't matter; all Corazon knew was that the Rat Queen squeak-roared again and dropped back down onto all fours with a crash that shook the room. His precarious perch rocked even harder under this new shock, which was finally more than the frame could bear. The cracking of the ancient wood was like a series of gunshots, and his last desperate grab for the rope still came up several feet short before the entire structure tumbled to the floor and took him along with it.

He landed flat on his back, knocking all the air out of his lungs, and the swarm was on him immediately. The press of tiny and barely substantial bodies pinning him down and smothering him must have been what being buried alive would feel like, if being buried alive was also incredibly loud and involved hundreds of tiny teeth and claws digging into him, leaving bright and burning pinpricks of pain that were far more real than those little ghosts should have been able to manage. He screamed in incoherent terror, trying to escape and knowing that he couldn't possibly. He was going to die here, drowned under a wave of the already dead.

Two heavy blows rained down on the swarm above his chest in quick succession, the shock of the impacts rippling out into his body like he'd been hit with a hammer through a thick layer of pillows. The rats had taken the hits directly, though, and those that survived it ran from the spot where they had been. His head freed, Corazon took a great gasping breath that tasted of the familiar brimstone and ozone of eldritch magic at close range. He scrambled up on his elbows, trying to scuttle backwards from the Rat Queen and get to his feet at the same time, and narrowly avoided being hit by a blazing torch that dropped from the ceiling and landed near his side, its light describing an empty space the swarm was slow to fill again. He jerked his head up to be ready for the next thing that might fall on him, but what met his eyes was a red and purple blur streaking down like a comet and roaring a battle cry.

Prudence dropped to the floor in a perfect three-point landing, barely seeming to feel the impact before she sprung back up into a fighting stance and threw herself in between Corazon and the Rat Queen. "That's right!" she shouted, her voice hoarse and cracking with barely-restrained emotion. Burning, crackling energy was already gathering around her hands again, her hair and clothes whipping around her in the impossible wind. "You're still alive enough to remember pain, aren't you? Come get some!"

The Rat Queen turned heavily towards them, the eyeless head lowered to take them in, and hissed like a boiling geyser. Unflinching, Prudence hissed right back at it. Corazon, who had almost recovered from having the wind knocked out of him, now fought for breath for other reasons entirely.

A guttural word of arcane power rose from Prudence's throat, and with a gesture the wind was hers. The power she'd gathered flowed out into the current, a bright greenish light cutting through the blue, and the electrified cyclone made a full circuit around her before spiraling back towards the Rat Queen. It spun in the opposite direction to the vortex the Rat Queen was at the center of, tearing at the edges of its rags and threatening to unravel it. The wind howled in counterpoint with itself, a screaming row of unnatural forces of nature, but Prudence was louder still, her hellishly amplified voice reverberating throughout Corazon's entire body. "Leave this place," she intoned in cold fury, hard and implacable. "You have no power here." Her chest heaved with a heavy breath, and as she drew her hands together she snarled again in her normal voice, the words barely reaching as far as his ears before the gale she'd called up snatched them away. "You don't get to touch them."

He assumed she'd said 'them.' It was too much to hope for that she'd said 'him.'

The crackling maelstrom continued to spin more tightly around the Rat Queen, spiraling towards the blue light at its core, and Prudence clenched her fist. The room immediately went dark as the blue glow that had suffused every corner of it vanished, snuffed out like a candle, and the wind died with it. The fabric that had been the Rat Queen's body fell to the floor in a limp heap, whatever had inhabited and animated it now gone, the swarm that it had called up vanishing again into the woodwork. In the stillness that remained the only sound that Corazon could hear was his own ragged breathing. And Prudence's. 

The torch she had dropped down to him had guttered in the sudden gusts of wind, and now the remnant embers of it tried to reach for life again, casting a low glow between them. Still crackling with her own fire, though greatly diminished now, Prudence slowly let her hands fall to her sides. She straightened, and in her posture Corazon could see the barest, briefest moment of I can't believe that worked before her usual fearless confidence returned. She turned to face him, lit from without by fire and magic and from within by the rush of her triumph, beautiful and terrifying, everything he hadn't known he'd wanted until he met her, and if his heart hadn't been entirely gone before it certainly was now.

He might have stayed sprawled on his butt on the floor forever, graceless and breathless and covered in rat bites he hardly even felt as he stared up at her with barely disguised awe, but she came to his rescue once again with an outstretched hand. The rest of the world faded into the distance when her fingers closed around his, warm and solid and reassuring, her other hand bracing his elbow as she hauled him roughly to his feet. "Are you all right?" she asked, her voice still rough.

I am now that you're here . A small mercy that he was still too stunned to speak, both mentally and physically, if that was the only response singing through his head and heart. Prudence's hands were still on him, still holding him with the same strength that she'd used to help him stand, and maybe he needed the support or maybe he just needed to be this close to her again. Close enough to smell that hellish campfire scent of her, to feel the warmth of her breath and see the firelight reflecting from her eyes and turning them more gold than yellow. Closer than they had been since waking up together, since his arm around her and her fingers in his hair and... almost. The almost that had become the heart of every interaction that passed between them now, every glance almost lingering, every conversation almost continuing, every moment of nearness almost turning into a touch. Everything almost pulling them back to that place where that first 'almost' -- or was it just the first one that they both recognized? -- could have become a certainty, and every time they brushed against that gap between what was and what might be it seemed to widen. And there was, in theory, a plan in place to bridge the gap -- or, rather, there was a nebulous idea of where and when they might have the chance to attempt to bridge it, without a very firm idea of what that would mean -- but at this rate how likely were they to last that long before it became an impassable chasm? One of them had to take that first step, and they were already so close to each other, and the burning triumph in her eyes had banked into something tender, and his heart was already hammering like it would never know quiet again, and if this wasn't the moment then what was ?

Corazon steadied himself, finding his breath again, the hand that he'd rested on her arm -- he had no memory of doing that -- tightening briefly, soft and careful and full of an ache that he couldn't contain. "It's fine," he said, letting go of her and shifting his weight away from her just enough to nudge her into releasing his arm, too. "Everything is cool and fine and good. Obviously." He laughed at the idea that he might be anything other than perfectly fine and fearless and also dashing and handsome, and the sound was too loud, too brittle, bitten off hastily like it might turn into a scream if he let it go on too long. He ran a hand through his hair, realized it was an absolute wreck, and smoothed down the worst bits of it before he could think too hard about what a much better job she would do of it. "Just a horrible giant rat monster from hell and its undead swarm spawn, right? Nothing I can't handle."

He carefully looked away from Prudence as he said it, but he could nevertheless feel some of that bright fervor leaving her, her shoulders sinking ever so slightly and her hair and clothing hanging limp in the stillness left behind by the cessation of the unearthly wind. "Right," she said, cool and calm, as unruffled as ever, but there was a brittleness to her voice that matched his perfectly. "Obviously."

Corazon closed his eyes, trying to drown out this new wave of regret. He was an idiot. She was being so devastating that he deserved a medal just for remembering how to breathe when she was this close to him, but that didn't change the fact that he was an idiot. And knowing that he was an idiot didn't make it any easier to stop being an idiot. "I would have been fine, probably," he continued, trying to babble his way into saying the right thing, or at least a less wrong thing. "If you hadn't been there, I mean. I had a daring last-minute escape all lined up, and you would have been super impressed, I'm telling you." Gods, this was even worse than the usual tide of bravado that rolled out of him whenever he needed to remind them all that he was actually much cooler than he looked in that very second. He took a calming breath as best he could -- without physical contact between them it was a little easier to find his composure, but now that she wasn't distracting him from the rest of the world he could feel all of the wounds that the rats had left on him -- and steeled himself to do the hardest thing he had ever done: Praising someone else who was doing something he could never hope to. "But that thing you did was pretty cool, too," he said, only stumbling over the words a little bit. "It saved me some time and effort. And I'm glad I got to see it." Wow. That last part had almost been sincere. He was impressed with himself.

"Yeah," came the cautious response from his other side. "It's just... what did you do, Prudence?"

Corazon nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Merilwen's voice, the sudden reminder that he and Prudence weren't actually the only two people in the world. (And the reminder that there had been an audience for this particular almost. He tried to tell himself that he was relieved he had faltered, rather than baring his heart in front of people whose business it wasn't and who would stop at nothing to make it their business regardless, and he almost made himself believe it.) Merilwen raised an eyebrow at him, and the way she was looking him over might just have been concern for his rough state or it might have been her knowing entirely too much, which was doubly unfair because it wasn't like Corazon knew enough himself to fight her on it.

Prudence grunted, and it looked like she had been just as startled as he had to be reminded of Merilwen's presence. An inscrutable glare from her, and Merilwen gave her that super unimpressed look of hers that she usually reserved for Corazon. "I Banished it," Prudence said briskly. "Just for a minute, though. Just so we can clear the room and maybe get a better angle on it when it comes back." She finally spared a real glance for Corazon, that same look of assessment that Merilwen had cast over him a moment ago, but this one was more... furtive. Like maybe she wasn't just looking for injuries. "And to get you out of here," she added. "Because you look..." She trailed off, her lip curling back in a grimace, his condition apparently so bad that either a proper comparison failed her or her rarely-seen tact actually took over for once.

"I look fine," he insisted with a little hiss of irritation. "Everything is fine and cool and good, I already said. You don't need to..." He trailed off, not having an actual end to that sentence. What she mostly didn't need to do was fuss over him in front of the rest of the Guild, who were starting to move towards the door after Prudence's warning that this was a temporary solution. The frantic helplessness that they had already seen from him during the swarm's onslaught was more than enough for one day; he was already going to have to do something really impressive during their next adventure to rehab his image. And even if it had just been the two of them, with no one else's opinion to worry about as she examined his wounds, getting as up close and personal as she would have to do to clean and bandage them without magic, mocking him with tender cruelty when he flinched... he was an idiot. "Don't worry about me," he scoffed, taking another step back from her and starting towards the door. "Worry about what I'm going to do to that thing once it shows its face again. We'll see what it thinks of-- hngk !"

All right, so some of those tiny phantasmal teeth and claws had cut deep, and all those dozens if not hundreds of little wounds had grown weary of being ignored. Every burst of pain in his body seemed to echo inside his skull, itching and burning like something was crawling on the surface of his brain. It was enough to stop him in his tracks, the disorientation more of a problem than the pain, and then there was a shoulder under his arm and a hand on his chest, bearing him up and steering him onward. "Come on," Prudence grunted. "You can be dramatic once you're out of the line of fire."

Leaving aside the fact that he was clearly not being any more dramatic than the situation called for, the moment of shock that had left Corazon frozen wore off quickly. He was certainly hurt enough to feel it, and to be slowed in his usual quick reflexes, but it was the jangle in his head that had brought him low more than any actual injury, and to someone who had been as many variations on drunk and hungover and even mind-flayed as he had been in his long and storied career that was easy enough to shake off. None of which meant that he was actually going to shake Prudence off, not if she was going to offer up her physical support so readily. Despite the urgency of the situation he allowed himself a moment of indulgence to wrap his arm around her and take full advantage of the support that he didn't entirely need. She had been the one leaning on him the last time they had been like this, that night in the tavern that had only been a few days ago but felt like another life already, the last time that either of them might have even been able to pretend that any part of this was uncomplicated.

They all charged back into the lobby, slamming the doors to the Hall of Textiles behind them -- it did not need doors as heavy and grand as it had but at the moment they felt like a blessing -- and there were a few moments of breathless silence before it all burst into shouting again. "What was that?"

"So something must have summoned it, right?"

"I told you it was rats." This last from Prudence, who still had his arm slung over her shoulder and seemed in no hurry to shrug it off. He wasn't going to argue.

Merilwen scoffed with exaggerated offense at this proclamation. "Oh, you do not get to have an 'I told you so' on this one!" she said. "That doesn't count as 'just rats,' especially when I already said that any rats here would have been dead for ages, so who got that one right on the nose?"

"I still wasn't wrong," Prudence said dismissively, as if now that she might lose the argument she'd stopped caring about it. "But whatever you want to call it, we don't have a lot of time before it comes back. If it comes back. And as much as I wouldn't mind just leaving I can't fake it being gone long enough for us to get paid. So if we want to figure out where it came from and how to make it go away, we have to do it now." She finally nudged Corazon off her shoulder, still looking at him as indirectly as possible. "And, you know, someone should probably help him," she added, pulling away from him with that kind of careful delicacy that said she was trying not to do so too quickly or too obviously. The lingering warmth of her hand on his chest seemed to pulse through him like its own kind of healing magic, leaving a little stabbing ache that the ghost rats could never have hoped to match.

Corazon tried to stand up a little straighter, tried to look a little cooler and more capable, but another stab of the all-over pains and itching headache had him listing to the side immediately. He staggered for a few steps, getting just far enough away from Prudence that someone else would be the one to catch him if he fell, because if he let her catch him again then people were going to start getting suspicious.

Gods, it wasn't just the healing he needed help with.

Head spinning from the bites but also quite a lot else, he thought for only a moment or two before making a decision. Before the swarm had started he'd been almost desperate enough to actually ask for the help he didn't want to admit he needed, and maybe now it was time to lean into that instinct. "You heard her, Dob," he said, taking a decisive yet stumbling step towards the startled bard. " Someone should probably help me."

*

Dob felt a pang of guilt as the heavy doors to the Hall of Textiles slammed shut with him on one side and most of his friends on the other, trapped with a mystery and possibly a monster. He should be in there helping them, but then again so should Corazon, who was in no shape to do so for reasons that weren't Dob's fault but still maybe a little bit felt like they were. The best thing he could do for all his friends was take care of one of them now. He put a hand on Corazon's shoulder and encouraged him to lift his chin, sizing him up. "Let's see what we've got here," he said with bracing cheer.

"A million potential infections, probably," Corazon said, grudgingly allowing Dob to poke at him and assess the damage. He was clearly in pain, but mostly that grumbling voice was his usual aggrieved and wounded dignity. "I've been bitten in places I don't care to discuss, thank you very much."

"Oh, it doesn't look too bad," Dob reassured him, taking in the sea of little marks. There really were quite a lot of them, but none of them seemed terribly deep or unmanageable, and Corazon hadn't lost a fingertip or an earlobe or anything else that wouldn't heal quite as cleanly. "Unless some of those places are on the inside of your head," he added, noting the way that Corazon seemed to be clutching his skull whenever he wasn't paying attention to what he was doing.

A wince. "I did say I didn't care to discuss it."

"Yeah, looks like psychic damage," Dob said sympathetically. "Makes sense, what with the ghosts and all. But I can take care of that just as easily, no worries." A few notes on the lute to find his pitch, and he pressed a hand to the top of Corazon's head and hummed a short tune.

Corazon immediately sighed in relief as the magic hit him, practically deflating. "Oh, that's much better."

"I should think so," Dob said with some concern. It had taken more power than he had expected to close all of those little wounds, the mental and the physical. "Those ghosts really worked you over, didn't they?" A sympathetic and guilty grimace. "I would have gotten you out of there if I could have figured out any way to do it," he insisted, "but every spell I have would have just hit you, too, at that range, and I couldn't get any closer."

"Hmm," Corazon responded without interest, his mind elsewhere. He kept staring at the door that separated them from the potentially danger-filled room that currently held their friends, a preoccupation Dob could sympathize with. For all that it had been necessary the healing had still been a quick thing, and now they were stuck waiting and fidgeting until there was something else they could do.

At least the way Corazon was fidgeting, absently fussing with his clothes and trying to settle them back into place, gave Dob the necessary inspiration for something to occupy his own mind. The holes in Corazon's skin might be healed, but his clothing was still torn and bloodied from the various bites, and he was the sort of person who actually cared about things like that. A bit of Mending and Prestidigitation would clear that right up, though, and it would give Dob something to do. He whistled a few cheerful and tuneless notes to call up the little bit of necessary magic, which spun around his hands and caught Corazon up in a little whirlwind, tugging at his clothes and pulling them back into the shape they were supposed to be. It reminded him of the other, much larger whirlwind of power that they had just witnessed a few minutes ago, one that was still swirling in his head a bit. "It's a good thing that Prudence figured out how to get to you," he said, easing a little bit of his own guilt at not having been able to do so. "With that drop from the ceiling, and the big dramatic 'come at me bro' before she pulled off the Banishment spell? Pretty impressive, I'd say!"

"It was," Corazon agreed, still sounding distant. He seemed to notice the new magic patting at him for the first time and gave it a vague nod of approval before shooing the last bits away and brushing himself down like he didn't trust anyone else to get the final touches right. He finished by adjusting his hat and smoothing out his ponytail, fixing the spots where it had fuzzed out while once again staring pensively at the closed doors. Eventually he seemed satisfied with both his look and whatever was going on in his head, and he furrowed his brow and turned his attention back to Dob. "You like girls, right, Dob?"

The question was surprising enough, coming out of the blue as it did, that it took Dob a moment or two to respond. "I... not exclusively? But yes." He paused, trying to find the meaning behind the question. "And obviously I'm aware that you're very attractive."

A scoff, and a roll of his eyes. "Yeah, I don't need you to tell me I'm attractive," said the man who seemed to need more reassurances about his attractiveness and brilliance and general coolness than any other cool person that Dob had ever met. He pulled a coin from somewhere on his person and started it dancing across his knuckles almost faster than Dob's eyes could follow, barely even looking at it as he did so. "Okay, then. So, say there was a girl," he said casually, the lazy calm of his voice combining with the flickering of the coin to create a hypnotic effect. "That you liked."

Not hypnotic enough to draw Dob's attention away from the actual words being said. " Is there a girl?" he asked, perking up immediately. For all that Corazon liked to talk about himself, it was rare that he actually admitted to anything personal like this. And it was even rarer that Corazon would directly ask any of them for advice. He leaned in, putting a hand on Corazon's shoulder and being the best and most supportive friend he could possibly be, his grin wide. "Is there a girl, Corazon? You can tell me if there is."

"How should I know?" Corazon sputtered hurriedly. He ducked out from under Dob's hand, moving so quickly and jerkily that the coin jumped up off of his hand into the air and he had to fumble to catch it. "I was asking about you , in this completely theoretical and hypothetical situation that bears absolutely no resemblance to any kind of real-world events."

There was a pause while Dob digested this. "I see," he said eventually, and he did see. The others might call him silly sometimes, or think that he was hopelessly naive, and there were times when he knew they were right. But even if the way that he looked at the world was too wide-eyed and optimistic for their jaded sensibilities, he still understood enough about his friends -- and about this friend in particular -- to know when a hypothetical wasn't actually a hypothetical. And also when not to draw attention to that fact. "So what's she like, this hypothetical girl? What do I like about her?"

Corazon gave him a careful, appraising look, like he was gauging whether Dob was making fun of him or if he actually understood the fiction of the conversation.Eventually he seemed to come to a satisfactory conclusion and leaned moodily against the wall. "You know, the usual things, I guess," he said. The hand with the coin vanished into some pouch or pocket, and when it reemerged the coin had been replaced by a dagger. He cast a critical eye over it and then started using it to clean under his nails, focusing on his hands rather than Dob. "She's brilliant and fearless, and super good at what she does. Not to mention passionate about it." He smiled, soft and private and probably without even realizing it, as if he just couldn't contain everything that he was pretending not to feel about this mystery woman. "Like, the kind of passionate where even when you're watching her work and admiring every moment of it you can't help feeling relieved to know that she's on your side, you know?" He paused in both his speaking and the restless movement of his hands. "And she's beautiful," he said eventually, even more quietly. "And I mean, I know everyone says that doesn't really matter, but she's the kind of beautiful where it would be weird not to mention it. Like, 'it hurts to look at her sometimes' beautiful."

Dob pressed a hand to his chest. It was hard to tell which was more captivating, the picture that Corazon was painting of this woman or the absolute and unprecedented sincerity with which he was speaking about her. "I can understand why I like her so much," he said. Corazon didn't actually respond to that, but there was a very faint nod, and a slight puckering to his lower lip that suggested that he was worrying the inside of it between his teeth. Dob waited for him to collect his thoughts enough to continue, even though he was absolutely itching to ask more questions. Who is she was chief among them, of course, although asking that directly was likely to shut Corazon down entirely. But as the silence stretched out and Corazon's eyes flicked towards the door again, twitchy and restless and either looking for an escape route or ensuring that they really were alone, Dob realized he was going to have to take the initiative. "And does she like me?" he prodded gently.

A sputter, and a flush of color rising in Corazon's face. "Well, why shouldn't she, when you're... you?" he stammered, and even though Dob knew he was actually talking about himself it still felt flattering. The burst of defensiveness deflated quickly, and Corazon ran a hand through his hair with a sigh. "Yeah, she likes you," he said, an answer that should have made Dob want to high-five him on this triumph but which sounded weary and defeated when he said it. "And you already thought for a while that she probably did, but you weren't going to stick your neck out and say something because you weren't completely sure. And then there was a... a moment, where you were sure, because she was making herself very clear, if you get my drift. And you were both totally going to act on that until something outside your control got in the way and then the moment was gone and you couldn't get it back."

Dob's sigh rose from the very bottom of his heart, as fervent as if it really was his own missed opportunity he was lamenting, something desperately hoped for and then snatched away. "And that moment was a long time coming, wasn't it?" he asked, knowing the answer even before Corazon's weary nod in response. The mystery woman had clearly had his heart fully for a good long while now. "And then you-- I finally had my chance, and even though she was interested it still didn't go as planned?"

"Suggesting that there was a plan of any sort would be overly generous," Corazon muttered. He scratched nervously at the back of his neck. "It was just... everything finally lining up perfectly, and everything moving in the right direction, and, gods, you were in fine form; it's no wonder she was interested--"

Dob held up a hand. "Leave me a little bit of privacy, please," he said quickly. As curious as he might be about Corazon's seduction technique, the weird extra layer of the 'hypothetical situation' made him hesitant to hear any further details about 'himself.'

Corazon managed a sardonic and faintly smug eyebrow raise before his expression sank again. "Doesn't matter anyway, since it didn't have a chance to go anywhere," he muttered. "And not lack for the both of you wanting it to go somewhere, either." He sighed and stared up at the ceiling. "Or you thought that you both wanted it to go somewhere, anyway, and it seemed like that's where she was going with the whole thing, because she was the one who said that the two of you needed to pick up where you left off once there was an opportunity where... things wouldn't get in the way. And you kind of had a specific opportunity in mind and it hasn't happened yet, so maybe you're overthinking it, but you keep running into these moments that could also be an opportunity, and you're pretty sure she's noticing them too, but you don't know if you should say anything because she's not saying anything, and is she not saying anything because you're not saying anything, or because she's not actually noticing them, or because she just thinks there's not actually anything to say?" He actually looked at Dob then, like he was genuinely looking for all the help and support he was pretending that he hadn't come here for, his entire body sliding a little further down the wall in a weary slump. "And the longer this whole thing goes on, and the more moments that might be the right one pass you by, the more you start to worry that maybe there isn't going to be a right one."

"Well, we can't have that," Dob said quietly, mostly to himself. There were no promises in life that even an emotion this heartfelt might not fail, but to see it end before it had even begun was unthinkable. The picture of the weight on Corazon's mind and heart was becoming clearer, as was the suspicion that was brewing in Dob's mind of just how heavy it really was. "Corazon," he said, quiet and firm enough to grab the other man's attention. "Do I love her?"

Corazon immediately stood up straighter, pulling away from the wall and looking like he was moments away from jumping out of his skin. "What kind of a question is that?" he asked, the words coming out in such a loud and overwrought sputter that Dob imagined the party on the other side of the door should have been able to hear it. There were a few expressive hand gestures, large and flailing enough that Dob had to take a step back from him. "I don't know; how would I know? This is all hypothetical, and also about you, not me. I don't have to answer your questions."

"Right, right," Dob said reassuringly, trying to draw Corazon out of what felt like a budding panic, or at least a budding very long and loud rant that he was going to regret terribly once it was over. When the soothing voice wasn't enough, however, he eventually put a hand on Corazon's shoulder and cast a quick Calm Emotions on him. He would probably be a little bit annoyed about that once it wore off, but he would also realize that it was better for him in the long run. Well, he would probably realize that. Regardless, his level of distress told Dob that, no matter how much he had been deflecting and projecting and pretending this wasn't about him and he wasn't affected, this latest answer was at least partially sincere. He really didn't know -- or just didn't know yet -- if he loved this girl. Which meant that there was a possibility that he did, and from Corazon... well, it was no wonder this felt so earth-shaking. "Silly question," Dob continued as if he was just rambling. He'd left his hand on Corazon's shoulder and could feel some of the tension draining out of his body from the combined effect of the spell and the lack of pressure to continue. "Don't know why I asked, really." He trailed off there and just waited, creating a space to be filled. Corazon was calmer now, and he knew that he was in a safe place with a friend who wouldn't judge him -- much -- and history suggested that there was only so long he could go without talking about himself in any event.

"I know exactly what you're doing, you know," Corazon said with a halfhearted glare, nevertheless not trying to shake Dob off. He settled into a sigh, almost immediately bearing out Dob's prediction. "You like her so much that some days she's all you think about," he said with quiet sincerity. "You're all in on this, and you can't remember the last time you were all in on someone, especially so quickly, and you just... don't know how to be."

Dob sighed in gentle but frustrated sympathy. Yes, of course that would be the problem, that Corazon had spent so much time running away from his emotions that now that they had finally caught up with him he didn't know how to deal with them. And Dob knew that, even Calmed, he was unlikely to allow Dob to try to hug him, no matter how much he needed one, but it still took all of Dob's willpower not to try it anyway. "The problem here," he said as gently as possible, "is that this is where your hypothetical situation starts to break down, because--"

Corazon cut him off with a loud and weary groan, leaning his head back and pinching the bridge of his nose as if this was the most exhausting thing anyone had ever said. "Because you have never in your life hesitated to be all in on anyone ," he said. "And you have also never in your life hesitated to announce that fact to all the world. I know . What I don't know is how you do it."

Dob could feel some of the layers finally falling away from the conversation, Corazon finally coming at least a little bit closer to admitting to him -- and to himself -- just what was going on here and what he actually needed from it. "I don't know," he admitted, sorry that he didn't have a better answer to offer. "I just... do it. I have to be true to my heart and what it tells me, even -- or maybe especially -- when it has a lot to say, and I have to trust it to be resilient when things don't work out the way that it hopes they will. Because if I put myself out there it might go wrong and I might get hurt, but if I don't follow my heart where it leads then there's never going to be a chance for things to go right , and that's so much worse. Oh, don't scoff," he chided at the sound that Corazon made beside him. "You know that it's true, otherwise not putting yourself out there wouldn't be eating you up inside the way that it is."

"It is not ," Corazon mumbled, chewing on a perfectly manicured nail, but it was like he couldn't even muster up the energy anymore for an actual protest.

Dob sighed. He had been patient and careful and not as aggressively forthright as he wanted to be, and obviously that wasn't doing the job. He moved away from the wall they had both been leaning against, stepping in front of Corazon to drop his hands firmly on the other man's shoulders and look him dead in the eye. "Listen to me," he said, more serious than he had perhaps ever been, his sudden intensity making Corazon's eyes widen. "I don't know any more details about this situation than what you've told me, but that's still enough to make it clear just how much this woman means to you. And enough to make it clear that there's only one way forward." Another squeeze of Corazon's shoulders, leaning in closer and not breaking eye contact. "You have to tell her how you feel about her."

There was a long moment of tense silence, with Corazon seeming almost too startled by this declaration to speak, and then he sagged under Dob's hands. "I knew it," he said, sounding weary once again.

"You sure did," Dob said bracingly. It wasn't a confession that he had expected, but it was a line of thought that he wanted to encourage. "I know you like to pretend you're all cool and cynical and you don't actually need anything from anyone else, but deep down you really do understand how important emotional honesty is."

Corazon made a sound of the purest sneering disdain as he ducked out of Dob's grasp. "No, what I knew is that I should never have said anything to you," he returned. "If I was looking for bad advice and someone getting all weird about feelings then Merilwen was right there." He rolled his eyes, some of his usual swagger coming back to him, but behind the expression there was still a touch of that vulnerability he had left on display. Dob pulled back, letting him have his space, but almost instinctively he kept his weight on the balls of his feet, ready to spring back into action as soon as there was an opening to do so. There was a breakthrough on the horizon, he could feel it, a chance to actually get some real emotions out of Corazon and get to the heart of the mystery of... well, of his heart. All he needed was a little time and patience to draw him out, and another one of those silences that he would feel compelled to fill. And all Dob had to do was actually have the patience necessary to stick that out. He could do that. Probably.

In his defense, he wasn't the one who broke the standoff. He was waiting as patiently as he could, watching Corazon shift his weight and tap his fingers against the door with that air of a man just waiting for the right moment, when a familiar voice cut into his head and nearly made him jump. Oi. Dob. You have Corazon patched up yet?

Dob gave a little grunt of frustration at the interruption. "Not now, Prudence," he muttered, saying it out loud to himself rather than making it an actual response to her message.

All of Corazon's boredom and nonchalance left him in an instant as he spun to face Dob again. "Are you talking to Prudence? What is she saying?"

Dob nodded a confirmation and then tapped the side of his head, indicating that the Message was still ongoing and that he would fill Corazon in afterwards. "Yes, he's just fine," he told Prudence, making it an actual reply this time and restraining himself from adding some comment about Corazon being fine physically but the rest of him still being suspect.

Corazon was practically leaning over his shoulder now, as if he could get close enough to overhear the voice being projected directly into Dob's head. "Is she asking about me?"

There was a little mental exhale at the beginning of the next Message, as if Prudence had been relieved of some great burden. Right. Then if you two are done messing around you'd better get in here. Merilwen's found something, and it looks like she's figured this thing out.

"We're on our way," he answered, and there wasn't even an acknowledgement from Prudence before she cut off the connection.

There was plenty of acknowledgement from Corazon, who was practically bouncing as he tried to cut in to get some response from Dob. "What did she say ?" he asked far too urgently.

"They want us back in the Hall," Dob told him, starting for the door. "Sounds like Merilwen might have solved our Rat Queen problem."

Another disdainful sigh. "I got that ," Corazon said, waving it away as irrelevant. "What did she say about me ? I know you two were talking about me."

"Nothing worth worrying about," Dob said, his brow furrowed at this sudden show of concern that didn't feel like Corazon's usual ego-fueled sense that everyone should be talking about him at all times. "She just wanted to know if you'd gotten healed up properly." Come to think of it, though, why hadn't she just asked Corazon directly? Unless she was worried that he wouldn't answer, whether because he was ignoring her for some reason or because he was just in no shape to formulate a response, or because she was worried that for whatever reason he wouldn't answer honestly. "I can't imagine she's secretly plotting anything nefarious," he said encouragingly. "She'd tell us if she was."

"Uh huh," Corazon grunted with that air of skepticism that said I don't believe you but it's not worth trying to sift through your lies. "And what did you tell her?"

A baffled laugh. "You were right here; you heard what I told her." Dob put a hand out to Corazon's hair again. "You didn't get knocked on the head when you went down, did you?"

Another dodge like an irritated younger sibling trying to avoid affection. "I'm fine," Corazon insisted, batting Dob's hand away. and reaching for the door. "I just want to know what people are talking about if they're going to talk behind my back while I'm right in front of them."

The Hall of Textiles looked about the same as it had when they had made their hasty retreat, which was to say that it was an absolute mess. Some of the displays around the edges of the room had survived the maelstrom intact, but nobody was going to be visiting this exhibit for a long time, if indeed they ever had to begin with. Most of the historic fabrics were now in a pile of sad rags in the center of the room, with Merilwen, Egbert, and Prudence crouched in the middle of it. Prudence was the first to raise her head at their approach, barely glancing at Dob before eyeing Corazon with speculative caution. The quickest flicker of a nod, which Dob barely noticed because it didn't seem to be directed at him -- or even at Corazon, for that matter -- and then she turned her attention back to whatever the others had found.

The floor where the Rat Queen had stood was covered in scorch marks that looked faded by time, and the smell of ash in the air was cold and ancient and probably not from Egbert, who was only smoking a normal amount. The crude hole that had been smashed in the floorboards probably was from Egbert, though, and he shuffled around so Dob and Corazon could join the rest of the Guild in surrounding the edge of it. Dob leaned forward to peer into the hole, vaguely aware of Corazon's hand gripping the back of his shirt and keeping him from tipping too far forward. "What have we got here?"

Under the floorboards there was nothing more remarkable than a bit of space, an empty patch of earth between the foundations of the building where the dirt was soft and overlaid with powdery ash. Dob poked at it experimentally, even that light touch enough to send the ash up in a cloud that all of them pulled back from with various degrees of coughing, but it had clearly been undisturbed for a very long time. "Is this from the fire the curator said they had a few years ago? That should have all gotten dissolved or decomposed or whatever it was going to do ages ago. And he said there were no casualties, anyway."

"No casualties they would have noticed," Merilwen said, and her voice was quiet and serious. She pointed into the hole. "A little light, Corazon?" Corazon produced one of his little globes of light and directed it downward, apparently too surprised by this request to argue, and Merilwen followed it with a careful and controlled brush of druidic wind that cleared some of the ash away. "There's your Rat Queen."

Dob leaned in to see what she was pointing to, feeling Corazon do the same, and then he leaned back again with an understanding of why she was being so solemn, and why the rest of them were looking at her with such concern. The charred and ancient skeleton half buried in the ash was large for a rat, but still tiny compared to the monster that had dominated the hall. The other skeletons that it was curled around, protecting them to the last, were even smaller.

Dob was silent for a long moment, trying to come up with an appropriate response, before he leaned over and put an arm around Merilwen's shoulders, giving her a warm little squeeze. She offered him a sad and weak smile in return. "It's all right," she reassured him, leaning into him for just a moment. "It's just... I wish we could have figured this out without having to fight it."

"You think you wish that?" Corazon scoffed. "Look at me; I'm the one who--" He started to gesture to his ragged and rat-eaten appearance -- not that he actually looked ragged and rat-eaten anymore, not after all the work Dob had done -- and then he stopped, seeming to read the room for once. "Anyway, it was harrowing and traumatizing," he muttered. "Even if you can't totally tell now."

Dob gave him a pointed look. "You're welcome."

Corazon shot him a quick glare before pivoting the subject around as if he could keep the others from noticing he'd said anything. "So what now? Is there some kind of exorcism? We destroy the bones and then the thing can't come back and summon its army?"

"No one is destroying anything ," Merilwen said sharply, her contemplative expression gone in an instant as she fixed Corazon with a stern look. She reached a hand into the hole and touched the largest skull gently. "And that includes you." She smiled gently, and while there was a sadness to it Dob was reminded of the indulgent and patient looks she sometimes gave to wildlife that tried to get into their supplies while they were camping. "I know you were scared, and you were only protecting your family, but it's not safe for anyone for us to leave you here. And it's not safe for you, either, you know. We'll find somewhere for all of you where you can be protected and you don't have to be scared anymore." She seemed to be coming out of a trancelike state as she stood up and looked around at the rest of them. "We owe them that much," she said, and the look she cast around the circle was stern again, as if she was daring any of them to disagree with her.

"That sounds like a good idea," Dob said, quickly enough to cut off any protests anyone else might make, giving Merilwen his best encouraging look.

"Yeah, but how are you expecting to find a place like that?" Prudence asked. "It's taking us long enough to get to where we're going already, and I don't think any of us are eager to take even longer before we get there."

Corazon jerked his head up suddenly at that, as if she'd said something startling, but before Dob had time to wonder about that Merilwen waved the concern away. "You remember that abandoned farmhouse we saw on the way into town? The one that was all overgrown and falling apart? The town took whatever they thought was useful from it already and they're letting nature reclaim the rest. Nobody will bother them there."

A raised eyebrow from Prudence. "And you're so sure of this because...?"

Merilwen jerked her head towards the room down the hall where she had been previously. "Where do you think half of the Farming Equipment Through the Ages exhibit came from?" An odd little smirk. "You really weren't reading the plaques in there, were you?"

The look that Prudence gave her in response was one that Dob was happy he wasn't on the receiving end of. The wordless standoff between them lasted for only a moment, and then Prudence let out a little puff of air that said she totally didn't care. "Fine," she said, giving an aggressively indifferent shrug and examining her nails. "The ghost of a farm for the ghosts of a rat army. Makes sense."

"As if any part of this makes sense," Corazon muttered, undercutting this surprisingly poetic sentiment from Prudence. "Explain to me how the hell a rat has enough unfinished business to turn into a ghost."

Merilwen had already shimmied into the hole, kneeling in the ash and spreading her cloak out on the ground to gently gather the little bones into it, but she looked up at that. It wasn't Corazon she was looking at, though, but Prudence. "Every creature in the world is capable of caring about someone enough to protect them to the end," she said. "Even the ones that might surprise you."

Chapter Text

Merilwen was gone when Prudence woke up the following morning, having taken the little bundle of bones and left a note saying she'd take care of it. As the rest of them had slept fitfully in the museum lobby -- well, Prudence had slept fitfully, anyway, and judging by how far away everyone else was from her when she'd woken up she guessed she had also tried to make sure that everyone else slept fitfully -- none of them had been terribly disappointed that she hadn't tried to wake them up early and drag them along. Especially as it turned out that Tessa had been speaking literally when she said she'd be back at sunrise, and had summoned her uncle as soon as she knew there was good news for him.

Prudence was the first to notice Merilwen's return, because she had broken away from the rest of the group to sit on a large bust of the city's founder near the door and leaf through a museum brochure. (Because there was too much of a crowd around the old man already, not because Corazon was all over Tessa and she wanted to avoid them both. Obviously.) "Hey," she said, scooting over on the bust to give her room.

"Hey, yourself." Merilwen surveyed the scene for a moment before settling in next to Prudence. It was a very large bust, and the city's founder had apparently had a very flat head, so it was a bit of a squeeze but not an uncomfortable one. "So what did I miss?"

"Oh, they're just filling the client in on what went down last night, and how vital his niece was to the process," Prudence said, keeping her voice neutral and her smirk in check. "Although the way they're telling it doesn't sound quite the way I remember it."

"So then the spectral knight opened up his skeleton mouth and a beam of green light came out, and he roared at us all that this place now belonged to the forces of evil, and anyone who dared trespass upon it would surely perish," Dob said energetically. "But the blocks of stone that the ghost monk had piled on the floor were still forming into their sigil, and the waterfall that was coming out of one of the tapestries had flooded the room almost up to our necks--"

"--Which did at least cover up the portal to Hell," Corazon cut in with horrible enthusiasm.

"Yes, there was that, at least. But we were all just trying to get to higher ground when Tessa... oh, you tell this part!" He nudged the girl forward with an encouraging look. "It was your big triumph!"

The silence that followed this exclamation was so terrified that for a moment Prudence almost felt sorry for Tessa. Almost . Not enough to stop her from enjoying the way that the girl was floundering to hold onto the tail of the improbable tale that Dob and Corazon had spun out. A quick, sideways glance at Merilwen, to see if she had any intention of putting a stop to this, but Merilwen was wearing that little knife-edge smile that came out just often enough to surprise Prudence all over again whenever it did. "I don't know," she said, matching Prudence's innocent tone and resting her chin on her hand. "That all sounds about right to me."

The two of them sat in companionable silence for a while, enjoying the bit of low-effort cruelty that was playing out before them. Dob and Corazon were in fine form, feeding off each other in that way they had that could go on for hours if no one stopped them, and this time nobody was in any hurry to stop them. After a while, though, when it was clear that there was no end to the torment in sight, Prudence could feel Merilwen's attention shifting to her and knew she was about to try to revisit yesterday's conversation. And so she did the only thing that she could do to forestall that: She cared about her friend before her friend could care about her. "And you got the actual problem squared away?" she asked. "Enough that you'll be happy about it after we leave?"

"It's all taken care of," Merilwen said with a soft and genuine smile. "The farm really is lovely. There's not much of the outer walls left, and there's little plants growing in all the cracks between the stones, and what's left of the farmhouse is barely visible anymore through all the tall grass. But there's still the foundations left, and some of the floor, so I found a spot down underneath where it was... it looked like where they were before. I think they'll be comfortable there."

"It sounds nice," Prudence said dismissively, but unfortunately it was nice to see Merilwen genuinely happy and so it was a little bit sincere. "And it's good that you got to have your little solemn nature moment or whatever without the rest of us mucking it up."

"That's not why I went out there on my own," Merilwen protested too quickly.

"Yeah, but you're not denying it, either, are you?" Prudence grinned. "And I'm not wrong. I wouldn't have interfered on purpose, mind. I think I already made my point to your little ghost rat family about what happens to folks who try to lay a spectral paw on me and mine; no need to belabor it further." And also maybe that thing Merilwen had said about everyone having someone they wanted to protect had home and there was some empathy going on there, a feeling she never enjoyed. She tried to wave that off. "Although Corazon might not be able to resist giving those bones a good kicking, now that they're harmless," she added. She said it with the sharp and crackling smile that she usually deployed when she was talking about one of her friends behind their back, turning it into a bonding moment where she and Merilwen could both laugh over Corazon's cowardice combined with his always wanting to have the last word, but it came out maybe a little bit less cavalier than it usually would have.

And Merilwen caught it, the way she so often did even when Prudence was doing her best to be cool. "'You and yours'?" she echoed with a very pointed look.

"Yeah? What of it? No one's allowed to kill my friends but me; I've been very clear on that." She folded her arms and turned away with a little haughty sound. "And if you lot would stop getting into situations where I have to remind you of that..."

She had once again given too much away, and to someone who would know what to do with it. Merilwen was quiet for a moment, and then she nudged her shoulder against Prudence's reassuringly. "Hey," she said, and waited until Prudence turned at least a little of the way around to look at her. "He's all right." She didn't bother to pretend that there was any question of what they were talking about, and there was no teasing or disdain in her voice this time. "You got him out of harm's way, and Dob's a damned good healer who looks out for his friends. I know you were worried, and that's normal and okay, but it's fine now."

The sound Prudence made didn't have quite enough force behind it to be an actual scoff. "Of course he's all right," she said. "All right enough to be back on the job already." She jutted her chin absently towards where Corazon was continuing to make an effort to charm, con, or just rob Tessa out of whatever extra loot he could manage. It wasn't like she was having to remember that herself. It wasn't like she couldn't picture his rakish smile without remembering the way it had turned to horror when the strut had broken, dragging him down into the mass of spectral bodies and out of her reach. It wasn't like she had been scared for him.

But she had waited a little too long to deny any of that aloud to Merilwen, who gave her another little nudge. She had already been speaking quietly, not wanting to draw attention away from the spectacle and not wanting anyone else to know what they were talking about , but now her voice got even lower. "It would be a good start to at least tell him you were worried," she said. "He deserves to know." A raised eyebrow and her own sideways look at Tessa, full of disdain. "And if you're going to open up to him, even a little bit, it might put a little more attention where it belongs. You know. If you were feeling a little jealous."

"I am not --" Prudence started, her voice high and sharp and carrying before she caught herself. "I am not jealous," she continued in a hiss. "For so many reasons, starting with 'I am so much cooler than her on every possible axis that it wouldn't make any sense for me to be jealous of her about anything' and ending with 'she doesn't have anything that I want.' I just... don't like seeing her hanging off of him because I don't like her , and you can't tell me there's anything weird about that."

"No I can't," Merilwen conceded. "She's a twit. Probably on the side of good all things considered, and maybe she'll grow out of it, but still a twit."

"There, you see?" Prudence said, vindicated. If even Merilwen thought that the girl was irritating then she , who was evil by her very nature and whose patron had been personally insulted, was allowed to have all sorts of dangerous and uncharitable thoughts. And none of them had to be attributed to Tessa's continued feeding of Corazon's ego, still convinced that her fancy horse patron's interest in him was proof of his true virtuous nature or something equally ridiculous, or to Corazon's willingness to have his ego fed by basically anyone but especially a pretty young thing with wealthy and credulous relatives. "Besides, everyone except her knows that it's all an act anyway, so I don't know why you'd think that I cared even if I... cared." That sentence had been going so well before it got away from her, so very light and airy and above it all that it was weird how grumpy and resentful she sounded even to her own ears. It must be the acoustics in here. The graceful fold of her arms became a little less graceful, her shoulders hunching in. There was maybe no point in pretending to Merilwen that she didn't care, not with last night's conversation still ringing in her ears despite her best efforts to drown it out, but this was still not a battle she was going to back down from so easily. Just because she thought that if Corazon's eyes and occasionally hands were going to be all over someone it should be her that wasn't the same as being jealous. "And if she's going to fall for it so easily she deserves whatever she gets."

Merilwen made a little warning sound, as if this was the first time that they had spoken of Tessa and Prudence needed to be reminded that she was in the room. Oh, right, because even if she was wide-eyed and easily swayed it probably wasn't a good idea to say out loud that they were scamming her. (But calling Prudence both worried and jealous where anyone could have a chance of hearing was just fine , apparently; thank you for your priorities, Merilwen.) That signet ring was still loose and heavy on Tessa's finger, as if she and her uncle had both forgotten it was there, and Prudence and Corazon had spent much of yesterday's shopping exchanging significant looks every time another merchant threw open their showroom at the sight of it. (This whole 'feelings' thing might have confused and complicated their ability to even make eye contact with each other consistently, but it was good to know that they were still capable of communicating on the important matters.) An adventuring party could do a lot of damage with a line of 'no questions asked' credit like that, and be well away long before anyone realized that they weren't actually authorized to use it. Well away and boasting together over their ill-gotten gains, heads bent low and close as they evaluated each others' new treasures, the low laughter of I can't believe that worked and of course that's what you'd go after first and I got this one for you, actually , leaning in a little closer to each other as they were distracted enough to forget why they'd ever been distant in the first place...

Prudence wasn't aware she'd drifted into reverie until the slightly raised voice from the other side of the room pulled her out of it. "Of course we don't want to take up too much of your time," Dob said loudly and clearly enough that he was obviously making sure that it cut through whatever other conversation had been going on over there, and probably making sure that it reached her, too. "You and Tessa are obviously going to have so much to talk about, what with all the good that she and her lovely patron can do for this city in the future, and naturally there's also going to be so much work to get the exhibit back in order."

"Or we'd be happy to stay and help you with that," Egbert offered, so cheerful and sincere that he seemed oblivious to the fact that he was the only one of them from whom that offer would be either cheerful or sincere. Prudence could hear Corazon's suppressed groan from here; it was an echo of her own.

"No, no, that won't be necessary at all," Cuthbert said hurriedly, and that was the kind of response that Prudence liked to hear to offers of doing yet more work. "I mean, you've already done so much for us," he added in a graceful backpedal. "It almost feels like we haven't repaid you enough..."

"Nonsense!" Dob insisted over the little sound that Corazon made that suggested that he could certainly be talked into accepting more repayment. "You've already been so generous!"

"Oh, more so than you know," Corazon agreed, his face just a little bit too friendly.

" Have they been generous?" Merilwen leaned in to ask, looking ready to spring off the bust and intercept any payment that might be coming. "And have they been generous to Dob specifically?"

Prudence handed her a small but heavy bag that clinked softly with muffled coins. "I took it off him the second the old man handed it over," she assured the Guild's treasurer. "I don't think he had time to slip anything out of it for the lake fund." As Merilwen secreted the bag somewhere on her person, Prudence leaned her head down so it would look like they were still in conversation, but the actual Message she threw out was for Dob. Have we been rumbled?

Not yet, but it's probably a good idea to get going , the answer came. I think Cuthbert is starting to have questions, and Tessa is... going pretty hard on the whole 'eradication of evil' thing and I think Corazon is about to say something she's going to make him regret .

Prudence's stomach did an odd little flip at that, but she forced it down and gave Merilwen a little nudge. "Looks like we're leaving," she said, and if she sounded a little bit too hurried at least Merilwen would assume that was the fault of something the others had said that made a hasty exit necessary.

"Yeah, I gathered," Merilwen said in a low voice, taking her cue and standing. Little sparks of waiting magic danced around her hand in a silent question -- Just what kind of hurry are we leaving in? -- but at a shake of Prudence's head she dismissed them and raised an eyebrow. "Tell me later." A warm smile over Prudence's shoulder to the clients, who were coming up behind them now intent on escorting their visiting heroes out of the museum in the grandest and politest way possible if they were going to insist on leaving. Well, that's what Cuthbert seemed to be doing, anyway. Tessa, for all that she was still fluttering around Corazon like a hummingbird, was nevertheless very definitely herding the entire party towards the door, clearly eager to get them out of the way before they could add anything else to the story that she was still trying to keep up with. She looked like the hostess at the end of a party, trying to be gracious but just seconds away from putting her shoulder to Dob's back and physically forcing him out of the building. "Good morning!" Merilwen said cheerfully as Tessa got close enough for them to see her balk at this new face. "Apologies for the delay, but the ritual took a little bit longer than expected. But it's all taken care of now, and the monk stones have been repaid for their service and won't be haunting your dreams and asking awkward questions."

"Oh! That's... good?" Tessa managed, her already pale face going even paler and her smile growing even more forced. "Thank you for that... you," she added in the voice of someone who had definitely not forgotten Merilwen's name.

"Yes, excellent work," Cuthbert added, stepping forward to shake Merilwen's hand as if this made perfect sense to him -- or, more likely, as if it made no less sense than anything else that anyone had said to him so far. "Always glad to see someone willing to go the extra mile to make sure the job is really complete." He gave his niece an encouraging nod and a pat on her shoulder. "Always bear that in mind, my girl!"

Tessa suppressed a sigh. "Yes, of course, Uncle," she said, smiling at him before shooting a murderous look at Merilwen. Merilwen's answering grin somehow looked even toothier than the one that she sported in bear form, and Prudence would have hugged her if it wouldn't have given the whole thing away.

"And I'm sure it's that same work ethic that has you so eager to be on your way," Cuthbert continued with the same irrepressible cheer, and Prudence had the feeling that, while he wasn't as eager to see the back of them as his niece was, he was still going to be relieved when they left and took their strangeness with them. Even so, it still made her chest do a weird, warm thing when he doffed an imaginary cap to her in particular. "Just know that all of you go with my gratitude, and that of all of our fair city, and you will be welcome back in Wellspring any time."

"Well, that's certainly not something you hear every day," Egbert observed. "Or, well, we don't, anyway. Usually when we leave a town there are torches and pitchforks involved."

Dob let out a hurried laugh. "Not that we expect you to throw together a farewell bonfire on our account," he said. "Not on such short notice, when we have to leave so soon, as we've already established." A stern and significant look that Egbert almost certainly missed.

There was a brief pause before Cuthbert seemed to decide that this was another thing he was better off not knowing about. "Well, as you wish," he said. "But the invitation still stands, if you ever want to return to the museum when you have more time to spend enjoying its wealth of information. It can be quite an enlightening experience, you know!"

"Especially with what it can teach you about yourself," Tessa said, once again leaning in towards Corazon even as she steered the rest of them out the door, trying to separate him from the group so she could talk to him privately and not even bothering to pretend otherwise. "Oh, I do hope that you'll come back to see us again some time. I know Lady Moonblossom is still so eager to talk to you about your potential and your destiny, and all of the good that you have the opportunity to do in the world." A brief but withering look at Prudence. "And about the company you've chosen to keep."

Corazon kept walking, but he allowed Tessa to slow his pace and keep him a little ways behind the rest of them, and eventually Prudence gave up on being subtle about trying to hang back with them and just stopped at the bottom of the steps leading up to the museum's entrance. She leaned on the railing and affected a bored expression, like she was just impatiently waiting for the last straggler to catch up with the rest of the group and didn't actually care what was holding him up. Corazon didn't look directly at her, but she could feel his attention nevertheless, like the faintest pressure on the center of her chest, just above her sternum. He grinned at Tessa like a pirate, all rakish charm and warning signs. "Oh, that does sound... enlightening," he said, drawing out the word into slow flirtation as he leaned over her. He took her hand between both of his, fingertips tracing delicately over her knuckles and making her bring her free hand to her cheek to hide the blush that was starting to rise. "And I would love to be able to stay in one place long enough to... soak up the local atmosphere. But I'm afraid I'm hardly wise enough to get any use out of what you and your lady might have to teach me, and the life of a professional adventurer is a life spent always searching and never finding. I can only hope that someday all of my searching will lead me back here again."

It was so theatrical that Prudence imagined somewhere ahead of them Merilwen was rolling her eyes and didn't know why, but Tessa seemed entirely taken with it as she sighed. "I hope so, too," she said. "And I hope that by the time you return we'll have even more to discuss."

"Naturally," Corazon said smoothly. "I'm sure that, should our paths ever cross again, by then you will have grown even wiser and more enlightened." He released her hand as if reluctantly, and as he patted her shoulder he leaned in and dropped his voice even lower, to the point where Prudence had to strain to hear him. "Who knows? You might even be half the warlock my friend is by then. I doubt it, though."

Prudence's own mouth opened in a silent and involuntary oh, damn. A low warmth prickled across her skin like sunburn, or like a too-gentle caress. Or maybe like an allergic reaction, judging by the accompanying tightness in her throat. The viciousness in his voice was just so... tender , even as he was tearing a strip off of someone who was looking at him with the kind of adoration that he thought was his due from everyone he had ever met, and who was so close to handing over the keys to the city just because a very stupid supernatural entity had decided he had potential. He had the chance to come out of this like a king, and he was throwing that to the wind to be petty. Because someone had been unkind to her, and he couldn't let that pass by without comment. It might have been humbling, if there was any shred of humility that could ever get a foothold within her prideful soul, but as it was it was just... warming.

By the time Corazon descended the stairs and started down the path towards her, Prudence had mostly managed to regain her composure. She straightened out of her casual lean on the railing without ever altering her expression. "Are we done here?" she asked, making sure her voice carried just far enough to express her sheer boredom and general unimpressed-ness as she cast one last glance back at Tessa, and maybe she couldn't help looking just a little bit smug. That smugness vanished quickly, though, at the sight of Tessa suppressing her confusion and frustration by biting her lip and... twisting her uncle's ring. Which still hung loose on her finger, just begging to be slipped off while her attention was elsewhere.

"Yeah, we're done," Corazon said, sounding equally bored. He made a 'let's go' sort of head toss towards the main road, not even breaking his stride as he passed her. The rest of the group was already a bit of a ways down the road, like they hadn't noticed that they were missing half their party. Or like someone was discreetly pushing them ahead to give that half of the party the chance for a bit of privacy together, because oh my gods that was exactly what Merilwen was doing, wasn't it. Oh, Prudence was going to have words with her later. She just wasn't sure what those words were going to be just yet.

She also wasn't sure what the words were going to be now, as she fell in step next to Corazon and started to open her mouth.She wasn't actually all that surprised that Corazon had rejected the chance to string Tessa along for a while, even if it was still flattering the way he'd done it. He wasn't exactly known for his patience, after all, and she couldn't imagine him actually pulling off a long con successfully. But abandoning the ring just felt like he was failing in his roguish duties, and it was a confusing enough move that Prudence almost felt annoyed with him. "Really?" she said. "Not even going to take along something to remember her by?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." A last look backwards, checking to see if Tessa was still watching them, and with almost aggressive nonchalance Corazon reached down and took Prudence's hand in his. "I've already got everything I could have wanted out of this."

It was like that first day after the inn all over again, when every accidental contact had felt like a lightning strike and threatened to set her ablaze, but there was nothing accidental about this contact. Prudence had to suppress a little startled jump at the bluntness of it, willing her suddenly racing pulse to slow before he felt it in the place where his wrist curled against hers. She was still wrapping her head around the situation when she finally registered that she was wrapping her fingers around more than his hand. There was something tucked into his palm, something solid and pointy on a chain that tried to slip out between her fingers. A silent gasp as she recognized what it had to be. "You didn't," she murmured, just loud enough for him to hear.

The sound that Corazon made was equally quiet but still managed to pack more smugness into it than more people could in an entire dramatic villain monologue. "And to think you doubted me."

Prudence threw one last glance over her shoulder, trying not to let it throw off their confident stride as they walked away from the museum, hand in hand. Tessa was very pointedly not looking at her, but while she still sported the ring she was very obviously missing the flower pendant she'd been wearing when they first met. And she didn't seem to have noticed its absence yet. (Prudence's free hand went unbidden to her own necklace as if she could still feel Corazon's fingers toying with the chain. If he had made sure that Tessa didn't feel that, then she didn't know what she was missing in more ways than one.) Prudence turned her attention back to Corazon, trying not to beam too brightly lest anyone else notice. "You didn't ," she said again, just a little bit louder because the giddy feeling bubbling up in her chest was more difficult than she had anticipated it would be to contain. When he just laughed, low and soft, she dropped her voice again. "That's from her patron ," she said, half delighted and half scandalized.

Corazon's swagger fell off its rhythm, and he shot her a quick and worried look. "Wait, do you mean it's, like, the source of her magic or something? Is the weird unicorn going to hunt me down for it?"

Prudence snorted before realizing that she didn't actually know the answer to that. Tessa's whole 'unicorn warlock' aesthetic was sparkly and frilly enough that a piece of jewelry might actually be the focus of her pact, and in that case both girl and unicorn would be capable of tracking it down and eager to get it back. And as much as Prudence secretly longed to play a round of 'my patron can beat up your patron' that she was sure to win, she knew the rest of the Guild wouldn't look too kindly on her deliberately dragging them into a grudge match without sufficient provocation. (Which wasn't sufficient reason not to do it, but Corazon should at least be aware of what he would be getting into, probably.) She stretched out her senses, her eldritch sight beyond sight seeking out any traces of magic that might be lurking around them, and found none. The pendant was just a trinket, its value sentimental at most. Which meant that the warmth that seemed to be radiating from it all the way to her chest was really just the feeling of Corazon's hand in hers. "Nope, nothing magical here," she said far too quickly, barely keeping her voice at the low volume the conversation required. "I mean, she'll probably want it back once she notices it's missing, but good luck to her in finding you to take it back."

It was amazing how quickly he snapped back into that smug confidence, as if his stride had never been broken. "Hah, good luck to her in anything she might try to do to face off against me," he said with his usual smirk.

The two of them continued walking with hands entwined, and if they were walking a little too slowly then it was to keep from attracting attention and had nothing to do with wanting to be sort of alone together for just a bit longer. The silence between them stretched out in a way that wasn't exactly terrible, but still Prudence eventually couldn't help but break it. "You could have gotten a lot of use out of that ring." She said it as casually as a comment on the weather, even if there was maybe that slightest sting of accusation to it still. They could both have gotten a lot of use out of that ring.

"Yeah, well..." A shrug, and the hand that wasn't holding hers went to the back of his neck in a slightly sheepish gesture. "What's worth more, when you get right down to it? Outfitting yourself and your crew with the best and most lavish gear that a decently-sized city can provide, all on the credit of someone with too much money whose only failings were trusting you too much and being too doting on his niece because he's proud of everything she's accomplished?" There was a pause after he said that, trailing off as if the regret was setting in, but he brushed it aside. "Or stealing one small and symbolically significant thing from someone who's personally wronged you in a way that's going to make them really mad when they realize it's missing?"

She knew all that. She understood it in her gut even if her brain was trying to be more practical about things. But it was different to actually hear him say it like it was the only clear and obvious thing to have done. "Not that anyone back there personally wronged you, " she responded nevertheless, because she was maybe still just a little bit huffy about how quick he had been to embrace all of the fawning, even if it was all part of the act.

He rolled his eyes. "You were wronged and I took that personally," he said. "Same difference." He bent his head low towards hers and gave a little tug like he was drawing her attention back to their clasped hands, as if there was any chance her mind might have wandered from them. "And besides that it suits you," he added in a rush, trying to sound casual and only stumbling over the words a little bit. "It's kind of dainty for you, maybe, but, you know. The stones. They match your eyes."

"Oh," Prudence said, and it took her a moment to manage even that much. She turned her head to look at Corazon, and didn't even care if he saw her looking this time. She had gotten used to the varied and sudden desires that he provoked in her, and she was well versed in pushing them aside to focus on the task at hand, but now she was struggling not to stop dead in the middle of the street and just hug him. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and let him do the same to her, to rest her head against his shoulder and sink into the amazement of having someone like him in her world. Someone who would steal a pretty little trinket for her with the knowledge that they both understood that the theft was the real gift and the pretty little trinket was just a bonus. Someone who made her want to do stupid things like throwing herself in front of a monster to protect him.

Someone who made her think that, as stupid and overrated as feelings might be, sometimes they were also worth it.

There was, naturally, no chance in hell that she was ever going to tell him any of this. There was a decent chance that she wasn't going to be able to tell him anything at all, actually, given the way that stupid knot in her throat tightened up again when he was the one to suddenly duck his head and look away this time. Not that she needed to speak aloud. I should warn you , she thought, sending the message directly into his head, that I'm not as good at the whole sleight of hand thing as you are. She moved her hand, shifting her grip so that her fingers intertwined with his. So if you want to keep this thing hidden, you're going to have to hold my hand a little while longer .

A new grin at the corner of his mouth, and a new squeeze of her fingers, and it was hard to tell which was warmer. I think I can live with that .

*

Wellspring was, as its name suggested, an excellent starting point for a voyage by water. The river that flowed through the city only had a short distance to go before it reached the ocean, not far from where the Joyful Damnation lay at anchor, and the barges going in that direction were happy to take on a few passengers for a bit of coin. Perfect for a group that was trying to leave town in a hurry, as the Guild once again was. Even if two of its members were taking their time about it. Merilwen had kept up enough conversation to keep Dob and Egbert from noticing the absence of the other two, who eventually caught up with them and separated from each other so casually that they probably thought Merilwen hadn't noticed them holding hands. Or the glint of something metallic that Prudence immediately tucked into a pocket, which was probably yet another reason they should leave quickly.

The barge was going to be worth whatever it was charging.

The one they ended up on was primarily a cargo carrier, and waiting to board it meant staying out of the way of the very large people loading even larger flats of various goods for transport down the river. Merilwen barely managed to duck under a rolled-up rug when the deck hand carrying it over their shoulder turned around abruptly, and a goose took a dislike to Dob but fortunately had its path blocked before it could do more than hiss and threaten at him. At every turn it seemed there was the threat of slapstick comedy, narrowly dodged, and then there were the eggs.

It wasn't clear who saw the potential in the situation first, but it was clear that Egbert hadn't seen anything, standing back and watching the commotion around him but not staying far enough away from it. He had stepped out of the main corridor of business, but had settled just beside a pallet that was stacked to almost half his height with so many eggs that Wellspring had to be doing something magical and questionably legal with its chickens. Egbert seemed not to have noticed it, or that every time he rocked back on his heels he came close to making the world's biggest breakfast scramble.

Others definitely had noticed though. Even Merilwen could at least see the appeal of this particular temptation. Not the part about humiliating Egbert, necessarily, but she did spend enough time as a cat to understand the desire to push things over just to hear them make a crash and a mess, and to act as if no part of it had been anything to do with you and you didn't understand why people were looking at you like that. She felt confident that her reproach had been taken to heart -- even if Prudence had only taken it to heart in the hopes of getting Merilwen off her back -- but still she was ready to intervene if temptation proved too much.

The sigh that came from behind her was so quiet that she barely heard it, but so yearning and heartfelt that she had to spin around to see where it came from. The sheer pining coming off of Prudence as she watched Egbert remain oblivious to the danger he was in was nearly as strong as the longing she'd shown when she was talking about Corazon, and Merilwen didn't even try to pretend she wasn't rolling her eyes. "Prudence..." she started warningly.

"I wasn't going to," Prudence said far too quickly. Her hands and jaw clenched once or twice before she took hold of herself, folding her arms in defiant disinterest and rolling her eyes right back at Merilwen. "I said I would back off and I'm doing it, all right?"

"And I'm very proud of you for it," Merilwen said, only a little bit sarcastic as she patted Prudence on the shoulder. She offered a grin, which wasn't returned even if there was the slightest twitch to Prudence's lip. "Come on; they're about loaded up on the cargo and they're going to start boarding passengers in a minute. Get yourself thinking about something else. Or some one else," she added, unable to resist the quiet dig as Corazon ambled into view from wherever he had been avoiding the crowd.

Prudence barely spared her a halfhearted glare before turning her attention on Corazon so casually as to make it look incidental. There was another nigh inaudible sigh, and here again was that hopeless and heartfelt sincerity of the woman who had buried her face in her hands at the museum and begged for some respite from the confusion of having feelings. Merilwen held her tongue, being a supportive friend as she had promised, but she could definitely feel some of that judging she had warned she was going to do coming to the fore.

There was going to be so much judgment as long as Corazon was going to keep being, well, Corazon . Like he was right now. Prudence might be caught up in him at the moment, but he was caught up in the same sight that had held her attention before his arrival, his entire focus zeroing in on Egbert and the eggs with a look of gleeful malice. And why shouldn't it? Merilwen hadn't had any oblique threats to hold over him to keep him from getting every ounce of petty revenge that he possibly could. Merilwen started to step forward, to find some way to head him off, but before she could move something stopped her. Or, rather, something stopped him .

It was an impressively stealthy approach as he crept up on Egbert -- he was very good at what he did when properly motivated -- but he froze well short of his target, his head suddenly shooting up as if someone had shouted his name, although Merilwen couldn't hear anything. The way he immediately turned all his focus on Prudence, however, and the way that she was suddenly not looking at him, was explanation enough. While Merilwen wasn't privy to the exact specifics of their silent conversation, she could make an educated guess based on the expressions that crossed his face. Startled guilt, confusion, something that looked almost like betrayal, and then comprehension as he turned a brief and baleful eye on Merilwen. She responded to his attention with placid unconcern; she wasn't going to object to Prudence throwing her under this particular bus. Corazon narrowed his eyes at her like he was sizing her up -- or, it occurred to Merilwen, trying to figure out just how much she knew -- before turning away like there had never been anything here to hold his interest. He tutted theatrically and loped off towards the barge. "For gods' sakes, Dob! Stop harassing the livestock and just get on the boat!"

Merilwen waited until he was well out of earshot before making a wry sound in Prudence's direction. "How about that," she observed, carefully keeping her amusement and her sarcasm in check. "Corazon actually listening to someone. Never thought I'd see the day."

The look she got in return -- once Prudence was done enjoying the view as Corazon walked away -- was exactly the kind of expression that Merilwen had been envisioning when she'd had her own thoughts about the whole egg situation. A perfectly feline look of you can't possibly be talking to me, because obviously this situation isn't related to me at all and I can't imagine why you would think otherwise. "I didn't hear anything," she said, attempting an indifferent shrug and utterly failing at the 'indifferent' part. "Don't know what you're on about."

"Right, of course not," Merilwen said with some amusement. "He's right about the 'just get on the boat' part, though," she said, changing the subject with a nod to where the captain was starting to gesture some of the other passengers aboard. "They're not going to wait for us, and I'm not in the mood to swim this one."

They turned to head for the boarding ramp, and behind them there was a sudden shout from one of the dock workers. "Oi! Keep away from those eggs, will you? That's an accident waiting to happen!"

Chapter Text

The thing that the others didn't seem to realize was that Corazon was always looking for a reason to be back on the open water. Being on land was excellent, sure, because being at sea gave you fewer opportunities to see new things and meet new people, and to then steal those new things from those new people, but even before he'd found out about his ancestry he had always known, deep down, that the sea was in his blood. Too long away from it these days and he started to feel the itch for it, for the swaying of the deck beneath his feet and the taste of salt in the air. Fortunately he had fallen in with a group that considered intercontinental travel a minor inconvenience at most, and getting them on board for a sea voyage -- literally and figuratively -- rarely took more than the promise of some exciting treasure or rumor to chase down on some island or other, and the Joyful Damnation was packed to bursting with maps of questionable provenance to dangle in front of them. Everyone had a grand adventure, there was usually some kind of reward to come out of it, and nobody had to know that it was all out of a kind of melancholy homesickness. And this time nobody was going to have to know about the other reason, either.

The 'other reason' was currently occupying more than her share of his attention, but then again she was also doing more than her share of the work to get them on the water. Prudence barely seemed to be straining as she hauled back on the line to raise the mainsail, making a one-woman job out of a task that should have taken most of their current tiny crew. The towline was like an extension of the smooth curve of her body, every movement a display of the comfort and confidence with which she'd taken to her newfound strength. How could any reasonable person be expected to pay attention to anything else when her presence had him pinned in place as surely as her arms would?

Oh, that was an image that seemed to be in no hurry to leave him.

She held the line taut while Dob secured it -- he had taken to those knot-tying lessons with an intensity and focus that left Corazon a little concerned that some wires had gotten crossed somewhere -- before striding away across the deck to find something else that needed to be done. She tossed her hair as she went, the salt spray that was already clinging to it catching the sun like a halo, and every fantasy he'd ever had about the two of them being the terror of the high seas came rushing back to him. They would be as unstoppable as they were gorgeous. When she turned to face the helm, as if she'd heard his thoughts, this time he didn't suddenly duck away from her gaze. Instead he raised one hand from the wheel and touched his hat, dipping it to her with a little nod that was the closest he was going to get to striding down the deck and sweeping it off before her with a bow as he bent to kiss her hand, which was what a very large part of his heart was telling him he should be doing.

Just a nod was enough to catch her attention, though, and she tilted her head coyly. She was turned away from the mid-morning sun, her face partly in shadow, but he could still clearly see the secretive and flirtatious smile she turned his way, cute little fangs flashing in the light. The wink that accompanied the smile was more obscured and might have been his imagination, but he was going to hold onto it nevertheless.

"What are your orders, Captain?"

Whatever you want them to be , Corazon managed not to say aloud in the split second before he realized the question wasn't part of the daydream he was already half slipping into. He turned towards the sound and saw Dob still waiting by the main mast, practically bouncing on his heels with excitement. Dob's enthusiasm for the sea had been an unexpected discovery, but not an unwelcome one, especially since it meant that there was one person in the group who was actually willing to call him 'Captain' without turning it sarcastic every time. Quickly Corazon snapped back into the role, straightening up and giving a brisk nod of response. "All sails ready, Mister Dob? Is the anchor weighed? Is our course out of the harbor clear?"

"All that and a favorable wind besides!"

Corazon didn't have to hear that part to know it. He could feel that wind rising around him like an old friend welcoming him home, sweeping away all his other concerns and replacing them with the sheer thrill of being at the helm again, the waves swelling to meet him and the horizon opening its arms. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the salt air filling his lungs and reminding him that this was where he had always been meant to be, even before he knew it himself. "Then inform the crew that we're ready to launch!" He opened his eyes and bared his teeth in a grin of triumph, his hands tightening on the wheel. "And may we find adventure before it finds us."

Once they were properly underway there was time for the joy of being at the helm to settle. It didn't go away, of course -- it never did -- but it eased down from a thrill to a sense of contentment and purpose. The skies were clear, the waves were smooth, and there was a distant destination cloaked in mystery and promising adventure and riches, assuming the chart he'd won off Curly Joe in a dice game years ago was even a little bit accurate. And there was about a week's worth of travel between here and there, plenty of time to soothe that 'too long on land' feeling and allow him to reacquaint himself with the sea and his ship and his general sense of his place in the world.

And also time to get better acquainted with one of his crew members. Even the feeling of being back out on the water couldn't entirely eclipse that thought, which was starting to feel like it was leaning on his shoulder and breathing in his ear, waiting for him to turn around and acknowledge it. Which he would do, definitely, just as soon as he'd taken care of absolutely everything else on the list of things he needed to do for a safe voyage and had completely run out of excuses not to. He drummed his fingers on the wheel, tapping out a quick and intricate hornpipe. It might have looked jittery to an outside observer, but really it was just complicated and proof of how deft and dexterous he was at all times, even when he was just fiddling about. And it was a way to occupy his hands while his mind was wandering, his attention being repeatedly drawn to the hatch where Prudence had disappeared belowdecks as soon as they were comfortably underway. Unpacking, probably, stowing her gear and her book creatures in the second-best cabin, which she either didn't think he knew she'd commandeered, or -- more likely -- didn't care about his knowing. She might be doing her own communing with the sea now that they were out on the open water, just as he was, although obviously her methods would be something vastly different from his. His heart belonged to the waves, the break and swell of the open water and the freedom that they brought with them, while her soul belonged far more literally to the embodiment of the madness that lurked in its depths, and no matter how taken he was with her he probably didn't want to know exactly how she expressed her connection to it. Something involving blood and tentacles, probably, with ichor oozing out of the walls and making everything smell weird. Which was fine, he guessed, as long as she cleaned up after herself.

And now he was thinking about Prudence in the bath, which was by no means an unwelcome mental image but which was not helping him keep the ship on course. He shook his head and sighed at himself, willing himself to get it together. This was why he had always avoided any kind of romantic entanglement back when he was with his old crew and captaining a ship full-time, because there was too much risk of getting distracted at a crucial moment. (And it had nothing to do with not being able to find anyone who was interested in any kind of romantic entanglement with him. Obviously.) There would be time to be distracted by his thoughts later, and possibly by far more than just his thoughts.

"Steady on, lad," he muttered to himself, an admonition he'd heard often enough from his first-ever pirate crew, way back in that brief time when he'd been just a crew member himself, still literally learning the ropes. Another shake of his head. "Steady on."

"What was that, Corazon?"

That was enough to shake him out of his blurred reverie, which must have been deeper than he'd realized if he hadn't even noticed that he wasn't alone. He aimed a glare up into the rigging, where Dob had once again made himself at home, swinging as carefree as a monkey and probably seconds from bursting into song. Corazon started to hunch in on himself, feeling some twinge of that old guilt of being caught unawares that had been a staple of his youth, before remembering that he was the captain here. Nobody could talk down to him or accuse him of maundering anymore, even when he was. "Never you mind, Mister Dob," he called out stridently, standing up straighter and focusing his eyes once more on the horizon. "And that's 'Captain' to you."

By the evening of their first day everyone had more or less settled in, and the ship was on a clear enough course that the skeletons could be trusted to take over for a few hours while everyone took a well-earned break and got a little rest. And a decent meal, of course, because the start of any voyage was always time for celebration, for eating together as a crew and taking advantage of some of the fresh food you'd managed to find in the port while it was still fresh. For all of the other distractions Corazon had been contending with all day he'd also been looking forward to getting back into his own galley and whipping up some of his classic culinary magic. Something nice, to make for a contrast to the camp food and mid-range inn fare they'd been subsisting on for so long, and maybe just a little bit to thank them for letting him be their captain. It wasn't that he especially cared about these people, or maybe even loved them just a little bit for all of their odd ways, but... what was a captain without a crew to lead? He was wise and gracious enough to appreciate them for that, at least. And to want to impress them whenever he had the opportunity. All of them, not just Prudence, although if she wanted to be specifically and particularly impressed then he wasn't going to argue.

The food started coming out and the conversation around the table went quiet almost immediately, the highest compliment that a chef could ask for. The Guild lost themselves in the pleasure of eating for a while, and the satisfaction of that was enough to make Corazon forgive them for whatever small transgressions they'd committed against him over the last few days of travel. And then the conversations gradually started rising again, and with them came one or two actual compliments. Merilwen nudged at the potatoes on her plate, tracing her fork through the delicate sauce. "You really stocked up on the herbs," she observed approvingly.

He had thought she would appreciate that. "There was a good deal going on them," he said with a shrug, as if he hadn't put any thought into it at all. He was actually putting even more thought into it now that she'd said something, and wondering if the presence of a druid might make it feasible to keep a little potted garden going somewhere on the deck. Even the tail ends of the hardtack and salt pork, once they got that far, could be made a little bit more endurable if there was something fresh to go along with them. He would have to try to speak to her later about the possibility.

A little nod in response. "Well, it's good to know that we're not going to be in any rush on this trip," she said, the glint in her eye making it into her voice and giving him pause. What did she think she knew about the real motivation behind this voyage? He carefully said nothing, turning his attention to her and waiting for her to finish this thought, and he could feel the rest of the group doing the same. Which she had apparently been anticipating, because no matter how casual she tried to make it look it was clear that she'd been waiting until she had everyone's attention to speak again. Another gesture towards her plate, and specifically one of the bright green spots on it. "Since it looks like you bought us some thyme."

On second thought, maybe he was just never going to speak to her again. At least the weary collective sigh that rolled around the table vindicated him.

Prudence sighed just as loudly as anyone else, with her usual mix of exasperation and indulgence, but she only seemed to be half listening to the conversation as she ate in any case. The alcohol was flowing freely, contributing to the rise in cheerful chatter and the celebratory feel of finally being underway, and as far as he could tell from the perfectly normal amount of time he was spending looking at her she was partaking. But more than once he'd caught her eyeing her tankard with subtle caution and calculation, as if she was devoting more thought than usual to just how much she was drinking. Like she was doing the math on how to settle her nerves without overindulging. Not that he would know anything about that. The careful way he nursed his own tankard was just about joining in on the convivial atmosphere that had overtaken the group while ensuring that he'd still be capable of reacting if some late-night captaining emergency should arise. He had too much of his own courage already to be looking for it in the bottom of a barrel, and anyway there was nothing here that he needed it for.

It was one of those evenings where good food -- if Corazon did say so himself -- contributed to good company; the entire Guild was in high enough spirits to remind him that they were more or less an all right lot, on the balance, and that there were more reasons to hang about with them than just a lack of other options. He even managed to listen to one of Egbert's stories about his cow god without interrupting or saying anything sarcastic, an especially impressive feat since he was still smarting from the earlier missed opportunity with the eggs. Dob was bristling with theories about what might really be behind the mystery on the island they were heading for, Merilwen was doing strange calculations on a scrap of paper as she tried to work out some new battle tactic involving her octopus form that she seemed to only have half an idea about so far, and Prudence leaned over her shoulder and listened to her mumbled explanations with the kind of absent nod that might have meant she was thinking about something else entirely or might have just meant that it made as little sense to her as the bits he could hear did to him. One perfectly manicured purple-black nail drew incomprehensible patterns in a bit of drink spilled on the table, and her half-lidded eyes were distant when they weren't coming into sharp and jumpy focus at every unexpected sound. If it wasn't for the hope that her mind was wandering for the same reason his was, Corazon might have been reluctant to see the evening slowly wind to a close. As it was, once the tapering-off of the various conversations around the table started in earnest he made his move.

The way he stretched as he pushed away from the table was only a little bit exaggerated. He shifted his neck and rolled his shoulders, and, oh, Prudence was making only the barest effort to pretend she wasn't watching that with great interest. Good to know. "Well, I'm off," he said once he was sure he had a sufficient percentage of the group's attention. "You can decide among yourselves who's going to do the washing up." He rolled his eyes at the various sounds of protest at this declaration. "Oh, come off it; I did all the cooking. And you especially have no room to complain, Dob; you have a whole spell just for that!" A pause as he took his companion in, the dirt and scruff and the faint but lingering eau de Dob that you actually got used to surprisingly quickly. "On second thought, nobody let Dob clean unsupervised. But other than that you lot figure it out yourselves."

He stood slowly and languidly, and it was just perfect coincidence, wasn't it, that his path to the door took him right behind Prudence's chair. A shame, or maybe not that much of a shame, that he'd made sure everyone's eyes were on him, because if they hadn't been he might have given in to the sudden temptation to brush a hand against her back as he passed, to admit or acknowledge that she had his attention as much as he had hers. And possibly, if he was lucky, to get a reprise of that little hitch in her breath from when he'd toyed with her pendant, a moment that replayed in his head almost as frequently as what had (and what had nearly) come after it. "I'm going to be in the actual captain's cabin if there are any... conversations that need to be had." He realized belatedly that, since he was standing behind her he couldn't actually see Prudence's reaction to that -- once again, a shame or maybe not that much of a shame -- but Merilwen's eyebrows shot up so sharply that once again there was that stab of panic as he wondered how much she knew. "But it's been a long and tiring day and a captain's cabin is designed to be private for a reason," he added in quick and careful course correction, "so... it had better be extremely important. Anyway. Good night."

A chorus of mumbled and possibly slightly confused responses followed this, but Merilwen's "Sleep well, Captain" was so aggressively innocent that he practically sprinted the rest of the way out of the room. At some point, along with everything else they needed to talk about, he was going to have to ask Prudence just what they had said to each other while he wasn't around.

The various backup captain's cabins were theoretically identical to the original, and they served well enough when they were needed -- which was, surprisingly, less often now than it had been under his previous crew, although now that everyone knew he had backups he was probably going to need them much more often -- but none of them were home the way the original was. Despite his distraction Corazon paused in the doorway to appreciate the familiar sight, which he had only glanced at briefly when they had boarded, unloading his things and making the barest pretense at unpacking before he was back on deck to oversee the preparations for getting underway. Now he patted the door's frame affectionately, feeling like the room itself was welcoming him back, before the frantic realization crept in that this place was not fit for company.

He was a fairly organized person, he had always thought. Even in his youth, when someone else had been doing the actual cleaning for him, he'd still been expected to maintain Standards in his own space and with his own things, and of course that had continued when he'd taken up life on the sea and had to keep things, well, shipshape. But there was always so much to do in an adventuring life, especially when you were the one in charge, and of course you always said you would get around to the little things, but then something would come up every time, wouldn't it? You'd have to settle a crew dispute or navigate around an uncharted obstacle or just spend way too long on land sorting through whatever series of quests you'd gotten dragged into this time, and meanwhile the trousers that needed mending were still thrown over the back of a chair in the corner and the papers you'd shuffled to the side of the desk when you needed a clean work space were piling up so much you couldn't remember what half of them even were, and it wasn't until you realized someone else was about to see the space that you really understood just how long you'd let it go.

And now, in the grand tradition of panic-cleaners the world over, he was going to let it go further. The trousers went into the back of the wardrobe along with the half-unpacked rucksack he'd been carrying on his overland travels -- save for a few freshly stolen items that went into more secure storage in places he wasn't going to reveal to anyone -- with the wardrobe's other contents reshuffled to make sure the door would close properly. The papers he sorted a little more neatly by size if not by content, and he wasn't above stuffing a few in drawers where he would undoubtedly forget about them. Other odds and ends found their proper place, or the nearest he could get to their proper place without actually doing a full-scale clean, and after only a few minutes the place was decent enough to be at least presentable, even to someone he was trying to impress. Going from 'presentable' to 'inviting' was going to take a little bit more work, though.

It had been a long time -- no need to talk about exactly how long -- since Corazon had had the opportunity and the need to set the mood. He blew out a breath through his nose and moved to get a view from the door, to gauge what kind of first impression Prudence would be getting when she arrived. Which should be any minute now, because his invitation could not possibly have been any more obvious, but then again if it was him in her situation he probably would have stuck around with the group for a little while longer, and even allowed himself to get roped into helping with the cleaning, just to keep them from wondering if there was some reason he was so eager to leave them when everyone had been having such a nice time, and then past that he would have waited a little bit longer to make sure that no one was going to notice where he was going. And naturally there might well be some business of her own that she had to attend to first, taking care of whatever evening rituals she had -- in whatever sense of the word 'rituals' that might mean -- and putting her books to bed, or just... doing whatever preparation she thought was necessary for whatever was going to happen next, the same as he was now. He had time to go all out in getting everything right. And he had time to not be worried just yet about where she was.

Getting the lighting right was half the battle, and he had experience with that part. Dancing Lights didn't last long, of course, but if he worked out the perfect setup now it would be simple enough to cast it again once she knocked, and it really only had to last long enough for both of them to get a little more comfortable. Low, warm light like scattered candles, carefully positioned to create a relaxed and intimate atmosphere. And to downplay the presence of the massive bed that dominated the room, because on the one hand yes, obviously but on the other hand no pressure . They'd work their way up to that, and if it didn't happen tonight then that was fine. It would all just depend on what kind of energy she was bringing and how the evening progressed. Maybe she would be just as aggressively casual and too cool to care as she was about everything else, or maybe she would finally be a little more open about the caution and uncertainty that had clearly been plaguing both of them. Or maybe she would show up at his door wearing her most devilish smile and nothing else. There was no harm in fantasizing that it could happen, or that he'd be even remotely capable of responding coherently if it did.

Taking things a little slower might be more than fine, actually.

It took him a moment to collect himself from that thought, and he pulled the lights a little further from the bed, pushing it as out of focus as he could. He still turned down the corner of the blankets to make it look a little more welcoming, though. No point in pretending he wasn't thinking about it at all .

Aside from the bed the most comfortable place in the room was the couch that he kept for reading and for the occasional bout of lounging all brooding and sexy, because sometimes lounging all brooding and sexy was just for you and that was fine, and it was the right size for two people to sit and talk at a comfortable distance. Or a comfortable lack of distance, depending on how things went. It was also in a slightly awkward spot, pressed into a corner as it was, and made of the kind of heavy, solid construction that could take a battering on the high seas, but with a little bit of effort he could-- he could leave it right where it was because it was perfectly fine there, actually. Ow.

With the corner established as a secluded and cozy space and not awkward or out of the way at all, Corazon moved a few non-magical lanterns over that way to keep the atmosphere going without his having to pay attention to it, and finished off the tableau with the addition of the nice bottle he'd kept hidden in the back of the drinks cabinet and waiting for an appropriate occasion. He wasn't much of a wine person, and neither was Prudence as far as he knew, but it was more about the gesture of hospitality and sharing the finer things. And also an excuse to steady his nerves a little further if it ended up feeling necessary. He was working with all the confidence he could muster, moving swiftly and decisively without rush or panic, but he was sure enough of his sea legs and his cooking to know that the occasional flutter in his stomach wasn't seasickness or indigestion. He wasn't entirely convinced, deep down, that he wasn't actually running frantic, and it was only his long experience in being the coolest person in the room that kept it from showing on the outside. He hoped.

Looking in the mirror now was, somehow, the first thought he'd actually given to what kind of impression he was making. Not that he was worried, exactly, because he always looked amazing by default, but Prudence deserved the extra effort to make sure she was getting him at his best. His hair, which she had fussed over and run her fingers through, was just windswept enough, the little bits that had come loose from his ponytail hanging around his face like they were there on purpose. A clean shirt -- he tossed the old one into the bottom of the wardrobe with all the other things he would deal with later -- and just a touch of cologne to complement the sea-air scent that clung to him, because she had rested her head on his shoulder and told him he smelled nice. And, with the heat of her hand against his chest still burned into his memory, one more button undone. There. Perfect. A smile at his reflection, that bold and rakish grin that he'd spent so long practicing without making it look too practiced, just enough of a cocky quirk to his eyebrow to achieve the perfect level of devil-may-care insouciance. He gave himself a smoldering wink, and, yeah, that would be enough to make a devil actually care. Assuming he could keep it going long enough for her to get a good look and be suitably impressed before his face did that soft, melting thing that he could feel it doing every time he looked at her for any length of time.

Of course, the most important part of looking cool and sexy and suave and sophisticated was also looking like you weren't trying . Really cool people didn't worry about if they were cool or not; it just happened and they were confident enough to know that it would just happen. Really cool people didn't get flustered at the thought of a beautiful and terrifying and perfect woman in their bedrooms, and they didn't have that little nagging voice in the backs of their heads saying that if she was going to show up she surely would have done so by now, wouldn't she? How long did it really take to ditch a group of adventurers who were so easily distracted that it was a wonder any of them ever got anything done? A furtive glance at the ornate clock on his desk showed that the evening was not entirely old yet, but didn't really tell him anything since he had no idea what time it had been when he'd left her in the mess hall. He turned the clock face-down with a little hiss of impatience, mostly at himself, because counting the minutes wasn't actually going to leave him any less tense when she finally arrived. What he should be doing, now that he'd made sure everything was ready for her, was focusing on something else entirely, both to keep himself from going in circles in his head and to avoid looking too eager, too desperate . When she showed up he should be deep in thought, poring over important captaining business at his desk (which would be lit to show off his best features and how he somehow looked even more elegant when he was working), but of course as soon as he saw her he would immediately put all of his vital work aside in favor of passing a pleasant evening with her, which was definitely perfectly set up because that was just the kind of person he was, where everything just fell into place for him, and not because he'd spent ages getting it all just right.

The little nagging voice was back again, reminding him that she knew him well enough that she wasn't going to believe it even if he managed to pull it off. He tried to tell it that that was beside the point, but he didn't think it was listening.

Anyway, there really was important captaining business he had to attend to. There was the ship's log to update, even if today had been entirely uneventful, and Curly Joe's map to compare to the more professional and detailed charts of the area to make sure they really were on the best course. Corazon lit the lamp on his desk, the best one on the ship because naturally he needed the cleanest and clearest light, and began to write.

He was still working when he finally cracked and looked at the clock ten minutes later. Twenty. By the forty-minute mark he had cross-checked their course so thoroughly that he could have sailed it in his sleep, and an hour after he'd started he'd found reference to half a dozen other little islands in the area and was planning out an island-hopping treasure hunting cruise if they were still in the mood for adventure after whatever they were going to find on this first one. An hour and thirty-seven minutes after he'd sat down the light sputtered, reminding him that he hadn't actually filled the lamp recently, and that disturbance was enough to snap him out of the pretense that he was clinging to and force him to accept what should have been obvious from the start.

She wasn't coming.

Corazon stood up slowly, feeling like his heart was tethered to the chair and was falling into his stomach and then his feet as he rose. That little voice in his head had fallen silent now, as if it saw no need to belabor the point now that he'd finally gotten it, and while he should probably be grateful for that it just made the hollow place that had opened up in his chest echo more loudly and feel even more empty. She had changed her mind, or gotten cold feet, or maybe he'd somehow managed to misinterpret every single interaction they'd had since that night and she had never actually intended to follow through on the tentative and implied invitation she'd extended to herself. The details didn't matter as he crossed the sumptuous room, so big and so well furnished and so lonely, and stared out the window into the dark sea that churned in the Joyful Damnation's wake. Funny. He didn't think he'd ever been seasick before.

The light on the waves gave him no answers, and for once no peace, either. He watched it for a while, waiting for the hurt to settle into a manageable ache. "Well," he finally said aloud, cool and crisp. "If that's how it is, then that's how it is." A harsh exhale, brisk and impatient rather than suddenly very tired and wounded. He had a gift for convincing anyone of anything. Convincing himself was just as easy.

The bed was just as grand and subtly inviting as he had planned it to be, if much colder, and he didn't bother to do more than pull off his boots before sinking into it. As exhausted as he suddenly was, it still felt like a long time before he finally fell asleep.

*

Prudence leaned over the railing at the rear of the deck, watching the waves fan out behind them. The stars were bright, the moon a bare sliver. Beneath her the ship rolled slowly and steadily, like the breathing of the great beasts that lurked deep below the ocean's surface. And between the deck and the depths, someone was waiting for her. Possibly.

This was their third night on board, and Corazon still hadn't said anything to her. There had been no mention of an invitation or an absence, no curiosity or concern, no attempt to follow up on a conversation they hadn't actually had. Granted, they hadn't seen all that much of each other, since they were a small crew on a large ship and there was always something that needed to be done somewhere. And because Prudence had been... well, not avoiding him as such, but... all right, she had been avoiding him. But only a little. And only because she didn't know how to come back from how she had responded to him. Or, rather, how she'd failed to respond.

She had tried, was the thing. That first night, when he had pretended he was being so subtle with his declaration that he was turning in early, she had gone looking for him. Only after she was sure everyone else had turned in, of course, and after spending probably more time than she actually needed in smoothing her feathers and combing the last of the road dust out of her hair and touching up her eyeliner. But after she'd done all of that, and also mostly stilled the restless little movements her hands were making when she didn't focus on stopping them, she'd been right back up on the deck. Standing just outside his door, with her stomach in knots -- because of the movement of the ship, obviously, which she was still getting reacquainted with -- and her hand raised to knock. And then she had gone no further, and she still couldn't explain why.

She had probably not spent literal hours there, tucked into a shadow and barely breathing to avoid being noticed if anyone should pass by, so close that she could almost imagine she heard Corazon shifting about in the room beyond, but it was long enough for the moon to change position in the sky and for her arm to get stiff from holding it up like she really was going to knock any moment now. Long enough for her to cycle through several rounds of scolding herself for her inaction and then talking herself out of making a move, long enough to half convince herself that Corazon had actually meant it when he'd said that he didn't want to be disturbed unless it was something important, and then to remind herself that there was nothing on this ship more important than her. Her body had remained frozen while her mind churned, until an eventual change in the wind felt like it was seeking her out on purpose and driving its chill touch into her fingers, at which time she had finally retreated to her cabin and spent a very long time lying face down on her bed and silently calling out to the depths until she had eventually drifted into sleep.

And then, in the intervening days, he hadn't said anything. Like nothing at all had happened. And, well... all right, nothing had happened, but that was the problem, and he seemed to be pretending that it wasn't. (She hoped he was pretending, at least, hoped it so hard that it hurt .) It was like she was back in the tavern again, not willing to be the first one to open up, but this time she was even less sure that opening up would be the right thing to do at all. All Corazon had to do was say something, anything , to tell her that he was still on board, and she would be all in. And he'd had the opportunity to do so! Even if Prudence was dodging him a little bit she couldn't do so entirely, because even a large ship was still a ship, and there had been plenty of crossed paths in otherwise empty passageways, places where he could have made some mostly innocuous comment, and she could have responded with a slightly less innocuous comment, and that could have turned into the kind of cautiously flirty banter that would have let both of them say can we try this again? without actually having to say the words or acknowledge that there had been a previous failed attempt. Then maybe they would have had a chance to move forward, and then maybe she wouldn't be standing alone out here on the deck.

Of course, in theory she had also had ample opportunity to start one of those conversations, to gently nudge him in the direction she kept hoping he would go and see if he would bite. But that was beside the point entirely, somehow.

If she leaned out far enough, Prudence could see the light coming from Corazon's window, a low and diffuse glow filtered through the imperfections in the glass. So he was still awake, too. It was easy to imagine him writing at the desk, or lounging on the couch with a book and a brandy, looking like he was trying too hard but so practiced at trying too hard that it now came to him effortlessly. Easy to picture in her mind, and almost as easy to actually see it if she wanted to, to find out if he was as restlessly awake as she was, and as restlessly alone. Just a little Spider Climb down the side of the ship to peer in through the window where he wouldn't be expecting anyone, or a peek into the room with her magic sight...

She wouldn't actually do it, probably. Even she had her limits. She settled instead for stomping a little harder than was necessary on the boards of the deck, knowing that he was underneath and willing him to hear her and just... be aware that she was there. And that she was also restlessly awake and alone. And when the stomping failed to lift her spirits, she gave up and headed back belowdecks to find something that might.

The cabin that Prudence had claimed for her own had been very nice once. It still was, but now it was her kind of nice. The subtle kraken motif that had already been part of the bed frame when she'd commandeered the room was far less subtle now, and helped in its ominousness by her removal of about half the room's lights. All the furniture was still rich and sumptuous and comfortable, because she still deserved the best things in life, but now it looked older and more weathered, spattered with dark blood and ichor. Well, some of it was dark blood and ichor. A lot of it was paint and squid ink, because blood only lasted so long and you could only take so much from your friends to refresh it before they started getting wise. The unholy sigils painted or carved into various surfaces were real though, as were all the skulls. (A lot of them were rat skulls, because those were the easiest kind to get on a ship, but her feelings about rat bones were kind of complicated at the moment so she'd been trying to mix it up with ones from the various birds the skeletons had shot down.) It looked like a warlock lived there, a proper one who knew about blood and violence and power and how to use them, and maybe she needed to remind herself to lean into that more. She lay on her stomach on the floor, surrounded by the kind of sigils that hurt most people's eyes to look at -- not strictly necessary, but sometimes it helped her feel closer to the unfathomable depths, and also sometimes you just needed to lay on the floor -- and cast her mind out towards the presence she knew would respond. An inky darkness surrounded her, the air itself seeming to grow thicker, and she smiled. "Hail, O Great Old One. How have you been?"

The response was sort of a voice, low and deep in her mind, but it was also a presence in itself, one that surrounded her and reverberated through the wood and the air and echoed through her entire body. "I am well, my child. What would you ask of me?"

This was the literal first step of the conversation and she had somehow failed to think even this far ahead. "Oh... you know," she said vaguely. "I just... wanted to catch up with you."

The feeling of a skeptical "Mmmhmm" echoing through one's entire body was one Prudence would not be quick to recommend to others. "I am listening," Cthulhu intoned, his doubt at least tempered by curiosity.

It would be nice if Prudence actually had something to say , then. Or possibly the capacity to admit that she mostly wanted a little bit of company from someone who wouldn't get all sentimental and concerned and mortal about her wanting some company. "It's just..." She floundered for a bit, and ended up turning onto her back to make it easier to gesture ineffectually to the empty air where he both could and couldn't physically see her. "We had a run-in with another warlock just before we came back to the sea," she said. "The first other one I've seen in a long while. Which you know, I'm sure, because you're always sort of there with me, but you've also got enough else going on that I figure you're probably not always listening unless I call on you specifically, so I don't really know how much I have to catch you up on. But. Anyway. I met another warlock. And she was the worst ."

"I am aware." Cthulhu's voice was a low, leviathan growl of seething contempt. "I am always aware when other warlocks are around, even those not of my patronage. And you are correct in your assessment. She was the worst ."

"Right?" Prudence burst out in the joy and triumph of vindication from the highest possible authority. She spread her arms wide at the enormity of just how ridiculous the situation had been. "All dainty and squeamish and self-righteous, and then she had the nerve to go and insult me -- and you, by association -- while we were trying to make her look good! I shouldn't have let it stand, except there was money involved, and those of us with mortal forms have physical needs." No need to mention that sometimes those physical needs were cool clothing and overpriced alcohol and jewelry that wasn't actually cursed but super looked like it should be. Or that sometimes it was also about 'my friends will only let me do so much murder and I don't want to be so terrible that they actually stop liking me.'

"You are forgiven," came the dismissive reply, and Prudence wondered if some of that forgiveness was for the parts she hadn't said out loud, too. "I am certain that she will be punished for her insolence in time."

"Yeah, that's gonna happen," Prudence agreed, a little smile curling her lip as she thought of the vengeance that had already been wrought on her behalf so she wouldn't have to. "Only..." She sobered again. "Her patron was there with her, like, all the time, listening to her and talking to her and giving her advice, and Tessa just absolutely adored her. And I don't actually want that kind of relationship," she added quickly, before Cthulhu could take the wrong impression away from the conversation. "I don't need to be hovered over, and you've got better things to do. But it did make me think that I have maybe... not been the most attentive or devoted warlock a patron could ever have, you know? And I should maybe try to do something about that, because I don't want you to think I take you for granted. So... I thought I should say hi. And maybe talk a little bit." That was all it was, was her being dutiful and appropriately considerate and a little bit guilty about needing to be nudged into being appropriately considerate. Nothing to do with loneliness at all. "So that's what this is," she finished hopelessly. "Just talking a little bit. If you like." She resisted burying her head in her hands at how pathetic she sounded.

The weight of Cthulhu's presence had been as close around her as it always was when she tried to speak to him directly, the air itself turning thick and heavy and feeling like it should be hard to breathe even though it never actually was, but now it closed in even more. The background thrum that always seemed to be present, like the great rolling of the deep waters, grew louder and wrapped itself around her, echoing through her ears. It felt like being wrapped in a heavy blanket, and it made something in her chest ache with a sort of quiet joy. "Prudence, my child," Cthulhu said, voice even lower and quieter now, almost reproving in its strange and eerie warmth. "You are my chosen, and it is through me that your power comes alive. Every drop of blood you spill and every cry of agony you draw forth reaches my ears, and it speaks in your voice of your gratitude for this power and the joy you take in doing my bidding and releasing my chaos on the world. You honor me in actions, not words, and that is more than enough." A thoughtful hum like tectonic plates shifting. "Which doesn't mean I wouldn't appreciate catching up with you every now and again."

Prudence felt herself beaming a little, buoyed by that feeling of interest and belonging and just being cared about that had so suffused her soul on her first contact with Cthulhu, when the boon of her pact had felt almost secondary to the knowledge that she mattered to someone. "I can do that more, yeah," she said. "And I can... listen to what's going on with you, if you want to talk about it?" It seemed only polite to offer.

At least Cthulhu seemed as confused about how that would go as she was. "There is little enough that I could tell you that would not reduce you to a gibbering madness unfit for my purposes," he said, and it was weird trying to hear him be tactful. "But I am curious to know, in greater detail, what transpired in your interaction with the warlock who barely deserves to claim that title."

Prudence pushed herself up into a sitting position now, eager to pounce on a chance to show off how much cooler she was than someone else. " Well ," she said sharply. "Let me tell you, let me tell you . There was a weird and boring old museum, and an even weirder and more boring old man running it, and his awful niece who he thinks is just the best, there were ghosts, there were rats... I'll start at the beginning. Have you heard of a sad but surprisingly well-provisioned little town called Wellspring?"

The great thing about this story was that she didn't need to embellish even a little bit of it to make herself look good. She was the one who had done the big dive into the swarm, heedless of her own personal safety, and who had harnessed the wind the rat queen had called up and reversed it into her Banishment spell. She was the one who had found the skeletons, their ghostly magic enough to sear her second sight. (No need to mention that Merilwen had wondered aloud just what kind of magic it really was, and Egbert had instantly replied that it was love. And no need to mention that the actual ultimate solution to the rat queen problem had been a nonviolent one carried out by someone else. And especially no need to say anything about certain conversations that had preceded the actual battle. All Cthulhu really needed to know about was the bit where she'd done something really cool and everyone else had been justly impressed.)

For an unfathomable cosmic being beyond the reach of mortal minds, Cthulhu was a surprisingly good audience for this kind of story. He listened with a frightening degree of attention, he didn't interrupt, and he made interested and approving noises at all the right places. Prudence hadn't realized just how much she needed a little bit of approval like this, really; she had already known that she had done well but having it confirmed by this highest authority was the kind of validation she wasn't about to pass up. She preened a little as she concluded the story with their swift but unhurried exit from the city, having been vastly overpaid for the job they had been sent to do and having made someone's life just a little bit worse.

When she had finished talking she was met with an approving rumble that made the entire ship shake, even if she was willing to bet that no one but her could feel it. "You have fought well and wisely," Cthulhu told her. "And yet your enemy still walks, and does not even know that she is disgraced."

"Because of the money," Prudence said again hastily, brushing aside the whole 'keeping the murder within socially acceptable levels' thing that they were going to have to have an actual talk about eventually, no matter how little she was looking forward to that and no matter how much she thought Cthulhu was maybe turning a blind eye to it for now and might not do so if he was forced to acknowledge it. Even he could accept that sometimes it wasn't just about blood and violence and death, right? Sometimes it was about getting the upper hand on the other guy through more subtle means. "Besides, by now she definitely knows she's been disgraced," she said with a little grin. One hand went to her neck, to the chain tucked entirely under her shirt where not even the most prying of eyes would see it. Corazon had been right that the pendant was nothing like her style, which was only part of the reason she kept it hidden, but she had kept it on her person ever since he'd given it to her, holding onto it like a talisman. "This was hers, once. Although it might have taken her a while to notice that it was missing."

She told Cthulhu every detail of Corazon's cool defiance of Tessa's adoration, and his hand slipping into hers as they hurried away from the scene of the crime, but she tried to make it sound like it was no more to her than just a particularly satisfying story of revenge. No mention of his voice so close to her ear and what that had done to her stomach, or the offhanded way that he had said the stones matched her eyes, even if she hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since. No acknowledgement of the little flutter that went through her at the memory, even knowing as she did that Cthulhu could certainly sense it with as closely as they were currently communicating.

He made no acknowledgement of her current state, either. Prudence got the distinct impression that, while her patron seemed to genuinely care about her and take an interest in his own unfathomable way, mortal emotions were almost as incomprehensible to him as he was to most mortals. Still, he seemed to be granting this new information the same weight that he had to the rest of her story. "So the irritating one has finally pledged his fealty to you," he said, the air growing warmer with his satisfaction at this development. "As is right and proper. Soon the rest shall follow, and all of you will ride out in my name together."

There were so many reactions to that crowding together in Prudence's head that she had to stop and force them to form an orderly queue before she could focus on any one of them long enough to turn it into a coherent thought. Like, what kind of riding out was Cthulhu actually expecting her weird little friend group to be able to accomplish, even if she could turn them all around on the whole 'murder and violence and the destruction of the whole world' idea? Or had he picked up on the subtext she was pretending wasn't there, and now he thought that she was (or should be) trying to amass a harem? (Which, yes, obviously they'd all thought about it, but trying to make things work with just one person was already troublesome enough.) And how was Corazon 'the irritating one,' or, rather, how did Cthulhu think that narrowed it down even a little bit? Eventually she just sort of coughed and tried to look away, and for the first time it really hit her that she was talking to empty air, something that hadn't bothered her about this conversation until now. She curled her fingers around the pendant like she was trying to conceal it from view, as if she was embarrassed by it now when she had been so pleased to share it just a moment ago, and gave a little shrug. "It's just a trinket," she said dismissively, the same voice with which she had almost convinced herself of the same thing, that haunting doubt that she couldn't actually shake.

A rumble of eldritch confusion, that incomprehension of the mortal mind once again as he tried to follow her logic. "He stood against your enemy and rained vengeance down upon her, leaving her defeated and disgraced in your name, did he not?"

"He did," Prudence admitted, her lip starting to curl into that expression that was a smile and a snarl at the same time in spite of herself. Some of the weird and embarrassing uncertainty seemed to slip away when he put it like that.

" And he presented you with the trophy of her defeat, knowing that it was yours by right," Cthulhu continued. A low grumble like a sigh. "It should have been her skull, but I imagine he's doing his best."

"He is." Another statement that Prudence had to agree with, although without the disparaging undertone that her patron had put into it. Corazon had avenged the insult against her via dexterity and theft, eschewing outright violence in favor of subterfuge because that was his best, and he had chosen his method not only to show off his skills but to cut the target to the heart and repay the offense in kind. This had been personal in every possible sense, and while Prudence certainly wouldn't have objected to being presented with Tessa's skull, this... might actually mean more to her than that would have. A mark of respect, of understanding what she actually wanted and why, and an offer to give it to her as only he could. Maybe fealty really was the right word. Or maybe the better one was devotion .

She tucked the pendant back under her shirt, concealing it not as a shameful secret but as a treasure to be protected, and wished she could tuck away the dizzying feeling in her chest so easily. "Yeah, all right," she said quietly, giving in to some force that she couldn't yet name. "But what do I do with it now?"

An even longer and more confused pause than the ones that had preceded it thus far. "You display it," Cthulhu finally said, with the sort of hesitation that said this was such an obvious answer that he couldn't understand why it needed to be said. "As a reminder of your claim, both for him and for anyone who might challenge it. If it's not to your taste I expect that it could be sufficiently modified by a skilled craftsperson to match your aesthetic without reducing its value as a marker of the pact you have made, as it appears to be an entirely nonmagical one." There was a sort of harrumph , a feeling of both warning and disdain. "As any pacts you make with others, mortal or otherwise, had better be unless I give my approval."

"What? No, not that part," Prudence said, brushing past her patron's needless jealousy. "I don't mean about the pendant, I mean..." The knots in her stomach. The sudden tightness of her throat when she thought about talking to him lately. The look in his eye whenever she caught him looking at her and knew that he had caught her out as well. The feelings , all of them alien and jumbled and completely beyond her expertise. "I mean him ," she said with some frustration and impatience. "I've never had anyone... pledge fealty to me before." That did at least sound like a safer way to put it than any of the other options that had been offered so far. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do with a... devotee."

"Anything you like."

The matter-of-fact tone of this reply made it clear to Prudence that the two of them were still having two very different conversations, and that the sudden onslaught of mental images it conjured was entirely her own fault. She tucked those thoughts away before they had the chance to leak out to her patron, covering them with forced calm and even more impatience. "Yes, but how do you even start that?" she finally asked with a sigh.

This time the vibrations in the air weren't confused, just thoughtful, as if Cthulhu was taking a contemplative and parental moment to process the question and come up with the best way to answer it. "Have you spoken to him yet? Informed him that you have accepted his pledge? If he's at all wise -- which I have seen no evidence of, but I trust your judgment -- then he knows he can't just declare his intentions and be done with it. He has to wait for you to decide if he's worthy of such an honor as being your lackey. And once you have decided that he is, then the two of you can discuss exactly what that's going to mean, and what is expected of him and what he can expect in return. To survive a little longer, presumably."

Given that she wasn't actually looking for a lackey, or a right hand man, or whatever other kind of relationship Cthulhu thought this was trying to turn into, none of these words of wisdom actually applied to any part of Prudence's situation. At least, that was what she was trying to tell herself. Finally she heaved a long and weary sigh, falling onto her back again in sheer defeat. "So what you're telling me," she said, drawing the words out into a sort of groan as she stared up into the impenetrable darkness between herself and the ceiling, "is that if I want him -- or if I want something from him," she hastily corrected, if it was a correction at all, "then I have to..." Another sigh, and this time she knew her disgust was audible. "Then I have to have an open and honest conversation with him. About how I feel , and what I want, and all of that nonsense."

"That is the normal mortal way of it, yes," Cthulhu said, in a tone that said once again that she was saying something very obvious. The tangled weight of the presence around Prudence shifted again, and this time it felt like the psychic equivalent of a patient hand on her shoulder from someone who was very old and had been very old for a very long time. "There is only so much loyalty that can be secured by violence and intimidation, even for someone as skilled in both as you."

The sense of patience and indulgence was enough to remind Prudence, with no small sense of embarrassment, of the impotent adolescent rage that Cthulhu had first found her in, and how long it had taken her to settle into this arrangement where she was so much more powerful than she had been before but still couldn't just blast her way through every inconvenience life threw at her. That he had been amazingly calm and indulgent for an ageless and unfathomable eldritch being was a wonder, but it was also really not the point right now. She was older and wiser and far more in control of herself now, and she pressed her hands against her face and did not scream in frustration.

Of course the surprisingly patient and indulgent source of her magic could still pick up on the ripples anyway. "Does something else still trouble you, child?"

"No," Prudence said grimly, her voice muffled by her hands and her gritted teeth. "Everything is fine. Good talk. Very enlightening."

The warm, enfolding darkness pressed in again, this time bringing with it a muffled thrumming that Prudence recognized as her own pulse surging through her ears. She was suddenly aware of the heavy thickness of the air that moved sluggishly through her lungs, a sensation that was by now as familiar and comfortable as it was unnatural, but which felt for a moment like a reminder of what it might feel like to drown. "There's no need to take that tone with me, young lady."

Prudence rolled her eyes -- still hidden behind her hands -- and let out a sigh that that furious adolescent would have envied. "I'm not taking a tone," she said, a statement which was patently untrue but which at least came with the suggestion that she was going to stop taking that tone now that she had been called out on it. Another sigh, not so much fuming and frustrated this time as just tired and defeated. Even inside her own head it was hard to say just how much of her soul she had intended to bare to Cthulhu, who was technically privy to everything that went on within it by virtue of ownership but who didn't care overmuch about what she did with it while it was still in her possession. It had been a sort of quiet desperation, the same plea for help that had made her let Merilwen drag more out of her than she had intended, and this had been no more successful than that had been. Her last resort for advice that would actually understand her and her situation, and once again the response had been you need to talk to him , as if that was in any way a useful thing to say. She dragged her hands down her face and let them fall to her sides again, the power that reverberated through the floor making her fingertips hum. "I'm just tired," she said, which was true because it was almost always true, regardless of whether it was actually relevant to this conversation. "Too much to think about."

Cthulhu made a knowing sound. "Mortal frailty," he said, sounding pleased that he had remembered. A reverberating sound of regret and sympathy. "Such brief and fragile minds, even among the best and brightest of you." Prudence, well aware that she was no scholar, nevertheless preened at the thought that someone thought she was among the best and brightest. Let him, in his complete incomprehension of so many mundane things, continue to think that there is cute boy, what do was the height of intellectual challenge. "I would show you the extent of the unknowable depths and grant you power beyond your imagining, and yet you are almost undone by the power of your own thoughts." It was like she could hear the shaking of his vast head. "Someday, perhaps. For now, though, the limits of your current form must be respected if you are to survive long enough to surpass them. Rest, then, until you can properly sound the depths of your own mind. I will await the proper introduction of your new vassal with... anticipation."

Again with that incredibly grudging acceptance, but at least he was willing to try to put up with Corazon if that was what she wished. Prudence grinned a little in spite of herself. "Yeah, I'll let you know how that turns out," she said, traces of irony on her lips. There were things that she couldn't keep from him even if she wanted to, if all went well, and then again there were things that she was never in a million years going to let him find out about even if he wouldn't grasp their significance. The yawn that came out of her was only a little bit faked, and she closed her eyes. "You're right about the resting part, anyway. I should do that. Lots to do in the morning." She couldn't actually send Cthulhu away, not entirely, but she let the extra-close connection she had been maintaining start to dissipate, and for whatever other gaps there might be in his understanding of her he knew how to take the hint. The darkness tightened around her like an embrace, the air growing drowning-heavy in her throat before lightening again as the presence that had filled the entire room receded back to the unknowable abyss from whence it came and left her alone. When her eyes opened again the darkness in the room was the ordinary kind, the kind that she could see the ceiling through. But the floor beneath her back still rocked with the gentle movement of the calm ocean, slow and rhythmic like the breathing of some impossible leviathan. The smile that had crept up on her before returned. Her bed was waiting, warm and comfortable and luxurious, but maybe she would stay down here a little while longer.

Chapter Text

The ship's armory was Egbert's own private haven, a lovely and warm place that smelled like heated metal. He couldn't imagine why nobody else recognized how nice it was down here, but he had taken advantage of their less refined tastes to make it into a spot he could retreat to when he felt like being alone for a bit, and where he could work on his explosives to his heart's content without making anyone else nervous. Nobody ever came down here unless there was a sudden and pressing need for ammunition.

Which was why he was immediately on the alert when the door suddenly swung open. He dropped his in-progress bomb to the floor -- this was one of the ones meant to take a good pummeling before it went off, luckily -- and rose from the little workspace he'd carved out for himself among the racks of cannonballs. "What's happened?" He readied his mace, in case he was going to need to repel a boarding party after he primed the cannon. "I didn't hear any alarm. Are we being pursued? Is it the Inevitability again?"

Corazon stared at him blankly from the doorway, squinting into the dim light. "What? No. What? "

Egbert lowered his mace, immediately disappointed to realize who it was. "Well, why else would you be down here?" he asked, and even if it was a reasonable question he was probably being peevish and uncharitable about it. But then, he also thought that maybe he had the right to be a little bit peevish and uncharitable, all things considered. The random acts of petty hostility from Corazon and Prudence had eased up recently -- Merilwen had clearly had words with them -- but he was still just trying to stay out of their way until the cold shoulder he'd been getting blew over. Which was easier said than done, apparently.

Corazon rolled his eyes. "I was looking for you, as it happens. Can I come in, or is something likely to explode on me?"

Instinctive hospitality made Egbert step aside to usher him into the room, and he tried to be fair-minded even as he narrowed his eyes. "You've never come looking for me before."

"Tch. Of course I have. Probably." Corazon strode in like he owned the place, which, fair enough, and made a point of closing the door behind him. "Besides, shouldn't a captain check in with his crew from time to time?"

"I guess so," Egbert agreed. "Seems like the right thing to do. It's just that I don't think you ever have, is all."

"Well, I'm doing it now," Corazon snapped impatiently before taking a deep breath. He calmed himself visibly, becoming the picture of a model captain, attentive and eager to listen. "So. What's going on with Egbert, then? How are things with the cow god and the atonement and whatnot?"

"Can't complain," Egbert said, still a little cautious. It wasn't like Corazon to be interested in other people, but maybe he was making an effort to mend fences. Even if apparently Egbert had been the one to knock those fences down in the first place. And if Egbert played his cards right and found the proper crowbar to wedge into this conversational opening... well, two converts from the Guild would be too much to hope for, probably, but he'd never know if he didn't try. He sat down on the edge of his hammock and gestured for Corazon to sit on one of the more comfortable piles of cannonballs. "You know, La Vache Mauve has had some fascinating things to say on the subject of piracy on the rare occasions I've had the chance to ask about it -- which isn't often, because my retinas can only take so much divine brilliance -- and I'm working on a pamphlet on the subject, if you'd like to--"

"Fascinating; I'll have my people contact yours," Corazon cut him off with a wave of his hand, ignoring the cannonball pile in favor of making a few small paces around the tiny room. "Listen, as long as I'm here there's something I need your help with."

"Right," Egbert said, disappointed but not surprised that there had been an ulterior motive after all. And maybe not even all that disappointed, because it did at least mean that Corazon was talking to him again and possibly offering him an opportunity to fix something.

"It wasn't my first choice, either, believe me," Corazon declared with a sigh. "But it just so happens that my problem is one that's perfectly suited to your particular set of skills. And besides, you owe me one."

Egbert couldn't really argue with that statement, but mostly because he was missing the vital context for it that Corazon seemed to assume he had. He huffed out a sigh, turning his head so the smoke and sparks from it wafted away from the powder kegs. "Obviously," he said. "Look, it's clear that I've wronged you somehow, but I don't know how, and I deserve to know why you're so upset with me. You and Prudence both, come to think of it."

"What? Who said anything about Prudence?" Corazon returned sharply. "This isn't about her."

"Well, no, I guess it's not, but--"

"Egbert. Egbert ." Corazon stopped his pacing and stepped forward to put his hands on Egbert's shoulders. "This is the time for healing. For putting the past behind us and moving forward. It will do us no good to rehash the problem and dredge up all those bad feelings again, right?"

Egbert nodded. Healing and moving forward was something that he understood, at least, and a philosophy he had tried to dedicate himself to. "I guess so. But--"

"And the best way to do that is for you to help me with the problem that I'm having right now," Corazon cut him off, the explanation almost exaggerated in its patience.

Egbert had to mull that one over for a moment. "I suppose that is my job," he agreed carefully.

Corazon slapped him on the shoulder. "Capital! A positive attitude, that's exactly what you need. And exactly what I can always come to you for."

"Right!" Egbert sprung to his feet, immediately invigorated by this encouragement and ready to help however he was needed. "What's the problem, then? You need something large moved? Or something set on fire?"

"Sit back down; it's not a 'right now' thing," Corazon said with a wave of his hand. "Although I do appreciate the enthusiasm. And it's not a brute strength and/or fire situation, anyway. I need a paladin."

Egbert sat back down, the hammock swaying with the force of his surprise. "Really?"

"Yes, really." Corazon sighed dramatically. "You do remember that you're one of those, right?"

"Yes, obviously ," Egbert said, still trying very hard to be fair-minded. He gestured towards his armor and tried to do that thing where he glowed with an inner divine light that was as clear and pure as that of the sun. He hadn't gotten there yet, but surely if he kept practicing it would come to him eventually.

"I wouldn't have to ask if you ever actually thought to use all of that divine magic that you're apparently stuffed to the gills with," Corazon returned, so maybe Egbert was starting to get the hang of the holy glowing thing. "But that's not actually the point right now," he continued. He'd started moving again, shifting around the little room restlessly and picking at the various corners like he'd never seen them before, looking anywhere but at Egbert himself. "The point is that you have magic that the rest of us don't, and that's exactly what I need right now to deal with this problem I'm having."

Corazon wasn't just restless anymore, he actually looked agitated, like whatever he was thinking about was preying on his mind to the exclusion of everything else, and although Egbert was a bit tempted to continue letting him stew, he couldn't do that to a friend and a crewmate. He exhaled another curl of smoke, a little lick of flame brushing against his teeth. "I'm listening, buddy. What do you need?"

"I don't need anything," Corazon tried to insist for half a moment, but then he slumped back down against the wall again. "It's about Prudence."

"But you just said this isn't about Prudence."

"That part wasn't, this part is, try to keep up," Corazon snapped. He glared until he was sure that Egbert wasn't going to try to say anything more, and then he sighed. "Look, you've got that spell, right, that makes a zone where people have to tell the truth?"

"You mean Zone of Truth?"

"No need to get technical. Do you have it or don't you?"

"I do," Egbert assured him, not entirely sure where this was going. "You learn that one pretty quick, coming up through the Orders." He chuckled at a memory. "Actually, when I was a kid in Mistmire some of us used to sneak out of bed after lights out and play Zone of Truth or Dare. We would have been in trouble if any of the higher-ups ever found out about it, of course, but that was part of the fun. In fact, there was this one time when Angelo dared me to steal the abbot's--"

"I will happily be charmed and delighted by this story from your childhood as soon as we've dealt with more pressing matters," Corazon said. "Right now I just need the details about the spell itself. I know I'm asking the exact wrong person this question, but how subtle can you be in casting it?"

"Hey, I can be subtle about magic ," Egbert protested. Corazon said nothing, only eyed him dubiously. "I can! Sometimes, anyway. When there's a distraction. But anyway, no one can be subtle about Zone of Truth; as soon as you've cast it everyone around you knows you've done it."

Corazon folded his hands over his mouth, contemplating. "That does make things harder," he said. "But I can still make it work, as long as the spell works." Another shrewd look. "And the spell will work, right?"

"If people don't manage to resist, yeah. Or if they just don't try to resist, which isn't all that likely to happen, but I guess you can try asking nicely." Egbert folded his arms and gave Corazon a newly speculative look. "What does all this have to do with Prudence?"

"I just need you to use your truth-telling magic and ask her a couple questions for me, is all." Corazon gave an indifferent shrug, even though he sounded anything but indifferent. "I think there might be something going on with her, and as her captain I should know about it if there is."

"The way you wanted to know what's going on with me," Egbert said.

"Yes, exactly," Corazon said, sounding relieved that Egbert was understanding him properly. "Except with her I can't ask directly, because then she'd know it was me asking, and I don't know if she'd actually tell me the truth."

"She does like keeping secrets when something's wrong," Egbert had to agree. "I didn't think she'd keep all that many from you, though, what with the way that the two of you get on." He grinned encouragingly, but even he couldn't miss the way that Corazon flinched, even if Corazon seemed to be trying to hide it. "Oh," he said a little more seriously. "Is she mad at you about something, too? Because I guess she doesn't explain that to people anymore." He didn't mean for it to be passive aggressive, not really, but at the same time there was definitely a little voice in the back of his head saying Good, now you know how it feels .

It didn't work, anyway, because that was the sort of thing that always rolled right off of Corazon and made Egbert feel like it wasn't fair that people called him the oblivious one. "She's not mad at me," Corazon scoffed. He folded his arms and stared off into the distance for a silent moment before a quiet: "No, she's definitely not, right? I mean, I would know." A shake of his head as he convinced himself. "She's not mad at me," he repeated with the same scoff as before, confidence tested but immediately restored. "It's just a complicated situation where I can't ask her what's going on outright and I don't think she'd answer me if I did."

Egbert raised a dubious eyebrow. "This is sounding less and less like something I should actually be helping you with," he said. "I mean, obviously honesty is important and confession is good for the soul, but people are allowed to have their secrets, too. Do you think maybe you're not asking her directly because you know you shouldn't , and you're trying to use me to work around that?"

"I don't want to know anything sordid ," Corazon protested, pressing a hand to his forehead. "I'm not trying to pry her deep dark secrets out of her; I just think there's something she's not telling me and I want to know what it is. Especially if it's to do with what she's been getting up to at night."

Egbert tried very hard to put a more positive spin on this, but eventually he had to shake his head. "Afraid that still sounds pretty sordid, buddy."

Corazon groaned loudly, dragging his hands down his face, and then his voice turned resigned. "Fine," he said. "I wasn't going to go into detail, for her sake, but I guess if you're going to be asking her questions you have to know what you're asking about." He sighed and threw up his hands before slumping against the wall. "We were talking, a while back," he finally said. "You know how her patron lives in the sea? Well, she won't thank me for telling you this, so there's no reason for you to let her know that I did, but she's been feeling like she could maybe do better about connecting with him on that front, because she doesn't actually know all that much about the ocean, and since I basically live on it..." He let that sentence hang on the air for a moment with a shrug. "I said that I could teach her a little bit about it. About... sailing, specifically. You know, navigation and charts and how to really feel the ocean, and just... how to keep a ship moving in the right direction. And since she didn't want everyone knowing her business--" he shot another quick and scolding look at Egbert at that "--I invited her to... you know. Drop by the captain's quarters of an evening once we were back on board so she could get some... private instruction." There had been traces of rising color in his face, and they grew sharper at that last statement.

"Well, that's nice of you," Egbert said encouragingly, latching onto the chance to offer some positive reinforcement for selfless behavior. It also explained the obvious embarrassment, given how protective he was of his reputation as someone who wasn't nice at all. "And how's that been going for you two?"

The answer was a sullen mutter. "It hasn't been." Corazon slouched even further into the wall. "She didn't show up."

Egbert let out a sympathetic puff of air. "Oh, buddy."

"I really thought she was interested," Corazon said, the sympathy warming him to the subject. "I mean, I know I was the one who said something first, sort of, and it kind of caught her off guard, but she was the one who followed up on it and made it... mean something. Like she really did want to follow through on it. So I thought we had plans, sort of, and I cleared my schedule and let her know I was available, and I waited up for her, and... nothing. And I didn't say anything the next day because, hey, maybe we weren't totally clear on which evening, and not everyone can be expected to get their sea legs back as fast as I do so maybe she just needed a day or two to acclimatize before doing anything more... strenuous, but it's been days and she hasn't said anything. She hasn't even talked to me at all , really."

That part Egbert had to admit he'd sort of noticed, even when he was trying to avoid them. They weren't being contentious towards each other, as far as he could tell, but their usual comfortable rapport had been lacking of late, even when they were gloating together about getting one over on him, and if he hadn't been having his own issues with them he would have said something about it. "I mean, that sounds like the part of all this you should be focusing on," Egbert said. "The not-talking part, I mean, not getting stood up."

Corazon bristled visibly, reminding Egbert of nothing so much as Merilwen when she was being an angry and puffed-up cat. "I didn't say she stood me up ," he snapped, suddenly defensive. "It wasn't that kind of secret meeting. And I never suggested it was; you jumped to that conclusion all on your own."

Egbert laughed in startled confusion as he sat even further back on the hammock, holding his hands up reassuringly. "I didn't jump to any conclusions," he said, although after a comment like that he could maybe see a few possible conclusions on the horizon. "But you thought the two of you were going to meet somewhere and she didn't, right? That's, like, the definition of getting stood up, and I don't think it matters what kind of meeting it was going to be, really. And it does still suck," he added, in case that point had gotten missed. He scratched the back of his neck absently. "And I'm here to listen if you want to talk," he added. "That's the least I can do after everything else. But I guess I just don't see how magic is going to help in this situation, you know?"

"Because I'm looking for information from her," Corazon said in that exaggerated tone he used when someone was being particularly thick at him, a problem he seemed to face often. "I want to know if there was a miscommunication somewhere, or if there was maybe some other important business that took precedent and kept her away and now she feels weird about bringing it up, or if she's feeling poorly and doesn't want to draw too much attention to it. I just..." He ran a hand through his hair and some of his impatience melted away into a sort of vulnerability that gave Egbert pause. "I want to know if there's a reason, is all. And if it's something I can fix."

"Oh, buddy," Egbert said again, softer this time. It was starting to get more obvious that this wasn't actually about sailing. "I get it, I really do," he assured Corazon. "But I think you're making this too complicated. I still don't get why you just can't ask her."

"Uh, because I'm not pathetic?" Corazon offered with another roll of his eyes. "I'm not going to go crawling to her if she's not going to come to me." When Egbert didn't accept this as an answer, mostly because he was sure it would probably make sense if he kept chewing at it for a moment but it didn't yet, his voice turned softer. "Look, if I know she's... interested, then I don't mind being the one to broach the subject and say we can... reschedule, or whatever, if something is holding her back. And if I know she's not, then that's fine, obviously, and I'll let it go." He did not entirely sound like that was fine. "But I don't know one way or the other, and the fact that she hasn't said anything kind of suggests that she thinks I do know already, so I can't be the one to bring it up. I can't keep bugging her about... ship things, if she's already said no and I just didn't take the hint. I'm not going to be that guy."

"I see," Egbert said, nodding at this new kinship. "I have problems with that part myself," he admitted with a grin and a sheepish hand on the back of his neck. "Still forget myself from time to time."

Corazon had still been doing that forced casual thing where he was looking anywhere but at Egbert, but this was enough to raise his attention and his eyebrow. "Do you," he said, and there was something just on the edge of sarcasm in his voice.

"Yeah, I know you already know that," Egbert said with a little laugh so Corazon knew he wasn't actually offended by this observation. "I know how it gets, when you've got that thing that you're super passionate about and have devoted your life to, whether it's your god or your seafaring lifestyle or whatever, and sometimes it's hard to remember that you can't convince everyone in the world to love it just as much as you do. And sometimes when they don't, you take it a little personally."

"Right." Corazon dragged the word out slowly, grimly, his face and voice strangely flat. "That's it exactly. I'm glad you understand."

"No problem," Egbert said with another grin. "I do understand more than you lot give me credit for sometimes," he added, just a bit reproachful. "I wouldn't mind that being remembered every so often, especially when I'm trying to help." A hand to his chin, thoughtful now. "But I still don't know how you think I'm going to be able to help in this case," he said. "If you're worried about bothering her on a subject she doesn't want to be bothered about anymore, it's still going to be the same situation no matter who's doing the actual asking. And if I suddenly ask her, 'Hey, what about that meeting you were supposed to have with Corazon?' then she's still going to know it's coming from you, so it's not even going to keep you out of it or keep her from getting mad at you." His brow furrowed as he said that last part; it had just occurred to him that maybe that was the real intent behind all of this, and Corazon was just trying to use him as a buffer against Prudence's inevitable annoyance. Which would be a lot to ask of anyone, even a paladin friend who owed you one.

"Which is where the question of subtlety comes in," Corazon said, back to his 'I can't believe I have to explain this to you' voice as if he'd never left it, as if he'd never had that moment of awkward uncertainty regarding someone he cared about. "And, yes, I am well aware of the incongruity of asking you to be subtle about anything. What I need you to do is ask her what she's been doing and if there's anything keeping her away, and to do it without her knowing that's what you're doing. Just... a couple questions about how she's doing and what she's been up to, that's all, and she'll tell you the truth because she has to and then you can pass it back to me."

Egbert turned this over in his mind, because it almost sounded reasonable enough -- just show a little bit of concern for her, the way Corazon had pretended to do with him -- but not all of the pieces were lining up into the foolproof plan Corazon was selling it as. "She's going to know I'm casting a spell," he reminded Corazon. "And even if it actually affects her it won't force her to talk; it just makes sure that anything she does say is true."

"Yeah, but something always slips out," Corazon said darkly, a shadow passing briefly over his face. He shook his head to clear it of whatever had taken up residence there. "And if she's going to know that you're casting the spell anyway, then just... tell her you're doing it. Say it's practice in case there's a new licensing test or something, or that you have to calibrate it with a willing volunteer."

"I don't think that's a thing," Egbert said, but with some hesitation. He hadn't been the most diligent or attentive student when he'd been learning magic, and now that he was thinking about it, it wasn't like anyone had ever said that it wasn't a thing. Even knowing that this was a story Corazon was inventing to give him an excuse he could still feel the ring of truth to it, the nagging wonder if maybe there had been something that he was supposed to do to maintain his spells. He hardly remembered that he had most of them a lot of the time; if there had been anything fiddly about keeping them up that would have left his head long ago. "But it might be," he had to admit eventually, not able to come up with a clearer answer but vowing to ask someone about it later because he definitely wouldn't forget about it the second this conversation was over. "And even if it's not, it can't hurt to go through the old prayer book from time to time to make sure you still remember all the words, right?"

"Exactly," Corazon said bracingly, seeming cheered to encourage this line of thought. "The brain is a muscle, right? I mean, yours definitely is, anyway. For the rest of us it might be a bit more metaphorical. But the point is that it needs regular exercise, and everyone knows how hard it is to get any exercise in this fast-paced day and age, so I recommend taking advantage of the chance while you have it."

Another nod from Egbert at this new argument, this piece of obvious truth with which he couldn't disagree. It was an obvious conclusion, even if some of the steps in the middle still eluded him. "And you really think that me just checking in on her is going to lead to her telling me about all the stuff she's not even telling you, " he said, because that was the one part of this that was still not entirely clear.

"Well, no," Corazon conceded. "Not that directly, anyway. But after you ask the questions, just let her keep talking for a while. I guarantee you she's going to say more than she means to, and then you can tell me everything that she said and I can pick through it and figure out what it means and what to do next." He had explained all of this with some animation, gesturing and making grand and important facial expressions the way he usually did when he was explaining a plan, but his voice started to trail off near the end, and after he concluded this explanation Egbert could see his shoulders sag. "This is ridiculous, isn't it?" he asked, sounding suddenly defeated.

It was a relief that Corazon had finally realized on his own that this was a situation that called for direct and honest communication, but a relief tempered by sadness and sympathy. He just looked so deflated and dejected that Egbert couldn't help making a little clucking sound and putting a hand on his shoulder, a gesture of camaraderie that Corazon didn't reject this time. "I'm afraid so, buddy," he said. "You really are going to have to--"

"Come along with you and hide somewhere so I can hear what she says for myself," Corazon finished for him, straightening up and pulling out of his brief funk. "Obviously. I don't know why I didn't realize that sooner."

Egbert drew his hand back politely, getting it out of range of Corazon's new burst of enthusiasm. "That's not what I was going to say," he said.

"No, but that's not surprising if I just thought of it myself," Corazon said. His voice was magnanimous now. "Naturally it would take you a little longer to get there. But the point is, I need to be there when the conversation happens so I can properly judge what she's saying and what she isn't saying, and how she's reacting to being asked in the first place. This isn't going to work if all I have to go on is your half-remembered secondhand report of what she told you when you asked her a weird question. It's going to require more subtlety and nuance. And more planning." Corazon stroked his chin, his eyes already going distant with contemplation. "This is going to be a completely new strategy. It might take me a moment."

Now it was Egbert's turn to feel defeated, letting out a quiet, deflating exhale as he accepted that Corazon was committed to this plan that he still didn't entirely understand, and which was sounding less noble and reasonable and more like an overly complicated excuse with each new detail that Corazon added. But if Corazon was committed then he was committed, provided... "And this is going to make things right between us again?"

It took a moment for Corazon to shake himself out of his plotting and understand the question. He made a dismissive gesture. "Well, I can't speak for Prudence--"

"Or to her, apparently," Egbert couldn't resist interjecting.

A glare, brief and more petulant than angry. "But for my part," Corazon pressed on, "if this works out then I'll consider whatever debt there is between us expunged and we can go back to normal."

"Brilliant," Egbert sighed, relieved. Not that he would have refused to help otherwise, but it was a little extra incentive and it did take a load off his mind that meant he was going to be much better equipped to assist. "Well, I already said I'm in and I still am. Just tell me where and when and I'll be there."

"This afternoon," Corazon said, far more quickly than Egbert had expected. "There's only so long a person can be expected to wait when he doesn't even know what he's waiting for ." A cryptic statement delivered with soft intensity, and Egbert was curious about both the comment and his suspicion that there was maybe some element of Corazon not wanting to lose his nerve in there, as well. "I still have to secure the where ," he said, "but as soon as I've done so I'll fetch you to fetch her."

Egbert gave him a thumbs up and a grin. 'Well, you know where you'll find me when you're ready," he said, patting the work table. "Over here working on my other specialty. Hey," he added as an afterthought, the idea striking him suddenly. "If this doesn't work out -- or maybe even if it does -- maybe you can teach me a thing or two about sailing. I'm always happy to learn something new."

Corazon had his back to Egbert, as he was already halfway out the door, but he turned back with an incredulous laugh. "I'm a busy captain, Egbert. I don't have time to be teaching people to do my job."

*

Most people never noticed the way the barrels in the back of the galley butted against each other to form a hidden niche in the corner, and even those who did would most likely assume that a human being couldn't fit into it comfortably, especially not if that human also expected to be able to see out into the rest of the room. But then, most people didn't know about the stealthy and dexterous skill of Corazon de Ballena, master of the obscure and unexpected hiding place, which of course was the point. A slightly disappointing point, of course, because it meant it was a skill he couldn't really show off, but he had reluctantly accepted that tradeoff. He settled himself more securely into the niche, his legs tucked up to his chest and his head leaning against the tiny gap between the barrels that afforded a surprisingly clean view of the galley, and waited.

A small subjective eternity later, when his legs were just starting to feel the discomfort of the cramped space, there were finally footsteps outside the door, one set heavy and shuffling and the other light and sharp. "In here," Egbert said, and the light rose as he opened the door and lit the lamp. "There shouldn't be anyone going in and out this time of day, so we can have a few minutes where we won't get interrupted."

"Well, how long are you expecting this to actually take?" The response was patient, but it was a patience strained, and the voice was the one that had haunted Corazon's every waking moment -- and quite a few of his sleeping ones -- for days, even if he'd been dodging its owner desperately. He shifted against the gap between the barrels, angling his vision towards the door so he could watch Prudence step in. She folded her arms, fingernails tapping on her bicep, as she continued to give Egbert that look that said she was being not entirely terrible as a favor to him and he should appreciate it. "I do have places to be, you know."

From the table, where he was brushing off a few stray crumbs from whoever had occupied it last, Egbert looked up at her in surprise. "Really? On a ship?"

Prudence pursed her lips. "I could have places to be," she said, just a little bit sullen. "You don't know."

The sound that Egbert made in response was vaguely philosophical, an admission, perhaps, that there certainly was plenty that he didn't know. "This shouldn't take all that long, anyway," he said as he ushered her towards the table and pulled out a chair for her. Good; he'd remembered to nudge her towards sitting in the proper place. As long as she stayed on that side of the table Corazon had a clear line of sight from which he could take in everything about her facial expressions and body language, gauging her reaction to the questions Egbert was asking her and just how evasive her answers really were. "The spell has a pretty short duration, and I don't think it's going to take all that many questions to calibrate it so I know it's working properly."

"I still don't think that's a thing," Prudence said, but she settled in and leaned her elbows comfortably on the table. Her look of boredom and impatience was the standard expression that came with dealing with Egbert for any length of time, but it was tempered by curiosity, and probably also by whatever Merilwen had said to her to make her back off from the petty vengeance they'd been exacting on him. She narrowed her eyes. "This isn't some trick to get me to let my guard down so you can test some other spell on me, is it? Trying to sneak in some smiting of evil to get the old atonement up and running again?"

Even with his back to Corazon it was obvious that Egbert was both shocked and hurt by this suggestion. "You're my friend , Prudence. If I'm going to turn you away from your evil ways it's going to be through patience and kindness and leading by example. And pamphlets, of course. In all the time we've known each other, have I ever tried to smite you?"

"No," Prudence admitted, the suspicious look softening and the faintest touch of a smile brushing her lips. "But I don't think you've ever bundled me off into an empty room before, either, so I figure either you have something secret and insidious planned or you're finally trying to put the moves on me."

Corazon managed to choke back most of the sound of shock and outrage that he made in response to that, but it was Egbert's bark of surprised laughter that really saved him from detection. "Not hardly!" Egbert burst out. "Er, with no offense intended, obviously. Of course I love you, but it's more of a 'traveling companion on the road of life' sort of love."

The little pleased look on Prudence's face as she touched her chest was apparently sincere. "Aw," she said softly. "You're pretty all right yourself." Corazon held himself perfectly still behind his barrel and tried not to seethe. Apparently won over, Prudence made that little hissing sigh that said she was giving in while pretending not to give in. "All right, then. What do I have to do?"

"Just relax, really," Egbert said, sliding into the chair across from her. "It's one of those spells that you have to fight off, so just... don't do that. Just let it happen; I'll know when it takes. Then I'll ask you a few questions -- nothing personal, just some basic information to set a baseline and then maybe a couple more complicated ones just to make sure it's working properly -- and you'll answer them truthfully. Or not, I guess, because the spell only stops you from saying anything untrue; it doesn't actually force you to talk. But I hope you'll talk anyway, since otherwise it's not much of a help to me, right?" His grin was visible even from the sliver of his head that Corazon could see. "All right. If you're comfortable, let's get started."

As a powerful and highly trained magic user himself, Corazon could recognize the feel of a spell spreading through the room and taking hold of its occupants. Prudence sat back in her chair again, arms folded and eyes shut tight, and as the spell hit her she twitched with the effort of not resisting it. She opened her eyes again with a shudder and a look of disgust as it passed over her, as if she had forced down some foul-tasting medicine. "Eugh. Honesty ."

"So it worked, then?" Egbert asked, leaning forward eagerly. Corazon found himself leaning forward as well, bracing the barrels to keep his hiding place secure but straining to gather every nuance of the interrogation that was about to take place.

"Yes, obviously it worked," Prudence said, still sounding tense and snappish. "So just ask your questions and let's get this over with."

A happy little bit of flame. "Brilliant!" Egbert reached into his bag and procured what seemed to be the paper that he made his pamphlets out of, poised like he was ready to take notes on the spell's functions. "All right, let's start with the basics. What's your name?"

A raised eyebrow. "Really?"

"I told you; we have to establish a baseline," Egbert explained patiently. "So: What's your name?"

Another little sigh and a roll of her eyes. "Prudence."

"Your full name, please."

"You heard me."

A pause in the scratching of pen on paper, which Corazon had to assume had already become a game of noughts and crosses that Egbert was playing against himself. "What, really?"

"Hermits don't really go in for surnames," Prudence said, her voice going faintly brittle in a way that should have served as a warning. "When your whole thing is not interacting with people, they don't need to know what to call you."

A pause while Egbert digested this. "I guess that makes sense," he said eventually, and the scratching resumed. "Next question: How old are you?"

"Also not a thing that hermits are big on, birthdays," Prudence returned. "Or tracking the passage of time at all, really, except to notice when the seasons change." She leaned back, looking up at the ceiling like it might have the answer. "It must have been some time in the spring, probably, since Cyrus liked to complain that he wouldn't even have been out that day except there was an early thaw. I could be somewhere around thirty, maybe? Just, you know, guessing based on general life stages stuff, and how long I think I've been adventuring, and assuming I age sort of like humans do." She looked back down at Egbert and shrugged, the gesture far more casual than her face. "So, not really an answer, there, either. Want to try for a third?"

There was only silence in response to that for a moment, while Egbert took all of that in and let out a heavy breath. "I had a couple more basic background questions just to establish a few things, yeah," he admitted, "but I think we can skip those. Got a good enough baseline already, probably." He drummed his claws on the table for a fidgety moment, and Corazon felt a little hollow of guilt open up in his stomach. Prudence liked to pretend she wasn't fussed about her origins, but the rest of them tried not to press her.

After a pause, Egbert cleared his throat. "You know, obviously you don't want to talk about any of that stuff right now, but if you ever do , you can always come to me if you want someone to listen. Or if you just want a hug."

Prudence gave him a brief and withering glare, but as soon as she opened her mouth she buried her face in her hands. A groan. "Well, we can tell the spell is working, because I really want to say something scathing about how unlikely that is but I can't."

"Sorry."

An aggressive grunt, most likely replacing the perfunctory "it's fine" that she couldn't actually say. "Just ask your questions, if you're going to."

Egbert sighed. "It feels silly to ask it now," he said. "But... are you mad at me?"

Prudence raised her head and gave him a curious look. "What, because you asked a couple of wrong questions? I'm more annoyed than anything, really, and that's really mostly because you reminded me that there's things that can still get to me and now I'm going to have to be even meaner for a bit until I forget that someone saw me get a little bit vulnerable." Her mouth screwed up in shock at her own too-honest words.

You see? Corazon thought at Egbert, silent but aggressive, as if he could force the words through his skull by sheer force of will. Just let them keep talking and they'll always say too much. It was like he had completely missed that Corazon was speaking from long and painful experience.

"Oh, I didn't mean about that," Egbert said with a shrug that at least had the grace to look a bit embarrassed. "This is something else. I was planning on asking you about it even before we started, actually."

A flush of indignation rose up in Corazon at this proclamation. This was his plan, and Egbert had no business riding his coattails on it like this. Stick to the script , he thought fiercely, glaring daggers at the back of Egbert's head. There was only so much time that could be extracted from this spell, and this was not how he had intended for Egbert to spend it.

"And is that the reason for this whole thing, by any chance?" Prudence asked, sounding weary and wary. "You have to tell me if it is. Or I'm guessing you do, anyway."

"Well, I--" There was a pause while Egbert seemed to think that over. "I guess I do, actually." He chuckled sheepishly, one hand on the back of his neck. "I was never any good at resisting this spell, really. But no, that's not what's happening here. I just... happened to think that, hey, I was going to have the chance to ask, so I might as well." He sighed, sending up a little curl of dark smoke. "Maybe I'm being silly asking if you're mad at me, since that seems pretty obvious, even if it feels like maybe you've been trying to be nicer to me lately. So I guess what I really want to know is, why are you mad at me? What did I do, and what can I do to fix it?"

Prudence had been silent and mostly still throughout this little speech, frozen by some sort of surprise or confusion, but as he gave her a beseeching look her eyes darted away from his, her bottom lip twisting between her teeth in an unprecedented display of what seemed to be remorse. "Right. That." Prudence sucked in her breath, steeling herself and seeming to choose her words, and Corazon prayed she would choose them carefully. There were some lines that even Egbert could read between. "Yes," she finally said. "I am mad at you, and I'm trying not to be, because it's not actually your fault and you didn't actually do anything... malicious." Definitely choosing her words carefully, then, and some of the nerves in Corazon's stomach unknotted. He could hear her foot tapping in agitation, her tail probably swishing in a counterpoint to it as she tried to dance around the edges of the truth, knowing that that chasm of honesty was yawning before her and waiting to swallow her whole. "There were other things going on. Still are. And you complicated some things just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but you didn't have any way of knowing that and you can't really be blamed for it, and..." She trailed off in self-preservation before pulling herself back together to rephrase herself. "I'm totally justified in being annoyed about the whole thing," she started again. "But not in taking it out on you the way I have been. And I'm sorry." And she really was, that was the shocking thing evident in the sudden softness of her eyes and the way her lips pinched together. Those eyes went hard again in another heartbeat, though, widening in shock at herself as her lips pulled back over her teeth. " Damn it, Egbert!" she cried out, throwing her hands up and looking like she was resisting the urge to hide behind them again. "You cannot tell anyone I'm capable of feeling guilt!"

"Don't worry about it," Egbert said, which wasn't any kind of reassurance, but then again he seemed to be hardly paying any attention to that part of the conversation. "So the two of us are good, then?" he asked a little too eagerly, and Corazon half expected his tail to start wagging. "I mean, there's no bad blood between us, and I haven't done anything that I need to fix?"

Prudence sighed and rolled her eyes. "Yes, we're good," she said, probably not sounding as impatient as she wanted to. Theoretically she should have been allowed to be as sardonic as she wanted under the spell as long as she didn't say anything literally untrue, but it seemed like maybe the spirit and the letter of the law were getting a little bit intertwined. "I mean, as good as we ever are," she added, clearly noticing the tone herself. A tiny breath of what might have been exasperated laughter escaped her. "Yes, all right, fine ," she said, eyes tilted towards the ceiling as if she was talking half to herself and half to some unseen observer. Or rather, some other unseen observer. "Maybe sometimes it's more productive to say things out loud. Don't ask," she added firmly and grimly at Egbert's bewildered expression.

"Okay," he agreed with a shrug, but then he paused with his mouth open. "Or, do you mean don't ask about that in particular, or don't ask anything else in general? Because if you want to stop with the spell then I'll respect that, but I haven't asked everything I was supposed to yet, so if you wouldn't mind keeping on with it..."

"No, you can keep going," Prudence said with a little hiss that said this wasn't technically a lie but that it was also maybe not the most sincere encouragement she'd ever given anyone, and then her eyes narrowed suddenly. "Wait," she said slowly. "What do you mean by everything you were supposed to ask?"

Corazon didn't have to see the full of Egbert's face to know that he'd been caught off guard by this, and was probably about to be even more so. "Well..." he started, slow and careful and a little too obviously slow and careful. "I had-- well, not exactly a list , really, but there were sort of a few questions that I had prepared for once we got the little things out of the way. But the 'little things' ended up being not as little as I thought they were going to be -- sorry -- so we really can just stop here and call the experiment done, if you'd rather."

Prudence had been comfortably slouched in her chair for most of the conversation thus far, first in her usual boredom and then in an attempt to mimic her usual boredom after he'd touched a nerve, but now her interest was piqued. She leaned forward across the table again, resting her elbows on it and favoring Egbert with a look that was definitely dangerous and ominous but also sort of devastating at the same time, and even at his current distance Corazon didn't know whether he wanted to recoil back from her or lean in closer. "No," she said with firm fascination, resting her chin on one hand. "Now you've got me curious about where this is going. The rules of the spell are still the same, right? I can't lie, but I don't actually have to answer anything?"

"Right, but--"

"Then ask." She made it sound so innocent, so reasonable. "Tell me what you want to know and I'll make my own guesses about why you want to know it. And if you're going to get an answer."

Corazon realized he was actually holding his breath. This whole operation was about to go sideways unless Egbert could come up with the exact right thing to say without running into the spell's restrictions, and given that he, Corazon, couldn't imagine what the proper answer would be there was no hope for Egbert save for some kind of divine intervention. All of his spells and all of his powerful magics, and in that moment he would have traded all of them, even Grease, for some kind of Create Giant Magical Distraction That Makes Everyone Forget This Conversation Was Ever Happening spell. Come on, Egbert. Your weird sky cow chose you for a reason, apparently, and now's your chance to prove you were the right choice. Just use all that crazy paladin magic to do something good .

Whether or not his mental energy was doing any good, Egbert did seem to still be trying to keep everything calm and level. "I never meant to dig into anything that personal," he insisted. "I just meant to ask you some general checking-in sort of things. To see how you've been lately, you know. What you're up to."

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Oh, so this is an intervention, then?"

"It's not an intervention," Egbert insisted, sounding wounded again. "I already told you, this isn't about trying to smite you or change you or anything like that, and it's not like I think an intervention would do you any good, anyway. And besides, you need more people for a proper intervention."

The thin line of Prudence's lips said that she didn't entirely believe him, but she exhaled a conceding sigh nevertheless. "Fine," she said tersely. "I've been fine. Got some cabin fever, got some generalized concerns about the future, got some deep yearning that I don't want to put a name to, but it's all at manageable levels. I'm fine."

Surely even Egbert couldn't let that last one pass by without comment or question, but that seemed to be exactly what Egbert was doing. "Well, that's... is it good?" He scratched the back of his neck again, looking bewildered as he tried to figure out what he was supposed to do with this statement. "As long as you're all right, I guess, although that offer to talk some time if you want is still out there." There was no response to that, not even sarcastic or beleaguered, and he seemed to take this as his opening to drive home towards what was supposed to be the point in the first place, now that it was clearly the worst possible time. "So there's nothing weighing on you, then?" he asked. "Nothing keeping you occupied of an evening, or maybe preventing you from doing other things that you might have intended or wanted to do?"

It was sort of amazing how terrible a segue it was, and Corazon was immediately immolated by a wave of regret that he had ever brought Egbert into this plan. He really did shrink back this time, as far as he could without losing his view of the room, and he felt like his body was trying to sink into the boards to escape. Prudence took a deep breath and brought her hands up to her head again. Not hiding behind them this time, but pressing her fingertips to her forehead and massaging her temples. Her eyes closed wearily. "Did Corazon put you up to this." A question, technically, but one asked by someone who already knew the answer. So this was it, then, the moment when it was all going to come crashing down, no matter how valiant an effort Egbert might put up against it.

"Yeah, he did," Egbert said without a moment's hesitation, and Corazon could hear every one of his teeth bared in his giant dopey grin, the cheerful look of a prankster having his joke rumbled. "He said he didn't want to bother you unless you were open to being bothered, more or less, and since he couldn't ask you without bothering you either way..." He trailed off. "Well, it made sense when he explained it, anyway, and I figured as long as I understood my part we'd be fine."

A slow nod at this confirmation. "So I'm guessing he's here somewhere, right?"

"I assume he is, yeah," Egbert said, looking around the room curiously like it was the first time he'd considered the prospect. "That was the plan, anyway. But he was already hiding before we came in, and I wouldn't know where to start looking for him." He craned his neck to eye the beams of the low ceiling, as if Corazon could have squeezed up between them without anyone noticing.

Another sigh from Prudence. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again they flashed with an otherworldly glow. They scanned the galley with slow and methodical scrutiny, and when they landed on the corner Corazon was tucked into they focused in on him with a terrifying certainty. She made eye contact with him like that magical glare could see right through the little gap in the barrels, or even through the barrels themselves, an impression only made stronger when she rose from the table and strode towards him with swift purpose. Corazon drew even further back now, his entire body pressed against the bulkhead in as small a space as he could possibly take up, and tried not to breathe.

From the sound of her footsteps Prudence was moving across the small room at speed, but her horns and then her head cresting over the lip of the barrel seemed as slow and inexorable as the rising sun. Another blink of those glowing eyes and then they were hers again, citrine and brilliant and a much more familiar kind of otherworldly, looking down at him with a sort of tightness that might or might not have been anger. "Corazon."

Thoroughly cornered and with no other bolt-hole to slip away to, Corazon went for the rogue's next best option. "Prudence," he returned with a nod, relaxing his body out of the tense attempt to hide and doing his best to lounge in the small space afforded to him, with all that cool confidence that said he was meant to be exactly where he was. He gave her his most devastating smile, the one that was designed to make hearts flutter and questions evaporate. The tension in Prudence's face, like she wasn't sure what emotion she was feeling, suggested that it wasn't working. He cleared his throat, shifting a little less comfortably. "What brings you back here?"

She made an eldritch sort of gesture with one hand, fingers curled like talons and wreathed with a breath of darkness. "Detect Magic," she said. "I could pick you out anywhere."

It was the kind of thing that wouldn't have sounded out of place being said in a sexy sort of growl, and even if she didn't actually say it that way it still sent a little flip through Corazon's stomach. "Good to know," he stammered.

"Yeah." Prudence folded her arms over the top of the nearest barrel, her fingernails drumming on the wood, and she gestured with her head towards the rest of the room. "You want to come out here and join the conversation?"

It was an effort not to sink back into the wall again. "Not really, no."

She leaned in closer with a smile that wasn't. "Would you like me to rephrase that?"

With his best efforts to look cool and unconcerned thusly thwarted, Corazon shot her a glare. "All right, " he grumbled, waving her away. "Just give me a little room."

She backed up, her head disappearing to the other side of the barrel and mercifully obscuring her view of his awkward scramble to his feet in the cramped space. He brushed himself off, trying to affect his usual coolness as he gave a little hop onto and over the nearest barrel, taking a seat on it like it was what he had planned all along. "Much better," he said. "Now. What were we talking about?"

Prudence was still standing, and that look on her face hadn't gotten any clearer. She closed her eyes and shook her head. "What are you even doing ," she groaned, her voice rising to a strange sort of growl at the end as her emotions tried to keep up with the situation.

This time he did shrink back from her just a little bit, although he camouflaged it by folding his legs up on the barrel. He still didn't know yet if she was angry, and he was starting to think that she didn't know if she was angry just yet, and it was, as always, hard to tell what might tip her in the wrong direction. "I mean, Egbert explained it already, really, and you know he told you the truth. Just... trying to check in with you with a minimal amount of bothering. Or a minimal amount of bothering you could trace back to me, anyway. Trying to avoid-- well, not this exactly, obviously, but more or less."

"Trying to avoid talking to me, you mean," Prudence returned. She made it into a scoff, sort of, but there was a little glimmer of hurt underneath it that she couldn't entirely conceal.

While resisting the temptation to suggest that she was one to talk -- an impulse complicated by that undertone -- Corazon made a sort of hedging noise. "More like trying to figure out if it was w--" He stopped, because there was no way to finish that sentence properly. Whether it was worth it to talk to her was not actually the question here; normally he would take any chance he could get to do so. "Trying to work out what we would be talking about," he tried again, casting a wary eye towards Egbert and being aware that he needed to choose his words carefully. "Whether the... conversation we were having previously was still ongoing, or if I should consider it settled." Whether there was still hope or if he should just get used to that hollow ache in the center of his chest whenever he looked at her, trying to close it off until it eventually scabbed over. He dipped his head and nipped at his cuticles, a habit that he had always despised but which was sometimes necessary for nail health in inconvenient circumstances and for not having to look at someone for a moment.

"Why couldn't you just ask me directly?"

"Insecurity and fear of rejection, mostly," Corazon mumbled, still not actually looking at her. "You don't have to deal with hearing a no if you never actually ask the question." A pause while the raw hurt of that sunk in, and then a realization. "Dammit, Egbert!"

"Zone of Truth, buddy." Egbert was turned around to face him now, to witness this little drama that he had indirectly and inadvertently caused after being directly and deliberately dragged into it, and his face wasn't entirely unapologetic. "It's right there in the name."

"Yes, but this wasn't part of the plan," Corazon groused, because griping at Egbert was always easier than doing almost anything else.

"The plan," repeated Prudence. "The plan to do what? To do literally anything other than talk to me like an adult? To hope I wouldn't notice being interrogated? What did you think was going to happen here, exactly?"

"I feel like it should be obvious now that I wasn't thinking at all," Corazon returned, a little sulkily as he realized for himself just how true that was. "I was just doing something stupid and hoping for the best, like we always do, because doing nothing was the worst possible thing, and so I picked the stupid option that looked like it had the least risk of making me look stupid where you could actually see it. Not that that worked, clearly."

"You make yourself look stupid where I can see it on a regular basis." Prudence's voice was sharp with frustration and impatience, but Corazon was sure he wasn't imagining the little touch of affection running under it, as there so often seemed to be when she was making fun of him. "It's never affected my opinion of you before."

Definitely a little bit of affection there. "Yeah, okay, but that's never..." He grasped for words, trying to find the ones the spell would let him say while not saying too much. "This is different," he finally said, pointlessly vague enough to be true.

"Yeah. It is." Prudence's voice was brittle and biting now, like he wasn't the only one being strangled by all the things that he didn't know how to say. "And this whole... whatever it is that's going on here? It's not helping."

"Yes, fine, obviously it's not helping now, " Corazon returned, starting to bristle despite his best efforts, or at least the best efforts he could muster when backed into an emotional corner and scrambling. "But at least I'm trying something. "

"You're trying my patience, mostly," Prudence shot back. "If you were trying to work out whether I was mad at you, I wasn't at the time but I'm starting to be. And you dragged Egbert into it, of all people? This is personal if it's anything at all, and you decided he needed to know about it?"

Corazon's eyes went wide and he tried to shake his head subtly, tossing it imperceptibly -- too imperceptibly, it seemed-- in Egbert's direction, trying to convey to her that he hadn't actually revealed as much as she seemed to think and that she was the one who was at risk of saying too much now. Her eyes narrowed, but not in a way that suggested she understood.

"It's all right," Egbert cut in, holding up a reassuring hand and making Prudence whirl around to face him with eyes even wider than Corazon's had been.  "Corazon explained it all, about you wanting to learn to sail but not wanting anyone else to know about it, and how he didn't know if you had maybe changed your mind and he didn't want to bother you if you had. And I don't totally get it, because I thought learning new things was supposed to be a good thing, but I won't tell anyone else if you don't want me to. And I won't say anything further myself, either."

Prudence was silent for a long moment, long enough for Corazon to slowly unfold his legs and dismount from the barrel, affording him a little more room to maneuver away if it became necessary. "Right," she finally said, her voice a little too high and a little too bright. "Right, that's just what he told you." She turned to look at Corazon over her shoulder, pinning him in place from his attempt at a strategic inching towards the door, but the strange mix of emotions in her face felt like it was starting to tilt further towards fondness. "That is..." She shook her head. "That is just so... you ."

It was the kind of comment to which it seemed there was no safe answer, at least not while she was being so hard to read, and Corazon hazarded a shrug. "It's me."

A hiss of a sigh as Prudence ran her hands down her face and leaned back against the table. "Fine," she said, the words crisp and sharp and completely out of any kind of patience. "You want to know what I've been up to in the evenings? I'll tell you. I've been reading up on eldritch lore and trying to hone my magic further, and also reading a lot of trashy adventure stories because that's what this ship is stocked with for some reason ."

"Only a few of those are mine," Corazon mumbled in halfhearted protest.

Prudence ignored this, on a roll as she apparently was. "I've been sorting through all my bags and doing a deep clean to figure out what I actually have and how much of it really sparks joy, and I've been fixing all the little broken bits that get shoved to the bottom of the bag and you swear you're going to fix them eventually but you always forget. I've been improving my sewing, actually, because it can be kind of meditative sometimes and I don't always entirely trust Dob with my clothes, even with Mending. I've been teaching Frisky and The Darkness a few new tricks, and working on their company manners in case we meet an actual warlock who's going to appreciate them as they are. I've been going up onto the deck and watching the sea at night, and feeling it call to me like it's missed me, and I've been talking to Cthulhu when he's not too busy and I don't feel weird about not having all that much to say. And every second, literally every single second that I'm not actively distracting myself from it, I've been thinking about you ."

The absolute thunder of this declaration, delivered at a moderate shout, still seemed to echo like that eldritch voice that Prudence normally saved for calling up the awesome power of the depths or freaking out the tourists, and it launched a resonance in Corazon's chest that he couldn't actually speak or think around until it died down a little. "Oh yeah?" he finally managed, the attempt to sound casual and conversational strangled by the sudden tightness in his throat that shot his voice up an octave.

A fierce and explosive scoff, accompanied by a sneering roll of her eyes that would have filled any teenager with envy and served as proof positive that she was having some kind of feelings and wasn't happy about it. "Spell wouldn't let me say it if it wasn't true," she said, and all of that earlier ferocity had sunk down into something petty and peevish. Her hand went up towards her collar like she was going to fidget with it as she tended to do, and then she closed her fingers into a fist and hissed in frustration. "I can't even fix my bloody jewelry without thinking about you."

"Oh yeah?" It was maybe a little less strangled this time, but only because it was so much softer. The memory she had called up was one that had been echoing in his own head with startling clarity on a regular basis. The heat radiating off of her, the brush of feathers and hair against his fingertips, the catch in her breath felt more than heard. Her eyes wide and bright, utterly ensnared by him and thoroughly willing to be ensnared. If they hadn't been interrupted... 

Asking himself how that sentence would have ended -- and answering himself with varying degrees of speculation, optimism, and detail -- had occupied most of Corazon's waking hours for the past several days, and quite a few of the sleeping ones, as well. He ran a hand over his hair, which he hadn't been able to do lately without thinking about her. It had been a sort of welcome haunting, and until she had stood him up -- he really hated to admit it, but Egbert had chosen exactly the right word -- he had assumed, or hoped, or maybe just devoutly wished, that she was just as haunted. "Then why didn't you..." The tightness in his throat felt like something else now, less about the images that had been conjured up and more about finally feeling the hurt of it. "Why didn't you... do something about it?"

"I don't know!" The barely suppressed bits of emotion that had been in Prudence's voice previously were certainly not suppressed anymore. It was high and hoarse, with that little crack in it that she got when there were feelings and she didn't like having them. "I tried! All that stuff about the reading and sewing and communing, that's all true, but it's not saying anything about all the time I spent standing outside your door and realizing I couldn't bring myself to knock. I tried, " she repeated, quieter now and sounding almost as hurt as he felt, "but I couldn't do it. It was like... being scared, but that doesn't make any sense."

"Doesn't it?" His heart wasn't beating faster , exactly, but he felt very aware of each individual beat. She had been there. She had been right bloody there, exactly where he'd been hoping to find her, not ignoring or rejecting his invitation but actually wanting to be there, with him, and just having that confirmed was enough to make him want to do a bit of excited shouting and buying everyone drinks. But that simple joy of being wanted was tempered by the fact that he hadn't known. Because she hadn't taken that last step that could have changed everything and saved everyone a great deal of trouble. And he didn't even get to be indignant about it, not while they were both tangled in a truth spell that he'd weaseled out of an unwitting third party just because he couldn't screw up the courage to talk to her like a normal person.

"Look, I'm not saying for sure that it wasn't fear," Prudence said, oblivious to his inner turmoil. A little twisting of her hands, a flick of her tail as she didn't entirely look at him. "At the moment I can't say for sure that it wasn't fear, if you get me. You get nerves, and sometimes it's the bad kind of nerves and sometimes it's just anticipation and you can't always tell the difference. And maybe the not being able to tell is sort of the problem, because the whole..." She tried to gesture herself into coherence and failed, finally throwing her hands out before dropping them to her sides. "I didn't open the door because I didn't know what was going to be on the other side. And that's not normally a problem for me, but this time it was."

Corazon huffed out a sigh, still a bit hurt and now also confused and reproachful. "Me. I was on the other side of the door. Waiting for you."

Prudence rolled her eyes. "Yes, and that was the problem. Because normally when I don't know what I'm getting into I know I can at least eldritch blast my way out of it if things go horribly wrong, and this time that wasn't an option because I very rarely actually want to eldritch blast you." She paused, a little crinkle forming around her eyes and nose that might have been the start of a smile. "Not never. But very rarely."

It was one of those Prudence threats that sounded so dangerous but felt so fond, especially with that look to accompany it, and he almost returned that almost-smile. "I thought we both knew--" he started, the spell cutting him off as he had to remind himself that he hadn't been any more confident about what was going to happen when that door opened than she apparently had been. "Well, I thought we'd sort of... established a starting point, anyway."

Prudence let out a helpless bark of laughter, shaking her head at him, or possibly just at herself. "Hell of a starting point," she said. "Knowing where to meet but with only a vague kind of time frame for when, and with no-- ugh, really ? Not even hyperbole?" She coughed, shaking off the choking effects of the spell. " Fine . With very definitely some idea of what the conversation was going to be about, or at least really awkwardly dancing around and trying to pretend it wasn't about. If there was any conversation at all, and if we didn't just--" This time the sudden cutting off of her words was clearly a conscious decision, her lips pressing together firmly and her skin flushing just enough for him to notice. "The exact tone of the conversation was still up in the air, let's say. I stood out there that first night and half convinced myself that you really meant it when you said you had important business and you didn't want to be interrupted, and even when I wasn't talking myself into circles I didn't know whether to expect a serious discussion, or a moonlit stroll on the deck, or... I don't know. Mood lighting and a bottle of wine."

"That one," Corazon said before he could stop himself. "It was that one exactly." Now it was his turn to drag his hands down his face, fully aware of just how awkward and pathetic that sounded when it had seemed like the cool winning strategy at the time. He groaned quietly. "Dammit."

That look that was almost a smile came back, shy and fleeting. "Good to know, I guess," she said. "Don't know if it helps with the whole... thing, but good to know."

"I was just trying to..." Corazon waved a hand vaguely. "Look, I didn't know either, okay? I didn't know what you were expecting, or what you wanted, and it felt like the safest option. Like... yeah, I had some definite... thoughts on where this is hopefully going, but I also wasn't going to get ahead of myself? Because if you weren't totally... I wasn't going to push, is all. We could have just talked."

Another quietly frustrated sound. "That was the part I was worried about!"

Corazon had been starting to creep towards her a bit, feeling a little more confident about how this whole thing was going now that they were starting to talk about it, but now he took a step back. "Or if you didn't want to talk..."

"No, I wanted to talk," Prudence said, with a sigh like the entire concept disgusted her. "Because you have to, right, when you want to... actually have something with someone? I just knew I was going to be really bad at it." She leaned back on the table again, folding her arms and not totally looking at him. "I know how to do the whole talking thing when it starts with, like, 'hey, are you busy tonight, and if not do you want to be,' but not when there's candles and wine and... feelings. " She said the last word not with her usual disgust, but with a little shiver of discomfort. "I don't even remember the last time there were candles and wine and feelings. If there ever were before."

Corazon scratched at the back of his neck sheepishly. "Yeah... it's been a pretty long time for me, too," he admitted. "And even longer since it was successful, if I'm being honest. Which I am, unfortunately." He didn't even bother cursing at saying too much this time. Yeah, he knew in theory that the spell didn't actually compel you to keep talking, but it was amazing how it made it so much easier for things to just... slip out. A problem that wasn't affecting him alone, he realized, as the hopeful little flutter that had started in his chest finally attracted his conscious attention and flagged him to what she had actually said. "So... if you know how to talk to people when you're just looking for a one-off, and this time you didn't know what to say, then... I mean... Do you want..."

"I want you, " Prudence said, something that she'd said a lot in various fantasies of Corazon's, but rarely with this kind of quiet fervor, like she was trying very hard to make him understand and believe her. "And, yes, let's get the obvious out of the way, partly I mean that I want you, with all the sexy implications of that intact. How could I not; you're the second-hottest person I know."

The rising chorus of joy and smugness that had been building in Corazon's chest at the first half of that statement faltered. "Sorry, what do you mean, second-hottest? "

This also stopped Prudence's momentum -- not to mention her unexpected earnestness -- in its tracks and she paused to glare at him for this derailment before gesturing towards herself. "Obviously."

Corazon's eyes widened a little as he leaned back, taking in this display of the kind of fearless and unbridled confidence that he could only feign. "Oh, damn. Even under Zone of Truth, huh?"

She raised an eyebrow. "You going to try to argue?"

"I literally can't," he admitted, and it almost -- almost -- didn't sting.

She let out a little snort, smug and annoyed, but he thought he could see that little crinkle again, that barely hidden smile at his quick willingness to agree with her. The look faded quickly, though, and she sucked at her bottom lip again. "So that's the easy part, just going, 'hey, I'm hot and you're hot and we should do something about it,' and gods if we didn't have this whole truth thing going on I'd probably say that you're lucky you're hot because that's all you've got going for you, but I'd only be saying it to bust your ego and keep up the whole 'I don't care' thing. And I would regret it, because I am always down to bust your ego but I also do care about you, and that is bloody terrifying. "

" Right?! " The response came out of Corazon in such a sudden and surprising burst of relief that he didn't have any room to spare to object to the bit about enjoying busting his ego. "It's like, you've got feelings, and everyone always talks about how great that's supposed to be, but actually a lot of the time it's just nerves and stress, and there's so much going on in your head that it's making your stomach go all funny, and you're trying to just go on with your day but you just can't stop thinking about someone and wondering what they're thinking about you--"

"Or if they're thinking about you at all ," Prudence cut in. She was still only a little bit looking at him, but she'd stepped away from her almost petulant lean on the table and she rolled her eyes a little, as if they were having a perfectly normal conversation about some minor inconvenience they were both looking forward to blowing out of proportion.

"And even when you know they are, because you see them every day and you keep almost looking at each other, that doesn't mean you know what they mean by the looking," Corazon continued, throwing himself wholeheartedly into a good rant while still carefully keeping his attention on her. "And what are you supposed to do, actually say something about it?"

A harsh scoff. "And take that kind of risk? That's for people way less insecure than you." A pause, and then that irritated and weary look that they were both getting familiar with at the realization of having said too much. "That wasn't just directed at you, and I didn't actually mean to say 'insecure' there because what I actually wanted was something a little more sarcastic, but apparently it still stands."

Corazon couldn't even pretend to dissemble about that, not when that exact confession had been his accidental opening into this conversation. "And even if you know it's insecurity you tell yourself you're just being reasonably cautious, right, and maybe you're not even totally wrong about that because you should be cautious when it's something important."

"And you want it to be important," Prudence said, coming in on his heels again to say the thing that he'd been stumbling towards. She took a careful step towards him. "Which is the terrifying part. Because you've been cautious for so long, and you've kept everything locked away because you know the risks, and it's..." She took a deep breath in, but quickly, not letting herself pause for too long. "It's hard to stop doing that. Harder than letting yourself take other risks. Because if you take a risk with money and you lose it you can always get more somewhere, and if you pull a stunt that gets you injured there's always someone who can heal you, but if you..." She turned her head down and squeezed her eyes shut like a slow wince from an old ache before looking up at him again, and when she spoke her voice was so soft he could barely hear her. "If you lose part of yourself to someone who doesn't want it, or if you give it to someone who won't handle it with the proper care..."

The sheer nearness and vulnerability of this, along with the resonance it started up in Corazon's chest, made his mouth go dry, his shoulders trying to slink back from her even as his hand raised like he might reach it out to her. "That's not so easy to recover from," he finished for her, equally quiet.

The barest nod, her lips pressed into a thin line. "So you really have to be convinced that it's worth it," she said. She took another of those bracing breaths, the glossy black feathers of her mantle catching the light as her chest rose and fell. "And you have to really trust someone, and really want to trust them, enough to make you feel like it's a safe bet." Another step closer, like she was ready to lean into that touch he'd almost offered, and gods the cautious, frightened hope in her eyes made him take a bracing breath himself, and not care if she saw it. Her own hand came up, mirroring the movement he'd faltered in a moment before, and then she shifted her gaze away again with a laugh that was high and nervous and entirely unlike her, and he thought of what she'd said about good nerves and bad nerves and how hard it was to tell the difference between the two. "Damn it," she murmured. "Why is it so much easier to trust someone with your life than with..." The rest of the sentence seemed to catch in her throat, far too dangerous to say aloud no matter how many spells she was under.

That hand was still raised up near her shoulder, the fingers curled into a loose fist now that she seemed at a loss for what to do with them, and Corazon imagined her standing like that outside his door, knuckles raised to knock but never getting that far, a door either one of them could have opened but didn't. It would be so easy to reach out and fold his fingers around hers, and yet he wasn't doing that, either, too worried that she would startle back from the touch even after everything that had already been said or alluded to, or that his hands would shake enough that she would feel it. "And you want to trust me with..."

"With more than I already do," Prudence said, a little louder and firmer than she had been. A small flash of white at her mouth, fangs worrying her lower lip as she seemed to concentrate very hard on something before coming to a decision, and then her fingertips brushed the back of his hand. "And what I already trust you with is a hell of a lot," she added. "Just in case that wasn't clear."

It was the first time Prudence had touched him since the museum, and Corazon's heart marked the occasion by jumping into his throat with a hammering that must have been audible. When the touch lingered he leaned into it, turning his hand around so he could take hold of hers. There was a little squeeze back. "Sort of clear," he admitted. It was a risk, and it was probably too bold, but he curled his other hand around hers as well, pulling it closer to his chest. "Mostly from the sad drunk bits, but yeah."

She didn't pull away, but there was a little flinch. "I don't only trust you when I'm sad and drunk, though," she said. "And I don't only... feel things about you when I'm sad and drunk, either. It's just easier to say it when I am. And this is... it's not the same, because this doesn't actually make it easier, but I'm still here and I'm still talking even though I don't actually have to because it's that... push, where you can't pretend later that you didn't mean it but you can pretend it's not your fault you said it in the first place. And I kind of hate needing it, but... I do need it, as long as I don't know what's going to come of saying it."

Corazon had to take a hand away from hers to press it into his forehead, closing his eyes at understanding that all too well. "That's... yeah. I get that. Obviously. Hence..." A silent gesture of all of this. When he managed to look back at Prudence there was a touch of wry sympathy in her eyes, and he tried to offer his usual flippant smile. "Does it at least help to know it's not just you?"

She pinched her lips together, and he didn't know if she was annoyed at the question or at her answer. "Maybe? I don't know." Her eyes darted away, seeming to trace the barrels behind him, and the hand he wasn't holding folded around her body in a defensive or uncertain gesture. (The hand that he was holding was making delicate little movements against his, her fingers drumming lightly against his skin and her thumb rubbing soft lines across his wrist. It risked being very distracting, especially with how much he wanted to be distracted by it.) "I mean, sure, maybe I get to be marginally less embarrassed about not being any good at this because you aren't, either, but at least one of us is going to have to start getting better at it if we want anything to come of this."

He grinned again, and this time it came a little more naturally and felt a little more comfortable on his face. "Goodness, then it's a good thing someone decided we needed a Zone Of Truth spell, isn't it?" The look she gave him in return was just annoyed enough while still being surprisingly tender, and he let out a little huff like a sigh and a laugh all at once, helpless and resigned. "And since this is my fault..." He said it slowly, wearily. He was not, no matter what the rest of the world thought of him, entirely without self-awareness. Sometimes he was so aware of himself that he had to hide from the truth of it, but obviously that wasn't an option now. "It's karma or justice or something, I guess, that I have to be the one to actually say all the things we're not saying. Right?" Prudence didn't say anything in response, but she was looking at him like she didn't dare turn away lest she miss something important, and in his careful but desperate grasp her hand was shaking. He squeezed it gently, silently asking if she was still here with him, and she squeezed back just enough to assure him that she was. He took a deep breath. "The thing is," he started, and it was as far as he got before he felt like his throat was closing up, all of his usual effortless eloquence strangled by the weight of every exciting and terrifying thing that wanted to burst out of his heart now that he couldn't tuck it away any longer. Ugh. Fine, then. If his heart was going to be in his throat, then it could do the talking for him. He closed his eyes for just a moment, and then he let go. "The truth of it, the thing I have been trying and failing to say for so long, is that I adore you, Prudence. You're amazing and wonderful and everything I didn't know I wanted before I met you, and every part of my life has been improved by having you in it. I just want to be with you, in any way that you'll have me -- in every way that you'll have me -- and if you feel the same way I think we could make a proper go of it and have something amazing. And if we did..." A warning bell was going off in the back of his head, but there was no stopping now. "I know I could fall in love with you. Easily."

Prudence had listened to all of this, soft and patient and not entirely concealing her nerves, but now she was wide-eyed and silent, her hand going slack in his grip. Too much. He had said way too much, and even if he could be relieved that she wasn't immediately pulling away from him his entire body tensed in a silent plea for her to say something, anything .

From somewhere behind her there was a quiet voice. "Oh, damn ."

The vague uncertainty in Prudence's expression snapped into focus, all the blood rushing from her face the way Corazon could feel his doing. It was just like last time he'd held her this close, and for the same reason. She spun around, finally tugging her hand away from his, and he stepped to the side to better see around her to the latest interruption.

Egbert was sitting backwards on the bench now to watch them with his full attention, leaning forward in rapt concentration with his elbows on his knees. All that was missing was the bowl of popcorn. He straightened when he realized their attention was fully on him now. "Sorry," he said with that broad and apologetic grin. "Didn't mean to interrupt. Don't mind me."

Anger and frustration bubbled over in Corazon, and focusing on that was better than focusing on the sinking, helpless fear that Prudence's continued silence was raising in him. "Egbert!" It came out as an impatient accusation, at least, and not the despairing wail a large portion of his heart wanted it to be. "Why are you still here?"

It was an inane question, really, but Egbert still accepted it gamely. "Didn't occur to me to leave," he said plainly, without a hint of remorse or concern. "And then it sort of did, but by then I was invested. Did not see that last bit coming, let me tell you!" This exclamation was met with cold and fuming silence, and it finally seemed to sink in for him. "But it should definitely be occurring to me to leave now, shouldn't it?"

"YES IT VERY MUCH SHOULD," Corazon exploded, striding forward. Egbert was already starting to stand by the time Corazon neared him, but Corazon still caught him by the collar and made as if to drag him to his feet, so filled with pent-up everything that he half imagined he would have been able to do it. As it was, he wasted no time in herding Egbert towards the door, genuinely agitated and deeply embarrassed by the whole thing but also grateful for the opportunity to not look at Prudence for a moment. "This is no longer your concern," he said at a lower and more urgent volume, the words fighting through gritted teeth. "And it should be obvious but then again it's you, so I should probably say very explicitly that nobody else needs to know about this."

"'Course not," Egbert said, surprisingly reassuring for all of his prior obliviousness to the severity of the situation. "Sanctity of the confessional and all. Not that this really qualifies, but it's close enough, really. Only..." They were out in the hall by now, Corazon's ire having swept the door open without a pause in their stride, and a bit of concern finally touched Egbert's brow. "We are even now, right? Like you said? It sounds like things are still pretty complicated in there, but I did do what you asked."

Corazon pressed his lips together and got a firmer hold on the voice in his head that just wanted to scream for a bit, silently reminding himself that none of the current situation was actually Egbert's fault and he couldn't really try to pretend it was. (The spell, as far as he could tell, didn't actually prevent you from lying to yourself in your own head, but damned if it didn't make you think twice about doing so.) "As much as we're going to be, probably," he said, which was no kind of answer at all but hopefully Egbert wouldn't notice that. "I think we can safely say that I'm not going to be demanding any further favors from you along these lines, at least," he added, not entirely able to keep the grimness out of his voice.

Egbert entirely missed the nuance of that, to no one's surprise, and the slightly worried grin he'd had broke into his usual wide and sunny one. "Oh, brilliant," he said sincerely. "Glad I could help. And..." He craned his head over Corazon's shoulder and then bent lower for the loudest conspiratorial whisper Corazon had ever heard. "Good luck in there!"

Closing the galley door on Egbert felt like a sigh of relief, but it was immediately eclipsed by the other half of this equation, and Corazon squeezed his eyes shut, half of him wanting to open the door again and just take his own leave. But the rest of him... maybe that dose of honesty was still making it harder to hide, and maybe the sheer exhaustion of not knowing was finally worse than the worst thing he could know. "I know," he said quietly as he finally turned back to face Prudence. "I said too much too soon, and now I'm sure you're freaked out and I've messed it all up, but--"

He didn't actually know where that sentence was going to go, which ended up not mattering. Prudence had already been advancing on him even before he turned around, and that was as far as he got before she caught his face between her hands and kissed him.

The thing about Corazon's finely honed pirate reflexes and his roguish agility, the swiftness of mind and body that allowed him to instantly react to any turn of events, was that even he knew, sometimes, in the privacy of his own head, that he was exaggerating them to hell and back most of the time. He was good , yeah, but he wasn't the constantly coiled spring that he tried to pass himself off as.

Except that this time he was. In the same heartbeat that her lips touched his -- and there was precious little space between heartbeats now -- his hands were already sliding around her back to pull her closer, eyes closing and lips parting, his entire being springing into action like this was what he had been born to do, and he welcomed his new destiny. He kissed her like he was making up for lost time, fierce and eager and focused, and she kissed him with a fire that poured through his veins like it was making itself at home. It reached that hollow place in his chest where the ache for her had rested and set him ablaze, the rushing roar of it in his ears shutting out everything but this moment. The whole of the world was the sound of her breath and the taste of her mouth and the weight of her in his arms, and that was all the world he needed.

That first blaze of passion eased slowly and gradually, settling into a low and comfortable heat between them as their lips finally parted. Prudence settled back on her heels, putting just enough distance between them that she could actually look Corazon in the eye but not so much that her hands slipped from his shoulders, or that she slipped from his embrace. He had never seen her quite like this, beaming and open and slightly flushed, her smile bubbling at the edges with the same barely-contained, tentative excitement that was running through his chest. A tilt of her head that wasn't nearly as casual as she probably meant it to be. "I'd be lying if I tried to apologize for interrupting," she said, quietly flustered but unrepentant. "But you were saying?"

"Don't remember. Doesn't matter." Corazon's voice came out in a high and strangled squeak, and he cleared his throat as she didn't bother to hide a laugh less mocking than the one he had expected. "So you're--" he tried, one hand tracing the curve of her waist. "You're not freaked out?"

Her laugh was rough and harsh. "Are you kidding?" she snorted. "Of course I'm freaked out. You're gonna throw that word out there like that and you think I'm not gonna freak out?"

Well, no, he hadn't thought that, in the brief moment where he'd thought about it at all before just letting his stupid mouth run wild, but then she'd reacted like that and he was still reeling from it in the best way, and now he didn't know what to think. "I threw... that word out there as a future thing. A possible future thing," he added, as if he hadn't already made his thoughts on the nigh inevitability of that possibility clear.

" Still ," Prudence said firmly. "It's a lot, and it's new and weird and no one's ever really--" It didn't feel like the magic cutting her off, more a stumble of her own as she tried to piece something together. "And I believe you when you say it," she finally said. "Probably would even without the whole Zone of Truth thing going on, so that's a whole other level of this is a lot to sort through, and I'm..." She took a deep breath, and she raised a hand to his cheek. "And I'm still here. Because even if this whole thing is freaking me out, it's not freaking me out enough to make me want to run away. It's just making me want to stay and figure it all out."

Corazon leaned into her touch, sighing deeply at the warmth of her skin and the scent of her. This declaration felt more important than the kiss had been, not that he was knocking the kiss and not that he wasn't eager for an encore. It was that same sense of relief, an affirmative answer to a question he hadn't been able to ask. Stay with me, she had said that night in the tavern, and he had stayed because his heart wouldn't have allowed him to do otherwise, and now she was the one who wanted to stay with him. It made his chest ache, but in a pleasant sort of way. "I meant all of it," he said, as if even with the spell there might be room to doubt it, or room for him to try to weasel out of it later. It was important that she really understand he had spoken with intent . "It's just that last bit that came out when it shouldn't have."

Sincere or not, the little arch to her eyebrow was brutal . "Gosh, that sounds like a completely predictable consequence of this little plan of yours."

He was slow to defend himself from that low voice, so near to him that he could feel her breath, but pride still held sway. "It was a stupid plan," he protested, realizing only after the words had come out that they weren't actually a protest and the spell had its own opinions about whether anything he'd done merited a defense at all.

"It was a stupid plan," she agreed far too vehemently, some of her usual demonic nature breaking out of the softness that had enveloped her. "And I'm still mad at it, and I don't know when I'm going to stop being mad at it." She held his eyes for a long moment, staying stern and warning, and then she let a little breath out through her nose. "But then again, you have a gift for coming up with stupid plans that still manage to work, somehow."

It might have been a compliment, possibly, and she was still touching him, thumb tracing the line of artful stubble that he kept so carefully trimmed so as not to obscure his impressive bone structure. He met her hand with his, curling his fingers around it the way he had before he'd said too much, resisting the temptation to turn his head and press a kiss into her palm, which would almost certainly be a step too far at the moment. "I really wish I could tell you that this was my plan all along," he murmured. "Not that I would expect you to believe it even a little bit, but I still wish I could say it."

Prudence rolled her eyes, but warmly, that hint of a despite-herself smile coming out once more. "The thing is," she said, getting serious again, "it's not just that word that's stressing me out, because it's not just you that's stressing me out. All the bits that you said leading up to that, about I adore you and my life is better with you in it and I want to be with you, it's... that's how I feel. About you. And that's... it's exciting, but also it's weird and I don't know what to do with it, you know? I don't know how to feel that way about someone, and I barely even know how to say it when something's making me say it, and you... you're out here just saying it all, and making all these little gestures, and-- and pledging fealty to me!"

That brought Corazon up short. "I-- when did I do that?"

Prudence made a little flustered sound. "It made sense when Cthulhu said it, all right?" She took her hands off him -- a damned shame, that -- and pulled away just enough to fumble at her neck, fingers disappearing into the folds of cloth and feathers around her collar until she fished out a delicate and familiar chain, one far too dainty for her. The pendant he had plucked from Tessa's neck glinted in her hand, the stones still doing their best to match the brilliance of her eyes. "That's what he called... you know. This."

Corazon's heart did a little flip in his chest at the sight of it. "Oh, that pledge of fealty." It was an act of adoration that he'd half put out of his mind; Prudence had clearly been touched by it at the time, but then it had vanished into that black hole between them, and the pendant with it. He'd hardly given a second thought to the object itself, since it was the act of stealing it and giving it to her that had been the actual important part, but to see that she was keeping it so literally close to her heart was... warming. Although other parts of this conversation were worrying. "So... you've been talking to Cthulhu about me?" He tried to sound casual, but the hand he'd rested so comfortably on her hip started to sidle cautiously away. Cthulhu wouldn't be the first overprotective parent he'd dealt with, but he would be the first one who could effortlessly rend his soul to shreds.

"I had to tell him that there was an insult levied against me by a rival, and against him by extension," Prudence corrected him, tucking the pendant back into her shirt. "And naturally, since you were the one who did the actual avenging of the insult, your name came up." She gave him a little sideways smile as she leaned in closer, tugging her hand back to where it had been. "He has my soul; he doesn't care what the rest of me is doing." A pause before her brow furrowed again. "And, okay, maybe I possibly hit him up for a little bit of personal advice at the same time, for all the good it does to ask an ancient and unknowable entity for advice on how to deal with people." An impatient huff that slowly relented. "Except... okay. Maybe he put it all as weirdly as possible with the whole 'fealty' thing, but he did say that if you were going to... put yourself out there like that then I needed to actually say something if I was going to accept it, and..." A light tracing of her fingertips across the edge of his shirt, just grazing his collarbone in a way that made it hard to breathe. "Even if this is already saying a hell of a lot I'm aware that I need to put the words out there. So... I'm interested in you. Physically, obviously, but also -- ugh -- emotionally. Romantically. And it's weird and embarrassing to say it and it's even more weird and embarrassing to feel it, but it could be... worth it? Possibly? To see if there's something there? So if you can take that word off the table, at least for now, then I want us to try the whole romantic being-together thing. If you're interested in that."

" If I'm--" Corazon sputtered, the satisfaction and relief and sheer joy of having her lay it out so clearly getting stopped up by the absurdity of that last bit. "Bloody hell, Prudence, how is there any room left for an if there?" He reached up a hand and toyed with a lock of her hair, making as if to brush it out of her face except that it had never been in her face to begin with and he had just been looking for an excuse. "Yes. To all of it." Gods, he would walk through the hell of her choosing without complaint if the smile she was giving him now was waiting on the other side. "To wanting to be with you, and to... not saying too much too soon, I guess." At least for now, to use the words she'd said herself that he couldn't help grasping onto. The hand in her hair moved down to cup her jaw, and he tilted her chin up and leaned in with a quiet and unstoppable grin. "And a definite yes to making it romantic."

This time the kiss was slower, sweeter, his entire body melting into Prudence's, his fingers twining in her hair and her tail coiling around the back of his knees to draw him even closer.  As new and exciting as it was, it still felt comfortable, felt right like nothing had in a long time. Like no one had in a long time. And it felt even more right when she let out a soft sigh of comfortable satisfaction and rested her head against his shoulder. Her arms slipped around his ribs, holding him tightly, and the only possible response was to hold her in turn, bending his head low over hers and tracing little circles between her shoulder blades. Eventually he sighed as well. "You still freaking out a little?" Her nod was felt rather than seen, and he huffed out a little laugh. "Me too." A pause. "Didn't mean to say that out loud. Not freaking out a lot, I promise." She echoed his huff, the sound tender and weary, and he pressed his lips to her hair. He had her, and he was right where he wanted to be, and he shouldn't be trying to argue with that, and yet... "Should we... I mean, do you want to talk about that?"

She raised her head just enough that her voice wasn't muffled by his shoulder. " Absolutely not. "

Corazon practically sagged with relief. "Oh, thank gods." Prudence tilted her head up further, giving him a curious eyebrow. "Well, it felt like someone should say it," he protested her silent judgment. "While we've still got the whole... thing going on. Doesn't mean I was looking forward to that conversation."

"Probably not the worst idea in theory, but I've had all the difficult emotional honesty I can take for one day," Prudence said. "I'm not saying anything more about feelings until I have my protective layer of sarcasm back."

"Right?" Corazon agreed at great haste. "How is anyone supposed to live like this? And why hasn't it worn off yet?"

"Eh, you know how it is with magic sometimes," Prudence said wearily. "You learn a spell, and in theory it's got a specific duration, but once you get out in the field with a lot of them, they mostly seem to last however long it's convenient. Or, you know, inconvenient." She flicked her tongue out, like she was tasting the lingering magic in the air. "This one's got a little bit left in it, seems like, but it's starting to burn out. We can wait it out."

"If you say so," Corazon said, with maybe the barest touch of sulk to it because even in his deliriously happy state it still chafed a bit to admit how much better she was than him at understanding magic. "Or we could just... leave the room, too."

It was another thing that he said reluctantly, just because it felt like someone should, and Prudence responded with a mischievous little smirk. "We could," she agreed. The smirk got wider, turning into a grin, wicked and demonic in all the best ways. "Or -- and here's a thought -- we could not do that, maybe." She released him from her embrace but stayed close, sort of leaning on his upper body and drumming her fingers on his chest. "Because I don't think I'm done with being alone with you yet, actually. Especially when you've raised some... interesting questions that would probably benefit from being answered truthfully."

For all that he was an adventurous spirit (sometimes) and had a taste for the thrill of danger (when there was a convenient place to hide and observe it from a safe distance before making his move), Corazon had never really thought of himself as being turned on by danger. Maybe it was time to reexamine that particular bit of self-evaluation. "Yeah?" The crack in his voice would, hopefully, be understood to be not entirely down to fear.

"Yeah." Still that dangerous grin, but now there was something playful to it, as well. "Because if you're going to tell me that you want to be with me in any way I'll have you..." A little click of her tongue. "Then I'm gonna need you to go into a little more detail about that."

Chapter Text

Egbert lingered outside the galley for a minute or so, just to listen for any sounds of shouting or violence that might suggest he was still needed. He was a paladin, after all, and even if it didn't tend to come up very often he had been trained in conflict resolution. And also relationship counseling, which was, apparently, potentially relevant to the situation. That was a twist he hadn't seen coming at all, especially not stemming out of an otherwise perfectly normal conversation about inexplicably clandestine sailing lessons. The sudden swerve had nearly thrown Egbert off entirely, and he had just barely been able to hold on and follow the conversation as it went barreling down this new and unexpected path, but Prudence and Corazon had hardly even lost momentum. Well, they always had been better at just talking their way out of things than he was.

So they were having feelings for each other! A stroke of luck that Zone of Truth had caught Corazon in the crossfire and brought that vital revelation to light. Maybe Egbert hadn't seen it coming, but in retrospect it made perfect sense for the two of them. And it seemed to make perfect sense to them, as well, given how quickly they had both picked up the thread, a thread that Egbert could already tell was leading to something that was going to make both of them happy. He hoped so, anyway, and he was determined to offer whatever support they needed on their journey. Once they'd had time to sort the initial bits out between themselves, of course; he wasn't in the business of getting in the way of romance.

There was still no sound coming from the galley that might suggest things were getting out of hand, and so Egbert left them to it, ambling down the corridor and heading for the deck. He had done his part, he had helped a friend, and all that was left to do was to bask in the satisfaction of a job well done and maybe see if the sun was out. He was sure La Vache Mauve would be eager to hear that his paladin had actually done a paladin-y thing for once, even if it wasn't the big flashy smiting-evil kind. Helping people just live their best lives was part of the whole thing, too, and if it could be done with more explosions it would probably be the part of the job that Egbert looked forward to the most.

It was only after he was well away down the corridor, his mind already halfway elsewhere, that something that had been wandering around the back of Egbert's brain finally came to the front. Corazon had acted all shocked and offended when he'd discovered that he had been caught up in the Zone of Truth, like he hadn't yet realized that he'd failed to resist it. But Egbert had cast the spell, and he had felt it fall on everyone in the room, and it was just occurring to him now that Corazon hadn't actually tried to resist.

*

Prudence awoke slowly, languidly, and the first sensations that came to her were all too familiar. She had awoken like this only once before, but she had relived it in memory countless times. She knew the warmth of the arm wrapped around her, the slow and steady rise and fall of the chest her head was pillowed on, the quiet snore that was more pleasant than it really should be. And she knew that if she opened her eyes -- which she was going to have to do eventually, but why rush it -- she would see a room that wasn't hers and a flashy coat hanging on the back of the door. There were a few differences this time, however. First, there was no hangover this time. Second, as a not-unpleasant prickle of gooseflesh brought to her attention, there was also no clothing involved this time, on either of them. And third, she knew exactly what had happened last night for her to have wound up here.

Trust me; you would remember, Corazon had boasted the last time, so eager to salvage his pride even as he assured her that nothing of this sort had happened between them. And he had been absolutely right, damn him. She remembered every kiss, every touch, every seductive growl (not all of them from her) and nervous and eager laugh (not all of them from him). She would have been more annoyed about his ego being vindicated if she wasn't enjoying the memory so much. Fine, then. He could be smug as long as she was going to be reaping the benefits anyway. She sighed, pretending that it was a put-upon sound rather than a contented one, and nestled further into his chest.

She had already slipped back into a doze when Corazon started to stir, which brought her immediately back to alertness. She wanted to watch him wake up, to see the light playing across his shifting features as he staggered towards consciousness, to be waiting with a ready smile when he finally opened his eyes and understood the shape of the situation. She levered herself up from her position on his chest slowly and carefully, trying not to disturb him as she raised herself up onto her forearms. A slow, half-asleep smile touched her lips as she steadied herself and looked down at him. He still slept with snoring, drooling, boneless abandon, and she was still completely smitten with it. Maybe even more so, now that she wasn't trying to convince herself not to be.

Corazon stretched and shifted under her weight, the movement of his hand on her back starting out restless and haphazard and then shifting into a deliberate caress that made her skin shiver. He breathed in and out a few times, deep and slow and comfortable, fingertips continuing to trace her skin, before resigning himself to actually being awake. His eyes opened slowly, taking a few blinks to focus, and when they did his entire face seemed to glow. "Hi."

Oh, it was that look again, the one that made her feel like melting. The one he had given her the first time they'd woken up together, that said she was everything that was right with his world. She hadn't expected to see it again, but oh, she had hoped. "Hi," she echoed back, the word almost swallowed up in a hiccuping little giggle that she would have been deeply embarrassed for anyone else to hear, knowing that the eager, tender grin she was wearing was just as awkward and embarrassing and not caring at all.

Corazon made a breathless sound of amazement, continuing to stare at her in adoration as he shifted the hand on her back up to tuck her hair behind her ear. His voice was barely above a whisper, hoarse with sleep but fully focused on her "So this is actually happening, then?"

His voice was sexy enough like this that she didn't entirely mind this sudden need for more assurance. "I thought we were both pretty clear about what we wanted," she said, putting a bit of a growl into her sleep-hazed voice as she traced a finger down his collarbone.

He twitched appreciatively under that touch, but gave a little shake of his head. "This is actually happening now, " he said, as if that was an explanation. He rearranged his shoulders under her and started to prop himself up, and with some reluctance she moved enough to let him sit up. He cupped her chin in his hand, that soft and tender look he'd been drinking her in with turning into his usual rakish smile. "This is usually the part where I wake up."

Prudence knew the shape of the truth said like a joke, a flirtation, and she matched his look with one of her own. "Not this time," she said, giving him a little pinch on the earlobe to make her point. "Do I need to prove it to you?"

Corazon flinched back from the bite of her nails, but the smile was undaunted as he shook his head. "My imagination is good, but it's not this good." He pulled her in for a kiss and she lunged, knocking him flat on his back again and falling on top of him with joyful, smoldering ferocity. Her eagerness was unbridled but not unmatched, and he kissed her like it was a competition he was determined not to lose. Which didn't mean she wasn't still winning.

She sank down into his chest again, and he put his arms around her like it was already habit, like it wasn't an absolute scandal that she let him get away with treating her so tenderly. "I don't know about you," she murmured, "but I could get used to this."

He laughed, soft and low. "I think I already am." A sigh, and then a little wince as she shifted her weight. "But we have got to talk about where you're putting your elbows."