Work Text:
Time had not been kind to Kyborg’s old village. A heavy blanket of snow carpeted the ruins, the charred, sun-bleached remains of the old thatched houses protruding from the earth like the scattered bones of some long-dead animal. Across on the other side, the river had frozen over, Christallena Falls no longer frothing and bubbling, covering the water-slick boulders with the misty, diamond spray that he remembered playing in when he was younger. Cold. Empty. The whole village felt both frozen in time, and yet so horribly ravaged by it. Gone were the children laughing and playing in the fields, a distant, bittersweet memory. Their laughter replaced now by the faint whistling of the wind as it stirred aimlessly through the ruins.
It felt so strange for him to be back here. He didn’t really know how he should feel about it. He had always thought he would never come back here-- the ghosts of his past were so deeply entwined in this place, the very thing he had been running from all these years. But he was back now, and he had no choice but to face them.
The frozen dirt felt unreal under his boots, the air almost suffocating. He had dreamed of this place many times-- nightmares, really-- but to be here, the air crisp and cold on his skin, the sights both familiar and unfamiliar, was sobering. He was home.
His gaze followed the main path leading from them to the centre of the village, where there still stood a stone statue of an elven woman with her bow drawn. Christallena. Mom. She stood with her back arched and her bow aimed into the depths of the Everwinter woods, her hair carved into a state of fluid motion and her jaw set with determination. He remembered loving this statue when he was young, looking up at it with his chest swelling with pride as he saw his mother standing protectively over him. The statue, like much of the rest of his village, was now run down and stained with marks, green lichen dripping down over it and notably a black cross over her face.
Kyborg felt tears begin to form in his eyes. That was his mom.
Beside him, he heard Mudd wildshape back into firbolg form as he disentangled himself from the Ahemmoblie and came up to his side. He became horribly aware that he was not alone, the silence heavy with words unsaid. He didn’t want to turn around and face them. He didn’t need to anyway to know entirely what they looked like-- he knew that Bart was watching him with tear-filled eyes, his empathy too strong to hold them back. Mudd was probably lingering nearby, fiddling with his ring the way he did when he didn’t know what to say, which was most of the time. And Gum Gum was most likely on the verge of scooping him into a hug, which he didn’t think he was ready for. He didn’t want to turn around and receive one, but more than that, he didn’t want them to see him cry. So instead he started walking up through the village, his boots crunching in the snow like crushed paper, a sound that felt deafening in the awkward silence.
He reached the base of the statue. She looked a lot bigger from beneath it, and he could almost imagine being just a kid again, looking up at her with pride, but this time all he felt was overwhelming grief. He sank to his knees. He thought he had overcome this sorrow, this aching hole that his family had left behind in his heart when they had been wrenched away from him. He thought he had healed, he thought that a century of self-imposed solitude had made him better again. But here it was, that awful wound, weighing him down. And once again he was just a kid. Just a kid, alone in the woods, no arm, no mother, and no family.
Except them, whispered a part of him.
His vision blurred with tears. He blinked furiously to clear them and reached his elven arm up to wipe the back of his hand over his eyes. He sniffled. He wasn’t going to cry-- he wouldn’t let himself cry. He took a deep breath of the frigid air, the cold both sharp and comforting. He reached a hand back into his quiver and pulled out an arrow. He inspected it for a moment, rubbing his fingers over the smooth, wooden shaft. The arrowhead was razor sharp and the feathers on the end striped with beige and grey; he had made these himself, just the way his mother had taught him to. He gave a little smile and placed the arrow gently at her feet.
He knelt there a moment longer before he became aware of the other Infinights approaching behind him-- by the weight of their footsteps, he could tell that Bart had approached first, followed closely by Gum Gum with Mudd trailing behind. Kyborg stood and took a step back to stand side by side with them.
“Kyborg, you left an arrow!” Gum Gum pointed out. He didn’t say anything, leaving Gum Gum to look back and forth between him and the arrow, deeply puzzled as to how Kyborg could have missed that. On Kyborg’s other side in the corner of his vision, he could see Mudd glance at him uncertainly. Mudd looked up at the statue and whispered an incantation, and with a small gesture of his hands, the statue began to mend itself before their eyes-- the ice-kissed vines slithered away like snakes and unsnared her, the stains washing away like chalk in the rain and the black mark over her face disappearing completely. It was just the way he remembered it, restored to its former glory.
The ghost of a smile crept up on Kyborg’s face. That was really nice of him, made even nicer that it had come from Mudd. That was probably the nicest thing Mudd had ever done for him. He patted a hand appreciatively on Mudd’s arm, and he gave the smallest of smiles back.
“What kind of flowers did your mom like?” Gum Gum asked in a lowered tone, his best attempt at a whisper.
“That’s very nice of you to ask, Gum Gum,” Kyborg said, “Uh… because of her red hair I’m gonna say roses.” Gum Gum nodded solemnly and pulled out his staff of flowers, a gnarled tree branch twined with small starbursts of pink and yellow petals.
“Okay, here’s a rose.” He held out one hand and an elegant, delicate rose twisted out of thin air-- small golden sparkles gilding the edges and then vanishing as the flower solidified. He handed it to Kyborg who took it carefully, avoiding the thorns. It was perfect, and he had a feeling that he had been right, that his mother would have liked it. He stepped forward and placed it next to his arrow. The leaves rustled and fell still with the movement.
A moment of silence passed. Beside him, Bart stepped forward as well, patted Kyborg’s leg comfortingly, and blew a kiss to the statue, offering it his best winning smile. Kyborg sighed. He decided not to dignify that with a response and started walking up and away from the centre of town, following the direction of Christallena’s arrow towards his childhood home and the Everwinter woods beyond, and after a moment his friends started after him.
The village passed quickly on either side of the path as he walked. His pace slipped into routine, his path so clear in his mind despite being hidden under the snow. He knew this walk like the back of his hand, his memory coming back to him with such clarity despite having not been here for over a hundred years. Here was the remains of his neighbour's old flower garden, there was the boulder he had fallen off when he was younger and scraped his knee. The walk wasn’t long, his village was pretty small, and he found himself now standing in front of his old home. It didn’t look like the vision anymore. The second story was gone completely, caved in and collapsed leaving only a few walls still standing, broken posts standing askew from the ground like shattered bones. Rubble littered the ground, the house now almost unrecognisable.
Kyborg wasn’t sure what he was expecting, or what was worse. He was scared it would look how he remembered, but now he thought that seeing it demolished might have been worse. He sighed. He wasn’t sure he was ready to go inside yet, so instead he skirted the remnants of the fence and walked back out into the fields that bordered the village, onto the stretch of land between his home and the treeline. A long line of dark trees towered above the earth, dark trunks standing unmoving like sentinels, the branches of pine leaves laden with shawls of snow and icicles that dripped down like strings of diamonds. Shadows filled the woods beyond, but he could make out the thick rows of trees that went as far as the eye could see.
This was the battlefield where he had first battled Quadron. He could see it so clearly. Quadron, his candescent orange eyes glaring out from the forest, the mechanical whirring sounds of his feet glancing over the grass towards his family. The smoke and ash that had filled the air, suffocating, asphyxiating. He could remember the tree he had leaned against leaving behind a bloodstained handprint as he fled into those very woods, the agony searing through his entire body as he bled freely from where his right arm used to be.
Kyborg looked down, realising that he had been moving forward. At his feet lay three barely raised mounds of earth. He knew instantly where he stood. His family. Tiny wildflowers sprouted above the earth, the snow shallower here to allow for a handful of daisies to peek their way over it. A sheen of frost fell over them but still they endured, white and yellow petals smiling up at him. This was where he had lost everything. Taken from him. He fell to his knees again, not noticing the burn of the frost as it soaked his clothes.
At first, it was guilt. Guilt that he was alive and they were not. His sister and his dad and his mom were dead so that he could live and that wasn’t fair. Then it was anger. How could someone do this, how could someone burn a peaceful village to the ground and slaughter its people and then laugh at the smouldering consequences of what you had done? He had been a child. He shouldn’t have to have been alone all those years. Quadron would pay. He had to, Kyborg would make him. He would make him see. He was going to kill Quadron. His goal felt seared anew in his mind, his determination set even stronger than before. He stood and headed back to the house.
The others had been sifting through the rubble inside the house. “Inside,” was a loose description, only a few walls still remained-- most of the rooms were now completely exposed to the wind and snow. As he entered, trudging through the fallen stone bricks and planks, Bart gave him a concerned and sympathetic look that he pretended not to see. The heavy silence continued for a moment until Bart suddenly straightened up, dusting off a scroll that he had uncovered. A few of the edges were lightly singed, but it was mostly still intact. He unrolled it, his eyes glancing over the words, and looked up at the others that had gathered around him.
“Can anyone here read Elvish?” he asked.
“I can,” Kyborg offered.
“I can read Elvish,” Gum Gum said at the same time. Bart handed it to Kyborg, who took it. Gum Gum looked down with his shoulders slumped, visibly disappointed.
“It is his parents after all,” Bart comforted.
“That’s true,” Gum Gum said, already over it.
“If I ever find something from your parents, Gum Gum, I’ll give it to you.”
“Please do,” he said, nodding.
Kyborg turned the scroll over and began reading it. It was written in perfect cursive handwriting. It was an agreement, some kind of contract between Christallena and the Borgians to protect a map to the Source. He translated it into Common and read it aloud to his friends so they could understand it. He wondered to himself what this Source was that they kept hearing about, and he wondered why it was so secretive that he had never heard of it before. It must clearly have been important, if his mother had gone to such lengths to protect it, and Quadron had gone to such lengths to take it from her.
“So,” Mudd began after Kyborg finished, “There’s a map that was really important-- that was so important that Quadron wanted it destroyed because they don’t want us to find what’s on the map… but the Borgians, and your mom, thought it was important to keep.” He looked to the others for confirmation.
“I’m assuming so,” Kyborg said, “because it was probably something to do with whatever can… destroy Quadron, or maybe it’s… but I think he wanted it, didn’t he?”
“Is the map not the map that said ‘Flats of Tabul’?” Bart asked.
“Yeah, but he burnt it,” Mudd said.
“After he read it,” Bart corrected.
“Oh,” Mudd realised, “okay, I didn’t remember that, I thought he was hiding that information. So he has that information and doesn’t want anyone else to get it.”
“Right, yeah,” Bart said, nodding, “And it’s protecting the Source, which we know…” He trailed off.
“Is part of me, and that iron golem, the Borgian,” Kyborg said. At least, that was his best guess: that the Source was what powered the Borgians, and now by extension, his Borgian arm. A thoughtful quiet fell over the group again. Mudd turned and returned to combing through the rubble, and Gum Gum followed his lead.
It was only a few moments before they found something again. Mudd swept his arm over the surface of a hard wooden chest, knocking aside some of the snow and wooden shards keeping it hidden. He hefted the lid open to reveal the contents inside: the tiny bones of some kind of small animal and the decrepit remains of Kyborg’s old training bow. He lifted it carefully, the fragments dwarfed by his huge hands. He closed his eyes and muttered an incantation and the bow quickly mended itself back together, like watching the break happen in reverse, and in his hands he now held a perfectly functional training bow. He offered the bow down to Gumbo. Gum Gum had been excited, ready to receive the bow, only to immediately become disheartened as the bow was given to the badger instead. Mudd, upon seeing how excited Gum Gum was, changed his mind and went to give it to him instead.
“Is it okay if I give this to Gum Gum?” he asked Kyborg.
“Yeah, no, I mean it’s-- yeah,” he said, trailing off awkwardly. Gum Gum received the bow from Mudd, his eyes wide with childlike wonder. As soon as it touched his hands however, the bow suddenly seemed to spring to life, jittering up and down and buzzing with a surge of energy. It tried to spin back and forth in his grasp like a compass needle trying to find north, but Gum Gum had a good enough hold on it to stop it from zipping away from him. After a moment, it settled down, only tugging gently in one direction.
“This bow really wants to go that way,” Gum Gum noted, pointing, “And also, thank you for the bow but, I don’t really know how to shoot a bow, here you go Kyborg.” He thrust the bow into Kyborg's hands. Kyborg took it, making sure not to let it slip away from him. The pull was light, but definitely noticeable.
“Maybe you could take this as an opportunity to spend some time with Kyborg,” Bart suggested, “Maybe he could teach you.”
“Yeah!” Gum Gum said, smiling enthusiastically. Kyborg shrugged.
“Yeah, I have an old bow that I could help you learn how to use,” he said, offering him a small smile back. It would be a nightmare trying to teach Gum Gum how to use a bow and arrow, but maybe it would be fun. Gum Gum could definitely use some accuracy skills.
“As well as a brand new mended bow,” Mudd reminded them.
“Well let’s,” Kyborg started, “for now, I mean once we get back to the castle you can go nuts with it but for now, because it is some sort of magical thing we should probably figure out where it wants us to go.” He trailed off, the nerves getting the better of him. He looked away, but Bart nodded supportively, and the others all looked to him for guidance. He looked down at the bow, tugging at his hands, trying to guide him north into the Everwinter woods. He took a deep breath in and began to follow it. He heard his friends following after him, wading trails through the snow as he let the tiny wooden bow guide him down towards the darkened treeline.
He’d fled into these woods once before, but this time, he was entering it on different terms. This time, he did not enter it as Kydelius, the lone orphan, he entered it as Kyborg the Mighty, the Infinight. And this time he wasn’t alone. He paved the way, side by side with Mudd, Gum Gum, and Gum Gum’s halfling backpack who was trying not to be swallowed whole by the snow. Together they headed into the woods and didn’t look back.
Kyborg’s heartbeat swelled, thrumming to the beat of a new rhythm. In the centre of his palm, glowing faintly against his skin was the Source Diagem, the heart of the Everwinter woods. It pulsed with warm, crackling heat like the hearth of a fire, solid and crystalline and powerful, beating in unison with the blood in his veins. A mechanical whirring sounded and he looked down to see that a small, tear-shaped niche had opened up automatically in his prosthetic arm-- shaped perfectly like the Diagem. He reached up and slotted it in. A comforting blanket of warmth washed over him. He looked up, and suddenly he saw only through a haze of tears.
His family. Three elves stood in front of him, transparent and ethereal like rose-tinted glass, illuminating the dark icy blues of the forest around them. His sister, so much smaller than he remembered, his father’s arm wrapped protectively over her shoulders and both of them smiling at him. They stood behind the third elf, a woman, tall and fluid in her movements, her fiery red hair still bright despite the washed out tones of her ghostly form, her bow strung across her back exactly the way he did. There were tears sparkling in her eyes too. She smiled at her son.
“We couldn’t be prouder of you, little Ky,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. Little Ky. He didn’t know how much he had missed that nickname until he heard her say it again. His mom was proud. Of him. The tears in his eyes spilled over, staining trails down his cheeks. “We always have been, and we always will be.”
She looked up and past him, and he turned over his shoulder to follow her gaze. His friends, standing behind him. Bart and Gum Gum were already crying.
“Thank you for watching over Kydelius,” she said, “and for being there for him through thick and thin. It’s clear the four of you have a special bond.” She turned back to Ky and took a step closer to him, a soft warmth radiating from her. He could have sworn that he caught her scent, the scent of pine and bracken and safety, and he felt the familiarity wash over him in another powerful surge of memories.
“We love you, Ky. We never left. We will always be right…” she reached out a hand and touched her palm gently to his chest. “Here.” He so badly wanted to touch her, for her to be real. He wanted to run up to them and hug them and tell them how much he needed them, but he knew they were just as solid as the wind wisping through the woods around him. But they felt real. He could feel the weight of her hand, but he knew he couldn’t touch it. And that was perhaps the loneliest feeling of them all. She withdrew her hand.
He didn’t really know what to do with himself now, so he did what he always did when he was in doubt: he did a backflip. He backed up a little, and flipped. It definitely wasn’t his best work, he landed unevenly in a patch of snow that he had underestimated the depth of, the tears in his eyes hazing his vision. She gave him an understanding smile, and with that, the three ghosts dissipated, their forms vanishing into the snow, leaving him alone in the frigid cold.
Well, not alone.
He turned and faced his friends. Bart was crying, and trying very hard to be quiet about it so as not to ruin Kyborg’s moment, and beside him Gum Gum’s eyes were watering, his gaze still trained on where Christallena had disappeared with a look of desperate longing. Mudd stood a little aside from them with a rare expression of sympathy.
And suddenly Kyborg was crying, full, proper crying. The kind that he had taken such measures to hide from his friends. Tears streamed down his face and his breath hitched in sobs. He strode over to Mudd and went to throw his arms around him. Mudd’s sympathy very quickly vanished, replaced by an expression of resignation-- and the look of a man who very much would like to sidestep this embrace but didn’t have the heart to push away his very snotty-nosed elf companion. He stood to a rigid attention as Kyborg wrapped his arms around him, clearly very uncomfortable, but Kyborg took no notice and just hugged him tighter. He was starting to understand why Gum Gum did this so often-- despite Mudd’s reluctance. It was a great hug. He smelt like coffee and dirt. Eventually Kyborg released him and was immediately swept up by a very large half-orc boy, whose arms locked him in tightly and held him in a way that had once felt suffocating, but now felt comforting. He buried his face in his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Kyborg,” he said, his voice low and rumbly. He could feel the vibrations in his voice against his chest. “I know how much it hurts to have a family reappear and then- and then disappear and- I’m so sorry.” Kyborg suddenly remembered back in the Ethereal Plane, when Gum Gum had attacked one of Mudd’s spiders for ‘taking his dad away,’ and an old grudge resurfaced, but he let it go.
“I’ve never forgiven you for that,” Kyborg responded, “You totally blew combat that mission. I hated you so much but it’s okay.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he mumbled. Kyborg felt kind of bad, but he had meant it. But he understood him a little bit better then. He gave Gum Gum another tight squeeze, his hands reaching up to his upper back, the sixteen-year-old still somehow managing to tower over him, and he unravelled himself from the hug. He hoped Gum Gum had enjoyed it, because this was probably the only time he would ever be willing to hug him. Not that that mattered to him, he was still going to trap him in them all the time anyway.
That left only Bart, whose eyes were still sparkling with tears. Kyborg got down on one knee for him, so he could avoid doing the thing where he would hug someone, but only really their lower stomach, and he held out his arms to fold Bart into them. Bart threw his arms around Kyborg’s neck and held him close, and he could feel him sniffling quietly, which only made him want to cry more. He patted Kyborg’s head in a way that was oddly comforting and stepped back. Kyborg rose, finally regaining control of his breathing. He sniffled and laughed, a little embarrassed, and very unsure with what to do with himself. He wiped his elven hand over his cheeks, trying to lessen the redness around his eyes.
Kyborg’s family was gone, and he didn’t think that any amount of solitary reflection would make him stop mourning that loss. But he had a new family now. They would never be the one that he lost, no one could take the place of his parents or heal the scars that Quadron had left behind, but he loved them. He had been reluctant in the past to admit that to himself, but he did. They were his family now, and he was theirs, and he loved them, Bart and Gum Gum and hell, even Mudd.
“So…” Mudd said after a sufficient amount of awkward silence had passed, “What now?”
Kyborg was hiding from his friends.
Well, he wasn’t really hiding, or at least, that was what he told himself. Kyborg sat a distance away from the group, hunched over a thin stick and one of Bart’s lended daggers that he had been using to whittle the wood into an arrow shaft. They had decided to make camp right where they stood and keep moving in the morning; the blood moon was bright, but not bright enough to really travel by. Kyborg had helped them gather kindling and firewood-- he knew this terrain well enough to know where to find the driest wood even in the depths of the ice-bound forest-- but once he had started the fire up for them he had retreated thirty feet away to curl up and whittle arrows. That was also somewhat of a lie-- he had really been staring blankly into the small, near-frozen brook in front of him, taking occasional, absent-minded slices at the wood until it was too thin to be of any use, throwing the stick away and then starting again in an endless cycle. The crackling fire cast light across the snow, illuminating the forest in front of him, but he had his back to the camp. From the corner of his eye he could see Bart glancing over every so often, concerned, but he didn’t press him to come over, which he appreciated.
He should join them, he knew. There were a lot of reasons why he hadn’t yet, first and foremost being that he was embarrassed. Embarrassed, because he had always taken such care to hide that weakness, and he had let his carefully crafted facade of masculinity come crashing down. And he knew that way of thinking was also bad, which made him feel guilty, which made him feel weak, which made him feel even worse. Emotions were infuriating. It was strange to be in a place again where he had to be in touch with himself. He had gone so long, alone in the woods, not ever needing to think about… anything, really. He hunted, he ate, he slept, and that was it. He would go weeks without ever saying a word to anyone, because who was there to talk to but himself?
But he also knew that another big reason he hadn’t joined them was because he had something to say to them, and he didn’t know if he had the strength to say it. Kyborg wasn’t good with words. That was Bart’s job, but this time he couldn’t rely on Bart to say it for him.
At last, after a very lengthy back and forth with himself, he sighed and stood up, his legs creaky from the lack of movement. That was his team, and if he had something to say, he just had to steel himself up and say it. Being vulnerable with his team was perhaps the strongest feat of them all. Or at least, that was what people liked to say, he definitely didn’t feel strong doing it. He would much rather do a backflip-- that required a lot less thought.
Kyborg trudged over through the snow towards the group. They had set up two logs around it, sitting at an obtuse angle with the fire in the middle. To his right, Gum Gum and Bart sat side by side, and Mudd sat across from them. The fire crackled, radiating heat from the heart of the camp, a comfort after the ice and cold. A thick forest of navy-blue shadows surrounded them on all sides, the stars a distant glimmer through the leaf-patterned ceiling far above, stirred softly by the frozen wind. Firelight lit the tree trucks immediately around them, and the faces of his friends. As he had walked up, Bart took notice, and Kyborg could tell that he was trying to be casual and not scare him away by making a big deal out of it. Gum Gum was much less subtle and made no effort to hide his staring, he turned around and smiled as he approached. Mudd really hadn’t noticed-- he sat hunched over, his elbows propping himself up on his knees as he stared vacantly into the fire, a cup of dirt-brown coffee swallowed by his giant hands.
He stopped short, standing to attention. His hands clapped awkwardly to his sides, and he swung his weight back and forth on his toes like a child waiting to make a speech. Bart turned to look at him then, and Mudd finally took notice and looked up at him with an unreadable expression. Nervousness wasn’t one of the emotions he felt very often-- normally it was quite the opposite: a completely undeserved level of self-assuredness was his default-- but he felt it now. Well, he thought, here goes nothing.
“Ah-- I uh…” he stammered. His voice cracked and he coughed to cover it. “I wanted to apologise.” That got their attention. Mudd’s ears twitched, and surprise washed over him and Bart’s expressions. “I’m sorry for being…” Mean? Stupid? Me? None of them were the right words. His mouth felt clumsy, his mind jumbled as he searched for what he wanted to say. How could Bart stand this?
“I haven’t been a team player. I keep... I- I don’t think. I just act. I’ve done a lot of… of reckless things that have put other people in danger. I don’t listen. And it’s been hurting our team. I’m sorry.” There. He had said it.
He looked down at his feet that had been kicking small scuffs out of the snow and uncovering the frozen earth below. He didn’t really want to look at them, too scared of what he might see in their eyes. But he wasn’t done.
“It’s only because of you guys that I’ve been able to make it as far as I have. And I uh… I wanted to thank you all. I really appreciate you guys all being there for me and for coming here with me. You’re all- uh. You guys are the only thing I really have.” Uh oh. The tears were back, making his view of the ground swim in front of him. “You guys mean a lot to me. If it hadn’t been for you guys, I probably would have quit the internship after the first few months and come back here, or more likely gotten myself killed along the way. You’ve all been way nicer than I deserved, and you’ve stuck by me through… All of this.” He waved vaguely at their surroundings, referring more or less to the bizarre, unbelievable series of events that had brought them all here. “I don’t know what I would do without you guys. You’re- uh… You’re all my new family.”
Silence. He coughed. “Uh… that’s it, that’s all I’ve got.”
Suddenly Bart was on him, hugging tightly onto his leg with his eyes scrunched closed to block out the tears. Damn it, Kyborg was crying again. Gum Gum was there too a second later, wrapping around both of them. He pulled back for a moment, his face overcome with dawning realisation. He looked down at Kyborg like he was seeing him in a new light all of a sudden.
“Wait, Kyborg,” he said slowly, “Are you my dad? You’re an elf. You said we were family. Maybe the real dad was… the friends we made along the way.” Kyborg sighed, but failed to fight off the smile creeping up on his face.
“No, Gum Gum, I’m not your dad,” he assured him, patting him on the shoulder. He looked vaguely disappointed, which, he supposed, was better than relief.
There was a word for what he was feeling. He didn’t think he had a vocabulary big enough to know it, but it was there somewhere. Community? Love? Belonging, maybe? Whatever it was, he liked it. But he was pretty sure he’d had enough of crying. When Bart finally released him, he patted him appreciatively on the shoulder, shuffled over to Mudd’s log, and sat down beside him. He watched Bart resume his position, half lying down with his head on Gum Gum’s lap, looking up at him as they had their own conversation, the odd burst of laughter coming from them whenever one of them made a joke that Kyborg couldn’t hear. Mudd watched him, a little warily, as he sat down.
Mudd had been watching Kyborg’s speech from afar, and through most of it his face had been partly obscured by the mirages and the coughs of smoke from the fire, his reactions unreadable. Kyborg had a feeling that he and Mudd were more similar than they knew. Both of them socially inept, always standing somewhere to the side, unsure of what to do with themselves while Bart and Gum Gum tried to talk down whatever absurd situation they had gotten themselves into. He also had a feeling that Mudd was more of a wild card than he let on, but spent too much time being relegated to the chaperone of the group (Kyborg, more specifically) to really show it. He thought back to when they were fighting Spectril and he had swarmed the room with hundreds of ravens, or just a couple of days ago when he had grown tired of all the talking and chugged the Tabulians’ decoction. It was hard to reconcile that reckless, wild druid with the quiet, reserved firbolg sitting next to him taking tiny sips of his repulsive dirt-coffee.
Mudd had a past somewhere too, but like Kyborg, he never talked about it. All that Kyborg knew about him was scraps of information and passing observations he had cobbled together to form a thin idea of Mudd’s life before he was an Infinight, although he supposed that it was perfectly possible that he just hadn’t been listening. That was something else that he promised he would start doing: listening. He was pretty sure that Mudd was descended from some kind of nobility-- his comfortable pockets, his signet ring, and the fact that his last name was something as fancy and arrogant as ‘Bramblecrack.’ Although he supposed he couldn’t complain with a name like ‘Kyborg the Mighty of Everwinter.’
“I’m sorry that you had to parent me for that entire internship,” he apologised. Mudd snorted and took another sip of his coffee. He looked out over the rim for a second, his eyes catching on the firelight, and ran his tongue over his top lip to get the froth out of his fur. He looked down at Kyborg with a small smile, the kind that was both triumphant in his admission of guilt, but still appreciative in his apology. He exhaled and shrugged, looking down into his coffee.
“Well, I’m sorry too,” Mudd said, “I’ve been kind of harsh on you.” Kyborg hadn’t expected that either. He looked at him for a moment, surprised.
“I deserved it,” he said. For a while they sat in a comfortable silence, side by side staring thoughtfully into the heart of the fire. It coughed out the occasional spur of sparks that fizzled out in the snow, the flames white hot and searing smoke-scented sunspots into his eyelids. A few minutes passed until Mudd turned to him again.
“Are you actually going to do it?” he asked. Kyborg’s brows knitted together in confusion. “Teach Gum Gum how to shoot?”
“I am,” he confirmed. Mudd snorted again and took another sip from his mug-- a white ceramic cup with painted badger paw-prints trailing rings around it.
“Ha, I’d like to see you try.” He smiled cheekily. “Although, you do kind of owe it to him, you being his father and all. You’ve gotta make up for all that lost father-son bonding time.” Kyborg barked a laugh and Mudd’s smile widened, pleased. He had meant it, he would be happy to attempt to teach Gum Gum how to be an archer, but that future where he had the time to do it felt a long way away.
“It might be a while before I get a chance, though,” he said, a little sadness seeping into his voice. “Entropa’s still out there. And the rest of the tetragogs. And Quadron.”
“Not for much longer,” Mudd said, shooting Kyborg a wolfish grin. Kyborg couldn’t help but feel assured by Mudd’s confidence in them, and he gave him one back. You know what, he thought to himself, maybe this guy isn’t so bad.
Kyborg let out a deep breath, letting his shoulders relax from a stance he didn’t realise he’d been holding, and he leaned over to one side resting his head against Mudd’s shoulder. He was really warm, his mossy cape soft and furry, and was pretty sure he could feel Gumbo snuffling around in Mudd’s pocket as he noticed Kyborg leaning on his side. Mudd froze, clearly taken aback, but he said nothing and let the elf sidle up beside him and his massively broad shoulders, taking sips of his coffee and glancing down at him every now and then, but staying quiet the way one might when a cat sits on them that they don’t want to startle away.
And that was how they stayed deep into the night-- Mudd and Kyborg, Bart and Gum Gum, huddled in the warmth of the fire and each other’s company, the stars glittering coldly from behind a mesh of dark pine branches and layers of snow and icicles. Hovering together on the precipice of an armageddon, but still unafraid. They had each other, and that was enough.