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Liam lets his fist fall away after two quick knocks, glancing down the long hall to make sure no one sees him paying a visit to this particular room.
Although if anyone appeared suddenly and spotted him, they'd have no reason to suspect anything out of the ordinary. Liam has that practiced, confident set of his shoulders, practically unheard of in a first year, that screams, "If you think I'm not supposed to be here, then you're the one who has your information wrong." It's learned in part thanks to the necessity of growing up very, very quickly, and in part because the person he's always admired most in the entire world is Xaden Riorson.
The door opens silently, and it only takes Xaden a second to glance over Liam and then out to the empty hall, before he offers a stiff nod. "Cadet Mairi."
"Wing Leader," Liam nods back, just as formally.
"Please come in."
Liam steps over the threshold, standing politely to the side and taking in the expanse of room while Xaden redraws the wards. What luxury this must be, to have a private room that can be locked so securely. Liam hasn’t had such a thing in six long years, and he can already feel the knots growing under his shoulder blades from being in this place for one single day. The stares, the sneers, the hands going to daggers when he passes. The relic branded to his skin practically itches with each hate-filled pair of eyes sliding over it like he’s some kind of exhibit.
Finished with the wards, Xaden crosses the room to lean his hip against the desk, folding his arms in a classic display of third year elitism while he looks Liam over from head to toe.
"You made it here," Xaden states unnecessarily.
"I made it here."
They just stand there looking at each other, jaws set in determined indifference as if they’d suddenly been transported back four years, now called to perform that same emotional emptiness they’d perfected in the presence of their handlers.
And then it changes. There's no obvious cause for the shift, no expression or cue that one or the other picks up on. Still, in a simultaneous motion that only those who have faced war together can accomplish, the shoulders of both the men suddenly relax. They smile at each other, the happiness and relief of one feeding the other, and then back again, until they're both just standing there stupidly grinning at each other.
Xaden breaks first, crossing the room to clasp Liam's upper arms in his hands. "You're fucking here!"
Liam laughs, bypassing Xaden’s grip to drag him into a tight hug. “You’re going to have to try harder than a little rain to get rid of me, brother.”
“I know.” Xaden pulls back, still grinning, and smacks the back of Liam’s head. “Way to return my letters.”
“Never got them.”
“Yeah, Imogen told me. Still not sure which side suppressed them.” Xaden sighs and takes a step back, glancing at the door. Instantly there’s a wall of shadow there, blocking the conversation from any malicious ears.
Liam takes a seat on the bed. “It wasn’t easy, leaving the others behind in that place. I knew it wouldn’t be, but…” he shakes his head, staring unseeing at the knives displayed across from him. “I don’t know how you did it. Coming here by yourself, not… knowing.”
“I knew,” Xaden says slowly, settling down into his chair by the desk, “that you were still there with them. And I knew that when it was your turn to go, you would have someone else in place to watch over the others.”
Liam nods, knowing exactly what watching over the other children means, because Xaden was the one who taught him. Showed him how to watch for the tired eyes, the easily bruised limbs. How to ration his own food to sneak nourishment to the ones who were being punished for a slip of the tongue by withholding meals. And most importantly, Xaden taught him how to watch for the mental breaks, especially in the youngest of them, who couldn’t remember life before this hell. How to pull them into his lap and hold them tight, reciting the stories his own parents had told him and speaking softly to them until their bodies no longer quivered in his arms.
He does indeed have someone raised up to watch over the others. Three of them, to be exact. And he’d spent the last two years expanding the physical training that Xaden had begun, so that through those forbidden classes, every one of them would have a fighting chance to make it to Threshing some day. They had to make it.
“There may be freedom here,” Xaden says, “but there’s also death. So much fucking death.”
Liam nods. The continuous, near-random deaths in this cemetery of a college is well known, even to children of the rebellion. No one has ever attempted to hide the fact that they’re here to die. When Xaden bonded a dragon it was big enough news that letters were unnecessary. He still remembers with satisfaction the look of horror on his handler’s face, who had bragged to them all day that Xaden would be dead by sundown thanks to the discerning wisdom of dragons, only to receive a missive that the opposite had occurred. Riorson had bonded, and bonded well.
He couldn’t imagine how frightening that was, to be the first of them, to walk across a field in threshing and not know whether he would live or die, simply for a relic on his skin. But Xaden has always been the first, the oldest, the bravest. The one who’s continued existence forced the world to make sense to a hundred and seven people who knew no other justice.
“Keep your head down,” Xaden tells him, “and your chin up. I have no doubt you will excel here, but that will also bring you unwanted notice.”
“I know how to stay out of the way.”
Xaden nods. “I got Sorrengail away from you, at least. That should help. She’s already making alliances.”
Liam smiles. “Seems a bit scrawny to be worried about, don’t you think?”
Xaden opens his mouth and then closes it again, face pensive like he’s no longer sure about the automatic answer he was about to say. “Don’t underestimate her. Make it to Threshing, assist the others whenever you can. Every dragon we bond increases our odds in a way that should make the king piss himself.”
“So you’re saying I get all the food and training I want, and all I have to do is survive? Easy.”
Xaden snorts, rolling his eyes. “Have you ever felt fear a day in your life?”
A flash of sound in Liam’s memories, screams, emotion. The fracture of his soul, the burning of his flesh. “Yes.”
Xaden sobers, taking in a deep breath and lacing his fingers behind his head. "You will survive. You'll get past the challenges, the back stabbing, and you'll find a dragon. And once you start channelling, you'll be the best..." He trails off, racking his brain for the right words. "Gardener, or some shit."
"I've always hoped for balloon animal powers, myself," Liam supplies, keeping his face deathly serious.
"Yes!” Xaden snaps his fingers, pointing at Liam. “You, sir, will be the best fucking balloon animal creator of our generation. How high those animals will fly," he says, pausing and raising his hands for grand effect, "and how loudly they will pop."
They both break character to laugh, and it stretches on longer than it should, in the way of people who haven’t seen each other in two years, yet still share a bond that cannot be weakened by distance.
“You will survive, Liam,” Xaden says, flattening his hand squarely over his own heart. “I promise.”