Work Text:
Will You?
Setting: camp.
He’s quiet, this man. Enigmatic. He wears his trauma on his face, so you’d think, but it isn't so. Ask, and he’ll tell you freely how he got those scars, who took his eye, what sank its claws into his flesh.
But you can tell there’s a story not being told. Not yet.
He’s had your back, many times, out there in the world: literally stepped between you and danger time and time again, his blade the outward measure of his protective instinct. You’ve watched him, stained with blood, pursuing some fleeing monster, cutting it down before it can alert its kin. Seen the berserker glint in his eye.
Seen, too, how as soon as the fight is over he regains control effortlessly, returning sword to sheath, and fury to the blind depths behind his eye. Seen him bend to injured companion, or frightened child, and offer comfort: the first to come out with the bandages, the blankets, the words of healing and support. It should feel like a contradiction, but these are equal aspects of the man: the warrior, the helper.
If things were different you could see him as a community leader. A town counsellor, A good politician: the kind who listens to what people need and puts plans into action, leads by example, wise and gentle and loved by his constituents.
But there are no good politicians, and leaders must be fighters today.
You wish he would talk to you more. You’ve been companions for a while, but you haven’t found the key to open that laconic lock. You’re becoming obsessed with the idea that he needs something from you, but you can’t begin to imagine what it is. Revenge, he said, when you first met. Freeing the world from a beast. But it’s hard to accept something so red and raw as his primary motivation: it really feels as if there should be more.
It's not like he never talks. When you’re out and about, searching for clues or sorting out the day’s tasks, you hear them at your back, the three of them picking on each other like a band of the most unlikely siblings. Sometimes you run them the long way round, through territory where there is nothing you need to do, just for the pleasure of listening to that banter. Like any brothers, they veer wildly between complete emotional support and threatening to stab each other in the back. It’s charming.
And you know – you just know – that when you fall asleep with your head on your pack, wherever you’ve managed to make camp for the night (and go out like a light as a result of your condition, which takes a greater physical toll on you than any of the others), he talks to them.
While you sleep, healing, they are putting the world to rights. Dissecting the day. Evaluating each other’s performance. Planning how to manage the next monster. The way the world is. You.
You love them all, your siblings-in-arms. Each of them has a need: a vulnerability. You lie comfortably drowsy, almost asleep, thinking about how you might be able to help each of them. And how to reach this quiet man, stalwart defender of your strange new family, and persuade him to tell you what he needs.
Above your head the quiet voices go on, lost in the noises of the night. One by one the others join them. Someone brings out a musical instrument; someone else starts to sing in a low voice, as you drift away, snug and secure.
It’s a deadly, dark, dangerous world out there. You’ve never felt happier.