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The sun doesn’t necessarily beat down on them with the sense of some grand, overbearing heat, but Jill’s starting to feel a little uncomfortable. It’s warmer in Rosalith than it is at home. That’s another thing that takes some getting used to, she thinks— even if she’s been here for years, the springs and the summers still have her melting into a puddle of Jill-adjacent goo. The Phoenix’s presence at her side doesn’t help the matter. They’re walking around outside for a place to have their lunch, to spread their blanket and picnic. Joshua promises that he has a great spot in mind, but he’s taken them past the bailey three times now. Between his natural heat and the exertion of their walk, it’s gotten a little toasty.
Jill can’t blame him. She knows full well the anxiety that must be gripping poor Joshua. The tournament to decide his Shield will be underway in a few weeks, and she knows his favorite.
Clive hasn’t noticed them walk past from so deep in his training with Sir Murdoch. Joshua lingers far enough away from the training grounds that he can reasonably tell his mother that he had nothing at all to do with the pair, watching them with a critical expression. Jill recognizes the way that flame sparks at his fingertips whenever Clive gets knocked down.
He’ll hardly be fifteen, when he enters the tournament. He’s told her that he’ll likely be the youngest there, and the youngest Rosarian to ever become a Shield. It’s a lofty order, when he’s to fight men three times his age, but Clive has never been one to refuse a challenge. Not when it comes to Joshua.
She watches him throw himself at Sir Murdoch again. Wooden swords clatter against each other. She can’t quite tell who’s winning, for a moment. It seems like Clive is forcing Sir Murdoch back against the fence, his strikes coming heavy as he flits around the arena. Each feeble counterattack is met by a roll to the side, Clive’s voice rising in pride as he seems to find a proper rhythm. He strikes at Sir Murdoch’s legs in what should have been victory, but all it takes is a single swing of a blade for Sir Murdoch to instead send Clive flying backward. Jill winces. Joshua gasps loudly, and claps his hands against his mouth.
“I-- I think it must be this way,” he manages to say, tearing his eyes off of the exercise. Sir Murdoch laughs and approaches Clive to offer him a hand, and Jill looks back towards Joshua. His nose is furrowed, his cheeks puffed in a very familiar pout. “I’m sorry, Jill, I keep getting turned around.”
According to one of the good Lady Anabella’s lectures, Joshua isn’t supposed to have a favorite for the tournament. Jill can hear the sniff in her voice, “Your Shield shall be decided fairly, and a lesser combatant should not be appointed by something such as your affection when your life could be on the line.” Joshua has to pretend for everyone. He doesn’t look at Jill when he begins to move again.
He’s a child, still, and the weight of the world sits on his shoulders. Jill looks back towards Clive again, watches him stretch against a sore muscle that he must have earned in his fall. What she would give, to take some of the burden from him. Joshua starts off again, and Jill has to jog after him.
The basket for their picnic is in her hands; she tucked some of her needlepoint away so that she could have something idle to do with her hands while she and Joshua conversed on whatever subject came to mind in their vague imitation of court life. It’s a pleasant way to prepare for their future; after Joshua is wed to Clive, the plan is for Jill to be welcomed into the fold as a true unification between Rosaria and the Northern Territories. Idle chatter is all that she sees in her future; if she could have a pleasant partner, then she would see some of it worth it. Still, most of the pleasant conversation wouldn’t involve something like her handiwork, and it more likely than not wouldn’t be teaching.
Still…
“Say, Joshua,” she says, once she’s caught up. The bailey is, thankfully, still in sight. “Have you given Clive your favor yet?”
The question has Joshua stopping, turning to look at Jill with a light furrow in his brow. “My favor? Of course I favor him. He’s my big brother.”
Who gave him the right to be so endearing? Jill smiles and shakes her head. “No, not like that. I mean, a memento of some sort. Something that he can carry with him into battle.”
Joshua’s furrow only deepens, his head cocking just slightly in an imitation of Clive’s confused stare. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Jill’s smile morphs into an earnest grin. “Here. I think that this is a good place for us to make our picnic, don’t you?” Joshua looks over her shoulder towards Clive, and she kneels down so that she can start laying down the blanket before he can actually give her an answer. “You see, that’s how my mother told me it’s supposed to work in courts like this. The lady gives her knight a favor. It’s usually something small, like some of her jewelry, or something she’s made for him, or a ribbon from her hair. He can tuck it into his armor, or tie it to the hilt of his blade, and he’ll remember that someone is cheering him on.” The blanket is a soft, knit thing that Lady Murdoch had made for them. She kneels on it when she’s finished spreading it out, gesturing for Joshua to come join her. “I was going to make one for Clive, for the tournament. Would you want to do something like that?”
Joshua sits down onto the blanket next to her. His eyes have mostly left Clive, at this point, watching Jill instead with marked interest. “...I’m not a lady anymore. Am I still allowed to do that?”
“I don’t think anyone will mind, if you do.” Jill lays out their lunch, some sandwiches and pastries lovingly wrapped for them by the kitchens. She recognizes a small vial tucked in their basket, too, and pouts a little at it. With a sigh, she pulls it out, undoing the cap and handing it over to Joshua. “Here you are.”
“What? I’m doing well.” He still takes the vial, of course, but pulls a disgusted looking face. “I don’t need to.”
Why did they expect her to be the one to give Joshua his medicine? She was horrible at making him do things. Jill looks around helplessly for a moment before her eyes fall back towards the bailey. “Well, I could ask Clive what he thinks…”
Joshua stiffens a little. “Don’t do that. He’ll worry, and then he won’t be able to focus.”
She’s a genius. “Then, I suppose you’ll just have to take it yourself, won’t you?”
“You… you’re good at this.” He pouts. “It’s not fair.”
Despite his complaints, Joshua drinks the vial all in one go. Jill doesn’t exactly know what it tastes like, but it has the cloyingly sweet smell of one of the flowers she’s found in the garden, and it has Joshua shuddering like he’s freezing once he’s finished. She nudges a sandwich and some water towards him, once he’s finished, and he downs the two before she can blink. Thankfully, Clive still hasn’t noticed his audience, so they should at least be able to surprise him a little. Jill sighs and scoots herself properly towards Joshua, tugging the basket’s final contents out and into her lap.
A few different colors of thread loop on themselves, attached to a small wooden rack. She takes a moment to carefully comb them out before showing him what she’s properly working on. It’s a handkerchief with a Phoenix egg sewn onto it. The egg is surrounded by lacy little yellow flowers. It took her hours to get the pattern right. She offers it to Joshua to let him see, watching his eyes very carefully. They light up immediately, and he wipes a hand on the blanket so that he can delicately reach out to run his fingers over the thread.
“Oh, Jill,” he says, his voice a soft gasp. “This is really pretty. You really made this all on your own?”
She passes Joshua the hoop so that she can take out another needle, lifting it up a little so that she can squint at its eye. Her other hand goes for some of her thread; red, because that’s his favorite color. “My mother taught me the basics, before I came to Rosaria. It took a while for it to be that neat.” She lifts the thread up to the needle and makes a face when it just barely misses the eye. The thread crumples to the side, so she has to pull it away and straighten it out before she can try again. Second time’s the charm-- it easily goes through, so she can move on.
“I don’t think I could ever make something this nice,” Joshua sighs, his voice heavy. “All of the lines’ll be crooked.”
Gently, Jill plucks her own work out of Joshua’s hands so that she can offer him a fresh bit of fabric and the needle. “It’s alright if it’s not perfect. Actually, it’s better if it’s not. If your work is perfect, then the fairies will find a way into it.”
Instead of looking at his gift, Joshua looks up at Jill with wide eyes. “Is that true? Fairies will live in your embroidery?”
“That’s just what my mother says.” Jill very gently takes Joshua by the hand, walking him through the motions of sewing a line into the fabric. “I don’t have any reason not to believe her. So sometimes, I’ll sew something wrong on purpose, so that the fairies don’t get in. Do you think that you can do this yourself?”
“I’d like to try.” Joshua wriggles just slightly out of Jill’s grip to extend the line himself. It veers off to the side, after a little while, but it’s a start that has something warm bubbling up in Jill’s chest.
She walks him through a few more stitches. Once Joshua looks confident enough, Jill takes a piece of chalk from the basket and sketches out a pattern on another piece of fabric-- a handkerchief that could be tied to the hilt of a blade. Joshua says that he wants to put a Phoenix feather on it, so Jill tries to draw it from memory. It’s too long, she thinks, and a little wiggly, but the pattern should be simple enough for a beginner. Joshua’s excited enough about it, so Jill sets him to work as she returns to her own.
Their conversation doesn’t flow as easily as it usually does, with Joshua so occupied on his work. Jill fills in the quiet with some commentary on Clive’s training, or passerby. When Joshua finally does decide to speak, he sets his embroidery down in his lap and looks up towards Jill. “Jill… Do you really think Clive is going to like this? That it’ll help?”
Jill peers down at Joshua’s work. His lines are still crooked, and there are gaps in between his stitches that let the fabric beneath peek through. She hums for a moment in thought, then looks back towards the bailey. Clive takes a moment or two to breathe, a break in the exercise. Finally, the pair catch his gaze. He lights up like a star, in that moment, his back straight suddenly straight and his shoulders relaxed. He waves at them both, nearly sending himself careening over with the force of it, before turning back to Murdoch with newfound resolve. Jill grins. “I think, if you’re the one who makes it, it’ll be just the charm that he needs.”
The tournament comes a few weeks later. Jill gives Clive her favor a few days before, which he accepts with all of the grace of a proper knight. She asks Joshua after his, a few times, but he flushes with some embarrassment and tells her that it’s not done. She understands the anxiety of a deadline, so she stops asking after a while. By the time that the tournament properly comes, she’s nearly forgotten about it until she actually sees Clive in motion. There are two pieces of fabric tied to the hilt of his blade, that his hand keeps gently floating to. One of them, she recognizes as her own, lacy fabric fluttering in the wind. The other is a mess of bright red threads tangled together that has her heart swelling in quiet pride.
The celebration of Clive’s victory is loud. Lord Byron Rosfield visits from Port Isolde, having arrived some days before to watch his nephew in the tournament, and fills the chamber that the feast is in with stories of Clive’s bravery, even as a young child playing the part of a knight. The Archduke is at Byron’s side, his face flush and grin easy from the drink in his cup. There is dancing and snacks. The good Lady Anabella watches from the furthest corner of the room. She tries to look at anyone except for the First Shield, instead seeming incredibly interested in counting the amount of bricks that make up the farthest wall.
Joshua is asleep in Clive's lap when Jill arrives. Through the noise and singing, it seems a miracle that he can keep asleep. The celebrations have gone long into the night, though, and the good Lady Anabella hasn’t been able to pull him off to his own chambers, so Jill supposes that he’s taking the sleep where he can get it. Joshua’s arms loop up around Clive’s neck, a place he’s been perched ever since Clive was declared the victor. Clive hardly looks towards her when she approaches, his gaze soft as the hand that isn’t supporting his brother’s back very delicately lifts through his hair. In the warmth of the celebration, Joshua’s hair lights up in the dim glow of flame, and Clive’s eyes shine with an echo of the light. Jill feels her breathing stop in her chest for a moment, and she has to remind herself of what she’s doing before she can convince herself to come forward once again.
“I suppose that the good luck charm worked,” she says. Clive startles slightly when he looks up at her. Instinct seems to tell him to stand, because he twitches for a moment, but Joshua’s weight is too awkward for him to handle in the moment so he settles for a nod.
“My lady.”
Jill offers him a curtsy in return. “My lord. Do you mind if I sit with you?”
Clive just barely scoots Joshua, readjusting his place in his lap so that the space next to him is free. Jill smooths her skirt and sits down next to Clive, looking up at him. He’s tired, she can tell, from a day of combat and being paraded around as a hero. Still, a proud grin lights his features, and he speaks before she can manage it. “Joshua told me that you helped him with the handkerchief that he made.”
“It was nothing.” Jill teeters vaguely to the side, bumping herself up against Clive’s shoulder. “He was worried about you. I wanted to see if I could find a way to help him manage that fear. Did it turn out nicely?”
“It was perfect,” Clive says, without even really thinking about it. “I suppose you were right. It really was a good luck charm.”
Joshua’s hair falls into his face a little. They both shift to brush it back without waking him, fingertips just barely touching. Jill jerks her hand away, just as she did when they touched when she gave him her favor, her face a bright red from the startle. Luckily, their tussle doesn’t wake Joshua, who just buries himself a little further into Clive’s chest.
The motion has Clive blinking and squirming a little. “That reminds me. Joshua told me that he wanted to give you something as thanks.” He tips forward enough to gently press his lips against Joshua’s temple. Joshua stirs just slightly, so Clive gently shushes him and slips a hand into his pocket. He pulls out another piece of fabric, this one a very deep blue. It looks looped onto itself, and when Clive hands it over, it starts to unravel a little. Jill rolls it out into a ribbon, stitched with little stars. At the edge of it is a moon, circled by a red star. The stitches are long and clumsy, and there are some awful looking knots on the back.
“Did… did he make this himself?” she asks.
“I think so. He told me that he wanted to thank you for teaching him how. I suppose, it’s good that he has something to do with his hands, isn’t it?” Clive tips back against her, in turn, with a very gentle nudge of his arm. He’s taller than her, and heftier with Joshua, so the weight has her tipping a little.
The last time that she had a handmade gift… it must have been before she left for Rosaria?
“My hair is too short to use it,” she says, voice trembling slightly. She can feel an odd tightness to her head, a struggle that she can’t recognize. Something within her struggles to get out, like she wants to scream that this is hers. Clive reaches out to stop the cause, in a way, brushing one of her tears away with a rough finger. She’s too embarrassed to even blush. “I’ll-- I’ll feel so bad. He’s going to think that I hate it, but my hair is just too short.”
“I think that it would look nice if you grew your hair out,” Clive says, not seeming to realize what he’s saying until the words already leave his mouth. He goes a little pink himself, clearing his throat and looking back at Joshua. “I-- wouldn’t dare to presume what my brother is thinking. But I think he thought you might get use out of it, somehow.”
Jill sniffles again and properly wipes her own tears. The party erupts into eager cheers, and when she glances over to the source of the commotion, Clive’s dog being hoisted up and over somebody’s head. It seems that someone went to examine the noise. Nobody can truly resist the urge of a puppy. She wraps the ribbon up and looks back to Clive and Joshua.
Joshua stirs again at the noise, brow gently furrowed, but Jill leans in herself to very delicately kiss him on the forehead. “Thank you, Joshua,” she says. His hands very gently twitch, and she looks up to Clive as she stands. “And thank you, Clive, for delivering it. I’ll get some use out of it, I promise.”
“Are you going to put Torgal to bed?” Clive asks, looking over her shoulder to the commotion. “I… wanted to thank you again for what you gave me. And for watching him, through all of this. You’ve… been a very good friend.”
The pride still sits on his face, and Joshua still lounges against him as if there are no cares in the world. Jill wishes, for a moment, that she could just stay here for the rest of the night, collapsed in a heap with her best friends. Instead, she smiles. “It was the least I could do. I’m glad to have been one of the first to support the First Shield of Rosaria.”
It takes a few years for Jill to grow her hair out enough to actually use Joshua’s ribbon. By then, Shiva has long since taken her. The burn of the ink woven into her cheek warms her blood against the fractals of ice that take root, and she’s not left with many possessions of her own. She hides the ribbon as well as she can until that point, and ultimately assumes that it’s mistaken for scrap fabric and allowed for a practical use rather than a frivolous one.
It’s easy to imagine small hands across the fabric, the uncertainty of a stitch. Did he prick his finger, here, where a line hesitates? Did he have to ask for help, tying off a knot? The Phoenix is dead (long live the Phoenix), but as she cradles the scrap of him that remains, that she knows that he has touched, she doesn’t feel quite so alone.
The Ironbloods aren’t forever. The ribbon long outlives her time with them, tying her hair into a sort of ponytail. She gets compliments on it, when she makes it to the Hideaway. Clive recognizes it, the first time that she takes her hair down in front of him. He doesn’t say anything, but he looks vaguely like he’s been stabbed when he runs his own fingers over clever stitches.
Joshua himself recognizes it, more than eighteen years after the fact, when he’s finally well enough to find a proper bed. He’s staying in Clive’s room, which happens to be Jill’s room, so they all sleep sort of clumped together. As they’re getting ready for bed, Jill takes her hair down and sets the ribbon on a table near Clive’s mementos, leaving it utterly open for Joshua to snatch away and stare at.
“Jill, is this what I think it is?” he asks, his voice sharp and incredulous. When Jill looks at him, he isn’t looking at her, instead trailing his thumb over his craftsmanship. His fingers have gotten long and slender, in their time apart, and she briefly wonders if he’s been practicing.
She takes it from him and sets it back on the table. “Of course it is. A knight shouldn’t forsake her lord’s favor, you know.”
“Are you a knight now?” Clive asks, wrestling with Torgal and nowhere near the conversation.
Joshua’s eyes remain on the ribbon. He doesn’t wear his emotions so profoundly on his sleeve, anymore, a cool look in his eyes guarding from any sort of insight. His still-gloved hand clenches very briefly into a fist. “I must confess, my lady, I find myself wondering how it’s been maintained for so long, after what you’ve gone through.”
The ribbon has seen better days. It hasn’t needed to be properly mended yet, but the edges are frayed, and the threads have been re-tied more times than Jill can count. She joins him on the edge of the bed and nudges herself against his shoulder, jarring him out of whatever train of thought he’s found himself marching upon. “Somebody very important gave it to me,” she says, her voice soft. “And if I took care of it, it was much like I was still taking care of him.”
There’s a long moment of silence that’s only vaguely interspersed by Torgal making some snuffling noise. Joshua dips his head slightly so that Jill can’t see his face, but when he speaks, it’s as clear as it usually is. “Might I bring it into our fold for tonight, my lady?”
Thus begins the routine.
When he was much smaller, Joshua preferred to sleep in a nest. Blankets were dragged across his bedroom (and, on occasion, from Clive’s room to his own) and layered onto the bed in some arcane, intricate motion. The build often led to high walls on the edges, and a little bowl in the middle for him to sleep in. Often, he would drag Clive to sleep in that bowl with him, his favorite blanket (a heavy red thing from Clive’s bad) either strewn on top of them both of clutched in his hand. As an adult, the habit is much the same, though he insists that more personal items be added now. More than a few of Clive’s shirts have been donated to the cause, and now, Jill’s ribbon suffers that fate.
Jill wouldn’t say that Joshua’s rules for his nest are particularly strict. He seems to take some joy in rebuilding it every night, forcing her and Clive to scoot from one half of the bed to the other in order to get their scent all over it. Jill asks him, once, if the Phoenix can actually smell anything. Joshua tells her in response that even if it can’t, I can, and it’s comforting to me. Clive doesn’t argue, because he never does, and Jill doesn’t really have any room to complain. Despite being pinned between two eikons of flame every night, it’s not nearly so stiflingly warm as it was in the Breath, so she’ll happily be covered by blankets and feathers and briar and thorn every night, and dig her hair ribbon out from someone’s grasp in the morning.
With the grey of the sky refusing to let up and with the wound in Joshua’s chest getting gnarlier and gnarlier, sometimes, the nest has to be deconstructed beyond a simple ribbon for the greater good. Clive and Joshua have their own business to attend to, so Jill decides that it’s a good time to get some laundry rolling, so that she doesn’t have to have this fight later. She picks through blankets for the worst offenders, dumping them into a basket to bring downstairs. Tucked within are some shirts that certainly need to be clean, and a familiar spot of fabric that’s a little rough beneath her fingertips.
Odd. She doesn’t think any of them have a blanket like this.
Very gently, she tugs the fabric out from beneath Torgal’s butt and three other blankets. It’s a threadbare thing. Though there’s a lot of fabric to it, it’s rough and worn, frayed at the edges. Jill rubs her thumb over the familiar red, brow gently furrowed.
“This was… Clive’s, wasn’t it?”
Jill offers the fabric to Torgal to sniff. He sneezes on it, so Jill sticks her tongue out and pulls it back. The fabric is soft, in a way, only rough from a lifetime of affection. The pattern is familiar, too, a very simple weave that’s sort of faded by now. She does remember this blanket, she thinks, from the life of the long dead ward of Rosalith. It was a heavy thing, once upon a time, a bright red that Clive supposedly had since he was young. Since he was a little older, Joshua had been using it, tugging it across the hallway and into his own room.
She can picture it, she thinks. A little fledgling, after the disaster of Phoenix Gate, curled so deeply in a blanket that when it became worn enough…
“This must be his scarf.”
Jill doesn’t think that Joshua left without his scarf today, but she woke up before the both of them and decided to give them a chance to sleep in. She makes to put it back, but her fingertips catch on themselves on a hole in the fabric. Jill blinks and pulls it back, unfurling the scarf so that she can properly look at it. There are a few more, scattered about the thing, from a lifetime of affection.
“Isn’t this a shame, Torgal?” she asks him, holding out the fabric again. He peers at her through one of the holes. “He’s had this this whole time. I wouldn’t believe for a moment that he’d get rid of it… Unless he means to retire it here, I suppose…” She turns the fabric over in her hands. It’s a little warm beneath her touch; she wonders if he rubbed his cheek against it, over and over, as he waited for Clive and Jill to return to Rosaria. “...He’ll still want to keep it at his side for as long as I can. Truthfully, it doesn’t look like these are too egregious…” She sits down on the bed, letting Torgal worm his way over to her side. “Some thread, and it would be all patched up in no time…”
Clive has his favor, the new one, that she’s going to give to him later. And the garland that they made sits happily on the mantle behind her. Joshua… doesn’t have anything of hers, does he? She’s kept his, after all...
“That settles it,” she says, standing up again. “I’ll fix it up for him.”
Torgal stares up at her with a pitiful expression as she stands to leave. She has no intention of returning to the nest, so if he wants the affection he so craves, he has to shamble up and and follow her over to Clive’s desk. He tucks himself beneath it, at her feet, with extremely dramatic sigh.
She spreads the scarf over the desk so that she can properly see what she’s working with. The edges have been worn soft over the years, so she won’t touch them; instead, she’ll focus on the holes that threaten to see it torn in two. Jill hums with thought and pulls her sewing kit from the desk, too, settling to work as Torgal eventually finds it in himself to doze off.
Jill decides on Phoenix down. At the very least, it should be important to Joshua, so she’ll make it as Rosarian as she can. Jill hums quietly as she works. It doesn’t take long; she’s practiced so much, at this point, that she thinks that she could do it in her sleep. She even manages to make the feathers look like they’re placed there with some purpose, rather than hiding the seams where holes once sat. Jill stands up to admire her handiwork, white and gold feathers dancing along a the fabric. It’s as she’s doing her final check that footsteps come up the door, and she’s properly joined.
Joshua’s hair is damp. He’s perfectly clothed, though carries a towel with him. His shoulders sag somewhat, as he enters, and the crystal between his breasts, tucked just beneath the plunge of his neckline, pulses with malice. His jaw is tight, his brow furrowed, and-- he doesn’t realize that she’s there, for a moment, until he properly scans the room. When his eyes land on her, his entire form changes; his spine straightens, and he offers her a sweet smile. “My lady, I was just looking for you.”
She thinks better of asking after him. The conversation would very quickly get nowhere, after all. Joshua is a lot like Clive, in that regard; he must ever carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, if it would save someone else the burden. She’s certain that he won’t tell her how he’s feeling because he doesn’t want her to worry. So, instead, Jill handles what she can. She gently gathers up his scarf and trots to the door to meet him. “Oh, were you? I was just about to come and find you!”
“Yes, I was wondering if you had started laundry already.” He lifts the towel from his bath. “I’ve this, and I’m afraid that my scarf…”
Jill takes the towel out of his hands and replaces it with the scarf, turning so that she can drop the towel in the basket that she had long since forgotten. “You left it in the nest,” she says over her shoulder. “You know, I didn’t know how you felt comfortable wearing that thing. A stiff breeze would probably have torn it in half.”
Joshua doesn’t respond to her. She drops the towel into the basket and turns to face him. It’s quite nearly like she isn’t in the room at all. He stares at nothing instead, the scarf lifted delicately to his so that he can rub the feathers against it. For the moment, his pupils have blown wide. He still doesn’t speak, but if she strains her ears, she can very nearly hear a bird’s overeager trill through the aether.
Jill comes back towards him, hands held gently in front of her. “I know that it means a lot to you,” she says, even if he can’t hear her. “I… know, that you and Clive still have a long road to walk, one that I might not be able to follow you on. I thought, if I could do something small to ease even one of your burdens, that it would be enough.” Joshua closes his eyes, so she continues, “Now, I don’t think that you’ll have to worry about it ripping while in the middle of things.”
She lets the thought hang in the quiet for a moment. Joshua closes the distance between them, then, and leans down so that he can very gently kiss her on the forehead. “You realized that you never gave me your favor, my lady.”
“My… favor?” She hadn’t even meant it like that. It felt like a good deed, like something that needed to be done. Joshua pulls away to grin at her, and Jill stares at him with a flush. There’s no denying it, is there? “...You’re right.”
“I usually am,” Joshua says. He lowers the fabric from his face, taking one of her hands and very gently setting it against the scarf. It’s already warmed slightly from the Phoenix’s attentions. “You knew that soon, I would be going off into battle, and you wished to give me a charm. Something that ensured that I would come home to you.”
“Not so deliberately,” Jill says. She takes the scarf from his hands and reaches up so that she can properly settle it where it belongs. The crystal in his chest is cold, even to her, and she’s glad to cover it up with comfortable red fabric. The way that it’s draped nearly makes the feathers frame his heart. “I wanted to make sure that you had a memento. So that you could look upon it, and remember that someone at home is cheering for you.”
Joshua bows his head slightly, so that he can tip their foreheads together. “I shall wear it with pride, my lady,” he says, his voice but a whisper. Their lips don’t quite touch, but she can just barely feel his breath against hers as he speaks.
With the scarf settled, Jill settles her hands on Joshua’s shoulders. “I know that Clive will keep you safe. And that you will keep him safe. I’ll count on you both, to make sure that you both come home. Will you do that for me, Joshua?”
The quiet hangs. One of Joshua’s hands lifts to his scarf, and that which lies beneath.
“I shall, my lady. I shall.”