Work Text:
At the moment of the portals’ closing, Tasim is fighting a golem somewhere in Cinfras County. Or, well, he’s trying, but collapsing mid-spell from the strange, strange feeling of something running through his magic like the burning of fluff on particularly dewy spring days in the Light Forest is bound to make any fight a non-starter. Still, the golem - either sensing Tasim’s inability or struggling itself with the abrupt change in the magical atmosphere - takes a pause just as Tasim does, and is promptly rewarded with a destructive hit of magic so strong that Tasim’s not sure it’s all his.
-
The next day, Tasim’s landlord Ykana - an old lady whose farm-battered hands from a childhood in Maltic and tendency to leave Tasim to his ruminations had ultimately sweetened him to her - nearly barrels him over in a fit of youthful energy likely foreign to her after all of those years. Perhaps more importantly to her, she almost drops her bottle of Nemract whiskey (no doubt purchased from that Wynnic bargirl that probably knows Tasim better than old Ykana, whose liver never allowed her to drink much), and she makes sure to steady it before excitedly continuing in a way much unlike her.
“Tasim, I think you’ll much like this piece of gossip,” Ykana starts, barely noticing as Tasim takes her basket from her hands in an attempt to make sure none of her goods from the market end up on the floor. “I was just speaking to Anita - the bartender at the inn, you know I like to check up on her, she’s so sad with her family all in that dreadful port town. Oh, you two would make the most adorable couple.”
Tasim did not know that, and is definitely not interested, but he nods at Ykana anyways in hopes that maybe she’ll leave him in the dark. Perhaps a bit enabling of him, but he’ll live.
“So anyways, Annie mentioned that she has news from Wynn, and I ask her what is it - you know how I feel about my homeland - and you know what this girl tells me? That big, scary portal that all of those weird things you’re supposed to fight against came out of just up and closed. Completely sealed up, no explanation. Isn’t that crazy? Anita’s headed back to Wynn as soon as the tavern can find a replacement, and I might honestly join her. I’ve got a nephew down in Maltic that could use an old lady to keep his head on right. You could come too, I bet Annie could use your help starting a new life, young, strapping man such as yourself. Maybe she’d finally talk you into losing that horrid beard, huh?”
“My beard’s not that bad. So the war on corruption is just… over?”
Ykana gently pries a loaf of bread from Tasim’s hand, still frozen in the air, and sets it down. “Well, I suppose so. Not much to fight anymore, is there? Maybe you’ll be a decorated war veteran, isn’t that sweet?”
“Ma’am, I think I need to end my lease.”
“I just about figured as much.” Ykana uncorks that bottle of whiskey and pours two glasses neat. “Have a drink with me, still. We’re celebrating!”
The whiskey feels like fire as it moves down Tasim’s throat. It’s strange, he thinks. That burning feeling had become so foreign to him.
-
Tasim gets to the ruins of the portal in record time, and shacks up with a kindly researcher named Jorkin who’s just as baffled about the closing of the portal as everyone else seems to be. He spends two days hiking around the portal, waiting for Aledar to come back, before you find him.
Maybe he’d known all along what happened. Maybe he knew the second that he stopped awkwardly meeting Aledar and his new friends in the light forest. Maybe he knew when word reached Cinfras of your team’s disappearance. Maybe he knew when, just days before, the bartender at the Rusty winced and said, “sorry about, you know…” when he’d ordered a whiskey.
Still, hearing the words, “Aledar’s dead,” spill from your mouth like you’d been waiting to tell him for years (haven’t you? How long has Aledar been gone?) is enough to make Tasim hyperventilate.
He doesn’t feel much better when you assure him you’ll fix it. Necromancy, if he remembers correctly, is the most horrid of the magical arts, and he’s seen enough undeads for a lifetime. Even still, he knows that you’ve never quite had limits, moral or otherwise, so when you invite him along he graciously accepts. To keep you in check more than anything.
And he’s seen the impossibility of goodbyes first-hand. Army men burnt to a crisp with no bodies for their wives to speak their final eulogies to. He knows better than to let the opportunity to see Aledar’s cold, lifeless body and remember how it was once warm against Tasim’s go to waste.
Plus, there’s no use staying at the portal anymore. So he goes.
-
“Where we’re about to go is unlike anywhere you’ve been before.” You’re seated on a random wall in Ternaves organizing your inventory: weapons and spellbooks and potions and suspicious vials of suspicious liquids. “The expanse is the kind of place that will make you wish you’d never been born. Don’t look at anything. Don’t interact with anything. Don’t stray off the path. Keep your eyes on me and only me. For Orphion’s sake, don’t follow anything else.”
Tasim doesn’t expect an answer when he asks, “should I be scared?”
It’s said in jest, but the look you shoot Tasim for it is deadly. “Yes, Tasim. You should be terrified.”
The conversation lulls into a pensive silence before Tasim finally pipes up with a, “playername, Aledar won’t come back the same. Nothing revived comes back right.”
You throw your hands up in inexplicable exasperation. “Why is everyone around me constantly acting like I don’t know what I’m doing?” Tasim shoots you a look for that, but you continue, “Aledar didn’t just die, Tasim. He was ritualistically sacrificed to a dark god to undo ancient magic used to seal that dark god away. His soul is still on an accessible plane, and his body’s condition can still be restored. Plus, the dark god he was sacrificed to doesn’t mind my existence. Seriously, Tasim, do I look stupid enough to revive anybody? Wouldn’t I have revived Axelus if that was the case?”
Tasim searches his memories for the existence of an Axelus and comes up empty, but he nods and pretends to understand anyways. Some stones are best left unturned, he’s learned.
-
You were right about the silent expanse, as it turns out. Seeing Aledar’s mangled body laid over an altar, battered and bruised with a stab wound centered on his still heart is, in fact, the kind of experience that makes Tasim wish he were never born.
And the eyes. He’s not a fan of the eyes. Why are there so many eyes in the expanse?
He doesn’t want to know.
He’s a bit of a deadweight as you recite the spell, a complicated series of phrases in ancient Wynnic that he can only make out bits and pieces of. Aledar comes back a coughing, bleeding mess, on the verge of death until you unceremoniously pour that suspicious vial of suspicious liquid over his head and his wounds stitch themselves up of their own volition.
Tasim fights the urge to reach for him. After his moving to Gavel stunt, his touch is probably unwelcome.
“Lazarus Pit water. Never disappoints,” you say to Aledar in lieu of a greeting.
Tasim double-takes. “Wait. You know where the Lazarus Pit is?”
“You don’t?”
When Aledar speaks up, his voice is weak and trembling. “Playername, why is Tasim here? What did you do?”
“When did everyone get so judgmental? I saved your life, Aledar. Can we just get out of here?”
The resentment in your tone does not even slightly remind Tasim of who you were when the three of you were carted in from Fruma. He supposes it’s fair for you to have grown to be… like this, but hearing your anger directed at Aledar of all people left a bad taste in his mouth, no matter the wrongs that Aledar did you. Still, it’s not his business, so he keeps quiet as you hoist Aledar up on his horse and as the three of you ride back to that ghost town in the middle of the expanse.
“What happened to the obelisk?”
“The portals are closed, Aledar. Nothing light can survive in darkness’ dominion.”
Tasim’s not sure what the two of you are talking about, but he’s better off not asking.
The three of you make it back to Detlas without much fanfare, and you leave them be with the feeble explanation that your job’s not done. Tasim’s pretty sure you closed the portal. How could your job not be done?
You’re long gone before he can make the complaint, so he swallows his pride and takes Aledar to the Rusty Tavern.
The girl serving their drinks is new, but familiar. Tasim takes a second to place her as Cinfras’ bargirl Anita, hair now dyed a deep, velvety scarlet instead of the natural black he’d gotten used to. Perhaps a second too long, based on Anita’s quickly growing smirk.
He rewards her with a half-wince. “Hey, Anita.”
“Funny seeing you here. Tasim, right?”
“Same goes for you. Ykana told me you were returning home to Nemract.”
Anita huffs in amusement, not unkindly but not quite kindly either. “You know what they say. Home is where the heart is.”
“You’ve got a guy stationed here or something?”
“No, I think that’s you,” she gestures to Aledar, quietly confused at Tasim’s side. “I’ve got a lady here. Ykana will be so disappointed. Whiskey?”
“Yes, please.”
Bottle and glasses in hand, Tasim leads Aledar to the tavern’s nook, making sure to draw the curtain over the old map on the wall.
“Aledar, I…”
“Why did you leave?” Tasim opens his mouth to answer, but Aledar cuts him off. “I want a real answer. You were bluffing when we saw each other in Gavel, and I let it slide, but I deserve the truth. Did something in Elkurn make you decide you didn’t love me?”
Aledar’s voice is calm, but Tasim still feels the pervasive need to cry when he tells Aledar, “there’s something wrong with our memories. You only feel like this about me because you don’t know anything about me.”
“Tasim, you cannot be serious. I know who you are right now. If you hadn’t noticed, I’m in love with who you are right now. I don’t care who you were in Fruma. Do you love me, Tasim?”
“Aledar, there’s something wrong with me.”
Aledar’s progressive matching of Tasim’s rapidly decreasing volume turns his next statement into a hurried whisper Tasim has to lean in to hear. “I just came back from the dead. I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with all of us. I am begging you to answer my question.”
“Yes,” Tasim blinks a tear out of his eye. “I love you, Aledar. More than anything. My universe revolves around you.”
Aledar’s eyes fall to the still unopened bottle of whiskey on the table between them, then back up to Tasim. “Why are we here, Tasim? Can we go anywhere else? I don’t want us to be in public right now.”
-
Tasim’s closing the door to their room at the inn when Aledar tells him he wants to kiss him.
Tasim hesitates. “You don’t think we’re moving too fast?”
“I’ve been waiting for years, Tasim. I know what I want. Do you?”
Tasim eyes Aledar for a long second, then crosses the room in a few long strides, reaching up to his face, but stops before ever touching Aledar’s cheek. Sensing his hesitation, Aledar places a hand on Tasim’s, pressing it to his cheek.
“I’m right here.”
“You’re right here.”
Tasim leans up and kisses Aledar, softly, like he had once all of those years ago. He figures they’re going to be okay.
-
It takes weeks for Tasim to get used to waking up next to Aledar. And yet, there he stays, with soothing hands and stars in his eyes.
-
Anita’s chatting up a soldier - a tall, broad blonde that Tasim recognizes but cannot quite place - when he visits the Rusty next. She doesn’t take her gaze off of her even as she takes Tasim’s order (a horrid blow to Tasim’s ego. He’d been so used to being the center of Anita’s attention, though he supposes now he sees why). Still, she looks away when she realizes she’s reached for whiskey instead of water, and, free from Anita’s trance, the soldier turns her newly hardened gaze towards Tasim.
“Did you seriously come into a tavern just to order water?”
With the sound of her voice her name comes to mind - Velkyra, if Tasim recalls correctly, who he’d last seen years ago as a lanky new recruit from Fruma with an infectious smile and a heart full of hope. Things change, he supposes.
“I’m meeting someone here. Don’t want her to go thirsty. You know how airships can be.”
At that, Anita looks up at him. “Is Ykana finally coming to Wynn?” At Tasim’s nod, she hands him a basket of breadsticks from somewhere below the counter (since when did they sell food?). “Her going thirsty is the least of your concerns. Her medications cannot possibly work on airship food alone.”
“Thanks, Anita.”
“It’s not on the house. You’re not going to make an old lady pay for her food, are you?” The smirk playing at the edges of her lips becomes full-blown as Tasim hands her half a stack of emeralds in defeat.
“So, Tasim,” Velkyra starts, “I didn’t think you’d end up back in Detlas for the long run. Figured I’d never see you again after you pulled that runner.”
“That’s harsh. I have my reasons. I’m sure you have yours.”
“If you’re looking for a fresh start, Detlas isn’t the place for you.”
“Leave him be, Kyra,” Anita interjects, “he can’t be that bad. Ykana likes him.”
“Ykana just wants him to get with you.”
“He won’t, though.”
Velkyra opens her mouth to answer, but her gaze is pulled away from her… whatever Anitra is by the door jostling open to let a familiar villager through.
Ykana, with a youthful spring in her step Tasim figured she’d lost for good years ago when she left her family for greener, corruption-free pastures, bounds over to the trio and, in between well-meant exclamations of congratulations, kisses both Tasim and Anita and both cheeks.
Anita recovers much faster than Tasim, piping up with a, “sorry to disappoint, auntie, but Tasim and I aren’t an item.”
Velkyra sends her a pointed look.
“Kyra’s actually been my lover for a couple of years now.”
“That’s surprising.” Ykana hurriedly presses a kiss on a rather stiff Velkyra’s cheek. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, dear. Can’t believe Annie’s been hiding you from me all of these years.” Whirling around to face Tasim, she adds, “don’t worry, Tasim, we’ll find you a nice girl for yourself.”
A wide grin spreads across Anita’s face as Tasim meets her eyes. “I wasn’t aware he was interested in that sort of thing.”
“Anita’s right. I’ve got someone.”
“Well, you all must be intent on robbing an old lady of her joys. Both of you, really, leaving me in the dark?” At Tasim’s pained look, Ykana shoots him a soft smile. “I’m happy for you both. I don’t care much for romance, but it’s nice to see you kids paired off.”
The conversation lapses into silence for a minute.
“So, auntie. How was the airship food?”
“Oh, it was gourmet. You’d think I was flying first class, I really don’t understand where they found the space to store all of that food.”
Tasim meets Aledar outside of the market with an almost full basket of overpriced breadsticks.
-
“Aledar.”
“Yes, Tasim?”
“I’m sorry I left you.”
“Do you regret it?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“You shouldn’t.” Aledar sighs and places a hand on Tasim’s neck, bringing him closer to him. “You did what you needed to, and you came back. There’s nothing for me to forgive.”
“I’m in love with you.”
“I know. I love you too.”
“Thank you.”
“Go to sleep, Tasim.”
-
“I like your haircut.”
Anita glances up at Tasim through narrowed eyes and her newly added bangs. “I didn’t do it for you.”
“I know. Still. It’s shorter. Very edgy.”
“I don’t think you know what that word means. Move your hand, it’s in the way.” Tasim lifts his hand in acquiescence, and Anita swipes at where it was with a rag. “Your boyfriend’s not around, where is he?”
“Aledar is at home studying.”
“I didn’t think you had one of those.”
“It’s. It’s a room at the inn.”
“Close enough.” Anita throws her rag over her shoulder. “Sit down. What do you want?”
“Velkyra hates me.”
“That’s not a menu item.”
“Anita.”
Anita takes a long look at Tasim and breathes out a long-suffering sigh. “I’m not having this conversation standing.” She glances at the counter appraisingly before boosting herself up and sitting on it facing Tasim, undoing all of her hard work. “Velkyra doesn’t hate you. She’s just-“ she takes in a deep breath. “She came to Wynn with nothing, and you gave her a purpose. And then you disappeared to who knows where and she tried to find you and she didn’t.” She looks Tasim in the eye. “You were her biggest role model, for a time. She’s just feeling a bit betrayed.”
“Oh.”
“She was young, she’ll get over it if she wants to. What’s it to you?”
“It’s nothing. She tried to find me?”
“Found me instead. But you don’t have the right to hear that story yet. Ask me some other day.”
“I won’t, but thanks.”
“Why’d you even leave?”
Tasim squints up at her, as if that would fix his clearly faulty hearing. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Come on, we’re on the subject, and you’ve got me curious.”
Tasim studies Anita for a second, but her expression is surprisingly earnest, lacking the desire to cause problems on purpose that usually paints itself so naturally on her face. Even still.
“I don’t know if I can tell you that.”
Anita jumps down from the counter, foxlike countenance restored. “Figure it out and get back to me, then.” She swats at him with her rag. “Get out of here. We closed five minutes ago.”
-
The city of Detlas exists in the opposite of a vacuum, shifting and changing just as the center of the world should. Still, Tasim thinks, his and Aledar’s idyllic life in the town’s inn has separated the two of them from reality, and, most importantly, their hard-earned emeralds. The amount of money they dropped on their months-long stay was perhaps enough to buy the entire inn.
And there’s only so much to do. Aledar makes do, swapping books with tourists and soldiers and mages passing through, and Tasim can’t say he hates trading barbs and drinking exotic cocktails with Anita on his off time, but, dear god. They’re bored. Tasim needs a hobby. Aledar needs a life. And Tasim would do anything for him.
Maybe that’s why he takes him to see Dr Picard. Or maybe he just needs Aledar to know the truth, to ease Tasim’s guilt about being with him under false pretenses.
Picard greets them with recognition and scientific glee (he claims he’s never forgotten a patient, which, in Tasim’s opinion, makes his eagerness to experiment on Aledar even more concerning).
(To his credit, he does step out for a minute when he’s done doing whatever he does with his orb. For all of his invasiveness, he knows when to give people their privacy).
“That’s… new.” Aledar says. He leaves it at that.
“I won’t blame you if you don’t want to be together anymore.”
Aledar looks at Tasim quizzically before sighing and pressing his lips to Tasim’s softly. “Tasim, this changes nothing. You really think I’d blame you for the Fruman queen banning magic?”
Admittedly, that sounds a bit stupid to Tasim. He’s never been rational about Aledar, though.
-
Tasim misses movement. And Aledar misses learning.
They decide to leave Detlas.
-
“I’m going back to Gavel.”
Annie looks up at Tasim, unimpressed. “About time.” She pauses for a second. “Come visit me, though.”
Tasim takes that as the “I’ll miss you,” that it is, and carefully ignores Velkyra’s pointed glare. “I have something to tell you before that, though.”
“Please don’t be in love with me.”
Tasim narrows his eyes at Anita. “You’re not my type. And I’m in a relationship.” She waves him off, and he gets back to his point. “Fruman military recruits are prisoners brainwashed to serve and die in the corruption war.”
Velkyra’s glass shatters on the floor, gin quickly absorbing into the floorboards. “How do you know that?”
“A scientist in Elkurn dug into my memory.”
Anita, for once fully absorbed in the conversation, asks, “what did you get locked up for?”
“Using magic.”
Both women gape at him, but Tasim can have nothing more to say.
After a long minute, Anita dares to ask, “is that why you left Wynn?”
“I was… conflicted about fighting the corruption war. And it made things weird with Aledar.”
Anita nods, looks down at the counter between them, and then up at Velkyra. Her probing look is met with a reluctant nod.
“I didn’t really have anything before I met Kyra.” At Tasim’s questioning look, she continues, “I left my family in Nemract because I hated being there and my parents hated the fact that they put me there, and Gavel was the furthest place from Wynn on all of the maps. There’s no such thing as permanence for humans in Gavel, but I didn’t know that. I was 19. Nemract was all I knew.”
Velkyra places a hand on Anita’s, stopping her tapping on the counter. Anita shoots Tasim a wry smile. “Sorry. I’m not good at telling the truth.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” She takes a breath to recollect herself. “I found that job in Cinfras by pure luck. I hated everything in my life. And then Kyra came along and everything just… fell into place.” She shoots an uncharacteristically soft smile at her lover. “It’s silly looking back how independent I pretended to be. Sometimes you don’t know how much you need someone until they come along.”
“I think we both needed each other.”
They lapse in a companionable silence.
“Bring your boyfriend back here sometime.”
“Thanks, Annie. I will.”
Anita scoffs at him, not unkindly. “Thanks for the stories or the drinks?”
“For being my friend. I don’t have a lot of those.”
“Yeah, well. You started it.”
Tasim shoots her a smile. “You should really clean up that broken glass sometime.”
“Get the hell out of here, Tasim.”
As Tasim’s leaving the tavern, Velkyra calls out, “take care of yourself.” Tasim figures he will.
-
The evening breeze in the light forest is cool and refreshing, disrupting but never quite overpowering the citrusy scent always hanging in the air. Tasim’s missed it, he realizes.
He’s also missed watching the forest’s sunsets from the treetops (the sinking of the sun below the horizon, glinting off of the distant quartzes of Llevigar, blazes the skies up into a breathtaking rainbow display. The forest’s very own aurora borealis, a nightly show). And he’s always wanted to watch them with Aledar sitting at a small distance from Tasim, fingers laced through his.
The sun takes its time dipping out of sight, letting the stars and fireflies and distant city lights have their moment.
Regrettably, with the sun goes Aledar’s hand, which he untangles from Tasim’s and folds in his lap as the night’s first star blinks on.
Tasim looks at him with a question in his eyes that he’d rather die than verbalize.
“Tasim,” he starts, then stops abruptly. His gaze falls to his hands, folded in his lap.
Tasim gives him a minute.
“The mission to the expanse. It was Elphie’s idea, but I convinced her to go. I needed to see it so badly.” His voice breaks. “It’s my fault she’s dead. I killed her. I killed Lucio. God, I was going to kill playername.”
Tasim opens his mouth to rebut him, but Aledar, lost in his spiral, inadvertently cuts him off. “She loved the forest so much more than I did. How could I come back? How could playername bring me back?”
“No one’s holding what happened in the expanse against you, Aledar.”
“Playername is. And did you see that elf girl today?” At Tasim’s confused and extremely concerned look, he tearfully elaborates, “she looked at me and her face just… fell. I think maybe I should’ve stayed dead. It’s what the universe wants.”
Tasim hesitantly wipes a tear off of Aledar’s cheek. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I want you here. With me.”
Not placated but with nothing more to say, Aledar leans forward and sobs into Tasim’s shoulder until he tires himself out.
Sleep eludes Tasim that night. Instead, he lies beside a passed-out Aledar on the uncommonly thick foliage of the treetop, quietly asking the stars for answers and not liking the advice they give him.
-
“There’s a place in the canyons,” Aledar starts the next morning, once they’re safely down from the treetops. “A dojo. They offered me a spot before everything happened.”
At Aledar’s pause, Tasim looks up at him from his tool inventory and nods his acknowledgement at Aledar.
“I’m thinking of taking it. Or just… going there. If they’ll have me. Their library’s not half-bad.”
“Alright,” Tasim affirms, eager to please, “if that’s what you want, I’ll stay with you.”
“No, Tasim.” Aledar grabs his partner’s hands. “You’d hate it there. You’d hate me for bringing you there. You need to be out here with people who need your help.”
“You need my help.”
“I need help. But I love you too much to monopolize yours.”
Tasim considers Aledar’s words for a minute. “Okay. As long as I get to visit you.”
“Of course you get to visit me.” Aledar presses a kiss to Tasim’s temple. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
-
Tasim drops Aledar off at the dojo, a quaint, peaceful little place he rather likes for his lover, and fills his time with noble pursuits. He befriends the quartet trying to repair the forests. He defeats golems and goliaths. He helps wayward citizens home. He finds the Lazarus Pit and does nothing about it.
There haven’t been as many problems for him to solve since the portals closed, not even in Gavel, which is a strange coincidence, but between the strange magical threats in Cinfras County and the constant problems of the forever-cursed city of Lexdale, he finds something to do. It’s fairly fulfilling.
He still finds time to visit Aledar twice a week, like clockwork. He’s risen up the ranks uncommonly fast, taking over the entire dojo from the aging sensei because he was allegedly the only qualified and willing candidate. Aledar’s honored. And Tasim’s glad to see him where he belongs: in a temple of knowledge and magic, where the weight on his shoulders becomes feather-light.
-
Tasim’s fighting a particularly annoying weird near Gylia when he sees you next.
Or, well, he hears you before he sees you, an exasperated “get out of my way,” from behind the weird before some of the strongest magic he’s ever seen obliterates it and sends it to the shadow dimension.
It’s surprising to see you so buoyant, to see your lips split into a wide smile at the sight of him.
“Tasim, it’s been so long. I don’t think I’ve seen you since I retired. How have you been?” You hesitate for a second, which tells Tasim you’re about to ask after Aledar before you actually do.
“I’m doing pretty well for myself. Aledar took over the dojo up in the canyons.”
“The dojo? How unexpected.”
“It’s a pretty peaceful place. It’s good for him.”
You hesitate, not just to shoot a blast of magic at a weird that got too close. “Should I visit?”
“Probably. You two need to work things out.”
“Yeah.” You fall into silence, kicking a rock to watch it skitter into the lake. “My retirement’s going well, by the way. Thanks for asking.”
“Sorry. I just don’t love asking questions. You know why.”
You look at Tasim like you’ve dealt with far greater problems and don’t have time for his crap, which, to be fair, is probably the case. “What a miserable existence. Consider getting over it.”
Tasim wishes it were that simple, but he still appreciates the fact you’re looking out for him.
-
You and Aledar apparently patch things up. Tasim’s glad to hear. He’s missed the three of you together.
-
As soon as he gets the news, he rushes to the dojo. It takes him a minute to find Aledar, who’s tending to the library like the universe isn’t falling apart around them.
“The Fruman border is opening. Maxie told me.”
Aledar pauses mid-action, book halfway pulled out from the shelf. After a second, he pops it back into place and whirls around to face Tasim. “Are we going?”
“I think we have to, but.” Tasim pauses. He actually hadn’t thought that far ahead. “We should give it some time.”
“Okay. Do you want some tea?”
Tasim’s hands are still shaking, he notes. “Yeah. Thank you.”
-
Lari’s decided that she’d much like to officially meet Aledar, and it’s ridiculously hard to deny her, so Tasim brings her to the dojo. They have a very long talk.
When it’s over, both of them shine just a bit brighter.
-
The journey to Maltic isn’t a particularly long one, but Tasim and Aledar take their time, making sure to stop at the Rusty so that Anita can tell Aledar that Ykana will adore him, and that he needs to stop coming for Anita’s spot as her favorite.
Ykana is surprised to see Aledar, but Annie’s right. She does adore him. He is coming for Anita’s spot.
It’s also very flattering to be used as the good example against Ykana’s nephew, but. Tasim’s not going to admit to that.
-
Something happens the day the Fruman queen is overthrown (and killed, but that’s less important). Tasim comes back to himself in pieces, finding memories where they haven’t been for years.
He really misses his parents, also.
Him and Aledar decide to go to Fruma that day. They’ve been putting it off. They invite you, too, certain you’d felt the change, but you brush them off.
“I’m pretty sure I’m not even Fruman. I didn’t feel anything.”
You wave off their shocked looks. “Go. Get closure. Just do it without me. I’m retired, remember?”
-
Tasim’s mother is a stout, kindly woman who takes her son and his partner in with tearful relief.
Tasim’s father, on the other hand, died while he was away. Tasim tries his best not to be wracked with guilt, but can’t quite shake the feeling that he could have done something differently. Spent more time with his father. Prevented his death. He grieves quietly.
Aledar never mentions his parents, and Tasim doesn’t ask. If he wants to share, he will. If he doesn’t, Tasim won’t make him.
-
They make their way back from Fruma through the mountain passage they were carted off through in the first place. It feels like some sort of closure, the ending of a chapter in Tasim’s life that he can’t quite define.
He figures that’s why he stops Aledar halfway through, as the landmarks become familiar.
“Aledar,” he starts, hand still on his partner’s arm. “Do you want to get married?”
The five stages of grief paint themselves across Aledar’s face before he settles into some sort of contentment. “Yes, I think I’d like that.”
Tasim pulls him into a kiss. They’ve never been better.