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“ Ow!” Agnea cried as the spearhead grazed her arm. She stumbled backwards, clutching her arm, bent over in pain.
Hikari swung his head around, forgetting that he was amid a battle and rushed to the dancer’s side. “Agnea! Are you alright?” With urgency, he knelt down beside her, eyes anxiously darting around. He saw Throné and Temenos looking at them with concern, but they soon abandoned the expressions when the group of bandits they were fighting lunged towards them.
He felt a tug on his sleeve and he focused his attention back on Agnea, the commotion of battle behind him.
“Hikari, I’m okay,” she smiled. “You know us, we get hurt in battle all the time. Castii and Temenos can fix us up no problem!” She punched him playfully, eyes flickering from the group behind Hikari to his deep, care sated eyes.
Still out of breath, he contemplated the smile on her face. He decided that it was genuine, and she was right. She wasn’t at all suffering a fatal injury, and she’s made it through a lot worse, yet something in him couldn’t get the worry out of his system. He cared deeply for his friends.
With a turn of his head, he watched Temenos cast a light spell at the bandits, blinding them. Then, Throné darted into the light, daggers blazing. He turned back to Agnea, who smiled with determination and nodded to him. He nodded back, face firm, and stood to his feet.
Spinning around, he ran to accompany his friends and these nasty bandits that stood in their way, although he couldn’t see anything amidst the light that Temenos had casted.
The light faded, giving Hikari enough time to gather what he was going to do in his head. Then, with all his power, he performed the final blow.
“I fight for my friends!”
He was a blur of flying colors of red and black as he slashed down the four bandits. They all yelped before collapsing to the ground, ending the commotion of noise.
The prince panted lightly, sheathing his sword at his side. Temenos smiled and walked over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Well done, Hikari! We can always count on you to help in the completion of battle.”
Hikari nodded his acknowledgement. “Thank you. I’m sure these bandits won’t be causing trouble for a while now.” Temenos chuckled and headed over to Agnea. Hikari turned and followed close behind.
“Are you alright, Agnea? That man gave you quite the mark.” Temenos examined the fresh gash on Agnea’s upper arm. She smiled and waved the hand of her uninjured arm.
“Thank you, Temenos. I’m alright! It’s nothing a good healer can’t fix!”
They all laughed, relieved that the tension of the fight was over. By now, the group had grown accustomed to fighting together, but the tension of trading attacks with an unknown person never got any easier.
While Hikari and Agnea talked, Temenos’s eyes searched for a particular little fox. He cocked his head, perplexed. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
“You two, do you know where Throné is?”
Hikari and Agnea stopped and looked at him in confusion, then their eyes widened when they realized she wasn’t in the clearing anymore.
“Throné? Where could she have gone off to?” Agnea asked, looking into the brush around her.
Temenos eyed her, then decided he would take a short trip into the woods. He was more than confused as to where she could be. As he walked towards the trees, he looked back at the bandits sprawled on the ground. All four of them were there, which meant that Throné wasn’t kidnapped. That was a relief.
He headed into the woods, careful not to make too much noise. Knowing Throné, a knife could fly towards his face at any moment if he made his presence known, if she assumed he were another bandit.
The sun spilled between the patches of leaves above. Temenos found a small path, and he decided to follow it. There was nowhere else to go. He followed the path littered with branches, leaves, and roots, eyes constantly searching for any sign of his friend. As he walked, he saw a rock out of the corner of his eye that was darker than any of the other rocks in this forest thus far. He turned and…
Temenos stopped in his tracks and looked down. The thief, back against a tree and knees close to her chest, looked up at him blankly. She looked rather dirty and scratched up, assumedly from the fight.
“There you are.”
The rock was actually Throné.
“What’s the little fox doing out here by herself?”
Throné huffed out with a faint smirk and gave a tiny shrug. “Guilty as charged.” Her voice was somewhat monotonous, unlike her usual seemingly monotone voice. Temenos raised an eyebrow at her, but she looked down so he could only see the top of her head.
Something is wrong.
With increasing worry, Temenos walked over and sat beside her, smoothing out his garments as he did so. Looking at her this closely, she didn’t appear to have her usual coldness about her. She didn’t try to pretend to appear nonchalant or dismissive. Throné looked back at him, waiting for wave after wave of interrogatory questions as she knew he would ask. They stared at each other for a moment.
Temenos knew this game. He knew she expected him to start the conversation. He knew she… “knew” she was right.
The cleric smiled at her before turning his gaze away from her and instead looking around the forest. The spring air was warm and welcoming. He felt like he could sit there for hours. Throné blinked at him in surprise.
No questions? Not even an are you okay? What was he getting at? Questions started to fill her mind, but she then realized something.
Why did she care? Why was she expecting Temenos to come and find her? Why was she hoping he’d ask how she was? Why did she think he cared?
Throné sighed in annoyance. She understood why she had always pushed people away and kept her distance. Caring about someone took a big toll on herself. But she wanted to be cared for by someone. She had known Temenos first out of all of their friends. He was somewhat like her, despite being a priest and investigator for the church. They had a lot of common ways they dealt with things, such as enemies. Moreover, they understood each other.
Both thief and cleric grew up independently. They knew how to navigate their way through life on their own. They never expected to feel so close to each other. They never expected to depend on anybody else except themselves.
She felt Temenos’s gaze on her once more. In turn, she looked at him, not knowing what to expect now.
“So…” Throné started. She didn’t know what she was going to say. She huffed again and closed her eyes.
“What is it?” Temenos asked innocently. He cocked his head at her, hoping she’d open up first. The past times they were in a situation where the thief had some explaining to do, he was always the one to initiate the conversation. This time, he wanted her to open up on her own. He wanted to investigate something…
“Why’d you come and find me?” She asked. In truth, she didn’t quite know why Temenos came into the forest. It could have been for a number of reasons; finding any more potential attackers or trails to follow. Or for her.
Temenos kept his gaze and said simply, “Because I wanted to. I noticed after the fight that you had disappeared, so I came looking for you.”
Throné nodded in comprehension and looked away again. She wanted to smile, but she didn’t want to give in quite yet.
“I see,” she stated awkwardly. “Well, I appreciate the concern.”
Concern? By means was Temenos concerned. She had disappeared, and now she was acting quite tiredly after a simple battle. Throné usually had plenty of energy after battles ten times more serious than the one they just had.
“Well we certainly can’t have one of our friends off in the woods by herself now, can we?”
“Oh please, I’m not five.”
Temenos chuckled shortly. “But, Throné, on a more serious matter, why did you come out here in the first place? I don’t see a reason you’d be here right now.”
Throné thought for a moment, then said, “It’s a nice day. Wouldn’t you like to come here and soak all the peacefulness in?”
Temenos’s eyebrows furrowed. “A nice day indeed, but right after the heat of battle? And without telling anybody? You could have at least told me–” he caught himself, “...us that you would be off by yourself for a little bit.”
There was silence for a moment, then Temenos heard Throné start to laugh lightly, covering her mouth with one hand. He leaned forward, arm on one knee, trying to get a better look at her.
“What? Did I say something?”
Throné’s laugh increased, and she looked at him with a smile. “So you care about this little fox?”
Temenos was confused. That wasn’t the answer he was expecting. “Come again?”
“It’s quite funny how every sentence coming out of your mouth right now is a question. Does that mean you care about me?”
“Well certainly. I care about all my friends.”
Throné leaned back against the tree, arms folded and eyebrows raised. “Oh really? You care about Ochette as much as you care about me.”
Temenos’s mouth opened, but he closed it again when no words came out. Throné chuckled again. Her laugh made the corners of his mouth rise without control. He was glad she was sitting here laughing instead of anything else. It was rare for anybody to see her laugh like this. It made his chest feel lighter knowing that they could share moments like these together.
“No, no, I care about her, but not nearly as much as I do with you.”
“But you care about her quite a lot.”
“So I do.”
Throné studied his face. He looked at her with content. She knew what he was thinking. Or did she?
“So,” Temenos started, “what’s the real reason you’re out here?”
I knew it. She sighed in defeat, shaking her head with a smirk.
“You never know when to quit, do you?”
“A good detective never backs down,” he replied.
Throné looked ahead of her, watching the leaves above sway steadily in the crisp spring wind. It created an ambience of whooshing and stirring. There was also the occasional scuttle of a squirrel or the flitting of a bird taking flight. The sun was warm on her face. Maybe her first reason wasn’t a complete lie. Springtime was a lovely season.
“You really want to know?” She asked to the trees.
“It would ease my mind, yes.”
“Well,” she started, “I knew one of those guys. He was a part of the Blacksnakes. When you casted that light spell and I attacked him, I saw the look of betrayal in his eyes. I didn’t think it’d affect me, but something in that look… It reminded me of Pirro.” She looked down at her feet with a blank expression.
Temenos looked at her feet, then at her face. She didn't appear too bothered about it.
“You’re handling it well,” Temenos stated.
Throné's feet shifted, creating an indent in the dirt below, and she looked beside her. They were sitting pretty close, so she had to fully turn her head to see him. He was doing the same. It was like they didn’t need to exchange words. They knew those looks, and they understood what needed to be said.
“Thank you.”
Temenos smiled warmly in reply. Gosh, she loved that look. It wasn’t like any look she ever received from anybody. Mother or Father never gave her that look, not even Pirro. It was a comfort beyond any she had ever experienced.
Well, besides Temenos’s healing magic, but that’s a given.
She wondered what other comforts she was open to receive from him. She couldn’t always get all scratched up so that he would come to her aid and heal her. That’s stupid. Sitting next to him and talking to him was always nice, although she had plenty of time for that.
She suppressed a yawn. All this thinking drained the energy from her. She was more of an action person. Doing the action was much more rewarding than just thinking about it and planning it out. Temenos noticed and smiled. He didn’t recall ever seeing her yawn, even around the campfire with everyone else.
Without thinking, Temenos reached around Throné’s shoulders gently and pulled her towards him. He gently guided her head onto his shoulder, fingers entangled in her hair. Throné froze for a moment, but then brought her knees up over his legs and a hand on his chest, snuggled up close to him. His other hand rested on her waist.
She found her new favorite comfort. Never in her life did she think she would be cuddled up willingly on a priest. Then she remembered the time she woke up next to him when they were at the inn, after she had defeated Claude. Throné never remembered how she ended up in that position. That night, she was much too exhausted to recall anything.
Temenos brushed his fingers through her hair, making her forget all her worries for the moment. The way she obliged to his actions said a lot. He smiled to himself in triumph.
Investigation complete.