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The first thing Craig notices is the silence.
No wind. No birds. No distant clatter of steel. Just smoke curling up into a ruined dusk and the acrid burn of spent magic in the air.
Tweek is on the ground. Still breathing. Barely.
Craig drops to his knees beside him, cloak dragging through the ash.
"Tweek. Hey. Come on."
No response. Just a low, involuntary twitch as his fingers spasm around the ruined remains of his staff. The wood is blackened, shattered. Whatever spell he cast hit harder than it should’ve, or maybe it rebounded.
Craig grits his teeth.
"Tweek. You weren't supposed to come back, you were supposed to stay back."
The fight had gone sideways. A trap on the ridge, left Tweek injured. Surrounded by too many dark elves, Craig had to manouver his way to distract and separate them from Tweek. Daggers flew around, as spells and arrows came returned.
All was going as planned, Craig had manouvered wittily though the forest leaving Tweek to rest on top of a tree to rest his newly sustained injury. The enemies took no consideration to the already deafeated sorecerer, instead turning to the now threatening rogue seamingly trying to get away from their grasp.
Craig was quite confident on his skills. He had broken away from deeper and more menancing trouble before, but Tweek being beat made him focused on the task at hand. That was until one of them, some dark mage, had caught Craig by the throught with a spell that froze every muscle below his jaw.
He remembers the way Tweek had screamed his name, the way the magic had flared bright and wrong in his hands. The way his voice cracked as he chanted in a language he barely understood.
And then light. Heat. Collapse.
And now this.
Tweek's eyes just barely open.
"You're... okay?" he croaks.
"Yeah," Craig says, voice low. "Thanks to you."
Tweek tries to sit up, but Craig gently pushes him back down.
"You almost burned yourself out. That spell... What was it?"
Tweek winces. "I don't know. Something I read in the scriptures we stole from the dark elves. I- It wasn't supposed to do that. I panicked."
Craig brushes soot from his face, careful not to press too hard.
"You shouldn't have done it."
"You were going to die."
"So were you."
Silence stretches. The tension between them hums like a held breath.
Craig exhales.
"You can't just throw yourself into fire every time I fall. That's not how this works."
Tweek's voice is ragged and dusty.
"But I- if I didn't-you-"
"I'm not mad, Tweek." Craig says quickly, then softly continued. "I'm not. I just- if I lost you, it wouldn't matter wether I lived through it."
Craig takes his shaky hands into his own. They feel as they are carved to each other. Tweek feels the soot lingering on his hads and rubbing onto Craig's. Their eyes locked together.
"Next time we fall, we fall together."
Tweek lets out a weak, shuddering laugh. "Romatinc," he mumbles.
"Dramatic," Craig corrects. "But yeah. Maybe both."