Work Text:
Saparata always has an escape route.
It’s a lesson he had to learn the hard way. After too many narrow escapes to count, it’s practically instinctive. Any time he enters a room, his eyes flick automatically to doors and windows, corners and shadows. He makes a note of the fastest way out, the path of least resistance, so when things inevitably go south he knows exactly where to run.
He hasn’t had much use for it since he found himself under the protection of Turntapp. The Covenant leader’s constant attention had managed to instill a sense of safety and companionship Saparata hadn’t felt since–
Since, well.
Either way.
As they traverse the docks on their way to the meeting with the Al Qarasina, the warning bells in Saparata’s head begin to ring. The pirates are looking at him weirdly. The air smells wrong. The space feels too open.
Without quite meaning to, Saparata’s gaze drifts. He tracks the gaps between moored ships and dock posts until he spots a narrow stretch of planking that veers east– a route that bends out of sight behind the buildings lining the dock. He plans his exit down to every step, every imagined placement of his feet.
So when Turntapp tells him to run, he runs.
* * *
His heart is beating out of his chest. His breaths come sharp and shallow, burning his lungs. Fear and adrenaline are mixing in his belly, until he can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. The sensation is achingly familiar.
His head snaps around wildly, tracking three potential exit paths. His eyes dart across the landscape in search of silhouettes or incoming arrows.
His foot catches on a cobble.
Momentum sends him forward. The world tilts, blurs– until he slams hard into the back of Turntapp. The impact rattles him, but the other man is a solid wall of muscle wrapped in diamond armor, and it breaks his fall before he breaks his face open on the deepslate path they were crossing.
Strong hands steady him onto his feet with traitorous gentleness.
“Are you alright?” Turntapp asks.
Saparata can’t answer. His pulse is screaming in his ears. The clump in his throat is so heavy he can hardly breathe around it.
He swallows. Why is he so out of breath? It must be the oppressive heat, making every quip for air feel like a struggle and has him stuttering around the words he forces out.
“What’s going on?” he asks. “It– uh– are we safe?”
Turntapp only looks at him. His jaw is clenched shut so tight Saparata can practically hear his teeth grind. He isn’t talking. Why isn’t he talking? He always fills Saparata in on everything, even when he probably shouldn’t.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” is the only reply he gives after a long moment of silence.
Saparata searches his face for something– reassurance, anger, anything– but Turntapp must notice, because he schools his expression into something completely stony. Blank. Unmoving.
There’s something he doesn’t want Saparata to see.
It looked, Saparata notes numbly, like guilt.
Flux never made the mistake of looking guilty. He threw his best friend to the crows with astonishing ease. But Turntapp– big, soft Turntapp–
Saparata knows the price tag on his own head intimately. He knows it could feed the Covenant for a year, could win them wars and valuable allies, could secure their future survival.
If you had to betray one man to save a nation, to save your nation, would you?
Why wouldn't you?
“Keep going,” Turntapp’s cold voice snaps him back to reality. ”We need to get back to the Covenant.”
The urge to run is overwhelming. It’s a living thing, clawing its way up his spine– but his legs don’t listen. They shake, then lock. Saparata is frozen in place. He know he needs to be brave, but he doesn't want to. He wants Turntapp to assure him, in that ever-so-steady way of his, that he doesn't need to be brave. That he never needs to run again.
“Turntapp,” he chokes out. “You need to tell me what’s going on, or I’m not coming with you.”
A hand clamps around his arm, and for a split second Saparata thinks that this is the end.
It isn't. Turntapp just snapped around so fast Saparata didn’t even register the movement at first. He can focus only on the point where they are connected, how the layer of his diamond armor suddenly feels paper thin beneath Turntapp's fingers. The other man has never laid hands on him in this manner before, and the strength of the grip sends a jolt of shock through Saparata.
“Listen to me!” spit flies into Saparata’s face. Turntapp’s face is so close that Saparata can see the sharp edges of his teeth as he snarls out his words. His dark eyes look entirely black at this distance. “If you don’t want to handle this on your own, then you listen to me. I’m taking you back to the Covenant.”
Turntapp’s bruising grip shifts to his wrist, where there is no armor to protect him. Saparata can feel the vessels beneath his pale skin burst and bloom into a bruise in the shape of long, solid fingers.
The sensation wakes him to a terrible reality. Turntapp– big, soft, Turntapp– could kill him with ease. If that hand was to move to his throat, if those fingers were to close around his windpipe and squeeze with the same strength they are squeezing his wrist now, Saparata would be dead within a minute.
A choking noise tears from his throat.
Turntapp snaps his hand back as if burnt.
They stare at each other, wide-eyed, breath coming in ragged pulls.
Saparata wonders if Turntapp just came to the same conclusion.
“I will explain everything,” Turntapp’s voice is gentler now, almost soothing. He keeps his hands to himself, but Saparata catches the split-second twitch of his fingers that gives him away. The urge to reach out. To squeeze. To end it, here and now.
“Later,” Turntapp insists. “I will explain everything. But now we have to run.”
He hauls Saparata into motion, and Saps can do little but stumble after. Once his feet hit the rhythm of running, his legs have learnt to just keep going.
His chest heaves. He doesn’t need an explanation. It’s clear as day– has been from the very start– since he first set foot on the shores of Yggdrassil, since he agreed to host that fucking meeting. There is only one outcome.
He hates how fucking cyclical everything is. How he has walked this road before, knows exactly where it leads, and yet he has still managed to delude himself into thinking things could turn out differently this time. After Fluixon’s betrayal he promised himself that he would never allow things to go this far again. He would never let someone’s kindness wear him down until he stopped checking exits, thinking he didn’t need them anymore.
He can’t take another betrayal.
His eyes snap to the sea. The tide is low, the water surely boiling. There’s a boat tied to a post, not unlike the one that carried him across the sea the first time.
Cyclical, indeed.
Turntapp’s boots keep falling across the shoreline. Saps digs his heels into the gravel. He stares after the retreating figure like he’s trying to commit it to memory. Turntapp is running without looking back, and Saps has to wonder why. Why doesn’t he look back? When did he start trusting Saps to always follow?
When did Saps trust the other to lead? When did he let his own feelings start clouding his judgment? And why is it that the last memories of those he has held dearest are always of their backs turned to him?
There’s a howl clawing its way up his throat. I can’t do this again. I can’t make it on my own. I can’t lose him too.
Saparata swallows it down. Then he makes his decision.
He takes the escape route.