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Marring the air like fog, the scent of singed flesh roamed the abbey as Hakoda hurried past terracotta jars of perfumed medicines. With his feet half-planted on the floor per step, he dove past the sisters who rushed ahead in the same direction, each holding an array of bandages and cool spring water. Hakoda skidded around the corner; the sound of agonising cries erupted from the end of the corridor. The lone, verdant door stood before his speeding body, and a disgruntled orchestra of weeping and pained whines echoed behind it.
Not again. He shoved the door open, uncaring if he had broken the hinges. Like a wounded fox, Bato lay on the floor, wincing and flinching, with the sisters circling him in a disorganised and panicked formation, until one broke off to make space for the chief. Once he shuffled past the clay jars that scattered across the corners of the room, he dropped onto his knees and gripped Bato’s untouched hand, his fingers tracing across the calluses and small scars that littered his palm—each from a mistake he made during their training as boys.
A pale pink splodge stretched over Bato’s chest and left arm, streaking with blisters and blanching. Distending across his arms, riding the flow of this lean musculature, were the coral and scabby reds of his burns that extended downwards into the loose skin between his fingers and constricted and tightened them deep into his hand. The distorted rim of skin around his torso bubbled with yellow-tinted blisters, which graded into sunburn-like pinkness across the rest of his chest, beneath his sparse, now patchy chest hair.
Through sharp, pained breaths and in a whispery manner, Bato mustered up a few words, “Hey, Hakoda…”
His royal blue eyes flickered with life. He tried to get up but collapsed before the sisters could steady him. “Don’t,” Hakoda said, his voice suddenly unsteady. “Just lie there. Let the sisters help. Just…”
Don't say it. Don't say it. Don't say it. Hakoda thought until he looked deep into the inky void at the periwinkle webbing at the inner rim of Bato’s irises. He needed to tell him, just in case.
“...just don’t die on me, I can't lose you too.” It had been five years since Kya died, and ever since, he could tell that Bato saw the stagnant widower that Hakoda had spent so long hiding from his children and tribesmen to keep them sane in their times of crisis. Once more, Bato saw that widower; it was stretched all across his face, from his parted lips to the wilted ends of his brow, forming a tight upward fold at the centre.
A silence held their tension taught like a string until Bato broke it. “Hakoda.” He squeezed his arm up and past the sisters who had begun to wrap up his burns over the translucent salves, “I’m not like Kya, and this situation is different to have the same outcome. I need you to promise me something too” Hakoda nodded, “If I die, I-”
“You’re not go-”
“If I die… don’t go all dark and stormy like you did when she went.” A fit of coughing erupted from Bato, his skin seeming paler with each one, “Promise me… please.”
Do not say it! Do not promise him anything and do not leave him! Hakoda’s head rang out, but with his tongue indented with teeth marks, he said, “I promise.”
As one of the sisters stood behind, expecting to move back for merely a second, he did as he assumed she wanted, and she blocked his view of Bato. All he could do was shuffle around and out of the room. Hakoda trudged down the hallway, the faint, sharp breaths tugging him backwards. He couldn’t, though; he couldn’t turn back, especially now that Gilak stood at the corner, his large back against the wall, head down until he noticed Hakoda walking down the hallway.
“Chief, is he…” Gilak looked up,
His stomach lurched, “No. They’re fixing him up now.”
Gilak’s lip corners quivered just enough for Hakoda to notice, “Chief, are you alright?”
“Just tell me what happened with the damn bastion.”
“I think you should take a moment; you don’t seem well, Chief.” Gilak’s face warped back into the picture of near-perfect health it had been before, the only issue being the concern painted on his face, while Hakoda’s grew paler. “I think it's best if you go to bed for the afternoon. I can keep everything sorted with the tribesmen and update you on Bato i-”
“Shut it, Gilak!” Hakoda’s hand clutched the wall, his stomach turning inside out as he spoke, “Just… just… I’m sorry. You’re right.” Gilak’s surprise returned to sympathy; Hakoda wasn’t one to yell at his men. He took in a breath, the underlying smells of scorched flesh drowning in the fragrant medicine. He wiped the sweat off his forehead, “I trust you to handle things. I’ll rest for a bit.”
The bitter taste of bile welled in his throat as he walked away, moving through the halls and out into the courtyard. Like a hammer, the warm late summer sun beat down on him. The floor of stone tiles grew speckled with an array of migrating sea raven, which flooded the sky with an episode of caws. His men lay scattered across, each with far less severe injuries than Bato. He reached the opposite side of the wall and headed into the dormitory that the sisters had set up two weeks ago. He tucked himself into his corner bunk, tiptoeing around the cramped set of blankets that took up nearly every inch of floor space in the already minuscule room, and, despite the churning tang inside him, he drifted off.
The dorms, now painted with a sliver of moonlight, lulled with the sounds of snores and the faint smell of summer night sweat, a scent that Hakoda didn’t get used to until a year ago. The aura of perfumed salves and medicines dominated it, however, and while it was practically a speck of noise in the background or even just his imagination, Bato’s voice winced from across the abbey.
At a snail's pace, Hakoda shifted, climbed out of his bunk and began to shuffle through the room, careful not to stop on any of his tribesmen’s fingers. He silently creaked open the door, stepping out before a ray of starlight could disturb his men from slumber.
His bare feet slapped quietly on the stone tiles as he returned to the other side of the abbey, the perspiring breeze creeping around him. With his eyes sinking with age, he stared at the door, one of many.
He halted. Hakoda had never halted, at least not like this. Not with his hands quivering. Not with his skin crawling. Not with his arm hair standing on end. He wasn’t himself, but he still managed to push himself forward, placing his icy hand on the door, opening it and moving into the hallways within the abbey’s outer walls. The perfumed atmosphere was strong, but a new semi-familiar one had entered. Bato’s salves. With a harsher footing, Hakoda made his way to the turn, and there it was again. The green door, coated in chartreuse, with the mother superior’s candlelight as she quietly glided down the hall.
“Chief Hakoda?” Her eyes lit up in confusion, “It's the middle of the night, why are you up?”
Hakoda scrambled as the stern nun’s dark olive eyes shifted for a response, and her jowls wobbled for the millisecond of silence after she finished speaking, “I could ask you the same question, Mother Superior.”
“Answer me, please."
Hakoda’s tongue faltered, and his throat dried into a desert, but he still staggered into something to say, “I need to see Bato.”
“Chief Hakoda, Bato’s injuries are severe; he needs plenty of rest and plenty of peace. If you need to give him some information, I’ll be happy to pa-”
“Mother superior, I’m sorry, but I need to see him myself.” Her brow shifted upwards in surprise. “Please, I need to see him.”
With the uncomfortable rage of the elderly that every old person felt when someone old enough to be their child acted flippantly, she struggled to find her own response. “Fine, although I’d prefer you not interrupt me.
“Sorry.”
Her look softened into sympathy, “There’s a bell in there, ring it if you need help.” As smoothly as she walked down the hallway, she disappeared around the corner. There it was, now nearly pitch black, the door, which Hakoda stepped past, the strong scent of sweet salves and bland bandages hitting him like a club. They helpfully masked the smell of day-old scorched flesh.
Bato lay in the same position as he did during the day, his burns now wrapped in two layers of dressing, stained just slightly with the pale coral that matched the pink slop in a wooden bowl at the end of the cramped room. The bowl lay among about four unused rolls of bandages, beside two empty ones. The clay jars of perfume and sweet-smelling medicines that the mother superior would store to sell to keep the abbey afloat had been moved elsewhere, providing some semblance of simple space that Hakoda began to take up. At the same time, he kneeled next to the unconscious Bato.
His sapphire eyes fluttered open, his lashes flicking in slow motion like a butterfly caught in time. With chapped lips, Bato struggled to push out a single word for half a minute until Hakoda finally interpreted the near-silent greeting. Bato’s right arm gradually lifted to point at a pitcher next to the bowl of coral salve, which Hakoda hurried to grab and place the point between Bato’s lips gently, waiting for him to signal him to stop.
After a few relieved breaths, Bato said, “Hey, Hakoda.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come back, I fell asleep.”
“No, no, you looked like you needed it… No offence.”
Hakoda snorted out a stifled chuckle, “It’s fine… What did the nuns say?” Bato’s face swiftly twisted into confusion until Hakoda clarified, “about your condition.”
Bato struggled for breath, “They said I’ll live, but I’ll need to stay in the abbey for a while.”
“Then we will too.”
“No, don’t”, Bato’s brow ridge tightened closer with pity, “We’re already cramped, and the attack on Colonel Shinu’s wasn’t a success. If they trace us back to the abbey or find any tribesman worth taking, they will lock up every nun here; if they even find a trace of you and the others, they won’t hesitate.” Bato’s face slid quickly into seriousness.
“But… Bato, I can’t leave you.”
“Yes, you can. I’m not going to die. I will find you again.” Hakoda couldn’t speak, his voice flickering like a lit candle in his throat. He wasn’t going to respond with anything anyway; he felt something well deep in Bato. “Hakoda… I remember when we were fourteen, and I was just the lanky guy who played ice marbles by the hills just outside Wolf Cove. I think only three people actually remembered my name. But then one night, you showed up with your marbles—the set with the glowing algae in them, and we played until sunrise, which sucked because you had training in the morning. So I spent that whole day finding out your favourite food and then making it. Do you remember the steamed dumplings that were left in your home for you?” Hakoda nodded, their eyes meeting so intensely that he felt they would pop out, “Yeah, that was me… But from then on, you always joined me to play ice marbles. Then you got me into the idea of joining the war effort, and even when I could barely hold a machete right, you helped me train. Every. Single. night. That was the night I realised I loved you.”
What? Hakoda thought for the millisecond he got before Bato continued
“I still do, Hakoda.”
“Oh, oh.”
“I know you don’t feel the same, but we've been together constantly, no matter what and if you need to leave… I think I’ll go a bit crazy. I just had to tell you. You can just pretend that I didn’t say anythi-”
Hakoda cradled Bato’s cheek and leaned into him, their lips grazing just specks of dust away from each other. “I love you too… in the same way I loved Kya.” As Bato leaned in to close the gap, he struggled up onto his backside, wincing as his hand held his weight. “Bato, I will always love you, even when we’re not together.”