Work Text:
It’s a calm evening. The sun’s down, but no one’s gone to bed yet. They’ve camped on a somewhat flat stretch of rock and dirt beneath a cliff face, partially shielded by scraggly trees. Dainix can’t say he knows much about trees, but the farther up the mountains of Helm they travel, the scragglier the trees seem to get.
Everyone’s more or less huddled around the campfire, presumably against the cold wind. Another thing Dainix doesn’t know well. It’s become more and more obvious as they travel that he doesn’t get cold, no matter what temperature the air is. A hundred childhood memories of his parents insisting he bundle up more on winter nights for reasons he could never fathom are starting to make more sense.
Neither Kendal nor Alinua seem too bothered either, where they’re sitting together. Kendal is hopefully very resistant to cold and not just unable to recognise what frostbite feels like, and Alinua seems to adapt to changing environments as easy as she breathes.
Tess is sprawled on the ground between them and the fire, soaking heat and gesticulating as she tries to recount a half-remembered absurdist fairy tale she heard somewhere. Kendal is bringing up elements from similar but not identical fairy tales from his seemingly inexhaustible memory of folktales and stories to help her fill the gaps, and Alinua is leaning on him, listening and occasionally giggling.
Falst has borrowed one of Erin’s books again, and whatever this one is about, it has him captivated. He’s sitting so close to the fire his tail keeps flicking through the flames, and even if he is fireproof now, he’d normally notice that. Instead, he’s so focused on the reading he’s not registering a thing going on around him—a lack of vigilance so unusual it’s fascinating to watch.
Erin is wrapped up in his thickest cape, writing in his journal like he does every evening, but he keeps getting distracted by the fairy tale.
So it’s probably fine to distract him more.
“Erin?” Dainix says, standing up. “Could I have a word with you?”
“Hm? Of course,” Erin says before he’s even looked up. “Oh, privately?”
Dainix shrugs and nods towards the path down from their little plateau. “I think this might be a conversation you’d prefer to have in private.”
Erin holds eye contact for a moment, sobering, before he puts the journal away. “Of course. One second.”
Tess pauses her story just long enough to say, “Don’t go far, kids!”
“We won’t,” Dainix says, and they head down the path.
They really don’t go far. With the steep drops of the path, it doesn’t take long before there’s enough geology between them and the camp to block the sounds of conversation. Dainix sits down on a natural bench of a boulder, and Erin settles to his left, huddled in his cape. Only starlight and Sword’s red glow illuminates the world below.
“Cold?” Dainix asks apologetically.
“Nothing I can’t fix,” Erin replies, and a moment later he’s holding the tiny flame of a warming spell between his hands. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I’ve been thinking.” Thinking he’s about to ruin a nice night, for one. “I know the biggest reason you wanted me along was because I’m one of the only things that can take on the Dragon in a one-on-one fight.” At Erin’s startled look, he hurries to specify, “That’s not a bad thing! I understand perfectly! I just need to know we’re on the same page.”
Erin’s mouth hangs open from the aborted objection, and he works it a few times before he finds a response. “In what way?”
“I mean…” Dainix sighs. “Alinua is undoubtedly your best choice. Just her being near you can send the Dragon running with his tail between his legs and leave you back in control of yourself.”
“Yes, I’ve been astoundingly lucky to meet her.” Erin turns the spell over in his hands, fidgeting.
Dainix continues, “Kendal can tank anything the Dragon throws at him and is good at defusing a situation. Also the Dragon weirdly seems to like him? Which might help keeping things calm in a pinch.”
“We’ll have to see if that holds up,” Erin deadpans.
“Yes, but…” Dainix shifts in his seat, deeply uncomfortable. “I’m good as a threat, but in practice? If I have to stop you? The only thing I can realistically do is kill you.”
Erin freezes. His back straightens, his expression closes off. “Yes,” he says, voice neutral and controlled. Every hint of a relaxed fidget is gone. “I am well aware. I… obviously, I would prefer not to have to die, but if the other choice is letting the Dragon kill you or any of the others or—worse—be dragged down to the Adamant Prison and used as a key to end the world, I would rather choose death.” He sends Dainix a short look. “But I understand it’s an awful thing to ask of you. If you think you wouldn’t be able to handle it, I will not demand it of you.”
Dainix wants to pull him into a hug, but between the shield Erin’s just slammed down around his emotions and the absurd propriety rules of this world outside the desert, he doubts it’d be appreciated. Instead, he puts a gentle hand on Erin’s forearm. It feels inadequate.
Erin barely reacts to the touch, muscles drawn tense like wires.
“No,” Dainix says, fire pulsing in his chest in time with his heart, bleeding heat and echoed grief. “I mean, I also very much would like not to have to kill you! But…” He knows all too well how easily guilt and conflicting emotions can be forged into a blade. “If—gods forbid—if it comes to that, if there is no other way… I can go through with it.”
“Can you?” Erin asks. He sounds superficially calm, but there’s a tension like a sealed container over a flame, pressure rising. He brushes Dainix’s hand off his arm. “I don’t mean to doubt your assessment of your own abilities, of course, it’s only… Your Crucible form is shockingly good at distinguishing friend from foe. The first time you fought the Dragon was one thing. We’d barely met. Practically the first thing you saw me do was explode and try to kill our friends. Now?” He meets Dainix’s eye. “Are you certain you would even be capable of killing someone you consider a friend?”
It’s an awful question. It’s an awful conversation. The mountainside is red with faint moonlight, and even the scraggly trees are sufficient to cast a shadow too dark to see through.
“I’m not stupid,” Dainix says.
“I never meant to imply that you were!”
“No, I… that’s not, I mean…” He shakes his head. “The Crucible is still me. When I’m like that, I can’t think… not clearly, I think very clearly, but not very complexly. I’m still me, though. I still know the things I know, understand as much as I understood when I transformed. If I had to… to kill you.” He’s regretting starting this conversation as bluntly as he did, wishes he could talk around it in metaphor and allusion. The words taste like glass through his throat. “It would hurt me very badly, but if anything, that would just make me stronger.”
Erin draws a sharp breath, his composure fraying. “If it helps at all to know, I did already try it once.”
Dainix makes a noise he can only pretend is questioning, and not a response to feeling like he’s been punched in the chest.
“This was before we even met Falst.” Erin’s eyes are fixed on the flame in his hands, but Haol only knows what he’s seeing. “The second night after… after the Storm. None of us understood what was happening to me or what that meant, and we were too close to the caves. I fell asleep in our camp and woke up deep underground, not in control of myself and surrounded by cave crawlers.”
“Erin, that’s…”
“It became clear very quickly what was going on and where we were going. I managed to regain just enough control to paralyse myself.” His next breath is shaking enough to be noticeable. “I expected the crawlers to get me. It was sheer luck Kendal and Alinua got there first.” Even quieter. “I didn’t know them well yet. I didn’t think they would.”
Carefully, expecting to be brushed off again, Dainix puts his hand on Erin’s shoulder, feeling the tremor running through him. “That’s incredibly brave of you,” he says past a lump in his throat.
Erin barks a humourless laugh. “Petty and vindictive, more like. I wanted him to fail more than I wanted to get out of there.”
Dainix squeezes Erin’s shoulder. “No. I think brave is right. I don’t know what else to call laying down your life for the sake of the world.”
Erin grows quiet and still, only the tremor left, making the flame in his hands shiver and spark.
Then the tension snaps like a bowstring. A hitched breath escapes his mouth, and the flame goes out as he clenches his fists and crumples in on himself, hiding his face from the sky. “I’m not,” comes out in a strangled whine. “I’m just a coward.”
“That’s not true.”
“I don’t want to die.” Erin looks up just enough to meet Dainix’s eye, and there is nothing shielded or hidden in his expression anymore. It’s all devastation, anguish and… “I’m scared.” He says. “All the time. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I don’t want to lose, and I don’t want to die, and I don’t want any of you to get hurt, but I can’t… I’ve lost all control, and I don’t think…”
Dainix scoots closer, hoping to share heat with the warming spell gone.
Erin shakes with more than cold and tries so desperately to breathe past encroaching tears.
“I don’t think I can do it again,” he whispers, burying his face in his hands, clawing at his hair. “I hadn’t thought it through. I didn’t try to think it through. If I had, I would’ve balked.” He takes a breath that’s more like a gasp. “But now… I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I’ve had too much time with it. I have too much hope. I’m terrified I’ll end up there again and I won’t be able to stop him, that I’ll be too hopeful for someone to save me, too scared of dying, that I’ll just let him have me for the sake of my own cowardice.”
Screw propriety. Dainix wraps Erin up in his arms and pulls him, shaking, close to his chest, for warmth and comfort and whatever he might need. “Of course you’re scared,” he whispers into Erin’s hair.
Erin leans in, gasping, trapped hands grabbing loosely at Dainix’s poncho, tears dripping from his eyes. “I’ll get you all killed. If I lose control…”
Dainix rubs a hand over the back of Erin’s neck, remembering being comforted like this as a child, sitting in his father’s lap and crying his heart out. Wishes this was as simple a thing as a broken toy or a fall in a reservoir. “It’s an awful thing to ask of yourself as well. No one should expect you to choose to walk to your own death.”
“But I have to,” Erin hisses, hands clenching. “If… If…”
It’s not a hard choice. “No, you don’t.” Dainix presses him insistently close, not for comfort but refusing to let go. Holding him safe. "We’ll fix this. We’ll fight every step of the way, and we’ll find a solution. But if we can’t, I give you my word. You will not have to be the one to make that decision.”
Erin draws a shaking breath, struggles instinctively against the grip on him. Then, finding himself trapped, he goes boneless. He melts against Dainix’s front, hands tangled in his poncho, face tucked against his shoulder, and cries.