Fae sits on the steps of the platform and waits for the wolf to trot over to him; he runs a hand through its flames, then breathes a soft sigh. The wolf steps closer and seems to vanish into him; Fae smiles sadly, but he closes his eyes and breathes again, in and out - alone but not alone.
And then he looks toward Dima, his gaze briefly lighting on Liviana in passing. Sullenly, speaking from a deep well of hurt, he snaps, "I gave you a month. You couldn't make it a day. 'Please' nothing.”
Nerys, who is just brushing off his clothing as he clambers from the temple ruins, falters in his step; both he and Sen have similar looks of Not Wanting To Be Involved In This. Sen sees something across the little river to inspect because it isn't here, and Nerys mumbles something about checking on the mudmen before vanishing.
<.>
It takes several moments for Dima to move. He knows Faolan's presence nearby. He feels Liv's disapproval, as well as her understanding. He's becoming aware of his own dizziness and the ash-dusted remains beside him (Faolan did this) (beautiful, the way he wields his magic) (but the way he looks at Dima) (the way Dima brought that look upon himself; brought that hurt to Faolan).
Faolan speaks, and of course Dmitri meets his eyes. Looks down, eyes shutting hard in the silence after. Nodding once, as if to say 'Yes, I understand.'
And he does. What Dmitri did, the way he handled himself in the fight—
Well. He can't say it was without a plan. But there wasn't much self-preservation in his actions, and there's no good skirting the truth of that, or of Faolan's response.
When Dima looks up again, he's beginning to move toward Faolan. Motioning to Liviana as he passes, and now she does hop to his shoulder; now he can feel her own weariness stronger still. (It was dire, what they all just endured.) (Dire doesn't necessitate recklessness.)
When he reaches the platform, Dima pauses at its edge, watching Faolan with one hand flexing, a nerve-strung gesture, behind his back. He catches at the edge of a dozen things he could say, and what forms into speech is—
"It was a calculated risk.
"...Somewhat calculated." A tick of his lip, a jerk of his head to the side, and Dmitri shakes his head at himself. "I won't say it was a wise one.
"I thought— I believed—" Again, he shakes his head, exhales a sharp breath. "No; that isn't to the point."
After a moment, he moves forward, lowers himself to one knee before Faolan and will attempt to take the man's hand. "I'm not going anywhere, Faolan.
"I didn't."
Rin, meanwhile, hasn't precisely been paying attention to this interaction - it doesn't seem much like their business or their interest, and they're still worried about Sen - and they follow Sen more for the sake of their own curiosity, and for continuing to keep an eye on Sen, then to avoid a conversation they've already decided not to mind.
They are going to ask Sen how he's doing.
Like.
For real, Sen. For real.
<.>
Faolan doesn't pull away from Dmitri's touch, but he doesn't do anything to encourage it, either. He only regards the other man sadly, thinking of how this loss would be far different from any other. How final it would be.
Without answering right away, he clasps his hands around Dmitri's and casts Cure Wounds, healing (12 points) some of the damage he sustained.
Then slides his hands free and lets them hang limply between his knees.
"You didn't. You might have." He looks off, contemplating his words before continuing, "I've readied myself for the moment you turn on me. When we're north and you're among your own kind, when you remember you're one of them and I'm not."
He finds Dima's eyes again. "I didn't plan on having to mourn you, too."
Faolan purses his lips, then grasps Dima's hand again and lifts it to indicate the rings. "Nevermind me. Nevermind Liviana, either; we'll be fine - one way or another. But the next time you calculate a risk, remember it's not just your life on the line."
<.>
How that warmth courses through him; the sudden surge of healing energy. The gift from Faolan that sets Dima's breath steadier, eases the strain on his own body to mend itself, or regulate the substantial loss of blood.
(It's apt, he thinks, when this man could cure his every ailment.)
(...If Dima doesn't get himself killed first.
If Dima doesn't shatter what little hope this man retains.)
He shakes his head, settling a hand on Faolan's knee. Breathing, looking down, then finding Fae's eyes once more. "I am skilled with speaking, Faolan. What I lack in— Current acumen for the arcane, I hold in the practice of negotiation. Of finding where to needle; where to pry." He thought— It doesn't matter, really. Not just now.
He glances downward, presses his hand at Fae's knee. "I promise you: I'm a harder man to kill than I may seem.
"But I take your meaning. I feel it— I do. And it wasn't fair.
"To Rose; to Thorn. To Liviana. To you.
"Faolan.
"I have no wish to leave you. I want— I would like. And I would like to strive for. The very opposite of that."
His eyes are locked with Fae's now, and take on a plea - along with, yes, the ghost of a command, an ardent request - of their own. "I need you to understand— Whatever else I may be, whatever I may do, beyond my own family, I have no allegiance to 'my kind.'
"Or I mean to give you cause to understand. I don't expect your belief; not now. Not when you have words alone to go on.
"But you, Liviana, Rosavalda and Thornboldt— There is no one I hold in higher esteem. No one other for whom I would learn to... Broaden the scope of my calculations.
"Well. You will see, Faolan. And I— For what worth it may have. I am sorry."
<.>
Faolan thinks - or doesn't think. It's difficult to think clearly at the moment, because anger is so much less complicated an emotion than the terror he felt when he saw that sword swing down on Dmitri.
(He thinks - Dmitri is trying to convince him it was the right decision.) (He thinks Dmitri doesn't understand. That it never should have been a consideration at all. That words don't win out against swords.)
The sound he makes is at odds with the look of disbelief on his face: a little laugh that dies abruptly. "I'll see?”
He shakes his head and says softly, "Dmitri, I'm not giving you another chance."
Rising, he continues speaking, now more to himself than Dima. "I'm going north like I planned - and then I'm going home."
<.>
Dmitri doesn't think.
(He ought to think. Isn't that part of the point: That impulse alone can't end well? He should be smart about this.)
(He knows the incongruity in that laugh; sees unfathomed depths of pain beneath Faolan's gentleness, written in the man's (Fae's) conviction.
And, yes. (Yes, of course.) Dima is terrified.)
He reaches; perhaps catches hold of something, some scrap of fabric, some piece of Faolan's clothing.
Whether he catches anything or not, he speaks again (aware of how little weight his words can hold) (aware of vicious irony; how certain he was his speech might hold sway with Visento, and yet here, here there is so little chance): "Faolan.
"Look at me.
"Please."
Dima hasn't stopped looking upward. Hasn't ceased to see the world straining toward shatters, or ceased trying to focus, focus, set clarity of sight on Faolan. (But he can't will things right.) (Can't will things right that he's shoved out of place.)
"We could have something here. All of us. You and I—"
A click in his throat; a jarred breath. "You'll travel with us? It is— Please. If nothing else, it is safer.
"And I don't want to—" 'Lose you,' he thinks, he means, but the trouble with speaking those words is the very present, glass-edged awareness that he already has.
<.>
He feels the grasp of a hand at his clothing and grits his teeth. (But even as he wills himself to just pull away, he thinks: maybe Dmitri will say the right thing. Maybe this time, he'll hear he's wanted, he's worth staying for, keeping, living for -)
(Stupidly, he hopes for it.)
(Again.
Every godsdamned time.)
He doesn't realize it, but the hoping makes him hold his breath; it's there in how he pauses, how he doesn't quite look at Dmitri, but listens.
All of us.
Travel with us.
Safer.
Whatever else Dmitri means (what Fae waits for, wants so badly to hear), it doesn't come.
His shoulders sag slightly, the movement faint enough to be nothing. Faolan pulls free and answers flatly, "I'll hire a guard if I want safety. You should do the same."
<.>
For a moment—
For a moment, he thinks he felt it: An inclination to remain; an ear offered in... in mercy, to Dima's feeling, but perhaps more accurately an ear offered in wanting, in an opening toward what might be ((might have been?)). For a moment, Faolan remained.
For a moment, Faolan might have remained.
But something breaks, or something doesn't catch, and Dima doesn't have time to process where it was he misstepped (failed to step) (he'll realize later, when the night runs on too long and sleep won't take him). He only feels the moment slipping. Feels Faolan, now absent.
(Sees in Faolan's weariness a sense of loss.) (A disappointment.) (A wanting ground into the dust, and left to wither, and if Dmitri can't trace the scope of what he's inflicted, he knows what he's rendered is monstrous.)
He sinks to his heel, barely balanced, his hand suspended in the air (knowing where Faolan was, so recently, in his touch) (thinking (knowing?) he won't have that again).
He thinks, 'Perhaps that's wise of you.'
He thinks, 'It isn't as though I'm fit to protect you, or anyone in straits like this.'
He thinks, 'I want you to stay.'
He thinks, maybe, it would have been more merciful if Calabra's lackey had ended Dima. (He flinches at the thought, his free hand moving instinctively to cover, to rub the rings. No; that wouldn't have been merciful, at all. And Dima draws the hand to his chest, holds it there, near-cradled.)
Not looking at Faolan now, not looking at precisely anything, he speaks just above a whisper, "For companionship, then.
"I can't see you go."
<.>
Faolan stops as though frozen, the breath knocked out of him. (He knows Dmitri didn't mean it that way.) (He - doesn't actually know that at all.) (He should have known this was all he could ever expect from them.)
When he looks back, all the hurt and anger lies bare in his expression and he bites out, "There's that, then. You couldn't let me walk away without a reminder?"
(Later, he'll remember how broken Dmitri looked. How remorseful.) (It might not matter then, either.)
"I knew better. I knew. It's you and yours that humiliated me three years ago; of course you'd want companionship out of me now. What else am I good for?" He doesn't keep his voice low now; with each word, he grows louder, angrier (more wounded, unloading years of pain into a single moment born from fear.) "If you want companionship, go to a fucking brothel.”
<.>
He doesn't understand; not at first.
He can hardly process anything beyond Fae's (Faolan's) sudden stillness, or the anguish written in his eyes, through his being ahead of speech.
And then there's the cutting blade.
A lash Dmitri understands he's brought upon himself. (A lashing he can't help but feel - somewhere deep and buried; somewhere he'd closed off long ago - as inevitable repudiation, as something both deserved and senseless.) A lash whose origin turns clearly writ as Faolan continues speaking, as Dmitri hears the unintended meaning in the word he used, and how could he be so fucking careless? (Because he was grasping for straws, anything to keep Faolan near.) (Will he never fucked learn to guard his impulse?)
He opens his mouth to speak, to tell Faolan that he's worth everything, good for everything, but Faolan's speaking still and the last words—
Dmitri's eyes churn with stark confusion, with regret, with disbelief (because how, how could anyone see this man in such meager scope?) (because how could Dmitri not have seen this coming, how could he not have guarded Fae against this error, at least?). He finds he's standing; finds he's taken a step toward Faolan, wary but unwilling to keep such space between them.
Thinking he wants to mend this.
(Thinking that, given his recent track record, he's more likely to turn this error into total ruin, or further ruin.)
He stops himself mid-step; he tries to tell himself to think about this, breathe and think, but already he's reaching for Faolan's wrist, he's trying to wrap Faolan's wrist in both of his own hands, shaking his head and gods help him, but he's speaking again—
"I didn't mean that.
"You know I didn't mean that. Faolan—
"You're so much more than anything. You mean so much more than anything, and I don't—"
He's losing his point; he's losing the tension in his shoulders, feeling an onrush of exhaustion, of frustration with himself, inevitability of his own errors. But he finally, finally makes himself breathe, and tries once more: "I want to stay with you. To be near you. To talk, and know the grace of your presence. Of your soul.
Awich: After the battle.
And then he looks toward Dima, his gaze briefly lighting on Liviana in passing. Sullenly, speaking from a deep well of hurt, he snaps, "I gave you a month. You couldn't make it a day. 'Please' nothing.”
Nerys, who is just brushing off his clothing as he clambers from the temple ruins, falters in his step; both he and Sen have similar looks of Not Wanting To Be Involved In This. Sen sees something across the little river to inspect because it isn't here, and Nerys mumbles something about checking on the mudmen before vanishing.
<.>
It takes several moments for Dima to move. He knows Faolan's presence nearby. He feels Liv's disapproval, as well as her understanding. He's becoming aware of his own dizziness and the ash-dusted remains beside him (Faolan did this) (beautiful, the way he wields his magic) (but the way he looks at Dima) (the way Dima brought that look upon himself; brought that hurt to Faolan).
Faolan speaks, and of course Dmitri meets his eyes. Looks down, eyes shutting hard in the silence after. Nodding once, as if to say 'Yes, I understand.'
And he does. What Dmitri did, the way he handled himself in the fight—
Well. He can't say it was without a plan. But there wasn't much self-preservation in his actions, and there's no good skirting the truth of that, or of Faolan's response.
When Dima looks up again, he's beginning to move toward Faolan. Motioning to Liviana as he passes, and now she does hop to his shoulder; now he can feel her own weariness stronger still. (It was dire, what they all just endured.) (Dire doesn't necessitate recklessness.)
When he reaches the platform, Dima pauses at its edge, watching Faolan with one hand flexing, a nerve-strung gesture, behind his back. He catches at the edge of a dozen things he could say, and what forms into speech is—
"It was a calculated risk.
"...Somewhat calculated." A tick of his lip, a jerk of his head to the side, and Dmitri shakes his head at himself. "I won't say it was a wise one.
"I thought— I believed—" Again, he shakes his head, exhales a sharp breath. "No; that isn't to the point."
After a moment, he moves forward, lowers himself to one knee before Faolan and will attempt to take the man's hand. "I'm not going anywhere, Faolan.
"I didn't."
Rin, meanwhile, hasn't precisely been paying attention to this interaction - it doesn't seem much like their business or their interest, and they're still worried about Sen - and they follow Sen more for the sake of their own curiosity, and for continuing to keep an eye on Sen, then to avoid a conversation they've already decided not to mind.
They are going to ask Sen how he's doing.
Like.
For real, Sen. For real.
<.>
Faolan doesn't pull away from Dmitri's touch, but he doesn't do anything to encourage it, either. He only regards the other man sadly, thinking of how this loss would be far different from any other. How final it would be.
Without answering right away, he clasps his hands around Dmitri's and casts Cure Wounds, healing (12 points) some of the damage he sustained.
Then slides his hands free and lets them hang limply between his knees.
"You didn't. You might have." He looks off, contemplating his words before continuing, "I've readied myself for the moment you turn on me. When we're north and you're among your own kind, when you remember you're one of them and I'm not."
He finds Dima's eyes again. "I didn't plan on having to mourn you, too."
Faolan purses his lips, then grasps Dima's hand again and lifts it to indicate the rings. "Nevermind me. Nevermind Liviana, either; we'll be fine - one way or another. But the next time you calculate a risk, remember it's not just your life on the line."
<.>
How that warmth courses through him; the sudden surge of healing energy. The gift from Faolan that sets Dima's breath steadier, eases the strain on his own body to mend itself, or regulate the substantial loss of blood.
(It's apt, he thinks, when this man could cure his every ailment.)
(...If Dima doesn't get himself killed first.
If Dima doesn't shatter what little hope this man retains.)
He shakes his head, settling a hand on Faolan's knee. Breathing, looking down, then finding Fae's eyes once more. "I am skilled with speaking, Faolan. What I lack in— Current acumen for the arcane, I hold in the practice of negotiation. Of finding where to needle; where to pry." He thought— It doesn't matter, really. Not just now.
He glances downward, presses his hand at Fae's knee. "I promise you: I'm a harder man to kill than I may seem.
"But I take your meaning. I feel it— I do. And it wasn't fair.
"To Rose; to Thorn. To Liviana. To you.
"Faolan.
"I have no wish to leave you. I want— I would like. And I would like to strive for. The very opposite of that."
His eyes are locked with Fae's now, and take on a plea - along with, yes, the ghost of a command, an ardent request - of their own. "I need you to understand— Whatever else I may be, whatever I may do, beyond my own family, I have no allegiance to 'my kind.'
"Or I mean to give you cause to understand. I don't expect your belief; not now. Not when you have words alone to go on.
"But you, Liviana, Rosavalda and Thornboldt— There is no one I hold in higher esteem. No one other for whom I would learn to... Broaden the scope of my calculations.
"Well. You will see, Faolan. And I— For what worth it may have. I am sorry."
<.>
Faolan thinks - or doesn't think. It's difficult to think clearly at the moment, because anger is so much less complicated an emotion than the terror he felt when he saw that sword swing down on Dmitri.
(He thinks - Dmitri is trying to convince him it was the right decision.) (He thinks Dmitri doesn't understand. That it never should have been a consideration at all. That words don't win out against swords.)
The sound he makes is at odds with the look of disbelief on his face: a little laugh that dies abruptly. "I'll see?”
He shakes his head and says softly, "Dmitri, I'm not giving you another chance."
Rising, he continues speaking, now more to himself than Dima. "I'm going north like I planned - and then I'm going home."
<.>
Dmitri doesn't think.
(He ought to think. Isn't that part of the point: That impulse alone can't end well? He should be smart about this.)
(He knows the incongruity in that laugh; sees unfathomed depths of pain beneath Faolan's gentleness, written in the man's (Fae's) conviction.
And, yes. (Yes, of course.) Dima is terrified.)
He reaches; perhaps catches hold of something, some scrap of fabric, some piece of Faolan's clothing.
Whether he catches anything or not, he speaks again (aware of how little weight his words can hold) (aware of vicious irony; how certain he was his speech might hold sway with Visento, and yet here, here there is so little chance): "Faolan.
"Look at me.
"Please."
Dima hasn't stopped looking upward. Hasn't ceased to see the world straining toward shatters, or ceased trying to focus, focus, set clarity of sight on Faolan. (But he can't will things right.) (Can't will things right that he's shoved out of place.)
"We could have something here. All of us. You and I—"
A click in his throat; a jarred breath. "You'll travel with us? It is— Please. If nothing else, it is safer.
"And I don't want to—" 'Lose you,' he thinks, he means, but the trouble with speaking those words is the very present, glass-edged awareness that he already has.
<.>
He feels the grasp of a hand at his clothing and grits his teeth. (But even as he wills himself to just pull away, he thinks: maybe Dmitri will say the right thing. Maybe this time, he'll hear he's wanted, he's worth staying for, keeping, living for -)
(Stupidly, he hopes for it.)
(Again.
Every godsdamned time.)
He doesn't realize it, but the hoping makes him hold his breath; it's there in how he pauses, how he doesn't quite look at Dmitri, but listens.
All of us.
Travel with us.
Safer.
Whatever else Dmitri means (what Fae waits for, wants so badly to hear), it doesn't come.
His shoulders sag slightly, the movement faint enough to be nothing. Faolan pulls free and answers flatly, "I'll hire a guard if I want safety. You should do the same."
<.>
For a moment—
For a moment, he thinks he felt it: An inclination to remain; an ear offered in... in mercy, to Dima's feeling, but perhaps more accurately an ear offered in wanting, in an opening toward what might be ((might have been?)). For a moment, Faolan remained.
For a moment, Faolan might have remained.
But something breaks, or something doesn't catch, and Dima doesn't have time to process where it was he misstepped (failed to step) (he'll realize later, when the night runs on too long and sleep won't take him). He only feels the moment slipping. Feels Faolan, now absent.
(Sees in Faolan's weariness a sense of loss.) (A disappointment.) (A wanting ground into the dust, and left to wither, and if Dmitri can't trace the scope of what he's inflicted, he knows what he's rendered is monstrous.)
He sinks to his heel, barely balanced, his hand suspended in the air (knowing where Faolan was, so recently, in his touch) (thinking (knowing?) he won't have that again).
He thinks, 'Perhaps that's wise of you.'
He thinks, 'It isn't as though I'm fit to protect you, or anyone in straits like this.'
He thinks, 'I want you to stay.'
He thinks, maybe, it would have been more merciful if Calabra's lackey had ended Dima. (He flinches at the thought, his free hand moving instinctively to cover, to rub the rings. No; that wouldn't have been merciful, at all. And Dima draws the hand to his chest, holds it there, near-cradled.)
Not looking at Faolan now, not looking at precisely anything, he speaks just above a whisper, "For companionship, then.
"I can't see you go."
<.>
Faolan stops as though frozen, the breath knocked out of him. (He knows Dmitri didn't mean it that way.) (He - doesn't actually know that at all.) (He should have known this was all he could ever expect from them.)
When he looks back, all the hurt and anger lies bare in his expression and he bites out, "There's that, then. You couldn't let me walk away without a reminder?"
(Later, he'll remember how broken Dmitri looked. How remorseful.) (It might not matter then, either.)
"I knew better. I knew. It's you and yours that humiliated me three years ago; of course you'd want companionship out of me now. What else am I good for?" He doesn't keep his voice low now; with each word, he grows louder, angrier (more wounded, unloading years of pain into a single moment born from fear.) "If you want companionship, go to a fucking brothel.”
<.>
He doesn't understand; not at first.
He can hardly process anything beyond Fae's (Faolan's) sudden stillness, or the anguish written in his eyes, through his being ahead of speech.
And then there's the cutting blade.
A lash Dmitri understands he's brought upon himself. (A lashing he can't help but feel - somewhere deep and buried; somewhere he'd closed off long ago - as inevitable repudiation, as something both deserved and senseless.) A lash whose origin turns clearly writ as Faolan continues speaking, as Dmitri hears the unintended meaning in the word he used, and how could he be so fucking careless? (Because he was grasping for straws, anything to keep Faolan near.) (Will he never fucked learn to guard his impulse?)
He opens his mouth to speak, to tell Faolan that he's worth everything, good for everything, but Faolan's speaking still and the last words—
Dmitri's eyes churn with stark confusion, with regret, with disbelief (because how, how could anyone see this man in such meager scope?) (because how could Dmitri not have seen this coming, how could he not have guarded Fae against this error, at least?). He finds he's standing; finds he's taken a step toward Faolan, wary but unwilling to keep such space between them.
Thinking he wants to mend this.
(Thinking that, given his recent track record, he's more likely to turn this error into total ruin, or further ruin.)
He stops himself mid-step; he tries to tell himself to think about this, breathe and think, but already he's reaching for Faolan's wrist, he's trying to wrap Faolan's wrist in both of his own hands, shaking his head and gods help him, but he's speaking again—
"I didn't mean that.
"You know I didn't mean that. Faolan—
"You're so much more than anything. You mean so much more than anything, and I don't—"
He's losing his point; he's losing the tension in his shoulders, feeling an onrush of exhaustion, of frustration with himself, inevitability of his own errors. But he finally, finally makes himself breathe, and tries once more: "I want to stay with you. To be near you. To talk, and know the grace of your presence. Of your soul.
"That's— Closer to what I meant.
"It's my own folly that I didn't say it."
<.>