Vasiht’h wasn’t sure when pirate-hunting had become an acceptable distraction from fear, but he guessed having personal history with those pirates made sense of the impulse. A little. What didn’t make sense was that he could prefer pirate-hunting to watching over people in a hospital. He was sure—mostly—that in the past he would have lunged for the hospital vigil in a heart-beat, if given the choice between it and chasing down slavers alongside the military. But somehow, he was not that person anymore. Maybe it was just too close to the anxieties he was trying to forget; to go from worrying that Sehvi and her family might be dead, leaving him bereft, to worrying that Sediryl might die, leaving Jahir bereft…
The medical personnel no longer acted as concerned as they had when she’d arrived, but there were still far too many of them checking on her. It had been almost two weeks; Vasiht’h would have thought she’d have woken by now.
Jahir was exhausting himself, as usual. Vasiht’h let him, though, because he knew, in that secret place where the Goddess spoke, that his partner’s efforts had been largely responsible for Sediryl surviving. Oh, the surgeons had been necessary, and without them she would have died. But without Jahir calling her, those surgeons would have had nothing to work with. A body, maybe, but no spirit to animate it ever again. Vasiht’h had parked himself beside Jahir and kept him anchored to the world, and that had given Lisinthir a channel into them both; it was Lisinthir who decided when they could step back, based on the medical team’s reports, step back and rest, eat, and then resume.
Vasiht’h could tell they weren’t necessary anymore. Whatever was keeping Sediryl unconscious now was less about her body failing and more about something internal and personal, a path she had to walk alone, a choice she had to make. They’d helped her reach the point where she could, but now? Now it was up to her, and all they could do was keep her company. He stayed because she was a friend… and because Jahir refused to leave, and how could he possibly tell Jahir to leave, when Vasiht’h himself would have been glued to the hospital bedside of anyone he loved?
They were there now, as they had been for days. Jahir was sitting beside the bed, arm folded on the halo-arch and his head pillowed on it; his free hand rested on Sediryl’s arm. Vasiht’h was sitting near Sediryl’s feet… scooted against the wall, though, so that the HEAs could get past him to use the arch or examine the read-outs during their rounds.
Lisinthir was across from them, occupying one of the chairs for guests. Now that Sediryl was out of imminent physical danger, she no longer merited the sterile field. He made unexpectedly good company, especially since Jahir was unavailable, still tranced, still reaching. Waiting, now, and in some ways that was worse than what they’d had before because at least before they could do something. Now… now all they could do was see if Sediryl was willing to meet them. It hurt Vasiht’h’s heart to watch his partner straining for any sign of her. Lisinthir was a welcome distraction, even when they weren’t talking, because Lisinthir filled a room with his presence whether he was talking or not.
It struck Vasiht’h as… weird… to be honest… that he could find that restful, and yet he did. But he no longer thought of Lisinthir as some threatening and baffling outsider, but instead like… like someone who’d been through things. Things that Vasiht’h had now been through, and that he couldn’t really talk to other people about who hadn’t also been through them. Who could he talk to about having been processed as a slave? About his rage, and his impotence, and his need to do something? Who could he talk to about fleeing pirates? Grappling with an insane D-per? Wondering if he would die far from home on an alien planet?
Who would really understand what it was like, to fear for your life when it was literally fear for your life and not some exaggerated response on the part of an inexperienced nervous system that had never been honestly threatened? Prior to his experiences in pirate hands, Vasiht’h could remember many, many instances where his heart had raced and his hands had shaken and his body had been convinced he’d been about to die, but he hadn’t been. Emotionally threatened? Existentially? Of course. Even, that once fleeing that hurricane, physically. But nothing compared to what he’d gone through at Sediryl’s side, and the Chatcaavan Queen’s.
Lisinthir glanced at him, cocked a brow.
“Just thinking,” Vasiht’h told him, and anyone else would have pried but Lisinthir took him at his word, and nodded and left him to it.
No… he now had more in common with a terrifying Eldritch who loved fights than he did with a lot of his own relatives. Not personality-wise, but… he and Lisinthir had both had their perspectives forcibly shifted, from the personal and routine to the galactic and extraordinary. While Vasiht’h would never stop preferring to bake cookies, now… now he knew those cookies had been bought at a price, and that other people were actively engaged in paying it, all the time. Now he knew that those cookies were a blessing because they were a symbol that people valued peace enough to make it possible, even if they themselves couldn’t have it. And he… he had been one of the people, for a brief time, who’d paid with blood so that other people could bake, and laugh, and be disturbed at the reminders that violence existed.
Vasiht’h still abhorred violence. He still feared it. But he no longer doubted he’d be equal to facing it. And he knew now, from the tips of his clawless feet to the ends of his clawless hands, that given the choice between fleeing and fighting, he would fight. That he would do it, knowing that he trusted the people fighting beside him. That he might even die, one day, in that defense, but that he could no longer be that baker of cookies without also being the person who poured all his living strength into a man destroying a pirate ship.
Lisinthir said, mildly, “Are you certain you are only ‘just’ thinking?”
Despite his fears for Sediryl, and Sehvi, and Jahir, and everyone… Vasiht’h chuckled. “Yes. Though… at this point what I’m mostly thinking is that I want a cookie.”
“I would not be averse to one myself, if you find yourself seeking them.”
“Do you eat cookies? Really?”
Lisinthir smiled. Vasiht’h knew him well enough to spot the fatigue and worry in his dark eyes, despite the conversational tone. “Did you suppose I should not? Why? Must I dine on delicate tea biscuits alone?”
“Either that or the still-bleeding haunch of a half-cooked animal.” Vasiht’h paused. “Come to think of it, barbecue sounds good around now too.”
Lisinthir laughed, low. “Go find something to eat, arii. And bring me something, if something appropriate you find. Though… try not to choose something quite as messy as a still-bleeding haunch.”
“Cookies it is.” Vasiht’h rose, paused to look at Jahir. His heart twisted in his chest.
“I’ll look after him,” Lisinthir said, voice quiet.
“I know. I trust you.” Vasiht’h set a careful hand on his partner’s shoulder, received nothing through the mindline but that blankness, the one that suggested a long and empty hall, and at the end of it, his partner at an open door, calling into the dark. He blinked back the wetness in his eyes and turned to go.
Something in his saddlebag chirped. His heart skipped, raced to catch up, and stayed at that frenetic pace, pounding until he thought he could feel it in his wrists. Vasiht’h twisted, undoing the flap and wondering if this was the moment his heart shattered forever, or if at last his life would stop being an endless limbo so he could move on. Before panic could freeze him into inaction, he grabbed the data tablet, silencing the alert, and spread the message.
The room swam, and his back legs gave under him, dropping his hindquarters to the ground. Lisinthir stood; behind him, he could hear Jahir jerking off the halo-arch, the chair scraping the floor as his partner pushed it back. The mindline flooded with his presence, shocking as sunlight from a pulled back hotel curtain. How had Vasiht’h never noticed that Jahir shone? Like ice crystals, or sugar, brilliant and sweet and powerful.
“She’s alive!” he croaked before either of them could worry. “She’s alive, all of them are, oh, Goddess, they’re all right!”
He was crushed in his partner’s hug, and the two of them had come so far that he didn’t question it, or marvel at it. That it might be a messy hug, awkward and too tight and completely unselfconscious. Vasiht’h pressed his nose into the Eldritch’s throat, coughed on a noise that became a sob, and then he was crying for relief, digging his fingers into Jahir’s back and for once the fact that there wasn’t enough flesh there for his taste receded beneath the shock of his relief.
“I… I have to go,” Vasiht’h said, the words pushing past the tears, and the tears were drying. “They’re on Veta, they’ve been sent there with other refugees—”
“You must,” Jahir agreed, parting just enough to look down at him. “At once. The quickest means possible. Whatever it takes, whatever you need.”
Vasiht’h glanced past Jahir’s arm to Sediryl, but his partner’s voice snapped his face back. “Don’t. Don’t stay on our account. You can do nothing here but wait, and I can do that well enough alone. Only you can fetch your family back, and reassure them, and bring them home. To us, ariihir. Don’t forget they were to household with us.”
“N-no,” Vasiht’h stammered. “No, of course not. If you’re sure…!”
“About that, and about your need to go? I am. Nothing is clearer in my mind.” The Eldritch’s smile was lopsided and sweet, touched with that self-knowledge that Vasiht’h found so affecting. “Lisinthir will see to me in your absence, I am certain.”
“Until he has to go…”
“I tarry,” Lisinthir said. “Have no fear on that account. Your beloved is right, Vasiht’h. You must go. We shall be here when you return.”
“Or on the homeworld,” Jahir amended. “If you are much delayed, and you will come straight to us. Engage the Queen’s Tams for it, you have the right.”
“I do?” Vasiht’h managed a shaky laugh. “Goddess, I do, don’t I. I’m a Galare.”
“How very right you are,” Lisinthir agreed, having seated himself again, legs crossed and hands casually folded on the knee. “And to the core, including the need to right injustices.”
Vasiht’h smiled at that, and didn’t disagree because… Lisinthir was right. He turned his attention back to Jahir and searched his partner’s honey-colored eyes. “Sure?”
“I need something to go right,” Jahir said softly. “So… do this for me. As well as for yourself, and Sehvi.”
There was no answering that much pathos except with another hug, and this time Vasiht’h felt Jahir’s fear and it hurt. /It’ll be all right,/ he whispered, where only they could hear—they, and the Goddess. /I promise./
/I hope so./ Jahir kissed his head. /I will see you soon, and your family with you. Go carefully, love./
/I will./ Which left him with the most important task he had to do before his departure. Disentangling himself, Vasiht’h faced Lisinthir. “I’m leaving him in your hands. Do what you have to do.”
“Ariihir!” Jahir exclaimed.
Vasiht’h ignored him, waiting… and as he expected, Lisinthir returned his scrutiny and read his intent in it. The other man inclined his head, a courtly gesture, and that allowed Vasiht’h to exhale. Because Lisinthir would have made light of such a request if he’d thought it unnecessary, and both of them knew it wasn’t… just like both of them knew exactly what Vasiht’h was asking him to do. Whatever it took, and if Vasiht’h came back to find bruises on his partner’s skin, then that was what had been needful.
Making sure of that took care of everything but the travel arrangements, and those wouldn’t make themselves. “I’ll be back,” he promised Jahir. Promised all of them, Sediryl included.
Vasiht’h jogged out of the hospital at a pace appropriate for a place that would have reacted poorly to someone running. But once he was in the station proper, he did run, and it was as much joy as it was urgency. Sehvi and her family were all right! And he was going to see her, and bring her home.
“Will you take me from here, then?” Jahir said after the Glaseah had left.
Lisinthir glanced at Sediryl’s slack face. The technicians he’d spoken to had said she was out of danger. In need of vigilance, yes, until she woke, and they encouraged company, believing that the sleepers were aware of it, no matter how deep their coma. But their constant attendance was no longer a requirement, and Jahir… Jahir was worn to the bone. The man had no reserves—who could be surprised, given what they’d so recently survived?—but he had come directly from nearly dying beneath the roquelaure’s cruel auspices… to this. There were shadows under his cheekbones and beneath his jaw that needed address.
But this was his beloved woman, for whom he had waited over a century.
“Yes,” Lisinthir said. “But not presently. Not yet.”
“Thank you,” Jahir whispered, and slumped again over the halo-arch, and released them both to the inevitability of what would come next… for in that reply was his tacit submission to his cousin-as-keeper, and his recognition that he needed one.
How beautiful, and poignant, and terrifying responsibility was. And yet, what less would ever satisfy?
Lisinthir allowed that situation to persist for another two days, during which he alternated between biding with the Emperor and the Queen Ransomed, and overseeing his cousin’s vigil. But at last he judged it had been enough, and when he entered the room where Sediryl remained stubbornly unconscious, he did not sit.
Jahir, wilted over the halo-arch, raised his head, and said nothing. Lisinthir didn’t either. His presence, waiting, was as good as a command, and he knew his cousin too tired for intransigence, and too wise to fight even had he been capable of it. But oh… how Lisinthir ached for him, watching his reluctance as he stood… seeing the careful non-expression on his face as he regarded Sediryl. Like a prince out of legend, awaiting the end of the princess’s eternal sleep… and like that prince, Jahir bent and brushed her temple with a kiss, his breath ruffling her snowy hair. His hesitation after he straightened made it painfully clear how difficult it was to leave, so when he finally turned his back on her, Lisinthir said, “You know she’ll be fine.”
“I do. I just hate the thought of her waking alone.”
Lisinthir’s smile was wry. “At the pace you’re running, Galare, you’ll be asleep at her side, and remain so throughout her first foray into consciousness.”
“That would be…” Jahir stopped, grimaced.
“Likely?”
“Yes,” Jahir admitted, shoulders sagging. “Please, cousin. Do…” He paused, smiled winsomely, but far too sad-eyed. “Do as Vasiht’h bade you.”
Lisinthir said, “Then come, Healer.”
His cousin fell in alongside him, and Lisinthir led him out of the hospital, aware of his agitation as they left Sediryl farther behind. Halfway to their destination, he set his hand on Jahir’s back. Not to push, but to make plain that he would not permit any deviation from their course. As he expected, his cousin’s reaction to that implied command was relief, and much of the agitation drained away.
“In,” Lisinthir said at the door, and followed his cousin inside, which was when Jahir finally noticed where they’d been going.
“This is my cabin?”
“Which you have seen so infrequently you probably recognize it not at all.” Lisinthir slid his coat off and rested it over the back of a chair. “I thought you would prefer to be someplace familiar, but that would have required you to sleep here at least once.”
“I have? I think? Prior to our departure…?”
Lisinthir snorted. “And you don’t recall it.” He unbuckled the swords and set them on the chair with the coat, and when he turned his cousin was standing in the middle of the room, looking lost.
“What… what shall I do?” he asked, and it was almost as if he asked himself.
“Now,” Lisinthir said, “You will take a very small meal, undress, and sleep.”
“Shower?”
“No,” Lisinthir said. “I don’t want you alone with your thoughts. And you love walls too well for me to shower with you.”
“I had thought—” Jahir broke off, skin tinting.
“You had, yes,” Lisinthir said. “But what you need from your cruel hand right now, cousin, is to be forced to eat and sleep, not to engage in more activity that will exhaust you.”
“And… if my thoughts keep me awake?”
“They won’t,” Lisinthir said. Switching to their tongue and silvering it gently, “Dress for bed, my dear, and I’ll have something for you when you’ve changed.”
That was how he came to oversee his cousin’s first meal at a table in… days, certainly, if not weeks: a few crackers and slices of melon, and a venison bone broth that had pleased Lisinthir when he’d smelled the sample he’d requested from the genie. The mainstream Alliance cultures preferred their meat domesticated, even when producing it blamelessly via molecular arrangement. But thanks to the failure of their livestock, the Eldritch homeworld’s tables were nearly always furnished with game, and Lisinthir wanted that reminder, visceral and immediate, for his cousin, who had been living far too much in his mind.
“This is good,” Jahir said, cupping the bowl. His eyes were closed as he breathed the steam, and he was, Lisinthir judged, very nearly asleep at the table.
“Finish it, then,” Lisinthir said. “I’ll tidy.”
“Thank you.” Jahir sighed, breaking the steam. “For not… for the meal.”
“For not presenting you with a repast the size of a celebratory feast?” Lisinthir shook his head. “Don’t mistake me, cousin. I want you to eat, and will feed you from my hand if necessary to ensure it. But your partner and Pelted friends know only your medical requirements, and their own dietary habits. They have not seen how our people generally eat. Had you been home, your conduct would have been unremarkable. Laudable even. It is only an accident of biology that makes those choices… imprudent… off-world.”
“You are too kind.” A touch of a smile there, whimsy. “Even at home, I would have been accused of daintiness.”
“Perhaps occasionally. But on the whole, we find it admirable not to over-indulge… and how fortunate that we do, given how poor our world’s harvests are.” Lisinthir brought the plates back to the genie. “Bed now.”
“Is it… I don’t even know what time it is.”
“It is late afternoon, by station time.”
Jahir rested his hands on the table. His head was sagging, but Lisinthir doubted he noticed. “I would not ask you to put yourself to any trouble on my account. I can’t imagine you are tired yet…”
“You think I am discommoded by the prospect of holding you?” Lisinthir asked, switching to their language so he could silver it, and touch it here and there with gold and white to make himself plain.
Jahir blushed, but did not fight him on it again.
As Lisinthir had expected, the pillows on the floor had been scattered in a way that suggested they’d been used, but the bed his cousin should have been sleeping in remained pristine. Vasiht’h had kicked his bedding against the wall in a hasty attempt to get it out of the way, at least, which would make their lives easier if they were drawn from bed in the middle of the night by some fresh disaster. Lisinthir trusted they were past such likelihoods, and could not deny that some part of him found it frustrating. How good it would be if the Emperor’s traitorous Second were to return, as the Pelted no doubt feared given their behavior. He knew better. The Emperor did too, which had not stopped him from offering his navy’s protection until the disparate elements of Fleet could be recalled to Selnor.
Still, if he could not fight that fight, there was one here that needed him, and it mattered no less for the privacy of its stage and the intimacy of its participants.
His cousin had already slipped under the covers, and as Lisinthir predicted, had not been able to hold his eyes open. The sound of Lisinthir undressing didn’t inspire him to move or speak, either, nor the feel of the arm sliding around him. Which was as Lisinthir wanted it. A little rest, a little talk, and then, he guessed, his cousin would complete his collapse and sleep for several days, at which point his health would be a matter for medical personnel, not psychologists. Or, in this particular case, keepers serving as psychologists.
Lisinthir put his chest to Jahir’s back and mounded up the pillow until he could see the door past his cousin’s shoulder. With his hand under Jahir’s shirt so he could feel skin beneath his palm, he could doze while also maintaining the watch, and so… he did.
Jahir woke, as Lisinthir had known he would, in the middle of the night. He’d been so confident of that outcome that he’d prepared for it, and when his cousin’s body grew rigid against his, he leaned over him to the night-table and brought the glass down from it.
“Will I regret this?” Jahir whispered, nearly inaudibly, over the brim of the glass brought to his lips.
“No,” Lisinthir replied. “Sip only. You don’t need more.” He touched his fingers to Jahir’s throat, felt them dip as his cousin swallowed once… twice… that was enough. He set the liquor back and settled behind his cousin once more, chest to spine. And there he waited, listening through their skins. The tumult was so powerful he perceived it scoring his palm with knives. And in the end… that was his cousin, and that was who they were to one another. Lisinthir listened to the cadence of his cousin’s breathing, measured the racing of Jahir’s heart as it accelerated. When he judged it approached its peak, he chose Universal for its neutrality and said, “Now. Talk.”
“I…”
“Say it.”
This time Jahir couldn’t push the breath out.
“Say it,” Lisinthir growled, and dug his fingers into the thin skin over Jahir’s heart.
“I almost lost them both.” Choked from a closed throat. A gasp. “So close—and after we had come through a war, somehow—and now—”
“Did you? Lose them?”
“N-no…”
Lisinthir slid his hand up to his cousin’s throat and grasped it. “Again. With conviction.”
“No!” The relief that flushed Jahir’s body was so overwhelming he started shaking with it. “No!” That second word became a gasp, and the gasp a sob. That was what Lisinthir had been awaiting, and he turned Jahir in his arms so his cousin could hide his face and safely weep… for exhaustion, for the terror of waiting, for the uncertainty and the fear and the horror of what they’d undergone. He rested his cheek on his cousin’s hair and stroked the trembling back over the fabric of the loose sleeping top, attending more to the riot of feelings he felt through their pressed bodies than to the physical sounds.
“There now,” Lisinthir murmured in their tongue, once the worst of the storm had abated. “There now. The nightmare is over.”
Quiet, punctuated solely by Jahir’s attempts to school his breathing until he could at last speak. “I thought that before, when I saw Vasiht’h on the Chatcaavan throneworld. And Sediryl was there, and I’d been told you were safe. I thought… that we had lived through it all, and that the worst was over. And yet somehow, it wasn’t.”
Lisinthir skimmed his hand up Jahir’s spine until it rested on the nape of his neck. “Will you make me force you again? Say it.”
“I didn’t lose them,” Jahir whispered, and shuddered. “But I came so close. If Sehvi had been found dead… if we had not gotten Sediryl here in time…”
Lisinthir pushed him onto his back and rolled over him, flattening both palms on his cousin’s chest. “If you continue in this vein, I will be displeased.”
“And…” Jahir replied, hesitant, “if it is your displeasure I seek?”
“Then you are doing a fine job of earning it.” Lisinthir leaned close, studied his cousin’s eyes. “Stop clinging to what did not happen and concentrate on what has. Stay here, in the present, which has not ended in personal catastrophe. That is the only way you will be strong enough for them both, for they will need it.” He pressed a little. “Do you understand?”
“I do,” Jahir said, and sighed. “And you are right. But it was…”
“So close?” Lisinthir snorted, threatened with his fingers, digging into too-thin skin. “Yes, it was. What will you do with the reprieve you have been granted, Jahir Seni Galare?”
The shock that bloomed beneath his palms felt cold, and provoked an immediate reply, reflexive but genuine, rippling through them like the plangent sound of church bells. “I will serve life.”
For a moment neither of them spoke, letting that echo between them, expand into memories of winter vigils and vows given, since they were old enough to grow their hair, to the Divine. For that moment, Lisinthir let Jahir exist in that vow renewed, realize how deeply he meant it, and how meaning it, he must accept the peace that came with the surrender of his will to a greater power… for whom Lisinthir was only standing in.
But he was, and that made it his responsibility to accept in Their name, and move them on. Lisinthir exhaled and smiled, bending over to kiss the tip of Jahir’s nose. “Good answer,” he murmured.
Jahir closed his eyes, his smile winsome and tired and shy. “Shall I drink more now?”
“Only a sip.” Lisinthir reached for the glass again. “What you truly need is a meal, but it can wait.”
“Is this… are you…”
“About to despoil you?” Lisinthir chuckled softly, leaning back. “Sit up, cousin.” He waited until Jahir had rearranged himself before passing him the liquor. “You don’t need it.”
“It is not always a question of need…?”
“You don’t want it either,” Lisinthir said, more seriously. “Not right now.” He touched his thumb to Jahir’s chin, waited until his cousin looked at him. “You are exhausted, and your heart is still in that hospital, when it is not stretched thin toward a fast ship to Veta. You don’t need distraction, Galare. You need sleep.”
“I want… wanted… I want you to know that we are not done,” Jahir managed.
“I know,” Lisinthir replied, soft. “I know. We will have time now. Enough that we need not attempt to fill every moment to bursting with experiences we fear we might miss.” He raised his brows. “Yes?”
“Yes,” Jahir conceded. And sighed. “My limbs are leaden.”
“And your extensive training as a healer-assist would seem to indicate to you that this should be addressed by…”
Jahir eyed him, succumbed to a laugh. “You needn’t employ your wit on me quite so obviously.”
“I must when you are half dead on your feet. And no, save me from your protestations at the exaggeration, because it is not as much of an exaggeration as either of us could wish. You came straight from the untender mercy of the roquelaure into a fight for Sediryl’s life, and you have not had time to recuperate. Now… when nothing is calling you on and all you can do is wait… you will take that time.” Lisinthir slid off Jahir, back into his position behind his cousin, and pulled the blanket close. “Do not fear that Sediryl will wake alone. We will keep the vigil.”
“But you will have to go…”
“Not soon,” Lisinthir promised. “The Emperor has agreed to stay until the Alliance can gather its farther flung military resources to guard the system. And even then, I must present myself first to the Queen before I return to him. Our Queen, that is. I owe her a vassal’s duty until and unless she releases me.”
“Will you ask it?” Jahir murmured.
“You know,” Lisinthir answered, smiling a little. “You knew before I did… Galare.”
“Imthereli,” Jahir sighed out. He sank into the bed again, eyes closing. “And what will you do, when she frees you?”
“You know that also,” Lisinthir said and leaned close to kiss his cousin’s cheek. Against it, he breathed, “I will serve life.”
“My good Hunter,” Jahir whispered in Chatcaavan.
“My Delight.” Lisinthir smiled and trailed a hand over the braid that fell alongside his cousin’s neck. “Sleep.”