"Dark and Dangerous" and "Stay"- Rian/Deet
This place should feel like home, Rian thinks. After all, it once was- he knows every wall, every stone, every tree. But a silent town and ashen-cold forge are not Stone-in-the-wood, and the only thing that feels like home is curled beneath the blankets beside him.
The moss-green expanse of her skin glows gold in the light of the only firebug-lamp he dares risk, fading the pale scars carved by the Darkening until he can nearly forget them, at least for tonight. Her wings are draped, translucent and shimmering, over the edge of the bed, and her unbraided hair is hopelessly tangled and flyaway, soft and white as a cloud around her peaceful face. The smile on her lips is the one that he had tried to picture whenever he had nearly given up hope of bringing her back.
This isn’t how he had wanted her to see the home in which he spent his childhood. There had been no anxious dreams of formally announcing a courtship to his father as he had once had about Mira- he had already lost and mourned them both before the first feelings for Deet had wormed their way unbidden into his heart. But they could have had a life here, at least for a time, if not for what she had to sacrifice to buy them that time and win their first victory. She could have lent her many Grottan tricks to the rebuilding of Stone-in-the-Wood, visited the Cradle Tree, joined their two clans together. They even could have had a family of their own, though perhaps it would have been too cruel to bring childlings into this world, seeing what it has now become in only a few short trine. And what manner of father would he have been, with so much of the weight of the Resistance on his shoulders? He knows all too well the precarious balance between being a warrior and a parent. Could he have maintained it better than his own father, or would he have failed at both?
He puts such questions aside, to be picked up again should they ever see happier days. For now they have one night, before they set back out on the road. They are too close to the castle to linger.
The telltale clicking of the garthim is blessedly absent tonight, but Rian has been burned too many times now to take silence to mean safety. A walk around the perimeter of the village will be quick. He tries to slip on his tunic and grab his knife as quietly as possible, but he has never been a very effective sneak, and a hand wraps around his wrist as he makes to stand.
“Do you have to go?” Her eyes are open now, deep pools of black in the low light. He begins to say yes, he has to, but stops himself. They are not alone here tonight. He would trust his friends with his life, and now he has to trust them to give him this one night in peace, even if Gurjin will surely rib him mercilessly come morning. He sets the knife back on the bedside table, and leans down to capture that undimmed smile in a kiss.
“No. I’ll stay.”