Chapter Text
Pretending everything's fine when it most certainly isn't is Reth's patented song and dance.
It's a skill, really. A craft. One of the few things life in the grimmelkin cartel did right for him. He has perfected the refined art of 'fake it until you make it'.
Smile when people expect a buffer. Joke when the air gets too heavy. Keep moving. Keep working. Your face is your greatest asset, pretty boy. Use it. Keep your hands busy and your mouth busier, because if you stop long enough to think about all the things that could go wrong, then the world will remember to come collect.
Reth's lived with that mindset for so long, he just can't kick it even if times are different. Slipping on the mask has become that old friend who stops into town for a visit whenever shit hits the fan. Always right when you least expect it to.
Reth just thought - selfishly - that he'd have more time before the next visit. To enjoy the peace that he hadn't quite settled into yet.
Ashura's inn was running on the warm side today. Loud in the comfortable way, not the 'there are six voices in my ear and they all sound miles off' kind of way.
The smell of stew and fresh bread clung to the air, and Reth was leaning over the chef’s counter with a knife in one hand, a cutting board under the other, and just enough attention to work on his mincing technique while ruminating over the same thoughts that invade his mind every day.
Tish was doing better. She'd just stopped in to grab 'brain fuel' for her and Jel to munch while getting creative. His debt to the cartel was paid. Had been, for months now. Although he still felt the kick to check if Zeki dropped off any packages for him to deliver. Reth's eye always strayed to the usual drop point when on break. Although his nerves hadn't yet conjured an illusion of some new contract to bind him.
Reth runs through his mental checks. He slept about four hours the night before. Which was good by his standards. Sifuu hadn't started another bar fight, thank dragon. Last week Tish had to replace three stools.
Ashura even mentioned giving him a small raise the other night. Never said why, but Reth could piece it together. A hint about 'getting him signed up a bank account so he could save for the future' here, another about keeping a bit of spending money to 'take his partner in crime on a date' there.
Speaking of, he got to see you earlier in the morning. Apparently you were off to the Royal Highlands on some special Order business with Subira. Reth was still waiting for her to put him in cuffs for his work with Zeki, but he was happy you were starting to get some answers about the whole 'humans popping up out of nowhere' business. Even if he barely understood most of it. Maybe with his newfound freedom, he could help out somehow and repay a bit of what you've done for him.
That is if he could convince Jina to teach him about humanity. There aren't many books in the library. He checked.
All Reth cared about was your happiness on that front, and you looked thrilled to explore the Royal Highlands. So he packed up a portion of hearty vegetable soup with a sliced baguette, kissed your cheek, and sent you off with the comfort of knowing you still hadn't realized how much of a mistake he was.
Everything was good. Pushing up sundrops, really.
The worst of life, the ugly, grinding, humiliating worst of it, was supposed to be over.
So why is there this...foreboding gloom hanging over his head? Why can't he just be happy?
He still didn’t know what to do.
Freedom felt too much like standing in an empty room and waiting for the door to open again.
“Reth, can I get one chappa masala to go?” someone called from nearby the hearth, and he lifted his head with practiced ease, ready with some lazy reply. The usual two-finger salute before getting a fresh order slip.
It was in that moment that time seemed to slow down. They say that seconds can feel like years when tragedy strikes, and he believed it. Felt it back when his parents never came home, when Tish's condition worsened, when he sat to let these dragon forsaken runes be carved into his skin with nothing to dull the pain.
Just because Reth's used to it, doesn't mean he's prepared. Never.
Shouting burst outside the inn's open doors, followed by heavy footfalls running up the outer stairway. The sudden scrape of urgency breaking through the heavy evening.
Reth frowned, knife pausing in his grip.
Through the swinging doorway came Subira’s commanding voice, sharp with alarm.
“Chayne—!? Chayne, I need you!”
Her panic cut through the inn like a blade.
Reth straightened to attention, stew forgotten despite needing a stir.
Across the room, Ashura was already moving, foregoing the steps down from his podium with one hop and rushing out with the kind of speed that showed he was still a trained solider even in his silver years. Reth caught the expression on his face for only a second — focused, grim, assertive — and then the inner doors banged behind him.
“What should I — ?” Reth started, but the offer died in his throat.
He should stay. He knew that. The inn was his post right now with Ashura gone. His job. His responsibility. He had a dozen plates halfway done, patrons still seated, and every sensible part of him knew he ought to keep his head down and his hands busy.
Instead he moved, leaping over the counter with one arm.
Because Subira sounded scared for the first time since she arrived in Kilma and he knew. Deep down, Reth could only think of one thing that might shake the Watcher and force her back from the Highlands investigation prematurely.
Because Chayne was not in the tavern taking his usual nighttime tea, which meant he'd been stalled by something far worse than a stubbed toe.
Because somewhere in the back of Reth’s mind, the part of him that spent too many years always braced for impact already started to say 'I told you so'.
The new breed of bad was here and peace was just an illusion.
The thing that strikes when you get comfortable.
He stepped out onto the porch just in time to see Chayne hurrying across the road, robes swaying in his wake, expression intent and troubled. Reth’s stomach dropped before he even looked past him.
Subira stood near the path, breathless, dirtied, and tense from the temples down, and in her arms —
For one endless second, Reth’s mind refused to understand what he was seeing. His gut was right.
You.
Limp in her arms. Face pale beneath the dirt and surface bruising. Your body draped in a way that made something cold and violent lurch through his chest.
Not dead. Not yet. He knew that because he would have known if you were already gone, wouldn’t he? He had to know that on sight at least. He had to be right.
But you looked so broken. Not at all like the sweet cheek he kissed just that morning, flushed under his attention and giving him the buzzy feeling that made each day something worth tackling.
Rather than those butterflies, all Reth feels right now are parasites eating at his stomach. He'll never be able to smell stew again.
Subira was saying something rushed before Chayne gestured down the road. She gave a curt nod before taking off in the direction of the healer's pavilion with you stolen away with her. Reth watches your head bob over her forearm and waits for your eyes to open. She disappears before they can.
Ashura’s voice cut in low and steady. Someone else was speaking too, maybe, but Reth couldn’t make sense of it. The sounds came at him from far away, like he’d slipped beneath the surface of a Lake Kilma and was hearing life through dense water.
He stayed rooted on the porch.
Couldn’t move.
Couldn’t make his legs work.
It was absurd, really. He carried trays full of hot food through crowded rooms, ducked knives and egos and the occasional exploding temper, survived enough terrible days to know how to keep a face on. He should be useful. He should be doing something.
Instead he was standing there like an idiot.
Dragon, why was he such an idiot.
His fingers twitched in the air, grasping at nothing.
No.
Not now. Not ever, really.
Not after everything.
Not after the cartel.
Not after Tish.
Not after all the nights he’d lain awake with the kind of dread that never really leaves, only changes shape. Not after resigning to be nothing, just to get a cruel taste of what freedom looks like. It had your face, your scent, your voice, your laugh, your touch, your...
Not after he had started, impossibly, to think maybe he could have a life that was just his life, and not a countdown to pay his due.
His gaze stayed fixed on the spot Subira once stood. You were here and not here. A body. A breathing thing. A person. The sight of you struck him in some old, buried place where hope and fear were tangled together so tightly he couldn’t tell them apart anymore.
This was it, wasn’t it?
This was the price.
Every small joy, every stolen laugh, every half-remembered moment of feeling safe in with your hand in his, of hearing you tease him through the storage room door, of seeing your face across the counter and thinking, against all reason, that maybe he could keep this. Maybe he could keep you.
He hadn't deserved any of it.
That thought came suddenly, sharp as a hook beneath the ribs.
All the things you had given him. All the new chances. The security. The patience. The way you looked at him like he was not a problem to solve or a burden to bear, but a person. He had not earned it. Not properly. Not nearly enough. He had not said the things he should have said. He had not thanked you enough. Hadn’t told you how often he thought of you when the night got too quiet, or how much lighter the world felt when you walked into the inn, or how he had started measuring days by the possibility of seeing you again.
Reth thought there would be time.
He thought he could be clever about it. Play it cool. Let things develop in their own time.
Dragon, there's never time. What made him think there would be now, when the universe was set to punish him for the sin of getting used to happiness.
His chest tightened so suddenly it hurt.
No, he thought again, but this time it was smaller. More frightened. Childish, almost. Like the voice in his head belonged to someone much more lanky, reading a report from the coastguard about a ship lost to the tides.
He didn't remember taking a still breath.
He didn't remember when his hands started shaking. Only that the air felt thicker.
“Reth.”
A rich, commanding voice, snapped straight through the haze.
Reth blinked hard, and the scene shifted into focus by degrees. Ashura was in front of him now, one hand braced on his shoulder, the other steadying him before he could even realize he was unsteady. His brow was furrowed with concern, the kind that came from someone who already made a dozen hard decisions before noon and still had room left to worry about other people.
“Hey,” Ashura said, low and even. “Listen to me.”
Reth stared at him, empty-headed.
Ashura’s grip tightened gently. “You need to hold down the inn for me, alright? I have to get Chayne what he needs but I'll be right back. Chayne will take care of them, okay? Just breathe and wait for me here.”
Your name carried weight across every syllable as Ashura spoke. If anyone knew the sinking feeling of half your heart being torn out, it was Kilma's gentlest innkeeper.
Reth swallowed, throat thick, grating, and useless. He could hear nothing clearly except the pounding of his own pulse.
Ashura said something else then, an apology maybe, or an explanation, but it washed over him without meaning. Reth barely registered the words. What he registered was the pressure of Ashura’s hands on his shoulders, the certainty in his voice, the fact that someone was still telling him what to do because he had not yet fallen apart enough to be spared responsibility.
Hold down the inn.
Yes. Right. Of course.
Useful. Be useful. Keep moving.
It was the only thing he knew how to reach for.
“Yeah,” he said, and the word came out thin. Crooked. “Yeah. Fine. Go. You can count on me."
Ashura searched Reth's face for one more second, as if he might object, and then nodded sharply. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
He let go and was gone almost immediately, already turning toward Chayne’s house at a speed Reth was sure would aggravate Ashura's bad knee later on. He'd only gather enough to care later, when this was over. It had to be over at some point.
Reth stood there a moment longer, staring after him, not because he was calm but because he had nothing left to do with his body. His hands felt far away. His legs felt borrowed. Everything inside him had gone still in the way a room goes still after lightning strikes nearby.
Then the world lurched back into motion.
Inside the inn, a chair scraped. Someone asked a question. A murmur of concern spread through the room, but Reth could not hear the words. He turned mechanically, like a puppet being tugged by a string, and went back in on legs that didn’t quite belong to him.
The smell of burning stew hit him again, warm and unbearable. He jumped the counter to turn off the burner.
His cutting board sat where he’d left it. The knife, too. The vegetables. The dirty bar rag hung on its hook. Ordinary things. Things that had no right continuing to exist while the rest of his world split open.
Reth put his hands on the counter and stared down at them.
He was still shaking.
He tightened his jaw.
Nope. Not here. Not now.
He picked up the knife and pulled out strip chaapa. Got to cubing it and grabbed an order ticket. Because what else was there? Because if he stopped, the image of you in Subira’s arms would keep replaying itself, over and over, and the breaking sound in his chest would turn into something messier and harder to hide.
A customer spoke to him and he answered automatically. Somebody asked if the tea was ready and he nodded. Another voice. Another plate. Another task. Another attempt to drag the world back into a shape that made sense.
But inside, he was still on the porch.
Still watching. Thinking.
I'm such an idiot.
I knew better.
I should've asked Jina sooner, should've asked Subira for details, should've begged them to stay - made an excuse. Been there.
Please.
Dragon, Pheonix, whoever you are ... if you're there.
Please.
Don't take them from me.
The word lodged in him like a splinter. Please let them live. Please let Chayne be able to fix this. Please let there be something in this world stronger than all the bad things waiting their turn.
Please don't let him lose the one person who's become the center of his life without him noticing until it was already too late.
And if there were gods—if there were any kind of listening power at all, any mercy tucked away behind the stars—then now. Now would be a very good time to prove it.
Because Reth could not do this again.
Could not stand by another bedside and wait for a voice to say there was nothing more to be done.
Could not hold himself together with jokes and flour and duty while the person he loved slipped out of reach.
Could not.
He pressed his fingers into the counter until his knuckles ached and kept his face angled just so, because the customers still needed feeding and the inn still needed him and if he looked too closely at anyone he was certain he would break. Their lingering eyes suggest they expect him to, and he won't slip.
But inside, where no one could see him, he was already broken.