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Private time is almost non-existent for Laios these days, but with Falin poised to leave within the month, he's done his best to make exceptions. His advisors, guards, servants and all the other people whose input he now depends on have been unusually accommodating, arranging and rearranging vast numbers of events and audiences so that he and his sister can have a few hours of peace at a time.
In this snatched moment, they’re sitting on a wide marble balcony outside his chambers, staring out into the gathering dusk. This high up, they can see for miles around, countryside spread out around them in the place of seabed. Most of it is still saltwater swamp, but he can spot places where the desalination efforts have taken root and the land is growing wild. Even more encouraging are the dotted mosaics of farmland and distant smudges of villages distinct from the city that has regrown around the castle. The country is filling up again, coming back to life. Even if he can’t be down in the dirt as often as he’d like to, at least he gets to see it from here.
Falin has been telling him about one of the caravans that have gone out of their way to visit Melini, and their recommendations for spots to stop at on her travels. The wind picks up as she describes a particular village that the traders claimed was build in the shadow of grand, arching ruins, sending the potted plants on the balcony swaying and even pulling a loose feather free from her neck. She snatches at it as it flutters off, and he feels his lips tugging upwards when she misses it and sighs in frustration. He’s already heard plenty about how annoying picking feathers out of all your belongings is, which would have held more weight if he hadn’t seen his sister petting them every time she’s distracted, if he didn’t know how much she adores her new body.
One of the leaves from the planters has tangled in Falin’s hair, brown against the ashy blonde. Without thinking, he reaches over to brush it away.
Falin flinches, sharp and vicious. One hand snaps up to close around his wrist, nails far sharper than they used to be digging into his skin. He freezes in her grip, and they stare at each other for a moment, her eyes as golden and wide as his, her face twisted up just like it had been when –
Then she releases him, all at once, and pulls her hand back to stare at it as if it belongs to someone else.
Laois leans back in his chair, keeping every movement as deliberately slow and steady as he would if confronted with a startled beast. His hand is still hanging in the air, and he can’t quite bring himself to pull it back. In the end, he just lowers it and leaves it hanging limply down.
"You do remember, then,” he murmurs. He hadn’t asked her that before; hadn’t wanted to know the answer, not really.
Falin nods slowly, eyes locked on the horizon. “It’s all in bits and pieces. My mind... wasn't all mine. I was the dragon too, so things are mixed up. But, yes," she sighs softly. "I remember that part."
She doesn't speak again, or look at him, but she does reach for where he's left his hand dangling. Her circulation is much better now, he reflects, as he twines her warm fingers with his.
Eventually, he manages to break the silence. "Falin –"
She’s already shaking her head. "Don’t apologise. You had to do it. If I was still under his control" – she's never said Thistle's name, not once that he's heard her – "I'm certain I would have killed you or Marcille, or Chilchuck, or Senshi. If he'd ordered me to, I would have done it. I wouldn't have wanted to wake up remembering that. You had to, and it was to bring me back, to free me."
"I know." How could he have done it, if he'd had any choice?
"I know, too." She smiles just a little, and finally turns her head to meet his eyes. "It feels as though that should help more, right?"
"You took so long to die." The words fall from him heavily, and the back of his throat burns in their wake.
Falin nods. "I remember that, too. It was the scariest thing."
"Scarier than being eaten?" he can't help but wonder.
She hums, considering. "Well, I don't really remember that time at all. So I’m not sure."
She's silent for a few more minutes, though she doesn't object when he begins gently rubbing at the bones of her hand with his thumb. When she does speak, it's quiet, soft, slow. "I know I recognised you. When I woke up and saw you there, I thought for a moment that I was back home. You know, the village. It felt like we were outside, and I was full for the first time in ages, and so sleepy. So many things feel like a dream, then… I think I thought that I'd been dreaming. It was confusing, but peaceful."
Her hand tightens on his. "And then you grabbed me."
Laios doesn't want to think about it, but the way she's gripping him around the hand feels just enough like the cloth, biting into his palms as he'd pulled it tight against her face. He'd let go, he wants to let go, but he can't. Falin needs to hold his hand.
"It really hurt," she keeps speaking, still so slowly, "and I couldn't make you stop, and it went on, and on, and I was so confused and furious, just so angry at you, and so scared. Even when everything started to go dark, and muffled, and I couldn't feel my body anymore, I was so scared. All the times I died in the dungeon, I was never frightened like that."
"Di-" his voice cracks, and he has to take a moment to swallow. "Did you remember that we could bring you back to life?"
She shrugs. "I don't think so. Maybe that's why. Or maybe the dragon was just more afraid to die than I ever was." She smiles to herself, just a little.
The idea of his brave sister dying in terror makes something open inside his chest, awful and distinct from the hunger than he can no longer ever really sate. “Well, I won’t do that again,” he assures her quickly.
She blinks at him. “Do what?”
“Touch you like that, when you’re not expecting it. Or around your face, or…” he trails off as she shakes her head. “How do I help?”
The deep gouges she’d left on his scalp and arms are long healed, but they still itch; a phantom pain like losing a limb had been. His wrist itches where she’d grabbed it just now. He wants to go his entire life without Falin ever having to put her hands on him to defend herself again.
Falin squares her shoulders. “No, Laios, it’s not your fault. I’ll get through this. I will. I have to. Otherwise I’m going to live my whole life scared of you.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.” It would be the most natural response, after all. He’d hated the living armour for such a long time, and that monster had only stabbed him, a desperate attempt to defend itself. He would never fault her for responding appropriately to a threat, even knowing that he’d rather cut off his hand than have it threaten her so again.
“I don’t want to live like that, though.” There’s a closed-door solidity to her words that he couldn’t remember ever hearing from her before her last resurrection, and he accepts the finality immediately, falling silent. It seems like the least he can do.
Maybe time apart will help. It has to, because the idea of Falin flinching every time he touches her, of thinking about suffocating the life from her whenever she does – Time apart will help. It has to.
They don’t speak again until Rolan, one of the servants responsible for his chambers, comes to tell them it’s dinnertime, but Laios tells himself that that’s not too unusual, for them. Falin still keeps hold of his hand as they follow to the dining hall, still walks close enough to him that their bodies bump together. It’s fine. They’re fine.
~~~
Laios comes awake all at once, in the stillness of his dark bedchamber, with the certainty that something is in the room with him. Slitting his eyes open, he keeps his breathing regular and slowly, slowly reaches for the dagger he keeps tucked between the mattress and the headboard.
Whatever it is, it won’t be a monster; the Winged Lion had made certain of that. It’s almost a shame – he’d be much more confident against a monster with identifiable, known strengths and weaknesses – but a human should at least be easier to overpower. Hopefully. Unless they’re a magic user. Either way, his best option is to stay as quiet and still as possible, see if he can take them by surprise if they approach or turn their back –
“Laios.”
Immediately, he relaxes.
Opening his eyes fully, he can spot where Falin is standing, next to the window she must have climbed in through, again. If any of his guards – or, fuck, if Kabru, who has quietly revealed himself to be the most paranoid man Laios has ever met – knew someone could do that, he’d be in such trouble. For good reason, perhaps, but he can’t bring himself to tell them just yet.
Falin’s used that route to come and visit several times now, and it’s always so nice to lie in the dark together. Between their childhood bedroom, the room they’d shared in town and pitching camp in the dungeon side by side, sleeping in the same room as her feels worlds more natural than sleeping alone. For that matter, between her and the various dormitories and campsites of his life, Laios has been finding sleeping alone, on a feather bed in a cavernous empty chamber, incredibly disturbing.
Already smiling, he pushes himself upright, swiping sleep grit from his eyes. He’s so glad to see her that it takes the strange shimmer of drying water on her cheeks for him to notice her hunched shoulders, her drawn expression, her downcast eyes. Her unnaturally tight grip on – Oh.
She’s holding a length of fabric in one hand. The moment he sees it, he knows exactly what it's for.
"Falin," he says, louder than he’d meant to. She jolts a little, curling into herself.
"I know, but…” When she looks up, he can see how frayed she is. Nightmares, probably, and bad ones. “I’ve been thinking about it. How we used to rough-house all the time, when we were little, and how I was never scared of you then. Because I knew you’d never hurt me, not really.”
And then he had.
“I know you’re not a danger to me,” she continues, “I just need to make sure I remember that even when I’m not thinking about it. If I can just… If we just do… what you did, again, and I can see that you’re not going to hurt me again… And you can see that you’re not going to hurt me! I really think it'll help. Both of us."
Laios lets her talk herself into silence, then closes his eyes, trying to think past his instinctive desire to lie back down, or run from the room. It doesn’t take long. While he can't imagine this doing anything to help him, whatsoever, that's not the point. She thinks it'll help her. That's all he needs to hear.
The only question is how to make it work best. The thought of setting his hands on her like that at all makes him flinch, but if Falin wants a complete recreation, then taking the same positions would make most sense.
"Come here," he tells her, and she does, walking quickly through the darkness until she’s standing above him. This close, he can see the fine tremor in her hands, but she smiles a little, and her shoulders are squared.
He takes her hand and pulls her to perch on the edge of the bed, then scoots up to settle behind her, close enough to feel the warmth of her back through his nightshirt. He'd had his legs wrapped around her, where her human hips connected to the rest of her chimera form, so that he could hang on when she started struggling. Gently, he brackets her body with his legs, then hitches them slowly up until he's encircled her.
Falin releases a long, slow breath, hands wringing the scarf in her hand, before she breathes in and hands it over to him.
"Don't pull," she says, then "or, actually, just a little bit. If I start to panic –"
He cuts her off. "If you start to panic, I'm stopping."
She seems to accept the ultimatum, at least, nodding and murmuring "Alright." There’s another moment of strained silence while she settles herself, then she nods, once and sharply, and turns to him. That’s new as well, to see her eyes open and bright every time he looks at her face. "Thank you, Laios."
"It's okay," he tells her, and then he slips the scarf over her head, drawing it just taut across her nose and mouth.
Immediately, Falin goes rigid. Every muscle locks, her breath cutting sharply off before she makes herself start again. She's obviously trying for the deep and regular breaths she uses when she's meditating, but they keep hitching. Her sternum jolts each time; he can feel it where his legs are wrapped around her, where her spine presses against his chest. She’s locked up too tightly to calm down, but she’s not fighting him, not trying to push him off – and she has to know he’d let her, she has to remember that.
Trying to recall the pattern she uses, Laios starts to count his breaths. The first deep inhale is a struggle, his chest trying to shake, but he hadn’t gotten this far without mastering his body. It obeys him in the end, and he exhales from his mouth for a slow count of six, then inhales through his nose for a count of four. Then again, and again, chest pressed to Falin’s back.
She must feel what he’s doing, because after a few more failed attempts, she manages to follow his rhythm. The juddering of her spine against him tapers off until it’s stopped entirely, leaving her stiff but no longer shaking.
It is different, holding her like this. No huge, boiling bulk of feathers beneath him, no sick, pounding desperation as he does what has to be done. If anything, he’s reminded of the times she would wake up from nightmares and crawl under his blankets, bullying her way into his arms until he gave up on staying asleep and cuddled her back properly. She would sometimes shake with bitten-back sobs for long minutes, before she tired herself out again and settled down.
Sometimes, neither of them would be able to get back to sleep. They’d hold each other through the night, until the cockerels and the dawn light woke the rest of the village up, until Mother came in to scold them both on Father’s behalf. As if he’d listen to empty arguments about propriety, when Falin needed someone living and safe to hold her through the dark.
Killing her, even to save her, had been the hardest thing he has ever had to do. He’d done it. He’d had to. He’d had to do it and then clear his head for the next task, for the next grinding battle, and the next, and the feast, and the resurrection, and rebuilding a crumbling kingdom and returning a short-lived-race power to the land after a millennium. He’s glad of that. If he’d been able to take more than a moment, afterwards, he doesn’t know how he would ever have stood back up. He’d still be sitting there, Falin’s head in his lap, until they were both nothing but scattered, jumbled bones.
Instead, his sister is finally breathing evenly, body going loose and open from the head down. She’d taught him that technique, to take conscious hold of every muscle group and relax them, one by one. He tracks the progress as he cradles her, and when she falls slightly forward, he follows her, curving his torso to cup her spine.
Slowly, trying to copy something half-recalled, Falin’s hands come up, one to hold his arm while the other buries itself in his hair. He braces for the pain that he hadn’t even felt the first time, but she doesn’t claw at him; just holds on to him as they breathe in quiet concert.
Then she squeezes his arm. Understanding her as he has never understood anyone else, Laios pulls the cloth slightly tighter.
Falin shudders in his hold, then sags, completely limp. She leans her weight back into him, heavy and warm, and her head droops to rest on his shoulder. Her breathing is still deep and regular, and he realises that he’s kept matching her count without noticing, switched to inhale for six and exhale for eight when she did.
She hadn’t told him when she’d want him to stop, but this seems as good a point as any. He uncurls his legs from her waist, wraps his arms around her limp weight and pulls her up onto the mattress with him. Images of her lifeless head in his lap flutter at the edges of his thoughts, but he can still feel her breath brushing his shoulder, her chest expanding and contracting. The room is blessedly dark compared to the false sunlight of Thistle’s garden, the smell of the castle laundry’s soap and his own body familiar and known.
He’s safe, and so is she.
She turns slowly in his arms as he settles them up by the pillows, burrowing into one of them. Her face is completely lax, eyes fluttered shut until she might as well be squinting the way she used to. There’s a little redness to her cheeks, where the scarf had chafed a little, and wetness around her nose and mouth from the condensation of her breath. In the half-light, he can’t make out her colour, but the cheek under his hand feels flushed with life.
“Are you okay?” he breathes, not wanting to break the quiet.
“Mmm,” Falin replies in a high hum, eyes still mostly closed. She fumbles with a hand gone strangely limp until she can cup his cheek, smoothing a thumb under his eye. Only when he feels the wetness smear across his cheekbone does he realise that he must have been crying.
He slings his arm around her and shoves his face into her shoulder, feathers soft against his hot cheeks, as the weight of what they’ve just done hits him all at once. Suddenly, his chest is shaking, and all he can think to do is hug his sister closer, concentrating on her living warmth, her closeness. She smells different than she used to; he hasn’t had a chance to make a proper study of it. It’s not the same as the dragon, or as her chimera form, but there is something uniquely inhuman there.
Falin runs clumsy hands through his hair until the shaking fades. Once he’s a bit calmer, she murmurs, “I’m sorry, Laios.”
“No,” he says into the feathers on her collarbone, “don’t be. It… helped.”
She presses a kiss to his forehead, uncoordinated with exhaustion, and they fall asleep like that, curled up together the way they’d used to sleep as children, before any of this. It’s good, peaceful. As if he never lost her at all.