somewhatclear

deerna
somewhatclear

Despite everything, Arun used to know kindness; they just pretended they didn’t, because it was easier to leave places behind when they knew they weren’t welcome there.

They spent ten years forgetting, scrubbing the feeling of it from their skin like a dangerous stain. For the longest time, Arun’s only companions were libraries, headaches and the uncanny power that simmered in their blood.

The Pit tasted like destiny in the worst way: it was dark and so removed from existence they couldn’t even recognize the stars they saw when they lifted their head — but after a decade of nothingness, the Creature had called upon them; after a decade of wandering, aimless, they finally had a path to follow; after a decade of loneliness, they had someone to wipe the blood from their nose when they woke up from nightmares.

Niv was dangerous. Friendly and loud and too trusting for anyone’s good, even before knowing his name Arun had tried to outrun him and then—and then they had let him stay.

Their bond had sprouted in the darkness like roots waiting for spring. Together they explored cities, crossed deserts, climbed mountains; they were lost in a swamp and then they were found; they walked through a continent that doesn’t exist anywhere and then they saw the sunlight again.

It blossomed in Arun’s gut and they breathed carefully around it, both afraid to kill it and to let it grow. It kept them warm at night and cool during the day; it gave them light when darkness threatened to swallow them and it helped them up when they fell down — even as Niv laughed at them for it.

It was there whether they were walking through the woods, searching libraries, napping on a pile of severed gryphon heads, hunting manticores near a cascade, shaking through the times they let himself close their eyes and sleep.

It was kind, and Arun was afraid of it.

So if Arun hummed a song under his breath as Niv played the ukulele, if during the fight he always had an eye on the half-orc, if he’d thrown himself in the void knowing that Niv could catch him — they never acknowledged it. Their lungs didn’t need to know that it was air they were breathing, to keep him alive.

Then the naga hissed a curse, unfamiliar to Arun’s damnedly ignorant ears and Niv’s glossed-over eyes had turned on him. For a moment, as the half-orc nocked the arrow and tensed his bow, pointing it towards them, Arun was eighteen again, scared and impotent and willing to wish the undesirable.

They screamed and they ran. The dart left their hand quick like Noise was when it was in its hawk form, and it buried itself in Niv’s neck. The half-orc cursed, life going back to his eyes.

Later, the naga dead and its treasures stolen from its lair, they gathered at the entrance to the cube, ready to swim out again, and Niv smiled at him, tired and kind and blinding.

Arun had started to breath again.