Winter is coming and bringing the cold with it, they haven't found anything to eat in the last three days, and Legolas is getting scared.
It's time to move to a new neighborhood, maybe even a new city. But they can't, because Legolas is half-starved and Aragorn is half-dead, and anyway they're both halfborns and so if anyone — well, almost anyone, but halfborn sympathizers are few and far between — saw them, they'd be right back at Ellecron. Where the law says they belong.
Aragorn whimpers in his sleep and presses against Legolas's hipbone. Legolas cradles the half-wolf closer, cards his fingers through Aragorn's hair. He would try to tell his (friend, brother, partner in crime, teammate, everything) that it's going to be okay, but it isn't and they both know that.
Aragorn's too hot. Even for a wolf. Legolas doesn't know much about diseases, but he does know that fever is the first symptom. Everyone knows that.
We should have stayed another year, he thinks. Should have gotten the vaccine while we could. Ellecron's the only company that has it, and the high demand is driving prices up, but even if Aragorn and Legolas could afford it (they can't) they still can't risk going anywhere near the local clinic.
The clinic that's owned by Ellecron, the company that owns them. The company that discovered how to mix humans with other animals, how to create super-soldiers and test subjects and perfectly legal slaves. The only company that can prevent or cure the plague. The company from which Aragorn and Legolas, legally speaking, stole themselves.
Aragorn needs a doctor. But doctors are a risk they can't take, and medicine, while technically available, costs money they don't have and don't have any way to get.
It hits Legolas suddenly that Aragorn's probably contagious by now. They're both going to die here, in the slums of New Haven City, of a horrible disease that they could have prevented if they had just waited another year. Halfborns get the vaccine from Ellecron at twelve; Aragorn is eleven and Legolas is eleven and a half, they knew about the plague, why were they so impatient?
Aragorn needs a doctor. They both do. But Legolas knows full well that it can't happen.
They have their freedom. That's what they wished for.
Why couldn't they have wished for something else?