Kill Your Emissaries First

It's a four-day ride to Vigil's Keep: eight Grey Wardens make camp off the road. It's a quiet spot cradled on a jut of rock overlooking the river, and the only entrance is one narrow track just wide enough for a man to guide his horse on foot. On every side but the drop-off to the river below, slate boulders catch the crackling glow of campfires like a pipe-bowl, making the camp seem warm and bright and relatively safe. Most of the men sit close together at the fireside: Sigmund laughs like a madman as Patrick spills a pint over himself in his frenzy to win a drinking contest, Brent uses a stick by the light of the fire to draw an exaggerated rendering of the hurlock alpha he killed a week before, and a couple of Orlesian archers lean on Heath's broad frame as they sleep off their drink. Theirs is a much-needed respite from a solid month of almost nightly skirmishes, and this small rock valley has never been taken while men stood within to defend it - drunk or not. As far as camping places go, it feels a blessed amount more protected than pitching tents in an open field or forest.

At the top of a slope of boulders overlooking the river there's a narrow perch with a good view of the entire campsite, and this is where Loghain chooses to pass the evening. It's a warm night; he's shed his armor but he keeps it close, half his attention on the river below and half on the camp's entrance behind and to the left of him. As improbable as an ambush seems, he can't help thinking a contingent of drunk Wardens practically begs for some height-happy emissary to climb the rocks overhanging the camp and pelt them all with fiery terror, and in Loghain's mind the bunch of fools would all deserve it. But by and large they're good men and good soldiers, and he keeps watch, even if a part of him loves to picture them all pissing themselves (and this applies particularly to the Orlesians) and jumping into the river thirty feet below.

Loghain hears someone climbing the boulder-path to his perch. He knows without having to turn that it's Bethany; he'd watched her take off her boots to let her socks dry by the fire, and the steps behind him are quiet. She's also the only one of the entire lot who'd willingly seek out his company. By the time she comes to stand beside him and prods his leg so he'll leave her room to sit, he's resigned himself to her strange, but consistent, desire to make conversation with a traitor and a fool.

"I saved you some bread," she says by way of greeting. He shifts his weight out of her way, entirely unsure that she wouldn't just sit on him if he chooses to be stubborn, and Bethany settles beside him with the bread in one casually outstretched hand.

He considers taking the sarcastic track and mentioning he's a grown man and fully capable of feeding himself if he so chooses, but he takes one look at her quiet, steady gaze, and accepts the loaf. Loghain picks at the bread for a few moments, letting it crumble between his fingers, as she rests beside him with her back to the same rock, her feet tucked near his. She's watching him, he notices; she sees him shredding the bread, but she just has a little smile when he meets her eyes, as if to say I don't care what you do with it, you can't win that way.

He's exasperated and a little unsettled by their unspoken game. It's been years more than he can say since he's been around a woman willing to challenge him who wasn't also Anora. Even Cauthrien hesitated to push too far, in light of his temper, and he'd known that and it was a large part of why he allowed himself to have a temper in the first place. It served its purpose the same as any other tool. But Bethany is unique, it seems: she's utterly indifferent to every attempt he makes to be cold and self-serving, and when he raises his voice she might raise a brow, but nothing else changes. She has no tic, no tightening to her jaw, no nervous hand habits. She doesn't blush, at least not out of anger, because she doesn't get angry. And Loghain doesn't believe it's simply that she's hard to read: even a sheltered Chantry-boy like Maric's bastard could see she's attached herself to him like a bit of wet lichen to a tree, but what he cannot by the Maker understand is why. Why nothing riles her. Why she's sitting next to him instead of getting stupid-drunk and passing out by the fire like good little Wardens do.

"Hey," she says, bumping him gently shoulder to shoulder. She's holding out another piece of bread: he's crushed the first one in his fists, pieces scattered between his knees and rolling off the edge. "This one's for eating."

For one startling moment, so heavy and unknowable it makes his stomach lurch, he actually thinks she knows him, knows him so well that she's saved two pieces of bread for him because he's restless and unfinished and he can't keep his hands from destroying things. And then he realizes the second piece she's offering him is the one she's saved for herself.

He catches her wrist and twists it, firmly but gently, so her arm is forced to curve back toward her own body. "This one is yours," he says, hoping the edge of authority, of finality, that he's honed for years will be enough to cover the unexpected huskiness to his tone. She hesitates. Her eyes travel from the hand on her arm to his face, and as he feels the tension of action leave her, he finally lets go.

But it's too much to hope for: she breaks the bread neatly in half. And then, perhaps foreseeing what he might do, without a word she places a half beside him - not on his leg, where he might have had excuse to let himself get angry, but still close enough to him that he can't simply pretend she's put it down with the intention of eating it later. If he were to get up now it would stay there all night; he knows that with certainty. That makes him want to grab the damn bread and throw it into the river, but he also knows the rising tide of frustration inside of him has nothing to do with food: if he really wants to make himself feel better he's going to have to throw her into the river, and then throw himself in too.

In spite of common sense, he hears himself sighing. "Did you take lessons in passive-aggressiveness, or is it a skill you've endeavored to learn all on your own?"

She isn't looking in his direction but he can see her lips twitch all the same. "I'm a woman and a mage. I'm told often enough that I can trace all my defects to one or the other, so to answer your question, it's probably innate."

"Almost certainly," he replies, voice bland. "And now that you mention it, it makes a sort of sense. All the women in my life have possessed an irritating ability to push their luck and put the blame on their sex."

She doesn't have to say a word. She just looks at him. And where do you put your blame? she asks, just with her eyes and one slightly raised eyebrow.

That's different, he wants to say. Instead, as a concession, he picks up the bread at his side and begins to eat it. He isn't at all hungry; he was never known to consume to excess anyway, but since Joining he's hardly had an appetite at all and the nightmares-that-make-him-vomit don't help with that. Months on the road carrying limited supplies necessitate eating smaller portions, too, and that doesn't just apply to him. Loghain feels a jab of guilt at that, looking at the food he's wasted.

Bethany shifts, getting ready to stand - having accomplished her goal, he supposes - but then with shock he discovers she isn't standing at all, she's just scooting closer, and suddenly there's the weight of her head against his shoulder. Oh. He takes a minute simply to process it: he allows himself to notice her warm breath, the leading edge of her shoulder against his side. She isn't entirely unwelcome; he can admit that, just barely. And the part of him that wants to shake her and demand she tell him why she insists on acting so young and stupid can't seem to win against the part of him pointing out that she's capable of besting him in a fight and shaming him with just a look. It's also true that there are many men older than him who take wives younger than her, but it's all the more unsettling because she's the one who seems intent on doing the taking.

It's too hard to unravel the knots she's making in his brain, so he turns to practicality. "How much have you had to drink?" he asks, quietly. There's that nagging gravelly edge to his voice again, and he's old enough to know what it means and to be resigned to it.

"Not as much as you," comes the slightly-muffled response.

He considers this. He hasn't had anything to drink in days, at least if he disregards the occasional dip into Heath's flask of whiskey after a battle to wash the taste of blood from his mouth. And then it hits him and he stops just short of rolling his eyes. "I don't mean over the course of your lifetime," you twit, he almost adds.

"Oh. Well then. Just a pint," she says. He's startled to find he can feel her smiling through his shirt.

A clear memory forms in his mind: he pictures a ridiculous heated argument they'd had after he became irritated with what he'd seen at the time as her persistent kindness, something he now understands as fundamental to her nature and not rising from ulterior motives. He doubts she would even consider herself all that kind, remarkably.

"What are you looking for, Hawke? Do you want me to justify my actions, make them neat and tidy for you so I don't ruin your precious belief in the good in everyone? I'm a ruthless and bitter old man, and I would have killed everyone in your family, every mage, every Grey Warden if it meant victory. Try to see the enduring good in that."

"There isn't any," she'd replied, with a strength and confidence that had surprised him. "But that man is dead, just like the woman I used to be and thought I would become died in the Deep Roads. Who are you going to be ruthless against now? What sort of ambition could you possibly expect to have that would amount to anything here? That's why they did this to you."

And she'd walked away, her words daring him to make something new out of himself. And... by the Maker, it isn't the road he would have chosen but he's tried. If only Maric could see him now; the irony of it feels strangely comforting.

While he's been consumed by his thoughts, somehow Bethany has managed to settle herself against his chest without Loghain noticing. There really must be something to the Commander's decision to assign her as a scout in spite of her being a mage. She can insinuate herself anywhere, he thinks wryly.

Loghain finishes his bread, eyes on the grey ribbon of water below. Their brothers-in-arms snore nearby, but the camp has faded out of importance and it suddenly seems far away, leaving him with only the glint of the moon on water and the weight of the woman beside him. When Bethany finds one of his hands and threads hers in it, he still has that memory clear in his mind and he doesn't stop her. For the first time he's curious about the things she'd said all those months ago. "You told me you gave up your dreams in the Deep Roads."

Bethany turns a little so she can look up at him. "Are you asking me a question?" He gives a short nod, suddenly feeling self-conscious about his intentions, but she doesn't seem to notice; her eyes are far away and her voice is soft. "I wanted to be normal. Have a bit of money, live in a nice place. I didn't want to run, anymore, from the templars."

Something painful and indistinct tightens in Loghain's heart at 'I wanted to be normal;' he thinks of Anora spending all her time alone because she was above her peers in every way... and yet he would still find her sometimes at the library window, looking at the other children playing ball in the yard, as if something had suddenly made her aware of the separation between her and everyone else. Anora had never wished to be normal... but that loneliness has never left her. It's not so different, he thinks, as he looks at Bethany. He thinks of himself too: the sleepless nights filled with the terror of his possible failure, the dread of knowing he carried the weight of his rebellion alone. Wanting to be normal, wanting to not feel isolated, wanting to have someone to share the burdens of life's choices... they're all the same thing.

Loghain clears his throat. In response to her answer he says, "one out of four isn't bad."

Bethany laughs out loud: the abruptness of it makes his whole body tense until he wills himself to relax again. "No, I suppose not. But now instead of templars I've got darkspawn."

"Yet you aren't running." He sounds brusque to his own ears, but underneath it there's real affection. He doesn't try to hide it. It's pointless with her as close as she is, and if he feels she's worth his respect - and it so happens he does - she deserves to know it.

She pauses. He can feel it in the absence of her breath; he wonders if he's said the wrong thing - and then he feels it too: he pushes her up and forward in one harsh shove and then he's scrambling for the armor piled on the rocks below him, starting with his chestplate. She tries to help him with the buckles, but Loghain strikes away her hands and continues tightening the straps with efficient hard yanks. "Go," he hisses. "Get them up."

She's gone; he takes just enough time to register her absence and then he pushes her from his mind. He's up, he has his boots on (where is his second sock?) and all that's left is to cram his skull into his helmet and grab his sword and shield.

What is it they always say the Maker has? It's either a penchant for sadism or a sense of humor; he isn't sure which.

There's only one way in, and that's the path Loghain takes out. It's hard to tell how far away the darkspawn are, or wherethey are, so Loghain keeps his eyes both on the tops of the rocks around him and on the path ahead. The camp is exploding to life behind him; it warms his heart to know his 'brothers' are still worth something when they're drunk off their asses.

And then there's a sound and dear Andraste he hates that sound, it's worse than Orlesians singing, he can barely keep his footing because it's messing with the insides of his ears. Shrieks. Why does it have to be shrieks?

Suddenly he sees them as they crest a small rise in the trail ahead: there's maybe three shrieks and eight genlocks. He takes a moment to feel glad about being wrong with regards to one thing, namely that not a single one of them has thought to climb. They're still twenty yards away: he solidifies his stance and waits for them.

There's a hurlock in there too... it registers a bare moment before a blast of heat comes rushing at his face that it's a hurlock emissary. He ducks behind his shield just before the heat coalesces into fire. It licks around the corners, but it will have to do a lot more than that to roast him through his veridian plate and so he waits it out.

Suddenly there's a gust of frigid cold, and a breathless Bethany crouches beside him. She's grinning: he wonders what it is she's done to look so pleased with herself, but then he knows. There's a distinct lack of Orlesian opera going on in the path ahead.

Vaulting up, he charges forward with a yell, hacking at the frozen shrieks as he reaches them: more voices raised in challenge join him, and there's Bethany yelling too, voice cracking with force. She's dropped back but everything she does goes with him: he sees her in points of blossoming fire carving a crater in the chest of a genlock to his right, in huge dollops of fire pouring on the emissary ahead, in Brent managing to straighten and continue to fight after receiving a nasty cut to his side.

Only a few minutes have passed before they manage to form into tight ranks: Heath holds the front with Loghain, and the others gather behind, Sigmund and Patrick together and the archers at the very back with Bethany. The line will hold, Loghain has no doubt...until he feels a familiar tremor. His gut drops unpleasantly, and he swallows and grits his teeth against sudden nausea. As if an emissary isn't bad enough.

An ogre comes crashing toward them, shoving the genlocks in front of it to the side, stepping on the remaining frozen shriek and shattering it. The way is almost too narrow; its horned head comes to nearly the ridge of the rocks around it, and the ground seems to shift from the river of loosened stones that pour down around it as it muscles its way forward. It's scraping itself raw on the rocks. Before it Heath holds his ground, defiant in the face of annihilation, his body a shield for the men behind him.

Loghain looks over his shoulder and catches the big man's gaze. Heath smiles through crooked teeth, and it's just as warm a smile as he's apt to have as he sits by the fire and tells stories, but his jaw's tight with tension. Loghain offers a nod in return, adjusts his grip on his sword, and looks past the ogre struggling along the narrow chute: he's still worried about the emissary.

A large hand rests on his shoulder; Heath's still watching him. "I'll take the ogre, if you think ya can get to the ugly one in the back."

Loghain doesn't even have time to nod: the ogre closes the last few steps in bounding strides that nearly knock them all off their feet. It ignores Loghain and focuses entirely on Heath.

In all his years of campaigning, the Hero of River Dane has never climbed an ogre. As the creature snarls and bends to butt at Heath, Loghain decides it's time to try new things and he lunges sideways to grab a hold of its horned head: it bellows and shakes, twisting up in confusion, and it's exactly what Loghain has counted on. As soon as the ogre straightens he lets go and drops down behind it.

Its irritation gone, the ogre turns back to Heath; Loghain rolls his eyes upward in thanks and tries to steady himself from his landing on uneven rocks. One of his ankles feels alarmingly loose, like he's trying to stand in a bucket of liquid, but he doesn't have the time for distractions and he stuffs the sensation to the back of his mind. There are still four genlocks between him and the emissary - some of the original number are splattered on the rocks from being stepped on by an ogre - and he has no idea what in the Fade he was thinking, believing he could fight through them alone. But the narrow space works to his advantage, and so does his shield.

Pushing forward with the shield, he shoulders through the genlocks. They smell of blood and rotting meat, a combination of metallic and sickly sweet that still roils his stomach worse than any smell on a purely human battlefield ever could. Humans can bleed and rot and piss themselves as they lay dying, but even a gutted man never smells like this. The genlocks close rank behind him, striking at him with crude and heavy blades, spraying him with their foul spittle. He goes on. When he's shouldered his way through he breaks into a sprint: the emissary stands at a rise in the path fifteen feet ahead.

A lancing shudder forces its way through him: he sees the Archdemon, and it's above him and in front of him and everywhere, a rotting black husk of pure hatred and malice. You died, he wants to say, but his mouth is frozen, he's frozen. Terror claws up his spine: he wants to vomit and he can't.

And then a shape forms, a little shape from memory. The Warden.

She's tiny, tan from a life in the sun and the woods, dark lines curling around her lips and eyes. You died too, he thinks; he remembers his words, "please, I've done so much wrong," and the way she'd smiled with blood in her teeth and denied him with a shake of her head. It isn't real. She died in my place.

Loghain gives a shuddering breath and the terror clears. Strangely, the Warden remains for a moment longer and then she's gone too, and it's only been a few seconds, and why aren't there any genlocks stabbing me from behind? He doesn't turn to look. The emissary is still ahead, hands already wreathed in the beginnings of another spell.

He lunges but it's too late: he can feel the hex pulling at him, draining him of life, even before he manages to slam the emissary to the ground. The hurlock snarls and bites at him as he throttles it, and distantly Loghain wonders if perhaps his hair's now on fire, or if the roaring sound and heat he feels is just the blood pounding in his ears as he struggles not to lose consciousness.

Its hissing takes on a frantic, gurgling edge after he crushes its windpipe; it claws at his helmet and then at as much of his neck as it can get to in a last-ditch attempt to take Loghain with it. Its legs kick into him with surprising force. He presses harder, harder, until there's blood on his hands. The clawing, and then the kicking, stops.

The pounding in his ears slows but he can tell the hex hasn't ended yet, and when he leans forward to get up he keeps leaning until he's slumped over the dead emissary. There's still an ogre, he thinks, and then he thinks nothing at all.

It's only ten minutes, fifteen at the most, before he opens his eyes again. He's still lying where he'd fallen, but instead of being on the dead darkspawn he's next to it, for which he's eternally grateful. A small crowd has gathered around him in his absence from his wits.

"Well hello," Sigmund says cheerfully, poking him with a leather-booted toe. "Nice to see our resident emissary-killer still lives."

"My pleasure," Loghain chokes out. His throat feels raw; he almost has a moment of sympathy for the darkspawn sprawled next to his shoulder. "Ogre?"

Sigmund shrugs, still looking pleased. Still drunk, Loghain thinks, or drunk again. "Heath got 'im. Ogre took his arm, but not a bad trade, if you ask Heath. Which I did."

Loghain wants to ask about the genlocks, but he doesn't have the strength to form a complete sentence so he tables the issue. They're obviously dead; that's all that matters. More pressing is the matter of Bethany, who is nowhere to be seen.

He manages to say her name before he breaks out in a coughing fit that ends with blood dribbling down his chin, which is the perfect topper to a wonderful day.

Sigmund and Patrick exchange glances and then bend down to lift Loghain between the two of them. "She's doing her best with Heath and Brent. They're the only ones with more 'n a scratch, other than you." Sigmund shifts his stance under Loghain's shoulder and continues: "looks like you got stuck in the lung or something. Damn but you're heavy."

"It's all armor," Loghain rasps, and then they're quiet the rest of the way along the path back into camp, the camp that's never been taken - but no one had ever said anything about it never being attacked.

As Loghain lies in his tent, what he feels most of all is impatience. There's too much to be done for him to be breaking his ankle jumping off of ogres, let alone getting half-throttled and hexed until he's spitting up blood.

After depositing him in his own tent, Sigmund and Patrick had left him, at his insistence, so he could take care of himself. "I've faced an Archdemon," he'd muttered, "I can handle a sprained ankle." Of course the ankle wasn't just sprained, and now, after struggling for a good half-hour to remove all his armor and put on cleaner clothes, it's painfully easy for him to see just how broken it is. It isn't quite a bad enough break for it to be impossible to walk on, but now that he's seen it...

He knows Bethany will come round to check on him when she has the time, so he stares up at the canvas above him and tries not to think about the pain he's really starting to feel now. "Stupid," he mutters.

"Hardly a generous thing to call someone who's come to help you," Bethany says from outside, announcing her presence. Without waiting for his reply she lifts the flap and slips inside, setting her lantern, a bowl of water, and her supplies inside next to him. She looks very tired but in good spirits. He notices she's stillbarefoot, her feet covered in mud; it's doubtful if she's even noticed.

When he rolls up the cuff of his pants-leg so she can see his ankle, she lets out a long sigh. "Oh, Loghain. They'd told me you'd sprained it." She looks him in the face then, and he sees the skin around her eyes looks smudged, like it's bruised. This weariness is familiar to them both, after a month on the road, and he's seen her look like this more often than not at the end of a long day... but tonight it's just that little bit harder to bear. It was supposed to be a night of rest, a few hours of respite. And instead it was every Maker-damned kind of darkspawn and an emissary.

Bethany pulls him from his weary thoughts when she wets a cloth and starts to wipe away the dried blood around his mouth that he'd completely forgotten about. "Ribs?"

"All fine," he says against the cloth, knowing she's asking where the blood came from. He's back in the painful, throbbing now,and he pushes away his tiredness for a little longer. "It's from a hex."

Bethany winces at that; he gathers she considers hexes to be bad. She puts the cloth back in the bowl, and then she's quiet for a long time, and he can't tell if she's just exhausted or if she's angry. She traces the contours of his ribs through his shirt, clinically, but that doesn't mean it feels clinical to him.

"I climbed an ogre," he says, because talking is at least a small distraction from her hands and their methodical journey up his chest.

"I saw," Bethany replies, arriving at his neck and gently turning his head to get a better view of his bruises in the lamplight. There's something bitter in her tone that he can't account for: she is angry, then. When she speaks again, he understands. "My brother tried the same thing."

"I'm sorry," he says, and he means it. He takes her hand; it's small and smooth compared to his own, but there are also callouses there from handling her staff. "About your brother." He has to add that, has to clarify that he's not sorry about himself, because he isn't.

She just nods, muscles in her cheek working, and she doesn't look at him. When she speaks at last her words are hard to understand, spoken through tightly-reined frustration as they are. "Does your life mean so little? Or are you that conceited," and she can't say any more.

Her words are like a slap, and without quite knowing how he's gotten there he's furious. He opens his mouth to speak, to lash back - and as quickly as the anger comes it slides out of him and leaves him empty, because this is Bethany. Bethany, who meets fire with ice, and the hotter the fire, the colder she gets and the calmer she seems.

So she does have a fire in her, he thinks. As if he's ever had reason to doubt. How funny... that the source of it seems to be him. Perhaps it's because her remaining family is too far away; perhaps he's only a placeholder for a passion he's beginning to see stems from a fierce familial loyalty. Perhaps she's chosen, for reasons he still can't fathom, to widen that sphere to include him.

When he finally speaks he's calm again. Her hand is still in his; he runs his thumb over it. "Once I might have admitted to the former, but now by-and-large I'd pin it on conceit."

Bethany is all stillness, and then she sighs. "Glad to know you're not suicidal, just stupid," she mutters, still keeping her eyes averted. It's plain to see that she thinks he's a fool, but she's done talking; instead she pulls her hand from his and busies herself with using a cloth to clean the grit from his swollen ankle. When she's finished, Loghain feels her settle both her hands on it, where it's most swollen, and there's a moment of frigid shooting pain, and then it's numb. Loghain props himself up and finds that his foot's been iced.

"That's your solution? Frostbite?" He snaps, more with surprise than anger.

"Would you rather I set it without numbing it first?" she says, in what has to be the driest tone he's ever heard her use. She's entirely too well-bred to add that she might enjoy that, but he can see it in some little change in her expression anyway. There's something... there's something about her when she's angry that he thinks he likes very much. Her soft edges recede, and in their place he can see a core of steel that he isn't afraid to handle roughly.

"Frostbite sounds fine," he says, choosing to be generous.

Bethany doesn't leave the ice on long; his skin's a bright angry red where it isn't blue, but the blue is from bruising and not tissue death. She grasps his leg below the knee with one hand and below the break with the other, and her eyes find his. He sees frustration in her face, but there's compassion, too, for what she's about to do to him.

This is the minute of respite: he uses it to test a theory he's had building in his mind. "Thank you. For the genlocks. And for disrupting that...horror spell, whatever it was I was stuck in."

"You're welcome," she says, voice steady and calm.

He nods, mostly to himself: he's had a firm suspicion the Warden's appearance was some sort of beneficial side effect of a spell. "Thank you also for fixing my ankle," he adds, well aware he's only buying time.

Bethany gives him a small rueful smile. "Don't thank me for that yet."

A smart-ass reply is on the tip of his tongue when she yanks on his leg, hard, and he discovers that as helpful as ice is, it's a far cry from enough.

Once the initial stab of agony has died away, Loghain watches Bethany through a haze of slowly retreating pain as she heals as much of the damage as she can, and by the end she's swaying on her knees. "Stay," he says, when she fumbles with her supplies as she attempts to gather them together. It's hard to sit up enough to blow out the lantern but Loghain manages somehow, and then he grasps her hand and uses his own weight to pull her down after him. Her feet are still filthy and she smells like sweat but he's hardly in a position to be less than generous about either of those things, his own state considered.

Loghain's intentions are pure enough, but that doesn't keep heated thoughts from crossing his mind as she folds herself against him, her breathing almost immediately deepening from exhaustion into sleep. It's just as well, he thinks, with a small smile; she's likely still angry, and he's still unrepentant. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

She's a lovely woman, hard but not brittle, soft but not defenseless, capable of seeing with clear eyes what he's done and still valuing him for who he can be. These are the things he respects in her; it's for the sake of these, and not pity, that he's sharing his bed. And if he weren't tired, and if she weren't asleep, and if there weren't so many things they still have to discuss tomorrow, and if there weren't so many things she'd hate him for if she knew (the Circle Tower comes to mind), he might find in himself the desire to express something that's lain slumbering since Rowan, something he isn't sure he knows how to articulate any other way but touch. He's even fairly confident she'll be amenable, at some point, if they... continue on like this. If she continues to look forward, if she continues to pull him along with her.

It isn't certain - nothing is - but it's a nice thought to fall asleep by.