This story only really came to me in the time since my beloved dog died less than a year ago. It's undeniably a work of grief, but it helped me work through a lot of things happening in that same time. I hope you like it.

I: Something broken, something blue

Robin finds himself outside her sickroom as dusk falls, leaning his head against the door. His left arm hangs in a sling around his midsection, and his shoulder is wrapped in bandages, broken and wrenched from he caught her. Maribelle and the new guy Libra—who, as it turned out, really was a man after all—had done their best, but his had been the least of the injuries suffered, and so he would need to wait until both had recovered their strength before he would be fully mended. Not that it was any consolation, not when he still saw that flash of green and gold falling to earth, too fast for him to cast with his unbroken arm.

At least he'd managed to save one of them.

"Come in," her contralto filters through the door, dead and flat, and at last he forces himself to enter.

She's sitting up, he sees. Considering the wounds she'd taken to her side and chest, it was a good sign, even if her head hung so low. Libra had said they'd had to cut away her armor and tunic for how deeply the arrows had been buried. She'd been fortunate, he'd said, that the arrows hadn't struck a major artery or organ. Robin had doubted very much that she felt the same. Her modesty is protected by the bloodied linen dressing that swathes her breast and sides, looping up over her left shoulder.

She raises her head almost imperceptibly, peering up through a veil of winter-blue hair, "What do you want?" Phila whispers.

"To see you," the tomblike silence of the room coupled with her quietude make his voice seem uncomfortably loud, though he barely speaks above a murmur, "I'd thought you almost dead when I caught you."

"So it should have been," bitterness creeps into her words, arms circling her knees as she brought them to her chest, "What sort of guard outlives her charge? You should have let me fall and spared yourself the bandages."

He can't bring himself to rebuke her, to tell her that her life weighs just as heavily as her Exalt's. Not when he has the same guilty anchor hanging from his neck. Instead he crosses the room, lowering himself gingerly into the chair by her bedside. He can feel the cold of the wood even through his coat.

"I couldn't save her," gods he sounds like shit, but at least the words don't catch in his throat, like when he had to look Lissa in the eye after his failure, "Her death is my fault as much as yours."

Phila shakes her head, red eyes dry after so many tears. Her voice is raw as she speaks, "I was the captain of her guard, Wing Commander of her Pegasus knights. Now they are gone and so is she. I was supposed to protect her—"

"And I was supposed to save her," he tries to keep his voice from rising, to tamp down the self-loathing and anger and keep it from spilling out. The war isn't won yet, "We both fucked up. Failures both of us."

She laughs at that—a broken and strangled bark that seems to strain her voice, "The Lady Failure and the Prince's Dog, what a tale that would be."

He tries to suppress a smile, but can't prevent it from breaking through, and she returns a pained smile, a white slash of teeth that reminds him of a slit throat.

"I like to think of myself as a tamed wolf," he ventures, and when she laughs this time it's not quite so broken or strangled.

When the laughter leaves her, she's silent for a long time. He lets it stand, settling back in the chair as best he can without pressuring his wrenched shoulder. He doesn't want to try his luck. When her shoulders begin to slump and her breathing starts to settle, he leans in, gently easing her back into the pillows despite her whimpered protests.

"Hush now, captain," he murmurs, "You need your sleep."

"Shouldn't bother," she whispers, clutching his hand, "Should have left me."

"But I didn't," he bites back a harsh retort, squeezes her hand reassuringly, "Mend quickly, Lady Phila. I'll not leave you to fester in the dark alone." He holds her hand until it goes limp in his own.

When she wakes next, she is alone, but her fingers are still warm.