He clings onto Firiel like they'll both fade out if he lets go, like one of them will disappear again, like she's the last in the world worth holding onto.
The static somewhere inside grows and grows but never bursts; he's already resigned himself to believing it won't ever. Willing it to fizzle out never works, it keeps on smouldering until he's sure he'll never be anything other than burn scars.
Each shoulders feel like it is about to crack in two; he tries to hold himself upright but just slumps against Firiel again, like a broken doll.
"I want to go home," he chokes out; half sobs. "I want to go back to Sellafield, Firiel. I want to go home with you and Tabitha, and I want to work in the tower again, and I want to show you all the stars and teach you all their names, and I want to take you to your mother's grave like I promised..."
Sellafield was safe until they came for him and the professor. It was he who brought them to the sanctuary, yet he dares to want to go back. We can build it again, Tabitha would say, Firiel nodding along behind her. We'll rebuild the house and the tower, and restore what we can from the wreckage. We can fix everything. It is what he is clinging to.
He pauses, swallows, shudders and shakes as if he is about to collapse – but Firiel's arms hold him firm. They are sturdier than he remembers. Of course, she has grown from those weeks of travel and training with Igraine.
He's never felt safer than this, he realizes suddenly. Being held by someone who touches him not like he is something broken, but like he is truly worth protecting.
Firiel's hair covers him like a curtain, she leans his head on her shoulder, and at last he allows himself the courage to let go.
"I want to go home, Firiel." he mumbles into her shoulder.
His hands hang limply by his waist: now that they aren't clinging to Firiel, anchoring them together just in case, he doesn't have a purpose for them right now. One index finger twitches slightly, involuntarily. In an effort to keep himself grounded, he imagines he is using it to trace constellation maps once again.
The finger keeps moving in slow rotations, pausing where he would have found a major star. "I want to go home," he says again and again and again, until the words stop feeling like lead weights, and are just words again.
"I know." When he finishes, Firiel's eyes are full of unshed tears. She smiles, squeezing his cold hands to lend them some of her warmth. "Me too."
She is so strong, and he has always known it, just as he has always known her sorrows and suffering, for as long as they have been together. She too must ache for the bricks and roofs and fields of Sellafield; the home her mother once built from nothing, from the ground up.
Firiel rises, brushes her hair back with one swift movement. She stands upright, steadfast and unwavering: the constant lighthouse that stubbornly built itself in the storm he has never been able to outrun. The storm may well be there for the rest of his life, but he'll keep pressing forward and navigate his own way through. He's always been good with maps, after all.
She leans down to offer him her hand and pull him to his feet. For the first time, he allows himself to take it and rise alongside her without hesitation.
"Let's go home together, Rune."