Gisborne felt fear course through him at what he saw, an old fear brought back into fruition that seemed to choke him. Took was standing on the very edge of a parapet, her arms outstretched for balance against the gusts of wind and one leg raised. His heart beating fast, he sprints forward and wraps his arms around her waist, forcing her backwards too fast and making them both topple to the stone behind him.

"The fuck, Gilbert," Jas demands angrily as she rolls away from him and into a crouching position.

"What the hell was that," he shoots back as he sits up, glaring at her to mask the familiar horror that came with being unable to prevent death. He'd felt it before when he was a boy and he'd never intended to feel it again. "Are you trying to kill yourself?!"

"What?" The anger in her face was replaced with confusion, but his only grew. "No, I was just—"

"Tempting fate is what you were doing and I'll slap you bald the next time I catch you doing it!" Her eyes widen a fraction as she studies him, taking in his windblown hair, flushed cheeks, and the pounding of his heart, barely heard by her sensitive ears. She's looked at him like that a few months previous when he'd nearly fallen down the stairs of Locksley, but never with so much concern as she did now. "Stop looking at me like that, Took."

"It scared you."

"No—"

"Don't lie to me." He lowers his gaze to his gloved hands, wringing them together until her smaller ones covered them. "You don't have to lie to me about these things." What good would it do to tell her the truth? All it would accomplish is another thing she could hold over my head at a later time. "Is this what panic feels like?" He chances a glance up and finds her looking astonished and absolutely puzzled, brows drawn together as she lifts his head with her hands.

They were soft against his cheeks, like the flutter of butterfly wings in that he could scarcely feel them, and her breath was cool against his face. He's never been this close to her in nearly three weeks, not since he comforted her after she woke from a nightmare. In fact, both had tried to avoid that type of closeness ever since, but this was different. This was someone learning a new thing and not entirely understanding it no matter how hard they tried.

"You've never been panicked before?"

"No, never like this. I didn't— I didn't have time to panic, only to feel crippling grief and hatred." She must be talking about that Garen person again and he felt his own curiosity rise once more.

"What happened to make you feel like that?" His voice was barely more than a whisper, but he knew she heard it. Her hands dropped to her lap and her head lowered until her curls hid her face from him like a veil. Swallowing nervously, he uses a knuckle under her chin to raise her head, being the one to do the studying this time. There was no hatred in her eyes, no mischief dancing their like fire, only a deep sorrow that seemed to dull the rich brown color.

"M-my…." She trails off, taking a shuddering breath as she tried to get ahold of her emotions. It did little good, tears making her eyes shine even as they fell down her cheeks like raindrops. "My baby," she whispers after a moment," my baby was taken from me." That hit Gisborne harder than he'd expected, having believed Garen to be a former lover instead of a child, her child. "He was only two, but he wasn't strong enough to be a Ranger, so an order was sent out among our kind."

"They stole him from you?"

"They came in through the windows, surprising me, and two held me down when I went to run for my baby." She sniffles, her entire frame shaking with the struggle to control her sobs. "They forced me to watch as Dash murdered my Garen all because he was afraid of dark things, the nighttime scared him." That explained why he rarely saw her in anything that wasn't colorful. "My master said that he wouldn't have survived the Rites, so he was disposable."

"I'm so sorry, Took."

"I killed them…. Those men that held me down, I came to them in broad daylight and I made their torture last for weeks before I finished with them. But Dash, we're not able to kill our own family without the master's permission even if we tried, so I used my magic to keep him pinned down on a dirty floor and I shattered every bone in his body. I made him hurt for what he did, I made him beg for a release, but he was just healed so I could do it all over again."

A beat of silence where her terrifying gaze was locked on something over his shoulder and Gisborne felt as though the men deserved far worse than what she was able to give them.

"…. He's still gone," she continues, voice breaking as she slumped against him," my baby's gone and I'll never see him. I want my baby, Gisborne, I want my Garen." Tears stung Gisborne's eyes as he held her tightly, like he was trying to protect her from what had already happened. He couldn't think of what to do to help her, couldn't think of a way to ease her pain because he'd never found a way to ease his own.

He just rocks her gently back and forth like he'd done with his sister all those years ago, lips against the crown of her head as he murmured the song he's heard so often from her, the one that helped her relax in this new world.

"Through sunshine and shadow, from darkness till noon, over mountains that reach from the sky to the moon. A man with a dream that will never let go keeps searching to find El Dorado…."