Author's Note: So, the first time the antagonist of last chapter was ever referenced in this universe? Believe it or not, Chapter 13 of When Nothing Remains; it's mentioned in passing by the Bewilderbeast. I was going to put this at the end of the chapter, but my beta informed me that it caused a bit of a mood whiplash there, so have it now.

Also, since we're here, as a general recommendation: The video game Transistor is amazing in every respect. Visuals, music, story… It's a shorter experience, and very linear, but totally worth it. (The combat is also pretty entertaining, though it might overstay its welcome in a longer game). I cannot recommend it highly enough, especially the soundtrack (though the devs advise against listening to the soundtrack before playing the game if you do have any intention of playing, something I wholeheartedly agree with, so… yeah. Do with that as you will. Maybe just check out the bonus track that, as far as I know, doesn't play in the game, called 'She Shines'.) The setting is nothing like this story, but the actual story of the game is… well, let's just say there are some weird parallels to Innocent Hopes, Twisted Realities and leave it at that. I would say what, but that would spoil the game, so I guess I'll leave you with that.

For once, Lily was thankful she couldn't sleep naturally. It meant she didn't have to fear dozing off and being killed in her sleep by a vengeful nightmare come to life. The nightmare dragon – which was the only name she had for its kind, though she had a nagging feeling she should have known more – hadn't even tried to get through her avalanche blockade, as far as she could tell. No sound came through the small cracks and gaps between the chunk of rock that had fallen and the tunnel it had blocked.

She wished she could hear that crazy dragon muttering outside; it would be reassuring, in a sense, in the same way that seeing the enemy was better than creeping around wondering where they were. Or in this case, wondering if they'd not given up at all, and were instead preparing some nasty surprise or going down a different tunnel to lie in wait…

Suffice to say that while she was tired, she was grateful she didn't have to worry about dozing off despite herself. Beryl, on the other paw… She would have been happy for him to fall asleep. Instead, he just lay there, mostly motionless, under her wing, his breathing too unsteady for him to be sleeping. He had calmed down, if one considered unresponsive 'calm', but not in a way that instantly reassured her that he would be fine. She could really have used some immediate, over-the-top relief to distract herself from what had happened, but instead she got uncertainty and anxiety as she waited.

She had no way of knowing how long they remained there, in that position, waiting. Long enough that her stomach was beginning to growl and her throat was dry by the time Beryl stirred again, though that was an imprecise measure at best.

Him finally moving put paid to her lingering thoughts of water, food, and terrifying creatures lurking in the shadows. "Beryl?" she warbled. "Back to normal?"

"No," he groaned, pushing her wing off his head with a shaking paw. He looked up at her, his gaze haunted, eyes near slits of fear and apprehension. "Did we… did we get away?"

"He's somewhere on the other side of that," she responded, indicating the boulder with her tail. "As far as I know, he has no way to get to us now, but I wouldn't count on it. How are you feeling?"

"Like someone clawed at my mind and made me run for my life, not necessarily in that order," he huffed, pulling further away from her, a good few steps backward. His every movement was constrained, hesitant. "I tried to warn you, but you didn't get it before…"

"I figured it out in time," she assured him. "I am fine, you are recovering, we are safe enough for now." She would like to tell him they were perfectly safe, but if she was going to lie she might as well go all-out and tell him she killed the cause of all their troubles, and that Holly had stopped by to say everything was all forgiven, after which she slept without any trouble at all. In reality, she couldn't say any of those things. Safe was the one thing she was increasingly sure they had never been since leaving the Valley.

"I don't feel safe," he mumbled.

"Under my wing didn't feel safe?" she asked, forcing herself to make light of the situation. If she did so, maybe he'd lighten up too. It was better than them dragging each other into a self-feeding loop of pointless fear.

"Safer, maybe, but not safe," he huffed.

"Seriously, are you okay?" she asked. "Because if you're good to move we should put some distance between ourselves and that place, but we need to be alert, just in case."

"I can cope," he said firmly, relaxing slightly. "Are you okay?"

"I can cope too," she replied. "And I'll do it better somewhere other than here."

O-O-O-O-O

The path away from their shared trauma was a tunnel just like any other, though thankfully it did not go any further down or up, continuing straight on with only a slight curve to the right. Lily walked behind Beryl, caught up in her own thoughts.

Foremost on her mind was his mental state; he clearly wasn't fine, though the same could easily be said of her. He'd been bitten and she hadn't which might make a difference, or it might not. She had no real way of knowing anything yet, and any attempt to start a conversation would range from ridiculous to counterproductive, depending on what she brought up to break the silence.

So, bereft of any way to further analyse him, she sank into thinking about her own experiences, the one thing she'd been hoping to avoid and push away. Though her habit of pushing away her memories likely had made that horrifying series of encounters all the more vivid… There was something to be said about a dragon that could drag one's worst fears out of one's mind no matter how much one tried to forget them.

The images passed in front of her eyes in no particular order, each still horrifying in hindsight, sometimes even more so. Claw, disgusting and broken even as he moved like a light wing in the prime of his life, inconsistently injured but consistently horrific. Holly, covered in waste, her throat slit. Cressa, dead and broken, Ivy, accusing and still. The countless other horrors…

All false, all imaginary, nothing but whirls of green fog, but even then, they were terrible. Whatever was in the fog to make her hallucinate, it had dug through her memories – or maybe it was her doing the digging, since she didn't think fog could do anything intelligently – and forcefully dredged up everything even remotely frightening. Visions of nameless dead, dead fledglings, collapsing floors and unleapable ravines, the illusion of safety pulling out from under her…

She grimaced, more than a little embarrassed. That one had been all too real and all too dangerous, in the end. Mirages from her past could be ignored, she had ignored them once she figured out what they were. Those had not stopped her, not for long, and neither had the dragon behind it all, lurking in the fog and dismissing her as weak.

No, none of those things had defeated her, but something else almost had. It was ironic that of all her many flaws, it was an old, physical failing that had come the closest to getting her killed. Not only had she been forced to leap an uncertain gap instead of just gliding over, if she had been able to fly back at the river cavern, it was likely she and Beryl would have gone that way and never doubled back at all, meaning they'd have unknowingly avoided the domain of that nightmarish dragon. Being grounded had put her life in danger twice over.

If only acknowledging and understanding the cause made her any more capable of fixing it. Claw had grounded her, and that was that.

Or it would be, if that was entirely true. She didn't like thinking back to those days, but after literally facing her worst nightmares, it was a small thing to force herself to remember, an uneasy feeling that paled in comparison.

He had grounded her, that much was true, but she could have tried to fix it. She had been given a choice after surviving the sickness that came with the injury. Cut her new scar open and spread her wings, or do nothing and continue to heal as best she could.

She remembered the reasoning behind that decision like it had been made yesterday; it was not all that complicated. Cutting her back open to spread her wings and let herself heal properly might have worked, but it carried the risk of bringing further sickness and then possibly death, and would certainly have lengthened her recovery time. Alternatively, not doing anything meant she would live for sure. Her pack needed her, so she had chosen life and never looked back… until now.

Though, even now that she was reconsidering it, she couldn't say she had made the wrong decision at the time. Had she chosen flight, even if she survived the reopening of the wound, there was no way she would have been in any shape to deal with what had come after. Crystal would have suffered and died when Claw caught her, Lily being too injured to come to her rescue. Others might have suffered too, but losing Crystal alone was worth the sacrifice.

Not that she'd had any way of knowing all that. At the time, she could not risk her life, because the pack needed her too much for her to take a chance. So she had sacrificed her flight for them.

A bitter feeling welled up within her. Look where that had gotten her in the end. The sacrifice did not feel hollow, not quite, but it did feel unnecessary, like she was still suffering but no longer for any good reason. They didn't need her now.

They didn't need her, she needed to move forward…

Lily almost stopped walking as she realized what she was doing. She was rationalizing a choice she wanted to make. A choice she could make now, a possibility she had long dismissed.

She wanted to fly again.

She really wanted to fly again, and now the biggest deterrent to pursuing that goal was gone. Her pack didn't need her. She had no idea what she was going to do with the rest of her life, and this wasn't an answer, but it was something she wanted to do all the same.

While it was true she had never really cared much for flight while she had it, she would appreciate it much more now, and taking it back now might be worth the risk…

She could ponder this on the move. Whatever she did, she wouldn't be doing it here.

O-O-O-O-O

"Looks like there's something up ahead," Beryl remarked some time later, drawing her attention to the present moment, or more specifically to a moment in the near future. There was a strong yellow light illuminating a final twist in the tunnel, one that signified a change of some sort.

"Careful," Lily warned.

"I've learned my lesson about gawking out in the open in an unknown cave," Beryl rumbled, stalking up to the twist in the tunnel and carefully looking out. "Large cavern… brightly lit… empty… pool of water to one side…"

That all sounded promising…

"No exits," he continued. "Well, one, but it's in the ceiling."

"Is it safe? Maybe there's one you can't see from where we are now." The very thought of being forced to backtrack through that nightmarish cavern was enough to make her shudder, so she was hoping he was missing another way out hidden behind a rock or something. Besides which, she certainly wouldn't object to water and possibly food being tucked away just out of sight.

"Looks totally empty." Beryl flicked his tail, inviting her to follow him out. "Watch my back."

The cavern, she noted as they tentatively emerged into the open, had a cool breeze wafting through it. There were actually two holes in the high ceiling, one on either side of the cavern, and both firmly out of reach.

Unlike most of the caverns she and Beryl had gone through recently, this one also had plentiful, normal-looking vegetation. Lily even recognized a few of the small shrubs bordering the still pond. She also recognized the shrill whining of the little insects that lived on still waters, though that was not nearly as reassuring as the shrubs. At the very least, there didn't seem to be anywhere for creatures bigger than the bugs to hide; the cavern was akin to an open plain, covered in grass but otherwise featureless.

Lily relaxed a little. They were still very much alone, and in a bright, cheery cave. She understood why the fear-inducing dragon didn't live here; it would be much harder to get an atmosphere conducive to terror in a well-lit place like this, and it wasn't nearly as big. So long as they could somehow get out without being forced to backtrack, she felt good about where they were.

"Okay, so this isn't terrible," Beryl announced, walking out to the middle of the cavern. The bright yellow light of the ceiling crystal cast a heavy shadow below him, one that made Lily flinch before she realized it was just that, not a hole opening up below him.

"Very nice," she agreed as she followed him out. "But I'm not sure how I'll be able to keep going."

That was a problem for later. Right now, she was thirsty, and unlike her hunger, she could fix that. The pond was covered in green algae, but a quick pawing removed a large portion of it, and the water underneath, while murky, proved tolerable. Even if she got a few bugs in her mouth in the process of drinking.

Beryl joined her by the water's edge. After a long drink, he loitered next to her.

She could see their reflections in the water, framed by algae. Black and white. From this angle, he was scarred and she was not. They both looked equally pensive.

"You know, we could break some chunks off the walls with a little bit of effort and our fire," Beryl said slowly. "We can pile them up and make a slope for you to climb, once I check down both of those paths to see which is better. We're not really stuck here."

"No, but it's going to take a long time and a lot of effort to do that." They didn't have the advantage of an entire pack of light wings to share the load like last time he'd directed such a project.

"Which means I need to go see if there's any food nearby," he rumbled, pulling back from the water's edge. "Not that I want to…"

Lily eyed him worriedly; the haunted look in his eyes was not something she liked seeing. Especially not when she was going to have to push him to go, because it was either that or they starved. "You'll be fine," she hummed.

"How do you know that?" he asked. "I do not think…"

"Think what?" she hummed when he failed to finish the thought.

"It's nothing," he growled, pawing at his head. "I'll go. I just do not feel good about it."

"If it helps, that monster back there was muttering about how he hasn't been getting much prey recently," Lily offered. "Which means that if you do run into anyone, you'll probably have an enemy in common with them, and that it's likely you won't run into anyone at all." That the dragon had bemoaned his lack of recent prey but also not acted like he was starving was encouraging too; there hadn't been any fish available in his nightmare cave, so he'd probably ventured out to procure food in between big catches… Meaning there was a good chance Beryl would find what he was looking for.

"That does help," Beryl agreed. "I'll go. I'll be back soon, though."

"I'll be here," she purred, unsure who he was trying to reassure, him or her. "You can be sure of that."

He purred, bumped his head against hers – she pressed back against him without hesitation, since he had initiated the contact – and took off, leaping powerfully into the air. She found her eyes drawn to his wings as he circled up to the cavern ceiling and carefully propelled himself into the angled hole. His tail was the last part of him to disappear from sight.

She found herself alone. Thankfully, she did not find herself immediately under attack now that she was vulnerable… Though she didn't wander far from the pond, and she would be lying if she claimed there was a reason for it other than the stupid feeling that she would break her promise if she wandered. And that she might find something behind her if she turned her back on the holes in the ceiling, or the tunnel they had come from…

Paranoia was a familiar sensation, and one she was wary of, now more than ever. It was justified, something really was out to get her… But she had thought the same with Holly, and that had turned out terribly. Though Holly hadn't ever made any move so overt as plotting to eat Beryl alive.

That was a hypothetical she had no interest in imagining – her nightmares were already promising to be varied enough without merging her fears like that – so she busied herself pawing algae out of the pond, clearing a bigger area to drink from. She was probably destroying the homes of hundreds of bugs, given the furious resistance they mounted to her efforts, but there was something comforting about that. At least she was the one doing the destroying and displacing this time. She was in control.

Though her new subjects were all considerably more annoying, given they all wanted to crawl into her nose or sting her around the eyes. She decided to abdicate, swinging her paw through a cloud of them and naming the survivors a new ruling council in her absence, then beat a hasty retreat.

Playing with bugs wasn't exactly a mature pastime, but she found herself chortling at her own antics all the same, giddy with delayed relief. She could only hope that Beryl was feeling the same thing, wherever he was now.

She could also hope he was catching fish by the dozen, her stomach was rumbling. Not all from hunger, either. She made herself venture to the other side of the cave to dig a one-light-wing waste pit. After using it, she decided to dig a larger one, since she wasn't leaving this cave any time soon and the only path back led to the cave of green fog… and because digging was a decent way to pass the time.

The dirt was shallow and underlaid by crusty rock, which put a hard limit on how far down she could go. She stepped in her finished hole and noted that it didn't even come up to her chest. Then she thought of someone else standing in a waste pit and hurried out, feeling nauseous.

"I'm sorry, Holly," she murmured, closing her eyes for a long moment. "So sorry." She could have come up with some other terrible punishment, even in her altered state of mind; some sadistic part of her had decided that standing in waste was the worst possible thing she could do without directly harming Holly, maybe because the idea of standing in waste herself made her gag.

Beryl did not return at the perfect time to distract her, so she had to make do with returning to the pond and checking in on her disloyal subjects. They didn't really notice her, for the most part. Just going about their little lives, only sending a few scouts out to harry her nostrils and tickle her nubs.

That was how Beryl found her; not feeling bad about Holly, or worrying about the nightmare dragon. Snorting furiously and shaking her head to dislodge the gnats who had made it their life's work to annoy her, however short those lives might be after angering her.

She saw him coming, but a tickle in her nostril demanded the majority of her attention, so she waved a wing at him before ducking down to sneeze. A little fireball obliterated what was undoubtedly the home of a dozen gnats, and the fearless intruder was obliterated… hopefully by the fire, but if not that then by the snot that she had also sneezed out.

She quickly licked her snout clean and turned to face Beryl. He still looked tense, but there was a massively amused look on his face, at least around the fish he was carrying.

"Don't say a word," she huffed. "You didn't see anything."

"Your defense was inspiring," he shot back after dropping the fish. "That bug never knew what hit him."

"He knew flying up my nose was a one-way trip before he did it," she grumbled. "How was the fishing?"

"You know that river we had to turn back from?" Beryl asked. "The one with the stalagmites? Well, I found another part of it, though this section is just a river at the bottom of a deep, narrow channel. We won't need to worry about food."

"That's great," she said enthusiastically. Then she took a fish, and for a moment couldn't have said anything else whether or not she wanted to. She assumed the fish were all for her, given Beryl had only brought back three and wasn't making a move to take one for himself, so the second and third followed the first with barely any time for her to taste them.

"You're really impressing me with your dignity today," Beryl remarked once she was finished. "That bit of fish slime on your forehead is stunning."

"You joke, but I might keep it as a decoy for the bugs," she snorted. His amusement didn't feel entirely genuine, but he was trying and definitely seemed better than before, so she was happy to write off the remaining tension as justified worry, nothing more. "A sacrifice to them to protect myself."

"To draw them all to you," he rumbled. "Do you want to sleep now?"

"Sure," she hummed, padding away from the pond. She was tired… very tired… though it hadn't really bothered her. Which, in itself, was problematic; not feeling the desire to sleep even when she needed it was one of the symptoms she wanted to stop experiencing, not something to accept. "Yes, right now."

Beryl loomed over her, dark and imposing as she lay down. "Do you want me to wake you if I notice you having bad dreams?" he asked gently.

"Yes, please," she accepted. A moment later, his paw was gently nudging under her head, and she faded away from him and the cavern.

O-O-O-O-O

Lily's sleep was mostly dreamless, as it always tended to be when she was put to sleep by the pressure point. She woke of her own accord, feeling peculiarly groggy, and chose to try and let herself fall back asleep naturally rather than forcing herself all the way awake.

That turned out to be a bad idea, though not due to failure and the resulting frustration she had half expected. No, it worked too well. She drifted, half-asleep, and bad thoughts began floating into her mind, half-remembered moments and terrible images burned into her, combining to something that made her drowsy rest more of a waking nightmare, mostly indistinct but no less unsettling.

When she recalled Claw, laughing at her and mocking her pathetic, grounded self – something that had never actually happened, but felt far too realistic – she growled and forced her eyelids up, her eyes refusing to focus as she pawed at the ground and dug her claws around until she was awake enough to stand. She felt more miserable and groggy than she probably would have, had she gotten up when she initially woke, which was irritating.

Everything was irritating. Her inability to sleep, Claw taunting her, Claw taking up space in her head that would be better dedicated to literally anything else… She wanted to spit on his cold, rotten corpse, if that didn't mean somehow having to find it and look at it to do so.

"I hate mornings," she growled to Beryl, who sat watching the three entrances to their temporary place of residence. The act of growling made her ears ring. "I hate being sleepy."

"You crashed pretty hard, I suppose," Beryl said with a yawn.

"Do you need me to stand guard while you sleep?" Lily asked.

"Not yet…" He shook his head slowly and stood, throwing his wings out to stretch them. "I don't feel like sleeping now. Too paranoid about that creep. I kept imagining I was seeing his fangs jutting out from the tunnel."

"Well, if you do not sleep soon, I will put you down myself," she promised. The last thing they needed was both of them suffering from sleep-related insanity because Beryl caught it from her at the worst possible time.

"I'll take you up on that," he rumbled.

Lily went about dunking her head in the pond, ignoring the retaliatory assaults from the native population, and using the waste pit while Beryl's back was turned. Her head cleared slowly but surely, and soon she was feeling normal again.

Normal, and in the mood to spite a bad memory. Her thoughts from the other day – or night, that whole ordeal felt like one long, horrible night – came back, and she pondered them for a while.

The conclusions she reached were tentative, but the more she thought about it, the more she knew she had made a decision. A decision she wanted to act upon, while she had the nerve. At the very least, to get it shot down before she sabotaged the idea herself out of self-doubt and regretted it later.

"Beryl, how long did you say making a path up to those tunnels would take?" she asked, walking up beside him.

"I did not, and I am not sure, but does it matter? We have nothing but time, and it's not like there's another option." He sounded sure of that, but then again, he didn't know what had been going through her mind recently.

"There is another option," Lily admitted. "You won't like it."

"You know," Beryl grumbled worriedly, "I'm usually the one who says that. If the option is me leaving you here, forget it."

"Not that." She was finding explaining herself to be difficult, mostly because she knew leading with 'I want you to cut me open' would worry him, but all of the other explanations she could think of basically boiled down to that in the end anyway. "Did I ever tell you about how bad I was in the air, back when I could fly?"

"No?" he warbled. "That does not sound like you."

"I never really cared about flying," she admitted. "Pyre once had to tell me outright that I needed to practice, and at the time I was well past the age when I should have known everything about it." Telling him her life story would be overkill for this, but some background might help him understand.

"Was there a reason for that?" Beryl asked, now truly interested in her story. It sounded like he'd forgotten she was leading up to something with it. "That sounds very odd. All fledglings like flight."

"I just didn't care for it," she said simply. "My life was on the ground. I could do it, but I wasn't very good. Later, the air became a place to relax, but flight was just a way to get me up and away. And then I lost it."

"It kind of sounds like you took it for granted," he observed. "Did you miss it after losing it?"

"Yes, but losing it was just one of the many pains Claw brought to my life, and it wasn't the worst." The worst was probably the physical pain that never went away… Or the scars he had left on her mind, though she was going to be rid of those if she had anything to say about it. "I didn't care that much, or I made myself not care."

"And now?" he prompted.

"I could take it back," she said simply.

She had expected him to freak out about it once he understood what she meant, but he didn't really do anything. It was possible he hadn't immediately connected the dots.

"It would be painful and dangerous, but I know what is stopping me from flying," she elaborated, stepping away from the water and spreading her wings out as far as they could go, her wingspan constrained by the scar tissue on her back, as always.

Beryl looked her over. "So…" He walked around her in a small circle. "You just cannot spread your wings all the way. How would that be fixed?"

"Three steps." She gathered herself and continued speaking, her voice carefully neutral. "Three little steps. First, someone cuts my back open, all the way down the scar tissue. Then, I spread my wings as far as they will go and pull the cut as wide as possible. Then, I leave my wings like that while the wound heals, leaving me with my full range of motion again."

"Let me get this straight." Now Beryl sounded both shocked and confused, which was more like it. He stared into her eyes as if looking at a puzzle that needed to be solved. "You want me to hurt you, and you want to suffer a serious injury, all in the hopes of getting back an ability you just told me you never really cared for?"

"Basically, yes," she whined. "I know it's going to hurt, and I know it's dangerous, but I want to fly again." She had gone without it for far too long, and now she had little more to lose.

"This is not like you." He shook his head in denial. "You think things through. Lily, this might kill you if the wound does not heal."

"It might." She didn't think that was a huge possibility, but it was definitely a possibility. "Or it might not work. And flying will probably be painful no matter how well I heal." Her back wasn't going to be less pained after this. At best, it would feel the same, and she would be able to tolerate it, just like she tolerated it while running. Maybe flight would be hard to do without being overwhelmed by pain, but it would be possible.

"You know the risks," Beryl agreed reluctantly. "Now tell me why you are asking me to do it.".

"Why?" She shrugged her wings. "Beryl, the reason I did not have this done the moment Pina first suggested it to me was simple. I couldn't leave the pack leaderless. So I let Claw take this from me. I let him take a lot of things for me, all for the pack, for their benefit. But now… all of that is over. I want to take this back."

Then she let practicality take over, because he didn't seem convinced. "And you have to admit it would be useful. This place isn't meant for dragons who can't fly. I'm not even sure every path can be traveled by dragons who can fly, but being able to fly would definitely open up a lot of options." She looked past him, to the holes in the ceiling.

"You want to risk your life to get this back," he said slowly. "It's something you really want? Something to help you move forward?"

"Yes. I have no idea what I'm going to do after, but…" She didn't have anything else to say.

Beryl walked out into the center of the cavern, and stared up at the ceiling, at the two exits available, both firmly out of reach. "You don't have to do this," he reminded her.

"I was thinking about it before we got here," she clarified. "It's not just that. Ever since we escaped the dragon that used our fears against us, I've been thinking. Something I saw there…"

"What did you see?" He had for some reason turned to look at his tail, examining each fin closely. She supposed he was remembering something he'd seen while hallucinating and chose not to think too deeply about it. His deepest fears were his own, she didn't need to pry.

"Well, aside from the ravine I almost fell into because I had to jump instead of just flying…" she sighed. "Claw, gloating about taking things from me. I know it wasn't him… but he was right. He took my flight from me, and still has it because I could take it back, but I haven't yet." She couldn't have her ability to have eggs back, or be rid of the memories he had left her, but this? Claw had taken far too much, and this was the only thing she could get back.

"Lily, I hope I don't need to tell you that risking your life because a hallucination taunted you doesn't seem smart." Beryl warned.

"It came from my mind," she retorted. "It was my fear. The only thing the hallucination had to do with it was showing me what I tried to ignore and hide from." She wanted this. There wasn't a reason strong enough to justify it aside from that, and maybe it wasn't as smart a decision as she usually made, but that didn't change her mind. "Beryl, it might be stupid and reckless, but I can afford to be reckless and take a risk just this once. And if I'm going to do it, I would want you doing it for me anyway, alone, in a place with ample water and food, a place with light and safety." She gestured with her tail at their surroundings. "We must spend time here anyway. Why not spend it… like I ask?"

"You want me to cut you open," Beryl muttered, flicking his tail restlessly. "You really want this back. I sort of understand why, I risked my life for flight when I could have left well enough alone, because flight was more than just being in the air, more than freedom…"

"You get it." She assumed he was talking about flying with his No-scaled-not-prey friend and whatever rickety substitute tailfin said friend had rigged up at the time; that certainly counted as life-threatening.

"I get the feeling," he reluctantly conceded. "Wanting to get back what was lost or taken from you… But it's not exactly the same. My tailfin didn't need me to seriously injure myself to get it back."

"But if it were you, are you really telling me you wouldn't be willing to cut it open?" she replied. "I wish I could just wait and have it fix itself, but that's not happening. Sometimes things need to be hurt to heal."

"I don't think those are equivalent scenarios," he objected. "No-scaled-not-prey are a lot better at carefully cutting things open, for one thing. It's not the same level of risk."

She still had him, despite his picky little details; that he was bringing such small things up meant he didn't have any larger reasons for his disapproval. "I know. But you know what I mean, too. I want to do this."

"I promised to see this through, to help you find a way to move on," Beryl murmured. "Is this your way of accepting you have to move on? Taking back what you gave up for them? Or is it… something else?"

"It is me moving on," she said firmly, brooking no argument. "That is for certain. What is your answer?" She didn't feel like she had done absolutely all she could to convince him, but she did want his opinion, not just to manipulate him into agreeing. She had given her reasons, heard his objections, and given her rebuttals. All that was left was to see whether she had swayed him.

"We both know I'm going to do it," he conceded, though Lily was not nearly so certain of the outcome as he seemed to think. "I might as well skip saying no and being convinced. But you need to be really, really sure, because the moment I start, there might be no going back."

"I know that," she assured him. There would be no going back, and that was fine. She needed to move forward, and if that meant picking a path and closing the passage behind her without knowing what lay ahead, then so be it.

"I am very, very sure," she added after a moment. "Now let's work out the details."

"Like what?" he asked. "It's a huge risk, but it's not complicated to do. You said so yourself."

Lily flicked her tail at the air to her side in annoyance. "It's not simple either, not really, because we know so little about what we'll be doing! Do you know anything we might need to make this even a little less dangerous?" She wanted to take a risk, not kill herself.

"No, I know a lot about letting wounds heal on their own, not about making them so that they can heal," he replied. "You know plants. Is there anything around here that can help?"

"I-" she began, before thinking about it. "Actually, there are some plants that can kill pain. Some that can ease tense muscles. There are even a few that Pyre said might make flesh wounds heal faster and prevent sickness, but those are rare." She made for the various foliage around the pond. "Come on, help me look through all of this." If they were going to do it, they were going to do it right.

O-O-O-O-O

A while later, after a long search by Lily and a reluctant nap for Beryl, Lily had four different plants laid out on a flat, grassy area. Beryl stood by her, watching carefully.

"I suppose this is what we have to work with," she huffed. She should have been surprised to even find this much in one isolated cave, but the meager gatherings weren't very reassuring, given what lay ahead. "It's not much, but it's not nothing, either."

"What's this one?" Beryl asked, pawing at a thick root she had found under one of the larger shrubs by the pond.

"Nothing. It's just a root for me to bite down on." Pyre had told her horror stories of light wings in immense pain biting into and through their own gums and sometimes hurting their jaws. She was glad she had listened to his more distasteful stories, though at the time they were simply a morbid fascination.

"This one," she continued, patting her paw on a flat, wide cluster of leaves with a peculiar half-moon shape, "helps headaches. It might do me a little good." Though it was only strong enough for headaches, and tended to be less than effective on anything worse. It was something, at least.

"What do these do?" He put his paw over a cluster of reeds.

"They taste good," she snorted. "They're for afterward. If I'm not eating or having trouble swallowing, break them and let the sap out into my mouth." She didn't think they had any actual medicinal properties, but that might get her to want to eat, even if it did hurt.

"And the last one?" he continued.

"That's…" she leaned in, something about the clawed-up moss catching her eye. "Wait, no." She swiped it out of the orderly line with her paw. "My mistake. That does nothing." She had thought it was the kind good for fevers, but that kind had a red tint to the underside, a little like the moss was bleeding. This one didn't.

"So…" Beryl eyed the remaining plants dubiously. "A headache cure, a tasty novelty, and a root to bite on."

"It's more than we might have found elsewhere." What she wouldn't give for the kind of painkiller she had provided Root right about now. To be lucid while not suffering would be ideal. But that one only grew on trees, and there were no trees down here.

"Okay…" he shrugged his wing shoulders, wincing as he was forcibly reminded of the puncture wounds still healing on one of them. "What else can we do?"

"Well, Pyre told me getting dirt or other things in open wounds is bad." Claw had forced her onto her back in the cavern after flaying her back, which was pretty much the worst possible treatment for a wound. "We should clean ourselves in the pond, and make sure we're not going to get distracted. Eat, drink, relieve yourself, all of that."

"Already done with that," Beryl rumbled. "You?"

"Yes… We both still need to wash ourselves." She was especially worried about what might be lingering on them from that dangerous fog; it had been a wet fog, and she didn't want to find out what getting any of that inside her body would do, not after what had happened to Beryl. Becoming paranoid and hallucinating while someone was actually cutting open her back would be disastrous.

"Right now?" Beryl asked.

"Right before you cut me open," she clarified. "What are your thoughts on when we do that?"

"No time like the present?" he ventured. "I'm rested, you're rested, and we've both worked up the nerve to do this. By tomorrow we might have lost the nerve."

Or, she thought nervously, they might have come to their senses and dismissed it as too dangerous. But there was no way to know which it would have been until afterward, and she had made her choice. Going back on it would do no good; she wanted to close that possibility behind them so that there were no more choices to be made.

"Now, then." She walked right up to him and shoved her face into his, staring into his eyes. "This is going to really hurt me. I want you to know I'm asking you to do it. If you feel guilty about this, whatever happens, know I said right now not to. This is my choice, and if you don't do it for me now, I'll cut myself open on a sharp rock and do it myself." That was an exaggeration, because she wasn't risking that, but the practical side of her knew she wanted to nip any possible guilt in the bud right now… because she might not be around to do it later. He didn't deserve to feel bad about this, not when it was all her idea.

"If you die I'll feel guilty no matter how convincing you are now," Beryl rumbled, staring right back at her. "I promised to see this through."

"I will not have you blaming yourself for whatever happens," she growled. "Promise me you won't."

"How about I promise to remember that this was your idea?" he asked. "I can do that."

"It'll have to do," she conceded with a huff. "Let's get started."

"To the pond, then," he quipped nervously, moving over to the water and… hesitating. "Wait… We're doing this to be clean?"

"Yes." She eyed the pond, in all its scum-covered, murky glory. Then she looked at Beryl's paws, which were maybe a bit dusty but otherwise unblemished black. "Maybe not the pond."

"Is my tongue clean enough?" he asked.

"Yes, use that," she agreed, watching carefully as he did so. It was her back those claws and calloused pads would be digging into once he was done, so she felt entitled to oversee his efforts. Not that she found anything lacking about them; he was very thorough.

"Now I need you to lick my back clean," she requested awkwardly once he was done. "But please, be careful, it's sensitive."

Beryl purred his understanding and leaned over, lightly running his tongue across a patch of her large scar. "Does this hurt too much?"

"No, keep going." It did hurt, but only where the scar pulled at those four points in her back. She was almost thankful there was that jolting pain; it kept Beryl licking her back from being something awkward, given how things lay between them.

Despite how big her scar was, it didn't take Beryl long to pronounce it clean. Maybe it was just her lurking dread making the time go by fast. She lay herself down on the shore, reasoning that being close to the water wouldn't hurt. It was actually time.

She felt a hint of doubt creeping in, around the edges of her mind. This was insane. She had only come up with the idea today, and now they were doing it. This could get her killed.

Or it could bring back what Claw had taken. She had little to lose, and something integral to gain. Something meaningful, something symbolic. Claw held her flight, and a similar pain to how he had taken it would bring it back.

She really wanted to do it, and not just for her flight. For what it meant. There was no more doubt to be had.

"Do it," she whispered to Beryl, who stood right by her.

"You know, I could put you out before I start," he suggested.

"If there are complications you might need me to do something," she objected. "I can't do anything if I'm unconscious."

"No argument there," he conceded. "You'd probably wake up anyway." He stepped over her and straddled her torso, setting his hind paws on either side of her tail, and resting his front paws around her neck.

She felt his tail curl around hers, ready to be squeezed. The root was right by her head; she grabbed it and held it between her teeth. Talking would require her to spit it out, but hopefully talking wouldn't be needed. If she was talking during this, that meant something had gone very badly wrong.

Next came spreading her wings. She did so, acutely feeling the point right at the midsection of her back where the scar tissue pulled taut, forcing her to stop with her wings still slightly angled, not fully extended. That was what they were going to fix.

Beryl lifted his left paw and placed it on the base of her neck. "I see the problem," he murmured nervously to her, growling quietly, "and I see I have to cut all the way down. Maybe more than once." He lightly traced a straight line down her back with his paw, passing right over one of the four centers of aching pain. She couldn't object; this had to happen that way, and it would hurt no matter how he did it.

He was waiting for a response, she realized. She nodded slightly, trying to relax her muscles. She had taken the headache remedy, for all the good that would do. It was time.

"Lily, this is going to have to be slow. I am only going to cut as deep as necessary, and if I just yank my claw down I'll cut way too deep." He placed the sharp tip of one of his claws at the place where her undamaged scales ended and the scar tissue began, somewhere below the back of her neck. His paw was angled awkwardly, so that only one of his claws was touching her, which would probably slow him further. "I'm going to start now. Please, please try to keep as still as possible."

She nodded again, before resting her head on the soft grass under her. Both her front and back paws were splayed out to the sides so that she couldn't jerk upward, unable to push down with her limbs. He had her tail, and her wings just had to stay out no matter what. The tips of his wings were touching about the midpoint of hers, but that wasn't much in the way of prevention, so that was up to her.

His claw began to press down into her back. She winced, whining softly. He probably hadn't even drawn blood yet, but it still hurt.

Then she was sure he had drawn blood, because he was slowly dragging his claw downwards. A shard of pure agony followed it, blazing hot and sharp. She yanked at his tail with hers, winding around and squeezing it as tight as she could manage, and bit down on the root.

His claw worked its way down her back, bit by agonizing bit. She could feel the tight skin trapping her wings slowly parting, which was the only shred of comfort she could find in the agony ripping through her.

His claw was at least a third down her back now, and approaching the one painful spot that was directly in its path. Lily bit down so hard the wood splintered, her teeth going right through it in a few places.

Then he was on that spot, and there was a cry of disgust from behind her, one that filled her with dread. "What is this?" he barked, stopping at the spot. "White pus, but also…"

Lily keened in utter agony as he stuck several claws in her back, only barely able to keep herself mostly still. She trusted him, but she didn't know what he was doing–

"Almost… got it!" His claws disappeared from her back, leaving behind throbbing, spiking pain that was only slightly less intense than when he was actively digging into her. "Lily, if you can hear me, there was a rock in your back, a little stone shard with pus around it." A bloody scrap of stone landed in the flattened grass in front of her face, so small she would have laughed at the idea that it could cause trouble.

She didn't want to think, didn't have the presence of mind or will to do anything much besides bear the pain, but something had to be said, something vital. She spit out the root, understanding in a flash of insight what his discovery meant. "Beryl," she panted, keening all the while, "there are three more, two to the left and up, and one down to the right. Find them and get them out!" If those were causing the pain, he needed to remove them. "Now!"

"Three more?" he asked incredulously. "What about finishing the main thing?"

"Do that after!" She could barely stand it, but to be rid of those apparently malignant stone shards she hadn't known existed, she would suffer far more. Four points of agony, every time she did anything; they were the cause. "Find them!"

"Okay!" he barked back. A weight dropped onto her back up and to the left of the long cut that burned like fire in the open air. "Where from here?"

"Up more," she cried out. One of the fragments was–

"There!" she barked, howling briefly in pain. Him pressing down on it was somehow worse than him removing the first one had been. "Right there!"

Beryl quickly cut into her back, slicing in an x-shape over where his paw had last pressed. Lily felt a small pressure dissipate, and then the invasive pain of claws digging in and carefully, laboriously flicking a foreign object out of where it had lingered for season-cycles.

"Two down!" Beryl sounded both horrified and proud, a mixture only achievable in situations as twisted as this. "Next one! Direct me there!"

They had to go fast; she was going to black out or go crazy if this took too long. Lily urgently directed him to the third place of pain that she knew so well and suffered as he dug out the stone shard they both knew would be there. The last shard took the longest, but he was getting better at guessing where they would be, and found it almost without her directions.

Then his claw was back in the original cut, swiftly dragging further down. By that point she was howling at the top of her lungs, beating her paws against the grass and dirt, unable and unwilling to do anything more. It hurt almost as much as Claw originally cutting her open had, if not more because her back was already damaged and pained.

Then Beryl lifted his claw away, panting above her. "Lily, spread your wings," he ordered frantically. "Now, so I can try to staunch the wounds or something!"

Lily mustered up a reserve of willpower she didn't know she had, buried amidst the mind-melting agony, and did something she had not done in a very, very long time.

She spread her wings to their full extent.

Aside from the pain, which was nearly enough to make her unable to think at all, she felt the unique mixture of discomfort and relief that came with stretching a long-cramped limb to its utmost. It was so strong she cried out in pure relief, almost able to ignore the pain for a brief instant. The movement felt right in a way that she hadn't felt in five or more season-cycles.

Then the pain took over again, and she felt herself slipping away. Agonizing rays of red-hot torture were radiating out from the five cuts, four small and one huge, that she had stretched. Beryl was licking the smaller cuts now, but she couldn't pay attention any longer, and darkness came for her, the uncertain darkness that promised a temporary reprieve… and possibly a permanent end.