Thanks so much for the support! Hope y'all enjoy this chapter!

During "Æsahættr"

"And I think Lyra's even braver than me," he'd said. It was impossible. Impossible! Lyra thought back to her list of "accomplishments" since they'd first met. She'd gotten herself hit by a car seconds after stepping into his world. She'd literally said yes when the pale-faced man asked whether they were traveling together. She'd practically given the alethiometer to Latrom, which forced them to steal the knife, which had cost Will his fingers and poor Tullio his life.

Pan was right. She could be brave. But, mostly, she wasn't. Still, it wasn't Pan's words that were continuously winding their way through her ears.

"What are you doing? Stop twitching!" Pan griped. His tiny ermine snout was resting against Lyra's cheek, which she now realized must have been alternately tensing and relaxing throughout the last minute or so. She'd been smiling on and off, unable to rationalize outwardly grinning at a mossy cave wall and yet equally unable to stop herself from beaming at what Will had said.

"Get off me, then!" Lyra hissed back. Pan leaped from her face, digging his feet in a little harder than necessary before launching himself into a neat curl on the rock floor. To hell with it, she thought. I'll go smile at something that might smile back.

Last night, the witches had told her to stay close to him. For warmth. And it was just as cold tonight.

Will was reclined on a natural ledge overlooking the verdant mountains. It was a clear, breezy night and what must have been thousands of stars twinkled peacefully in the inky sky above. Lyra crawled over to him and peered over the ledge. Well, this simply will not do, she thought, almost giggling at him. The boy had decided to fall asleep on a slab of rock no more than a meter wide, and there was a drop bigger than the Torre degli Angeli on the other side.

"Will." She shook his shoulder gently.

He snapped awake instantly. "What? Do we have to walk again?"

Of course he'd woken up without complaints—a much better temperament than she'd been able to muster whenever she'd overslept at Jordan and Roger had been so kind as to wake her before she got paddled. "No," she whispered. "But you can't sleep there. If you so much as roll over, you'll fall for ages."

"I don't move in my sleep," he protested.

"Well, every scenario has a first instance, and this would be a pretty awful first instance!"

Will looked over the edge, and even by the firelight, Lyra could see the color drain from his face. Had he really not noticed where he was sitting? "You're right," he mumbled.

"Obviously," Lyra quipped. He lowered himself slowly from the ledge and laid down on the dirt right beneath it. She sat right next to his chest, arms around her knees.

Lyra had always loved talking with people at night. Everyone's voices lowered until they were stripped of all the bombast of the everyday, just loud enough to be heard by whoever you were talking to, and barely even loud enough for that. The low anbaric light (or in this case the firelight) and the night sky would obscure anything except eyes and cheeks and hands, all lit up in gold.

"You know, they have a similar saying in my world," Will said. "'There's a first time for everything.'"

"It's like I said the first day," Lyra teased. "You're world's like my world with the words all messed up."

He met her eyes, looking up at her from the ground. "Or...your world is like mine with the words all fancy. 'Every scenario has a first instance.' It's unnecessary. Flamboyant."

She slapped his shoulder. "Your world's got no poetry to it, then. No elegance."

He snorted, loud enough that Lyra spun her head around to make sure they hadn't woken up any of the witches. "I thought you hated all the stodgy stuff in your world!"

"I kind of miss it now," she whispered.

"Sleeping on rocks will have that effect," Will agreed.

"Do you miss your world?" Lyra asked him, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyesight.

"Some bits of it. Not my school. But going to the movies. And good soda."

"That yellow stuff Angelica gave us that stings your tongue?" Lyra asked, bewildered.

"Yeah, that, except better. One day I'll buy you a can of Sprite," Will said.

Lyra raised her eyebrows. "Promise?" (promise I'll be able to visit your world? Promise you won't just forget about me once we find your father?)

"I promise," he repeated. "Oh, and I miss popcorn too."

"The wood-shavings stuff?"

"Oh, shut up, you said yourself you couldn't stop eating it!"

"That doesn't mean it's good! It's, like, magicked or something. It fritzes your mind."

"We don't have witches in my world," Will snickered. "It's just chemicals. Designed to make you want more and more."

Lyra's face knitted. "Can't control me with any chemicals." He laughed again, but his face fell afterwards.

"Come on, what else?" Lyra asked. "And it doesn't have to be food. I already know your world has awful food."

He was quiet for a few seconds more. Then, "I miss my mum."

"I'm so sorry, Will." Lyra didn't know how he did it all. He attacked whatever task they had at hand with incredible focus. With strength. Bravery. And, meanwhile, part of his heart was in another world.

"I know she'll be okay. I trust the man she's staying with, but…"

"Anyone who's not you, you automatically trust less," Lyra finished. After Roger's death, she'd felt the same way. She would've been perfectly content not to run into another human soul until she tracked down Lord Asriel and made him tell her every bloody thing about Dust, made him explain why some particle made it okay to kill her best friend.

She laid back on the ground, her arm flush with Will's. She didn't know who made the first contact. Maybe it was a shared impulse, an instinct. Whatever it was, their fingers laced together.

"I trust you, though," Will murmured. He squeezed her hand.

Lyra was almost too joyful to speak. Almost. "I trust you too," she managed to reply, voice saturated with conviction. She rolled over onto her side, not releasing his hand, and rested her head on the solid part of his chest, right below his shoulder. He smelled like smoke and sweat and a bit of blood, yes, but there remained an unmistakeable vestige of the lemony soap of the cafe's stand-up bath. But none of the various scents he'd inherited from their travels mattered. Beneath it all was him, his heart beating strangely fast under her ear.

"Lyra."

She lifted her head up and looked down at him again. His eyes were darker than normal, the fire reflecting in a manner that gave him golden-orange pupils.

"Nevermind," he said, smiling slightly. Lyra smiled back and placed her head back on his chest, contenting herself with feeling its rise and fall. He traced his thumb over her knuckles and closed his eyes. They didn't speak another word until morning. They didn't have to.

I hope y'all didn't feel like this was a bridge too far in their relationship to this point. When I write fanfiction, I generally gravitate towards filling in quieter moments or gaps (not plot holes, just gaps) in the storyline, trying to stay as close and respectful to canon as possible while getting to the heart of the characters (if y'all also like this kind of fanfiction, might I humbly point you in the direction of my "Missing Moments" series for Avatar: The Last Airbender?). In this case, that means I don't want to have Lyra and Will fall in love before the fruit (which is why this fic is very clumsily titled "Before the Fruit, There Was This"). Sorry that that sentence surely sounded very pretentious and self-indulgent (this fic isn't even that well-written lol I hate how hard it is to come up with other ways of saying 'said' and I have a love-hate relationship with adverbs) but it's all to say that I pray that you'll just enjoy the cuddling even if it may be a bit premature for the actual arc of the series/their relationship.

I'll probably do a couple more chapters of this, and at least one of those will be in season 3/Amber Spyglass. Thanks so much again for reading!