Disclaimer: I don't own Bravely Second, all rights to the owners.

Something touches Yew's forehead. It's soft, warm, and probably not a sandworm, but Yew freezes nonetheless.

It absolutely isn't a sandworm, as he quickly finds out. It's a gloved hand, one that has a twin, and one that holds his face and brushes the tears from his eyes with its thumb. The hands tilt his head just a bit, and Yew tries to fix his eyes on where he hopes the person's face is. It can't be Edea. She has metal gauntlets. That leaves Tiz or Magnolia, and even the briefest bit of consideration for what the hands are doing tells Yew exactly who they belong to.

Magnolia's hands quickly pat down his body, lifting his arms a bit, getting him to flex his fingers, making him stand and checking his legs. A standard injury check. On impulse he tries to say he's fine, but he chokes on the words due to the silence spell upon him.

He hopes Magnolia knows he can't respond and not that he's purposefully being silent. What does he even look like on the outside right now? Did the black orb have an obvious visual effect on him, or does he look normal beyond the fact his eyes probably aren't focusing on anything?

Is the black orb still active? Hopefully no one else has been afflicted.

Eventually Magnolia's hands go to his backpack, and she probably notices how soaked it is. Her hands pull at the straps, and Yew takes that as a cue to remove it. He then waits awkwardly without any idea of what's going on. He presumes Magnolia is doing something with his pack (hopefully she'll save his diary and dump out the broken potions), but he has no way of knowing.

A minute later, a pile of cloth is shoved into his hands. Feeling it, Yew realizes that he's been handed a change of clothes, probably because his back and pants are also soaked with eye drops and antidotes. Yew reaches for the hem of his shirt so he can change, and then remembers that Magnolia is right there and he absolutely doesn't want her staring at him while he changes.

Also, where are Edea and Tiz? Are they nearby too? Are they watching him? He doesn't want an audience at the moment.

Gloves hands touch his shoulders again, though these are a bit more firm than Magnolia's. They're still not metal, so Yew assumes it's Tiz. Tiz walks him back a few steps, takes one of Yew's hands and puts it on his (Tiz's) face, and makes a show of turning around.

Yew takes that as a cue that he's not being watched, and changes into something clean as quickly as possible. When he's done he taps Tiz on the shoulder (he actually ends up pawing the boy's neck-length hair, which confirms it is indeed Tiz and not Magnolia) and his dirty clothes are taken away from him.

His backpack isn't returned. Magnolia (he can tell because she's gentler than Tiz) then loops an arm through one of his, and starts to guide him down the hallway.

It's remarkably difficult to walk when you can't see where you're going, not helped by the uneven ground, and it's thanks to Magnolia that when Yew inevitably trips several times he's caught and set back on his feet rather than left to fall and probably break his nose against hard stone.

"No one has given me eye drops or echo herbs." Yew realizes as Magnolia escorts him. "Of course they haven't. I insisted on carrying all of them. What was I thinking? Forget just carrying the tent, I've even failed to be a pack mule…"

He tries not to let his thoughts show on his face. He doesn't want the others to have to deal with his mental state on top of his physical one.

Yew tries to focus. He can't mope now. They're still in a dangerous place. He tries to focus on his footing, but the ground is always a bit higher or lower than he expects. He tries to focus on a plan, some way he might not be entirely useless for the rest of this dungeon, but he can't think of a single way his currently crippled self could be even remotely useful.

He thoughts eventually, inevitably, turn to Magnolia; dragged there by her arm subtly tugging his own up and down when she wants him to step higher or lower, or how her thumb rubs over the back his own gloved hand which is a sensation Yew is decidedly not used to, and which isn't exactly uncomfortable but does make his hand tingle, and he's trying really hard not to squeeze his grip too much or Magnolia might stop touching him, e-except that sounds wrong and he only means that she won't guide him, it has nothing to do with her thumb and the tingling and-

Yew takes a deep breath. He takes that thought, Magnolia's hand and the tingling, imagines it as a ball in his free hand. He curls that hand into a fist, crushing the thought down to a tiny pebble, and then he opens his hand and drops the thought on the floor. He's thinking only noble thoughts now, just like a Geneolgia should. Just like his father taught him.

At least, Yew thinks so. He never asked what constituted "noble thoughts" in his father's eyes, but his father made it very clear what thoughts weren't noble.

At some point they reach the spot where the third sandworm broke down the wall to reveal the new passageway, Yew can tell because there's suddenly a lot of sand and rocks under his feet, and Magnolia leads Yew to the right.

"Isn't that backwards?" Yew thinks, trying to remember how the new passageway relates to the path they were already travelling down. "Are we going back?"

Shame floods him as he realizes why they're going back. It's because of him. They can't protect him for the rest of the dungeon, and don't have a way to cure him, and so they have to go all the way back to Al-Khampis to get him cured. That's going to mean at least a month of walking across the desert, because Al-Khampis is on the other side of Harena, and Ancheim isn't accepting visitors.

That going to mean a month of being an unseeing, unhearing, unspeaking, useless lump of a human being.

Magnolia's hand clenches Yew's, and Yew jerks out of his brooding to pay attention, but nothing changes. They're walking just like they were before. Was there danger, maybe? Did she see or hear another sandworm?

Her thumb is now rubbing circles into the back of his hand rather than just stroking it, and Yew has no idea what that means, if it means anything at all. It's very distracting either way.

Eventually they reach the stairs, and Yew has to climb slowly, clinging with both hands to Magnolia's arm to keep from tripping when his boots bump into stairs with every step.

"I must look like an old man." Yew realizes as he carefully navigates the stairs. "Leaning on someone for support, unable to take stairs without help."

That thought doesn't make him feel any better.

The walk back to the entrance of the ruins is a long one. Time runs together for Yew, marked only by Magnolia turning him ninety degrees for corners. Even more than the lack of sight, the lack of sound is getting to him. He's heard that being deprived of all stimulation can lead to terrible hallucinations, and he fervently hopes that it won't apply since he still has touch to work with. He'd rather not hallucinate thank you very much. The others wouldn't even know what was happening if he started hallucinating. It would look like he was going crazy.

With little else to think about, Yew inevitably ends up dwelling on what the others must be thinking right now. He ruined everything. Edea is probably furious, and would shout at him if he wasn't incapable of hearing her. Tiz is probably disappointed, and giving him disappointed looks that he can't see. Magnolia… is probably concerned, because she's always been unusually nice to him.

Magnolia squeezes his hand again, pulling Yew from his thoughts. He still has no idea why she's doing that. Does she want him to squeeze back? Is that why she's squeezing?

So Yew squeezes back, hoping that it's what Magnolia wants. Her response is hold his arm closer to her side and squeeze his hand again, which Yew can make even less sense of.

At some point (hours, minutes? Yew can't tell) they must make it outside because Yew becomes aware of heat on his face and the need to squint his eyes. Even though he can't see the sun, he can feel the discomfort of its light.

Travelling through the desert isn't immediately that much different than travelling through the ruins. It's just hotter, and Yew permanently keeps his eyes closed because he can't see when sand gets whipped up and doesn't want sand in his eyes thank you very much.

When someone eventually decides it's time to set up camp for the night, Yew feels like glue has been applied to all his joints. He didn't realize he was so tense until Magnolia sits him down on a rock and he can barely stay upright. His back muscles want to give out of him, to say nothing of his hands which positively ache. He doesn't feel much better on the emotional front either. He may not have cried too much, but his chest feels empty and his face feels heavy, and he has no appetite to speak of.

He'd probably roll onto his side and fall asleep if Magnolia wasn't still touching him. She never leaves him alone for more than a minute or two at a time, always taking a few seconds to touch his shoulder and head to let him know she's there while she does… something.

Yew suspects she's cooking judging by the smell, but that could be anyone.

Eventually Magnolia pushes a plate into his hands. Yew holds it very carefully, not knowing if something is going to slide off and not knowing if he can safely put it down. Does he need a fork? He smells meat, does he need to cut something? He's not sure how safe he feels cutting something when he can't see. The plate doesn't feel light. He doesn't want to let go with one hand and have the plate tilt and its contents fall off.

It's a small relief when someone takes the plate out his hands after he spends a minute trying to readjust his grip and feeling around for a fork. That relief quickly becomes mortal embarrassment when some taps his chin with a finger and then bumps his lips with a fork, and Yew realizes that he's being fed.

You know, like an actual infant.

Yew tries to grab for the fork, but soft hands (not gloved anymore, and Yew is assuming everything is Magnolia by this point unless he has a reason not to) push his own away and again poke at his mouth to tell him to open up, and Yew resigns himself to the degradation of being fed by someone else.

Yew slowly eats the meal Magnolia feeds him, very aware that Edea probably has her eyes locked on the two of them and is making snide comments to Tiz right now. It also crosses his mind that Magnolia is probably letting her own perfectly good meal go cold while she assists him.

As if he didn't feel horrible enough already.

He finishes the meal as quickly as the slow pace of being fed will allow, and then waits in embarrassment as Magnolia wipes crumbs or liquid off his face (which he could have done himself, there was no need for her to do it).

Yew hopes his face isn't as red as it feels, because it feels like his cheeks are going to catch fire. He hopes he's sitting close to the cooking fire and no one will notice, but he's probably not that lucky.

When Magnolia is done cleaning him (that's embarrassing to think about. Ball it, crush it, drop it, forget it) she does something else. Yew has no idea what that something else is, but she's doing it right next to him. He knows she's right next to him because when he tries to push his hands against the rock he's sitting on to readjust his spot, he accidentally ends up grabbing her thigh.

He's glad for the silence spell for that moment, or he surely would have yelped in a most undignified manner. He does regret that he can't apologize though. What if Magnolia thinks he did that on purpose!?

Yew doesn't get punched or stabbed or suffer retaliation, and he can tell Magnolia is still next to him from the occasional brush of her arm, so he assumes (and prays) that she isn't offended. He also prays that neither Edea or Tiz are paying attention to him at the moment, because if he wasn't blushing before he sure is now.

(Ball, crush, drop, forget. No temptations, noble thoughts.)

After Magnolia is done doing whatever she's doing she leads Yew to somewhere. Cool air rushes over him after they cross some arbitrary threshold, and Yew quickly realizes it must be the tent. The tent is climate-controlled, after all.

Going to sleep sounds amazing to Yew at the moment. He's been ready to drop for the last half an hour. He's worried that Magnolia is wanting to do something else for a moment, but the only thing she does is push his bedroll and backpack at him.

Yew never realized just how big his bedroll is until he has to blindly feel it out with his hands. It's also a lot tougher on the outside than he would have thought. It's not something he would have noticed if he wasn't limited to just touch to experience it.

He must be taking an awkwardly long time, because Magnolia's hands grab his for a moment to help him find the knot keeping the bedroll tied up. He's relieved that she doesn't go on to untie it for him. He really wants to do something himself at the moment.

Yew goes through the familiar action of unrolling his bedroll and setting up his pillow. Before he settles in though, he needs to check something very vital in his backpack. He searches each pocket to make sure everything is still there (the shattered potions, eye drops, and antidotes are gone of course, but that's not what he cares about), but the main thing he's concerned about is his diary. When his fingers brush the spine, he pulls it out and opens it up. Yew flicks through large swaths of pages, feeling the paper for water damage and breathing a sigh of relief (that he can't hear) when he can't feel any. There's no wet pages, and no warped pages that would be the standard of pages having dried after being wet.

With his diary confirmed to be undamaged, Yew carefully slides the book back into its pocket, relieved. Yew then takes off his boots and gloves and slides into his bedroll, and allows the tension to flow out from his body.

Despite the anxiety of his lack of sight or hearing, and not knowing if Magnolia has left or if she's still in the tent, Yew passes into sleep in short order.

I should mention I don't know all that much about Yew's father, and I also don't care too much if I'm misrepresenting him. So I'm taking the "Yew's father was corrupt and kinda shitty and tried to teach him some shitty things but Yew didn't/doesn't realize anything is wrong because he's too nice and took the most charitable interpretation of everything his father said" route. That doesn't mean Yew doesn't have some weird ways of thinking of course, hence his coping mechanism and anxiety around touch/romance… and the fact that he thinks he needs to have a coping mechanism for those in the first place.

Oh, and next chapter will be from Magnolia's POV.