Disclaimer:I don't own anything!

Author's Note: Heading up to North Carolina for some family reunion type thing for the weekend. I didn't even know we had family up there. Either way, it lets me miss two days of school, though it's at the cost of a two hour plane trip. I hate heights, planes particularly. So definitely no updates from me this weekend, so I thought I'd get this in early.

I kind of wanted to be mean in this chapter and say that it wasn't actually Zaren, that Yuan was mistaken, but I wanted it to be Zaren more. I've had this idea going through my head since very early on when I was writing like…the sixth chapter.

The song I was listening to almost on loop while I wrote this chapter was Somewhere Out There by Our Lady Peace. Felt like something to mention.

-/-/-/-

I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.
~Maya Angelou

-/-/-/-

Yuan had told Kratos of his brother, had told him of the sheepherder and the way they would play hand games to decide who had to do what chores. The man in front of them wasn't anything like the boy that Yuan had described. This was a warrior, trained and hardened. Kratos' eyes flicked to Zaren's arm and, sure enough, there were numbers tattooed there.

"I thought you were dead." Yuan was still staring at him as though he expected him to disappear at a moment's notice.

Zaren's arms, humanly muscular, wrapped tightly around his younger brother. "I didn't know what happened to you. No one in the ranch had seen you."

"None of the slaves saw you either." Yuan said, clutching to his brother tightly. "I missed you."

Zaren stepped back, but didn't release him. They didn't look alike, not really, but something was the same. Perhaps the line of the jaw or the tilt of their smiles.

"…Well, you definitely don't look six anymore."

Yuan laughed and Kratos wondered if he was imagining the slightly wet edge to it. "And what happened to you?"

"Viren and me escaped the ranch and headed out to his tribe, out in the desert."

"Viren and I." Yuan corrected automatically.

Zaren tilted his head a little, like he didn't quite know what to make of what he was looking at. "Someone taught you proper, didn't they?"

Yuan turned and beckoned Kratos forward. Kratos obeyed without thinking. "This is Kratos. He and I escaped the humans together."

Kratos saw the confusion on Zaren's face before Yuan did. "It's a long story."

"I'll bet." Zaren hesitated, glancing between Yuan-and-Kratos and over their shoulder at Viren before holding out a hand. "It's nice to meet you."

Kratos saw the hesitation, but couldn't fault him for it. He shook his hand. "Likewise."

"Aurion!" Yuan and Kratos both turned automatically towards that voice, more because of the name. Myra was very good at commanding respect. "Get Yuan and go. You two are late for guard duty."

Yuan barely hesitated before stepping away from his brother. He glanced up at Zaren, at the vaguely unfamiliar face, framed as it was by the braids and beads. A smile tilted his lips, but something about it was different, slightly strained. "Trust me, don't keep her waiting."

-/-/-

"They're very close." Zaren murmured to Viren as he sat beside him, watching his little brother and the human walk away.

"Not so different from you and I, really."

Zaren glanced at him. The man was his closest friend, had taught him to speak properly, taught him how to survive. "Can he be trusted? Kratos?"

"That depends on whether you trust Yuan's judgment. From what I hear, those two have been helping out quite a bit around here. Some of the other half-elves are beginning to trust him as well."

"Still a human." Zaren muttered. He tried not to hate them, he did. He had travelled through human lands with Viren and seen that the majority of them didn't live much better than they did. But that didn't mean he could forget what had been done to them in the ranch.

Viren watched his friend, saw the expressions play out on the expressive face. "What're you thinking?"

Zaren chuckled a little, but there was no amusement in the sound. "…I almost didn't recognize me own brother…he's so tall now, and his face and voice changed…I know it would have happened anyway if the humans hadn't come, but it's still a shock. And he recognized me almost right away."

"Actually, I think he thought you were a ghost."

Zaren shot him a look. "Not the time for jokes."

"I was being serious."

"I…I don't know what to do. I mean, I was the one that looked out for 'im when we were kids, y'know? Then…" Everything happened. "And I see him now and I get the feeling that he doesn't need me anymore."

"Maybe he doesn't." Viren said, fiddling with his spoon. "But he wants you here. He wants to know you again."

Zaren fingered the white beads that hung on the braids. "…That's going to be an interesting conversation."

Viren chuckled as he stood up. "I need to go. Alstan wanted to see me after supper." He kissed the top of his friend's head, a habitual thing from nights of fear in the ranches. "Try not to do anything stupid, yeah?"

-/-/-

"…I didn't think I was ever going to see him again." Yuan said quietly. It was easy to talk out here on the wall where it was difficult for anyone to hear you if you didn't want them to.

"He's different than I pictured." Kratos said. He had one hand on his sword, but that's not tension, simply a habit of his.

"He's different than I remember." Yuan leaned back against the wall, looking out over the city. Lanterns glowed every few street corners, highlighting the last remnants of the sun on the horizon and accenting the shadows that crept along the ground and walls.

"To be fair, you're different than he remembers." Hell, Yuan was different than Kratos remembered.

"It'd be nice to never change, wouldn't it? To be able to see the people you love never grow old? Or get sick?"

Kratos mimicked his friend, leaning back so that their shoulders were touching. "…Yeah, I guess." But this heavy silence, wrought with Yuan's thoughts and memories, was too heavy for tonight. "…If you had to choose between flying and living forever, what would you choose?"

Yuan glanced at him and flashed a grateful smile for changing the topic. "I dunno…flying would be pretty awesome, don't you think? I mean, imagine touching those stars and the sky!"

Kratos smiled. Despite Yuan's joy in the fact that they were adults—the human age of majority was eighteen. Twenty, if you were female. When Kratos asked after half-elven age of majority, he'd gotten a shrug and a "Not a clue." as a response—and yet, Yuan was still the same dreamer he had been when he had carved YUAN AND KRATOS, KINGS OF THE WORLD into the tree.

Sometimes, Kratos wondered if Yuan would want to fly so badly if he hadn't been raised in a little village whose guardian Summon Spirit were the Sylph. Yuan had told him about it—the monthly prayers on the mountain, their likenesses painted on walls and carved in cliff faces; the songs and the incense that would smell of smoke and pomegranate.

"You can fly." Kratos told him. "I'll stay right here, with my feet on the ground, and cheer you on."

Yuan grinned. "C'mon, Kratos. Heights aren't so bad. And are you honestly telling me that you'd rather live forever? 'Cause that seems like it'd get boring to me."

"Haven't you ever wondered what the world's gonna be like thirty years from now? Or a hundred?"

Yuan didn't say anything, waiting for Kratos' brain to catch up to his words. The human winced when it happened. "Sorry."

"It's fine." Yuan said quietly. It wasn't something they ever really discussed. Yuan didn't know how many years he was going to live. Some half-elves lived only as long as humans. Others lived for five hundred years. Yuan didn't know if he was going to outlive Kratos, but it was likely and he didn't want to imagine what life would be like without his blood brother.

(Yuan finds it vaguely ironic that, once, Zaren had been his only real brother. He hadn't been able to feel the same grief that Zaren and Mama had when the news of Dehua and Kail hit because they hadn't been real to him, he hadn't known them. Now, it's Zaren that he doesn't know and Kratos who is the real brother.

Somehow, Yuan can't find a way to regret any of it.)