Disclaimer: I don't own anything!

Author's Note: North Carolina was…interesting. I can say I hiked up a mountain, at least. In my pajamas, no less because I was lied to and lured up with the promise of chipmunks. There was a "Pride Rock" like the one from Lion King at the top, so we had to climb the mountain again with a stuffed polar bear so we could do the whole 'hold Simba up' thing.

I've also found out that North Carolina is quite mountainous. It's a big change from flat old Florida. And that I don't like flying at night. This is a strange rant, but planes deserve it.

My friend has declared me a freak because I enjoy annotating stories for literary devices. I told her that writers are all weird types. I started playing Portal for the first time. Quite the interesting game, but I have more fun with the possibilities of the game than the game itself. Also, I've been watching an anime called Samurai 7, so if you get a chance to watch that, please do.

-/-/-/-

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.
~Toni Morrison, Beloved

-/-/-/-

"So…why are you hiding here again?" Martel asked as she mixed a salve.

"'m not hiding." Yuan muttered.

"Uh-huh."

"Alright, it's because of my brother."

Martel glanced back at Yuan, who was carefully patching whatever injuries he could. Yuan was a surprisingly quick learner and willing to help. And the Healers were needing the help. The war hadn't been getting any better, but, at the very least, it wasn't much worse.

"…You're not talking about Kratos, are you?" The way Martel said it, she already knew the answer.

Yuan shook his head as he finished tying a bandage. This was the last patient who was conscious. The others only needed pothers, salves and quite a bit of sleep. "No. My, my biological brother. He's here."

Martel knew very little of whom Yuan had been before Kratos, and vice versa. She knew he'd had brothers, but she'd assumed them dead. "He's alive?"

"Mm." Yuan smiled, fond in a very different way than he did with Kratos. "He's—he's so different now. And so am I. I barely knew what to say to him when I saw him again. It's just awkward now."

"…Especially since Kratos is your brother too?" That was something that Martel had never doubted. Kratos-and-Yuan were an incredible force of nature that was in turns sweetly protective and powerfully destructive. If they ever broke, Martel thought, they could very well shatter the world with them.

Yuan sat back on his haunches, not looking at her. "…Yeah. That too."

"You could just talk to him." She suggested.

"I wouldn't know what to say. It's—nothing's the same with him anymore. I think we're too different now." He said the last part so quietly that Martel nearly didn't hear it, as though giving voice to his fears would make them real.

But the words themselves made Martel chuckle. "Interesting choice of words."

Yuan looked up, frowned at her.

"You think you're too different." She repeated. "Now, think about you and Kratos and tell me that that doesn't sound just a little ridiculous."

Martel waited for the thought to process and she saw when it happened. Yuan's lips twitched to a smile that widened slowly before he barked out a laugh. He grinned wryly at her. "Why is it that you always make so much sense?"

"Women often do." Martel carefully began scooping the salve out of the bowl into a jar. "You just don't listen to anyone."

"I've been told it's one of my finer traits." Yuan rose easily to his feet, tossing what was left of the roll of bandages into a rickety cupboard.

"It doesn't count if you say it to yourself." She looked up at him. "So, what are you going to do about this brother of yours?"

Yuan ran a hand through his hair. "Sylph knows. I don't want to hide though."

No, he wouldn't, Martel thought. It wasn't in his temperament. "Don't tell me you're going to let fear get the better of you."

Yuan bristled automatically, as she'd known he would. Yuan was a proud man. "Of course not! Just—I don't know what other options there are. I can't retreat and I'm not going to just march up to him and talk."

"Then go around." She suggested, twisting the cork into the neck of the jar.

Creases formed in between Yuan's eyebrows when he frowned. "What?"

"If you can't go forward, and you can't go back, you go sideways or around. Everyone knows that."

"Not that that isn't a lovely metaphor, but that doesn't tell me what I'm supposed to do." Yuan had never had a head for analogies and the metaphoric. Not that he didn't understand it, because he did, but he was very much a linear thinker. He liked straightforward, down-to-earth words.

"You have a brain, don't you?" Martel snapped suddenly, making Yuan take an uncertain step back. "Use it."

She winced the next moment and said quietly, "I'm sorry. I've been stressed lately."

"Clearly. C'mon, up you get." Yuan took her hands and tugged her to her feet.

"Where're you taking me?" Martel didn't bother fighting. Tiredness was dragging at her limbs so that she knew it was pointless to even try.

"Outside. Away from all this."

"My patients—"

"Are either asleep or unconscious. I'm sure they'll be fine without you for a bit."

It was strangely warm outside, and the slight humidity made her hair stick to the back of her neck uncomfortably. But out here, on the street at this time of twilight, meant that there were fewer people out because it was suppertime and families were ladling stew into bowls and washing hands and setting tables.

Martel looked up and down the street. How very ordinary this place looked. How simple. Sometimes—more often than she was willing to admit—she missed Heimdall. Missed its arching trees and slender branches; the fresh smell of constantly wet grass and the strong humidity of the air that wrapped and settled itself down on you like a heavy cloak.

"Sometimes, I wonder why I bother."

She realized a moment after she heard herself say it that she'd said it out loud. It hadn't been on purpose. She waited for the judgment, the optimism of others, even if they didn't believe it themselves.

But Yuan didn't do any of that. He simply watched her with very blue eyes. "I've been wondering that myself for a while now."

"Do you have an answer?"

Yuan shrugged, his hands in his pockets and seeing him right there, standing right in the middle of the street with the summer breeze tousling his hair and the strange faraway and too-close look in his eyes made it feel like they were standing on a precipice, that they would take their next step and fall or fly.

"No. But the way I figure it, no one does." Yuan smiled at her, wistful in a strange twist of the lips. "But it wouldn't be the first time we did something without understanding why."

Trusting people you met on a boat. Making friends with humans. He had a point. "No. So what will you do?"

Yuan's laugh was a strained, hoarse sound. "Wing it."

"Thought you'd say that." Martel hesitated before leaning in and kissing his cheek.

She watched the pink rise in his cheeks, saw the way his ears went red and his smile turned sweet. "What was that for?" He mumbled, looking from her to the ground and back to her.

Martel smiled, unable to help it. "For luck."