Disclaimer: Don't own anything!

Author's Note: Had some community service hours to do. In the rain. But my teacher let us out early and is still giving us full credit for nine hours, so it wasn't so bad.

-/-/-

"Your men love you. If I knew nothing else about you, that would be enough."
-Prince Edward (A Knight's Tale)

-/-/-

"How are they?" Kratos asked. They'd managed to return to camp with little incident, somehow. Martel said that the Summon Spirits had been watching over them. Zaren had called it damn lucky.

Yuan was stretched out on a cot, looking tired. But then, they all looked tired these days. "They're getting fed some stew and looked over properly for medical issues. The hard part is finding beds for everyone."

"They should be in the capital. Not on the warfront. They won't get better here and supplies are getting stretched as it is."

"Mm. But the problem is, they're not really fit for such a distance just yet."

"It's going to get cold soon." Kratos said, toeing off his boots. "They really won't be able to travel then."

"We'll figure it out." Yuan quieted, eyes haunted. "…There were so many kids there, Kratos."

Kratos knew their faces well by now. They hadn't wanted to stray far from Noishe and they'd slowly become acclimated to him over the half days' walk back to camp. The kids smiled small, like they were afraid that he would wipe the smiles away. But their eyes, dimmed by the horrors of whatever had happened in the ranch, were slowly brightening. Kids bounced back so quickly sometimes.

"Maybe one day, they'll be able to forget about all of this." Kratos said. "Or it'll be something they only remember in their nightmares."

"I doubt it." Yuan sat up, wrapping his arms around his knees. "…That would've been me, Kratos, if it weren't for your father."

They didn't like to think about it and Yuan in particular didn't like the idea of having to be grateful to Sandor Aurion for anything. But after seeing those kids and seeing the changes that being in the ranch had wrought in his brother…

"…How many years has it been, Yuan?"

The half-elf glanced over. As much as they'd both changed, he still saw the same kid. And most of the time, he felt like he hadn't changed, like Time had left him alone, though he knew that that wasn't true. Yuan didn't need to ask what Kratos meant and, for a moment, he didn't know the answer. "'Bout four, maybe five."

"You don't know, do you?" Kratos knew that time didn't pass for Yuan the same way it did for him and it was only more noticeable as they'd gotten older.

Yuan shook his head. There was no point in lying. "Not for sure. Do you?"

"No more than seven. That's as much as I can get."

They lay in their cots, staring at the tent canopy, until Yuan started laughing. Kratos turned his head, cheek against the rough material of his pillow to stare at him. "What's wrong with you?"

Yuan grinned at him. "I think this means we're old men now, Kratos, if the years are blending together like this."

(He remembers the old men in his village, the ones who would sit on their stools outside or on top of the houses built into the cliffs, smoking at their handmade pipes and laughing in their rough, raspy voices as they shuffled too-thin and too-worn playing cards. He remembers sitting with them sometimes, liking to hear their voices and letting their words and memories wash over him. They forgot a lot of things, like years and dates of events and how old their children were and even how old Yuan was, but he'd loved them)

Kratos chuckled. "Well, we're looking pretty good in our old age, huh?"

"I'll say."

-/-/-

Kratos poked his head inside Viren and Zaren's tent, unsurprised to see the little girl (?) that hadn't left Viren's side since he'd rescued her from the ranch curled up in his bed, small, too-thin hands clutching at the thin blanket.

"Are you busy?" Kratos asked, voice low so as not to wake the girl. He knew that it was probably the first decent sleep she'd had possibly in years.

Viren shook his head, beads clacking as he sat up from where he'd been stretched out on Zaren's bed. "Just taking some time to not move." Kratos could understand that. When you were constantly travelling and working, times when you could sit and just breathe were precious. "Something wrong?"

"Just wanted to talk to you about something."

Viren seemed to sense that this was going to be a serious conversation. "Let's talk outside."

The camp was still buzzing with activity and Kratos still half-expected to see Martel dashing back and forth between tents and patients, but she'd been ordered to get some food and rest.

"…You're a general, right?" Kratos began, looking around.

"Yes." Viren replied, not entirely sure where the human was going with this.

"So…explain to me why you went with us on that mission." Kratos glanced at him. "Someone as highly ranked as you should be ordering people to do things rather than actually going out and doing them yourself. Particularly for such a high risk mission."

Kratos was smarter than he seemed, even after knowing him for a while, Viren thought. What he said was, "It's a bit more complicated than that."

"I'll bet."

"I'm not the only general that the half-elven army has. That ain't a surprise, I'm sure. I'm the youngest general. The others….they don't agree with me. They don't think that the half-elves that had been captured were worth rescuing."

That scraped at Kratos' temper. "What?"

"That ain't the worst of it. They've also started to lose hope. Don't think we have any chance of winning, so they want to stop fighting."

"So you don't have any backup then, is that what you're saying?"

"Right. Since I'm the youngest, I got put in charge of this front, which, let's be honest, nothing as supposed to really happen. They wouldn't let me have the people I needed to really get an assault going on the ranches and they refused to try it themselves."

"Which is why you needed us."

"Yes. And I wasn't about to send you guys out there alone. The way I see it, if I'm gonna ask you to do something, I should be willin' to do the same thing."

Kratos liked that idea, liked the kind of leader it made Viren and he would be unsurprised when he went back through his memories to find that his father was nowhere near that kind of leader. "Why didn't you tell us the first time you asked?"

"Honestly, I don't know."

"I think I do. You didn't trust me then. You might not even trust me now."

Subtle as a cannon, he was. "Is that what you think?"

"Am I wrong?"

"Not completely. What made you think about all this?"

Kratos shrugged and suddenly, any of that stubborn certainty and confidence was gone. "I was just thinking, before we went into the ranch, and I remembered my father."

"Why would—"

"My father was a general in the human army. As far as I know, he still is one. I never saw him really go into the field while I was growing up, so I thought it was strange that you were."

"You know their tactics."

"Unless they changed them since I've been gone, yes."

Viren rubbed his hand against his lips. It was a strange habit of his. "This is going to sound strange."

"I've probably heard stranger."

"You can help the army. You know your people well enough that you could predict them."

"Uh-huh." Kratos had been doing that, to a certain extent. Myra and Alstan were willing to listen to him when he told them his thoughts on a situation, but few others were willing to trust him like that.

"If you do that, it could be possible to convince the other generals to free the people trapped in the ranches."

"Do we have the manpower to spare for that?"

"I don't know yet. I'd have to look it all over. But would you do it?"

"Of course." Viren had never heard a human so quick to help half-elves. He still found it disconcerting, how similar Kratos felt. It was like another half-elf. "It won't be easy, though."

"No. But most things aren't."

Kratos nodded and glanced up at the sky. "It's getting late. I'm going to head back."

Viren said something in a language Kratos couldn't recognize, one that sounded rough, but not unpleasant.

"What does that mean?"

Viren's smile was tired and worn away at the edges. "May Efreet watch over and guide you. It's something that's said for partings in my village."

Kratos smiled. "I think I'd like to see your village one day."

"When this is over, maybe." Viren said.

"Then hopefully, it'll be over soon."