Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: Thanks to those still with me. This chapter was challenging, but I was very excited to get to it. Hope you enjoy. :)

Rocks and Shoals

Part Two: To the Seabed

Chapter Nine: Fury and Famine

"Did you kill him?" she asked wildly, her voice hitching as her breath caught, and he couldn't be sure whether it was desperation or exhilaration that colored her words. - In a post-war galaxy, Kolyat and Oriana found each other when they went looking for themselves.

Kolyat was livid. But it was the quiet sort of lividness that kept him rooted to the floor. It wasn't loud. It wasn't explosive. Instead, it stained the air around him, permeated the room like another being entirely. Like a fog. This dense heat of fury.

He could throttle Bailey if he wasn't already lying in a hospital bed. Except he was. And that was the whole fucking point. That was the root of his fury.

"You're getting slow, old man", he had said, maybe one too many times. Maybe just enough to jinx it. And he figured Bailey knew why he said it. Or at least, he should know why he said it.

Because he meant it, Kolyat thought. He should know why he said it because he fucking meant it, casual joking aside. He didn't do affectionate reminders well. He didn't do rational concern. Bailey should have known this.

Kolyat stood just inside the threshold of the hospital room, staring at Bailey as he lay along his cot. He was rooted to the spot, quiet as bone.

And then everything came rushing back to him. The white sheets. A jagged cough, touched with blo. The roughness of his father's scaled hand in his.

And fuck, this was not supposed to be happening. Kolyat blinked back that telltale itch behind his eyes that begged a memory. Swallowed it down. Shoved it somewhere between his ribs so he could breathe.

So he could just breathe.

Bailey seemed to blink into awareness upon Kolyat's presence in his room, turning to catch the young drell's gaze, an IV tapped into his arm, the harsh beeping of the monitoring machines suddenly loud in the room, suddenly intrusive.

And then the man groaned, laying his head back along the pillow to stare at the ceiling, like he knew what was coming. "Hey, kid."

As though it were any other day. As though he wasn't lying in the hospital hooked up to machines that helped pump blood through his heart (his heart that had nearly ruptured), just lying there and doing his best to ignore Kolyat's wrath as though it were normal. Except it wasn't. It wasn't normal at all (not for Bailey, but maybe a little for Kolyat and he was just so tired of hospitals becoming the norm for him).

Bailey threw him a lukewarm smirk, a weak shrug accompanying it.

(As though he hadn't almost died.)

Kolyat's nostrils flared, his hands curling into fists at his side, his chest heaving with the furious breath he took. "Don't," he nearly spat. Barely breathed.

Bailey shook his head, a heavy sigh leaving him. "Look, kid, I'm not exactly up for the lecture right now, so could we maybe -"

"Fuck you," he growled, taking a marginal step forward. But still three feet from the bed. Still with this space, this distance, this… this space. This air to breathe between them.

Bailey's brows bunched in irritation and he picked his head up to look at Kolyat. "Watch it, boy. I'm still your superior."

"Still an idiot," he shot back.

Bailey frowned at him, deep and harsh, and then he moved to push himself up, the sheet sliding down his chest, but Kolyat was already moving to him, bracing his hands along his shoulders and pushing him back down.

"What the fuck are you doing? Just stay down." He wasn't even looking at him anymore. He was looking at the corner of pillow just past his brow, at the sharp whiteness of it.

Bailey acquiesced, if only out of exhaustion, and Kolyat seemed to realize that at the same time, his hands retreating back to his side. They stayed staring at each other for long moments. Kolyat looked around the room in a tense sort of quiet, a nearly visible tremble lighting his frame, and then he took note of the chair behind him, settled close to the side of Bailey's bed. He took it, if only because he felt distinctly out of place standing over the man. And then he sat there for an immeasurable amount of time just glaring at him.

Because Kolyat was just so angry. So fucking angry he could taste it - like salt and copper. Like the sea that took his father and never gave him back (and yes he knows what that sea tastes like because it drowns him every night in his dreams - his head breaking the surf with every desperate thrash of limbs but see, the thing is, Kolyat never learned how to swim in the first place).

Bailey blew a frustrated breath through his lips and glared back at the young drell. "Stop staring at me like that. It's creepy."

"You deserve it."

"For landing in the hospital?" He raised an IV-tapped hand to motion around the room and the image made Kolyat swallow tightly, the breath held in his lungs. "Yeah, I see my mistake now. So sorry about that," he scoffed.

It made Kolyat curl his hands into fists atop his knees. "No," he breathed very slowly, very surely. Because he needed him to understand. "For getting yourself to this point. For not looking out when I told you to. For not fucking paying attention."

Bailey shook his head and looked away. "I didn't exactly ask for a heart attack, you asshole."

"You may as well have."

"Yeah, well, part of the job."

Kolyat sneered. "That's bullshit, and you know it."

Bailey looked at him at that one. "No, it's not. And you'd know that if you lived the job like some of us have."

"It's like you don't even see it!" And now he was yelling. Now he was standing. Now he was bearing down on him. "You nearly died, Bailey."

The commander frowned, his lips white. "Not the first time," he grumbled, then sighed. "Probably not the last."

"And that's not okay!"

"Kolyat - "

"No! Don't you fucking get it?"

"What are you - "

"How could you do that? How could you be okay with that? What about the rest of us?"

"This isn't about you!" Bailey shouted, quick and loud. A harsh bark that deafened the room around them.

Kolyat stood silent at the side of the bed, his hands still curled into fists, his chest still heaving from his labored breaths, his double lids still blinking furiously. He could taste the desperation on his tongue, he just didn't know what for. He didn't know what this anxious need meant, this blinding terror in his bones.

"This isn't about you, son," Bailey said once more, this time gentler, this time with the hesitant ache of someone who knew how keenly such a truth must have hurt him.

Kolyat dropped back down into the seat behind him, staring dumbly at the man.

Bailey's gaze softened, his brows furrowed as he shook his head. "So why are you so angry?"

The thing was, Bailey didn't owe him anything. Kolyat knew this. Rationally, he knew this. But 'rationally' didn't mean shit these days, not with the way his head's been so screwed up. Because 'rationally', Kolyat knew a lot of things. For instance, he knew Bailey lost his family in the war as well. He knew the man had nothing left but the job. And he knew he was damn good at it.

He also knew he wasn't his father. Would never be. And that was okay. That was how Kolyat preferred it, because his track record with fathers hasn't been very up to par so he figured it worked out for the best in the end anyway.

But he also knew that he's been here before. Maybe not 'here' here, not here in this room, not here in this hospital, but very near 'here'. Some other hospital, some other white room with insultingly clean windows, some other memory - one he kept lodged in his throat because to bring it to air would mean to choke on it and maybe some things are supposed to stay dead.

That's what he told himself, at least.

So yeah, maybe not 'father' (and perhaps that was best), but it was as close as he'd ever get again and honestly, he hated that he even still cared enough to lament that fact.

He was just so fucking sick of hospitals.

"I'm not… I'm not doing this again," is what he managed to get out, more a coarse breath of air than anything.

Bailey kept his eyes on the drell, but didn't say anything (he'd always known him just a touch more than Kolyat would have liked).

Kolyat released a long, slow breath, leaning his elbows on his knees and cradling his head in his hands, squeezing his eyes shut.

There was just so much damn light in the room.

"I just thought…" Kolyat started, paused, tried again, "I don't know what I thought, I guess."

Bailey grumbled under his breath, reaching a hand up to rub at the back of his neck. "I know I gave you guys a scare. All of you. And I know I've got people I need to look after - "

"It's not about that. It's not..." He looked up then, webbed fingers sliding from his face. The right words never came.

But Bailey raised a brow as though he did need looking after and Kolyat wasn't about to dignify that with a response (regardless of how true it was - because he still had some pride left, even after all this time).

"I know," Bailey said.

Except he didn't. He couldn't, really. And Kolyat didn't know how to show him.

The commander sighed, rubbed a hand down his face. "I'm okay though. Alright? I'm okay now."

"But you're not." It was said so softly he thought the other man might not have heard him.

Judging by the frown he responded with, Kolyat supposed he did

Bailey shifted in his position. "I will be okay," he corrected.

It wouldn't be enough. "You can't promise that," Kolyat said on a sigh. He was done fighting this.

"Is that what you're scared of?"

"I'm not – " And stop.

Because he was. That's exactly what he was.

Kolyat deflated suddenly, his hands gripping his knees, his shoulders slumping. All the breath left him at once.

It was so simple.

Maybe he just never got the chance to say it aloud. Maybe that's all there was to it in the first place.

"Yeah," he said instead, nodding slowly, eyes focused on Bailey. "Yeah, it is."

Bailey's mouth opened as though to speak but nothing came. He watched Kolyat steadily, his mouth tipping closed, and then he had to blink his gaze away, a hand coming up to rub at the space between his brows. "Kolyat…"

And all at once it made sense.

"Here's the thing," Kolyat began, and didn't think he could ever stop.

So he didn't.

"It's like that human saying, how does it go? Oh yeah, something like 'Those who never learn history are doomed to repeat it'. That one. It's that word: 'doomed'. Like a curse. Like it's something bad to repeat history. Like history is just a long litany of mistakes and bad choices, and yeah, sure, maybe it is most of the time but sometimes - sometimes it isn't. And maybe I just haven't seen enough of that but this - this is me trying not to repeat history. Because I've lived this scene before and I am not going back there and I don't know if history is supposed to be a fucking lesson or not, I really don't, and I don't care. It's not like I ever took easy to any lesson in my life anyway. I've had a gunshot to the thigh and a dead father to attest to that, and even still - even still - I want to do this. I want to tell you - I want to tell you…"

Bailey sat staring at him, brows furrowed, the machines still ticking away around him and now it wasn't so easy.

('Nothing worth keeping ever is', Shepard had told him once, and he had a sneaking suspicion she stole that one from his father but he never called her on it. Never will.)

"To eat well," he finished, lips clamping shut, and then opening again ('and when will it stop?' he asked himself at some point but the answer didn't seem to matter anymore). "Eat well, Bailey. And sleep well. Don't overdo it with the stims. Don't skip lunch because you have paperwork to do. And don't take it home with you. Call me sometimes, just for the hell of it. Or call anyone for that matter. Keep yourself warm at night. Go for a run in the mornings. Read something not work related. Go out somewhere. Have a drink. Have a laugh. Rest. And… stay with us, okay? Stay with us a while longer."

"Why are you…"

"I want to tell you these things because I never got to say them to him." He didn't think it needed clarifying exactly who 'he' was.

It was always Thane. It would always be Thane.

"And I don't know, maybe I wouldn't have wanted to say these kinds of things to him. But I know I wanted to say something. I just never got the chance. Too full of anger and spite to say anything worth repeating, and it didn't matter that he was dying, even though it should have - it didn't matter because I hated him for leaving and I hated him for coming back and nothing was ever going to change that. I get that now. I get that history is meant to stay history. I get that past is past. But damn if it doesn't linger sometimes. Damn if it doesn't stain everything around you, just this… this feeling that takes you and never really lets go. That. Call it regret or something, I don't give a shit. That is what I won't repeat. That is what I won't be doomed to. Not again. So take this however you fucking will, Bailey. Take this… whatever. Just… eat well. Sleep well. Be well. If not for yourself, then for me. Because you know I'm too fucked up to do this without you."

(It was never really hospitals he was sick of, but somehow that was the easiest answer here.)

Kolyat didn't think he had it in him to say he was sorry. At least, not the way 'sorry' was supposed to be said, and he didn't think Bailey would know what to do with it anyway. To be angry was familiar. To be demanding was familiar. He knew Bailey understood this about him, even when he didn't want to. Even when he would slump down in his office chair, pinching the bridge of his nose, the latest filed complaint open on the terminal at his desk, and Kolyat standing there with his hands held behind his back, his chin high, throat tightening with the strength of holding back his words.

And what was the fucking point? What did it matter that some smartass civilian got a dig in, or a witness was being exceptionally annoying, or an officer was unfairly pulling rank on him? What did it fucking matter? Because half of those people were dead at this point, or close enough to it, and still he was sitting here stewing in his dejected, self-absorbed resentment. Still it was all about what the world owed him, as though the world (or the universe for that matter) hadn't just shat all over all of them. As though his daddy issues meant anything in the grand scheme of things.

And here's the rub: it really didn't. It didn't mean jack shit. Because life went fucking on.

Or at least, it went on without him, so long as he kept digging his heels into this age old hurt - this excuse he carried around like a hand at his throat.

So, no - he didn't know how to say sorry about that. About any of that.

Instead, he just stayed quiet. Just breathed that sweet vacuum-cleaned air of the hospital, just stared into the far corner of the room, the harsh white of the walls starting to blur his vision and just before he was about to simply leave - just push from his chair and abruptly walk from the room - Bailey cleared his throat.

His attention swerved to the stark sound so swiftly he almost lost his balance in his seat.

But Bailey was looking at his hands, clenching together over the sheet in his lap, his throat flexing imperceptibly, and for a moment, Kolyat could see the sheen of wetness over the man's eyes, just before he blinked it away and cleared his throat again.

(Years later, it would come to him like this: "A jagged clench of air, lungs tight, no sound. His eyes are wet - there is no sea to take him, not yet. Not yet, I demand, because too many have drowned in that lonesome sea and there is a shore to get to still. The staccato of the machines is deafening in the room. His knuckles - white like bone - grip the sheet beneath his calloused fingers and there are just so many words so many not enough it isn't -")

"Kolyat."

He wasn't sure he could form words at this point, not after all that, so he only grunted his acknowledgement, barely lifting his gaze to the older man.

But it was enough, it seemed. "Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?"

It was enough.

Kolyat was nodding before he knew what he was doing, the breath raking through him in a release that hurt as much as it healed. "Yeah." Another nod of his head, the quake in his voice swallowed down, muffled. "Yeah, I can do that."

Bailey sighed, leaning his head back along the pillows and closing his eyes. "Good." Another slow, even breath - this time like a promise. "That's good." His voice was already lowering, already edging into the realm of sleep.

Bailey didn't owe him anything. Kolyat knew this. Rationally, he knew this.

But 'rationally', he also knew -

He owed Bailey everything.

Kolyat stayed until he was asleep, and a while longer still.

He hadn't really thought about the 'after'. After he left the others in the hallway. After his visit with Bailey. After he returned.

Belatedly, he realized how late it was, and that the members of Precinct 12 would have been long gone at this point, or else risk the long, dark walk back to barracks. He hadn't really cared, truth be told. Like Bailey said, this wasn't about him.

(But some part of him was also quietly relieved no one had wanted to interrupt his time with Bailey, so yeah, maybe it was a little bit about him - a very little bit.)

Still, he supposed he should have expected Oriana and Shepard. Perhaps because they were the last people he wanted to see in this situation and the universe had a way of doing precisely the opposite of what he wanted these days.

"How is he?" Shepard asked, straight to the point, even though he was absolutely positive she already had that answer, and Kolyat remembered that she wasn't completely without her merits.

(Because he preferred 'How is he?' to 'How are you?' and he was pretty sure she knew that, too.)

Kolyat glanced back at the now closed doors, eyes lingering a moment before returning to the women standing in front of him. "Asleep." He didn't particularly feel like expanding on that.

"Ah, your lecture knocked the poor man out?" Shepard asked impishly.

Kolyat narrowed his eyes at her. "Not exactly."

She raised one brow, a smirk tugging at her lips.

Oriana fiddled with the zipper on her jacket and, suddenly noticing the motion, Kolyat had the unexplainable urge to pull her hands from the thing. He kept his fists stuffed resolutely inside his pockets.

"Was he lucid?" Oriana asked, biting her lip.

Kolyat nodded, watching her.

"And he's – "

"Look," Kolyat interrupted, pulling a hand from his pocket to rub at the back of his neck. "Can we just - not talk about this? Not right now, at least."

Oriana swallowed her words, and then she nodded gently. "Okay."

Kolyat glanced at his boots, watching the distinct shine of their blackness against the white tile and glass. "Okay," he croaked out. He glanced up to find her still fiddling with her zipper, dragging the thing back and forth at the bottom of her jacket where the two sides connected. Kolyat swallowed, and then he reached out, grabbing the zipper out of her hands and ignoring her surprised yelp, yanking it all the way up, closing the jacket with a swiftness that had his knuckles bumping her nose. Then his hands were in his pockets again and he was turning swiftly from her. "Let's go."

He didn't look back, didn't catch the way she stood there, hands stilled mid-flail, mouth hanging open in a cross between heated incredulity and flushed embarrassment. Nor did he catch Shepard's single raised brow at the action before she followed him out the door, blessedly not questioning him.

Because, yeah, the absolute last people he wanted to see right now.

Oriana fell into step behind him, huffing her annoyance, and the comfort and ease at the familiar sound brought the faintest smirk to his lips.

The absolute last, he had to remind himself.

"I'm not going to self-implode, you know? You can relax." Even when he said it, he could recognize the dangerous crack to his voice, the exact kind of thing that promised self-implosion, and then he had to sigh, run his hand down his face, throw his head back and glare at the Citadel's false sky.

Oriana's hands were in her jacket pockets as she walked beside him, the same jacket he had spontaneously zipped up earlier, the same one she hadn't bothered to unzip. Shepard had left them at the hospital entrance, waving to them as she skipped over to meet Garrus, after wrestling Kolyat into a bear hug and receiving a much less reluctant one from Oriana. The alley the two walked down now was badly lit and smelled like rusted metal and tepid water, running along the backside of the shanty town just before the barracks.

Oriana merely raised a brow his way. "I never suggested you would."

"You may as well have. With all your...eerie quiet and...and everything." He narrowed his eyes at her.

She shook her head, eyes on the path. "I'm not here to tell you how to feel, Krios."

"Well, that's a first."

She swatted his arm, and he jerked back dramatically.

"Ow. Stop manhandling me," he whined.

She released a soft bark of a laugh, blunted though it was by her fist at her mouth. "Yeah, well, maybe you're a bad influence on me." Her hands returned to her pockets.

He couldn't help the smirk that lined his lips then, and she stared at him, and he noticed, and he was sure it was supposed to be her that was uncomfortable with the recognition of her staring but she wasn't.

He looked away first.

"I'm really not, you know."

"Hmm?" she asked, eyes still trained on him, and it was so intense and yet so casual and he didn't know why it made his chest constrict or his throat tighten or his lids blink rapidly and furiously, eyes turning to gaze dead ahead.

"I'm not going to implode," he said in explanation.

"I know."

Somehow, he doubted that. And maybe that was a little self-awareness peeking through, because he wasn't dumb enough not to notice how they handled him with kid gloves sometimes – her, especially.

He pursed his lips and nodded silently.

And then she sighed, her whole body seeming to slump with it. "It'd be okay if you did, though. I mean, not okay okay. But just, like… no judgement, you know? It'd be okay to just… kind of break a little. I'd understand. I'd get it."

The thing was, he honestly believed she did get it. And maybe that was why he felt so adamantly that he needed her to know he wasn't going to break down on her. Because perhaps she understood better than anyone, and there was a part of him that didn't want to put that on her. She'd had enough of breaking, he was sure. They both had. And he didn't want to add to that.

It mattered more than he thought it would. More than he was able to properly express.

So he didn't. He just nodded, swallowing tightly, keeping the breath lodged in his chest because it made more sense than any self-conscious lie he'd tell in jest.

And when the hell had that happened?

He stopped along the path, hands stuffed into his pockets. Suddenly, he remembered the weight of his father's prayer book tucked into the pocket along his thigh, the one that Shepard had shoved into his hands outside the hospital, an exasperated look on her face, just before she pressed a tender kiss to his forehead and wrestled him into an unwanted hug.

"You don't have to forgive him," she had whispered across his temple. "But you can forgive yourself."

He had pushed her away then, because he wasn't ready for those words, and she didn't know. She didn't know. Not like he did. And sometimes he wished he didn't. Sometimes he wished it was easier to hate his father (because then he wouldn't miss him), and all at once Kolyat was flailing and lost and wrathful again. All at once he was reminded of how the one person who should have stayed for him, never did –

And all at once he was reminded of those who did stay for him –

Bailey, Shepard, DT, Iranis, and on and on and –

Oriana.

He thought of the prayer book in his pant pocket. He thought of the words his father had left along the inside of the front cover. He thought of the dry warmth of the pages, brittle against his scaled fingertips. He thought of many things, none of which helped.

And then he thought of her.

He should have been paying more attention, he realized later, when he had time to think back to this moment, when he could recall in perfect lucidity the way she had stopped several feet ahead to look back at him, a questioning arch to her brows at his lingering halt, and the way some shadow had slinked through the alleyway to plant itself alongside her – the way the ragged, desperate refugee had pressed a rusted knife to her side before Kolyat could even recognize what was happening.

"Any money you got, and any valuables," the man demanded in a rasp.

And what the – what the fuck was happening?

Kolyat blinked. Oriana gasped and froze. This was not… this was not happening.

"Now!" he yelled, and everything came crashing back into starkly lit clarity – the haggard man holding Oriana with one hand wrapped around her throat, pressing her back along his chest, his other hand holding a knife to her side,

And where the fuck had he come from? And why the hell hadn't he been paying attention? And why… why was this happening now?

Kolyat ground his teeth. He was so, so utterly useless. So inconsequential.

"Hey, hey, calm down, okay?" he tried, hands going up in surrender. The man backed up, taking Oriana with him.

"Who are you?" Oriana breathed lowly, eyes narrowed, hands anchored on his arm at her throat.

The man panted heavily at her neck, wary, anxious. "Doesn't matter. Your credit chit, now!" He prodded Oriana with the knife at her ribs and she jerked in response, her eyes blowing wide with a frenzied sort of panic.

"Don't…" she gasped, her eyes watering, teeth bared, and then she was shaking her head, mumbling something under her breath.

The man looked to her and shook her in his hold. "Stop moving."

Kolyat's gaze narrowed on her. "Lawson, stop it."

"I won't… I…please, not again." Another yelp when the man dug his knife into her side, hard enough Kolyat was sure he had punched through the hard leather of her jacket, and then Oriana was stumbling back, shaking her head. The man shook her wildly. "I can't. I can't. Not again, I – I won't! Oh god, Krios, please."

He had a gun to my ribs.

And suddenly he imagined that this was what she looked like when her horrid father had her by the throat in that sick excuse of a 'Sanctuary', when he had tried to barter his life for hers, when he had shown her exactly what a father's love had meant to him.

He looked at her, wild-eyed and trembling, stumbling back against the man, panting in his hold, the corners of her eyes wet with unshed tears.

A weapon at her ribs, memory in her heart, panic at her throat.

"Lawson, calm down."

"Fucking do something, Krios!" she shrieked suddenly, thrashing in her captor's hold.

Gods, this was not the time for her to freak out. He couldn't handle her wails. He just couldn't.

"Quiet, bitch," the man snapped, tugging her more forcefully against him. It didn't matter, though.

"What are you doing, Krios? I can't – I can't –" Her breath caught in her throat, her hands going to her hair. "This isn't… this isn't happening."

Kolyat approached slowly, hands still outstretched. "Calm down, Lawson, just… just calm the fuck down."

The man holding her swung desperate, red-tinged eyes to her.

"I can't fucking calm down!" she screamed, and then stumbled, the man cursing as he gripped her throat tighter, his knife slipping at her side. She turned her head slightly to him at her ear. "You don't want to do this, please, god, you don't want to do this, you can go, you know? You can just leave – you can just… just go, but please, you don't have to do this."

"Just shut the fuck up, Lawson, just shut up!"

"Fuck you, Krios," and she swung her heated gaze his way as she seethed it. He was closer still, but not close enough. She laughed deliriously.

"You're fucking crazy," the man whispered, shaking his head, regretting this already, Kolyat was sure. "I just want your damn money, you crazy bitch, just your damn –"

He didn't get to finish, because Oriana's head whipped back and slammed into his nose.

"Oh fuck, my nose, my fucking – "

In the second it took for Oriana to scramble from the man's arms, his knife nicking her cheek as she fled, Kolyat was already grabbing for his wrist, twisting it back painfully, and the howl he released as the knife clanged to the floor echoed through the alleyway, followed by the ugly pop of his shoulder dislocating, and then they were falling to the floor, the man grabbing for Kolyat's coat with his free hand and Kolyat put out an arm to brace the fall but he landed hard on his elbow, his teeth clattering in his mouth, and then the man was swinging for him, hard and sharp – blood on his tongue, he bit down on it in the fall, he was sure – and then the heel of his palm slamming into the man's chin, a choked-off grunt, a curse, wrath in his palms and a hiss off his tongue, and this – this – this was what rage felt like, and then suddenly it was Bailey's broad, fragile form against the stark white pillows, and his father's chapped lips, flecked with blood, and the image through that blessedly false Citadel sky of the disintegrating Reaper sailing in flames toward the ward arms, and then that first terrible, lonesome night in the wake of the war, a sharp, branding hunger, a bullet-riddled Precinct 12, Oriana's pursed lips and disappointed sigh, the hollow whiteness of her closed barracks door, and then this refugee's face, split red and raw – his fist came down again, and again, elbows and knees and jaws and skulls and Oriana, gods, Oriana screaming somewhere behind him and then her hands on his shoulders, and no, stop, no, not yet – I'm not done with him yet – and she pulled at him, and his fist – bundled in the captor's collar – dragged him up with him, an ache in his throat, a ragged, bellowing wail, fury and famine in equal measure, until she wrapped her arms around his chest and heaved, dragged him off, and he swung back instinctually, knocked her back along the floor and the look – the fucking look in her eyes – and it was over, it was well and truly over, even as he panted and trembled and kicked away from his sprawled and unconscious attacker, his knuckles red and green and every color in between (was this what it meant to hurt someone, father?) and then his hands over his face and the roar lodged in his throat and his teeth clenched beneath the blood and she was pushing at his shoulders again, pushing at him to look at her, dragging his hands from his face and she was crying just like him and she was – she was –

She slapped him. Once. Swift and cold. They stared heatedly at each other, his cheek warming in the aftermath.

"Did you kill him?" she asked wildly, her voice hitching as her breath caught, and he couldn't be sure whether it was desperation or exhilaration that colored her words.

"I don't… I don't…" He glanced at the unmoving man, barely catching the subtle rise and fall of his chest. The relief raked through his lungs in a single, tight exhale.

"Did you kill him?" she asked again, shaking him.

He pushed her away. "I didn't fucking kill him, okay?" He was trembling. He was trembling and bleeding and raging and somehow, somehow this was familiar and it ached in all the wrong ways. He brought the back of his hand to his mouth and winced at the pain, his hand coming away with blood when he looked down at it. Breathing deep, Kolyat closed his eyes, and then he opened them, catching sight of the thin trail of blood running the length of her cheek. He narrowed his eyes at it.

Oriana shook her head, falling back along the floor as she stared at the bloodied man beside them. "This is so fucked."

"I know."

"I mean, you bloody ruined him, just look at his face!"

"I know," he growled, sliding a glare her way.

"What are we even supposed to d–"

"Gods, will you just shut up for a second, Lawson? Let me think." And then he slumped back, arms hanging over his knees, eyes on his bloodied knuckles.

She stared at him, her chest heaving. "He came at us. He attacked us."

He offered her silence.

She ran her hands through her hair, and then he saw it – the way her hands shook, the way her pupils dilated, the way she licked her lips and didn't settle her gaze on anything for more than a half a breath.

"Hey."

She glanced at him when he said it, swallowing tightly, and then her gaze flitted away again.

"Hey," he repeated more forcefully, sitting up.

"What?" she snapped.

"Look at me."

She didn't.

He grabbed for her elbow, tugged her toward him. She fumbled against him, her hands going out to brace herself along the floor and he leaned toward her, staring into her eyes, his scaled brows furrowed, his breath heavy. "Look at me."

She finally stilled, her breath halting. She brought her bottom lip between her teeth and whimpered so softly he almost missed it.

"It's okay," he found himself saying, and he didn't know why. None of it was okay. But even still… even still he needed her to hear it.

Her gaze fell to the floor. He brought his other hand up to brace along her chin, pulling it up so she had to meet his eyes. "It's okay, I said. You're not back there. You're not with him."

She stared at him, eyes blinking furiously, her hands curling into fists along the floor. She nodded, but even he could see she didn't believe it, not yet at least, and he wasn't the kind to cradle her in a comforting embrace or offer tender words. He only knew this. He only knew how to bare his teeth and how to clench his grip around her jaw and how to steady his breath into a single, demanding exhale. "Stop crying," he seethed, his voice cracking slightly.

And then she stopped, her mouth pursing, her shoulders going slack, and after a long, silent moment, she brought her fingers to his cheek. He started at the contact.

"But you're crying, too," she whispered, not unkindly.

He blinked at her, suddenly noticing the wetness along his cheeks.

All at once he was very aware of her closeness, and her steady stare, and the damningly exquisite pressure of her fingertips along his cheek and – and –

He looked back to the body beside them, and then to his bloodied hands, and then – then to her.

She didn't take her hand from his cheek, and belatedly – startlingly – Kolyat realized he didn't want her to.

(And when the hell had that happened?)

Falling back along the floor, Kolyat brought an arm up and over his eyes, exhausted.