I'm sorry this story is so huge. I've had THREE YEARS to amass
the entire plot, and to work out a believable path for these two.
A bit is going to seem rushed or glossed over, because I love you
and am really not trying to drag this out at all BUT IMPORTANT
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT has to befall this pairing and it's not
going to be nice or good or pretty. Really late trigger warning
for gore! and angst i guess /the worst

I wish I could write really compact, powerful short stories but
aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

xxXXXxXxxXXXxxxXXXxXxXx

Conrad gripped Hanna by the waist, claws dug sure and firm into the cement wall to keep them both up and away from the fucking lava that had spilled from the large, angry, thrashing dragon head what had followed he and Sean out of the portal.

"NO!" Hanna screamed, and something fragile tore inside Conrad the same time the larger dragon pushed her way through the portal of the smaller dragon, ripping the copper body too far open, too fast.

Ashleigh Wong took up the bronze spear, hide long-ago stitched in hidden places with runes to repel wet, fire, wading through the lava as easily as if it were mud.

The ruby-red dragon, size of a city bus, hissed and dribbled orange-brown lava from between long black fangs, and backed away from the threat of the spear, her yellow eyes gone narrow in recognition.

The runed bed frame melted, warped, toppled. Rhett remained limp, a paling winged lizard nestled in the cooling lava, the eye that turned up in the press of the ooze as it gently nudged his body sideways, now dulled of light.

The larger dragon tore her eyes from the spear to follow the short burst of flame as the frame's paint caught fire, then noticed the dead thing whose neck was under that frame. The great billows of her lungs sucked in sharp, deafening surprise and she roared outrage, and it nearly knocked Conrad's grip from the wall.

Ask your wish, the voice rasps from the dragon's shivering throat, serpentine tongue twisting behind the fence of shining black fangs. You who freed me.

"Nonono!" Hanna babbled, frantic, waving both arms despite the lash of the hot wind. "Don't anybody wish for any goddamn thing! She can't kill us if she owes us!" He struggles from Conrad's grasp, and is relented to a lava-free patch of cement, but clambers over the cooling rounds of the stuff regardless.

Worth intercepts Hanna with a palm to the side of the head, snatching his glasses off and curling an arm over the lower half of his face to shut him up. "Your life for that kid's," Worth sneers up at the dragon, who had snaked closer, avoiding Ashleigh's calm gait. "Bring yer son back, ya goddamn greedy bitch."

I cannot, the dragon's voice thrums through the very ground.

Worth suffers the elbow to his middle, suffers Hannah's struggle. "Make it fuckin' so! Or we'll strike ya down where ya stand!"

I cannot, the dragon mourns, jaw slamming to the ground, eyes clamping shut, claws digging into the cement as her serpentine body writhed. End this.

Ashleigh takes the distance, spear up.

Hanna turns in Worth's grip, hiding his face, mouth a hot silent scream through the layers of Worth's shirts.

x

Sean Flannerty sat on the snowy stoop of Hanna's apartment building, cheap woven blanket draped over his shoulders, hands wrapped around a steaming thermos full of soup he would never sample. He stared, ashen, over the cityscape and its falling snow.

"Called you a cab," Hanna croaked, joining him on the stoop. "Take you to the bus station."

"I don't think he was meant fer this world," Sean started, woodenly. "That's what we always said, even before th' scales and the weird eyes. He wasn't a part of this, any of this bullshet." The sudden fury reddens his face, darkens his eyes, grip firming knuckle-white around the thermos. "He jus' did what he was asked and goofed around and didn't cause no trouble, and people loved that, and people didn't deserve that. And I'm glad he's gone." A trembling exhale, dark eyes glassy. "This weren't no kinda world for that smug asshole, and he weren't no kinda miracle as what deserved our special human brand 'a torment."

"He took you because he cared about you," Hanna assured, and winced when Sean scoffed.

"You can't know that," Sean lectured, eyeing the cloud of his breath. "Nobody could ever know that, from him. Not from that guy, nope. Soon as punch ya twice fer the insinuation." He holds the thermos up, saluting, then screws the cap on and sets it gingerly by Hanna's ankle. Sean stands, shrugging the blanket off, draping it around Hanna's shoulders, stooping to chuff his hands against Hanna's upper arms. "Ah thenk 'e was jus' jealous of mah magnificent facial accessorizing," Sean drawls in exaggerated southern gallantry.

Hanna can't even fake a smile. "He's dead because of me."

"Yep," Sean agreed, nodding, a hard glint of resentment to his eye. "So don't go looking ta me fer forgiveness. The BeVonts, neither. They'd give it to ya, but just don't."

"Oi," Worth's bark cracks from the atrium door, "The fuck you jus' say, Mack? Didn't sound nothing like 'thanks fer the rescue', ta me."

"Kiss my white Irish ass, longshanks, you heard what I fuckin' just said!" To Hanna, desperately, "Ever wonder what good it might do ya, kid, if ya simply stopped givin' everyone everything they want? Hey? Ever wonder what good it mighta done Jem, if he coulda just stopped trynta help erryone, and helped hisself first? If you'da turnt him down, told him no, told him ta live with his goddamn decisions and face the fuckin' responsibility and find his own retribution? Think he might still be here, if you ain't tried ta put a bandaid over nothin'?"

Worth loped from the stairs in two easy strides, stomp stomp, right past Sean to open the waiting taxi door. "Bye," he prompted.

But Hanna stood. "Yeah," he answered earnestly, eyes hard in the sea of his compassion. "Yeah, I think he'd still be dead, because that's sort of what he wanted, if it meant bringing you back. You were probably always right, Sean, this isn't the right kind of world for people like him. Maybe it once was, or maybe it never was, but it isn't the right place right now. And I'm sorry you lost someone important to you, but it was Jeremiah's choice to try, to just try our hardest to bring you back. So I get it, okay?" A shuddering breath, "I get how he was too good for you, and I get how you don't want to believe that, maybe, if you weren't so important, to that guy? Maybe you'd have never disappeared in the first place and he'd never have literally torn himself up trying to find you. You don't want to face that, not right now, and that's fine. One dragon at a time, yeah?"

Worth feels rooted in place, hand on the car door, bottomless, heels fusing with the pipes under the sidewalk, which are fused with the pipes under the sidewalks of China. Hanna didn't mean 'people like Rhett' as in dragons and demigods and wish-bearers, no. Hanna meant 'people like Rhett' as in people like Worth, people like Gretta DorGrey and people like Veser Hatch, hard people, people hiding very small, very fiercely generous hearts under layers of self-fatality.

Ashleigh joins Hanna's side, holding a large cardboard box out to Sean.

Sean accepts the box, stunned and bleary-eyed but quizzical. He pries the top of the box open, revealing a shiny onyx reptile skull roughly the size of a horse's, horned, buried in rubies and, of all things, copper pennies.

"That's got an extended bottom and a rune to make it weightless," Hanna said, patting the side of the box. "So I crammed all of Jeremiah in, and as much of his mom as I could. Her skeleton's still back at the spillway, and a small heap of treasure, but I think that's up to Xacharia to decide what to do with, yeah?"

"What the fuck is this supposed to be?" Sean had gone pale and splotchy with rage at the same time. "Some sorta bribe?"

"Nope," Hanna answered brightly. "Just the remains. You can bury them, or use them to help people, or help yourself. One dragon at a time, remember?"

Sean looked punched, gutted, drunk. Tired. Aged a hundred years. Defeated. He shifted the box to one arm and held out a hand to shake. "You remember now what I said," he mumbled, stepping close as he shook Hanna's hand. "You don't get any kind of forgiveness out of this."

Hanna's mouth pursed up, and after Sean disappeared behind the cab door he bent at the waist to knock on the tinted glass of the window. Sean rolled the window down and Hanna mumbled something and Sean rolled the window up and

Worth

caught a glimpse of a pale face in the other side of the cab, Conrad in a t-shirt and drawstring pyjama trousers, bare foot, relaxing with one ankle crossed over his knee, staring hard ahead.

As the cab was pulling away, Worth was already jogging the sidewalk, into the street, hailing down one of his own, climbing in, snapping instructions to the bus station.