A/N: In which Jace is cold and in pain, and Ral is definitely, positively, absolutely not concerned.

Chapter Two

They were falling. Ral had never experienced a journey through the Blind Eternities like this one. Worlds seemed to swirl past, and he reached for them, but they slid and spiraled away, and the raw mana tore at his bones, corrosive and agonizing.

Jace's eyes were open again, still straining to focus. From experience, Ral knew he was badly injured, and noticed now, as he hadn't before, the blood beginning to trickle from the burst vessels in the mind mage's eyes. The hand in his was trembling, muscles fluttering like windblown leaves.

"Come on, Jace," Ral said urgently. "We have to get to—somewhere."

Eyes fluttering as well now, Jace managed to nod. His free hand came up to clutch at Ral's shoulder. Dizziness was threatening to overwhelm Ral, but he ground his teeth. If Jace could keep his concentration, then so could he. He reached and wrenched and reached some more and dragged the other planeswalker along and suddenly they were falling through real rain and wind.

They had appeared several feet above the ground. Ral grunted in pain as they landed heavily amid high grass and water. He did not recognize the rolling plains, nor the smudge of dark forest on the horizon. He spared a moment to groan, and then turned his attention to Jace's injuries. The mind mage's eyes were shut, and he had gone limp.

Ral had seen this before; in fact, he had experienced this before, when he was somewhat less adept at controlling the storm. He tore open Jace's shirt front and put a hand on the mindmage's chest, which was still and cold beneath his hand. "Come on," muttered Ral. "Breathe, you idiot."

Jace's heart wasn't beating. Of course his heart wasn't beating. That would be too easy. Ral growled wordlessly and put his hand over the Guildpact's heart. "If I owed you anything after Lightning Bug, I think I've successfully discharged my obligation," he said to the unresponsive mind mage as he delivered a second, more controlled burst of electricity to the other man's system. Jace gasped and bucked beneath his hands, his eyes flying open. They actually were blue, the storm mage noted with some surprise. He would have expected a muddy grey. Blue seemed too elegant for the real Jace.

The mind mage's tearing, ragged breaths were better than silence, but he was still disoriented and clearly in pain. Ral took a look around again. They had literally landed in the middle of a muddy field, with no sign of habitation other than something that might possibly be a smudge of smoke on the horizon. He swore loudly. Stuck on an unfamiliar plane in the middle of nowhere with Jace Beleren. The day could probably get worse, but Ral wasn't sure he wanted to find out how.

And how long would it be before people started realizing they were gone? He looked back at Jace again. "Do you think you can get back to Ravnica?" he asked.

Jace's face was a peculiar grey-white. "No," he said, in a voice that was probably intended to be firm but came out barely more than a whisper. "Sorry, but no."

"Damn useless mind mage," Ral muttered. "What happens when Niv-Mizzet wants to know where the hell I am? What happens when someone needs the Guildpact for something?"

"Oh, yes, it's clearly my fault someone is trying to kill me. Again," Jace snapped back. "Let's see—who else do I know who's done that?"

"Well, this time I saved your life. You are going to owe me big, Beleren."

"After Lightning Bug? I'd say we're pretty much even now."

"Yeah, whatever. Can you stand?"

Jace moved his legs slightly, shut his eyes and breathed heavily. "Give me a minute," he panted. "Krokt, that's painful."

"Sorry, can't do much about the burns," Ral said. As Jace finally pushed himself into a sitting position, grimacing in pain, he added, "I know it hurts," and suddenly wondered why he'd volunteered that particular piece of information.

Jace let out a pained whimper and slowly began to get to his feet, but paused halfway, putting a hand to his head. Ral, hovering awkwardly over him, finally slid an arm underneath Jace's shoulder and around his waist. With both of them working at it, they were able to get Jace into a standing position, but Ral could feel that the mind mage was ready to tip over at any minute. Jace was trembling and breathing heavily, sweat standing out on his forehead and matting his hair.

"There might be civilization that way." Ral indicated the hopeful smudge of smoke on the horizon. As a bonus, the clouds in that direction were thicker, and Ral thought he could see flickers of lightning passing across them. Although perhaps that was less desirable, given their circumstances, than it might have been otherwise.

Jace nodded tightly, staring at his feet. Ral had to admit that the Guildpact didn't lack courage, at least. He would have expected—well, he wasn't sure what. Somehow Jace didn't give the impression of someone who was good at handling pain.

"So," Jace managed as they started forward excruciatingly slowly. "Do you happen to recognize this plane?"

Ral shook his head. "I was going to ask you."

"Somehow, I am not surprised." Jace sighed. "It's that kind of day." He shivered against Ral's arm.

Ral kept a concerned eye on him as they moved. The Guildpact was hunched forward around his chest, his breathing shallow and rapid, and he shuffled rather than walked. Several times, his feet caught in some of the tangled grass, and he nearly fell, but he continued, his lips pressed tightly together.

After about twenty minutes, he spoke again, his voice dull with exhaustion. "Assuming you get your equipment soon, what sort of experiments are you working on?" he asked.

"Uh," said Ral, unprepared for the question. "I mean, Lightning Bug was mostly dismantled, but I think there's still something to be learned from it."

"Tell me. Just—just tell me everything."

"Do you have any idea what you're asking?" Ral asked. Even among the Izzet, there were people who would make excuses when he started talking about his work. "I will never shut up."

Jace gave a tight little nod. "Good," he said. "I need—I need a distraction."

"What, and you think the sound of my voice will be enough? I mean, I agree but—"

"Ral, please," gasped Jace. "Yes, anything. Just—just talk."

Ral looked at him again. His face had grown, if possible, even paler, and his lips were going blue at the edges. "You sure you don't want to talk about something else?" he asked doubtfully.

"You can talk about an—anything you want," said Jace, his voice breaking in the middle of the sentence. "I just thought you'd like to talk about your experiments."

Again, Ral allowed himself a quick, curious glance to the side. Oddly thoughtful of the Guildpact, whether or not he'd intended to be. "Why don't we talk about how much you're going to owe me when I get you back to Ravnica safely?" he asked, patting Jace's waist lightly.

"I can't appeal to your sense of enlightened self-interest?" Jace responded with a small smile.

"Oh, this is above and beyond self-interest," Ral drawled. "Dragging the Guildpact across an unknown plane? This is much more effort than just instating a new one."

Jace made a soft chuffing noise, and for a moment Ral was concerned, before realizing that the Guildpact was laughing. "Ouch," said Jace. "Laughing hurts. All right. So I owe you. What do you want? Me getting your equipment back?"

Ral was vaguely confused to realize that they were—bantering. Almost playfully. And it was almost enjoyable. "Oh no," he said smoothly. "Surely that's the kind of thing you'd do out of the goodness of your heart. You owe me much more than that. I'll have to keep thinking. I haven't come up with a suitable reward yet."

"Just don't stop talking," Jace said.

It was strange to have a captive audience. Ral usually had to fight for listeners—either people weren't interested in the kinds of things he did, or they were too busy trying to get him to listen to their ideas. Or, he supposed, he was fighting to make the Firemind actually consider something, in which case there was nothing comfortable or enjoyable about talking, no matter how much he liked the idea itself. Jace didn't seem to be processing everything, but then he wasn't really processing everything about the surroundings either.

It had been early evening when Ral had arrived in the Guildpact's office, and, from the rapidly fading light, it appeared that time across the two planes was running similarly. Jace didn't comment, and Ral kept talking, but there were longer and longer pauses as Ral had to pay more and more attention to where they were putting their feet as the shadows lengthened. Eventually, after a heartstopping moment when Ral nearly lost his balance and dropped Jace, he stopped and carefully lowered the other man to the ground.

"Unless you think you can get back to Ravnica, we can't keep moving," he said.

"I—" Jace paused. "No. I can't. I'm sorry."

"Well, I can't leave you here. You'll get eaten by a dragon or something."

"They might not even have dragons here."

"Then you'll get eaten by something else, Guildpact. Everything that looks at you wants to kill you."

"Thanks for resisting that temptation, then," Jace said wryly, then let out a soft, sharp sound of pain. "This isn't going to be a pleasant night," he murmured.

Ral sighed. "No, it really isn't," he agreed. "I'll see if I can put together a fire so we don't both freeze to death."

Jace drowsed, his relatively uninjured side pressed against a rock, as Ral, complaining with every breath, managed to collect some wood and make a fire. Not a very good one, because it smoked horribly and had a tendency to burn out when neither of them were paying attention, but at least Ral could start it again relatively easily and it did make the evening a little warmer and lighter.

Still, it was going to be a cold night. Jace was soon reduced to huddling closer and closer to the fire, wishing strongly for his comfortable bed on Ravnica. When Ral touched him on the shoulder to get his attention, the mind mage whirled with a gasp of pain.

"Not exactly the response I was expecting," Ral said. "Maybe I'd better wrap those burns up. I've got some ointment here that may help a little."

Jace tried to hunch his shoulders down with discomfort, but this turned out to be a mistake. He groaned in pain. "I don't think getting my shirt off his going to be fun."

"Well, Jace, if you feel like planeswalking…"

Jace gave him a glare. "I'd be happy to, if I didn't think I'd end up smeared across the Blind Eternities," he grumbled. "All right." With exaggerated care, he unclasped his cloak and removed it, folding it and setting it beside him, then tried to take off his shirt. His cold fingers scrabbled against the straps, but he couldn't seem to find the coordination to unhook any of them. He stared down in confusion and slowly realized that the image of his hand kept blurring from one to two.

"Beleren, can't you even undress yourself?" Ral asked.

Jace shut his eyes, trying to will them to focus, but when he opened them again, everything had split fuzzily and—it seemed permanently—into two offset pictures. He groaned.

Ral made an irritated noise and knelt in front of him, starting to undo the straps himself. Jace watched him uselessly. Ral's fingers were surprisingly gentle, but even so, Jace had to clench his fists against the pain as the other man actually began to tease the shirt away from the injuries. Once the cloth had been removed, the Izzet mage paused. "Damn," he said, in a tone of voice Jace wasn't certain he could read. He resisted the temptation to peer into the other man's head. Besides, he could hazard a guess as to what Ral had seen. The criss-crossing spiderweb of old, white scars beneath the new, inflamed injury. Jace narrowed his eyes in frustration, almost wishing he'd thought to put up an illusion.

"I had a disagreement with an artificer," he explained, tiredly, then tried to distract Ral. "Is the lightning going to leave a scar as well?"

"Probably," the lightning mage said. He thrust a surprisingly muscular arm into Jace's face, rolling up his sleeve. For the first time, the mind mage had a close view of the dragon winding its way up Ral's arm. At the top of his knuckles, around where the tail began, he realized that the tattoo followed and embellished a feathered white scar, which ran up the lightning mage's arm and disappeared into his shirt beyond the shoulder. "I have more on my back as well," Ral said. "Yours look worse, though. Must have been quite the disagreement."

"I didn't manage to protect him from a dragon," Jace mumbled. The words had slipped out with the memory, and he shook his head to clear it. "Not important," he added. "It was just—something that happened."

There was a long silence. Finally, Ral spoke again. "I'd better clean out the burns," he said.

Wetting the rags in some conjured water, Ral began to carefully clean Jace's injuries. It hurt at first, as he cleaned clinging fabric and sticky fluids off, but eventually, as the twinges became repetitive, Jace found it almost relaxing. Ral's hand on his shoulder, steadying him, as the other hand moved softly and rhythmically across his back and chest. The Guildpact felt his eyes sliding shut of their own accord, and he let out a little breathy noise, half a hum. Ral chuckled. "Enjoying that, Jace?" The use of his first name, tossed flippantly off the Izzet mage's tongue, was unexpected. Although he hadn't been restricting himself to 'Beleren' and 'Guildpact' lately, there was still enough of a pause and a beat before the choice of name, and an inflection on it Jace couldn't identify, for it to send an odd tremor through the mind mage's frame.

"Mmm," Jace murmured. Ral's hands paused suddenly, and Jace yawned. "Don't stop, it's nice," he said sleepily, but the hands moved away.

A chilly breeze sliding down Jace's naked back made him shiver and broke the strange spell. His teeth chattered as he wrapped his arms around himself. "Damn," he managed. "It's going to be a cold night."

"I'll get you wrapped up," said Ral abruptly. He fumbled with a few things at his belt and pulled out a jar of ointment. "Let me just put this on. You can thank me later."

It stank, but Jace didn't complain. The burning pain subsided slightly in the wake of Ral's cool fingers.

"We're going to have to wrap these up with something," Ral said. "Hm," he said speculatively, moving toward the rock Jace had left his cloak on. A spike of absolute panic shot through Jace, and he jumped to his feet, but colored spots swirled in front of his eyes, and the next thing he knew, he was on his hands and knees with Ral saying his name in his ear.

"I'm all right. Just leave my cloak alone," Jace managed.

"You could have just said that," Ral growled. "Instead of getting up and fainting. If I hadn't caught you, you could have gotten dirt into the wounds, and I would have had to start over. Besides, it's the most logical—"

Jace managed a dizzy glare. "Just don't. That cloak has been through more with me than most people."

"Okay, okay." Ral raised his hands. "Don't let me take away your security blanket. I suppose I'll just have to sacrifice my shirt."

"You're wearing something like twelve, aren't you?" Jace asked acidly, but had to put his hand to his aching head, and nearly fell over again. Ral made a disgruntled noise, and helped him back into a sitting position against the rock.

"I wouldn't expect you to understand fashion," the Izzet mage said. "Do you ever change out of that cloak?"

Jace didn't bother answering that, not that he had a good answer anyway. Ral sighed rather theatrically and began to divest himself of one of his outer layers of clothing. After a long moment, during which the sound of tearing cloth filled the air, he knelt beside Jace and began to wind the strips of cloth around him, front and back. His hands were swift and careful, and he seemed to be trying not to tie the bandages too tightly, which Jace appreciated.

It wasn't going to be easy to sleep, but Jace was utterly exhausted, and he'd slept under more painful conditions. "Can you give me my cloak?" he mumbled as he sank down. In fact, he had barely felt its soft weight on his side before the dizziness and the darkness swallowed him.

Ral stared rather moodily at the fire. He disliked self-analysis, but he couldn't stop wondering about the strange lurching sensation he felt whenever he looked at Jace. He had started off by hating the mind mage and everything he stood for, and even during Project Lightning Bug, he had seen the man as nothing more than a useful ally. That was definitely all. And now they'd spent a two hours together running for their lives and suddenly Ral was feeling—protective.

He stared down at Jace's face, relaxed in sleep. The lines that worried at the Guildpact's face during the day were smoothed out in his unconsciousness, and he looked all curves and youthfulness. He was drooling slightly. How old even was he, Ral wondered. Planeswalking had a way of aging a person faster than normal, he'd found.

"I don't like you," Ral said softly, in irritation. He grunted and rearranged himself. "Stop making me like you," he muttered.

He had let the fire burn low so that he could keep his eyes adjusted when it grew really dark, and, in the twilight, other little lights had started to pop up nearby, small glowing insects that lit up, traced their tiny paths in the dark, and vanished again. Ral yawned and rubbed at his eyes: the little motes of light had a vaguely soporific effect. He needed to stay awake.

Jace was going to owe him a lot, he thought groggily. Stuck on this strange plane, sitting out a boring, lonely vigil, just to make sure the Guildpact didn't fall apart again. He didn't even have his coffee with him. Ral dug through his pouch and found a few pills he could take in an emergency, but they always produced uncertain side-effects, and he didn't think a single night without sleep constituted a proper emergency, unless he really started to drift off on a hostile plane full of things trying to eat him.

Something brushed against Ral's leg. He slapped at it, and his hand touched warm flesh. He looked down to see that Jace, who had been several inches away against the rock, had moved in his sleep and was starting to curl against him.

"Oh no," Ral said aloud. "Go sleep on your own side of the rock." He put his hand down to shove Jace away and realized that the mind mage was shivering. "Oh come on," Ral said. "Isn't this what the cloak is for?"

Jace mumbled something under his breath and snuggled closer to him. Ral frowned. He didn't want the Guildpact to freeze or get any sicker than he already was. Well, it looked like he was going to be a pillow tonight in addition to his other duties. Jace slid forward some more until his head was actually resting in Ral's lap. The lightning mage froze, hands in the air, unsure what to do next. Jace sighed, wriggled, and was still.

"Dammit," said Ral. "That's my lap." Eventually, he arranged his hands on top of Jace's head and shoulder, careful to avoid touching his injuries. He half-expected Jace's hair to be greasy, but though it was thin, it was soft to the touch. Ral shifted slightly, spreading the weight more evenly over his legs, and readjusted his position to be less awkward.

As the fireflies swirled about his head, he ran his hand through Jace's hair. It was going to be a long night.

Jace's head felt light, as if it were going to float away, but there was a weight pressing down on it, grounding him. He opened his eyes slowly, to see bright lights floating overhead. They seemed to rotate and blur in and out of focus as he blinked and shifted.

"Ouch," a voice complained loudly, and Jace realized his head was lying on something warm and covered in cloth.

"Ral?" he said uncertainly. The weight on his head moved abruptly, and Jace wondered vaguely what it could have been.

"You're awake," Ral said flatly.

"Am I?" Jace asked weakly. He blinked. The sky seemed to be moving, the bright lights in it coalescing into strange figures painted across the tapestry of the cosmos.

"You seem to be," answered Ral. "Maybe you could move yourself off my lap now."

"What?" asked Jace. He tried to move his head, but everything shifted dizzyingly, and he gave up unhappily after a moment. There was cloth under his hand, and he moved that instead, trying to figure out what was going on. Another hand clamped down on it almost immediately.

"I don't think we're quite at that stage in our relationship yet, Jace." Jace blinked slowly. Legs. There were legs under him.

"Why am I lying with my head in your lap, Ral?" he asked slowly, oddly pleased to have figured out what was going on, even if he still could not seem to make sense of the strange tableau in the sky.

"I don't know, you did it yourself!" Ral sounded defensive and indignant.

Jace tried to digest this, but he kept getting distracted by the scene above him. A white-clad figure seemed to be arguing with a tall, thin being surrounded by green and blue mist, whose form wavered from female to male and then collapsed into a curling cloud of smoke-like stars. As the man in white stalked angrily toward the horizon, another figure rose from the formless chaos of the night sky. He was strong and bearded, one hand tightening about a patch of rapidly-coalescing light, which spidered outward into a jagged, fractal pattern. Jace's tired gaze was drawn upward and to the twin clouds of purple-grey stars that formed the man's eyes.

The world seemed to invert, and he was hanging in midair, anchored by nothing and yet not falling, as the eyes bored through him. Jace felt the sudden pressure of a whirlwind of thoughts, painful and jagged like the bolt in front of him, rushing into his mind like a fast-moving tempest, bulldozing everything in their path. "Ral—" he tried to gasp, tried to hold onto the sensation of the Izzet mage above-below him, anything, but it was like trying to hold back a glacier.

He felt the weight move back to his head, recognized it with sudden clarity, and managed to hold onto that impression for a moment as the rest of them were stripped away. Nothing but Ral's hand in the darkness and confusion, and then, a heartbeat later, not even that.