iv) Fighting battles for peace and innocence, you have already lost.

.

In your hangover, you misunderstood:

These battles that you're drinking to forget

Have already been decided

In dreams

And memories.

.

The inn is dirty and loud, the innkeeper unsympathetic.

"One room left." He says, voice gruff.

"That's fine. We'll have it."

Numair is aware of the man running his eyes over Daine behind him, but his gaze is indifferent enough. The war, in its short span, has worn down even the gossips. Numair himself is too drained to raise an indignant protest at the implications of an older man traveling alone with a young, beautiful woman. Exhaustion has settled so deep into his body that it feels like a permanent part of him, and emotional resources have to be rationed, also.

"We'll take supper upstairs." Numair says to the innkeeper

He can wait, he thinks tiredly, not watching Daine but constantly aware of her presence as they arrange themselves in the single room. His midwinter realization had been both burden and salvation through the already bloody months of the Immortals War. Difficult as it has been to come to terms with the change in their relationship, it has now become the one thing in his life that is of light, hope, and loveliness. His love for her is a single oasis amid the darkness and heavy archaic magic, the one thing of life amid the death and destruction.

He can wait, because if there is one thing that he has learned from wielding the most powerful Gift in the world, it is self-control. Not always readily apparent in other areas of his life, he can apply it when he needs to.

So it is not difficult for him to avert his eyes and turn slightly away as she begins to strip down to her underthings to prepare for bed.

"Do you want any dinner?" He asks, pointedly ignoring the treacherous reflection of the room's interior in the candle-lit window. She crawls under the covers and smiles at him from a nest of blankets.

"No. I'm exhausted. I'm just going to fall asleep forever. I'm so happy to have a bed to sleep in tonight."

"Alright then." He smiles back, looking now at the window and meeting her gaze in the reflection. She looks at him easily, and he is by now familiar with the stirring in his chest that this look evokes. He allows himself to enjoy the quickened heart rate and the subtle warmth for a few moments before softly pushing it down. "Sweet dreams, then."

A short while later there is a soft tapping on the window, and he opens it to allow cool night air inside. It is followed by Tkaa and Kitten. The dragonet scampers gracelessly to Daine right away, but Tkaa follows more slowly with a prize: a Stormwing crown hanging around his scaled wrist like an over-sized bracelet.

"A snack." He explains, yellow eyes blinking in an almost amused fashion. "And I brought you a gift as well."

Out of a pouch he pulls out a flask and hands it to Numair, who almost laughs as he takes it. That bad? He thinks, opening it to smell the contents and feeling pleased to find it strong and clean. He knows Tkaa isn't very good at reading or understanding the emotions of mortals – that they learned very early on in their acquaintance. Bemusedly, he wonders just how bad he must look that the basilisk reached the conclusion on his own that he needed a drink.

They don't talk as they eat because there is not much to say and he doesn't want to disturb Daine. The only sounds are the crackling of the fire and the scrapes and clunks as Tkaa pops precious gems out of the Stormwing crown. Numair finishes a third of the flask and goes to bed, stretching out on top of the covers on the other side of the bed from Daine. There is enough distance between, and they have shared much smaller sleeping spaces. It is not sexual. But he enjoys her nearness, and the fact that he can hear her soft breathing as he falls asleep.

.

He dreams restlessly. He is sitting besides sixteen-year-old Ozorne on the banks of the Zakoi river. Ozorne is laughing and tanging his fingers in the curls of Numair's hair, cut short back then to the nape of his neck. His eyes are burning, but there is no malice or madness in them yet.

"What are we doing?" Numair asks, unsure if it's himself or sixteen-year-old Arram speaking. Ozorne's skin is hot, and in addition to the dream-induced confusion he feels a trace of the giddy excitement from that time.

"Together we are all-powerful." Ozorne says softly. "We will take over the world, or we can destroy it if we like!"

Arram laughs too. He is young and excited by their love and is just beginning to realize the extent of his own power. His Gift is spilling out of him like an open faucet so that they are sitting in a pool of their own magic. Ozone is making images of fantastical birds and magical beasts appear and fade in the shimmering fire as their colors mix together like oil spilled in the sun. That itself is more intimate than any touch.

"We are as Gods." Ozorne continues, because they are drunk off each other and off their magic to the point of blasphemy. "We can create or we can destroy. Which do you want to do first?"

.

Numair awakens, and stares and the ceiling in the now-dark room. Ozorne was fire. His passion, his brilliance and his ambition had burned – until they consumed him. Until he became charred and insane, deformed beyond recognition. But before that, years ago, that fire had drawn Numair irresistibly. He was young and in awe. It was like jumping Beltane flames – always with a rush of adrenaline, a racing heart, and just almost out of control.

But with Daine – it's nothing like that. Her power over him is constant and steady. She flows like a river – cool, patient, and deep. She is permanent.

He can wait.

.

It is not true that she had never thought about it.

Half-asleep, Daine watches him and Tkaa silhouetted against the fire, an outline of mage and basilisk like a bizarre engraving from a dream. And in this storybook space, what she struggles with is a smattering of guilt – that here, alone with him, she feels a little bit content.

She could never figure out how to live, really live, normally in Tortall. Things keep becoming complicated, in ways she's either not ready or not willing to deal with, much too fast and much too often. But worst of all, over the past year and a half, as she has gotten older, she has realized more and more that he is really not all hers. And that is hard to come to terms with, given how close he feels when it's just the two of them.

It's not just the deep, dark tunnels of his magic, down which no one can follow him except maybe Alanna, that take him from her. It's not just Ozorne, and the mystery of whatever happened between them many years ago that she still does not really understand. Not the heaviness of his past. Some of it is very basic, very simple…

… And she is thirteen years old again, pushing open the door to his rooms, late in the evening – without knocking.

She supposes that she had known even back then, theoretically, that there were women in his life. Joking comments from Onua, or even whispered gossip amongst the Riders, all gave clear signal of it. But even at that point, so early on in their relationship, she had already developed strong sense of possessiveness of him. With her, he was like with no one else, and that made her feel as though he was her's more that anyone's. And so the women existed – only very much in the abstract.

"Hello?" Says musical voice, light and curious.

Daine stops short in her tracks. In the chair by the fire there is a woman, a glass of wine dangling from her fingers. She is wearing Numair's Black robe and – from her long bare legs crossed beautifully in front of the fire, to the outline of her collarbones and the plunge of her neckline – it seems like nothing underneath. Golden curls fall around her face in a beautiful disarray. Daine stares.

She has never seen a woman like this before. She didn't know women like this existed in the real world.

"Yes?" The woman says patiently, serenely, as Daine stands shell-shocked. The woman sees in her nothing but a maybe-magical wild-child, hair in a tangle and clothing stained with bird droppings – just another curiosity from her companion's long collection. "Would you like to come further in?"

Daine is incredibly clumsy and unsure.

"Hello," she clears her throat. "Um..."

Numair walks into the room and Daine feels redness burn across her face. He is shirtless and barefoot, his hair un-bound around his shoulders, a very faint gleam of sweat over his skin. She feels something else but she has no word for this feeling yet.

It is painfully, blatantly obvious that she is interrupting,

"Oh, Daine!" He says. He sounds surprised but not angry or displeased to see her. He even smiles at her as though everything is OK. "What brings you here?"

Her face is burning and she cannot look him in the eye, but on his neck there is a faint pink bruise, and on his chest there is a slight film of sweat, and she cannot ignore the thin line of hair trailing down from his navel. With no safe place to look, she stares at his feet.

"I'm very very sorry." She stammers. "I have to go."

"Daine—"

But she has already whirled around and practically ran from the room, slamming the door behind her.

She leans her head slowly against the wood, eyes shut tight in mortification. And because she's standing there, still pressed up against the door, she hears a laughing female voice from the inside,

"She is so sweet, my darling. Though perhaps next time we should lock the door?"

.

And Daine is too sleepy, too drained, too pre-occupied with the world going mad around them all the time to really explore this feeling. But one thing that she understands is that, despite how horrific everything is right now, this part of it she likes. When it's just the two of them, and their magical companions, and no one else.

She reaches out across the darkness and puts her hand on his shoulder. He immediately opens his eyes and turns his head to her. He smiles softly, and reaches to cover her hand with his own, squeezing her fingertips gently. They are in the eye of the storm, together, and that feels almost as protected as a rocking cabin crossing the sea from Carthak.

.

.

A/N: This had to be squeezed out, to put it mildly. I find the period of time between Numair's realization and the Realms the trickiest to write about. But it is smooth sailing after this.

And no one got even that drunk in this chapter.