You hide your love
In tents
Like flames inside a lantern
But fire shines through the canvas walls
And color gives it meaning
.
The first thing Numair is aware of, even before opening his eyes, is a soft violet light. And though his body feels utterly broken, the panic begins to subside immediately, because for the greater part of his adult life that light has meant Alanna and that has meant safe.
She is sitting on the cot next to him, both hands firm on his chest, eyes closed in concentration. He is aware of her magic filling him, holding him up from the inside. She is preventing him from collapsing in on himself because he has nothing, not a single drop of his own magic, to hold himself up.
She feels the change in his awareness and looks at him, smiling slightly, as his vision focuses.
"Hi." He says, his voice hoarse.
"Hi," She replies. He watches her lashes flutter close to end the spell, and still feels her presence within him, as though a part of her is curled up inside his chest wall. It's warm and comforting, like a cat. Magic is baffling.
"Why does it feel like I'm always dragging you from the brink of a magical collapse, Arram?" She asks. For a moment he is confused and twenty-two again, and she is the only one who can save him. But quickly the years come back and he remembers –Inar, the torn earth, the utter emptiness inside him as he sends his last magic against the enemy mage – she slips like this sometimes, when she's feeling the most protective of him, reverting back to his given name. He's not sure exactly what happened to him, but this means that it was bad.
"What is the last thing you remember?" Alanna asks.
Moist soft earth, light filtering through willow branches, the sound of a pony choosing its path through rock.
"Where is Daine?" He asks sharply.
Alanna's hands are still firm against his chest, even though she is not witching anymore, preventing him from springing up.
"She is here, she's fine. She has been in and out to check on you. You collapsed – a mile away from Legann, when they were bringing you back. No one had realized how much you'd over-drained yourself. You were literally crashing in when I got to you." Alanna smiles at him again, warm and protective, and also very tired. Then suddenly her face crumbles, and her eyes brim over with tears, "Arram – I am so glad that you are alive!"
He moves, even though this causes a band of fire to flare around his ribs, to reach his hand over and clasp her fingers on his chest. She squeezes back tightly.
"There, hush." He says, finding it almost ridiculous to be comforting her from his own deathbed. "I am here, aren't I?"
Light filtering through the branches of a willow, swaying like a translucent veil in the wind. The beating of her heart, like a small wild bird, against his chest. Her mouth, hot and willing against his. Her fingers, grasping firmly against his shoulders.
"The Gods were willing."
"The Gods were willing." Echoes Alanna.
She pushes away tears with the heal of her hand, and he looks, really looks at her. She is grey-pale, her eyes watery and red, her lips chapped and weathered so much they are cracked with dried blood. Her hair is cropped short and uneven, as though sliced with the blade of sword. Though she is wearing no armor now, her undershirt is stained with sweat and blood in the form of her breast plate. And the half-delirious comment that he was about to make dies in his throat – that at heart, he truly does believe – he is alive not by chance, but by holy intervention. His survival of the duel: a divine gift – for Daine, from the Gods, for her service. But he looks at Alanna, with her bloody lips and shorn hair, her own magic half-drained in holding him up, and understands that this moment is about more than him and Daine. And that Alanna may need him almost as much as he needs her right now to keep him alive.
"How are you holding up?" He asks, still holding her hand.
She signs, the long harsh sign of someone who hasn't had anyone to talk to in a long time. And she hadn't. She had been the mortal Champion fighting an unwinnable war against the Gods on earth. He had been gone.
"I'm so tired, Arram." She says quietly. "I'm so tired of this war. And it's over – but it's not really over, is it? And I just want to go home. I want to see my children. I want to fuck my husband. I haven't seen him in a year, Numair." Her voice almost breaks.
He strokes her fingers, because that's all he can do. He has learned the names for so many of his emotions, but he doesn't have one for what he feels for Alanna. A lot of love, a lot of affection. A lot of possessiveness, protectiveness, gratitude and obligation. He wouldn't be alive if it weren't for her, many times over. And he remembers Jon's words, at the end of his very first meeting with the King of Tortall. It was the last thing he had expected the incomprehensible monarch to say to him.
"Alanna is very easy to fall in love with." Jon looks at him from behind the desk. "But I suggest you do not go down that path, Arram. She is not for you." He smiles, almost sympathetically, as though there is something else he would say to that if he could. "She is married, she has a child... And besides – you'd be much to tall for her!"
And a twenty-two-year-old high treason fugitive from the most powerful kingdom in the world isn't one to take condescending love advice from other men. But somehow, he listens to Jon then, and over time what blossoms from his relationship with Alanna is a different, more precious kind of love.
"They're alright? George, Pirate's Swoop?" He asks, to shake the memory and bring himself back to the present.
Alanna nods. "They're waiting. I will escort Jon to Corus, and then I can finally go home. We ride out in five days. I expect you should be OK by then without me. But I don't think you'll be able travel for a few weeks. You'll remain in Legann until you are well. Daine already said she will stay with you." Alanna smiles again, even though this causes her lip to crack and start bleeding again, and he simultaneously marvels how quickly her mood can change, wonders how much she knows. "She insisted."
.
.
.
A/N: I ended up deciding to take down what was originally the second half of this chapter - it never sat quite right with me, and I since I don't know how many opportunities I'll get to write this kind of story, I wanted to get it right. On the plus side, now there will be seven chapters, because of course we have to make it to the bath-houses in the end :)