(2023-07-17) Dreams of Drowning - Part 1

Details

Author:	Athena
Summary:	In the Second War, an Admiral of a navy took a 10-year-old boy with him to war. The repercussions of that choice have finally come to a head, as Zath, Avrenne, Sintha, and Siamus cope with the aftermath of the Alliance's devastation at Wrathgate. While Siamus struggles his way to the surface from the ravages of the battle and the cold, Avrenne and Zath learn to work together to anchor him. Character driven RP, with romantic themes and deep dive into childhood trauma. 24k-ish words. PART 1 OF 3.
Rating:	M for Mature 17+

Chain: Siarenne

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child harm/death in the past, childhood trauma, descriptions of choking/drowning, medical distress (non-magical healing), descriptions of panic/anxiety, characters in conflict, characters in distress, crying, discussion of perceived infidelity/unrequited feelings, non-graphic descriptions of nudity, polyamory, suggestive themes, romance, kissing, possessive language

There is a very, very light tap on the door, almost a brush of knuckles rather than a knock, and then it opens a crack and Sintha Fallon peeks in. She surveys the school of jellyfish.

Avrenne is curled up almost completely on top of Siamus, her hair mostly across his chest and neck now, her other arm reaching out across the bed as if for Zath — the only reason she is not touching him is that her arms are simply not that long and stretchy. She stirs only a little at the light tap. "Mm." Woodpecker noises maybe. House creaking. Perpetually clumsy child tripping in the hallway from far away. It's fine. Five more minutes.

Zath was sleeping in corpse position, and immediately sits bolt upright.

Sintha purses her lips at Zath and surveys him. "Not an emergency," she whispers. "But I thought you might want some food and a respite."

Why she thinks Zath might need a respite from napping is a mystery, hmmm.

She glances at Avrenne. "Both of you, perhaps. I can take a turn to sit with him." She arches a brow at Zath.

Avrenne misses the glance and the offer. People are talking quietly. She does, however, stir again in her sleep, breathing in deeply, and moving suggestively against Siamus by what is absolutely nothing but reflex at this point.

Zath notes the Suggestive Movement — this is a man who does not miss much, particularly when it involves Attractive Blondes — and is out of bed so fast he almost stumbles. Almost. He nods to Sintha, clearing his throat, and pushes past her gently into the sitting room.

There is a tray on the table with an arrangement of sliced, coarse brown bread, cheese, and cold meat, a pitcher of (sweet) cider, and a pot of tea, with a mismatched group of teacups. Sintha may have just scrounged stuff to avoid pestering the kitchen too much.

She eyes Zath over her shoulder, looks back into the bedroom, steps in cautiously to approach the bed. "Avrenne?" she whispers, and touches the woman's shoulder gently.

Avrenne makes a soft "Mm?" sound in response. She might have at least partially woken up at the sound of her name, but her eyes are still closed.

Sintha leans closer, glances at her sleeping brother, and murmurs close to Avrenne's ear, "Let's give you a break, darling? Let him sleep, and I'll watch him for a bit. There's food in the sitting room."

Avrenne turns, blinks drowsily at Sintha and you can almost see the start of the wheels — identifying Sintha (huh, why is Sintha here?), realizing what room she is in (Oh. Wintergarde.), and the catching up of the past 16 or so hours (OH.), before she seems to process the actual words being spoken. She is suddenly much more awake, looking back over at Siamus as though she's afraid he's disappeared out from underneath her, and then her eyes flicking to the empty place next to him.

"Where is Captain Tyrrell?" Her voice is low, rough with sleep, and quiet as though trying not to wake the man still sleeping at her side, but there is a look of something of distress, hovering near fear, on her face, and her voice may very well carry enough for someone in the sitting room listening for his name to hear it.

"He's only just gone out himself," says Sintha soothingly. "To the sitting room. When I came in and asked if the pair of you would like a break."

Avrenne exhales a sigh of relief, gathering herself up a little. She smooths a hand over her hair, and then smooths back Siamus' gently. She leans over to press a kiss to his cheek, lingering there for a moment. "I will be back," she says very quietly to Siamus, before she gently disentangles herself from him and the blankets.

Once standing, she reaches out a hand to Sintha's arm to touch her with a soft, naturally warm hand, looking at her with a gentle expression.

Sintha smiles back at her. What she says, rather briskly, though, is: "Shall I send for some clothes for you, darling? I can do that after this."

"I have some," Avrenne says, and reaches back to the pillow to remove a small black bag. Huh. It doesn't look as though it has clothing, especially not Avrenne's kind of clothing, but you know how magic bags are sometimes. "Thank you." She wraps the bag around her wrist, and makes her way to the bathroom. She is going to reassemble there, clearly.

While the three of them have been talking, approximately one third of the meat, cheese, and bread have mysteriously vanished from the tray. Captain Tyrrell is now sitting at the table, his black shirt very buttoned, having a cup of unsweetened black tea.

Ah yes, the Magic Bag. Sintha is not overly surprised.

She considers her brother lying in the bed, considers the nearest chair by the bedside, but eventually settles on the bed's edge to unbutton her boots, rises to take her jacket off and drape it on the back of the chair, and then climbs into the bed with Siamus, atop the blankets and still otherwise clothed, but snuggled up against his side. In a not-Avrennish way.

Avrenne emerges from the bathroom a different woman — well, maybe not so different, it's clearly still her beneath it — but not one any of these three have ever seen. She is not dressed in a dress, every inch a Duchess. She is, instead, in dark gray cloth and leather, clearly custom made for her, something suggestive of an Alliance scout's uniform, of fairly tight pants, a long sleeved and high collared shirt cut to her exactly and reinforced around the abdomen, and cloth and leather boots that lace up to her mid-calf. She looks ready to run for her life under potential fire from enemies actively seeking to do her harm, possibly needing to hide at night and blend in with the darkness.

Her face has been washed and her hair brushed out into a soft fall of gold around her face, and she walks out from the bathroom to the living room without pause, her eyes scanning the room for Zath — having spotted him, there's a release of tension of her shoulders, and she flicks her eyes to the food on the table.

Sintha very much approves of the outfit, as it goes past her. She doesn't comment. She has dropped her head sideways to rest it atop her brother's, and is looking pretty smol and sleepy.

Zath's gaze sweeps the length of Avrenne as she enters, just once, and very briefly, as it is a very brief length. Then he nods absently in greeting and raises his teacup to his lips.

"Captain," Avrenne says in greeting as she sits at the table, selecting a very small amount of food for herself. She selects one of the teacups that looks, at least in her estimation, the most feminine, to pour herself some tea. She isn't doing Composure, but she's quiet and she isn't looking at him — although in fairness, she is assembling food and drink and eating, perhaps that's all it is.

Zath just drinks tea. In silence. For long enough that it seems he may be planning not to say anything to her at all.

But at last he lowers his cup and says in a low, dangerous half-whisper, "At what point, if ever, were you planning to tell me the results of that little conversation with your husband?"

"What conversation, Captain?" Avrenne asks, and it is clear from the look of confusion on her face that she might very well have no idea which one he is referring to.

She might as well have stabbed him in the heart. He looks ambushed, blindsided, stricken; he literally has to take a moment to find his breath again.

When he does, he just neutralizes his facial expression and says, "Never mind." He reaches for his teacup with a slightly shaky hand, and lifts it to his lips.

Avrenne reaches out immediately, as though she cannot help herself, as if there is no actual thought that precedes it, reaching to touch him. "Captain." There's that same look as before, like the Gala, as though she has no idea what she has done, but has not intended a harm, and that she has done so has struck her in turn.

He flinches from her slightly, refusing to look at her. "Stop, please," he says. The please is genuinely pleading. "You have what you wanted. I won't interfere. Just spare me your pity. I wanted this for you. Both of you. My hand was in it. But do not force me to watch."

"What pity?" Avrenne says quietly, and she hesitates, her hand hovering in the air in indecision now. "I have never pitied you, Captain." Unlike him for her, is the implied statement. "I will not take him from you." She casts her gaze around the table briefly as though trying to draw inspiration for what or how they are talking about. Her expression flickers, and the mask of composure comes across it, fitting badly but an attempt has been made to veil her expression.

"Do you hate me now, to see me with him? Is that what happened? I thought." A pause, a swallow, two quick in drawn breaths, her hand now withdrawing from him to set it against her waist as though trying to hold something in. "I thought you simply lost interest. And I understand, truly. I don't blame you for it. There is even some…solace in being right, to know that I would not have been enough to hold —." She doesn't finish that sentence, and there's a false calm through her voice as she continues. "He cares for you. Don't leave him because of me."

"You are his wife," he says with finality. "I will not play the villain in this tale. Not when I helped fucking author it." He throws back the rest of his tea, clearly preparing his exit.

"You're not a villain," she whispers, at the tea, which is definitely not villainous, no matter what Sintha says about it. It's very heroic tea. But, Avrenne probably means Zath. "So you will just leave?" Avrenne asks, and her voice breaks on the final word. "Again." Her eyes are staring at her tea, tears already holding there at the gates, her expression bleak.

He rises from his chair, icy gaze bearing her down.

"I will put up with torment when there is reason for it," he says sharply. "But there is no reason for me to be a part of this story. He will be fine, and you know that he will. You know how easily he lets things come and go - it is one of his greatest qualities, a source of strength in a chaotic world. This isn't even about him, I don't believe, not deep down. it is about you. What you want is a reason to suffer."

He looks for a moment as though he might physically spit something bitter onto the floor. He does not, just more venom-laced words, months of pent-up grief and rage spewing its way out of unattended festering wounds.

"If you can't literally burn yourself alive in service to him, you will find some way to prevent yourself from being happy with him, even if it's chaining one of his many lovers to him so that you can watch them and think yourself nothing to him. I find abuse of women repellent, Your Grace, repellent, even when it is done by the woman herself. I will not be part of your twisted martyrdom fantasy. Find someone else to torment you."

He might as well have picked her up and thrown her across the room into the wall, crushed her beneath his boot.

That telltale flush across her cheeks streaks in brilliant reds on both cheeks as though she's been struck hard on each one. Her hands go first to her stomach as though trying to hold something in — her insides, perhaps, like they might spill out from her — and then to her mouth. There is no doubt now, nothing at all subtle about these tears, not a slow leaking but a wrenching sob that she holds back literally, clamping her hands over her lips to hold the sound down, to prevent it from escaping, her eyes held closed like this will do anything to stop the stream of the tides pouring from beneath her lids, as she shakes as though she's shattering.

Zath responds as though she's literally started pouring blood from every orifice, rushing toward her to kneel by her chair, both hands steadying her by the shoulders as he tries to figure out what is happening here.

Avrenne keeps her hands over her mouth, sobbing in a way that is so quiet that it can only have come from practice, of someone who has learned how to cry without making a single sound. She doesn't move away from him, but she may not be able to at all, her focus narrowed, perhaps, to simply not being overheard by those a room over.

"I'm sorry," he says softly, genuinely, still holding her by the shoulders as though to keep her from collapsing to the floor. "Please — tell me how to — I shouldn't even– "

He exhales gustily, inhales, tries again.

"I spoke too harshly. I am sorry, I have had… a difficult twenty-four hours. I did not mean to … speak so disrespectfully. Please. All I meant to say is, why will you not simply allow yourself to be happy?" He is gentler now. "Why, now that good fortune has finally found you, must you try so hard to taint it? Just being accustomed to misery doesn't mean it is inevitable. Hm?"

Avrenne's hands leave her mouth to set against them against his chest, balling her fists hard into the material there as if she's going to physically fight him from moving away. She opens her eyes, red and still filled with tears. It takes her several of those breaths, those little give away flares of her nose as she takes them — one, two. one, two. one,two. — before she speaks.

"I am happy with Siamus, as he is. There is nothing he could do to taint that by simply being who he is," she says, her voice now a hoarse whisper. "I told you what I wanted to be as happy as I —." Breath, breath. "I want him to be happy, to have what makes him happy, and I want you to be —." Another pause, a shake of her shoulders.

"I love him. And I love y —." Her lips tremble and she closes her eyes again on what might be a rush of pain, and doesn't finish the word. But, it may be obvious what the word was going to be, all the same. It's not, after all, the first time she's said it.

Zath suddenly draws her in and crushes her against him — easy to do, because small and fragile. He clings to her as though she's the only floating thing in the sea. One hand buries itself in her hair, and he takes deep, unsteady breaths.

"Please," he says brokenly. "Just let me go…. Love… is not enough. He is your husband, you are his wife. You have a family, a House… you have everything you ever needed, and I am sorry if I — if I have made you feel for me, if I have set your compassionate heart afire with my tales of woe — I was being selfish." He says the word like he's confessing to child-murder. "Forget me again, as you did when first he courted you, and this time… I beg you… forget me for good."

He lets out a strange, shaky laugh.

"You know that I have been with him, and so you know that I can forgive you, because I can imagine all too easily… how easy it has been for you… and will be again… to forget."

Avrenne's hands haven't let go. "I've never forgotten you." Her voice sounds like it's been dragged on the ground. "The Alpine strawberry," she says. "Grows in clumps. To get more, you don't propagate the runners, you dig clumps and divide them. They grow well in containers, raised beds, hanging baskets, and window boxes." It's a near word for word recall for words spoken 12 years before. "You were in blue. You didn't wear all black then. I will let you go if you do not want – ." She breaks off again, but her hands are trembling on his shirt with the force of her grip. "'Avrenne' has never been enough. I don't blame you for your choice. I won't bear you any ill will. Forget me if it is easier, but do not ask me to forget you."

"My choice?" He pushes her back by the shoulders to stare incredulously into her face. "I sent you to him with a question on which my happiness depended… I even told you precisely how you must phrase it. The next day I checked for a letter… and the next, and the next. After a week I gave up hope… and then, blessed Light, word from you at last… only I opened the letter and it was — I do not even recall what it was about, only that you needed a favor from me, something… some business or other. Not even a hint of what he had said. Another week, trying to think of other things and being faced daily with the gift I had so foolishly and impulsively —" He takes a hand from her shoulder to scrub it over his face. "I would ask what on earth had you so occupied during that two weeks, but I know, Light do I know what he does to a person's mind and heart."

Avrenne stares back at him as though he's stopped speaking Common. "What are you — " She shakes her head, and her hands leave his shirt to grab onto his face as though she's going to physically prevent him from moving now by holding his head right there. "Those two weeks I was working on the House campaign, and the WEB. That business was that a dear friend's son had gone missing." She opens her mouth, shuts it, tries again. "I was going to ask after the wedding. When I would be permitted to take a lover, as per our contract. But I thought. You returned her. After two weeks. I thought you'd…like Mr. G – ." She doesn't say his name, just a lip tremble. "And not a single word from you. Not one. You just left."

"Untrue and unfair!" That is the first thing he's said that is loud enough to be heard in the next room. He lowers his voice swiftly again to a whisper. "I sent a letter! But I was not going to sit all day alone at my estate, with that beast gazing at me every day with its sweet brown eyes, reminding me that you had not even thought to tell me yes or no. You expected me to wait — Light, a month? Who sits for a month waiting for the answer to a question like that?"

He releases her entirely now, throwing up his hands with a scoffing sound and rising to stagger back into the nearest chair. He tries to smooth his hair, so viciously he might be trying to pull it out.

"What letter?" Avrenne shakes her head. She never saw a letter. She only lets him go by pure physics that she is simply not strong enough to keep hold of him. "I received no letter from you." She looks bleak again, her eyes filling with tears as she sets both hands back to her waist. "And I thought you would wait. I thought you knew that I would ask. I thought you wanted me enough to – ."

"To ignore an obvious jilting? No. I've never wanted anyone or anything that much. I knew who you were with, and frankly, I wouldn't have written me either." His voice is still a half-whisper, barely audible, but it somehow manages to convey Zathian snark.

"I told you I would ask him. After the wedding." Avrenne's voice is equally quiet. "I wanted you that much. To wait, to ask a man I love if I might be permitted a lover, one whom I would only find out was his own when I asked. And I would have still asked." Her shoulders curl inwards, shake slightly. "If you wanted me I would still ask him now," is so quiet, so faint, that if he chose to not hear it, he could miss it.

"What I want doesn't matter," he says, suddenly weary. "I am not about to … cuckold either of you. Enjoy your fel-damned marriage, please, won't you, after all it cost me to bring it into being?"

Avrenne looks hollowed out. "What you want matters very much to me, Captain. I will not force you. I will not chain you. If that is what you want, to leave…" She stares at her tea, speaks to it in a throaty voice pitched low. "We might have been happy. All three of us. He would be happy, I think, and so would I. We could at least speak of it, to ask. But if you would be unhappy no matter what, then. It would not be worth it. But will you not consider it? That there is room for you here. If you want to be here."

"You believe I am determined to be unhappy?" he says dryly, wearily. "Spare a glance for the mirror, my lady. You say you love me, but clearly what you love is misery. Or why would you refuse to let go of a man with whom every conversation ends in tears and blood and shattered teacups? And in the next room is a man whose attention makes you glow like a– "

He cuts himself off, clearly unwilling to think too much about what a glowing Avrenne looks like.

"— and instead of basking in his warmth you are here talking to me." That last syllable is so saturated with venom he might has well have said The Plague.

Avrenne reaches for him again. He's too far. Fine. She stands up, and walks to him, closing the distance to once more hold onto him.

"What I love is a man who makes me laugh when I least expect him to do so. Who tries so hard to make others around him happier, to be willing to bend himself to do anything to reduce the harm of this world, from a moment at a dance when a woman seems hurt, to dedicating his life to the defense of Azeroth itself, willing to immerse himself in the fel to be sure that it is known and handled as safely as possible in that defense, a man who will take scars on himself, wounds on his soul if he must, to protect others. Who will throw himself into a world of politics he despises on the hope that he might make a difference for those who need someone to speak for them.

"Whose touch is so gentle, who will reach out to a woman when he does not care for her simply because he knows she's been wounded and he will offer her a moment's respite. Who would see a moment's thought on my face, a silent private wish allowed barely a second, and spend a small fortune simply because it might make me happy. You think you wooed me with tales of woe? Captain." It's almost a scold, but not quite; it's too gentle, too loving.

She reaches up to his face, cradling him gently with the lightest of touches as though he's something precious. "You think I do not see who you are? I've never known someone so selfless in all my life. I want to know the rest of you. I want to know who you are when you do not think of me as some horrible fate awaiting you, a Duchess you cannot touch." A faint smile, barely a ghost. "And you have very nice teeth even when you are clenching them in anger." The compliment she has come back to so many times, but she's not looking at his teeth, she's looking at his eyes like they're beautiful. "You're extraordinary, Captain. And I don't want to let you go."

Zath just stares at her, looking younger than she has ever seen him. His eyes fill slowly, and he seems to be having difficulty speaking. He swallows once, clears his throat, swallows again.

"Let us… at least… try to be kinder to one another," he says. "I shall not flee. I shall try to… show you that I care. But you are his, and I will not disrespect him, no matter how– " He does not finish that thought. Instead he pivots to another, the shift clear on his face as he studies her intently. "It… would not bother you to see… to see me… close to him?"

"No." It's a decisive, simple answer without hesitation. She strokes her fingers so carefully on his face; it looks virtually identical to the way she's been touching Siamus all the previous night. "You love him, don't you?"

There is a strange lurch in him that, as though he has stifled a sob, or a retch, or something else trying desperately to escape him. Then his eyes fill to overflowing, and for just a moment he seems very young, and lost, and afraid, a child confessing to his mother that he's done something terrible and doesn't know how to fix it. “Yes,” he whispers.

Avrenne moves forward into him, embracing him as though she can fold herself around him, leaning her head against his chest. "I'm glad. He deserves extraordinary people who love him. And so do you, Captain. It will make me so happy if you can help him be happy, and find some happiness yourself. Didn't you see him last night? How pleased he was with both of us there. I asked him, if he would rather one or the other. And he wanted both."

Zath wraps his arms around her, squeezing her tightly, his breath ragged. "I love him," he whispers into her hair, and his lips linger there, "Ah, Light, I love him…" His other hand finds her spine, pressing her as close as he can.

Avrenne is gentle, as though handling something fragile and precious all at once. "I know," she says quietly, warm and soft, the scent of lotus sweet and a little spicy with that sense of green growing things fragrant in her hair, holding onto him. "It's alright."

He shudders and breathes in the scent of her hair, fingers sifting it at the nape of her neck, lips still pressed into it. "I'm sorry…" he says, his breath warm, the fingertips of his other hand absently tracing, from memory, that hidden constellation.

Avrenne's breathing changes at the touch, a faint tremor that is in no way similar to the shake of her shoulders in tears; no, this is a bow being slowly drawn taut, an arching towards him that is not merely an embrace. "I have felt your hands on me since that night," she whispers like a confession. "What are you sorry for, Captain?"

He freezes momentarily at her confession, but then remembers how breathing works. He takes a moment to consider her question. "Everything," he says finally. From the weight of the breath exhaled into that word, he may be including his very existence.

Avrenne makes a soft sound, her hand stroking a slow soothing line. She might have possibly forgotten where they are for the moment. "No, please. Don't be sorry for it all. Don't erase yourself and all you have done. You have given so much, done so much good in this world. You cannot be granted forgiveness where there is nothing to forgive, where you have done so well. Even now. You saved his life. If you had not loved him so well, he would have been lost. Do not apologize for that."

He draws back to look at her, something in his eyes that is somehow at the same time calm and fervent. "Yes," he whispers, catching her face gently in his hands. "I thought exactly the same, the first time I had a moment to think at all." He strokes her cheek with a cold thumb. "I finally understood that… He was here without structure; no one was responsible for him. No one else would have looked for him. If I had not been so wild with— if I had not acted irrationally and against my own direct responsibility, he would have died in the cold, alone. So… yes." Another thumb-stroke. "I am not sorry for loving him. I will never be sorry for that. You are right."

Avrenne smiles so brightly at him that he can, at last, get some sense of what it looks like to see such an expression directed at him and him alone, a warm glow held between his hands.

"Light…" he whispers. It's not clear if it is an exclamation or a description. He yearns forward for a moment, bringing his lips nearer to hers, but then he lets her go, decisively but gently. "You should finish eating," he says.

Avrenne moves forward slightly when he pulls away, a movement she catches by what is likely years of training to hold her balance, and there's a strange little motion of her hands to near her legs as though anticipating needing to adjust the skirt of her dress before she trips on it — she's not wearing a dress, so that makes the gesture a little odd, a small flutter of her hands around her legs hitting empty air instead of material.

She looks around the room as though she is just now once again realizing where she is, blinking twice. There's a faint start of a blush to her cheeks, nothing at all like the stark red of before. "I." She clears her throat, looks at the table. Food. Right. She sits, and again, there's a weirdness to it as she tries to adjust skirts that do not exist with this outfit, scooping at the air. Everything is a little off kilter. "Of course."

Zath smiles faintly as he watches her, eyelids going heavy for just a moment like a contented cat's. Then he begins to push various morsels of food in her direction gently, nonverbal suggestions.

Avrenne flicks her eyes from her plate, slightly picked over from the very small amount of food she'd placed on it before, and there's such a look in those dark eyes, a silent fond yes, dear, as she picks up at the least the bread to place it on her own plate. Her tea has gone cold, and she picks it up, stares at it with a momentary intensity, and the steam curls back up. There's a faint, small flicker of pain around her eyes, but it passes so quickly that it might not have been there. Her voice is still quiet, and soft, a sultry note woven through it. "I would not like to repeat a mistake, Captain. When would you like me to speak with Siamus, or do you wish to do so yourself?"

"He has enough on his mind at present," Zath says, smoke still lingering in his voice, but no further pain. "Whenever it comes up, it shall come up, and in the meantime, I shall try to present myself as someone he can trust with his most precious gift." He nods toward her plate. "The sooner you have eaten, the sooner you can return to him."

Avrenne sips at her tea, and eats at the same ladylike pace. "I am still with him," she says quietly, and her hand goes to a pocket at her hip, where a seastalk case has been placed. "I am so glad that he is well, and improving. I would like to be there as well to be sure of it." She flicks her eyes to Zath's. "Where will you be today, Captain?"

He leans back into his chair a bit and sighs. His voice rises to a normal conversational volume, potentially audible by Fallons.

"I need to check in on the 6th when I can, as they are in a bit of a crisis. However my most recent attempt at speaking with them did not… go particularly well."

Sintha may have more context for that slap mark she saw, now, if she's hearing this.

"I also have to attend various meetings with my superiors - there is a great deal of… responding going on just now. But when I can, I will be here. I have… I have been staying in this room, for a while. Since your husband… since Siamus…"

He scrubs at his face again. Relaxing about this whole situation clearly does not come easily for him.

Avrenne reaches out yet again to touch him, even if she can't reach him. It is just something she does, Zath. You'll have to get used to it.

"What happened to your people, Captain? Will you tell me, please?" She seems to genuinely mean it, to care about the answer.

The bedroom door opens and Sintha puts an eye to the crack, checking to be sure no one is Making Out. She heard Normal Voices. Also her brother is asleep and boring.

Avrenne's head turns at the sound, but she keeps her eyes on Zath.

Zath's face goes very Neutral. Wartime report.

"We lost my second-in-command, our healer, and our siege engineer. The rest survived, but the Cobalt boy, Silentstep — he is… barely more coherent than poor Siamus."

The door gap widens and Sintha slips out, closing the door behind her and leaning back against it. She looks genuinely aghast.

Avrenne's face goes soft with grief. "Lost. Fully?" She seems to have at least some idea of how extreme that is for the 7th Legion. "Oh, Captain. I'm so sorry," she says with sincerity. She's already reaching for him. In a moment she will probably stand to be able to touch him if he doesn't reach back.

Zath does not resist her approach, but his manner is of one providing comfort rather than receiving it as he continues his Wartime Report. "Master Sergeant Hall and I returned to the field to attempt their resurrections, but there was nothing to be done. I have contacted the families of those that had them."

"Oh, Captain," says Sintha, in a quiet and alarmingly sincere way. Her eyes are nearly as dark as her brother's.

Zath looks prepared to Comfort Her Also if necessary.

Avrenne sets her hand lightly on his shoulder, holding onto him there. "I remember them. Lieutenant Kieley Boles. I did not get the names of your healer and siege engineer, a kaldorei woman and a dwarven woman, as I recall, but they are not unknown, and their service and sacrifice will not be forgotten. I am so sorry," she repeats.

When Avrenne says Boles's name, a deep, savage pain flickers through his eyes like summer lightning and is gone. "I appreciate your sympathy," he says calmly, but kindly. "And your respect."

Sintha moves into the room and, possibly surprisingly, takes the chair on Zath's other side and draws it a little closer to him. "The scars of this battle," she says with quiet and deeply-un-Sintha-like formality, "will be written on all of us for years to come. The magnitude of the losses — and every single loss its own agony. It's hard for… some people to think of, when they hear of an incomprehensible thing like this. They hear a number, a staggering number perhaps, and can think only of it. And not what each of those means individually. How each singular loss can be carved into so many other living people, how grief multiplies."

Then she reaches for a remaining crumb of cheese. Mmm, cheese.

Zath stares at Sintha as though a completely new person he's never met has walked into the room. Which isn't not true.

Avrenne nods, her eyes on Sintha as though on a fixed point, a faint smile on her face. "Well spoken," she says softly into the ensuing silence. She pauses, as though thinking of something. "There will be children that will need to be seen to." It's so very quiet. "So many lost."

Sintha gives Zath a sidelong What? look. She eats her cheese-crumb, brushes off her hands, and says, "My family has been in service for generations, Captain. You did hear my brother speak, I believe, at the Gala? The Fallons are ever servants of our kingdom and our people."

Then she raises her eyes ceilingward again in much more Sintha fashion. Gosh.

Ah, there she is. Zath relaxes a bit. He still says nothing though.

Avrenne's expression grows softer in memory at the mention of Siamus' speech, and her eyes go to the bedroom for a long beat. "I should check on him," she says, looking back down to Zath, and then to Sintha. She's had enough to eat, it seems, or perhaps her appetite is not very strong to begin with. There's a lingering to her touch on Zath, a sense of warmth to it that is nothing more than a woman's touch, as she withdraws to walk to the bedroom.

"You've had enough to eat?" His eyes search her. "Do finish, if not. He won't be going anywhere."

Avrenne turns at his voice, an elegance in the motion, smiling at him. "I have had enough for now, Captain. I will take care of myself." It's a gentle promise, not a scold or cold pride. "Do be sure you do the same." There's a soft warmth in her tone that might seem rather bizarre given the night before if you didn't overhear the past half hour or so. "Don't leave without saying goodbye, even if only for a little while, please," she adds as she continues to the door to open it and slip inside.

Zath turns to Sintha and regards her with frank, silent curiosity.

Sintha sits and picks at the mostly-picked-over platter of food until the door has closed behind Avrenne, and then looks at Zath. "I won't keep you from your people, Captain, if that's where you need to be. But I'm not sure you heard me last night, when I thanked you. So I must thank you again." She reaches over and puts her hand on his wrist.

"He has always come back to me," she tells him, and her eyes fill but her expression doesn't change. "Every war, every battle, since we were children. And when our father would have left me — Shay refused. We have always been… an island of two. He is the only family that matters to me, and if he hadn't — if you hadn't —"

She stops talking for a moment, clears her throat.

"He and I have some very painful news to deliver. It will be… I expect it's a piece of what… happened to him, yesterday. And I know how much painful news there will be to deliver, for so many people and to so many people, and I am truly sorry for it. I am. And even so I will selfishly thank you for sparing me my own."

She squeezes his wrist, lets go and sits back again.

He continues to watch her in solemn silence for a moment, before saying softly, "I would have you think well of me. I am glad that in sparing myself pain I have spared you, and that you think of me kindly for it." He looks for a moment as though he wants to say more, but he doesn't.

"What makes you think I didn't already think well of you?" she asks, with a flicker of that coy smile and a sidelong look.

"Nothing, I suppose," he says coolly, "other than everything you ever said or did or every expression that crossed your face in my presence. You're aware by now, I suppose, that I am in love with your brother, but my intention has never been to let my own desires interfere in what was best for him."

"Oh, Captain, you are so beautifully inscrutable, I do adore it, you know. Surely it must occur to you that other people cultivate airs as well, for their own reasons?" She glances at the bedroom door and then back to him. "Your second, your healer, and your siege engineer, you said?"

He nods. That's all he does.

"I assume that you will need — I do not mean to sound dispassionate, Captain, I assure you that you have my every sympathy — but I do assume the 7th Legion will want to replace them."

His expression closes off slightly. "Their bodies are still warm, Lady Sintha." Smoldering, in fact, probably, but let's not go there.

"Yes, Captain," she says very gently. "As I said, I am sorry. In my line of work, I am accustomed to things moving with some urgency. It was only a question. You needn't answer it, if you don't want. I will ask elsewhere."

He sighs and squares his shoulders slightly.

"Dispassionately speaking, the 7th is still scrambling to reorganize. We do not lose people, Lady Sintha. We are not set up at all for losses of this scale. We replace one person here, one person there. It was shocking when I had two open spots in my unit two years ago, and only one of those was a death. Now… we are still trying to determine… many of the units will have to be merged; there simply aren't enough resources to put that many people through the training… we do not yet even know what our next steps are."

Sintha nods seriously and taps her thumbnail on the table. After a moment's thought she says, "Very well. Thank you, Captain. I shall follow up." She flicks her glance back to him. "And truly, I do not mean to detain you. Go and see to your people. Is… do you think Mr. Silentstep would benefit from a familiar face?"

She pauses. "Not mine. But I could fetch someone from Cobalt to see to him."

"Light, yes, anything. I tried to speak to everyone and it … did not go well. Silentstep was all but catatonic, and then I called Hall 'Lieutenant' and she — struck me, harder than I've been struck in my life by anyone that wasn't aiming to kill me. And then she ran off crying and Crowley couldn't leave Silentstep to— yes. Yes, anything you can do. I… feel I should stay here, at least a while. Lady Esp — Lady Fallon seems fragile."

"I have a feeling," says Sintha, "that Lady Fallon will be just fine." It isn't a combative statement; it is a slightly wry observation, which Zath may interpret as he likes.

She softens again. "I'm terribly sorry to hear of it. Your people. I'll find someone for Mr. Silentstep. I would offer… well. I would offer but I don't suppose I'd be much use with either of the others." It seems like a little bit of a question, but just a little bit. "Is there anything else?"

"Thank you for asking, but… if I knew what to do to clean up any of this mess I would be doing it myself." He runs a hand back through his hair, then studies her again. "You… would you prefer I find somewhere else to be? To leave the Lord and Lady Fallon to themselves?"

"I assure you, Captain, I have absolutely no preference in the matter whatsoever, so long as Shay is happy and you are not all being a lot of absolute fucking jellyfish." She rolls her eyes and rises to her feet.

"Yes, do let me know if I am being a jellyfish; I am not certain I would recognize the signs." He rises, too, but clearly in an away-from-Sintha sort of trajectory. Holy cats, this girl.

"You have definitely been a jellyfish. I have hope of your recovery. I will be back shortly, Captain, should my brother happen to be looking for me."

Sintha goes around the table to collect her attache case from the floor, and then lets herself out of the room without a further look back.

Zath may have watched her go, a little, sorry, he's like that.

Lady Fallon has meanwhile, entered the bedroom, and moved to the side of the bed. She removes her boots carefully, leaving them (and the socks) behind to slip into the bed to curl back up against Siamus, her head to his shoulder and her hand on his chest, studying him in sleep.

Siamus in sleep doesn't wear the soft and peaceful mien most sleepers do; if anything, he looks more troubled in his present sleep than he almost ever does awake. His expression is taut and lined, his mouth pressed thin, his brows drawn. He turns his head restlessly.

When Avrenne slides in beside him his lips part on a faint sigh and his shoulders relax, but the lines in his face do not ease, even as he turns it blindly toward her. His breath is still a thin rattle, though it sounds neither as raw nor as strained as before.

Zath carefully eases open the bedroom door to peek inside…

Avrenne moves her fingers along Siamus' chest in slow, soft lines as if to try to encourage his lungs to cooperate and let him breathe easier. She's watching him sleep, pressed closely against him, looking small for the comparison, her own expression soft and warm as she gazes at him with love open and obvious in her face.

"Should I …?" His voice is soft in the doorway. He can't even finish the sentence, it seems.

Avrenne turns to look at him immediately at the sound of his voice, and there's a soft smile for him as she moves her hand briefly off Siamus to hold it out in an offer to come closer.

He approaches the bed, still fully dressed aside from boots and coat (but in socks, which seems to be an important thing to mention?), and after a moment's awkward hesitation he crawls onto it toward Siamus's other side, keeping the sleeping man between himself and Avrenne.

His approach to the bed is different, now, however. There is no longer a nightsaber watching him from atop the mattress. He is the saber now, carefully prowling his way next to Siamus so as not to wake him, lean muscles controlled and careful but also betraying a hint of the hunter as his eyes linger on Siamus's face. He settles himself all along Siamus's side, then lays his head down on the pillow and closes his eyes.

After a moment he says to the room, "Beautiful, isn't he."

Avrenne sets her hand back on Siamus' chest, resuming the strokes, her touch light as though he's something precious she can absorb through just her fingertips. There's an answering sigh that sounds content. "Yes," she agrees, her accent giving the word a soft purr of sound, a sultry note threaded through it.

Zath lays a hand on Siamus's chest also, an obviously familiar gesture, but he is careful to lay it on a different part of Siamus's chest. But even that is just … too much, and he retracts his hand. Siamus Chest Belong To Avrenne For Now, Ok.

Avrenne tries to catch his hand before it gets out of her range.

His hand is caught. He is now frozen. You broke Zath.

Avrenne gives him a sweet sort of smile that he has not seen before, as she very deliberately, very gently moves both their hands to Siamus, and she holds Zath's hand against Siamus and her own. You are the sandwich now as well, Zath.

The look he returns Avrenne could not be described as sweet. She may suddenly feel like a rabbit making eye contact with a very blue-eyed, very hungry wolf.

"Do not tease," he says, very low. "My edges are quite frayed."

"Captain," Avrenne says, and there's a rising heat in her own eyes. "I don't tease."

(That's not a rabbit you're looking at Zath.)

Zath seems to be realizing this. He holds very still except for his pulse, which is thundering.

Siamus shudders beneath them and his lips part again, his brow tightening as he turns his head again blindly. One hand claws the blanket beneath it into a knot and clings.

Avrenne's attention jumps immediately to Siamus. "Siamus?" There's a thread, a faint note, of something almost like fear in her voice.

"Shh shh shhh…" says Zath, and kisses the edge of Siamus's ear. Seeming to have forgotten that he was shy about that just minutes ago. Another kiss, behind the ear this time. "Be easy, my dear…"

Avrenne looks ready to be thrown off, as she does much the same, pressing a kiss to Siamus' shoulder against the inky blackness of the kraken tattoo, her hand still on Zath's, holding them both to Siamus' chest. Despite the sense of fear in her voice, her hand is the same temperature it was a moment ago. "We're here, Siamus."

He shudders again, more violently this time, and there is a sense that unconsciously he is trying to shake — not them off, but some other imprisonment happening in his mind's vision, behind his eyes, some constraint only he knows. A moment later, he surges half-upright, forcefully enough to cast himself loose of both of them, and grapples with the blankets, choking.

And then the effort is too much and he falls back again, coughing and gasping for breath, his eyes wide and wild.

Avrenne rolls with the movement, letting Siamus move; she loses hold of Zath's hand in the chaos, her grip simply not strong enough to keep it physically.

As soon as Siamus is back down on his back, she makes a soft soothing sound, coming closer, her face showing nothing but calm; how real it is may be up for debate. "Siamus," she says again, gentle and sure, no fear now, or it has been hidden away. It has that sound like she's trying to retether him with the reminder of who he is, or the sound of her voice saying his name. "It's Avrenne. You're alright. You're in bed."

It takes Siamus moments to process; he stares madly at the ceiling and continues to gasp, though after the first few wracking coughs, it has gone oddly soundless: a man drowning in a silent film. He lifts his blanket-hand to clutch at his throat.

Zath, strangely, looks genuinely calm. He places one cold hand on Siamus's cheek.

At the touch of Zath's cold hand he jolts again, startled, and then blinks and turns his head. He stares at Zath, and the electric horror and tension seep away. He closes his eyes, exhales, and then squeezes his eyes closed more tightly. "Burning up," he whispers to Zath. "Need a drink."

Zath looks to Avrenne, the cup-warmer.

Siamus is, objectively, not burning up. He remains cool to the touch despite blankets and bedmates.

Avrenne breathes out a sigh of relief when Siamus speaks. She looks back at Zath. She holds out a hand for a moment, her gaze far. In the other room, a pitcher of cider moves the barest fraction of an inch. She closes her eyes, and there's a brief look of something on her face, as though she's failed at something and she sets a hand to her waist. She is not a powerful mage, and she never has been. She cannot get that pitcher from the other room, no matter that she knows exactly where it is.

"I will be just a moment. I will be back," she says to Siamus, pressing a kiss to his shoulder again, although there's a sense to it as though it's more for her than him, like she thinks maybe he doesn't know she's there. She looks once more at Siamus before she slides out of bed, moving with purpose to the sitting room for the pitcher and a cup for it.

"I must inform you again," Zath says dryly to Siamus, "that you are cold. Your body is lying to you. You need to be warmed, so that your body can properly detect its own temperature once again. You are going to drink warm cider and you are going to relax, and we are going to try to untangle that mess in your mind so that you can get some proper sleep."

Siamus stares at Zath, uncomprehending again. He licks his lips. "No," he whispers. "Burni– " He lifts his own hand to show Zath, looks at it, blinks, knits his brow.

"You see?" says Zath very calmly, as though his lover hallucinating is just a minor annoyance.

Siamus looks back to Zath. He looks a little frightened: this is not making sense.

"You're very ill," Zath explains patiently. "It is causing confusion. You need to do the things that will help you recover, so that your mind will work properly again."

Avrenne pours a cup of cider carefully, and she stares into the cider like it owes her money and she will literally set it on fire if it doesn't cooperate. The temperature rises to a point and then stops. It's warm, but not hot, and not steaming. She returns into the bedroom carrying the cup, her eyes flicking from Siamus, to Zath, back to Siamus. She looks calm and steady. There is nothing fragile about the woman in her gray almost-scout uniform, and she walks with decisive steps to the bed — not to the side she was on, but the side Zath currently is.

"Here," she says as she holds out the teacup full of cider to Zath. "The cider, warmed."

Zath takes the cup and offers it to Siamus. "Can you hold this?" he asks him.

Siamus's glance lifts to Avrenne, surprised, and he turns to look over his shoulder at the place she was lying minutes earlier. There is a definite sense-memory of her, at least, and it isn't entirely clear what has happened in the last few minutes that suddenly she is over here and not there with him.

He takes the cup clumsily from Zath. "Thank ye," he rasps, to one or both of them.

Avrenne's hands clasp together as she watches them for a moment. She smiles at Siamus before she turns, walks around the edge of the bed to the other side. She slips back in under the covers quietly, setting her hand lightly back on Siamus, a steady presence.

Zath stays on standby in case there are Cup Problems, but gives Siamus a chance to drink from it himself.

Siamus lifts the cup to drink. He manages a few sips before his hand starts trembling, perhaps untenably, and he lowers the cup before there is a minor disaster. He stares at the cider. "Fordragon?" he asks the cider in a whisper.

Avrenne settles a little closer, moves her hand up to his hair, fingers stroking a gentle rhythm. It has that sense of someone soothing for comfort. Which may not be, at the moment, comforting for the implication that she knows that it's coming, the information about the Highlord.

"He perished on the field," Zath says calmly, reaching to steady the cup. "Along with thousands of Horde and Alliance troops. Wrathgate was a massacre."

Siamus is wracked by a tremor; cider sloshes onto his hand, but doesn't seem to notice. He closes his eyes. After a moment, he lifts his free hand and puts it over his eyes. "Aye," he whispers. "Sometimes I thought I dreamed — ah."

He takes a deep, ragged breath, his hand still over his eyes. "I beg your pardon. I'd no' meant — I'm sorry. Tides ha'mercy, I'm sorry. Ye must —"

"You have nothing to be sorry about," Zath says in the same calm tone.

Avrenne moves closer, making a soft sound as she keeps up a steady stroking through Siamus' hair.

"Fucking fuss," Siamus whispers almost violently, his tone full of self-loathing. "Ah, what ye must think. A fucking — child."

Another ragged breath, and then he takes his hand carefully from the brace of Zath's to lift the cup again and drink cider. It is a deliberate, nonchalant, I'm fine gesture, except that he still doesn't take his hand from his eyes and the cider in the cup still shivers as he holds it.

"I like children," Zath says quietly. "Especially bright ones who are courageous and beautiful."

Avrenne sets her hand lightly against Siamus' hair while he drinks, that touch like he's precious to her. "We were all children once. Being taken care of means that you have those who care about you," she says.

"I'm — Tides! I'm no' —" Siamus struggles now to push himself forward, away, as if he means to get out of the bed. "I'm no' a fucking child, I'm a man grown and and a bloody officer and marine and – " whatever else he is saying is lost in the rasp, as the rage of his whisper burns it out entirely. He stops where he is, about halfway down the bed, still seated, and folds forward slowly, despairing and furious.

"And you're injured," Avrenne says softly, unafraid of the anger, her hand steady on him. "We all get injured, Siamus, no matter how strong or old we are."

"Illness makes children of us all," Zath says quietly. "The only way to endure the indignity of it is to realize that there is no shame in being a child. Or in being weak. At whatever age. As your wife says, all our lives we will be reduced at times to a childlike state, and such things should be met with compassion, not judgment."

Avrenne sets her hand lightly on Siamus' chest, her eyes dark and warm, without pity. It's love in her eyes, but if a man didn't want to see it, he wouldn't.

"You will be strong again. I promise," Zath says.

Siamus isn't looking; he has folded forward, and now makes the strange gesture Zath has seen from him once before, folding his arm over his head as though hunching from an anticipated blow. "Please," he implores them; it is a whisper-shout, at the last limit of his voice, and still sounds like anger. "Please. I'm no' — don't. There is — there is — the child. Tides ha'mercy on the child, and I must — don't. Fuss. At me."

"What child, Siamus? Whom do you mean?"

"Where is the child, Siamus?" Avrenne asks a moment after.

His bare shoulders convulse. "The girl. Left. In Tiragarde."

Avrenne exhales a faint sigh. "If she is in Tiragarde, then she is likely safe for the moment. And her being left there does not mean that you are not here, needing to heal, and deserve to do so, Siamus."

"Siamus… is she…" Zath looks slightly pale, hesitates, but pushes forward. "… yours?"

Avrenne shakes her head. "No, she isn't," she says with faith and certainty. They have a contract.

Siamus makes a motion that might be a headshake, but it's hard to tell with the shudder of his shoulders. "His," he whispers. "Mercy on the girl, ah, tides forgi'e me. I promised her."

Avrenne presses in closer to embrace him, as though to help with the shudders. She's small enough that she's mostly just a light draping, her hand on his back stroking a line. "What did you promise?"

Zath goes a shade paler. "…Fordragon?" he says. Baffled. Surely not, says his expression.

Siamus nods miserably under the screen of his arm, which is still folded over his bent head. "Little lass. His wee girl. Ah, Tides, I promised — I'd bring — look after —" He is weeping openly now, which is perhaps why he is hunched and shielded the way he is. Do not perceive. Do not.

Avrenne moves fully to him — coaxes with her hands and her body — tries to gently guide him more towards her, a warm embrace, not trying to move his head up, simply into a softer place to land.

"I'm so sorry, Siamus," Zath says, taking full custody of the cup while Avrenne takes custody of the man. "But you must understand, not all promises can be kept. We are not gods, to declare who lives and who dies. This is not your fault. You have done your best by her."

"My word," Siamus rasps raggedly. "A child. I gave my word." He doesn't accept Avrenne's embrace so much as crumple sideways into her. "Sintha."

Avrenne is sturdier than she looks, for all the smallness of her, as she absorbs the crumple, rearranges herself around him, holds him tighter against her now. "One can do all things correctly. Obey every order with honor, hold as fast as one can to every promise one has made. Make every right choice there was to make. And one can still lose. You kept to your conscience and your honor, Siamus. That is enough. That is everything that can be done," she speaks slow and steadily, her hand one more at his hair, stroking through the curls with a gentle touch.

"We are at your side: me, Sintha, Captain Tyrrell. We will not leave the child alone. You know that we won't. We will do everything we can to see that she is taken care of. We cannot bring back the dead to every child who loses their father or their mother, but we can honor them by making sure that their children are cared for.

"'When our soldiers step forward to make what sacrifices they may, they deserve to know that, should the worst befall them, those loved ones whose futures they fight to secure will be secure,'" she says, speaking the words Siamus spoke months ago with complete clarity. They sound a little different in her voice, the Lordaeron accent, but they're his all the same. "She won't be alone, the child. We won't let her be alone."

Siamus had stilled during Avrenne's speech, clearly listening if not unfolding. Her touch in his hair seems to soothe him.

When she is finished speaking, he leans on her in silence for a time, and then whispers in his sandpaper voice, "A little lass wi'out her father. And I must tell her again. And again. Again. And all the fleet burned."

We may be veering back into the mental weeds, here.

"I'll no' stand for it," he whispers brokenly. "A child left."

"Sintha," Zath says softly.

Avrenne's frown appears at the mention of the fleet burned, a look of deep horror for a moment, a thought — how many people did they just lose — but there's another thought, another memory that must intervene because the frown is back as she looks at Zath, a question in her eyes about Siamus' fleet?, but what she says out loud to Siamus is, "We won't stand for it. Of course we won't. I'm here with you, Siamus. We will help her. But, I cannot do that without you. You cannot help her until you heal. And you cannot heal until you let us help you. A partnership," she says softly.

"Sintha," is what Siamus whispers. He may be agreeing with Zath; he may just be repeating himself, trying to make himself clear, remembering something.

"Sintha is a strong and capable woman," Zath says. "All manner of things can happen to children, and they can still grow, and thrive."

Avrenne continues stroking her hand through Siamus' hair, holding her questions only in her eyes for the moment. There's a look of grief across her face, as she looks at something that isn't there, and then pushes it away, focusing back on Siamus.

"We cannot stop terrible things from happening to children, my dear. We can only try our best to make certain they have somewhere to call home, and someone to love them as they suffer through it. Sintha had that. Fordragon's child can, as well."

Siamus is mute, shivering, leaning on Avrenne. "A child," he rasps, grief-stricken.

He unfolds now, pushes himself upright to seated again, and tries with effort to maneuver himself to the foot of the bed as if he means to get out of it, out from between his two guardians.

Avrenne is not a physically strong woman, but she tries to hold him, tries to halt him. "Siamus, please," she says.

Zath also reaches out to stay him, and is… considerably stronger.

Siamus is himself not terribly strong at the moment, and is stayed. He gives a growl of frustration and tries to shake them both off. He is not successful.

Avrenne's touch is gentle, but as implacable as she can make it as she now moves much more insistently for him to be returned to the blankets. There's a touch of something in her at the growl, a tipping up of her chin, of someone expecting to be yelled at, perhaps, and ready to break the wave.

"Where are you going, Siamus? What is it you think you can do now?" Zath remains calm, a man accustomed to being In Charge in mad, chaotic situations.

"Anything!" It would be a shout if he had a voice. "Anything! I'm no bloody use here, am I? I've no' been a bloody use —" He falls back into the blankets. "If I'd been — the wind, if I could —" His face twists and he touches his throat.

"Why is it up to you, Siamus?" Zath says firmly, almost sharply. "Not Fordragon, not Wyrmbane, not me, not any of the other thousands of men who were there? None of them wanted to die, or to watch others die. Is each of them at fault for not stopping it? Or just you? Why just you, Siamus?"

Siamus stares at Zath. This question does not compute.

He repeats himself firmly. "Thousands were present at that massacre, with a thousand different talents, and none of us could stop it. I was there. Should I have stopped it?"

"None of ye," he says finally, slowly, as though explaining, "has a thing to prove. You're great men, you've done great things, you've — none of ye. And I will — I have to prove myself over and over. D'ye see? I haven't — I'm no' — " He continues to stare at Zath. What part of this are you not getting? "And here I am bloody useless."

Avrenne sets her hand on Siamus' chest, as though now trying to feel his heart beat, the draw of breath from his lungs. Her other hand goes back to his hair, stroking softly through his hair, down to his cheek.

"You did what you could have done, Siamus. And you being here, healing, is its own merit. You don't need to do anything beyond ensure that you survive, at this moment. You're alive. You came back to me." Her voice breaks a little, and she steadies it. For a moment, the hand on his chest goes to her waist, a tell of hers. It is also, by coincidence, where she might touch if she were with child, but there are some things Avrenne doesn't know yet. She sets her hand back on him, maybe now to hold him there with what little strength she has. "That is enough, Siamus. You have nothing more to prove. You are an exceptional, loyal soldier of the Alliance. An honorable man, dedicated to your House and your people. You are enough."

"Whose voice would set you at rest?" Zath asks him mildly, thoughtfully, perhaps rhetorically. "To whom have you granted the right to judge you worthy? Clearly your wife's words, and your lover's, are not the words of approval you yearn for. Because those, you already have. Siamus my love - to whom must you prove yourself?"

Siamus touches his throat again helplessly and stares from one of them to the other. "What — have I done? My… fame is…" He pauses, winces like the words are painful, changes tacks. "I ha'e — the blood. And a… duty to it. I couldn't. I couldn't." For a moment his voice deserts him entirely and he chokes on the end of what he might have said.

"The fires came back. And I went —"

He stops talking, drops his head back on the pillow, tries to look at neither of them. This is difficult, considering they're on either side of him, so at last he just shuts his eyes. He looks miserable and, somehow, humiliated.

Avrenne takes the opportunity to try to settle back at his side, to place her head at his shoulder, tuck herself against him.

"The fires at Wrathgate were not the fires on the sea," Zath says gently. "You were not at sea, and the fires were not to harm the living. These fires were a cleansing pyre for the dead. To stop the plague. These were free dragons, allies, not slaves of the orcs. But you did not see that because your eyes were not in the present. They were in the past. Reliving the same nightmare you have again and again and do not understand."

Siamus laughs, a harsh rustle of dry sound, his eyes still closed. "Oh, aye, I understand it well enough. I saw him die, d'ye know? Saw it. All of them."

"I did not," Zath says neutrally. "Because I fled."

Avrenne moves her hand up to Siamus' face, her touch recognizably soft and light. "You saw the Highlord Fordragon die?" She asks, a frown knitting her brow. "Or someone else, Siamus? Who did you see?"

Siamus opens his eyes and looks at Zath and then Avrenne. Is this what we're talking about? Now he's confused again.

"Siamus," Avrenne says. "You saw someone die, before? That is what the nightmare is?"

Zath goes strangely still and silent.

Avrenne's eyes flick to Zath, and then back to Siamus.

He stares at her, black-eyed, still confused. "The Lord Admiral's son," he says. "I saw him fall. Proudmoore." It is still that whisper, the rasping ghost of his own voice, but there is something in the cadence of the phrasing, the way he says it, that makes it sound like a child's confession. "From the mast. The ship — his ship afire."

"He fell, from the mast? Or you saw, from the mast?"

Avrenne nods gently, slowly at him, something comforting in her expression, like a mother with a child hearing the confession, and forgiving it, as she strokes her fingers along his cheek.

Siamus looks at Zath. That is a very complicated question, Zath. He can't seem to get his head around the geometry of it.

"Siamus, were you on the mast, there? You were watching from up high?" Avrenne is not speaking as though to a child. She sounds as she always does when she speaks to him, asking her questions. But her face has that softness to it, her hold on him gentle and warm.

Zath waits for Siamus's answer with the disconcerting air of a man who knows it already.

"Aye?" tries Siamus. Is that the right answer?

Avrenne smiles at him, a small gentle one, nodding again. "You were the lookout? And so you saw everything."

"And you say you saw him fall. Do you mean, he was up high? And fell? Or do you mean, you saw him die?" His voice is a touch gentler now.

Everyone is asking him extremely complicated questions right now and Siamus is tired. He closes his eyes again. "I was — he was, aye. On the mast. The ship caught. He fell and died."

Avrenne makes a soothing sound, stroking her fingers up through into his hair as he closes his eyes.

"Siamus… " Zath turns his hand fingertips up, summoning a small indigo-black sphere with a flickering light at its center. When he speaks again, his voice is very gentle. "Did you fall?"

Avrenne's eyes go to the sphere, then to Zath's face.

Zath's eyes are intent on Siamus, and utterly expressionless.

Siamus opens his eyes and regards Zath, a troubled line between his brows. "No," he says cautiously. "I was wi' the Admiral, aboard the Pride. I saw — him fall. Proudmoore's son."

Siamus might note that Avrenne's hands feel a little warmer on his skin, even if nothing's changed in her face.

"So Proudmoore's son fell before you did?" Zath asks gently. "He fell, and you saw this before you fell?"

Siamus is silent. He thinks. "I was on the Pride," he repeats. "Wi' the Admiral." He lifts his right hand and wraps it around the scar on his left bicep fretfully.

"I fell," he amends carefully, like he's trying the assertion out. "Wi' the halyard. But then I was on the Pride. I saw Derek Proudmoore fall. He died." Again it is that childlike cadence, uncertain, hopeful: is this right?

"The halyard caught your arm… and then you were on the Pride. What was the name of the ship whose mast you fell from?"

Avrenne responds more to the tone than the words, her eyes going to Siamus' bicep, the one he held onto so slightly before. Her hand moves along his arm, her fingers light on his forearm. "It's alright," she says to Siamus, gentle and warm.

Siamus is so deeply bewildered by Zath's line of questioning, and shrinks back into the pillows a little. "The Pride," he repeats doggedly.

Avrenne makes a soothing, soft sound. "You were on the Pride," she echoes. "Siamus."

"The Valley's Pride." His whisper is badly fraying. He licks his lips and looks from one face to another. Neither of them is getting this for some reason. "The Admiral's — flagship. Fallon."

Avrenne makes another soft sound, her eyes on his lips. "I see. Siamus, are you thirsty? Will you try some more to drink?"

He moves his eyes toward Avrenne without turning his head and regards her. That, it seems, was also a bewildering question. After a moment he nods haltingly. Was that the right answer?

Avrenne smiles gently at him, a soft mother's smile, stroking her hand along his arm. She looks calm, serene and steady. She's just there with him, a fixed point in his vision.

"So the Pride sailed on without its mast, then? The mast you were on, as lookout. The mast that fell."

Siamus turns his gaze back to Zath and stares. That obviously makes no sense at all. Why is Zath not following this?

Avrenne flicks her eyes to Zath as she holds out a hand for the teacup. "May I have the cider, Captain?"

"You said you were on the Pride when you fell, hm?" He hands Avrenne the cup, eyes still on Siamus. "And the mast fell with you. But then you were on the Pride, and you saw Derek Proudmoore fall."

Siamus is bewildered. He puts his hand in his hair and looks between them, his expression strained. "Aye," he whispers, barely.

Avrenne takes the cup, looks down into the contents, and the temperature rises once more. She brings it to Siamus, holding it closer to his lips. "I see. Here. This will help," she says with such soothing confidence. "Drink some for me?"

Zath watches them both for a moment.

Siamus reaches clumsily for the cup, doesn't take it from Avrenne — his hold may not be enough at the moment — but guides it so that he can drink. He takes three swallows and then sits back, sinking down against the pillows. He puts his hand over the scar on his arm again and stares at the ceiling.

"Siamus," Avrenne says, as she holds onto the cup, sitting up enough to stroke her hand through his hair. "Are you tired?"

"Can you rest, now?" Zath says gently. "If we stay here, will you know you are safe?"

"Aye," Siamus's mouth shapes without sound. His eyelids sink closed. He continues to hold his own arm, but not with the panicked claw-grip of last night.

Zath lets the soulstone in his hand vaporize, that near-invisible thread returning to its source.

Avrenne turns, sets the cup on the nightstand with a reach that only just barely makes it with her short arms, and turns back to Siamus. "We're here." She returns her hand to his hair, starting up a rhythm. As before, she sings the song of the sea — her voice once again strong, with that sweet darkness to it, as soft as she can make it.

Zath listens to her, his eyes on Siamus, his expression inscrutable.

After a time, when Siamus appears to be asleep, he says quietly without looking at Avrenne, "I caught myself — just in time — falling into the same fallacy that has driven Siamus half mad with guilt over a man who died among thousands who also failed to save him."

Avrenne's hand still moves through Siamus' hair, but it's very slow now. He doesn't need a comb at least while she's around for the moment. She looks over at Zath, her expression that same gentleness. "The same fallacy?" She prompts. She might know it already, but she may simply be giving him an opening to speak more on it himself.

"That because I care for him, it must be me that leads him out of this darkness. That it must be now, when he has lived in it and with it for twenty years, and through more lovers than I can likely count."

Avrenne sighs, her hand still moving. "Sometimes it takes more than a single step to come out of the darkness. A step towards you now. Another tomorrow. Another step another day," she says, her voice warm. There's nothing of the cool Duchess he's known of her before here. "And those lovers were not you, and they were not me. We will shine brighter, so he knows where to go."

She pauses. "You know something." It's not an accusation; it's a soft observation. "You were certain that he fell, even when he was not. And you knew that his story did not make sense. He is either confused now, or he was confused then as a child. I'm familiar with both. My ward, Otto, does not remember things the same way Isla does, though they were both at the same place, at the same time, and he older. I do not think his version is the right one. It doesn't make sense." She sighs. "So, will you tell me what it is that you know, Captain?"

"I will not," he says gently.

Avrenne closes her eyes, and then opens them. She doesn't seem surprised, or hurt. "Very well." She traces the line of Siamus' brow down his face. "If I had to guess, I would think that something terrible happened to him that day. That he fell from the mast of another ship, something that left a scar on his arm. You know this, but he's either lost that knowledge now, or he lost it then."

She continues gently across Siamus' cheek, tracing the line of his beard. "He fell, and something went very wrong. A head wound, perhaps. A loss of memory, until all he recalls is the other ship, where they've become one now. But if you know this, and he does not now, it is because he's either confused at this moment and spoke to you of it more clearly before, or you spoke to someone else who knows the truth of it, someone else who was on the ship who would remember it better than a ten-year-old boy." She nods a little. The math looks pretty good. She's got an estimation, if she's off on several points, and missing a conclusion that is possibly too horrifying for her to contemplate.

She exhales. "I will do what I can. Children are not always as resilient as people hope they are. Sometimes," she says as grief flickers on her face. "They just become better at hiding when they've been hurt, shining brighter so people won't look at what's been wounded. And it lingers rather than heal, for the hiding."

For some reason, Zath tugs absently at the cuff of one of his sleeves.

"I suppose you will not rest until you find it out, until there is nothing of his I possess that you do not. You shall have all I have of him… plus his name, his home, his gold, his future, his children, and a plot beside him in the earth."

"You do not need to keep pieces of him, secrets or hidden things, to divide up," Avrenne says quietly. "I do not have more of him. He's always all of himself." She continues her tracing of Siamus' face. "And would you not have only some of what he will have of me. Am I worth less to you, for not being able to give you what I would give a husband?" She sounds sadder, resigned as though ready to hear the affirmative. "For being nothing but a woman."

"It is not that either of you are less." He keeps his voice incongruously low and soothing, so as not to disturb Siamus. "I am the one who must skulk at the edges of your full life together, grateful for whatever scraps you may throw me and obliged to surrender to its rightful owner anything I may have thought was his and mine… or yours and mine."

Avrenne makes a soft sound. "I do not think it need be so," she says. "And I think you picture a very different life than the reality, Captain. That 'full life' of ours will sometimes contain distances, long months of separation; he will be at sea, and I will be at home." There's no sorrow in it, no resentment, just a simple contented surety. "He will always come back. And that is all I ask of him. That is all I would ask of you. That you do not leave me in truth, no matter how far you go, how long an absence stretches, or how many other lovers you take, that you remain tethered to me still.

"There is no ownership. He does not own me, and I do not own him. What you have with him is something on its own, as is mine. It's not pieces. I do not want you because there is something lacking in him. I want you for you as you are, because of who you are.

"There will always be things that are different between each of us, I expect." For some reason she smiles, and it's a little sad and happy at the same time, looking down at Siamus with soft eyes before she turns her face to Zath. "After all, he does not love me."

"How do you know?"

"Beyond that he has never spoken the words? That he has told me repeatedly that he is not a man of sentiment, that there is none such feeling in our marriage? That he has described to me what such a woman he could not resist might be like, and I fall short of her, an ideal that I could not be, for half of it is in the past that I cannot reach, and the rest is in the present that lacks the rest?" Avrenne looks back at Siamus, smiling gently at him in sleep.

"Surely you are not so surprised, Captain. Don't you have your own ideal, to which I will never quite measure, the Lady Cressidha? Young, beautiful, unscarred, the third daughter of a thriving, influential House so that she need never concern herself with the taint of politics, free to choose to do whatever she wishes with her own life, to marry or not as she wills with the full benefits of her station, a powerful mage of ice who can save the world with her own two hands. All that I am no longer or never was." She doesn't sound envious, or resentful. There's an acceptance to her; these are just the facts, presented as they are.

"I have never been that sort of woman, to inspire such depth of feeling in anyone — love. I thought, once, that I did, and I rested my future on that, to find that a single week was all it took to forget me in the arms of another." There's a flicker of pain there still, but it's brief and gone.

"How tremendous this man must have been, that you base your entire self-worth upon his wretched little opinion, while I am meant to believe I am worthy despite two decades' worth of rejection… including your own. Twice."

"Mr. Green kept after me for three years, without a single scrap of hope. His devotion seemed complete," Avrenne explains. "He was the only one who was ever different. All the others, no matter how they declared themselves, the moment my marriage was removed as an option, whether by my hand or my father's, they lost all interest. I was nothing if they could not have my marriage. Mr. Green was rejected on his first approach — he proposed to me out of nowhere, having seen me from afar, and I knew neither who he was nor believed his sentiment. But he persisted, and after three years, I finally thought I was convinced of his feeling."

She shakes her head, her hair moving gently around her face. "But I do not think, in the end, I ever truly believed him. Some part of me doubted, must have. Because I knew the difference when I signed that contract with Siamus; I could feel it. I knew that it was as good as being married at that moment, with nothing but a formality left to finalize it. I knew Siamus would die before he broke his word to me, more true than sentiment of feeling could be, to hold himself to his honor. I never trusted Mr. Green so, not in all the time I knew him. I think I always expected that he would stop loving me."

Avrenne looks back at Zath. "There are no others. No other man has ever declared his love for me, nor acted in such a way. I have had dozens of suitors, and not a single one wanted the woman. And I realized that this was for the best. That in the end, a man of honor and loyalty will outlast all else."

"And I never saw you as a prize or a continuation of my Line; I saw you as a person. At first a maddening one, then an intriguing one, and very briefly an endearing one before you became maddening again, then vanished. I do not even know you, and now I never shall, because something tells me that as much as the Lord Fallon enjoys being shared, he will not feel so generous about sharing you."

"It's in our contract. In writing — and they were his original terms, not one I added — that after the wedding, I would be permitted lovers, with the caveat that I do not catch child by any other man, and that is to do with another concern altogether," Avrenne says, her brows raising. "Does that sound like a man who will hold his wife as a possession?"

"He wrote that contract before he knew you." Zath lowers his voice even further. "Before he knew the fit of your waist in his hands, the glow of your smile, the music of your laughter… and a great many other things about you I shall likely never know that please his other senses. So while he may hold to the contract by the letter, I believe he will hold it bitterly."

Avrenne brushes her hand across Siamus' chest, tracing along to the tattoo, drawing circles at the curves. "I will ask him. And he will tell me honestly. But I do not think he will say no, not on my behalf at least. I am not certain he will wish to share you, but I do not know your arrangement with him."

Zath laughs softly. "He liked the look of me and failed to find me intimidating. So he approached. He has bedded me at every reasonable opportunity since then. There was no need for //arrangements //."

"Then it is possible that you will find yourself setting terms, Captain," Avrenne says quietly. "He looked for you when you were not there. His eyes tracked you through the room; he whispered your name when he could speak. He feels far more for you than an interest in bedding you."

Zath's eyes close briefly. When he opens them, his expression is once again inscrutable. "Not at first, certainly. Not after a week," he adds pointedly. "But… yes, something… shifted, I think, the last time or two we —" He shakes his head. "Ah, my lady, do not feed my delusion, sweet as it is." He smiles wryly. "We should rest, hm?"

"I am not one for delusions of sentiment, to try to see something where there is nothing. And I think that Siamus and I are quite often in accord, with similar opinions, and I think on this subject we once more agree," she says as she looks at Zath, a soft emotion in them. "You should rest, Captain. I will be here with you both."

"You rest as well, my lady," Zath says a little drowsily as he settles down on Siamus's other side. "And next time… I get the side with the tattoo."

"I did not fight in a terrible battle yesterday, dear Captain, and I slept quite well last night for all that came before," Avrenne says, leaning over to reach out to Zath's hair, as much as she can anyway, to brush it back. "And you may have the other side, if you wish."

"Mm, let's not wake him by shifting about," he murmurs. "Bad enough we have been arguing over his stunning unconscious body like a married couple…" He yawns softly. "Without any of the benefits…." He trails off drowsily.

Avrenne laughs, a low warm sound that unfurls from her like a sweet pull of a blanket over them both, as she does just that a moment later, tucking the blankets more securely around both Siamus and Zath. She sits upright on Siamus' other side, watching over them both as the morning passes.

At some point during their rest, a mostly-asleep Zath turns over toward Siamus and spoons effortlessly against his side. The gesture is so habitual and tender that if Avrenne had not already heard his confession it would serve as one.

Siamus, still decidedly and deeply asleep, takes his hand from his own arm to rest it on Zath like a reassurance; whether his unconscious has him reassuring Zath or whether his hand seeks the other man's familiar shape to reassure himself isn't obvious. Whynotboth.gif

His sleep is not troubled by further disturbance, but as before his face is not the slack and peaceful expression of a man at easy rest, but the pale, tight lines of someone who has been dragged into sleep by sheer exhaustion despite pain or terrible unease.

Avrenne remains awake, her hand in Siamus' hair, stroking through it. She touches his brow, as if trying to smooth it out, reach into him and remove what has hold of him. Having no such power, she sighs, leans over to press a gentle kiss to his forehead, cheek, and mouth. And then she slips out from the covers, rearranging them around Siamus as if to erase her absence, before leaving the bedroom to seek out Sintha in the sitting room to work out the logistics of a Commodore down and out for the count for the moment in the wake of a massive military failure.

As Avrenne slips out from under the covers Zath wakes, but his usual eyes fly wide open instantly moment happens just as she is leaning to kiss Siamus's forehead, so she doesn't see it, and his body is otherwise still. He immediately closes his eyes again, feigning sleep, perhaps to give them some privacy? Perhaps in hopes of tempting her to do or give away something intimate under the assumption that she and her husband are "alone"? Who knows. But his eyes remain closed until she is on her way out of the room.

Then he just lies where he was when he woke, curled slightly into Siamus's side, his eyes open now. Inscrutable thoughts brew behind his iceberg eyes. Eventually he checks Siamus's apparent body temperature with one hand.

Siamus stirs at that, the familiar cool touch; he is warm enough, no longer Zath-cool himself. His breath still rasps from time to time, and there is an occasional, shallow, raw-sounding rattle in his chest, but he doesn't seem to be in the same respiratory distress he was before the dwarf priest's visit.

He turns his head and opens his eyes. Paradoxically, it's only now on waking that his expression does the thing it should have during sleep: lines ease, his face smooths and is younger, gentler. He smiles drowsily at Zath, heavy-lidded.

Zath gazes back at him inscrutably. Then leans over to place a kiss between his brows. Then gazes at him inscrutably some more.

Siamus's smile widens for a moment, a little dreamily, and his eyes drift shut again. Then open. He stirs, turns his head, considers the empty place on his other side. He lifts his head from the pillow and looks around the room.

"It's all right," Zath says quietly. "She's just gone into the sitting room to talk with your sister for a while. Sadly we won't be able to fully eavesdrop, but if you listen carefully you might be able to catch the honeyed, soothing tones of your wife's voice through the wall." It is very unclear if he's being sarcastic or not. One would assume sarcasm, but his gentle tone lops off a few points from that side of the scale.

Siamus's head falls back to the pillow and his shoulders relax. He lifts his hand to drag it through his hair, turns to gaze at Zath again. "How long?" he whispers. "Was I asleep?"

"Yes, and not long. You were… confused again for a while. Lost in the past." A cool thumb traces the shape of one of Siamus's brows.

Siamus closes his eyes with a wince. He is not wincing at Zath's touch; he turns his head further in Zath's direction.

"I'm sorry," he whispers at last. "Tides forgi'e me."

A tear slides from between his lashes again and now he turns to face the ceiling again, eyes still closed.

Zath lays a cold hand against his wet cheek. "For what, my dear?" he asks softly.

"I'm no' — this," whispers Siamus, and there is that channel of contempt, self-loathing running through it again. He puts his hand over his eyes, the repeated effort he makes to conceal their inconvenient leaking. "I don't know what's — happened. Ye shouldn't see — neither of ye should see. Tides, Avrenne must ha'e some regrets, aye?"

"Not a one," Zath says decisively. "In fact, I believe that while she would give various limbs to see you whole and healthy again, there is a part of her that relishes the chance to watch over and assist you, to prove her worth to you as a partner. You have known her long enough — and well enough — to see this in her by now, surely? That she would not know what to do with herself if all were secure and peaceful?"

Siamus takes this in silently, and doesn't answer it. Instead, after a moment, he asks in an even thinner rasp, "And you? I'm being a bloody child, Captain, will ye not shake me and snap me from it?"

"I was advised that shaking you could be perilous at this juncture," Zath says smoothly.

Siamus manages the quirk of a sour smile at that.

At length he whispers, "I've been a soldier all my life, Zath. I was raised to it. And I swear to ye, I've never" — he lifts his hand from his eyes and considers his wet fingers with frank loathing — "been a bloody child."

This may mean more than he intended it to mean.

He stirs in the bed, shifts and attempts to prop himself upright, surveys the distance between the bed and the bathroom. "Will ye give me an arm?" he whispers. "Someone's been making me drink things."

Zath nods and attempts to help Siamus up. Despite his default toward frosty dignity, there is an air about him that suggests he has experience assisting people with all manner of undignified things.

"And you should drink more, when you return. But I shall wait for your wife to return rather than warm the cup myself; I would hate to deny her the obvious pleasure she takes in self-abuse."

Siamus manages to lever himself out of the bed with Zath's aid. He is unsteady on his feet, whether from the long stretch in the bed or from illness and weakness. He seems, for potentially the first time in his life, to feel slightly self-conscious about his nudity, and looks around for something to cover himself with. He reaches back to drag a blanket from the bed and wrap it over his shoulders, then shuffles toward the bathroom.

Zath assists both in keeping him steady and in keeping the blanket tucked firmly around him. He opens the door for Siamus, then ushers him through. He also follows him in. Yep. This is happening.

Siamus pauses just inside the door and gives Zath a slightly incredulous look.

Zath gives him a look that clearly says, deal with it.

"I may be a bloody child right now," Siamus whispers dryly, "but I am a toilet-trained one."

As there is clearly no point in being self-conscious at this juncture, he takes the blanket off and drapes it over Zath's shoulder to hold. If you're gonna be here, be a coat-hanger, buddy. He shuffles for the toilet.

The business of the cider having been addressed, he moves to the basin and turns the water on icy-cold to scrub his hands, forearms, face. He peers at his own reflection in the mirror, rakes wet fingers through his hair. "Tides ha'mercy," he whispers, and bends to splash water on his face again like he can rinse away whatever he just saw. When he straightens, he avoids the mirror this time, and moves straight back to Zath to collect the blanket.

Then, very slowly, he seems to sort of tip gently over, and leans heavily against Zath, just standing.

"And now you see why I am here," Zath says dryly, wrapping his arms around Siamus. He presses a kiss to his hair. "Now back to bed and have some cider. We'll try warm broth next, perhaps, if you manage to drink all of it. The sooner you recover the sooner I shall be allowed to fuck you senseless." He says this in the same even, patient tone he has been using all along.

Siamus still doesn't move for a moment. He lifts his own arms — a little awkward, for the blanket — and wraps them around Zath in turn, and continues to stand there.

After a moment, though, he gathers himself, straightens, and begins the reverse journey toward the bed. "Aye, something to look forward to," he whispers, still dryly. He probably doesn't mean warm broth.

Zath assists him, one corner of his mouth tilted upward in a sly smile.

The door to the bedroom opens, and for a moment framed within it is a Figure. A rectangle within the rectangle, if you will. There is something in her bearing that suggests some sort of person of power, a General or an Admiral, perhaps, of whatever particular flavor is called to mind when the thought of someone of such presence is invoked. Without another to give the scale of her, she seems larger, dressed as though she would be heading out any moment now to some battlefield, in that dark gray cloth and leather, her weapons not entirely concealed with her hands ungloved, and currently at her side rather than clasped in front of her. Her head is held up high and shoulders squared, as though she's recently had to put it on to Deal With Things.

She looks first to the bed — a fleeting look of something on her face — before her eyes flick to the movement of the two men and there's both relief and that same exact light up of her expression as she sees Siamus as though nothing at all has changed. The sense of power is tucked back away, softens and warms into Avrenne, striding forward to Siamus and Zath with the clear intent to help Siamus on his other side, her hand held out to him.

"Siamus." It's still only his name, but it has all the sense of a term of deepest endearment.

Siamus freezes, for a single belated moment, like a cornered hare. And then he does sort of the inverse of what Avrenne just did: he seems to straighten, squares his shoulders, is restored to his proper height and easy, amiable Presence. Only Zath can feel, from the way Siamus's lean on him becomes momentarily heavier, that the effort costs.

He gives Avrenne that smile, the glinting, sardonic look. "Lady Blanche."

He does allow her to assist, though he manages to make it a slightly ironic-feeling gesture, as though they are playing a game where she squires him for once, ha ha please yes let me take your arm. He continues to put most of his weight on Zath as he returns to the bed.

Avrenne's expression almost freezes for a second, goes veiled at the putting on of his own mask for her, but she makes it look more natural a moment later, as though there is nothing wrong at all, a soft look there. She assists with the return, her hands steady on his, if lacking in physical strength.

"He's still not as warm as he ought to be, hm?" Zath observes to Avrenne, a rare moment of treating her as though they are collaborating on a thing, bearers of Shared Knowledge.

"Mm." Avrenne looks at Siamus' face, her hand touching his skin moving slightly as though in agreement, evaluating. "Do you still feel too warm, or do you feel cold?"

"I feel," whispers Siamus, and considers a moment, "perfectly ordinary."

This is absolutely false, and a moment later, weakness and current exertion plus chill expose the fact when he shivers. For a moment, his expression goes bleak and bitter: bloody betrayed by his own body. Then it wipes clean and he gives a dry, ironic laugh. "Ah, or no'."

"Siamus, you need to stop that." He is sharp as hell, suddenly. "Healers cannot treat patients who lie to them. Put aside your fucking pride so we can help you and you can get on with your life. Are. You. Cold."

Siamus closes his eyes briefly. He nods once.

"All right. Believe it or not, that is good."

Avrenne's body temperature rises, a wash of very soft, gentle warmth coming from her, not enough to be alarming, just that sense that someone's turned the heater on in the room. "Here, let us get you back into bed. I can get you something warm to drink." She is not likely going to be the one able to fully move him into the bed, and so she moves a little from his side to the teacup on the nightstand to pick it up.

"And you," he says sharply to Avrenne. "Stop panicking at every little thing. He feels cold because his body is now doing the things that it must do to raise his temperature on his own. Shivering, goosebumps, all of that. His body now realizes its temperature is low and is doing the things it ought to do. Relax and get him the damned cider."

"I am not panicking, I assure you, Captain," Avrenne says calmly back, no answering sharpness in her voice but the way she looks over at him, in her eyes a small warning — she is not one of his unit to be commanded is the reminder — before she softens again. "This is nothing I do not do to save on heating costs in the winter. I am a mage." There's something, a faintest edge of vulnerability in her voice there, swiftly shoved far, far away as she continues. "And I am familiar with hypothermia. House Esprit lands were up in the high mountains of Lordaeron, as you might recall. There were some cases every year."

"Of course, I keep forgetting that you know everything about everything," he says coolly. "I shall leave everything to the expert. My life will be very dull now, with nothing to do."

Siamus continues resignedly to shiver as he clambers back into the bed, shedding his blanket on the way. He manages to arrange himself again and then looks between the two of them.

Avrenne's expression grows stiffer, as though concealing a flinch, as she tips her chin up, and warms the cider by looking at it with concentration in her eyes.

"Thank ye," rasps Siamus, watching her, as though trying to smooth something over. He looks from her to Zath again. Don't fight, Mom and Dad.

Zath catches the look. He turns to Avrenne and very visibly rearranges some inner stuff. "I apologize," he says.

"For what, Captain?" Avrenne says, and she holds out the cider to Siamus with a soft smile. "There is nothing to apologize for. Siamus, are you feeling up to trying to eat?"

Siamus leans back on the pillows. He closes his eyes for a moment; hopefully no one is looking at him. Whew.

Oh shit, Avrenne was looking at him.

"I could eat," he acknowledges, and reaches for the cider cup. His hands are slightly unsteady again, but not disastrously so, just enough to ripple the surface of the cider as he clasps the cup.

"We could start with– " Zath stops. Makes a slightly deferring gesture to Avrenne.

Avrenne doesn't let go of the cup entirely, balancing it below with a steadying hand, though simply following Siamus' movements to allow him to bring it to his mouth on his own power. "With what, Captain?" She asks, her eyes on Siamus.

Siamus manages a few swallows of the cider. It takes concentration.

"There is some bone broth down in the kitchen. Not particularly delicious but it should be very strengthening. He's had nothing but sugar since we brought him back."

"Perfect," Avrenne says, to either Zath's information or perhaps to Siamus drinking; maybe both. "I can see to it, unless you would prefer to do so, Captain?" She reaches out a hand to brush through Siamus' hair, and her body temperature lowers back down to her regular now that he's back in bed, blankets able to be secured around him. The room is only a little warmer than it was before, and it will likely fade quickly without the continuing source.

Zath surveys her a moment, closely watching her face as she caresses Siamus's hair. "I shall bring it up," he says.

There doesn't seem to be anything different in her expression from before, a gentle warmth to her, affection and caring left to be obvious on her features, something motherly in her bearing. But how much of it has been deliberately set there, how much there might be something underneath of her own personal feelings of someone curled up protectively over her own thoughts might be speculated about, even if there is no obvious proof of it.

"As you'd like, Captain," she acknowledges. Her eyes flick to his, holding for a moment. She gives him his own softer smile, perhaps gratitude, perhaps just something because she's looking at him, but this smile it seems truly is his and not simply a residual from how she looked at Siamus.

He moves toward her and for a moment it seems that in his distraction and weariness he is instinctively going to… give her a goodbye kiss on the cheek or forehead or … ??? His trajectory and body language seem very much that. But as he gets closer something clicks and he shifts, turns it into a Grateful But Soldierly Hand On Shoulder, and then he turns to go.

Siamus releases the cider cup to Avrenne's custody and settles back to watch Zath go.

He flicks a glance up at her, looking weary and chagrined, now that Zath has explained he is not allowed to play pretend. "Thank ye, Avrenne." It is a very soft whisper, and for a moment he closes his eyes under her touch in his hair.

Avrenne sets the cup back down, moves closer, resting her other hand against his cheek with that light touch. "You're welcome." There's a depth of feeling in her voice, warm and comforting, without pity. She pauses, seeming to just regard him for a moment. "It may be helpful to have someone there still with you beneath the covers to generate more body heat." It's only information presented gently, not a request.

He shifts over and lifts the corner of the blankets, indicating welcome. He also considers her outfit. He is still Siamus.

Avrenne's outfit might, shockingly now, contain some sort of underthings on her upper body, a shirt beneath the long sleeved one that contains some sort of brassiere. Weird.

She smiles at him, a touch of that sweetness that is currently on the Forbidden Activities list that might be nothing more than a habit begun after a week of honeymoon. But, perhaps very oddly, she walks around the bed to the other side to slide into the bed with familiarity, moving into her favored position to set her head on his shoulder (now the one without the tattoo) and hand on his chest.

Siamus looks briefly confused by the switch, but that's okay, he is confused about a bunch of shit the last couple of days. He rearranges the blankets on the side he'd offered, and tucks his arm around her where she rests now. "I'm sorry," he says in that thin sandpaper whisper. "To — give ye so much trouble, already."

"Siamus, surely you must know by now how much I like your trouble," Avrenne says, and there's only the lightest of touches of humor to it, with a far deeper sense of, well, he can call it fondness, if he wants. "Borrowed or given. And this, this is not trouble. I told you, didn't I? That I am always at your side, always, vow witnessed before her: 'through the calm and the storm.'"

Siamus lifts his gaze to the ceiling a moment because his eyes have been doing some fucken weird stuff lately and his allergies are on some kind of spree, and he doesn't like to be delicate indelicate in front of a lady.

He exhales, nods, looks down at her again, his dark eyes solemn. "You're a good girl." Woop no that was reflex, not here, Siamus, rephrase. "You're a good woman, Avrenne. I'm blessed, aye? And obliged to ye."

Please don't divorce me for being a baby.

Oh, there's that touch of a blush at the phrase — welcome to classical conditioning Avrenne — but she blinks a few times (not here, Avrenne, goodness). The smile she turns on him is a glow, something radiant in it, reminiscent of a wedding day several weeks past as she reaches her hand from his chest to his face to touch his cheek.

"There's no obligation between partners, Siamus." Ignore that thread of a sultry tone, Siamus. She can't help it. "I'm so glad you're alive." Oh dear, that's another kind of blinking. But it's gone as she deepens the smile instead.

He smiles back at her smile, bends his head to kiss her forehead, her eyebrow, lifts a hand to tip her chin up gently and kiss her lightly.

Avrenne, for once, doesn't let it go any further, returning the kiss very gently, and letting it break before it can go places. She kisses his cheek in return, breathing in deeply as though he smells wonderful — and it may be simply just a matter of opinion there. "Are you warm enough, or should I make it a little warmer until it evens out a bit more?"

"Warm enough now," he reassures her. "Warmer wi' broth, I expect. How long since I ate?" The passage of time is extremely muddy right now.

Avrenne shakes her head a little, the smile fading slowly and naturally into a soft expression. "I'm not certain, but at least nothing at all since sometime yesterday evening after 7pm, when I arrived. I would expect, if you assembled at the assault that morning, that you have not eaten for a full day."

There is another shiver at the mention of the assault, for a moment his eyes — no, no, he's fine. "Ah," he says, and tries to clear his throat. It doesn't work, and sounds uncomfortable.

After a moment he says, "I may… ha'e to sail to Tiragarde. If they'll allow."

Avrenne's hand travels to his hair again, stroking through it in soothing, almost coaxing movements. "Of course. Is there anything I might do to assist with it?"

He closes his eyes, and weary lines set in his expression again. "No," he says. "No, it's mine. Ta and I will manage it." He opens his eyes and gazes bleakly straight ahead.

Avrenne studies his face for a moment, and there's an exhale that isn't quite a sigh. "Very well. Whatever you decide to do, I will support you in it, Siamus. I will be there at your side, even while I hold your place back home."

He nods. After a moment, he tilts his head sidelong and rests it atop hers.

Avrenne still has that sweet scent of lotus to her, someone who bathed just the evening before, and did not go through either battle or horrible nightmares, and she settles herself as close to Siamus as she can get herself, holding onto him in companionable silence, as though just listening to him breathe.

He inhales deeply, still with that uncomfortable rasp. "Ye sang to me?" he asks, like he's not entirely clear whether that was a thing or maybe like the time he dreamed he was on a LEGO ship with a bear.

"Yes," she answers. "Would you like me to again?"

He is silent for several long moments. "I can't," he says, the whisper fraying in the middle. He does another attempted throat-clear, tries again. "I can't sing." He keeps his head resting on hers, so they she isn't looking at him. It is important that nobody look at him right now.

"I know. It's normal. Your throat will be sore for a while yet." Avrenne strokes her hand along his chest. She's silent for a moment, perhaps lost in a moment of memory herself.

Louder but gently, encouraging, she says, "Right now you might feel like you cannot sing, but you will again, I promise. This is only temporary. And the more you let it rest, the sooner it will come back. I can sing for the both of us until then."

She really isn't capable of being truly quiet as she sings, not with the training she received to learn how to project across an entire opera house, but this is as soft as she goes, her voice dark and warm, as she sings to him again.

Siamus closes his eyes. It looks neither like sleep nor soothing. The lines of his expression are etched deeper now, pulled taut by what looks like grief.

Avrenne holds onto him, singing with a depth of feeling to her voice that gives the words their own nuanced meaning — this is not a song to still the sea sung in her voice at this moment. It's a love song, a song of an embrace and a holding. She makes the mistake of looking up at him as she comes to words Mo ghrá, and at the look there, her voice whispers out, the song halting.

Siamus doesn't stir for several moments; it seems to occur to him only belatedly that the song has stopped. He lifts his head and looks down at her. "Thank ye," he says again.

Avrenne's eyes are on his face, and it's unclear if that's her true expression or a mask of it, warm and motherly, as she brushes her fingers along his hair again. "Should I sing something else? A song you don't know?" It's an offer. "Or do you want to rest a little longer before Captain Tyrrell returns?"

"Ah, it's no' the song, the song was perfect," he whispers lightly, for whatever version of that strained rasp can be considered 'light.' "You're no' troubling my rest, pet." He glances toward the door. "I was only thinking when Tyrrell's back and I've had some broth, I might have a shave and a wash. I'm feeling… untidy." He smiles wryly down at her.

This is definitely not what he was thinking, unless hygiene and grooming are an incredible strain on his emotional reserves. It is also entirely possible, to judge by the way he holds a cup of cider, that Siamus Fallon is not capable of his own razor-facilitated grooming right now, but let the man fantasize.

"You may not be able to hold a razor just yet," Avrenne says gently. Sorry, Siamus, she's familiar with shaking hands, and she's a crusher of fantasies, apparently. "But I am certain Captain Tyrrell will be able to assist with it, if you would like."

Zath can be heard entering the main door to the sitting room, and after a moment he passes through the bedroom doorway, carrying a tray with a steaming bowl and a spoon.

"They've made it too bloody hot again," he says. "I would let it sit a few moments." He goes to set the tray on the nightstand, then surveys the two of them calmly, fingertips idly stroking his silver-touched beard.

Siamus looks up at Zath as he enters and some of the strain in his face eases again. He doesn't seem to register the words properly, only the man.

Avrenne's head turns at the sound, and she smiles at Zath, her gaze flicking to the tray and the bowl as he mentions the over-hot state of it.

Avrenne is, this time, on the non-tattoo side of Siamus.

Zath gives her a strange smile, then lets his gaze include both of them again. "No need to rise yet," he says, smile lingering as he leans over to kiss Siamus's forehead and then, his smile turning briefly downright devilish, just as casually kiss Avrenne's, as though they were his twin infants napping in a crib. He then straightens and turns to inspect the soup.

Avrenne's eyes flick up to Zath's when he kisses her forehead, a little wider for a moment — surprise, rather than fear — before her expression gentles in a warmer smile.

Siamus knits his brow a moment, and then it smooths and his shoulders ease another degree. Wow, Zath, really making an effort there, proud of you. "I can," he observes sardonically, "drink hot soup."

"Not according to the priest who spoke to me."

Siamus lifts his eyes skyward in an expression remarkably reminiscent of one of his sister's. His expression says transparently that he is confident this was a Light-priest.

"It may hurt your throat more as well," Avrenne says on Team Zath solidarity of persuasiveness. "Warm is better. And the priest surely knows their business with healing, and how to get you well as quickly as possible."

"When your body temperature is back to normal, you may eat whatever you like." His gaze flicks slyly toward Avrenne. Get the joke this time, Siamus, c'mon.

Siamus eyes Zath uncertainly. He cracks like 27% of a smile, his eyebrow drawing down in an …eh? sort of way.

Avrenne does not blush. She looks back at Zath with an almost Siamus-like bland expression. Ahem.

Zath will take what he can get. He nods in a very dignified way. "Anything else I can get for either of you?"

Siamus lifts a hand to rub his slightly-disheveled jawline. "Lady Fallon says," he says dryly, "that I am no' to shave myself, either. If ye'd like to have custody of my dignity again at some point."

"There is nothing I would enjoy more. In the meantime, should I strip down and get under the blankets with you?" He is surely trying to get a rise out of one or both of them now.

Siamus raises his eyebrows and visibly — if unseriously — considers this prospect. Now there is the flicker of a sly smile. He is not quite well enough for a rise, however, sorry.

Oh, dear. Is that a challenge? Avrenne just looks back at Zath with a slight tilt to her chin, and a look in her eyes as she raises both brows and flicks her gaze down and up again. It's almost a dare, as if calling his bluff.

Siamus drops his head back wearily on the pillows.

Zath, who was clearly expecting Avrenne to clutch her pearls or get the vapors, falters. He looks to Siamus. "Do you need some quiet while the soup cools?"

Avrenne flicks her eyes back to Siamus, studying him as though looking at a formula she knows but hasn't quite solved mentally just yet.

"Will company startle the soup?" Siamus asks dryly, without lifting his head. He pinches the bridge of his nose and then drops his hand to offer Zath a smile. "Will the soup bide if I have a shave meantime?"

Siamus, it should be noted, does not look like he would survive another upright shuffle immediately.

"I am honored that you trust me to groom your magnificence," Zath says dryly. "I shall do my utmost to ensure you do not end up looking like an ominous warlock. But I think it is a bit soon for that; you are clearly fatigued. Try to be patient."

"Are there any portable basins that might make it easier, after some food and rest?" Avrenne asks it genuinely — she doesn't know Wintergarde's set up for shaving amenities. She doesn't shave her beard.

"I could go to the barracks and fetch some things that would suit, as well as my own brush and soap." He seems somewhat reluctant, however, about something in there.

"I have my kit," Siamus whispers hoarsely. He had brought with him, for his stay at Wintergarde, his shaving kit bag and a couple of tidy changes of clothes. He is a gentleman. He lifts a hand to point wearily at a bureau, where all of these items have been stashed in a neat row in a single top drawer. "But no' a basin."

Avrenne flicks her eyes to follow his hand, noting the location in that way of hers.

"That I can likely find. If I can manage to enter the barracks without someone removing my head."

Siamus knits his brows at Zath.

He is missing a lot of context.

Avrenne's expression goes sober, looking over at Zath, and there's a protective sort of concern as she frowns.

Zath seems disinclined to provide context.

Siamus, as we know, is willing to roll with Zath's opacity. Also having questions aloud is starting to seem confusing right now.

"Captain, I could see to it," she offers gently. "No one will be after mine, and I would not mind the opportunity to ask after a few others, if you would care to remain here. Do you know — " Avrenne's voice wavers. She steadies herself, calm again. "Have you heard anything of the 11th EU, of Lord Bertrand?"

That gets Siamus's attention and he attempts to push himself up on the pillows again, white-faced.

"The 11th was here during the assault," Zath says reassuringly.

Siamus sinks back with an exhalation and puts his hand over his eyes briefly.

Avrenne sets her hand on Siamus' chest with an automatic touch, moving her fingers soothingly. "Thank goodness," Avrenne says quietly, relaxing. "Thank you."

"Yes, if you would," he decides, looking to Avrenne. "If you see Hall… tell her– " He hesitates.

Avrenne smiles gently at Zath, starting to slowly disentangle herself from Siamus. "Yes?"

"I don't know," he says then, on a weary exhale. "Your guess is as good as mine. I am sure she would be delighted to see you, however."

Siamus lifts his hand from his eyes again and stares at Zath. He knows Hall. Hall is the pleasant young lady. Is something potentially wrong with Hall?

"I will speak to her," Avrenne promises, stretching up to press a kiss to Siamus' cheek, lingering there for a moment. "I will be back." It's the same soft reassurance she's been saying each time she leaves, as she starts to slip back out of the bed.

Siamus looks after her. Avrenne knows the thing too, he can tell. He watches her slip from the bed, looks at Zath again. "Hall?" he whispers. "Master Sergeant?"

Zath studies Siamus's expression, smiles gently. "She's fine. It's only that we've quarreled."

Avrenne walks around the bed, and it's not on her way out of the room, and so it is notable that she detours to Zath first to touch his arm with a gentle hand, looking up at him for a moment.

He looks back to Avrenne. "Tell her the Commodore asked about her as well."

Siamus does that ineffective throat-clear again and nods. "Please," he rasps.

"Of course," Avrenne says to both of them, her hand still steady on Zath, nothing in the warmth of her hand but the touch of a woman, before she withdraws to leave the room.

Zath turns to Siamus, almost cheerful. "Perhaps we could convince your lady wife to give you a bit of a sponge bath as well, hm?"

(To be fair, it would not take much effort, or any at all really.)

Siamus's look gleams for a moment. "Oh," he says, "I'm no' sure I'm up for that."

Okay, yes, he has recovered into sex joke territory.

His expression flattens to weary irony. "I'm like to drown in a bath, I suppose, if left to my own devices. An infamous end for a navy man, drowned in a tub o' fresh water."

"I can see the headlines now," Zath says with feigned outrage. "I won't stand fer it." Wait, was he Doing Siamus? Before one might ascertain, he is back to Full Zath. "It might be pleasant, though, having warm soft hands, warm water, even if you could not… follow up as you might like, hm? "

Siamus peers at Zath at the impersonation. "Tides below, man, it's like ye ne'er spoke wi' a Kul Tiran before." He's fighting a smile. "And aye, I expect it would be, at that."

"After some soup and a bit of attention from your lovely lady, we'll see if you're feeling up to a shave."

Avrenne returns to the inn suite after quite some time. It was clearly not a quick trip to the barracks and back, for one reason or another. She lets herself back into the main room, and into the bedroom. Once again there's that sense that there's another Avrenne there — larger, and commanding, a woman who could very well have been an officer in another life — and then it's gone as she dims back down to simply Avrenne, a woman holding a portable metal shaving basin in one of her hands.

Zath had been lying on his side, propped on an elbow looking down at a seemingly sleeping Siamus with his heart in his eyes. His expression reverts to neutral as Avrenne enters.

"Ah, thank you," he half whispers, and moves to rise from the bed, making certain not to jostle the mattress. Unlike Siamus, Avrenne has not as often seen Zath move in anything but an upright position, and there is something decidedly saberlike about it: fluid, efficient and predatory. One gets the impression of a man who may have crawled on his elbows and belly over long stretches of terrain.

He tilts his head toward the door, then steps just outside it.

Avrenne watches, her eyes flicking to Siamus — alive, breathing, yes, good — and then to Zath. She raises her brows and follows him back out into the sitting room, still holding onto the basin.

He closes the door but doesn't stray far from it. He leans in and lowers his voice to a near-whisper.

"You are doing a splendid job of caring for him; you are a natural caretaker and will make a fine mother when the time comes. But … if I might make a suggestion?"

There's something in her face at the mention of becoming a mother, a fine little tremor, as though he's dangled briefly some deeply held wish right out in front of her, and her hand goes to her waist for a brief touch before she drops it back down. "Of course," Avrenne says, that sense of willingness for the listening. She'll hear it. Will she take it? Remains be to seen.

"Men can be… particular about certain things. On the whole they are embarrassed by coddling. Since there are two of us, we can work as a team to take care of him, and we needn't both play the same role. I can be the one to inform him that he is weak and a complete mess, and I will simply sound my usual acerbic self. But if you could at least… appear to see him as strong, capable… I think it would do a great deal to ease his distress in your presence. You are so newly married, and I believe… I believe he feels he has already demeaned himself in your eyes, appeared as less of a man."

There's a brief pressing of her lips, not of a wound but some sense that, perhaps, she has failed in some way; that hand goes again to her waist and holds there. "Of course I see him as strong and capable. He still is," Avrenne says with a degree of fervent devotion in her voice. "There's nothing different about him in that way for needing help now. He's still Siamus. That is the way I look at him, and always will, no matter what happens." She inhales and her eyes go from Zath to the door, in an unerring line at where Siamus is behind it, her voice dropping quieter. "I cannot…how can I look more like I already look at him? I realize I am not the most…demonstrative of women, but if the feeling were able to be visible, then that is what is on my face."

"I am not speaking of love or admiration. I am speaking of — not coddling. He has expressed on multiple occasions his disgust at feeling like a child. There is a way to love a man without– " He exhales, shakes his head, leans back. "I oughtn't to have bothered. I am too weary for another argument." He opens the door and gestures for her to precede him, a wryly courteous ladies first.

Avrenne touches him with a gentle hand. "I am not arguing with you, Captain. I am admitting to a fault of my own, that I do not know how to do as you are asking, to show what you tell me I must. I have cared for those who have been wounded before, but they were children and the elderly, or – ." An odd pause, a glance down at her arm, and a blink, before she raises her eyes back to his.

"The men I have known who received grievous injuries as soldiers I have only interacted with when they had healed enough to be on their own. I will never look at any man who has received such a wound in service with pity; they are all, to a one, wonderful and strong for what they have sacrificed. So, tell me, Captain, what do you want me to do?"

Zath gently closes the door again. Takes a breath.

"I would like you to stop thinking of your experiences, and the purity of your feelings and intentions, and genuinely attempt to understand that he does not feel the way you believe he ought to feel about his situation. I am not arguing with you about his state and what it means about his manliness or capability. I am telling you what he is feeling, as an irrational man ruled by his testicles. He is disgusted with himself for needing help of any kind, and mortified that his beautiful new bride is present to witness it. And every time you behave toward him in a motherly manner, I feel certain it stings all the deeper. He has only just met you; he is still trying to court you. You jellyfish." He adds, experimentally and oddly gently.

Avrenne's expression gets that fixed quality before it remains in cool lines that is so obviously a mask, not quite fitted perfectly over her eyes, that little chin tilt up as she listens, her hand on her waist as though she can hold something there. "I see." She sounds calm, as though she's just received information.

"Why do I feel that you absolutely do not." He sighs wearily.

"What is it that you believe I should do then, Captain? If not to behave as myself.”

"Not beh– " He exhales and rakes a hand back through his hair. "When I said nevermind before I really should have neverminded. I feel absolutely certain that you have sifted through all of the incredibly potentially helpful information I just gave you to find the one word or phrase that you can most easily interpret to mean that you are a failure and no one cares for you and you are all alone in this cruel world. Just… do as you like. I am officially finished offering you advice."

"That is not it at all," Avrenne says, and there is a flash of hurt in her face. "I understand that he is seeing something in me, and that it is doing him some harm, to make him feel worse. He does not want to be treated as I have been treating him, and that is the way I would…that is how I am, how I know how to be. So. I am asking you genuinely — what is it that you believe I should do? I can…be there less, while he is still recovering." She seems to mean this in genuine offer, a woman accustomed to needing to make decisions, look for the angles of approach of a strategy. "I can find things to occupy myself so that he only sees me when he is feeling at his best for the moment, excuse myself when he seems to be tiring, be there when he is not conscious to help."

Zath looks genuinely bewildered. "I just told you how he is feeling. He is embarrassed that his new bride is seeing him in a state of weakness. So…" He waves his hand vaguely. "Act accordingly." Once again, they are watching two entirely different channels.

"If he doesn't want me to see him in a state of weakness, then a possible solution is that I am not there to see it," Avrenne says. "You are here. He will have someone that he does not seem to mind seeing him in such a way. If I leave that care to you, and am only there when he is at his best to…" She moves her hand in her own vague circle gesture. "Appear as he wishes me to see him, then if it will aid in his recovery, that is all I want to do. I will aid him however I can, Captain, and I am more than willing to step aside for the worst of it if that is what will be of the most benefit to him. I want him well.

"So, is that what we shall do, Captain? Will you help me on this, to do so, in partnership to care for him best?"

"I am not asking you to step aside. Could you stop trying so hard to shape a world in which you are cast aside?" For a moment his exasperation twists into something so pained on her behalf that it's searing before he turns it back into exasperation. "I am saying for you to… go in there and be his bride. Laugh if he makes a joke, admire his muscles, remind him how handsome he is — is this some great hardship for you, to behave as though Siamus Fallon is witty and clever and easy on the eyes? I am asking you to see your husband and not your patient or Light forbid your child, and let me be the one to take on the duty of bossing and restricting him. If it damages our relationship, no real harm done, but I think he is less concerned about impressing me."

Avrenne's face flickers in multiple ways. Wounds have been dealt, and she looks at Zath for a long moment — those two quick breaths, and she's so very obviously trying not to show how bad it is. "I am not trying to cast myself aside," she says, calm and collected, as though patiently explaining a complicated formula to someone less familiar with differential equations. "Sometimes the right course is not the most direct one. It does not matter if I am there physically by his side. I will be there all the same, and I will be here. I don't see him as a child or a patient or anything other than Siamus, and while I realize that I can speak for such myself, if I have appeared otherwise, then I must only say that I am not the right choice for his recovery. I have been myself with him, as he knows me to be. If I were to suddenly begin flattering or flirting with him in such a manner, I expect he would wonder what was wrong with me."

"Then, as I have tried to say twice before, never mind, and do as you like." Once again, he opens the door and gestures through it.

"I asked for your help to see to his care." Avrenne looks at him. "If you will not help me, then I have fewer options."

He shuts the door once again. "I am trying to help you," he says wearily. "But you have never once believed anything I had to say, and all you hear from any of it is that I am throwing knives at you. So I will stop talking, and we shall do our best without attempts at understanding one another."

"I asked you — will you take care of him more fully, and I will do what I can to be there less, where if you could give me a sign that he is better, where I might spend time with him, to do as much as I can to reassure him that I find him as absolutely lovely as I always have, then that is the course I can think to take, if you will help me. I cannot do that without you," Avrenne asks, and there is a note of pleading in her voice. "All my other options are limited, for what I might possibly do on my own."

"All I have accomplished here is make you feel that I want to shut you out. I did not summon you here because I felt I should be the one to watch over him while you keep your distance. That is not at all, that is not ever…" A muscle in his jaw works as he tries to get something under control.

Then he stands very straight. "Do you know what? I need a drink. A real one. It is your turn to watch him. I will be back when I am less of a virulent plague to everyone's peace of mind. Two glasses ought to do it. Hold down the fort."

He turns and heads for the front door.

Avrenne's lips press so hard together that her mouth turns from a rectangle into a line as she lets him go, staring straight ahead.