Chapter 22 – To Cherish, To Hold #4
But he carried so much. The least I could do was lighten his burden. Maybe that was how I could help him, since I'd be useless on the sands.
I stepped in behind him, brushing my hand against the line of his shoulder, which was curved forward as if expecting a blow.
"It's alright," I murmured, brushing my thumb along his shoulder blade.
"It will all be alright." I slid in close, nudging his hip with my own and, despite my best intentions to not give it all away so easily, I found myself leaning forward and brushing my mouth against the cool skin of his temple.
Araxis was perfectly still next to me, his stare lost in middle distance, but his hand twitched when I pressed the note into it. He glanced down, then back at me, then at the note again. His thumb moved, just slightly, tracing a line beneath my second sentence.
His chin jerked down in the sharpest, smallest nod, and I slid backwards to sit on the plush bench, pulling my handful of papers into my lap and offering him the pen as he settled in next to me.
I'd have expected him to put some space between us, but he tucked himself firmly against me, our hips and legs touching.
I wanted to tip his head against my shoulder; I wanted to hold him.
I had thought I was good at putting things away, and I might have been able to do that with Araxis as well…
but how could something stay buried when it insisted on clawing its way free every time I saw him?
What I had tried to smother had taken on its own life, and it refused to be hidden.
It refused to be silenced. And every time I saw him, it gained strength and vigour until it was undeniable.
Maybe that was what made me virra: I felt so much, so intensely, that it couldn't be contained. The emptiness, the loneliness, were the shadow; either I felt it all, or I resolved to feel nothing at all. But the intensity always came back. It lived inside of me, bright and alive.
The pen scratched on the paper as Araxis wrote in a beautiful, looping hand, clearly the product of writing in a different alphabet for most of his life. Then he slid the page to me, his hand coming to rest on my thigh; his grip was tight, as if he was afraid to let go.
I'm ashamed of how I spoke to you. I was so afraid when you were attacked. That fear has since grown into something monstrous, and it became a weapon to hurt you. I am deeply sorry. You shouldn't be here at all. We I should have thought of something else.
I exhaled, my breastbone aching. "I hope you know how much I like you," I said, a little breathless, as I started writing back.
"I hope you know how much I like you," he murmured. "I do not think you're weak, Sashen. It cannot have been easy, leaving your people or surviving for so many years on your own."
I want to be here with you, I wrote. I just hate the idea that I'm another problem for you to solve. I wish
He took the pen from my hand and grabbed the paper, scribbling furiously. Trying to keep up the pretense that we were speaking, I said, "I like your crest like this. Is there… a reason?"
A thin breath fluted out of his nose, his mane rustling slightly, as he finished writing and pushed the note back to me.
"We braid our crests in public; they are for many of us…
hm. A barometer of emotion, though we learn to control ourselves at a young age.
Even so, it is customary except in… special circumstances.
I wished to come before you bare. I do not wish to hide how I feel. "
You are not a problem for me to solve. He had underlined the sentence three times. It is my pleasure to care for you. I have done a poor job thus far, but I wish to do better.
"Then why –" I started, before cutting myself off. Fuck, it was hard to juggle two conversations at once. I'd nearly asked why he'd gotten so upset with me. "Sorry, I don't mean to pry," I finished lamely.
Maybe I'd like to care for you as well, I wrote. That’s why I didn’t just want to leave you. I'll help however I can. Just tell me what to do. I'm yours. You know that.
He was silent for a long moment, staring at the words I'd written.
His fingers traced over the letters. "You aren't prying," he murmured, lingering over I'm yours.
"You know little about our culture. How could you?
We share only the smallest slivers with the outside world.
We are a private people." He huffed, then, a thin sound.
"I find some of our practices challenging to understand myself. "
"I'd like to learn," I offered, waiting for his written response. When none was forthcoming, I added, "I told you that I'll yield on the first day. What happens after that?"
"Then I will win," Araxis said, plain. His hand still brushed against the paper, our two scripts at odds on the page. Mine, angular and sloppy; his, precise and elegant. Didn't that just say it all? "And then you will be free of your debt, Sashen, and you will be able to choose your future."
I took the paper back. Why were you so upset when I saw you after the fight? I almost added that he'd never spoken to me like that before – but I couldn't bring myself to make my feelings another burden for him to carry.
He took it back and wrote, I was afraid of what else might happen to you. He paused, then added, I did not know how much you could bleed and still survive, Sashen, and I do not think your survival was a given. I was covered in your blood, soaked in it, and
His hand froze.
I swallowed, throat dry, and peeled the paper away from him. "And what comes next for you?" I asked, quiet, hoping desperately he would look at me and understand what I was asking. I couldn't ask him, not in writing and certainly not aloud, but I hoped he heard me. I hoped he understood.
But he didn't look at me, staring down at his hands on his lap.
"Creche Thiel will travel to the Great Hall and finalize our petition.
We will spend much time in Xitera, the heart of our empire, as we make our case and assume our rightful place in the Assembly.
It is a long road ahead, but it is a righteous one.
It is my honour to serve our people in this way. "
Please don't cut me out again, I scribbled, not sure what else to put, although it felt like a fruitless request. Araxis would do whatever he thought was right.
I understood that, but we were meant to be a team.
We were working together. We worked together, our jagged pieces fitting like the crystalline shards of a geode that had been cracked open. I can take a lot of things, but that –
I stopped, scribbled out that last sentence, and tried again. We're here together. I promise you can trust me like I trust you. I trust you entirely. I know I'm no one important, but I swear I will do anything to help you and your creche.
I slid the paper back into his lap, and Araxis blinked down at it, his eyelashes dark and thick as he studied my words. Ask me, I thought furiously at him. Ask me to help. Ask me to stay. Ask me for anything. Just invite me in!
"I wish to keep you safe," he said after a long silence, finally glancing back to me, although his stare skated past me as if he found looking at me difficult.
"Knowing you are well, that you are safe from harm, will be a source of strength for me.
You are like a calm centre in the eye of a hurricane.
The soft quiet after a snowstorm. Finding you, and being close to you…
you cannot understand what a balm you have been to my spirit, Sashen.
I thank the stars that aligned and brought us together. There is no end to my gratitude."
My heart thundered against my ribs, and I wanted desperately to believe him as he said it.
But I felt, all at once, that there was something he was holding back – his attention drifted past me, and I could see his mind twisting and turning through unseen paths.
And still he hadn't asked me for anything, except to get out of the arena and let him handle the hard work.
I was cracking open the walls I'd built around myself, I was scrabbling my hands in the mud of my soul to dig up the things I'd tried to bury, and he was giving me pretty words meant for an audience.
And then he added, "Perhaps you will allow me to show you how grateful I am," and he wrote, Today is our tenth day here.
My heart sank, and any hope I'd been holding that this was real drained from me.
There had been something real, I knew there had been, and he had wanted to tell me something – but all he'd really said was that he was sorry I'd been hurt, that he wanted to protect me, and that he felt bad for not doing a better job.
He had been Araxis, entirely: empathetic and protective. Entinn and sinnenthi. But he hadn't drawn me closer, not in a real way. I'd reached, desperate, across the distance between us, and he offered me… artifice.
He wasn't even blushing, and it was that more than anything else that confirmed that none of this was real.
What he'd intended to say when he'd brought me down here, thinking we'd be free of outside eyes and ears, didn't even matter. If he couldn't write it down, if he couldn't make me understand, if he couldn't lean on me – then it had probably been nothing at all.
In all likelihood, he'd brought me down here for this exact reason – it was our tenth day, so we needed to fuck – and perhaps he felt a little conflicted about it. Perhaps he felt, like I did in a sudden, sharp spike, that I was just a dancer, and he was buying access to my body by paying my debt.
But I said I'd do anything. And if this was what he needed from me, that's what I would give him.