Archive of Our Own

“If I think of all that befell me as a linked chain that brings me finally to this place, with you kneeling by the water, alive and whole, then…then the price was not too high. To see you whole again heals me.” 

-Fool's Fate Chapter 30

It was on our fifth and final night in the market square that I finally found the courage to bring our ordeal up to him. We had yet to mention it, either of us, and at first I had privately sworn we never would. We'd spoken about plenty of other difficult things as it was. Better, I had thought, to let this one die a silent death. 

But that had been before the Fool had given back to me all that I'd forged away, all the heartache and joy, the sorrow and fear and elation and terror and hope. Now, in the face of that overwhelm, some part of me desperately wanted nothing more than to discuss things, to purge the virulent, weeping shared wound that neither of us could stand to even touch, much less address head on or out loud.

I felt the reverberations of it every time I touched him, in the way he both leaned into the contact and recoiled from me unconsciously. It stung my spirit like little else, though not a single part of me could blame him for it. I'd defiled and assaulted him at his very weakest and injured, in the most vulnerable state a person could be. It was unforgivable. I'd been forced as well, yes, but perhaps if I'd refused to cooperate with those horrible instructions, his death might still have been quicker than the lengthy one he'd been granted. Less horrific. Less cruel. Maybe I could have goaded the Pale Woman into killing him swiftly. The thought nauseated me, but when I looked upon the damage inflicted on him, and so much of it because of me, I wished I'd done so all the same.

"Quit looking at me that way," he said, hunching over the fire painfully to pour himself some tea.

"What way?" I replied innocently, and he glanced up at me wearily.

"Like I'm some lame animal," he said.

"I'm not trying to. I'm only sorry about what happened," I replied, and he turned away from me sharply, his hair, dampened recently from a trip to the river, whipping across his head and lashing his face as he did. "I'm sorry," I continued, forging ahead despite his clear disinterest in the topic, "For what I did to you in her room. For what we... I'm so sorry."

"I want to make it right," I told him, and he emitted a strangled, bitter sound that I thought was supposed to be laughter.

"Impossible. And besides, you did nothing wrong," he said after a moment, his bandaged fingers shaking around his mug as he lifted it to his split lips. It would be far too hot. The tea would surely scald his tongue. He drank deeply from it anyway, wincing. 

"But I ra-" I began, and then faltered as he startled me greatly and flung the cup abruptly onto the ground, its contents splashing everywhere. An errant droplet burned my arm.

"No!" he replied in a shout, his voice coldly furious. "No, you didn't! She did that, did it to us both. And besides, if you did as much to me, Fitz, then I did the same thing to you. No. This isn't your burden to bear. It's hers. It has always been hers. It wasn't you that hurt me, it was her. And I wish you would have killed her for it."

He finished on a sob, then lifted a shaking hand to his wet eyes and wiped his tears with the back of it. "Please," he begged tearfully. "Please, don't make me talk about it anymore. It hurts too much to remember."

"I know. I know it does," I said, then drew a deep breath. This next bit, I was immensely uncertain of, but I had given it a great deal of thought over the course of this quiet evening, far too much, in fact, and it was the only conclusion I could seem to draw to mend this hurt between us, at least, the only one that felt truly fair.

"You can do it to me, if you want. What she made me do to you," I offered, studying the fire astutely, and he looked up sharply, more affronted than I'd ever seen him.

"To what end?" he snapped, sounding both horrified and horribly wounded. "So I can hurt you sufficiently enough that you feel absolved? I'd never do something like that. And besides, there's nothing for you to amend for. What do you take me for? A monster? Someone like her?"

"No. Never. You're nothing alike," I replied, struggling to find the words to explain what I was offering, and why.

"You said otherwise that day," he returned, swiping at his tears again, his face a mask of misery and anguish. I wanted to put my arm around him to comfort him, but feared he'd shrink back from it or worse, push me away.

"I meant no offense. Truly. I just..." I trailed off helplessly. He was silent as a tomb, his jaw set squarely. I tried again, for both our sakes. "I just don't want that," I whispered, my voice cracking, "To be the only memory we have together of such things."

"Why would you want any memory of it at all?" he countered dully, picking at a wrapped finger and then staring at the bandage on it intently. "That was more than half the horror of it all, was it not? That you had to bed me to begin with?"

"No! That I had to bed you that way," I corrected him quickly, floundering.

He looked at me, his face lined deeply with pain and doubt. "Fitz, there's no need to lie just to preserve my feelings. We're long past that. Besides, you said to me yourself-" 

"I know. I know what I said. Now I'm saying something else," I interrupted, and he sniffed disbelievingly, then huffed out a pained, watery laugh.

"Well, it doesn't matter either way anymore," he replied, gazing down at the mug he'd thrown in the dirt, his face discolored with bruising and his posture tight and protective, looking as if he would build a physical wall between us if he could. It rent me to my very soul. "I'm hurt far worse now than I even was then," he continued emotionlessly. "I'm in no state to be taken that way again."

"I know that. I would never ask you for that. It's like I said before. I... I had thought you might do it to me," I replied, face flaming but my mind set. This was it. This was how to make what had happened between us right, how to mete out justice fairly. He stared at me, then laughed mirthlessly under his breath.

"I'm certain now that I'm hearing you incorrectly," he said faintly, and I shook my head.

"You're not. I want you to do it. I think..." I hesitated, then leaned forward, setting my hand on his knee beseechingly, for it was one of the only places I knew for certain I could touch without hurting him. "I think in order to move forward, I need it. And maybe you do, too. So that things can be normal between us once more."

He looked at me fathomlessly. "Things have never been normal between us, FitzChivalry," he said quietly. "That seems to be the entire point of all this pain in the first place. Even she could see how abnormal all of this is."

"She couldn't see anything but a way to make you suffer," I retorted fiercely, suddenly defensive for no reason I could understand. "She doesn't know anything about either of us. Not a single true thing."

He opened his mouth, then shut it again and ran a hand through his wet hair with a sigh. "I'm not doing it," he said with finality.

"But you want to," I replied, perplexed. "You told me so."

"Not like this!" he exploded. "Never this way! You of all people must know as much, Fitz! You know me better than any other ever has! Tell me, do you know me to be callous? To be cruel? Have I not done enough to you? Must you add this wrong to that long list, as well? No. I refuse. Find another way to make peace with this, my friend. I cannot do it. I will not."

"What way?" I interjected.

"What?" he replied, dazed.

"You said never this way. What way, then, Fool? What way would you have us do this?" I replied, then watched in consternation as his lower lip trembled almost uncontrollably.

He again opened his mouth, and again he closed it, then repeated the motion several times. Shutting his eyes, he finally brought his wounded fingers to his temple. "Lovingly," he whispered, not looking at me. "Lovingly and willingly, or not at all."

"That is easily enough done. I love you," I replied.

"Don't mock me. Don't you dare," he chastised me despairingly.

"I wouldn't. Not over this," I replied, hurt by his mistrust. Perhaps it was deserved, but it brought sorrow to my heart, all the same. "Fool, you know that I love you. And now you know that I am willing, too. There. You have it."

He stared fixedly at me for what felt like long minutes, searching my face for sincerity. In the prolonged silence, I could hear how labored his breathing was, and could nearly feel how furiously he was thinking. Our link, still so strong after our time spent within one another and from our earlier exchange that morning, spiked with a bright, momentary leap of power.

"Touch me," I said impulsively and thrust my wrist out to him. "Touch me and know that I do not lie. Please, Fool. Touch me."

Like a man moving through a fog, he unwound the bandages from around his three silvered fingers one by one, and I winced for him when I saw his raw, exposed nail beds. I wanted to cradle his battered hand in my own and kiss it but feared he would not welcome such a thing. Instead, I nodded encouragingly, heart pounding.

"Go ahead," I said again when he hesitated. "Touch me. I want you to."

Gingerly, he set his fingers to the marks on my wrist, and when he did I felt his fear, pure and undistilled, and so overwhelming that it brought tears to my own eyes. His hurts were immense, and the ones within were so much deeper and more abiding than those that were outwardly visible. Gone was the bubbling joy I so often felt from him, that leaping, playful, indescribable magic that made my friend himself. In its place was a slog of hurt and sorrow, terror and shame, and I was grieved by it profoundly. 

You are sorrowful for me? he asked.

Of course I am. It is my fault you feel this way, I replied, then felt a surge of unexpected affection and protectiveness rush over me.

Not your fault, the Fool said.

Nor yours, either, I replied, and was brave, and for a moment, albeit, a brief one, allowed him to peer into my depths as I'd peered into his. I felt his sparkle of life then, faint but unmistakable, as his soul brushed mine, and was comforted. Then he was lifting his hand from my wrist, and we were two separate, fractured beings before the fire once more.

"I still won't do it," he told me, but his words were absent of the harshness they'd possessed before. I nodded wordlessly and picked up one of the discarded bandages on his lap, then gestured to his hand. He offered it to me and allowed me to slowly bind his fingers back up, grimacing in pain but keeping his hand in mine trustingly.

When I had finished, I bent my head daringly and kissed his knuckles. "I'm going to wash in the river," I told him when it was done, clearing my throat awkwardly.

"Alright," he replied, glancing aside at the Elderling tent. "I might go to sleep. I'm so tired."

As I bathed alone in the cool water, I recalled other times that I had been here on this riverbank before. Scrubbing myself raw with ferns after forging myself, just before bedding Starling for the first time, and before that, laughing in the shallows with the Fool and my wolf as we played and splashed each other, giddy and joyful and so very, very young. I would give anything, I reflected sadly, to hear my friend laugh that way with me again. Anything. I finished washing quickly. I was anxious to return to him. 

All was dark as I crested the hill to the forest plaza. The only light at our camp emanated out from within the Elderling tent, glowing red and warmly inviting. I did not know if its owner felt the same, currently, but as I stepped softly toward the flap, the Fool must have either heard or been listening for my footfall, for he bid me, "Come in," in a voice far gentler and calmer than he'd used when speaking to me for much of the last few days. 

Hesitantly, I ducked inside, my hair wet and my damp shirt sticking to my shoulders. "The fire outside is banked," I observed, speaking just as softly as he had.

"Didn't think we'd need it in here," he replied from his small nest of bedding and cloaks. His use of the word gave me hope. These past few nights, I'd mostly slept outside the tent while he'd sequestered himself away within, when he deigned to sleep at all.

"We?" I repeated, giving him a small smile.

"I've missed having you beside me," he replied, as if the admission was a difficult one. "Would you stay in here with me tonight? Please?"

I bent, added a bit of oil to the little brazier in the center of the room, and then sat down cross-legged in front of it. "Of course I will," I agreed, then blinked in surprise when he patted the makeshift pallet he lay upon in further invitation. 

I edged over to him on the floor, then rolled onto the bedding beside him. He lay curled on his side like a kitten, looking at me wetly. Slowly, I reached my hand toward him, palm up. Offering me a tiny smile of his own, he placed his palm in mine and shut his tawny eyes.

"Thank you, Fitz," he whispered, and I tugged the cloak he'd been using as a cover over my shoulders, too. 

"Warm enough?" I asked, and he nodded. "Good," I murmured, recalling how his cold body had shaken beneath mine in the Pale Woman's chamber. All of a sudden, my heart dropped into my throat and it was momentarily difficult to breathe. When I gasped in air at last, Beloved squeezed my hand tightly.

"I know," he whispered sadly and leaned forward, pressing his forehead to mine. "I know. It happens to me, too, sometimes. I know."

I squeezed my eyes shut and kept our foreheads pressed together until I finally felt his breathing go still and even with sleep. I did not think I could bear to look at him and see my own failure, just then.

"I'll keep you safe," I whispered to him, once I was sure he couldn't hear me. "I'll keep you safe, I swear I will."

I hadn't intended to sleep too, but I did it all the same. His steady breathing lulled me, as did the warm light of the brazier and the dragon and serpent-covered walls of the tent. It felt cozy and secure, like a pocket of happiness held over from another life, from before all this horror had been dealt to us both. When my thoughts tried to wander to those horrors or to my past, I focused on the weight of his hand in mine until they left me in peace. When the worst of the memories crept in, I opened my eyes and stared at his wispy hair and the coppery sheen of the Elderling robe that he wore. It was all he'd been garbing himself in since we'd arrived here. I suspected that it was the only garment he could bear to have touching his flayed back at all.

His panting awoke me in the deepest hours of the night, heavy and harsh. He was still asleep, though he thrashed a bit like a man conscious, his body moving strangely. But when I took hold of his shoulder to rouse him, he did not come awake with fear, but a lengthy, labored sigh that echoed through the quiet of the tent for a long moment before he sat straight up in alarm. 

"It's only me. It's Fitz," I told him soothingly, and he laughed grimly in return, much to my confusion.

"So it is," he agreed wryly.

"You asked me to stay," I reminded him, sitting up too.

"So I did," he repeated eerily.

"What was it? Another nightmare?" I asked, rubbing his arm, and he jolted at the impact but did not otherwise recoil from my touch.

"Not this time," he said quietly, and beneath the mottle of garish, ugly bruising, I was surprised to see a painful flush start coloring his cheeks. 

"Do you need something to drink?" I tried, befuddled, glancing around for my water skin.

"Did you mean what you said before?" he asked me distantly, ignoring my question altogether. "That you think me... That doing what you asked me to do will help you move beyond all of this? Did you just say it because you thought I wished to hear it, or did you actually mean it?"

"Why would I think you'd ever want to hear a thing like that?" I replied, exasperated, and he blinked as though that thought had not occurred to him. "I don't say things I don't mean," I added, and he raised a doubtful brow. "Usually," I amended, and he scoffed, then leaned forward and rested his forehead on my shoulder. I mimicked him, resting my own head against his, wishing I could touch him further without hurting him. I wished I never had hurt him. I wished that he would just believe me. I wished for so many impossible things.

"Please, Fitz," he whispered into my sleeve, as if he'd heard my very thoughts, and for an instant, all around us was extraordinarily still, nigh on frozen. "Please touch me. I'm so afraid all the time. I scarcely know who I am anymore. But I know that I want you. I will always want you. Touch me, Fitz, if you truly wish to touch me. Please, do it. Just be gentle with me. Don't hurt me."

I turned my face until it rested against his cheek. "I'm so sorry," I said again, my mouth moving against his bruises.

"It's too late to apologize for it, Beloved," he replied, his voice splitting unevenly as he spoke. "I forgave you before it ever happened."

And then we were kissing, very softly, and I was unsure who had made the final motion that brought our lips together, but I hardly cared at all. The only thing I felt was the press of his mouth to mine, his blessed, strong breath against my lips, and the cool of his skin upon the warmth of my own. 

The Elderling tent was like a cocoon or a womb surrounding us, snug and safe and isolated from anything that could do us harm. The air within it was comfortingly balmy, and it smelled of tea and the Fool's cakes of soap. Here, as he seemed to do everywhere, he had created reality around himself, unwittingly crafting a tiny world for the two of us to share, apart from everything and everyone else.

Slowly, carefully, mindful of his broken, aching body, I wrapped one hand around the back of my friend's neck and rested the other on his chest. In return, he flung both arms around me, holding me more with them than with his tender hands. It was so private, so intimate and secluded there that I did not even question if I ought to let him. Of course I should. I wanted nothing more than for him to cling to me that way. I wanted to cling to him, too. If it weren't for the delicate skin on his back, I would have in a heartbeat.

He trembled in my arms, just as he had in the Pale Woman's presence, but unlike that awful day, he was not cold, nor, I thought, in fear for his life or mine. He was still afraid, but I couldn't fault him for that. I was afraid, too. But not afraid enough to keep from begging him, "Please, Fool. Please touch me, too."

"I can't," he said sorrowfully and lifted a bandaged hand in regret. "Would that I could, my friend. Would that I could." He paused, then stole a glance down at the hand that rested on his chest. "Be my proxy?" he murmured, tapping it with his knuckle, and I nodded.

"What would you have me do?" I whispered. "What would you have me touch?"

"Your lips," he whispered back, and with only his palms, guided my hand to my own mouth, pressing my thumb to my lower lip. "That is what I'd touch first, were I able. Those sweet lips."

Timorously, I brushed my thumb along the swell there and he inhaled sharply. "Open," he breathed, and I parted my mouth, unsure. "Inside," he murmured, his face crimson and his hands quivering, "That is, that's what I'd do if those fingers were mine."

Hesitantly, I slid my thumb slowly over my lip and onto my tongue. It scraped against the edges of my teeth along the way. I shuddered and then, on instinct, sucked it further into my mouth, and was only half-surprised when he groaned in response.

It felt as if the temperature in the tent had suddenly risen by a significant degree.

"Gods," he muttered, currant red, and then I watched a kind of calm decisiveness overtake him, watched him draw some foregone conclusion in his brain and set his mind firmly to the task before him. "Take off your shirt," he said. "If you still wish for me to do what you asked of me earlier."

Startled by his sudden change of heart, I scrambled out of my shirt clumsily, my pulse spiking and my thumb still damp, half expecting him to change his mind again as soon as I did. But he only watched, his hands resting peacefully in his lap and his chest rising and falling shallowly but evenly, as if his breathing was the only thing he was consciously focused on.

"What now?" I asked him, nervously balling my discarded shirt in my hands.

"Could we kiss now?" he asked me tentatively, "Or would it remind you too much of that day to do it again?"

"We can," I whispered, and then leaned toward him, waiting. He swallowed hard, then reached out, draping his arms around my shoulders and drawing me in. "You're the one hurting," I told him quietly. "You lead."

He nodded wordlessly, chewing at his lip, then slanted cautiously forward and kissed me again, barely brushing his lips against mine. I didn't move at all. I didn't want to frighten him. 

"Do it back," he said against my mouth as if he could tell, and I lurched forward, cupping his hip bones in my hands and deepening our kiss, though I still tried to keep the gesture gentle for his sake. All his hurts aside, he also just seemed to like that. It appeared to me as if he enjoyed the simple sweetness of moving so slowly. I was surprised to find that I did, too. 

I was more taken aback than I ought to have been when he climbed into my lap, for it was the most logical place he could have gone to be closer to me.

"Alright?" he asked, sounding nervous, and I nodded rapidly. In response, he nuzzled his face against my scruff. "This wasn't here the last time," he commented carelessly, as if speaking about a previous tryst and not some horrible assault.

"It is now," I told him, my gut tightening along with my hold on him. "And we're alone here. We're safe here."

"Safe," he repeated, as if the word was a concept too foreign to comprehend.

"My beard will scratch your face," I warned him as he rubbed his cheek against it again, and he snorted. It was the first true laugh I'd heard from him since bringing him back to life. I could barely believe it.

"Fitz," he said incredulously, "My love. My face is one massive bruise. A bit of prickle from your cheeks will hardly do me in."

I heard his endearment and it pierced me like a knife, but I chose not to mention it. Not now. Not just yet. Things were fragile, still. It could wait. But I did kiss him in response to it, deeply, if briefly, so as not to hurt him further. When I did, he pushed me backward onto the bedding, guiding my head toward the bundled-up clothes he'd been using for a pillow. Then he set his palms in the center of my chest, rubbing big, concentric circles there, his wounded fingers lifted prudently. I felt my tension easing beneath his touch. Seeing him above me calmed my nerves. I wondered if, in those horrible moments past, seeing me that way had calmed him, too. 

"Were you afraid?" I asked him, and he nodded slowly.

"I was very afraid. But never of you. Only for you, and for me as well. I feared what she would do to us. But I didn't fear what you were made to do to me." His hair was floating around his face just a bit in the reddish, amber-soaked light. It made him appear to glow.

"Did I hurt you badly that day? Did I do this to you?" I asked, and felt a tear leak out of the corner of my eye as I laid a shaking hand over one of his, stilling it.

He shook his head, his own eyes filling. "No. You would never hurt me. She did it, Fitz. She did it."

He bent over me and kissed the place where my tear had fallen. The saltwater wet his mouth, and I felt it trail down my cheek and neck as he laid a path of well-considered kisses across my body.

"She told you to hurry," he said as he did, "So now I will take all the time in the world. We have it, after all."

We did. We could do this all night and all day, and no one would come looking for us, and even if they did, they'd never find us here. This market square was ours alone tonight, a space apart from everything else. A place where we could simply exist.

I wove a hand into his hair, simply because I wanted to feel it. It was brittle still, drier than usual and coarse, but it was his and I loved it. I had always loved his hair. I rubbed his scalp slowly as he kissed me and in doing so, felt tension leaking from his body, too, pouring off of him in waves and leaving him pliable and eased. I was pitifully glad for that. I wanted this for him as I'd wanted little else. I wished so badly to give him an interlude where he could finally feel at peace. 

I knew all too well how brief and far between such moments would be as he healed. I knew this one would not last, nor would it fix him. But it would distract him from his pain for a short time, and from my own experience, I was well aware of what a gift that distraction could be.

His mouth grazed the bone of my hip and I jerked. He buried his cool face in my stomach, biting at it, and I jolted. "If I could touch you," he said into the dark hair there, "I would slip my hand into your leggings now."

Heart racing, I slid my hand down obediently, past his face and beneath my waistband. The trajectory of my path was incredibly familiar, but had never been one taken in front of another before, not this way.

"I'd go slowly," he told me, his voice muffled and his eyes heavily lidded, and so I proceeded at a leisurely pace, arching into my own touch, for it felt, almost, like it was not my hand there at all but another's, though I knew that to be only a trick of the mind.

"I might twist my hand, now and again," he added hoarsely, and I made an undignified noise as I moved for him, my breathing ragged and uneven and his weight draping over me like a quilt. 

He watched me work myself for some time, murmuring soft suggestions and running his hands through the hair on my chest very lightly. It wasn't until my mind started to go a little hazy with pleasure that he bid me remove the rest of my clothing.

"Only if you wish to," he added fretfully as I shimmied out of my leggings at once.

"I told you already. I do," I replied, toeing off my stockings and wriggling out of my small clothes until I was stark naked beneath him.

"You're so warm," he commented, spooning closer to me with a sigh. "And you're so very beautiful."

"Not the word I'd use," I replied, more self-conscious of that comment, strangely, than being bare before him.

"No? What word would you use?" he replied, and his voice was almost droll, just a few turns shy of teasing. He was trying, I realized. He was trying so valiantly to be alright for me.

"Acceptable, maybe," I offered, then carefully wrapped an arm around him, the way I had that first night before the fire. "Passable."

"You think me a man of merely passable tastes?" he asked, with put-upon and incredibly mild censure.

"I think you a man of completely unfathomable tastes," I replied, thinking of Lord Golden's outlandish costumes and the Fool's ridiculous antics and Amber's entire existence.

"You find it unfathomable that someone could want you?" he asked me mournfully.

"I find it unfathomable that you could want me after all I've done to you. Not just on the glacier," I added when he began to make a noise of vehement protest. "Not just that. All of it. I'm sorry for all of it."

"As am I," he replied simply but emphatically, and his sparing words seemed to encompass so much hurt that had been leaching into our friendship and draining it of joy. "I could have," he hesitated, searching for the right words. "Been better to you back at Buckkeep," he landed on at last.

"You were afraid," I excused him quickly. "You thought you were going to die."

"No," he replied. "I knew I was going to die, and I pushed you away because of it."

He didn't push me away now, but instead allowed himself to be pulled in closer until we were chest to chest.

"Will you do it now?" I whispered. "I want it."

"Do you?" he whispered back, searching my face for falsehood.

I nodded. "We can make this right," I told him, trying desperately to believe my own words. "I know we can."

"As right as a thing like that will ever be," he replied gravely, then took my hand in his and guided it further down my body than it had been before.

"Ideally, I'd do this for you," he said regretfully, "But I'm afraid the task must be yours alone tonight."

"What task do you mean?" I replied, confused. When I'd done this to him before, there had been nothing of this nature involved. His face cracked momentarily, pain shining through his tentatively placid demeanor.

"Usually a lover would use their hands to prepare your body before anything else occurred. It lessens the risk of pain or discomfort during lovemaking. It can make things feel better for you, too," he explained, steadfastly looking anywhere but at my face.

The implication of his words sent a flash of anger reverberating through me. That, too, she'd taken from him, knowing I'd know precious little about it. He'd suffered through even more pain unnecessarily because of my ignorance.

"You should have told me," I choked out.

"There wasn't any time, Fitz," he replied. "She was going to kill you."

"You should have told me," I repeated.

"It doesn't matter, Beloved," he said, petting my chest absently. "She'd never have allowed it. She wanted it to be humiliating. She wanted it to be nothing like the way it should have been."

"And how should it have been?" I asked as he reached for the oil we'd been using to feed the brazier. He unstoppered it.

"Slow," he said. "Sweet. Bumbling, in parts. Awkward and nerve-wracking. Good," he added, his voice breaking, and a tear slid down his cheek.

"It will be good now," I told him. "And she cannot take that goodness away from you this time."

"Nor from you," he replied and poured the oil onto my fingers.

"Tell me how to do this," I implored him, feeling wildly out of my depth.

"Slowly," he repeated. "There is no rush at all."

Frightened but determined, I pressed a finger slowly into the place he'd intimated I ought, my heart leaping strangely at such an unfamiliar sensation.

"Take it slower, even, than you think you need to," he cautioned me, his eyes glued to my hand.

"Show me," I whispered, my courage faltering as tight muscle gave way and I breached myself with a sharp breath. 

I felt his cool, bandaged hand ghost over my body and settle atop mine like a second skin. Carefully, he rubbed my knuckles.

"How does it feel so far?" he asked.

"Strange," I gritted back. "I'm not sure I like it."

"If you don't, we needn't continue," he assured me, and I shook my head.

"We will continue," I said stubbornly. "I just need a moment. That's all."

"You have that and more," he replied, pressing one of my knees up so that I was spread out further before him. "You have all the time in the world, remember?"

Nodding, I pressed in a little further, up to my knuckle. The intrusion felt massive and all-consuming. I could not imagine having welcomed him into me without this. For every second my discomfort lessened, I recalled the long minutes I'd been inside of him with no such consideration and felt ill. And he'd been so gracious and understanding, even in what I could now imagine was nothing short of agony. Some pain is inevitable, he had said, but it wasn't. It wasn't. He was proving as much now with his dogged refusal to hurt me. I was so angry that I'd not been given the same opportunity to be gentle with him.

"When you feel ready, you should move it. Just a bit, just to see if you like how it feels," he suggested, his tawny eyes avid and gleaming in the low light.

I obliged him at once, for being still was doing nothing, and after a few timid, experiential tries, found that motion was not so frightening as I'd thought it might be. It even felt like relief in a way. I did it some more, growing a touch braver with every attempt.

"How will I know when I'm ready?" I asked him, reddening.

"You'll know," he replied. "Believe me, my friend, you will know. Can you add another, or not just yet?" He brushed across my fingers meaningfully. I already felt so full that I thought I might die, but I moved to let my second oiled finger join the first anyway, teeth set.

"If you relax into it, it's far less uncomfortable," he told me, touching the seam of my clenched jaw. "And if you do this with your fingers once they're inside, it might feel a bit better."

He curled his own as if beckoning to himself. I breathed out, pushed in, and gasped aloud when both fingers went inside without splitting me in two. "Good," he praised me seriously, rubbing my inner thigh, his head resting on my knee as he watched. "That was exactly how it should be done. You're doing so well."

"Fast study," I bit back, and he laughed again, entirely unexpectedly.

"Indeed," he agreed, seeming surprised by the sound himself. I recalled his suggestion and curled my fingers together inside myself, then moved, then made a low, startled croaking sound when it actually produced a sensation beyond being filled to bursting.

"You tried it?" the Fool asked, and I nodded weakly.

"What now?" I ventured, and he smiled down at me. The expression had an edge of sharpness to it. "Well," he said, "If it were me, I would keep touching you that way until you forgot your own name, but alas, you are at the helm this night, and not I."

"That can happen?" I asked, mildly alarmed.

"All sorts of things can happen," he replied, kissing my kneecap. "For example, look at us right now."

"Do it again for me," he murmured into my skin, demonstrating with his hand how he wanted me to move. I mimicked him, then whimpered involuntarily, my hips jutting forward of their own accord to seek more of the same sensation. "Again," he whispered breathlessly. "Again, Fitz."

I might not have been as ruthless with myself as he'd have liked, but by the time I found a rhythm, I was sweating profusely and panting into each touch, so relaxed that the slide barely felt like an intrusion at all. I could even feel myself stiffening, amazingly.

"Should I try to add another finger?" I asked him, entirely of my own accord.

"That's what I'd do," he replied, rubbing my flank. "Although with how much you've relaxed, I doubt you even need it. Still, it's better to be safe than sorry, especially the first time doing such things."

The first time. I wondered if he was implying that there would be others, or if he only meant it in a broader sense of the phrase. I found that the second option disturbed me, and the first titillated me far more than it ought. My third finger joined the others with far less difficulty than I'd expected. I groaned around it, squeezing my eyes shut.

"Fitz," I heard the Fool grit out, his soft voice guttural. "Gods, Fitz, you're such a sight."

Somewhere along the way, I had lost track of my inhibition. Without it, I rocked back on my own hand shamelessly, chasing the mindlessness he'd described to me. My chest was hot and flushed as if I'd been sitting too close to a fire. I was not afraid of the next step at all anymore. I only wanted it very, very badly.

"I'm ready now," I told him, "I'm ready for it. I'm ready."

"Told you you'd know," he said, smiling faintly and reaching for the oil. I caught sight of his arousal then beneath his robe, rock solid and neglected in favor of watching me chase my own pleasure. He followed the trajectory of my gaze. "I didn't dare start," he explained ruefully, moving the robe aside and slicking himself up for me. "I didn't trust myself to stop."

"Will you take it off?" I asked, touching his glittering copper sleeve with my free hand. "Only if you want," I added. "You don't have to."

"I can," he said slowly. "But Fitz, it's a ghastly sight, still. It might be better for you if you cannot see it."

"It's you. I want to see you," I told him. "However you are. Besides, it's nothing I have not seen already."

"True enough," he agreed, paling slightly, and then laboriously unhooked the robe and let it fall from his shoulders, breathing in sharply as air kissed his sensitive back.

I'd coaxed new skin to grow there, but it was only a thin veil still, and fresh, and barely a protection to him at all. "Is it hurting very badly?" I asked him.

"Not as long as nothing touches it," he replied, the robe pooling at his hips.

"Show me where I can touch," I pleaded. "Please, Fool, show me where I can touch you."

"Well," he said, glancing down with a quirk of his lips, and I reached between his legs at once, my other hand still inside myself.

I hadn't actually touched him there at all during the ordeal we'd been put through, though he'd touched me. Still, in larger part, both of us had worked solely on ourselves as much as we could, in some desperate attempt to maintain what little had been left of our dignity and privacy. So it was with great curiosity that I felt the weight and length of him rest in my palm, and with great fascination that I watched him buck gently up into my fist, as he soon would the rest of me. My fingers trembled at the thought. 

His bruised face looked smooth and momentarily unafraid as he languidly rocked into my hand, his undulating hips mimicking my own. One by one, I withdrew my fingers from my body, making space for him, instead.

"Are you ready?" I asked, releasing my hold on him, and was unsurprised when he quaked at the question, the movement betraying what his calm face would not. He slid one hand into mine, pinned it down hard beside my head, and used the other to guide himself to the place I'd prepared for him.

"Breathe deeply for me," he told me in a rasp, lining himself up unerringly. "Relax. I won't hurt you, Fitz. I promise."

He spoke true. There was no pain at all. It was an adjustment, to be sure, but a bearable one. The slide in was smooth. There was no struggle whatsoever. Tendrils of arousal curled through me the deeper he pressed, and I made noises in response to them. He pushed down harder on my trapped hand.

"You feel like paradise," he informed me, his voice shaking. "You feel like a dream."

"You feel big," I wheezed in reply, and a brief, if remarkably subdued grin overtook his face.

"Why, thank you," he drawled, and it sounded almost like he was the same person he'd been before all of this had happened to him. I tried to pretend that was who lay atop me, my friend untouched and not the sorrowful man I'd had a heavy hand in breaking. He gripped my fingers even tighter, though doing so must have hurt his own, and propelled his hips slowly, seeking out a pattern of motion that would be bearable for us both. 

I whined involuntarily when he found it and he used his free hand to cup my cheek and caress me.

"You're alright?" he asked, gliding in and out so smoothly that it stole the breath from my lungs. I nodded silently, at a loss for words. It was so warm in the tent now that it bordered on tropical, the air reminding me of the wet heat of the Rain Wilds. I was glad. I knew how much he hated the cold, and probably doubly so now.

"I'm alright," I confirmed, and then, after a shy moment, added, "I like this. I like it."

He kissed me and began to move a bit faster, with a touch more purpose to his thrusting, and I gasped into his mouth. His movements battered against the place I'd been touching and made stars form behind my eyelids.

"El," I swore, my free hand flexing helplessly as I tried not to touch him anywhere that might hurt. He saw my struggle and seized that hand as well, pressing it down the same way he was holding the other. 

His body was painted all over with huge bruises and contusions and lengthy, healing cuts, like a field of purple and gray and sickly green flowers on red-tinged stems. Even just brushing up against me must have hurt him tremendously, but he never complained. I hoped that meant he felt safe in my care. I certainly felt safe in his. I was not afraid at all. I could hardly remember, for a moment, why we had even begun to do this. I hoped beyond hope that he couldn't, either.

"Deeper," I heard myself begging him desperately. "Harder. More. Please, Beloved, please."

I realized I had spoken the name he'd bid me to say no longer and froze, but he barely acknowledged the slip, and rather obeyed my impetuous command, leaving me breathless and keening. I couldn't believe how loud I was being. It didn't matter, though. We were surrounded by no captive audience here. No one loomed over this makeshift bed to mock us. I had no reason to hold back from him, not any longer, and I did not particularly get the sense that he wanted me to.

"Is this good? Is it good for you?" I asked frantically, riding the waves of pleasure he sent rolling through me as best I was able, which was to say, with much whimpering and shaking.

"Yes," he whispered, as if the answer surprised him. "Yes, it's very good. You're so good to me, FitzChivalry."

I struggled one hand out from under his and cupped his face, then guided it down to mine and pressed our foreheads together. "Is it helping?" I persisted. "Is it helping you like it's helping me?"

"More than you can ever know," he returned, rolling our hips together hard. I surged into him with a cry. "If I were able," he added, "I would stroke you through the rest of this and I would not stop until you begged me to."

Letting a shuddering breath escape, I did as he suggested, and he rearranged himself to make it easier for me. It was almost too much that way, too many dueling sensations, but I didn't want any of them to end, so I kept going, my hand moving not by my own will, but by his. He was strangely cool inside of me, but not cold. Still, it was noticeable enough that I could not remain unaware of his presence there for even a moment. It made itself distinct and known to me with every move he made.

The coolness reminded me of ice, which brought to mind the Pale Woman laughing at me as I'd been made to injure him, and a sudden wash of debilitating shame swept over me like a wet blanket dropped on a fire. I must have tensed or faltered, and he clearly felt the shift, for he stopped moving with remarkable immediacy. I stared up at him, beset with such overwhelming guilt that I could scarcely bear it. 

To my dismay, I saw it reflected back at me in his face, and in his eyes glimpsed a sorrow so marrow-deep and powerful that it frightened me to my core.

"No," I whispered and took his hand, wrapping it around my own, still wrapped around myself. "No. She cannot have this, too. I won't let her. We won't let her, Beloved. We won't let her."

He stroked my knuckles pensively. "Someday," he said quietly, "Perhaps we will do this and neither of us will hurt at all."

I tried to believe that could happen as he gently resumed his motions, his eyes glistening and his hand firm around my own, moving along with mine. I had not asked him to start again, but I had badly wanted him to. There was no stopping what was happening between us now. It was far too late for that. I tried not to think about what it might mean for us going forward. I tried to exist as a wolf does, in the present, with no thought for the future nor the past. I tried to carry him to that place with me.

My climax took me by surprise. With a twist of our hands and a well-timed stroke from within, I was gone, done in and not at all quiet about it. The Fool watched me tenderly, his expression opaque in places but undeniably warm. When I began gasping, overwhelmed, he finally smiled and ducked down, kissing my neck and then burying his face there as he continued on, his arms tight around me. 

For a moment, I didn't know what to do with mine, and then, for lack of a better option, put one hand on each of his buttocks and pulled him deeper into me.

"Please," I whispered. I wanted him to let go without stifling himself this time. I wanted him to come undone here without shame. "I want it. Please. I want you. I want this, Beloved. I want this."

He cried when it happened. A part of me had expected that. The part that hadn't kissed his tearful face sympathetically, muttering platitudes about safety that I wondered if he would ever believe. It felt like his body simply gave out in the wake of his release. Probably, it did. He'd likely used all the energy he'd had to spare on this endeavor. The last thing he did before collapsing atop me limply was slip out of me without haste, taking great care not to wound me at all. 

My heart thumping, I turned us on our sides facing one another and then cradled him close. I watched him cry quietly for a time, and wept alongside him, too. I kissed his forehead over and over. I pressed our noses together, our mouths, our chests. I clasped our hands and twined our fingers. I tangled our legs. No one was coming to drag me away from him, but if they did, I would not make it as effortless as I had the last time. They would not find us so easily separated now.

"Thank you," I said to him, when it seemed the bulk of our shared sorrow had passed over us at last.

"FitzChivalry Farseer, thanking me for bedding him?" he replied, sniffling. "What a strange, upside-down world this is becoming."

"Why did you do it? What made you change your mind?" I asked curiously, and he blew an errant strand of dandelion fluff hair out of his face, without much success. Mindful not to brush against the giant goose egg on his forehead, I reached up between us and tucked it behind his formerly torn ear.

"It was a dream," he said. "That's what I was dreaming of when you woke me. Doing that with you. It was the first truly good dream I've had since...." He trailed off thickly and I nodded my understanding. "Anyway. I know I cannot trust my dreams any longer, at least, not in the same way I used to. But old habits die hard. And this path seemed like it might be a kind one," he continued. "A kinder one than the last we traveled together."

"And was it?" I questioned. He nodded soundlessly, his eyes heavy and his arms around me lax.

"Far kinder, I'd say," he told me. "It was a balm to do this, in more ways than I expected. You were right."

"I am that, on occasion," I reminded him.

"I know you are. I'm only surprised that you were right about this," he told me.

"So am I," I admitted. "There were moments I thought I had made a grave error, even as it was happening. But I'm still glad that we did it anyway."

He hummed quietly in agreement and then shut his eyes. "Don't let me go," he requested.

"I will not," I promised, and shut mine too.

He awoke me with a long kiss at dawn, still securely tucked in my arms. "No one took you away from me," I whispered. "No one came for us."

His tight smile held jagged shards of pain in its margins as he replied. "Come. Wash with me at the river. Both of us could use it. I'll even share my soap."

We walked there very slowly. His body was so frail and exhausted that I found myself wondering how he had ever rallied enough strength to do the things to me that he had the night before. Then again, the first time we'd done it, my shoulder had been wrenched out of its socket and he'd been beaten bloody. I pushed the memory away, and in its place, recalled his loving expression as I'd cried out his name in relief. He leaned on my arm harder as the path downhill steepened.

"I've got you," I promised him. "I won't let you go."

He wore my shirt into the water and I did not question it, even though he'd been bare before me earlier. This was not the Elderling tent. This was the real world, and in this world, he protected his body fiercely. I myself had come outside in only leggings since he'd stolen the rest, and I promptly rid myself of them and waded into the cool, gentle rush of water, enjoying how the river's current swirled and bubbled around my ankles. 

Then I felt a little splash against my calf and looked up in shock to see the Fool kicking water at me and smiling ever so slightly.

"Do you recall the time we fished here with your wolf?" he asked me, wriggling his toes in the clear water.

"I recall being ganged up on and pushed backward into the water under the guise of fishing," I retorted, my heart leaping with hope. 

"That was a good day," he said wistfully, wading in up to his knees. I skimmed the water with my hand, then playfully splashed him back, not hard, but with enough force to dampen the hem of his stolen shirt.

"It was," I agreed. "And there will be others like it."

"You said these wounds will never truly heal," he reminded me, his smile dimming.

"They won't," I agreed regretfully. "It's like you said. Some things can never be healed all the way. But life keeps going, all the same, you know. There's still goodness to be had in it. There has to be." 

"Perhaps we did exchange more than just our faces," he remarked, shaking his head.

"You sound more like me than I do myself, and I fear I sound quite a bit like you."

"Would that be so bad, being like me?" I asked him as he handed me a lump of soap and I lathered it up between my hands.

"Oh, I don't know, Fitz. Maybe not. It didn't seem like you minded one bit being yourself a few hours ago," he replied slyly, and I felt my cheeks redden. 

"I'm not sure I want to go back," I whispered to him. "I'm afraid nothing will be as it was before. I'm afraid even with it all returned to me, I'm not as I was before."

"It won't be," he agreed. "It can't be, and you aren't. But that isn't a bad thing, Beloved. Everything changes. You're not the same. You're whole now. That's a beautiful thing to be." 

But I had only been made whole because of him, and not just because of the way he'd returned my memories. I recalled further back, how we'd passed one into the other, how we'd become, for a moment, a single, seamless thing. That had been what our adversary had been trying to splinter apart with her cruelty and threats. Surely, if she possessed even half the power she claimed to, she would have known from the start how very bound together the Fool and I were. But she had failed in her scheme, and where she had failed, he'd once more succeeded. What she had rended so terribly between us, he had fully renewed and made whole once more.

"It is. It is a beautiful thing," I agreed, and splashed him again, this time harder, and he spluttered in surprise and then splashed me back, chuckling begrudgingly.

We played in the river that way for a time as the sun came up, tentatively and halfheartedly, but with a small, shared measure of happiness, nonetheless. And for that short span of time, brief though it might have been, things were right between us once more, just as I'd hoped they'd be, and I was fiercely glad for it.