Horseriver feels Jedao's return to consciousness like a sudden wiggle in a tooth he's been absently prodding. If there's a few moments of relief (proof of the worry he'd never admit to) sent across before he withdraws to his normal level of background sensation, well, he's trusted Jedao with more than that.
He's wandered far from where the Admiral dropped them off, half-exploring and half-looking for somewhere away from the crowd of people. The hunting lodge he finds at the edge of a forest serves both those purposes admirably. It's from there that, some time after he feels Jedao 'wake up', he sends out another touch of emotion - a suggestion that there's something interesting to see, mixed with his least cutting amusement. Not a demand for his presence but asking in a way he can't with words.
What Horseriver gets back, with precisely the same messiness and lack of ceremony as a girl in a romcom dumping her boyfriend's possessions on the lawn in the middle of a fight, is a tangled vehement muddle of pain, fear, guilt and resentment, with permeating, overriding frustration running through it all. And then weariness, and then the odd twang of sympathetic indignation, and then a sense of tight-bound productive obsessive worry-focus, and the accompanying impatience for anything that isn't fixing the shit that imploded in his sleep, and lastly resignation, flecked with curiosity and the affectionate-ache of missing him.
Jedao will come and see, and sigh, and rest his head on Horseriver's knee, and grouse at him in person. But not right now. If all goes well, tomorrow morning.
Horseriver is sitting on the porch of the lodge, a fox curled up in his lap. He isn't sure if the animals are 'native' to the strange park-forest or lost pets from some other barge but their presence amuses him either way, and he likes to see animals outside of what he always considers to be the unnatural confines of the barge. The fox looks up when Jedao comes but doesn't run, even when Horseriver stops his slight humming. The souls of animals are easy to keep calm.
"I see you have no fared ill from your 'rest'."
He's seen people come out of comas, he considers the word inappropriate for the situation - like many other words used on the barge.
"No, just from waking up," Jedao mutters. I'm still annoyed at you, he does his best to think pointedly at Horseriver, although he really doesn't know how much nuance comes across. But it's so rare to see Horseriver in anything like this...soft, peaceful scene. And the fox doesn't deserve to be caught up in whatever this is. He decides to save his irritation for when nothing cute is happening, he decides, and sits down next to his king with an exasperated sigh, leaning into him.
Horseriver knows Jedao well enough to pick up the outlines of the feeling, and to guess at the reason. Eventually. Really, the fact that it only takes him ten minutes or so before he makes a connection to past events is almost as much proof that he cares about what Jedao is feeling as the fact that he says something once he does.
"You likely should have told him." His tone is a little absent.
The fact that Horseriver remembers and cares enough to mention it when Jedao isn't dragging it up does surprise him, and Jedao would be touched if he weren't - naturally - doing it in the most irritating way possible.
"He gets to say that," Jedao hisses, and pokes Horseriver somewhere in the vicinity of his kidneys. It doesn't matter that it's right. "You don't get to put this on me."
"He said you were his...general," honestly, he hadn't even been listening very closely at the time, not with the tension full of possibilities (it's a very old dance; prisoner and guard, guard and prisoner - the barge is strange but some things are familiar and he refuses to bow to that power when he can fight instead), still if he is... "There are responsibilities."
"I know. And I am - dealing with it. But we both know perfectly fucking well you made it worse on purpose, so you don't get to be the one to lecture me about it."
He wasn't angry before, for precisely that reason, the weird unspoken understanding of what it means to simply and spitefully resist, to choose to take the consequences. Frustrated, yes, annoyed, yes, because he hates when he misses things, feels trapped between the things he needs from both of them and the things they're both incapable of. But having the right to make it worse on purpose doesn't make it any less galling for him to do so, and then turn around and point out Jedao made it possible by accident; he is angry now, tight and bitter and cold.
He had never lied about that, wouldn't have even before the flash of personal anger had faded to his usual distance. He used any crack he could find, choosing any consequence that would come with it and even more firmly always choosing to claim his part in it. He refuses to give up that control. He tilts his head back slightly, looking up at the trees and not the whiteness that isn't the sky.
"You will return to a fuller sort of life, once you leave the 'ship'."
He'd never expected a denial, never expected Horseriver to be anything except indifferent or proud, but Jedao wasn't at all sure if they would see eye to eye on the implications for who, exactly, gets to call Jedao out on his mistakes. And maybe they still don't. Maybe Horseriver is humoring him because it matters to Jedao but not to him. Either way, Jedao will take it.
He looks down instead, meets the calm but curious eyes of the fox in Horseriver's lap.
"That's the plan," he says quietly, a cool ripple of distant fear taking the place of the ebbing anger. War he can do. It's been a lot longer since he tried life, and it never went well for anyone standing near him.
He looks at Jedao directly, more because of the feeling than the confirmation. Horseriver's emotions are often hard to read, he's spent centuries holding them tight and combined with heavy darkness that tends to linger over all of them, it takes either choice or a true shock to break the dark waters. His confidence is only warm in comparison to his distance but it is solid, even as it's laced with the brittle sharpness of understanding.
"You watch the 'network'. You saw when it showed... memories."
For Jedao it's usually the opposite; mental communication was the only communcation he had, and while he took pains to control bleedthrough, it was also a useful tool. With Horseriver, it's easy to be expressive, far more so than with words. But he's also learning the subtleties of even Horseriver's more opaque moods, and he slumps a little more against Horseriver's shoulder. It's not properly relief, but it is - an allowance, a temporary easing.
"I did." All of them, meticulously, with the use of alertness drugs, although he doesn't bother to clarify.
"I can remember everything." It could almost be a joke, there's even an edge of self-aware humor to it because Horseriver takes a sardonic view of the world but he doesn't exclude himself from that gaze. It could almost be a joke, because he forgets most things, even the few things he cares about, but there's an equal truth to it - it's all there, layers of lives and their memories that he can remember and the control necessary to forget so he can exist.
"But it is different to watch the living, as they were before."
I can't, Jedao thinks, a glint off silver razorwire, tightly coiled. But this fear is neatly tucked away, dark and deep. If Jedao let himself feel too much of it, he would unravel, gibbering with bloody nails.
"It is different," he says instead, focuses on the fierce little bloom of pride and hope and vindication instead, although he doesn't push to project it; that would be crass, considering. "It was so strange, to see my brother as a child. He was always...this lofty adult who just happened to be a bit short, in my memory."
"It's a requirement, you need something to make up for having to deal with younger brothers." There's warmth in his teasing, emotion reflecting his smile. "A legacy passed down, I always reminded my oldest son that he had to look after his brothers, as I had been told before him."
He didn't consciously mean to bring it back around, not when Horseriver's smiles are so rare - but maybe part of his mind did, picking Rodao out of the memories. or maybe he's giving himself too much credit.
"Fives is my brother now, too," he says, feels a weird twang in his chest like a broken violin string. Ori'vod. "Not just my lieutenant." Or just his - no, that's private, even if most of the ship knows. The way it is on the inside is private, the way family and fealty and command and culture and intimacy all run together for clones. He reigns the more tumultuous feelings close. He's a sniper; he can keep on the damn target.
"I never had a little brother before. I don't think I'm good at it yet." He was big brother to Nidana, of course, but sisters are different. "I want to be clear that this is - not a condemnation, and not a demand. It's not even a request. But I am informing you, for the future, as explicitly as I can, because that seems to be generally the duty I've failed in. That when you are cruel to him, my lord, you are cruel to me."
He takes a breath, lets it out in a rough, ridiculous, sideways laugh. "And for once you've got no excuse to forget, the man literally has a label on his forehead."
There's a slight glint to Horseriver's eyes a moment, because he's been waiting to see where the circle would catch up with them. Or perhaps it had been more a net than a circle, let loose to see where it would catch.
He had been a brother; he had been a brother and a friend and a husband and a father and a king. He had listened to what was spoken and what was not and had learned when to pull forth the second to untangle the knots people made of themselves and others.
Most of the time, he no longer claims any of those roles. He's a ghost of too many remnants, bound to the dead and gone until the end when he had lost them and not gained anything but the freedom of emptiness. But Jedao had sworn an oath and he had accepted it, as himself, not in the name of another damned soul. He taken the words and claims they make on him, whether Jedao had known they were there or not.
He takes Jedao's hand between his, carefully lifting it slightly so he can lightly kiss his palm. The weight of ritual, all the heavier for Horseriver's usual economy in touch.
"It could be a request. It could even be a demand, though that would stand on a different ground. One offers a sword with trust that it will not be held to one's throat."
He doesn't know what he expected, except not this; he was incapable of expecting this. He feels raw, suddenly, overexposed and relieved in the same moment, like squeezing aloe leaves on a sunburn. He can feel the warmth of Horseriver's mouth through the glove and he wonders with a sharp twisted ache if Fives was right about him after all. It wasn't that he'd meant to be giving in so easily, so weakly. He just - like with Tris, like with Jean, he doesn't need to do any maneuvering and he barely knows what his balance is without it.
He takes a careful breath. "It might have been different if he were demoted. I need that not to happen. But that seems like. More of a him problem. And I'm angry with him too, for. Badly overstepping, for hurting you when he's..." It would be ridiculous to say there was any power imbalance that mattered, and yet, Fives had a responsibility, even if he thought his responsibility was to protecting Jedao first - and that's on Jedao -
"Weeping eyes, what a fucking mess, I know I need to do better with him, and he needs to control himself, but he was terrified for me and you are four hundred and he is thirteen and he didn't have a chance. And I love him, and I need him." Clearly, deliberately, the words feeling artificial as marbles stuffed in his mouth - "Please do not bait him again."
And then he's afraid, as soon as the words are out of him. Reflexive, inexorable cold squeezing his heart. Telling people above you things you really want is just handing them targets -
(It's different with him, he kept trying to tell Fives, or sometimes He's different with me, in ways Jedao feels in his bones but still struggles to actually understand. He squeezes Horseriver's hand tight, and pulls himself the fuck together. It's Horseriver; it's different.)
I love you, he thinks in a shaky, messy surge. He still doesn't know if it's the kind of thing he's supposed to say out loud or not.
He listens carefully, with all his senses. There are several things he could say, that he might say, later. There are certainly some questions he could ask. But, in this moment, they aren't important.
He squeezes Jedao's hand in return.
"You have my word." The promise in that is as clear and hard as diamond. It's been a long time since he's truly given anyone his word, perhaps as long as the years since his first body was broken and his words drowned.
Jedao knows him. His brittle edges and dark shadows; his capacity for careless cruelty and careful revenge. The weight to his vows, the acts of kindness he tries to hid under careful detachment, the promise of light; Jedao knows parts of him that he sometimes wishes had died completely.
He turns so he can pull Jedao closer. It's the sort of physical gesture he usually wouldn't think to make, but there are times when some things are important.
"You may put any request to me that you might wish, Ser Fox. I am not bound to agree, but by my oath I will listen." He doesn't say, that's what good kings do, because in all Jedao's reactions, he doesn't read a questioning of Horseriver's kingship (he easily takes insult at people not knowing what he considers obvious truths, but things are different with Jedao), just a failing in what's come before. "When you speak, I will always listen." There's a cadence of a promise to that.
"Thank you, my lord," he says quietly, means it deeply, for all of it. Just - all of it. The promise feels more like solid ground than any planet has, and Jedao wants to curl up inside the steady strength of it. He leans easily into the embrace instead, accepts it with what grace he has as the gift it is.
"...please tell this very adorable animal to scoot over," Jedao says, patting the fox's ears, a note of playfulness already creeping in now that he's been reassured that he is allowed to do this. "He's in my spot."
His laugh is more a huff of air than anything, but warmer in it's lack of a bitter edge. He rubs the fox's head before lightly shooing it away. "Go to your family, my friend." The fox listens like the trained pet it isn't, leaping down and vanishing under the porch.
"I found the whole family here when I arrived. I took some time to make sure they were not going to start speaking to me." He's seen some strange things, even making his way around the less populated areas of the port.
Jedao loves that little huff of a not-laugh, always feels pleased and proud when he manages to prompt it. Jedao watches the fox trot away and the rearranges himself on a lower porch step so that he can rest his head in Horseriver's lap, all the tension of the conversation seeping out of him.
Horseriver absently starts stroking Jedao's hair, in much the same way as he had been petting the fox.
"There are some worlds where it must be a certain type of disturbing to go hunting, at least if you mean to eat your kill. To much like old children's tales of demon ridden beasts."
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He's wandered far from where the Admiral dropped them off, half-exploring and half-looking for somewhere away from the crowd of people. The hunting lodge he finds at the edge of a forest serves both those purposes admirably. It's from there that, some time after he feels Jedao 'wake up', he sends out another touch of emotion - a suggestion that there's something interesting to see, mixed with his least cutting amusement. Not a demand for his presence but asking in a way he can't with words.
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Jedao will come and see, and sigh, and rest his head on Horseriver's knee, and grouse at him in person. But not right now. If all goes well, tomorrow morning.
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"I see you have no fared ill from your 'rest'."
He's seen people come out of comas, he considers the word inappropriate for the situation - like many other words used on the barge.
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"You likely should have told him." His tone is a little absent.
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"He gets to say that," Jedao hisses, and pokes Horseriver somewhere in the vicinity of his kidneys. It doesn't matter that it's right. "You don't get to put this on me."
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"He said you were his...general," honestly, he hadn't even been listening very closely at the time, not with the tension full of possibilities (it's a very old dance; prisoner and guard, guard and prisoner - the barge is strange but some things are familiar and he refuses to bow to that power when he can fight instead), still if he is... "There are responsibilities."
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He wasn't angry before, for precisely that reason, the weird unspoken understanding of what it means to simply and spitefully resist, to choose to take the consequences. Frustrated, yes, annoyed, yes, because he hates when he misses things, feels trapped between the things he needs from both of them and the things they're both incapable of. But having the right to make it worse on purpose doesn't make it any less galling for him to do so, and then turn around and point out Jedao made it possible by accident; he is angry now, tight and bitter and cold.
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He had never lied about that, wouldn't have even before the flash of personal anger had faded to his usual distance. He used any crack he could find, choosing any consequence that would come with it and even more firmly always choosing to claim his part in it. He refuses to give up that control. He tilts his head back slightly, looking up at the trees and not the whiteness that isn't the sky.
"You will return to a fuller sort of life, once you leave the 'ship'."
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He looks down instead, meets the calm but curious eyes of the fox in Horseriver's lap.
"That's the plan," he says quietly, a cool ripple of distant fear taking the place of the ebbing anger. War he can do. It's been a lot longer since he tried life, and it never went well for anyone standing near him.
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"You watch the 'network'. You saw when it showed... memories."
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"I did." All of them, meticulously, with the use of alertness drugs, although he doesn't bother to clarify.
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"But it is different to watch the living, as they were before."
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"It is different," he says instead, focuses on the fierce little bloom of pride and hope and vindication instead, although he doesn't push to project it; that would be crass, considering. "It was so strange, to see my brother as a child. He was always...this lofty adult who just happened to be a bit short, in my memory."
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"Fives is my brother now, too," he says, feels a weird twang in his chest like a broken violin string. Ori'vod. "Not just my lieutenant." Or just his - no, that's private, even if most of the ship knows. The way it is on the inside is private, the way family and fealty and command and culture and intimacy all run together for clones. He reigns the more tumultuous feelings close. He's a sniper; he can keep on the damn target.
"I never had a little brother before. I don't think I'm good at it yet." He was big brother to Nidana, of course, but sisters are different. "I want to be clear that this is - not a condemnation, and not a demand. It's not even a request. But I am informing you, for the future, as explicitly as I can, because that seems to be generally the duty I've failed in. That when you are cruel to him, my lord, you are cruel to me."
He takes a breath, lets it out in a rough, ridiculous, sideways laugh. "And for once you've got no excuse to forget, the man literally has a label on his forehead."
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He had been a brother; he had been a brother and a friend and a husband and a father and a king. He had listened to what was spoken and what was not and had learned when to pull forth the second to untangle the knots people made of themselves and others.
Most of the time, he no longer claims any of those roles. He's a ghost of too many remnants, bound to the dead and gone until the end when he had lost them and not gained anything but the freedom of emptiness. But Jedao had sworn an oath and he had accepted it, as himself, not in the name of another damned soul. He taken the words and claims they make on him, whether Jedao had known they were there or not.
He takes Jedao's hand between his, carefully lifting it slightly so he can lightly kiss his palm. The weight of ritual, all the heavier for Horseriver's usual economy in touch.
"It could be a request. It could even be a demand, though that would stand on a different ground. One offers a sword with trust that it will not be held to one's throat."
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He takes a careful breath. "It might have been different if he were demoted. I need that not to happen. But that seems like. More of a him problem. And I'm angry with him too, for. Badly overstepping, for hurting you when he's..." It would be ridiculous to say there was any power imbalance that mattered, and yet, Fives had a responsibility, even if he thought his responsibility was to protecting Jedao first - and that's on Jedao -
"Weeping eyes, what a fucking mess, I know I need to do better with him, and he needs to control himself, but he was terrified for me and you are four hundred and he is thirteen and he didn't have a chance. And I love him, and I need him." Clearly, deliberately, the words feeling artificial as marbles stuffed in his mouth - "Please do not bait him again."
And then he's afraid, as soon as the words are out of him. Reflexive, inexorable cold squeezing his heart. Telling people above you things you really want is just handing them targets -
(It's different with him, he kept trying to tell Fives, or sometimes He's different with me, in ways Jedao feels in his bones but still struggles to actually understand. He squeezes Horseriver's hand tight, and pulls himself the fuck together. It's Horseriver; it's different.)
I love you, he thinks in a shaky, messy surge. He still doesn't know if it's the kind of thing he's supposed to say out loud or not.
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He squeezes Jedao's hand in return.
"You have my word." The promise in that is as clear and hard as diamond. It's been a long time since he's truly given anyone his word, perhaps as long as the years since his first body was broken and his words drowned.
Jedao knows him. His brittle edges and dark shadows; his capacity for careless cruelty and careful revenge. The weight to his vows, the acts of kindness he tries to hid under careful detachment, the promise of light; Jedao knows parts of him that he sometimes wishes had died completely.
He turns so he can pull Jedao closer. It's the sort of physical gesture he usually wouldn't think to make, but there are times when some things are important.
"You may put any request to me that you might wish, Ser Fox. I am not bound to agree, but by my oath I will listen." He doesn't say, that's what good kings do, because in all Jedao's reactions, he doesn't read a questioning of Horseriver's kingship (he easily takes insult at people not knowing what he considers obvious truths, but things are different with Jedao), just a failing in what's come before. "When you speak, I will always listen." There's a cadence of a promise to that.
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"...please tell this very adorable animal to scoot over," Jedao says, patting the fox's ears, a note of playfulness already creeping in now that he's been reassured that he is allowed to do this. "He's in my spot."
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"I found the whole family here when I arrived. I took some time to make sure they were not going to start speaking to me." He's seen some strange things, even making his way around the less populated areas of the port.
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"A wise precaution," he agrees.
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"There are some worlds where it must be a certain type of disturbing to go hunting, at least if you mean to eat your kill. To much like old children's tales of demon ridden beasts."
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