Fantasy, Heist, Romance, Found-Family - Chapter 26: Chapter 26

Whiplash slapped a hand over Ronan's mouth.
He pressed his ear to the engraving in the door but couldn't hear anything over his blood rushing and the screaming bells. Someone gripped the back of his shirt when he laid his palms over the planks, but they couldn't stop him from cracking the door open a sliver, just enough to let sound in and get an eye on the scene.
He saw Amir raise yielding hands, reaching one to pull down his hood. He was slowly approaching the hall entrance and the four rumpled guards; they leveled their blades with his chest. Ronan strained to catch what snippets he could.
"Your highness," someone was saying. "...should have realized...the rest, where...? Who are they?"
Amir said nothing.
"Stop moving," the guard commanded, leering at his prince Rainer. To his comrade, "Search the place."
Only three guards left. Fight, Ronan implored, but Amir stilled, obedient like he'd always had to be. He let himself be manhandled and cuffed, and Ronan got the briefest flash of his face. Resigned, like he had come to terms with this outcome long ago, but proud. A tight jaw and hard eyes, anything but weak.
The guard tried to push him toward the door but he went willingly, not wavering at the force of it. Ronan watched him walk away, out the door, back to his prison. By the looks of it, he might actually wind up in a cell this time.
Robin's frantic hiss, "What the hell are you-"
"Don't follow me," Ronan said, then ran into the Great Hall.
He sprinted with abandon, cloaked by the bells until the moment he burst through the doors and threw himself into Amir's back.
They tumbled together to the floor. Ronan winced at the slam of Amir's chin. "Sorry, love," he murmured as he sat up over Amir's back a meter from the guards, twisting to point his right arm their way. Clutched between his fingers, cool against his burning skin, was the wooden grip of a shiny steel pistol.
The guards stopped dead. Ronan cocked the hammer and leveled the barrel with his prison guard's chest. It was the bluff of the century, but he was a damn good liar.
Shielding his movements with his body, never taking his eyes off the guards, he worked on the handcuffs with his left hand. Quickly, quickly. Seconds were all the hoax would buy him. And all he needed.
"You good to go?" he asked, leaning down so Amir could hear him, when he felt it: the tell-tale sigh of release from deep within the metal as the lock came undone.
"Great," Amir groaned.
Ronan tucked the gun back into Amir's hip and stood.
In the time Amir spent pushing to his feet, the brief moment in which three swords came down on Ronan at once, Ronan saw the lines of Amir's face pull downward and inward, so very tired. Then he erupted.
That was it. Amir was centuries old when he fought. He was ancient magma bubbling over. He was lava gushing hot and fast, spraying high, filling every space. He propelled one guard back with a kick and caught the other two with a knife in each hand, throwing aside their strikes as if they wighed nothing. He moved as a smoke cloud, surging forward then curling out of reach in a wisp. Fighting him looked suffocating.
Ronan ran at the first guard before he could regain his footing and put all those sparring sessions to use. A jab to the guard's unarmed side to make him veer away, a swipe of the leg mid-dodge to knock him off balance. Deflect the swing, counter with another strike to his unsteady side, and once he was really teetering, throw a shoulder forward. That last step probably wouldn't get Amir's approval, but it did the job. The guard wound up on the floor, and Ronan wound up on top of him.
Pinning his sword arm down with his hand and the other with his knees, Ronan glared down at his prison guard, steeled his nerve, and drove the butt of his dagger into his jaw. The guard's head lolled.
Easing up, he looked over his shoulder and nearly got crushed beneath the weight of another guard plummeting toward them. Ronan scrabbled out of the way.
Amir stood with his chin and shoulders low, breathing like there wasn't enough room in his lungs, over three fallen guards.
"Come on," Ronan urged as he stood. Amir didn't move right away except to blink up at him in a daze. Ronan snatched his hand and forced him into action, and this time when he jumped down into the tunnel, Amir was right behind him.
"Hey," Ronan said. "Are you with me?"
He didn't like the wild look on Amir's face. It landed somewhere past Ronan, out of focus. Ronan tugged down Amir's mask so he could breathe a little easier and found a line of blood trailing from his bottom lip. He reached up to thumb it away but Amir edged back, wiping his chin roughly with his sleeve.
"You shouldn't have done that," he said.
The others were waiting a short ways ahead, out of earshot of the door. Tony cleared her throat. She looked a bit green.
"Let's move out," said Vito. Amir gestured with a hand for Ronan to start first, looking anywhere but at him, and made no move to fall into step at his side. Felix offered a sympathetic smile and an elbow. Ronan accepted both gratefully.
The last walk was long and quiet. Every flask of water was drained by the first kilometer; Ronan didn't shake the paranoia that they were somehow being pursued until the second. Somewhere around the third, the torch burned out and the tunnel went dark save for the sliver of moonlight poking through the forest exit. Vito scaled the ladder and poked his head between the roots, beckoning the all-clear.
Ronan's breath hiccuped. There were six great horned beasts waiting for them around the primordial oak, reflective in the moonlight. Ronan thought he recognized Atlas' feathery tail and Calypso's striped fur, but the rest were strange to him. There was even a small one, crouching playfully onto its haunches before Amir, nearly taking his eye out with its antler as it wagged a stubby white tail.
"Wow," Felix sighed. "It's like they can tell, somehow."
"Tell what?" asked Ronan.
Amir sank to his knees and dropped his face into white fur. Someone called for the horses. He didn't move as they waited. The Royal Beasts converged around him, hiding him from sight in a cumulus blanket. Ronan could hear him muttering to them.
He only spoke up to call them off when the forest trembled with their growls at the sight of Bandit, Devil, and Rogue descending through the trees. Ronan looked between Amir and Felix, both of whom he'd grown to think of as partners on Bandit's back. But Amir was already moving, following Mitch onto Rogue without looking Ronan's way.
He lurched into Felix's back when Bandit shot into the air and away from royal orchid purple. She moved with none of her usual grace, hasty to be far from the castle and its moat of serpents. Ronan thought he might be sick and hoped his spew would land on the head of some fleeing noble.
The wind felt nice, at least. It was a cold compress against his feverish cheeks, billowing his clothes around his body to dry the sweat sticking his shirt to his skin.
The castle faded behind them, brightly lit from every window, buzzing with an energy he could feel rather than hear. The horses were calming down as the vestiges of Ronan's adrenaline faded away, leaving him with a pulsating heat in his calf, the type of exhaustion that made him want to cry, and the paradoxical inability to sleep.
"You okay back there?" Felix asked when they were moving slowly enough to be heard.
"Yeah, I'm," Ronan began, then realized who he was lying to. Had it really been so long? "No. I'm- no. How long has it been since we've seen each other?"
"Gee, it's been...five months? Five and a half. I hate that."
"Me, too. I'm sorry."
"Me too."
Felix used one hand to feel around his pockets. "That reminds me."
He twisted to hand Ronan a wad of small squares of paper tied together with ribbon. On the top one were words Ronan couldn't make out, but he could guess that they spelled out a date. He felt like he'd been running all over again. "Are these...?"
"We checked your house after the story came out. Er, I hope you don't mind. Amir knew the way."
"How did you get in? I heard there were guards stationed there."
"Ronan, we're thieves."
"True, yes, go on."
"We searched for signs of, well, anything. And I found these in your chest. I didn't read them!" he added. "Well, I read the one on top, just to see what it was, but I stopped the second I realized! Sorry?"
Ronan recalled Amir's most recent note well. 2 Nov. Thirteen days ago.
I saw a black cat today with a white patch of fur on its forehead. It made me desperate to see you. Yes, I am that weak. Yes, I was just over last night, yes I am coming back tonight, no I will not feel shame. It is only ever "yes" with you, dearest.
P.S. Sweet Robin Hood definitely suspects me of something more nefarious than serial sex. But he needs me, too. It is a dilemma that brings me great joy.
It certainly wasn't the worst note Felix could have found. Ronan's face flamed nonetheless. He pocketed the notes but didn't withdraw his hand, tracing his thumb along the ragged edges. He closed his eyes and regretted so much.
"Thank you," he said, tipping forward to rest against Felix's back. "Really."
The horses had barely touched down in the Merry Men lawn when the door burst open. Ronan was so stunned that he sat unmoving on Bandit's back after Felix dismounted, dubious even as two voices met his ears: a soft, relieved sigh of his name and a raucous screech.
Sadie yanked at his arm hard enough to drag him down and caught him in a crushing hug, squeezing until the feeling came back to his body and he wrestled his arms out from under hers to cling around her shoulders.
Elena hung back a few paces behind her. Her uncertain smile wobbled when he opened one arm to her, and when she folded against them, he could feel her trembling.
"Big babies," he said shakily.
"'M gonna kill you," Sadie sobbed.
"Get in line."
She held him even tighter for a second, then shoved him roughly to scrub her cheeks. With her head stubbornly bowed, she procured an apple from each pant pocket like it was entirely normal and extended one to Ronan. "For Exie."
Bandit snuffled happily and crushed the treat in one bite. Devil and Rogue took their pocket apples more elegantly while she chewed Ronan's hair.
It caught up to him all at once that he was here, and he was safe, and Amir was safe. But also that he'd broken out of a castle dungeon and stabbed a prince.
"You look woozy," Elena fretted. "Come inside, eat."
Ronan looked across the strangest assortment of friends and ex-friends and family he'd ever seen, landing on the one person in the group who he couldn't define.
"Not yet," he said, even though his stomach twinged at the thought of food. "We need to talk."
Amir still wasn't meeting his eye. "After dinner."
"Right now."
"You need to eat," he chided.
"We will talk right this second, or so help me I'll starve."
Someone snorted.
Amir conceded with his mouth pressed into a thin line. "Out back," he said curtly. Blood welled up in his bottom lip.
Ronan turned over his shoulder as they rounded the corner, pointing two fingers. "Privacy," he said. Sadie turned a sheepish look to Tony. Tony rolled her eyes. They stopped their subtle attempt to follow at eavesdropping distance, and Ronan struggled to wrap his head around the two of them in the same space, interacting.
He leaned back against swampy-green panels facing the backyard. An ache settled in his gut, far deeper than hunger, when Amir came to rest several steps away with his head tipped back, so visibly exhausted it was a wonder he didn't slide down the wall.
For all he'd demanded they talk, Ronan was low on things to say.
Well, he had plenty of things to say. I'm sorry or how could you? or thank you. I love you, you've ruined me, do you resent me? But he didn't know where to start.
"Penny for your thoughts?" he asked, cringing at his own spinelessness.
"I wondered if I would run into my father tonight."
"Oh."
"I didn't, and I don't- I am relieved, but it's...strange. Stranger still that I didn't think about my mother until we'd already left."
"Do you want to see them again?"
"No," he said quickly. "No, but..."
"But it's all strange."
"Yes." And Ronan thought that would be it, and he would be forced to speak up after all, but Amir continued. "When he was unhappy with me, which was often, he used to tell me I was the thorn in his side. But I suppose a thorn wasn't enough, and so I became the knife twisting in his gut. I got older and he got more creative." His head lolled to one side and he fixed Ronan with eyes full of contempt. "'Rainer, bane of this household, blade through my chest, you are a sword wielded against things once beautiful. You run them through and spill their blood, and someone else must clean up the mess. Why must I always clean up your mess?' It was very theatrical."
He spoke airily, like there was a joke to be found there somewhere.
"You believed him," Ronan guessed.
"I didn't actually, not then. Of all the cruel words he had for me, those never struck. I think, looking back, that I simply had not yet known anything beautiful, so an accusation like that held no meaning. Now I have, and I..."
"You can't take him seriously."
"Can't I?" His stare, now that Ronan had it, was hard to meet. "If betrayal is a knife to the back then I have stabbed you twice. You hate being lied to and yet I lied to you. You forgave me once and I lied again. You were..." His eyes lowered to the long cut in Ronan's pant leg and the dirty bandages it revealed. "Taken and injured and kept in a goddamn dungeon to wait with your life on the line for someone you couldn't be sure was coming, and still you- you- your escape was secured and you ran back out and risked everything to save the hand that cut you. I hate that you did that, and I-" He tore his gaze away, wringing his hands together. "I never knew I could be so destructive."
"I was sure."
"...What?"
"I never once doubted that you were coming for me. Christ, Amir, all I do is doubt. But I have faith in you."
"You shouldn't."
"It's your doing. I can be faithful because of the way you've loved me."
"Another transgression, then."
"I missed you," said Ronan. "Do you not want to be with me?"
Pain cinched Amir's expression. "You know the answer," he said like it had been punched out of him.
"But you don't want me to want you."
"Of course I-!" he pushed suddenly off the wall like he was about to start pacing but made an aborted turn toward Ronan instead. "I want you to think about it!"
"All I have had is time to think!" Ronan faced him. "Do you believe I don't know all the ways you've hurt me? I don't fool myself that you're perfect. I might have once, and I apologize for that, because that is an awful thing to do to somebody. I need to apologize for so many things."
"Don't."
"Why not?" Amir's presence was so large, Ronan sometimes forgot that the difference in their heights was small. He only remembered in moments like these, when Amir shrank into himself and Ronan rose up to defy him. "Tell me, are there any more secrets? Anything big I should know?"
Amir looked on helplessly. "There's nothing else."
"Then I've seen it all. You were gone, out of my grasp when I had just had you, and now you're within reach again and everything else seems very, very small in comparison."
"Not so small that you should endanger yourself."
"They would have taken you."
"They would have killed you."
"So you are allowed to die for me, but I can't do the same?" Ronan challenged. Alarm flashed on Amir's face as he stepped closer, but Amir squared his jaw and did not move back. "What does any of it matter when I'm here?"
"I can't stand being the reason you get hurt!"
"Will you stop with that?" Ronan exclaimed, edging nearer again. The difference between them was more pronounced this close. He had to glare from beneath his lashes. "Words cannot express how disinterested I am in your stupid fucking heroism!" He threw a weightless punch against Amir's chest. "If you are a sword then let me fall." Another punch. "Pierce my flesh and run me through, but don't be surprised when I never pull you out and you're stuck in my skin for eternity." He reared back again, but a hand caught him around the wrist. Amir was gawking at him, or maybe laughing. "What I wouldn't give to be that close to you! God almighty, you are dramatic-"
Amir pulled him in by the wrist, and Ronan was more than happy to shut up. His lips were chapped and Amir's tasted of iron. There would never be anything better. He sighed, incredulous at himself for ever thinking he could go without this.
"That was...severely hypocritical," said Amir. Ronan clenched his hand around black fabric and tugged hard, and Amir caved into him gasping-
Only to be shoved by the same hand, then shoved some more until his arms came away from Ronan's back. Ronan scrambled away from him.
"Oh my God." Ronan held his own cheeks, mortified. "Oh my God."
Amir made a confused, mildly fishlike sound, and reached for him. Ronan backed away again.
"I haven't even bathed, oh my God, I'm filthy."
"Oh my God," Amir echoed.
"Here I am, just- throwing myself onto you, I must reek-"
"Come here."
Amir approached and Ronan squawked, holding out both hands to ward him off. Amir grabbed his wrists and overpowered Ronan when he resisted, forcing him close enough to wrap his arms around and chuckling into his hair like it wasn't slick with grease.
Ronan protested loudly and squirmed in his grip. Amir didn't budge.
"Easy now," he laughed, kissing the top of Ronan's head and continuing over his outraged shriek. "I went into tonight certain I would never hold you again - something would go wrong and I would have to give myself in, or we would make it out and you would want nothing to do with me like any sane person should - so forgive me if I do not care when you last bathed."
Ronan could hardly keep fighting after that. He slid his arms up, around Amir's back, and slumped forward.
"That's the spirit."
Ronan bit down sharply on his shoulder. Nothing came of it.
"Amir?"
"Hm?"
"I love you."
Amir shuddered.
"You continue to call me that," he said after a long, hazy moment. "Amir."
"I don't know you by any other name. Unless you want me to?"
"No," he said hastily. "Please."
"Besides. Ronan and Rainer sound terrible together."
"I love you desperately."
𓃦𓃦𓃦
A fork clinked three times against a mug filled with water.
"I would like to raise a toast!" called Vito. "To the fighters and thinkers among us who breached the unbreachable tonight."
A mismatched assortment of cups jutted into the air, spilling water and wine over the rugs. "To the Merry Men!" they shouted.
Dinner was spread across the living room floor. Ronan leaned back against the loveseat, half-asleep now that his belly was filled with roast lamb and stuffed potato. He picked at a cauliflower floret and prodded it into the leftover gravy smeared across his plate. Pleasantly surprised, he did it again. He noticed Tony judging him and threw a carrot at her.
"To new friends!" Felix cheered. "For lending your heads and your hands in a world so unlike your own. You held this operation together, and dinner is delicious."
A cluttered shout went up to Sadie and Elena. The former basked in the attention, taking a long, slurping drink from the very chalice Ronan had stolen from Vito not long ago. Elena bowed her head, to be polite or to conceal the flush crawling fast up her neck.
"To the reason we're all here."
It wasn't a shout, but it caught everyone's attention nonetheless. Tony never raised a toast.
"For making sure no man was left behind. And for making it back to us."
She lifted her glass. "To Ronan."
The cheer that followed was far too loud. Ronan sat dumbly as the living room shook.
The reason we're all here. How odd, that a simple statement could be at once obvious and staggering.
"Do you want seconds, love?" Amir asked, leaning in close to be heard over Sadie's unruly laughter as Mitch reenacted the moment Ronan had run out from King Kirei's portrait. His rendition was excessively gallant and none too flattering.
"That's my hero!" said Sadie, throwing her shoulder into Ronan's. The force knocked him sideways, which would have been all well and good - welcome, even - if Amir hadn't just stood to refill their plates. She caught him by the sleeve before he could eat carpet lint and met his glare with an apologetic smile he couldn't resist.
"Back, go back," she urged. "To the beginning."
So Mitch brought them back, all the way to their first touch down in the royal woods. Felix gushed for so long about the Royal Beasts that Tony had to gently steer the conversation back to the tunnels.
They retold the night in snippets and sound effects, bickering frequently over small details. Sadie tipped forward, thrilled and full of questions; Mitched fed off of her energy, gesturing wildly with his hands. They got along well, Ronan observed with muted horror. Elena nodded at her side, trying and failing to school her expressions the grittier the story got.
"I'm impressed, loverboy," Sadie praised. Amir smiled, shy and sleepy.
Ronan was too busy testing the limits of his stomach to contribute much. He only filled in the bits nobody else had been around to see. Amir was no help, nodding off on his shoulder, but he had never been one to say much in a group. The stranger silence was Vito's.
For someone normally at the center of the room, whether by choice or because people naturally circled around him, he chimed in briefly and infrequently. Was there tension between Vito and Sadie, who was fiercely protective of Ronan? Or maybe it was Elena, who came from the very world he fought so resentfully.
Vito caught Ronan staring and looked away, and Ronan realized it was him.
Felix crawled over to Elena's side when the recap was over, digging in his clothes. Ronan couldn't see what he procured from his angle, but his sister gasped. "How did you- Lancolm is impossible to find!"
"Snatched it from the library! You would have loved it, it was massive."
Ronan squinted. "When could you have possibly had time to take that?"
Felix grinned full of teeth. "Must I remind you again that we're thieves?"
As if taking a cue, Mitch, Tony, and Vito all reached into their pockets. A suit of armor's steely gauntlet, a golden candlestick embellished with amethyst petals, an ancient-looking scroll bound in leather.
Ronan tipped his chin down to look at Amir as best as he could. "Where's your trophy?"
Amir opened his eyes to wink.
"Dear god," groaned Sadie. Tony made a face like she'd swallowed a lime.
A drowsy, sated hush fell over the group. The last conversations petered out, and with nothing else to distract himself, Ronan ran out of excuses to stall.
"What...what happens next?"
The comfortable silence took on a tangible weight. Amir's arm came around his back. He straightened, wide awake. "We've come up with a few options."
Sadie spoke first. "You could stay with me."
Instantly, "No way in hell."
"No, listen-"
"No."
"You would never have to go into the city, or leave at all- you'll have everything you need, and you'll keep working for pa and-"
"I said no!"
"He wouldn't mind!" she pushed. "He told me he wouldn't mind!"
"You already asked him?" Ronan cried. His face burned when he heard his own raised voice, frantic. He tried to relax and wound up sounding unsteady. "I will not put your family in that kind of danger. If you were found harboring me..."
"Why would they look at some random farm?" Sadie took Ronan's hands and squeezed. "You would be safe. And you'd...you'd be with me."
"I couldn't. I can't. This is the life I chose, but you didn't, and you shouldn't. I won't drag you into it."
Sadie turned away when her eyes started to water. Her face disappeared into Elena's hair, but she kept a tight hold on one of his hands.
"We did," said Felix. He wrung his hands in his lap, tapped his foot, always so fidgety when he was uneasy. "We chose this. If you need a place to go, you can always come ho- back. That's option two."
This time, when Ronan turned Vito, it stuck. Looking at him dead-on, with no mask or hood - the port-wine stain over his left eye, the sharp corners of his lips - Ronan felt lightheaded.
"Of course you can come back," Vito said. Even from across the room, he seemed to catch the nervous tick of Ronan's mouth. Ronan remembered how easy it had been to fall in love with him. "I won't ask you to work. You don't have to do anything, just. Just live, and be safe. That's enough."
"Enough," Ronan echoed. Enough wasn't something that had ever existed with Vito. "Is it?"
Vito's face crumpled. Ronan could feel how badly he wanted to look away, to keep his weakness secret, but he held fast. "It is."
"You could still work for pa. If that's not too much," Sadie said, sour but not unkind. "You could come on Bandit. Or I could come visit, that's okay, too."
Ronan tried to picture it. Living like Amir - living worse than Amir. His name was in the papers, his poster was everywhere. Would he even be able to go outside with a mask on, or would he be confined to this space?
"We took all of your stuff," said Felix. He was just shy of smiling, hesitantly hopeful. "Everything we thought you'd want, at least. It's all here."
The rest of his life in this house, this place he'd loved, this place he'd run away from. Escaped from. The rest of his life watching his friends risk their necks for a thrill. The rest of his life with Vito.
"Is there another option?" he asked quietly. He didn't watch Felix's reaction.
"There's one more. It's the main reason we couldn't get you any night but tonight."
Ronan waited with bated breath for Vito to go on. "I...did some digging. Into trade routes and the whispers about merchant ships. And it's not certain - everybody was so secretive - but there is a trade ship leaving for Oswall at dawn, and rumor has it they'll take on passengers for the right price."
Ronan nearly laughed. The corner of his mouth lifted with the urge, with disbelief and irritation and the awareness of being made fun of. But it caught somewhere in his chest, because nobody else was laughing. Not Vito's mean chuckle, not even a smirk from Mitch.
"I think I'm misunderstanding something."
Vito shook his head. Ronan's heart gave a feeble kick.
"That dream of yours is right there, if you still want it."
That was the first time Vito had ever called it that. A dream, not a delusion or a chimera.
Ronan looked to his left, at Sadie, Elena, and Felix, and it felt more like a nightmare. Unless-
He looked to his right.
"Of course," said Amir before he even got the chance to speak. "Sorry! I meant- yes?"
"Would you come with me?" Ronan asked.
"Of course," Amir said again, immediately. "Of course."
"You have to mean that. You have to mean it with your whole goddamn chest, or I swear-"
"My chest?" said Amir. "What is a chest worth when I can offer you the rest of me? And I do. I am. I'll follow you anywhere."
Ronan thought in a daze that this was it, that feeling he'd wished for beneath a sky full of fireworks. It was being pointed out in a crowd and beckoned closer. It was being shamelessly, wholeheartedly, finally chosen. It was the splinters in his chest getting plucked away one by one. It left behind an open wound, it burned - it was too raw, too gory, the pin cushion his heart had become. But now, at last, it could heal.
"How would-" Ronan blinked his eyes feverishly. "I don't have that kind of money."
"I do," said Amir. "I've been saving. Ever since you moved out."
Ronan started to ask, why didn't you tell me? before realizing it was his own fault, his own stupid rule. Instead he whispered, "What are you doing?"
Amir grinned coyly and said, "Living for you."
Ronan was gaping at him. A stupid, incredulous stare that Amir met with a tentative smile. A laugh puffed out of Ronan's open mouth, then dropped away just as fast. Overwhelmed, he pressed his hands over his face, but he could still feel everyone staring at him.
"It's- I don't think it's quite enough for two. But everyone's offered to pitch in," said Amir.
"Except for me. I love you, but I'm poor." Sadie's teasing didn't make it to her voice.
"And." Ronan dug the heels of his hands against his eyes. "It has to be tomorrow? Or- today?"
"There will probably be new posters come morning," said Vito. "More accurate ones. I don't know if any ship will take you after that. Or what the price would look like."
Ronan stood. "I need a moment to- yeah."
"We filled a bath for you," said Elena. "I don't know if it's still hot."
"Yeah. Yeah, okay."
"Do you need help?" Felix offered. Amir was already rising.
"I can bathe myself," Ronan said, snappier than he'd meant. He needed space to think.
The hallway beyond the living room was dark. Ronan faltered in the doorway; he hadn't thought this through. You lived here for years, he reminded himself. But the swaying curtains cast moving shadows, threatening to chase him down the hall.
"I'm going to help you with your hair," said Tony. She was right behind him, holding a lamp. It wasn't a question, or even an offer. It left no room for debate. She led him down the hall with two fingers curled into his sleeve. He focused on the back of her head.
The water in the metal tub was lukewarm. Ronan sank in with his injured leg propped on the rim.
"You're lucky this didn't get infected," Tony murmured as she unwrapped it. It was unsightly, swollen and crusted with dried blood, but when she ran a gentle rag around it, the surface looked healed.
Ronan cleaned himself with her nice soaps as she lathered his hair. It was clumsy, crammed into the small washroom, and it was quiet. Tony massaged her sudsy hands into his hair and let him process. He thought about everything he would lose if he left.
"I'm going to dye your hair," she said after it had been still for some time. Ronan tipped his head back as she got to work.
"It's growing so long," she commented absently.
"I should cut it."
"Only if you want to."
Ronan peered up at her. He could just barely see her blackened fingers near his forehead. "It's pretty," she added.
"I think," Ronan said. "I think I'm going to leave."
He was going to leave, and he would never come back. He was going to abandon Sadie after fighting so hard to stay close to her, and he was going to lose Elena when she'd only just begun to feel like his sister again, and he was going to leave the best friends he'd had for six years. Permanently this time, with no option of coming back.
"I know," said Tony.
"I'm going to miss you," he said.
"Shut up." Then, "Me too."
Ronan was going to leave, and so many open ends would be left behind.
"Do you still have those tarot cards you bought a couple years ago?" he asked.
By the time Tony returned, Ronan was dry and dressed, relishing in the feeling of being clean and wearing clean clothes. He sat criss-crossed on the tile while she knelt in the doorway. "What do you want to know?"
He thought it over as she shuffled yellowing cards stamped with simple criss-crossing patterns. He could smell their age. "I just...want to see where I'm going. This decision- I want to know if I've changed."
Tony drew a card, turned it over, and revealed the Fool. The hopeful breath he'd been holding seeped out through his nose, but the tightness in his lungs didn't ease. She watched his face fall and cocked her head.
"What do you think this means?" she asked.
Ronan scoffed. He'd drawn this card when he was sixteen. He was nearly twenty now, still playing the fool. "Exactly what it says."
Tony laughed under her breath. She held the card out to Ronan, and he reluctantly took it, scowling down at the boy walking dewy-eyed and oblivious at the edge of the cliff, one step away from falling off the lip.
She lowered her head, black hair swishing around her waist as she laughed. "The fool means new beginnings," she said, bright in a way she never normally allowed herself to be. She tipped her head up, smiling, sparkling. "It's a leap of faith, Ronnie."