“Nikita?” Shura’s face is a pale smudge in the dark, his voice a faint whisper.

“Yes?”

The ground beneath him rustles as he shifts in his pallet. “I’m afraid,” he admits, voice trembling.

I close my eyes.

Understatement of the bloody century.

“Me too, kid.”

If someone asked me how the hell we got out of there, I probably couldn’t tell them. My recollections of this afternoon are just vague flashes of action, my body moving on autopilot as I dragged the kid out of danger and into the silverwoods. What I really remember is the angry, growling buzz that accompanied the afternoon. The roiling in my stomach, the dryness in my mouth, the way my bandages were soaked through with sweat after barely an hour on the road.

I drag a shaking hand up to pinch my nose and scrub over my face. Some individual curls lodge themselves into tree bark as I lean further into the tree and stare up at the stars. There are too many of them, too bright, and my arm flops up to cover my eyes. The tunic smells like sweat and a hint of blood. It doesn’t usually bother me.

“Me too,” I repeat.

Shura manages a shaky cough that I charitably decide was probably meant as a laugh. “At least I’m not alone.” His voice hitches on the word “alone” and something in my chest aches so much for this kid it takes away my breath. He’s seventeen, darn it. At seventeen, I thought I was stressed because I had to balance music school, competitions, and orchestra applications. He just found out that his country is on the brink of collapse and he’s apparently the only royal willing to get off his ass and do something about it.

Talk about stress.

The dry grass rustles again, louder this time, and the pale smudge that is Shura’s face blurs as he sits up. His silhouette unfurls from his pallet, and before I have time to wonder about it he’s taken a few shaky steps in my direction and I suddenly have an armful of shaking seventeen-year-old clinging to me. His hands grip my tunic and his face is pressed into the space between my shoulder and neck. The force shoves my back uncomfortably into the tree behind me, but the discomfort is nothing against the breathless ache in my chest.

(I don’t think he’s ever hugged me before.)

One of my hands tentatively comes up to rest on his head while the other rubs his shoulders, and that’s enough for him to completely break down, sobbing angrily into my tunic. The ache spreads from my chest into my eyes. I find myself staring at a blurry moon, hand still rubbing soothing motions on his shoulders, resolving to keep the tears from falling by sheer willpower.

“I don’t know what to do,” Shura sobs into my collarbone. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

The blurry moon ripples as the tear overflows and tumbles down my cheek. Darn it. My hand comes up from cradling his head to swipe at my eyes, but it’s a futile effort.

“I know,” I whisper, still rubbing his shoulders as if that could do anything. And I do know. I know better than I can ever begin to tell him. The shaky anguish, the tension in his shoulder blades, the ache that’s most likely settled itself around his skull. All accompanied by that horrible atonal buzzing, the nauseous ostinato of utter helplessness. My bones ache in sympathy and I grip the kid tighter.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he whimpers. “I don’t want him to hurt anyone. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.” His voice hitches. “He just wants to help people. He’s a good man.”

“I know,” I whisper again. If there’s one thing I could say about the king and mean it without any reservations, it’s that he never intends to harm people. His manner, his speech, his face, everything about him oozes genuine care for even the most vaguely human-shaped shrub in his immediate vicinity.

He’s genuine, he’s principled, he’s consistent, and he loves his son more than anything else in the universe. If only that was enough to make him a good man.

“I don’t know what to do,” Shura says again. His voice is muffled against my tunic, but much stronger than before.

I tighten my arms around him and continue to rub soothing, mindless circles on his back.

“I’m afraid,” he mumbles, “I’m afraid, I’m so, so afraid and I don’t know what to do.”

I blink rapidly into the moonlight, cursing the tears and the situation and the king and Death and anyone and anything I can think of. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes, and if there was one person in this world who doesn’t deserve even a rhyme of the helpless fear, subsequent shame, and overwhelming guilt that I did so many years ago, it’s him. The thought alone, the idea of him in as much pain as I was, makes me sick. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. The fact that it's come for him now, and there's nothing I can do about it? Bloody terrifying. 

“You’re allowed to be scared,” I tell the ache in my chest, the moon, the helpless kid sobbing in my arms.

“Father says –” he cuts himself off, shakes his head, but continues. “Father says fear makes bad decisions.”

I shake my head. “Fear doesn’t make any decisions. You do.”

One of the hands clutching at my tunic reaches up to punch my shoulder. “You know that’s not what he means.”

I hum. “Do I?”

Shura huffs, a puff of warm air at my neck. “What he means is that men make bad decisions under the influence of fear.”

“They do,” I say (and resist the urge to scratch at the phantom feeling of blood coating my forearms). “That’s not what I gave you permission to do, though. I said you’re allowed to be afraid.”

The longer we spend in our familiar banter, the more his shoulders relax. “It would seem that those two concepts are integrally connected, somehow.”

It’s a bizarre sensation to grin even as tears are still drying on my cheeks. “No one’s asking you to make any decisions tonight, kid. Right now, you can feel as afraid as you want to.”

Shura lifts his head and leans back to look me in the eye. Even in the semi-darkness, with a tear-stained face and puffy eyes, the serious glint in his eyes makes me swallow. “But we’ll have to make a decision at some point, won’t we?” His mouth twitches dangerously at the thought.

I sigh. There’s no point in sugar coating it, but I also don’t want to be an asshole about it. “Most likely, yes. At some point. But you’re not having this discussion at night, three hours after we found out about it. Sleep on it. Be angry about. Be afraid. Do whatever you need to. Postpone your decision until you can approach it clearly.”

He swallows, not at all as comforted as I’d hoped. Not that I’ve ever been known for my extensive capacity for doling out comfort. Who authorised me to be here in this situation anyway? He needs a real adult. With actual skills in empathy.

“My decision?” he asks quietly.

It takes half a second to understand the implication, but once it’s there, it rings in my ears.

I care about Zemyal, loath as I was to admit it before. I chose to come back here, live here, work here for people I can’t stand, because it matters to me. I care so much it hurts. I care because I’ve already messed up once, and they paid the price, and I’m terrified that I’ll never be able to make up for it.

But I also care about the kid. I want him to be happy. I want him to make decisions that let him sleep at night. I can’t manipulate him into doing what I want.

“Of course it’s your decision, Shura,” I say firmly. “I wouldn’t take that away from you.”

He shakes his head angrily and takes me by the shoulders. I find myself staring back at the most intense gaze I’ve ever received from him. “That’s not what I’m asking.”

I blink.

“Will you stay?”

I don’t usually feel that I’m particularly stupid, but there must be something intensely obvious that I’m missing here. “I wasn’t exactly planning on leaving you out in the woods three days away from home by yourself, your highness.”

He huffs. “No, I mean, will you stay. After I make the decision.”

Everything grinds to a halt.

I stare at him. There it is, the thing I’ve been too stupid to see. Right in front of me. An abyss, full of darkness, releasing blasts of wind which rattle my bones. Shura standing next to me. Asking me to jump.

Is this some twisted attempt at absolution, or is it friendship?

Will I still support him, after he decides, no matter what he decides?

Who am I truly loyal to?

I don’t know.

I hover over the edge, darkness rustling somewhere below me.

A good person, or a good friend?

Heaven knows I don’t know how to be either.

“I’ll be here,” I say, and the wind whistles in derision as I tip over.  “For as long as you need me to be.”