Work Text:
Shadia had always found comfort in the late-night quiet of the Rookery, the low calls of night birds, and the hushed conversations between friends as they walked together. This late, most houses were dark but for the candles some left in their windows in expectation of family still to return or simply left to burn down with the hours. There were fewer every year, a growing unease with their display as the Creed acted more and more as if they had a monopoly on light itself, and even if she understood why, Shadia couldn’t deny that she dearly missed the taper-candle constellations that once speckled the neighborhood.
She had left the Round far later than intended, caught up in the finishing touches of her murals and then caught up watching the troupe practice. The realization had struck her, somewhere between the third and fourth hours of what had been meant as a simple dialogue-only run-through of the first act, that she should have left hours ago, before it had gotten so late it had looped around to early.
Usually it wasn’t such a big deal—it wasn’t unusual in the Rookery to come home at odd hours or to be loud past the ‘proper’ time, but it was different in Mirzash. Not quite curfew, but an expected level of quiet after certain hours. Different rules, and ones that grated on her after a life lived without restraints, but Elodie didn’t mind if she came home later or if she came home loudly, as long as she came home safe.
The issue, of course, is that she forgets, somewhere in those hours of rehearsal and the exhaustion that comes with the paling morning sky, that she was supposed to head to Mirzash and not the Rookery. The new fork in her path—north to the D’vyen House and not east across the bridge—comes and goes without her notice, so caught up in the familiar routine of walking with her friends that she lets her feet carry her home. She isn’t thinking about the fact she hasn’t slept there in days, isn’t thinking about why.
She hadn’t told anyone she was staying elsewhere, and by the time she remembered to mention it, they were already at her front door, exchanging hushed goodbyes as her friends wandered off towards their homes. And although she told Dad she would stay with Elodie and Hero, the draw of her childhood bedroom—its tapestries and overstuffed pillows and the tiny kaleidoscopic lanterns she’d hung from the rafters as a teenager, the little field of stars they made on the ceiling when lit—is too strong to walk away from.
Her dad would understand. He hadn’t suggested she stay with Elodie and Hero because he didn’t want her there. “For now,” he’d said, “for a bit.” That wasn’t forever.
“It helps to know you and your sister are both safe,” he’d said over breakfast that morning, pastries and cups of chai to balance out the multiple cups of coffee already had between them, and although part of her had wanted to question why their home wasn’t safe, he had looked so exhausted, so grey and so unusually serious, that it felt unfair to argue.
She couldn’t deny that it had been a terrible sort of relief to stay somewhere else for a while, to wake up without needing to brace herself to go about her days like the body of her uncle hadn’t been laid in their living room.
He’d been so still and peaceful in his repose that it had been too easy to imagine that he was asleep, that his grave-good adornments were just trinkets Shadia and Alogar and Thimble had stacked atop him to see how much they could fit before he woke, a mix of their mother’s jewelry and the stage props eternally scattered around the home and not precious gifts those that had come to mourn had left.
It was easy to pretend that those gifts—faceted gemstones and plant cuttings and foreign coins, lengths of silk and velveteen and brocade, beautiful things and joyous colors befitting her beloved uncle—hadn’t been strategically draped to cover bruises and wounds and the deep, near-black contusions from the noose. Easy up to a point to ignore the reality if she just didn’t look closely.
But even in their generosity, and in his peaceful stillness, none of it could hide the truth of his death. None of it could hide that there was a body in their living room and mourners at their door and a heavy silence to those first nights.
And even now, with him laid to rest within the rich earth so high atop the city, she was still grateful to be staying with Hero and Elodie. It almost felt like a sleepover, like the ones they would have when Hero was small and Elodie had moved back to her home for good and she’d missed them. She’d always been welcomed with open arms, a bedroom always ready for her. A forever place in their home, just as they always had a place in the Rookery.
For all their differences, for all they fought and competed like sisters wont, it was nice to wake up with Hero around when she was so missing the rest of their family. For all they drove each other insane, especially the older Hero got, her little sister had still always been a comfort to her.
That didn’t mean she didn’t miss home, too. That it hadn’t been difficult to wake up without the comforts she’d known all her life. That it wasn’t difficult in the moment, standing on the threshold smelling the jasmine that had bloomed strong and sweet with her mother’s nurturing—she and Hero had taken cuttings of it and had tucked them into the folds of Uncle Thjazi’s shroud alongside the late-season fern fronds they’d picked in the shade of the Tintazi, a goodbye her mom hadn’t been there to make—and not want to collapse into her childhood bed or into her dad’s arms, to not miss her mother and brother so badly it ached.
It was difficult to not miss the way her life had seemed only weeks ago, to not wonder if life would ever feel the same again, now that it had been touched so intimately by death. Now that she had been touched by death.
But in the cool of the night, the jasmine kicks up its scent as she brushes past, welcoming her home, reminding her of all the good still left for them. She pinches a bud from the plant to warm between her palms as she unlocks the door.
Ever since Shadia could remember, the Fang house had never truly been empty. Family and friends and acquaintances destined to become friends. Their house had always been open, a safe place to rest, a home for anyone who needed it.
It had always been a comfort, the reminder that they were part of a community so much larger than themselves, a community that loved and cared for them as much as they for it. The depth of care that came with being Rungjani, but even beyond that, people of all walks of life that had become part of their world.
So it doesn’t surprise her that, as she steps inside and locks the door behind her, there is a familiar figure on the couch.
For a moment as her eyes adjust to the gloom, she thinks it might be her dad. He would sometimes fall asleep downstairs when he got too engrossed in work or in a good book to weather the journey to bed, and she wants more than anything in that moment for it to be her dad.
She wants so badly to fall into his arms and not let go, to wrap herself around him like she used to when she was small and still fit so snugly in his arms, when she could crawl into his lap and tuck herself so perfectly against his chest and under his chin. Back before she’d ever considered that anything truly bad could happen to their family. She was too big for any of it now, but it didn’t matter when she just wanted her dad, when all she wanted was the way the world had seemed when she was small and her dad’s arms were the safest places in all of creation.
But it’s not, and her disappointment only lasts as long as it takes to realize who it actually is. Because for the first time in what felt like years, it’s Azune.
He’s already sat up by the time she turns from locking the door and drops her keys in the bowl by the door, probably awoken by the sound of her and her friends’ footsteps as they approached. He’d always been a terribly light sleeper.
He tries to focus on her, but even though his eyes are sun-bright, they’re human-blind in the gloom, unable to adjust the same way hers do, and it’s nothing for Shadia to wave her hand to light some of the lanterns against the walls, to flood the room with warm, dim light for him to see by. For her to see him better by, too.
He’s barely stripped out of anything but his armor. There's a blanket draped across his lap (his blanket, she realizes, the one her dad kept folded in the upstairs closet for him, purple and blue, a tapestry blanket depicting the city’s waterfalls) and two mugs on the coffee table, paperwork scattered, nothing she can make out but that it all looked very official.
There’s an unusually heavy sleep-haze over him, his gaze a little vacant. A look she knows, one she's seen on his face and Uncle Thjazi’s and, much more rarely, on her dad’s over the years. Faraway, like he was reminding himself where he was and why.
Accounting for that gaze, Shadia does a number of things slowly. She toes off her shoes and leaves them next to her dad’s boots and hangs her coat on the hook next to Azune’s ochre-lined marshal’s cloak. Crosses the room to stand closer to him and crushes that little skin-warmed jasmine bloom in her palm to release more of its scent; the smell of it had always been a comfort to her, and she hoped it was a comfort to him, too.
“Hey, ‘zune,” she says, because familiar voices usually helped. She remembers watching her mom give her dad a good solid shake to bring him out of a daze, watching her dad square his shoulders and bark an order at her uncle to refocus him when he’d get mind-lost. Azune tended to respond best to gentleness, or at least he did when they were younger. Gentle words, gentle intentions. No touching, though, at least until he was more present in his body. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
He responds slow. He’s not quite hoarse, but something rasps in his chest, like he's been sick. Or crying. “Hi, Shadi, s’okay. What time is it?”
“Hour to sunrise, ish.”
He gives a grumbly sort of acknowledgement like he used to when they were teenagers and presses the pads of his fingers hard into the corners of his eyes, his shoulders hunching up almost to his ears. The motion makes him look narrower than he’s been in years, closer by degrees to the boy that had shown up on their doorstep than to the man he’d grown into alongside her and Alogar.
He’d come to them with nothing but a letter from Thjazi and a pack of clothes and nowhere else in all the world to go. He’d been so obviously in the middle of the same coltishly awkward late-teens growth spurt as Alogar, but he’d held himself so stiffly it had been obvious he was a soldier.
Of course her dad had welcomed him in. Even if he hadn’t had a letter from her uncle, he would’ve welcomed him in.
He’d been polite but withdrawn, answering whatever questions he was asked until her dad had excused himself and Elodie with Thjazi’s letter so they could talk, leaving the two of them alone together in the living room.
The absence of adults had made their attempts at conversation awkward; they sat a person’s width apart on the couch while they both pretended they weren’t straining to listen to the hushed conversation behind the kitchen door. Shadia had watched him pick at a bowl of camp mix, carefully sorting through it for the dried fruits and little bits of chocolate, his eyes flickering to her every so often before he took more, like he was making sure it was still alright.
She’d been fascinated by his eyes, a striking duo-tone that had reminded her of the cat’s-eye marbles she and Alogar had played with as children, the ones she’d given to Hero when Hero was finally old enough to not try crunching on them like candies. Her breath had caught the first time he’d really looked at her when she’d asked if he wanted to go sit on the roof, struck with a paralyzing kind of awe, like she’d caught the gaze of some primordial thing and not a boy just a bit older than herself.
But he’d nodded, and she pulled him away to go sit on the roof so they would stop trying to listen. She’d learned young that when adults talked in hushed tones about you, it was usually kinder if you didn’t know what they were saying.
They’d sat with their feet dangling off the edge, and she’d rambled about anything and everything she could think of—her mom and Alogar and Hero and Elodie, the new play her dad was working on, and their tiny, cramped, wonderful theater.
He’d been so tightly wound that he’d gotten badly startled when someone had shouted a few streets away, had flinched hard and stiffened, wide-eyed and frozen, but he’d calmed again sitting there with her, listening intently as she kept talking and holding out a palmful of seeds for a few curious magpies to peck at.
He stays with them for years, finishes growing up alongside her and Al. He lags behind them both until seemingly overnight he didn't anymore, filling out more and more until it became difficult to reconcile the rawboned boy he’d been at the start with the broad man he’d grown into.
He’d started to pull away eventually. Started to make a life for himself in a way that meant getting his own place and coming around less, around the same time Alogar had started being gone more too, training and traveling. Shadia had put on a happy face and pretended it didn’t feel like she was losing both her brothers at once. She had her life, too, but it hadn’t ever really struck her that they might live their lives separate from each other.
And now, years later, she’s happy to see him, he was family, he always would be, but the last time she’d seen him, he’d been carrying her uncle’s body.
They hadn’t talked in weeks before that, both too busy with their lives to make time to catch up, and then her uncle had been arrested, and everything had fallen apart, and it had been Azune on their doorstep again, like all those years before, grown so strong and broad that it had seemed like no hardship at all for him to carry Thjazi’s body over the threshold, to cradle him like a precious thing and set him down so gently for his repose.
When she closed her eyes, she could still see it. She worries that in her mind now, and probably in his, he would forever be carrying her uncle’s body.
He’d spent the Farramh silent and alert, more guard than guest. She had tried to catch his attention, to share a few kind words or a hug or even just a smile, anything to let him know she was there for him, because it was his loss, too, but she hadn’t gotten the chance, and at one point she’d looked for him to find him gone, and she’d had so much else to juggle that she never had the chance to look for him again.
She wonders how long he would’ve stayed if he’d been allowed to truly mourn with them as family. Because he had loved Thazji, too. He was mourning him, too. It felt cruel that he wasn’t allowed to do it publicly.
She’d been a little surprised when he hadn’t come to the burial with her dad, but that Miss Mag’nesson had instead. Not that she’d minded, Uncle Thjazi had been loved by a lot of people, and they all deserved to say goodbye. She’d just kind of expected he would be one of them.
She wonders if he’s gone yet to his grave but doesn’t want to ask. He’s still a little fuzzy with sleep, relaxed in a way she almost never saw him be anymore, and she doesn’t want to ruin it.
“Hey,” she says softly, waits until he peers up at her again. "Want some coffee?”
She lights a fire under the kettle with a flick of her hand, carefully stoking it to a gentle blaze. It would be easy to simply prestidigitate it to boiling, but she’d always liked the ritual of making coffee slowly, especially when she wasn’t making it for just herself.
The air in the kitchen is heavy with the lingering herbal scent of tea from a pot abandoned on the counter. Even if the jar next to it hadn’t been so obviously one of the sleep blends, she would’ve been able to tell from the smell alone—lemon balm and valerian root and something else almost too heavily medicinal to be anything but a sleep potion. It would explain why he was so much groggier than she would expect.
She moves the pot to the sink, opens a window to air out the valerian, and starts pulling out what she needs—cafetière and a measuring spoon, mugs, sugar, a tiny bottle of cream from the icebox.
Her search for the coffee takes longer, her own previous efforts working against her. She’d pulled many of the jars of tea to the front of the cabinet when her mom had arrived, and she has to rummage around them to find the bags of coffee she’d pushed to the far back corner.
She hadn’t known how long her mom was going to stay, and she had wanted it to all be easy to find, to show that she’d been keeping up with making the blends she’d been taught—remedies for everything from stomach upset and cramps to headaches and sleep. Work that Shadia had cherished because it made her feel closer to her mom despite the often-vast physical distance between them.
There were other teas scattered among them, a Kahadi red with a mouthfeel like velvet and a smoky black from the Sunset Mountains and delicately floral white teas from even further away. Special blends that she reached for when she needed a change but that mostly stayed in the cupboards for her mom’s returns so they could enjoy them together. Simpler things too—a jar of crushed mint and one of dried jasmine buds they harvested in the spring to brew on the windowsills during the hottest months.
She pushes past it all to find the coffee, the roasts her dad bought that only he and Bolaire had the palates to truly appreciate. Settles for one she remembers had notes of candied ginger and orange peel.
She fills the cafetière and stands in the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil and listening to the chattering of magpies on the roof and the low croon of mourning doves as it all filters through the open window.
When she joins him again, he’s attempting to pick apart his braid, but his movements are slow and still slightly hazy. She settles the tray on the coffee table and sits beside him, sidles close, and shoos his hands away. It’s an old habit to take over the work of loosening the long cord of his hair, and he lets her do it without protest, dropping his hands palms up into his lap.
The braid comes apart quickly, but even after it’s all combed loose, she keeps carding her fingers through the long wavy drape of it all, pulling gently at any little snarls she comes across.
In all the years they’ve known each other, she’s rarely seen his hair loose except for moments like this, late nights and early mornings before he could braid it again. He obviously hadn’t meant to fall asleep in it, she couldn’t remember a time he ever had. His hair had always seemed a singular point of pride, healthy and long and always absurdly soft. Always braided in the same style, more weight to it than simply ease or preference, something he held close.
She already knew he'd want to braid it again before he left, and since she was already there, she didn’t see any harm in doing it for him when she’d done it before. She nudges his thigh with a knee and nods down at the floor. He understands instantly, hums a tired affirmative, and scooches off the couch to sit at her feet. She settles cross-legged behind him, and his nape fits easily against the divot created by her ankles.
It’s been a long time since they sat together like this, and looking down at him, she could see so clearly how he'd changed—the definition of his arms when he rests them on the table, just how powerfully built he’d become compared to the lean teenager he’d been. But she could see what remained the same, too—the scattered freckles over his shoulders like flecks of brown paint and the way he goes boneless and docile when she returns to running her fingers through the loose sprawl of his auburn hair to pull it all neatly back to his nape and up into her lap.
She splits sections at the base of his neck to start his usual three-strand and gets a few passes in before she reconsiders and combs it back out. Pulls sections from his crown instead, running her nails lightly over his scalp as she divides it out and starts to plait.
Shadia and Alogar had been so curious about Azune in those first months. Although their dad had warned them to give him space as he acclimated, to not ask too many questions of him, it didn’t exactly stop them from being nosy when they could get away with it. A boy their age who had served in a war with their uncle, it was hard not to ask questions.
Alogar had asked endlessly about the rebellion, both curious and simmeringly jealous—what it had been like to fight, what Uncle Thjazi had been like in battle. Those questions never seemed to bother Azune, but his answers still usually lacked specificity. Whether he was warned off details by their dad or making his own choice to withhold, it was never quite what Alogar wanted to hear.
Instead, it had been one of Shadia’s questions that seemed to unbalance him the most.
They’d gone swimming in one of the calmer parts of the river—Alogar had been determined that whole summer to teach Hero how to tread water and their dad had finally relented. Shadia and Azune had been sat together on the bank after they’d had their fill, drying off and watching Hero determinedly dog paddle after their brother as he lazily backstroked away.
She had watched as Azune wrung out his hair and idly finger-combed it into sections. The movements had been so practiced, so unconscious, that she had asked who taught him how to braid.
She’d honestly half-expected him to say Thimble, because it had been Thimble who had taught Shadia some of the more complex plaits she knew—things she’d learned in the Golden Orchard, fey knots and twists and the Royce’s wonderfully elaborate plaits—but he’d frowned at the question, brow furrowed and fingers stalled on the carefully parted sections.
He’d gone quiet for so long she’d almost apologized, but after a moment, he answered, starting to braid in a slow underhand down the long cord of his hair, loose enough that it would air dry as they walked back home. His voice had been so soft, like he was entrusting her with a secret. “My mother. She taught me and my sister when we were little. I’m not the best at it, but…”
She’d felt silly for how much it had caught her off guard. Of course he’d had a mother, but Shadia hadn’t thought about it. She’d accepted he was her age but hadn’t quite conceptualized everything that came with that, the reality of what it all probably meant that he was here with her family and not back with his own.
Thinking about it had hurt, had made her so instantly sad, that she had immediately offered to teach him other braids, if he wanted, in an attempt to steer the conversation. He’d brightened at that, especially after she told him about the ones she’d learned from Thimble.
But, really, it had been her mom who taught her first, too. How to make small braids tight and even, the difference between over- and under-hand braiding. How to secure a braid without needing ties or ribbons and how to weave in chains and cords and baubles without them getting tangled. How to find calm in the process when her thoughts were going too fast to manage.
The one she was putting Azune’s hair in now was one Thimble had taught her, a basic Timmon’s plait that had always suited him. She strands under and picks up another section from the side of his head to weave in. “Do you think they’re going to find Al? Mom and Lady Nessa and—”
And Occtis, who she only met briefly but had seemed sweet and awkward, and Sir Julien, who Alogar thought so highly of. He’d be happy to see Sir Julien, and mom, maybe not at the same time but— but if Shadia’s letters hadn’t reached him with the news of Uncle Thjazi’s arrest, they would have to tell him about—
“I hope so,” he says. “If anyone can, it’ll be Thaisha.”
She nods, working deft fingers through the last few sections until she gets to his nape, finishing off with his regular three-strand. “I miss him.”
“Me too.” Azune tilts his head back to look up at her, smiling small but genuinely. “He’ll be alright.”
“Might not be after mom finds out he definitely slept with Sir Julien.”
He wrinkles his nose, brow furrowed incredulously. “You think—?”
“You don’t? You’ve met him, he’s totally Al’s type.”
He seems to actually consider it. “Al could do better.”
“Oh, obviously.”
She rests her hands on his shoulders, feeling the steady rise and fall as he breathes slow. She wants to wrap her arms around him, but the angle is too awkward, more headlock than hug. Settles for leaning forward to touch their foreheads together. She can feel the soft rumble of his laughter through that little point of contact.
After a moment she pulls away and slips off the couch to sit beside him, pulls his blanket with her to drape it over their legs as she stretches hers out under the coffee table alongside his, and leans into his side. Her exhaustion from the night was finally catching up with her, the world was starting to tilt and drift like she was at sea, and no matter how water-logged the sunset in his eyes was, he'd always been steady as a ship at anchor.
He’ll have to go soon, the lightening of the sky outside the windows and the increasing birdsong heralding the dawn, but she’s selfishly pleased he’s lingering, letting her lean into him and drift. She’s missed having him around almost as much as she’s missed Alogar. The house had been so quiet after they’d both gone, with her mom already away for months at a time and Hero more often at the D’vyen house once she’d started full-time at the Penteveral. It was like she had blinked and her entire world had changed, and even years later she was still recovering from it.
It takes her a moment to remember that there’s coffee on the table and a moment longer to nudge him and nod to it. He immediately obliges, reaching out with the arm she wasn’t using as a pillow to pull the tray close enough to depress the plunger of the brewer.
She’s so tired that she gets momentarily lost in the grounds and the little bits of froth swirl with the motion, in the pleasantly fragrant swirl of the steam as he fills their mugs.
“It’s still early,” Azune says, spooning sugar into the mug closest to her, topping it with a generous pour of cream and stirring. It’s only sort of surprising he still knows exactly how she liked her coffee, when they spent years across the same breakfast table. When she knew exactly how he liked his, too, once he’d stopped forcing himself to choke it down black. He angles the tray so she could reach for it without unsticking herself from against his side, if she wanted to. “You should go up to sleep, Shadi.”
She hums sleepily, cheek smushed against his shoulder, and watches him pour the remaining bit of cream into his mug. If he didn’t have to go, she would’ve been perfectly content to fall asleep there, to nap as long as he would allow it. If he didn’t have to go, he probably would’ve let her.
As it is, he lets her lean against him for longer than she expects. They settle into silence as he drinks his coffee, and she drifts as the birdsong outside the windows slowly increases and for just a little while she understands with perfect clarity that their family would be okay again.