Legend of Ransera

When he saw the rune laid bare, he only looked for a moment before he let go. Hurting Arry hadn't been his intention, but he didn't react well to tricks being played on him. He didn't recognize the rune, but then it didn't do what his own did. He didn't know enough about runic magic to really say anything, except it had felt mesmerizing, hypnotizing, as though Arry's will was overruling his own. That it had urged him toward happiness was nothing. Happiness wasn't really in Aurin's vocabulary.

He felt numb. Whether that was just his reaction or a reaction to the trick, he couldn't say. A couple of heads might have turned when Arry raised his voice, and still more when he began to cry. Aurin didn't notice and that was unlike him. He rubbed his face with his hand as if exhausted.

"Serves me right," he said abstractedly. Perhaps he meant it was delayed justice for the dirty trick he had pulled, almost as instinctively, on the streets of Antiris. Perhaps he meant something else entirely.

"Should we just head home?" His voice was a bit hollow, and so was his gaze when he turned it on Arry. He wasn't sure how much of the waterworks were heartfelt and how much artifice. Perhaps Arry didn't know either. A street kid learned to be as adept an actor as any who trod the boards of the Golden Peacock. And he had urged Arry to play the role he wanted to be. If there was an artifice to Arvalyn, he had played midwife to the identity's birth. Aurin had a tricky relationship with the truth himself

Of course, home was two different buildings for them. Life had seemed somewhat simpler when they had briefly been roommates, though.

Aurin froze, but his insides were moving. He reviewed his urges as they came. First, he wanted to take Arry home and fuck him. But while that might distract them, it wouldn't solve anything. Second, he wanted to sneer. But that would only increase the pain, even if it did have the chance of pricking his pride and steeling his backbone. Third, he wanted to let words fall out in an attempt to comfort him. But he always said the wrong things to Arry. Even if they seemed to be the right thing at the moment, they ended up wrong in the long run. He wasn't sure if he misspoke or Arry read things into what he said that he didn't intend, but it always seemed to lead down a rocky road.

Of course, he was aware in a vague sort of way that his own bait and switch childhood had something to do with how he engaged with people, especially the ones he cared about, but self-examination only led into the darkness. He wasn't afraid of it exactly, but it was too easy to get lost in the dark, to lose himself and whatever self-control he had, whatever control over his environment he had. It led to vulnerability and that was anathema.

But even as Arry bade him go, he couldn't. Would his distraught ward run off into some dangerous situation? He couldn't let something happen to him. Even when he told himself that he only had to keep an eye on Arry until Arry was established and could take care of himself, he knew that the world could come for him at any moment no matter how well established he became, even if he became the Shokaze's own bard and lived a feted life at court. He would always have to look out for Arry, which meant he couldn't leave Kalzasi, which meant he was stuck. It would seem crazy were he ever to say it out loud, but he had survived more than once by running. The idea that he couldn't up and run at a moment's notice was disconcerting.

He wanted to sharpen something, soothing his own mind with an activity that would help prepare him for the dangers the next time they came for him. But that wouldn't go over well in public. Finding himself in the need of something to fidget with, he pulled out a coin to roll over his knuckles. He didn't say anything more, but he didn't leave Arry alone.

"Yes," his voice creaked. Apparently his throat had closed up over his silence. It eased a bit as he kept speaking. "I'd like that. To go. With you."

Hazel eyes caught the impossibly gold gaze of his young friend. Friend didn't encompass it, but neither would the words Arry would have liked to be true either, he supposed. He felt as though he had expressed things as best he was able over their time together, but circumstances begged to differ. But there were words he was physically incapable of saying, and it seemed as though they would keep coming back to this place, where Aurin felt he cared too much and Arry felt he cared too little. But perhaps they had a reprieve for the time being.

After one more roll of the coin over his knuckles, he flicked it spinning into the air, caught it, and pocketed it. Standing, he nodded gruffly. He got prickly like this, but he had never hit or abandoned Arry, so he assumed they could just walk out and put it behind them. He was, of course, an idiot about a lot of things like this.

When Arry rose too, he put his hand on the lad's shoulder as if nothing were wrong. Or, perhaps, he hoped that whatever had been wrong was past. Everything had been comfortable for a while now with Arry gradually gathering steam as Arvalyn and Aurin doing the same with his collection of secrets. While Arry had apparently been thinking about their friendship progressing, Aurin had been focused on their reputations and streams of income. It wasn't romantic, but neither was he. All he really had in this world was a little cottage in an alley, his reputation for competence, Arry, and now Torin. If it didn't seem like much, it was the world to him. And he was trying to build it into something more secure.

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