lady_mab | Fic - EphrimThrondir - Saying Goodbye (Reply)

Vague spoilers for 33 and 34!

This is from Lu 😘

The celebrations last for what feels like forever, but can’t be more than a few days. They deserve that moment, and Ephrim enjoys seeing the people--his people? Is he allowed to say that?--celebrating with the sweet sigh of relief that came with the death of the Advocate.

Throndir has been hard to find through all of this, and at first, Ephrim gives him his space. After Alcyon, after what had been said… After what hadn’t been said, even.

Ephrim is no Ranger, but then again, neither is Throndir. Not anymore. So he tracks down Throndir, asking around, using his own limited senses, relying on pure instinct more than anything else.

(If he allows himself the fancy, Ephrim thinks of it as following the tether that is hooked into his heart, the other end held by Throndir. It’s not so much as finding a co-leader, a trusted friend and advisor, it’s about finding the other half of himself. Especially when his own half has been pulling itself too thin and threatens to fray completely.)

Ephrim manages to track Throndir down with no one else around, finally for a private conversation, on the third day since their return. The night before the others are ready to leave. He’s seen Throndir in the war table meetings, had to stand there and listen and say nothing as Throndir volunteered to go with Hella--with Hadrian. Ephrim doesn’t know which was the motivation, but it’s clear that the guilt is still there.

Throndir is still trying to atone.

“Running away, then?” Ephrim says, closing the door to the storage room behind him and leaning against it. He’s not much of a defense, but it seems that Throndir has been avoiding him the last few days, so it’s as good a move as any.

“They need me—”

“I need you.”

“I’m a danger to you, Ephrim,”

“No more than you are to any of them—”

Throndir sighs and throws down his bag. “To you specifically. What happened to you in Alcyon, I can’t control it.”

Ephrim rolls his eyes. “Not this again.”

“No, I need you to listen to me—”

“And I need you to tell me that you’re not running away from me. From facing this.” Ephrim jabs his gloved hand at his chest, and the ache of it is still there. The memory that the fix he thought he found was only temporary, undone as easily as an unconscious thought.

“It’s easier for me to pull from the weak. You’ve been destroying yourself, and I’m only speeding that along.”

“I’m not—”

“The arrow, Ephrim? Each time you use that weapon, you don’t think I can’t feel the way it breaks you apart?” Throndir looks at him, and there are lines of exhaustion etched into every crevice of his face. He looks so tired, as tired as Ephrim feels, and not for the first time, the weight of those long winter years presses down.

Ephrim gives into his exhaustion, his weakness, and covers his face with his hands. Outside, muffled through the wood of the door and the distance of the keep, he can hear the echoes of the party still going. The strings of music floating on the spring breeze.

People will be looking for him, wanting to celebrate his accomplishments, his name. (Hadrian, scarred, keeps to himself, keeps to his family. Hella, changed, keeps to Adaire. The names the people shout and cheer.) He wants to stay here, to hide, to claim a final moment where he can.

“Are we fighting?” Ephrim asks, voice wavering in a way that he would only ever let Throndir hear. “I don’t want you to leave—” if we’re fighting, he means to say, but his courage peters out and he can’t manage the strength.

“Yes,” Throndir says, fragile. “I’m sorry.”

Ephrim shakes his head. Before he can decide what to do next, to stand aside or to yell--to actually fight, to get to the heart of the matter, to feel something over this fear-turned-numbness--Throndir crosses the distance to him and catches him up in a fierce hug.

His arms fold easily around Throndir’s shoulders, holding him close, feeling the tethered piece of him braid itself back into a stronger rope. “And I thought the housing arrangement in Alcyon was going to be hard,” Ephrim says, managing a laugh.

Throndir kisses him, pushing him back against the door, fingers caressing Ephrim’s cheek and burrowing back in his hair. “Allow me this. Say you forgive me. Don’t let me leave thinking you’re mad at me.”

“I could never be mad at you,” Ephrim murmurs, drawing him back in for another kiss. And another, and another, unwilling to let him go. “Say goodbye to me properly, and I’ll give you your forgiveness.”

There’s a quirked brow, the question of a challenge. “Here, in the storage room?”

And Ephrim manages another laugh, though it’s barely held together. “Fuck no. I want you until the morning. As long as I can have you.”

Throndir lets his hand drop to Ephrim’s chest, pressing softy over his heart. “Let me finish up here, then I’m yours for the night. For as long as I can stay.”

Ephrim gives him one final kiss before letting him pull back. Then don’t leave, he wants to say, but instead, he says, “Twenty minutes, and then you get someone else to do the final preparations. I am an impatient man.”

Throndir catches Ephrim’s left hand before he can get too far. He presses a kiss to the knuckles. “Twenty minutes.”

Ephrim leaves to say his goodnight’s to those at the party still expecting him, and does his best to quell the anxiety welling up inside of him.