[complete] I'm home again, I won the war, and now I am behind your door.

[amberdrake]

Who: Amberdrake and Sanzo
What: Drake's been out Healing people since the riots began, and is finally hitting the bottom of his resources when a familiar face shows up. Sanzo always had a particular timing...
Where: Ludmead.
When: Very late on the night of the arena riots.
Warnings: A little gore and violence at the start.

Amberdrake's vision is finally starting to gray out, inkblots of darkness spreading at the corners and sometimes blocking the middle, making his balance skew way to the left, or way to the right. He doesn't have to see with his eyes to Heal, so here he is somewhere between Ava's place and his own little rental house, patching some poor sod up who couldn't quite make it out of the line of fire quickly enough.

There's a gunshot, and Drake barely has the presence of mind to flinch at the sound or at the burning line of white-hot fire slashed across the outside of his arm. He's too distracted by the fact that the man his Gift was threaded into just died. Bullet to the skull, his Gift informs him as it happens in such excruciating detail, millisecond by millisecond, that even the seasoned war-Healer feels supremely nauseated.

Just as when he was Healing Wolfgang earlier today -- when there was still light and his eyes still worked properly -- he can feel a gun aimed at his own head. And just as then, he doesn't really react. Later, he'll tell himself that he was too distracted by withdrawing his Gift from the dead meat beneath his hands, but right then...

He doesn't really have a reason to care, now does he? For one tiny moment of loneliness-fueled self destruction, he can't be bothered to so much as duck.

Get it over with.

Comments

[sanzo]

With much creaking, cracking, and groaning, Sanzo takes his old man-esque self off to wash.

But not before pausing, and this time deliberately -- if hesitantly -- reaching out to touch Drake's cheek.

Maybe he, too, hasn't been quite convinced that his companion is real.

[amberdrake]

Amberdrake captures that hand, very briefly! And turns his head to brush his lips against the monk's fingers.

"I'll find you a clean set of scrubs and set them outside the door," he says after letting go. Look at him, all prepared for trouble as usual.

[sanzo]

Sanzo's fingers twitch, but he lets the moment drag out for a little while.

"Just like old times... huh?" Maybe there's a little irony there: for Drake, they really would be old times!

[amberdrake]

"The more things change, the more they stay the same," Amberdrake even manages a smile at that, if faint.

[sanzo]

Sanzo doesn't quite smile, and it quickly fades. "Ten years, huh?"

[amberdrake]

Drake's fades, too.

"I never stopped missing you," he says, quietly, but honestly. "I never stopped loving you. I never will. No matter where I am, and no matter what happens."

He remembers that Sanzo is wary of such open emotion, because his own world is so brutal and unforgiving. But he isn't worried about that outcome; the King of White Gryphon has dodged those arrows before.

[sanzo]

"..."

Sanzo looks him over for a long time, assessing but not critical, his expression -- and his emotions -- neutral enough.

"You've changed," he states at last, the obvious, even if it's not all obvious to him. His lack of inflection makes it hard to tell, perhaps, whether he thinks it's bad or good, or perhaps it's just that, the obvious, and whatever else comes of it will happen in time.

Amberdrake still wore his ring. He'd worried, when he'd given it to the kestra'chern, if Drake would suffer for it, like Shuuei did, or most anyone else whom Sanzo had cared for. He worried still.

I love you, I missed you, those were things that Sanzo could rarely say. But he roughly, awkwardly caressed his lover's cheek, his hair... and then headed into the shower.

[amberdrake]

"Yeah," Drake sighs to himself once Sanzo has gone into the bathroom, "I suppose I have."

But some things haven't changed... and, as he said, never will.

He finishes off the thermos full of foul tea and then, very shakily, levers himself up onto his feet. The world sways, and he has to sway the other way just to keep his balance, but he manages to make it into the bedroom. There's a small dresser, which the landlord owns just like the rest of the furniture, and he digs out a few pairs of scrubs.

Amberdrake drops one pair outside the bathroom door, as promised, and sway-shambles his way into the kitchen to scrub his hands and arms clean in the sink. There's probably brain on his clothes.

Some things really never do change. He's still a war-Healer, after all these years, complete with the hazards of the job.