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

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.

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Drake hands them over next, too. This part, he would have asked for help with, because wrapping bandages evenly and with the right tension and then tying them off... one-handed? He could do it, but he was still tired enough to doubt his own dexterity.

And it was just a lot less fuss to have someone else manage it.

"I think our being here is proof of that," Amberdrake notes mildly, "although I have a hard time being mad at them over it, at this point. I shouldn't be glad for this situation; there are people relying on me on my world, and people relying on you on yours, but..."

But he is glad. Even if he suspects that makes him a selfish idiot.

Sanzo bandages him without replying for a while. He's done this a lot, for himself and for others, and he'd probably be a decent field medic if that had been his calling.

But eventually he says, "So we make our own way, once we find out the limits of this place."

Amberdrake smiles a little at that, rolling his short sleeve down once the bandages are done. His arms being bare like this is more skin that he usually showed casually, ten years ago. And not a hint of apprehension can be felt; he's gotten over some of that, too.

"When we were on Haven..." it seems important to voice the thought, now, so he speaks slowly and carefully, "we both got into trouble, trying to protect the other at our own expense."

It was true. Amberdrake had tried to protect Sanzo from his own inadequacies, often by pulling away. Ducking under his mask. Literally fleeing, sometimes, as when the others had arrived. And Sanzo... hadn't that been why he'd initially allowed Kain to do as he had? To 'make peace'? To keep Drake from becoming collateral damage?

He's had ten years to mull these things over.

"But that was foolish, because it just makes the other person have to try harder to undo the damage the first person did to themselves while trying to protect the other. Does that make sense? It's a vicious cycle."

Ten years of relative peace has taught me more about these things than ten years of war could.

Sanzo, after setting the rest of the bandages aside, doesn't sit down; he watches Drake even more closely instead.

"When did you get so cocky, asshole?" is what he finally asks, and it's surprised, approving, and a little disconcerted all at once.

"That isn't exactly a denial, dear-heart," he notes with a smile, because he's not letting Sanzo de-rail him quite so easily as that!

"Do you know how many times I almost got shot, yesterday?" Amberdrake asks, and then shakes his head a little with a glance at his bandaged arm, "And I don't mean that little thing. I had a gun aimed at my head at least twice, probably more. I didn't feel like doing anything about it, until you showed up."

"Idiot. You're not a fighter, you shouldn't be on the front..." But that's hypocritical of him to say, isn't it? Hasn't Sanzo said to others to fight when they needed to fight? To risk themselves instead of sitting back?

But this is Drake, and...

"Shit." Relationships make everything so damn complicated.

"You're saying things that..." No, that's not the civil thing to say, either. "If you go out there without backup, I'll shoot you myself."

"You're misunderstanding me," Amberdrake reaches to catch one of his hands in his, "I'm saying that now that you're here, I will be careful. Because I don't want to hurt you by getting myself killed. And if you want me to be safe, you'll do the same. Because if I lose you, here, I... probably won't be far behind."

And he offers a rather affectionate smile up at the monk, "I know you hate discussing these things, but I want-- I feel it should be said. At least the once. If we're going to make our own way, let's do it without being idiots." This time.

Sanzo doesn't pull his hand away. "Look at you, talking like a strategist now." And a lover, but he doesn't say that aloud.

At least his tone is a little more gentle, and his gaze betrays everything that he won't say-- but Amberdrake can feel all of it anyway, awkward as it all is.

"You've got weird taste in trash."

"I'm talking like a kestra'chern," Drake counters smoothly, "who's finally had time away from the war."

It's not like he'll ever be completely over it. The war haunts him, still, and it always will. But it isn't the entirety of his life as it was before. He'd never had a break from it, when Sanzo knew him last, never had time to recover at all, to mourn, to even attempt to heal.

"I have a family, now... people I don't want to lose. I've accepted that they don't want to lose me, either. And you're one of them." So there! "Ten years has given me a lot of time to think about what I'd say if I ever got the chance, you know."

A lot of words crowd around in Sanzo's chest, or his brain, or wherever it is that these things get all tangled up. How can Amberdrake speak so freely? Why can't he?

"I haven't," is what he manages-- without self-pity, only plainly. That he cares is something that the kestra'chern can feel; that he loves him is something that saying aloud is entirely alien at the best of times, and yet he's here, his hand is in Drake's, and he's doing his inadequate best to listen.

But-- "I understand."

But Amberdrake honestly doesn't need Sanzo to say any of that out loud. And isn't that a large part of why they work? In many ways, it's not such a bad thing that Sanzo has gotten involved with a therapist.

It kind of takes a therapist to handle him, sometimes!

"Good," Drake smiles up at him, "so be careful, for my sake if nothing else. And I will do the same."

Look at them, being all adjusted and things. But there's enough trouble outside without them having trouble inside, too!

"Get more rest," is what Sanzo finally settles on. "You look like shit."

It's not like he can't feel the weariness and strain lingering in Amberdrake, and, "If we're going to do things right this time, you can't be dragging because you're overextended. You have to be stronger."

"Fair enough," Amberdrake gives that captured hand a squeeze and then lets go, moving to get up. And Sanzo is correct, of course, because his vision briefly grays out at the edges when he stands.

And he trails off for the bedroom, because the couch is okay to sleep on when you can't move any further, but the bed is far better!

Of course, Sanzo might then, still fatigued, join him; for he himself will not sleep on the couch.

He's subtle, after all.

Yeah.

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

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