¤ Leading Out

The tears stopped after a while; not even the heavens could cry forever. But Silver continued to lean on Jaysen, utterly worn out from her weeping. He sighed, his fingers tentatively brushing the top of Silver’s head. While he did imagine before how the girl would come voluntarily into his arms, he didn’t quite imagine that the embrace would be this heartbreaking for him.

What sort of man could even think to put a girl through so much? Jaysen felt his hackles rise at that thought. What sort of human, for that matter!

At that moment, Silver stirred, sniffing and hiccupping a little. Blinking groggily, she seemed to slowly realise where she was as she took in the slightly scratched surface of Jaysen’s Scorpio armour. A small shocked sound catching in her throat, she pushed herself away from him and sat up quickly on her own.

‘I’m sorry.’ She made that embarrassed apology in a voice hoarse from crying. ‘I shouldn’t have- I’m really sorry.’ Jaysen watched her try to make herself as small as possible against the wall, huddling into herself while looking down at the floor, and his heart broke again.

‘You don’t have to apologise!’ He burst out and reached out across the short distance between them impulsively.

‘But it is all my fault… everything is,’ Silver murmured brokenly, exhaustion dragging behind every syllable and making her gasp in between words. ‘I had to fix it, the last time, by snatching the honours from him. But it still isn’t enough. Still my fault for letting him catch me alone… my fault for trusting him.’ She huddled further away from Jaysen, her hand moving repeatedly over and over the scars under her sleeve. ‘My fault.’

‘How is any of it your fault!’ Jaysen cried, throwing his hands up in exasperation. ‘You didn’t ask to be injured, you didn’t ask to be… I have no idea, whatever stupid and cruel things that Balrog’s arse of a man did to you! You never asked for all that to happen, lady, how can you blame yourself!’

‘I didn’t ask.’ Silver breathed out, leaning tiredly against the wall. ‘But I let it happen.’

‘There was no way you couldn’t have prevented it, whatever it was,’ Jaysen’s voice softened now. ‘There is no sufficient guard against the wicked, poor confused lady. Everyone knows that.’

Silver’s brow visibly furrowed at that, as if perplexed by that simple logic. Finally, she simply sighed and buried her face in her knees. ‘Tired. So tired.’

‘It’s alright, lady. Just rest now.’ Jaysen patted her on the shoulder gently and moved to sit by her quietly.

They stayed like this for a long while, until Rei found them on his search for Jaysen, having waited for a long time for the bandit and worried that he was lost in the maze.

‘What happened?’ Rei asked in a low voice, sidling up to them.

At the sound of his voice, Silver raised eyes red-rimmed from crying to look at him. ‘Nothing important,’ she mumbled.

Rei made a disbelieving noise and exchanged a look with Jaysen. ‘That’s what you always say, and I’m not believing it.’

Silver sighed and mumbled something inaudible as she buried her face again. But Rei got the message and stopped asking; if Silver wanted to say anything, she would, in due time.

It was a few minutes more before Silver finally looked up again, her face impassive but with telling shadows under her eyes. She slowly got to her feet, refusing the help both Jaysen and Rei offered with a little shake of her head, and remained in brooding silence all the way back to her rooms, not even reacting when Rei led the little group through the stairwell where she had almost died.

Rei couldn’t help but recall the time when he had led an equally silent Silver along this same path.

At the door, she fumbled with her keys, her trembling hands making the key miss the keyhole once, twice. Rei offered to help, but Silver waved him away with a frown. On her third try, she finally unlocked the door and went through it, leaving it hanging open. She took a few steps to the middle of the room, and stopped there, dazed, as if she had forgotten what she had wanted to do.

Jaysen hesitated at the doorway, but Rei nudged him. Still uncertain, the bandit approached Silver and touched her by the elbow, mindful of the bruises on her upper arm. ‘Lady, do you want to take a rest?’

Silver shook her head and gently removed herself from his grip, but drifted over to sit down at the edge of the bed anyway.

‘Oh, alright…’ Unsure of what to do, Jaysen shot a puzzled look at Rei, who shrugged in answer from the doorway. He finally gestured uneasily towards the door, ‘Then I’ll take my leave now?’

‘No, don’t go.’ Without thinking, Silver reached out with both hands to catch hold of Jaysen’s.

Jaysen smiled broadly and ventured, ‘I knew you could not bear for me to leave, most wondrous dewdrop.’

A slight flush crept across her pale face then, but he was heartened to see that the comment won a small twitch at the corner of Silver’s mouth, and most importantly, she did not let go.

‘I guess I’ll, um, go get some food or something.’ At this scene, Rei cut in, stifling a grin with much difficulty, then left the room hurriedly, closing the door behind him.

There was an awkward pause, in which both of them looked down to their joined hands and up at each other again. Then, Silver let go of Jaysen with a wry smile and murmured. ‘You said you’d listen. Is it true?’

‘Try me, lady. I won’t run away, I swear on my most honourable soul.’ Jaysen laid a fist over his heart.

‘What honourable soul.’ Silver jibed, but she did not further question Jaysen’s sincerity. As Jaysen pulled up the chair from her desk and settled down next to her, she started to speak.

All that hurt and pain, delivered in plain, clinical detail; it didn’t take long for all that had happened to be related to Jaysen. At the end of the tale, however, Silver felt even more exhausted, because even finding the right words to sort out the mess of emotions that she had gone through, and was still battling now, was difficult.

But it did her good: whatever that insidious little voice inside her head had told her truly sounded ridiculous once spoken out loud, but unlike what she feared, Jaysen did not mock her for it. Already, that little voice was losing its power, with Silver’s own true voice robbing all speech from it; without affirmation from someone else, it was losing its credibility as well. Soon enough, it would be silent, its twisted babbling stopped for once and for all.

It will take time, but already the healing was beginning for Silver.

Jaysen pulled his Silver Identity off his head, tilting back his chair slightly to regard the sleeping girl curled up in the bed before him.

The poor lady. He smiled sadly. Silver had dropped off to sleep soon after finishing her tale, succumbing to her bone-deep weariness; her face was peaceful, but with a slight frown on her forehead as she slept, a little furrow that Jaysen dearly wished to smooth away with his hand.

But the bandit kept his hands to himself (No evil thoughts, my man! he told himself) and merely relaxed in the tentative silence in the room.
‘Silver? Jaysen? Can I come in?’ Rei’s voice from outside the door prompted Jaysen to settle the chair on all four legs gently before getting up hastily to answer the door. The wooden door opened on a Rei with a tray of food and a slightly queer expression on his face.

‘Ah, she’s alright then?’ Rei peered into the room before stepping inside, cautiously balancing his tray.

‘Yeah. She fell asleep a few minutes ago though.’ Jaysen murmured. ‘She told me everything, about Brandon and all.’

Rei smiled a relieved smile. ‘That’s good. She’s always keeping things to herself, so much so that I feel like throttling it all out of her sometimes. No one can keep everything bottled up like that for so long.’

‘You mean… she never talked to you about it at all?’

‘Sadly, never.’ Rei shook his head with a smile, then laughed softly as he saw how Jaysen’s jaw unhinged. ‘What, are you surprised?’

‘Don’t you feel upset? I mean, you are her best friend, but she chose to tell me all that instead…?’ Jaysen felt a sense of guilt, as if he had upstaged Rei somehow.

‘Nope.’ Rei shook his head again. ‘But that’s my best friend for you. Besides, it’s not as if I don’t know her well enough to understand.’

Silver shuddered in her bed just then. Both Jaysen and Rei turned to look at her, but she had already settled down.

‘Look here, Jaysen.’ Rei started to say softly as he moved closer to Silver to pull the blanket higher around her shoulders; the girl murmured something in her sleep and turned slightly. ‘She trusted you enough to tell you all that, and you should know by now how she really takes care of who she trusts.’

‘I know.’

‘I think you are a good person, Jaysen, but that’s only what I can see from the outside.’ Rei paused, before plunging onward. ‘I hope you understand that I really don’t want another Brandon to happen to Silver again.’

Jaysen met Rei’s sharp gaze square on. He knew what Rei was trying to do, and he did not blame him; Goodness knows what Rei must have gone through during that critical period of Silver’s recovery in the initial days. ‘I do. Do not worry, most protective friend. I’ll never do something that despicable to anyone.’

‘Good.’ Rei clapped Jaysen on the shoulder and the two exchanged smiles.

Then, Rei’s smile turned mischievous. He asked slyly, ‘So… anything interesting happened while I was gone?’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Jaysen goggled back at Rei.

‘You know. You two…?’ Rei pointed between Silver and Jaysen, and raised a suggestive eyebrow.

‘What!’ Jaysen hissed, only remembering to keep his voice low at the last minute. ‘Do I look like that sort of knave, you little Librarian!’

‘Come on, don’t tell me you don’t like her.’ Rei teased even as he backed away from Jaysen, waving his hands. ‘Oi, no violence in the library!’

‘I’m no Librarian, you lowly person of lewd suggestions, I’m a bandit!’ Jaysen declared. ‘And bandits are most prone to violence, do you not know!’

But Rei didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence; the younger boy had ducked past Jaysen and scrambled out into the safety of the corridor.

Jaysen considered chasing after Rei for a moment. Nah. I’m feeling lazy. Besides, I promised the lady that I wouldn’t go.

And so, he settled down back into his chair and waited for Silver to wake. But that didn’t mean that he had completely forgotten all about Rei’s words, both the playful ones and the serious ones…

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That was such a bish to write. D: Apologies for all the cringe-worthy bits in there.

Andandand. ONE HUNDREDTH BLOG! Here’s to another hundred cookies, and another hundred blogs of spam. And to kick that off: There’s another chapter of Redemption waiting, if you haven’t noticed.

Oh, and COOKIES~ *throws*