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“You’re a liability , Matthias! You’re just going to get us all killed!”
Lukas was starting to worry that those words would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Matthias just looked at him. His eyes were misty.
“How long have you thought that?”
“Since we left! Since you decided that just because you’re bigger than me and can throw fire all over the place that you need to chuck yourself at every threat in our path! If we get caught by the druskelle, it’ll be your fault , you empty-headed, feckless idiot!”
“Matthias!” Timo called. The sound of his voice almost made Lukas jump out of his skin; he was so wrapped up in his own head that he’d almost forgotten Timo was there.
Matthias smiled sadly, maybe even a little bitterly.
“Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you think.”
“N’so loud,” Berwald mumbled. “Th’drusk’lle might hear y’.”
“Sorry,” Timo said, dropping his voice a few octaves. “ Matthias! ”
Lukas shook his head. He laced his fingers together and closed his eyes, and the sound of three heartbeats filled his ears.
There was Timo’s, right next to him, frantic and fluttering. There was Eirikur’s behind him, strapped to Lukas’s back and beating languidly. Then there was Berwald’s, low and steady and almost deafening. But the fourth heartbeat, the one he’d heard most of his life, was nowhere to be found.
“Sense anything?” Timo asked.
Lukas huffed and pulled his fingers apart. He shook his head.
“He’s not here,” he said.
Timo frowned in a mix of worry and consternation.
“Y’shouldn’t h’ve been so hard on ‘im, Luk’s,” Berwald said.
“What do you think I should’ve done, then?!” Lukas snapped.
“Not call’d ‘im a burd’n, maybe.”
Lukas scowled. Berwald was right; he shouldn’t have said it. This was Lukas’s fault, and if this ended with them never seeing Matthias again or only finding his corpse, then the blame was solely on him.
Timo suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. Berwald and Lukas stopped too, and watched as Timo crouched next to a patch of churned-up dirt and snow.
“Footpr’nt?” Berwald asked.
Timo shook his head. “Hoof marks.”
That sent shivers up Lukas’s spine.
“It’s too disturbed for me to make out the style of horseshoe, but just going by the size, I’d say it’s probably Fjerdan.”
Berwald grunted. Lukas hissed.
“If they took him-”
“-we’ll get him back,” Timo said. “And we don’t even know if there’s even a connection, but it’d explain why Lukas can’t sense him. If they snatched him shortly after he left, then they’d be halfway up the mountain by now. I say we follow it; it can’t hurt.”
Berwald glared at Lukas, who glared right back. It wasn’t until he realized Timo was staring at him too that he realized they were waiting for him to say something.
“Why are you asking me?” Lukas demanded. “I’m the one that got us into this mess.”
“And you’re going to be the one who gets us out,” Timo said cheerfully.
Lukas huffed. “Fine. We’ll follow the prints.”
Ever since they were little and first discovered they had powers, Lukas and Matthias would go out into the woods to practice them, hidden from prying eyes. Lukas would bring his father’s matchbox; they’d light little campfires and Matthias would make shapes in the flames, or make them burn as bright as a signal fire, or snuff them out completely. When he burned himself (which was often), Lukas would in turn use his powers to heal him, chiding Matthias all the while.
But he never used his powers on anyone else. Just Matthias. And after a while, after long enough knitting bones back together and coaxing cells into closing up scrapes and burns, Lukas started to think that he knew the inner workings of Matthias’s body better than he knew himself. And he was probably right; people were complicated, and Lukas loved Matthias, but it was so hard to talk to him and find a common ground aside from both of them being grisha. In comparison to his personality, Matthias’s body was simple. It didn’t clash against Lukas, didn’t go against even simple instructions because it thought it had better ideas. It was frightening, having that much control over someone else’s body; the only thing that tamped down Lukas’s fear was the look in Matthias’s eyes. Matthias trusted Lukas, trusted that Lukas wouldn’t screw up, trusted that Lukas knew what he was doing and trusted that Lukas would never hurt him.
It was nightfall by the time they finally spotted a fire in the distance atop a massive ridge.
“Stay here,” Timo said. “I’ll scout it out.”
He slunk into the scrubby underbrush and was gone.
Lukas sat down on a tree stump and sighed. He was worn out from carrying both Eirikur and his pack; usually Matthias carried Lukas’s pack for him.
He never should’ve said those things to him. It had been a spurious act, a thought he flung out like a knife just to make Matthias hurt. He’d had it before, but it wasn’t a genuine belief; and even if it was, he wasn’t enough of an asshole to wish whatever fate awaited grisha in the Ice Court on Matthias.
Matthias and Eirikur were the last things in his life that Lukas treasured. He’d known Matthias since they were little; he’d risked being discovered and caught to save Matthias when he’d fallen ill with an affliction that should’ve killed him and Lukas had been paid back in kind more than once, far more than that simple act should’ve bought him. He…
He loved Matthias. Simple as that.
And now he might never see him again because he let his emotions get the better of him again . The box in his mind where he pushed them all away had exploded under the pressure and he’d lashed out. It happened again and again and again in a vicious cycle he couldn't stop; he built the box to keep those emotions in control, but it could only hold so much, and every time the dam broke he’d snap at whatever was nearest to him and let it pour out, and then grow so mortified with it all that he’d shove it all back away again, out of sight and out of mind.
Lukas was ripped out of his thoughts by a shrill, high sound. Berwald flinched, startled by the noise; Lukas had grown used to it by now. He pulled the sling off his back and cradled his brother, trying to quiet him down. Eirikur whined and squirmed.
“Shh. It’s okay,” Lukas whispered. “Are you cold? Or hungry? Why are you upset at me?”
Eirikur, being a baby, predictably didn’t answer.
“Y’ever tri’d usin’ y’r pow’rs on ‘im?” Berwald asked.
Lukas glared at him.
“Of course I have!” he snapped. “I barely know what I’m doing when I’m trying to kill people with them; you think I’d be any better with this? ”
Berwald looked startled by the outburst, maybe even a little upset, if that was even possible. Lukas forced the emotions back down.
“Sorry,” he said. “Just…stressed.”
Berwald grunted and pulled a knee up to his chest. Lukas turned his attention back to Eirikur.
Lukas was ten years old when he almost lost his best friend.
He’d been woken up at midnight by the sound of footsteps on the stairs, footsteps he’d thought were his parents before the door opened and he realized the silhouette in the doorway looked nothing like them.
It was Matthias’s older brother, a man by the name of Hans. He always seemed so laid-back and casual that the sight of him in such a panic made Lukas start to panic too. He’d rushed Lukas down to his house, refusing to tell him what was going on, telling him he’d see for himself soon. Lukas had been annoyed by the secrecy until Hans pushed open Matthias’s bedroom door.
“I don’t know what happened,” Hans said unnervingly quietly. “He was fine this morning, but then he just kept getting worse and now…”
Lukas had wandered over to Matthias’s bedside and perched on the edge of his bed. Usually when he slept, Matthias liked to fling his limbs every which way, taking up as much available space as he could, but now he was curled up in a tight, feverish ball, as if hoping that shape would protect him somehow.
He hardly acknowledged Lukas’s presence, just shifted a little to keep from sliding into the divot Lukas’s weight made in the straw mattress. Lukas pressed a hand to Matthias’s forehead and quickly pulled back, startled by the blazing-hot fever burning under his skin.
He glanced over at Hans, whose expression was grim. That was when it dawned on him why he’d been brought here, why his parents had let him come here.
They didn’t think Matthias would make it to see the dawn.
“Matthias…?” Lukas whispered.
Matthias’s eyes fluttered open. They were glazed over with fever and seemed to look through Lukas rather than at him.
Lukas pried one of Matthias’s hands free from the sheets and cradled it in his own. A dark, coarse feeling was building up in his chest, something halfway between grief and determination.
“I’ll leave you two be,” Hans said, closing the door behind him.
Lukas waited until the sound of Hans’s footsteps vanished completely and closed his eyes.
No. He wouldn’t let it end like this, not when he had the power to do something. He refused to let Matthias die so easily.
He gently pulled his hands away and pressed them to Matthias’s shoulder. He could sense every part of him under his fingertips; the heart that beat far too fast, the lungs that struggled to keep the oxygen they took in, the blood rushing through his veins. The bones and nerves and muscle tissue, all as familiar as the back of his hand, and all at his command.
Lukas followed it all, pushing and pushing until he found the source, the foreign substance that had brought Matthias so low, and he cut it out .
Later on in life, when everything started going to shit, Lukas wondered if Hans knew Lukas and Matthias were grisha, and if that was why he sought out Lukas that night. He wondered, then, why Hans why he didn’t take the time and grab them the night he left after ripping all the blood out of the bodies of the druskelle who came for him and his friends.
It was a few hours later when something finally happened.
The sound of snapping branches caught Lukas’s attention. He glanced over his shoulder, startled; Berwald looked up, but not much else.
“It’s okay! It’s just me,” Timo said, emerging from the bushes.
“Did you find him?” Lukas asked.
Timo nodded grimly. “I was right. The druskelle took him.”
Lukas cursed under his breath. Berwald stood.
“W’need t’get ‘im back, th’n,” he said.
Timo’s expression brightened. “Oh, no, we don’t have to! I already broke him out!”
“...you what?” Lukas said flatly.
Timo shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. The guard was passed out drunk, so I just had to sneak in, snatch the keys off his belt, unlock the cuffs, and drag Matthias’s unconscious body down a three-hundred feet cliff without falling!”
You’d think that would be sarcasm or a joke, but nope. Timo’s tone and expression were completely sincere.
Lukas glanced at Berwald, bewildered. Berwald shrugged.
“H’s jus’ built diff’r’nt,” he said.
“Where is he?” Lukas asked.
Timo gestured for Lukas to follow. They slipped back into the bush, coming to a stop at a dense cluster of shrubs. Timo knocked them aside with the butt of his rifle, revealing an unconscious but very alive Matthias.
Lukas forced down his relief and glanced at Timo. He gingerly offered Eirikur to Timo, who set his rifle down and took the baby, surprised by the gesture. Lukas crouched next to Matthias and searched him for injuries; despite the full moon, it still wasn’t easy to see, and he wondered how the hell Timo had done anything with this little light to work with.
The biggest and worst injury was from a blow to the head: a dent in Matthias’s skull the size of Lukas’s thumbnail which went deep enough to chip the bone. He pushed the ripped flesh and knit the damaged neurons back together with his powers; there was little he could do about the bone at the moment, but the worst and most worrying of the injuries was now somewhat under control.
Lukas rubbed a bloody lock of Matthias’s hair between his fingers. The blood had dried, and it left behind a crusty brown residue.
“Do, uh…do you want me to carry him back with us, or do you want to do it?” Timo asked.
Lukas pushed himself to his feet and headed back to Timo. He held out his hands, and Timo passed Eirikur back to him. Lukas held him to his chest and watched Timo trudge up behind Matthias, slip his hands under his shoulders, and start awkwardly dragging him back up the trail.
“...you need me to get Berwald?” Lukas asked, half-amused and half-annoyed by the scene playing out in front of him.
Timo waved a hand dismissively. “I already dragged him this far; I can drag him another half a mile or so!”
Lukas shook his head, casting one last look at the camp up on the ridge before trailing after Timo.
Once they made it back to Berwald, travel became much less of a drag - literally. Berwald agreed to carry Matthias if Timo carried his supplies, which Timo happily agreed to. Berwald hefted Matthias over his shoulder like a log or a bundle, and off they went.
They didn’t stop until the dawn, settling in a cave next to a narrow, rushing stream. They divvied up some food - Timo had apparently taken the time to rob the druskelle’s supplies as well - before settling in to rest for a little while. Lukas couldn't stop himself from stealing glances at Matthias every once in a while; despite the trail of dried blood on his face and hair, he looked oddly peaceful. Guilt bubbled in Lukas’s stomach, heavy as liquid lead.
Think about it! The Little Palace! We’ll never have to hide what we are or go hungry, and we’ll always have somewhere safe to sleep…do you think they have baths? I hope they have baths.
I’d settle for just a basin and a cot on the floor.
He closed his eyes and sighed, mentally apologizing to Matthias for…well, everything that had happened over the course of the past day and night. He ran that apology through his head, over and over, refining it like gold for when Matthias woke up.
I’m sorry, Matthias, he thought to himself. I’m not the friend you deserve.
He pulled his coat a little tighter around himself and rolled onto his side, watching the honeyed light of a new day stream through the trees.