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There is a prison underground, because on some level, those seem to be inescapable.
This one is familiar, as commonplace and foreign as a childhood home. It has been destroyed thrice over, broken and bombed and obliterated. It sits, secure and solid, unharmed and untouched.
So do many, many other things.
Andor shows up to the dungeon door alone, in the middle of the night. Three of the people inside are asleep, unconscious, lying where they were left by the guards. One is awake, on his knees, drawing runes on the stone floor in streaks of shimmering crimson. His hands are shaking, but the curves and lines of his bleeding fingertips are smooth and strong. They should not be. Many things should not be, not as they are. The Prince of Dagrun has never studied blood magic, the work of a heretic; Andor recognizes the glyphs for protection, for reciprocity. A stranger who fell from the sky would have no reason to know them, no cause, no way. And yet.
"Jordan," he says, and his soulsworn's eyes snap up to meet him. He looks young, younger. They both do. They are not. "I'm here."
His soulsworn is at the door in a heartbeat, bloody hand wrapped around the bars of the window. He looks young, except for the wild light in his eyes. Half his scars are missing. His teeth are too blunt, and yet Andor feels like he's staring down a starving wolf, an unspoken promise of violence. It shouldn't make his chest feel warm, probably, but it does. "Andor?"
Andor blinks, once, in a frozen moment that lasts less than a beat of a hummingbird's wings. He doesn't even think about it, bringing his hand to his mouth, doesn't need to waste a second. His own teeth are sharp, even now. The blood comes easily, eagerly, with just a prick. He reaches out, and Jordan nearly lunges to meet his grasp through the bars. "We'll do this right," he says, and his soulsworn stares at him with eyes as wide and bright as the moon. "We'll do this right, and we'll do this now. No more hiding, no more half-measures. I'm not losing you again."
"I'm not letting go," Jordan breathes, and their blood drips down their intertwined hands onto the iron door. If it hisses when it lands, then it's a trick of the wind, of the mind. "I'm not letting them hurt you. I'll kill them all if they try."
The night is never silent, here. It still feels as if the world is holding its breath, uncertain and afraid. It's a sensation that this body is intimately familiar with, shoulderblades aching from the exertion of standing tall. It's a sensation that Andor doesn't think he'll ever feel again. “I know,” he agrees, and it comes just as easy as the breath that carries it. It's blood that drips from their hands, but he feels the certainty in the very core of his bones. That's what makes him step even closer, what makes him tighten his grip. “I know, and I'll be right beside you. You won't fight my battles alone.”
His soulsworn laughs, and it's a bitter, miserable thing. “You never left me to fight alone,” Jordan says, but his grimace can't even begin to hide. “You- you didn't.”
Andor inhales slowly, more to keep a steady voice than anything else. They will talk about that, later. They will talk about so very many things later. Now, though, there are more important things to say. It helps that they are the only sort of comfort he can imagine. “Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh,” he offers, and the settling weight of the words is that of a winter cloak or steadying hand. “We move as one.”
Jordan's lips part in wordless shock for a moment, because there is exactly one way for Andor to know those words, that precise pattern of the vow. Every realm has their own, and that is not the one spoken in Ruxomar. He grins, though, after a moment. It's wild, sharp and delighted and a promise in itself. “Blood of my blood, breath of my breath,” he breathes. His knuckles are white. “We act as one.”
The world does not tremble at the words, because it does not yet know that it should. Andor's chest does, just a little, as he draws in a steadying breath. The leaves of the trees do, just a little, because the wind is swirling in eager eddies of anticipation. “In the eyes of the goddess, and in the eyes of the world, I make my vow; from your hands, my deeds. From your wounds, my blood. For your soul, my soul. In this moment and on, we move to one end.”
“In the eyes of the goddess, in the eyes of every realm,” Jordan murmurs in return, an imperfect echo. It's a change, but a closer one, a strengthening one. “I make my vow; from your hands, my deeds, and from your wounds, my blood. For your soul, my soul. Bound and sworn, we move to one end.”
Andor presses his forehead against the cold metal of the barred window, and Jordan swipes a bloody thumb across the bridge of his nose. It smells bitter, metallic. His soulsworn lowers his glasses, tilts his chin, and Andor mirrors the gesture as neatly as he can. His hands are trembling. His chest is tight. It's not fear. Elation is a weak, delicate word for it. He doesn't have a better one.
Their blood trickles down the side of his nose, towards the corner of his mouth. He doesn't bother to stop smiling.
Andor tugs his handkerchief out of his pocket with his free hand, and tears that with his teeth, too. It's not a proper bandage, but it's what he has. Jordan grins as he reaches through the barred window to wrap it around his finger, and tears off a scrap of his already tattered shirt to return the gesture. It's not a great option, already singed and stained with gods-know-what, but Andor's gotten good at brewing potions in the past five years that haven't happened. He'll be fine. He'll make sure that Jordan is, too.
Nobody asks about their matching bandages when he returns in the morning. They say nothing to tempt questions, not now, not yet. The others will have to be managed later. Andor goes through the motions, makes all the right gestures, all the sarcastic comments. Jordan brushes their shoulders together as he heads towards the bridge, and Andor stares after him for a long, long moment.
The others stay across the river, that night, scattered as always. Jordan slips back over the ungated bridge, through shadowed streets, into a cramped lighthouse keep. Andor is waiting up, because of course he is, a kettle of water rumbling faintly on the hotplate. His soulsworn raises his eyebrows when he sees it, because they both know how that used to go. Andor just grins back. “I've learned a few things, you know.”
“I'm sure,” Jordan drawls, but he can't keep his smile down for long. There's a beat, eternal and instant, and then they both move forward in the same heartbeat. It's awkward, obvious that neither of them have quite remembered how to move in these bodies. It doesn't matter. Jordan knows the important parts, knows how to wrap one arm around his shoulders and the other around his waist, knows how to accommodate for wings that ache in an entirely different way than usual. Andor tangles his fingers in dark curls as his soulsworn buries his face in his shoulder, pulls him close.
They spend a long, long moment just standing there in the spilled pool of moonlight, clutching at each other as if they could press themselves into one. They already have. Jordan smells like blood, still, like blood and sweat and salt. His shoulders are shaking. Andor's shoulder is damp.
He doesn't mind. It's all worth it, getting to hold his soulsworn for the first time in five years, for the first time that this world has ever known. Dealing with this world is worth it, even, because this time they will not be pulled apart.
There are not words to encompass the weight of it all, nor the lightness in his chest. Every language that his tongue has ever known falls flat, because nothing can adequately replace five years of silence.
“I missed you,” Andor croaks out, eventually.
“I was afraid that I dreamed you,” Jordan replies, and it's muffled in his shoulder. He just holds tighter.
They sink to the floor at some point, and shift once both their backs hurt from hugging for too long, their sides pressed together and a wing around Jordan's shoulders. He runs his fingertips along one of the primaries that drape over his arm, awed and so very gentle, and Andor almost chokes on air.
“Sorry,” Jordan says immediately, snapping his hand away. “Sorry. I shouldn't have.”
Andor swallows the tightness in his throat, the threatening sob. “I'll teach you how to preen them,” he offers instead, because it's been five long fucking years. Jordan looks at him like he's been run through with a blade, all wide eyes and agony. It nearly strangles him. “Not- not fully, not tonight. But soon. Before it- before.”
Jordan grits his teeth and snarls, growling like an angry dog, curling his fingers into Andor's sleeve like desperate claws. “There won't be an after,” he spits, with a rage deeper than any ocean. “They won't touch you. I'll kill them all if they even think about it. I'll hang them by their own guts at the city gates, and leave the corpses there as a warning to the rest of the bastards. I won't sit by, this time.”
“⍑ᔑリ↸ 𝙹⎓ ⍊ᒷリ⊣ᒷᔑリᓵᒷ,” Andor breathes, a little lightheaded, a lot fond. “I have to do something, though. Something that ends better, something that works.”
His soulsworn twists to look at him, brow furrowed. “You think we can? Because unless you're planning to let me at him, I don't exactly see how you're getting Helgrind out of the picture without destroying the place.”
“I won't just sit by,” Andor echoes. It's not much of a plan, but it is the truth. It is the certainty that has crystallized over the long, anxious hours spent pacing. “After everything, I can't. It's not about Helgrind. It's not about Dagrun, it's not about me, it's about- Jordan, it's not just us. Not now. Not yet.”
Clearly, that takes a moment to sink in. Jordan slowly straightens, spine taller, jaw dropped. He looks more like himself, almost. “You don't care about this place. You want to find others that are hers. You know them?”
Andor waves a hand, sits up a little himself. “A few, in Urulu. Revolutionaries, proper ones. But it has to start here. The riots at the docks, after, and then when you found me, that's what led to changed postings and gave them an opening. I assume that you won't object to some light arson, when we get to that point?”
Jordan chokes on nothing and starts coughing, not at all inconspicuously. The confession muttered into his hand can't be anything else, not with that look in his eyes. Andor just grins, far more delighted than he should be. Gods and stars, he's missed this idiot of his.
The kettle chooses that moment to whistle, finally, high and clear and bright. Both of them startle at the sound, both of them flailing from instincts meant for bodies notably different than these. Andor knows that he looks just as stupid as Jordan does, nearly falling over from expecting momentum that doesn't exist, but he's still the first one to snort. His soulsworn pauses in trying to threaten a nonexistent threat with a distinct lack of horns, and glances back with betrayal in his expression and delight in his eyes.
It takes about two seconds for them to dissolve into laughter, after that.
“Have you just been headbutting shit?” Andor demands, incredulous and ecstatic. Jordan outright giggles, behind his hand. “It would explain a lot.”
“Listen, sometimes you need to stab with whatever you have on hand,” Jordan chokes out, and then pauses for dramatic effect. “Or on head.”
Andor nearly tackles him for that, because the asshole had been laughing at his own godawful joke. He settles for an elbow in his side, instead, because his face hurts from smiling so hard that his peripheral vision is fucked. Jordan squawks, in what is possibly the most undignified sound of his life, and that just sets them both off again.
It's good. It's so fucking good, the two of them finally together again, even here and now. There will be hell in the morning, old nightmares to face and new problems to handle, a revolution to plot and several murders to plan. The world is still dying around them, but here on the old oak floor of the lighthouse, Jordan is alive and laughing and free. That is what matters. That is all that matters. They are together, and they are whole.
Andor gets up to address the kettle, eventually, once he can breathe again. Jordan is sprawled out on his back and has to be stepped over, grinning hazily at the roof. He's a bit drunk off of exhaustion and giddiness and lack of oxygen, the both of them as bad as the other. That's how this works. That's what they are, one thing in two bodies. That's what they are meant to be.
Clearly, that's why he says what he does. “So.”
“So,” Andor echoes, setting out all three mugs that he owns. It may or may not be a full moon here, but he doesn't particularly care. It would have been. “Ask.”
Jordan blinks, like he's thrown, like he thinks his tells have changed at all. “Right,” he says. “You were, uh. You ended up- home.”
“Everyone but you and Tom,” Andor admits, and his soulsworn closes his eyes as if to hide from the words. There's no point in lying, though. This doesn't work if they aren't honest with each other, with themselves. He pokes at his sad little jar of honey, willing it to uncrystallize. “Lasted five years until, uh, this mess. Our Lady spent most of it looking for you.”
There's a look of confusion in his other half's eyes at that statement, confusion and wonder and awe. Andor cuts the lemon with a little more force than absolutely necessary.
“I built my place across the river from your tree,” he continues, because there is little else to do. “Little cottage with an actual kitchen, an actual studio. A balcony high enough to catch a breeze on. A room waiting for you.”
Jordan makes a noise like a wounded animal. Andor pours the tea without spilling, because these hands are so very used to shaking. “I'm sorry. I didn't- I didn't mean to.”
Andor does not throw a lemon slice at his head, but he comes close. “Of course you didn't. Nobody thought that you meant to fuck off into the void. That's probably how we ended up in this one, considering the shit that we pulled to try to find you. Lesson learned, we're never going to need it.”
“Oh,” Jordan says, quiet and small. He wraps his hands around the mug like he thinks it'll break under his touch, slow and hesitant, delicate as can be. And then he freezes. “Wait. What did you do?”
Nothing smart. Something clever, maybe, but nothing smart. “Well,” Andor hedges, and Jordan narrows his eyes. “Sonja had an idea. Our Lady had a way to make it work. I agreed to it. Here we are.”
His soulsworn very carefully sets his tea down, and then buries his face in his hands. “I was not worried enough about leaving the three of you alone, was I? Everything I was afraid of, when it should have been that.”
Andor doesn't deny it, just offers a thumbs-up and a smile that they both know looks guiltier than he actually feels. Jordan snorts into his hands, which is really all that he'd been aiming for. Something has clearly gone terribly wrong for him during that little jaunt off into the depths of the void, but the same can be said for most of their lives. They'll fumble through this one as well.
It's an impressive sort of terribly wrong, he'll admit that. It is, perhaps, in the top three most absurd things that they have to fumble through. But, as they say, onwards and upwards.
“Drink your tea,” he says, instead of any of that. He gets an obnoxious slurping noise in response, because his soulsworn is an asshole.
There is a full moon in the sky, when he turns to the window, or at least something close to one. Andor sets the third mug of tea in front of the sill, halfway between a dedication and a dare. He's got thoughts on his grandmother, these days, after everything he's seen. After knowing the devotees who had spent a decade hunted and hidden. After meeting a goddess who had been torn apart body and soul and then still fought for her purpose, for her people. After knowing what loyalty is, returned. He would love to share them.
“I invite you,” he murmurs to a goddess that isn't listening, to a sea that cannot hear anything over the thunder of its own crashing waves. And then he takes his own tea, and his soulsworn, and goes to bed.
It is, categorically, not a very large bed. It's a spare mattress shoved into the storage loft of a lighthouse, with pillows shoved into the crack beside the wall, because he'd been a self-loathing teenager with the interior design skills to match. They can sit side by side on the edge, barely. Jordan kicks his boots off before he does, at least, and stays upright for about ten whole seconds before cautiously leaning Andor's way.
Andor wraps a wing around him, wordlessly. They don't talk much, sitting there, because there is too much and nothing to say. He doesn't need to explain himself, not about his grandmother or their goddess or the difference, not about the steady fury and old fear twisting under his skin, not about the honest joy and the need to hide behind humor. Jordan knows. Jordan knows, because he is the same, in all the ways that count. That is why they are what they are.
Jordan also snores, apparently, here and now. Andor sighs, and gently pries his half-finished tea out of scraped fingers. They'll address that in the morning.
(He thinks that it's one of Sonja's cats against his leg, first waking, blearily moving to sit up. It's not. It is that familiar old ceiling that he opens his eyes to, and it is a tuft of violet down that is caught in his hair, and it is Jordan that sleeps curled at the foot of the bed.
This is real, then.
Andor still isn't quite sure if it's a dream or a nightmare. All things considered, he's leaning towards the first.)