Archive of Our Own ^beta

Being released from the healing houses was like being born again.  After weeks on his back, waiting in frustration, he was finally free.  Laurent was, surprisingly, absent, but Paschal was not.  The physician gave him a very stern look, unusual for him, as Damen stood and stretched a little and and began to head for the door.  "Take care of that wound," he instructed in a voice just as stern, causing Damen to pause and turn to look at him.  "I expect to continue to see you each day until I have decided otherwise."  

 Damen's mouth opened automatically to dispute the directive, but he thought it over and slowly clicked his teeth closed as Paschal watched with raised eyebrows.  "Yes," Damen said dutifully.  "I will keep returning to partake in your salves."  His diplomacy was ruined by the wrinkling of his nose, but Paschal's solemn countenance relaxed into a small smile.  He gave a single nod and turned away, dismissing him as only a healer could dismiss the King.

 Damen had intended to make his way to the King's chambers.  He had intended to go and see the throne room.  He, in leaving the healing houses, had intended to walk in the sunlit palace and look at all of the places his father's spirit still lingered, pretending it was flesh and blood.  Damen had a lot to reconcile with, and he wanted to get started.  His country needed a King; it could not function indefinitely without his being fully present, no matter how good at ruling in his stead Nikandros was.  Akielos needed his father...in his absence, Damen would have to do.

 How he found himself in the training space, he did not clearly remember.  He didn't remember taking a sword down from the wall, either, but his hand was wrapped firmly around a hilt.  The weight felt good in his hand.

He looked around.  He was standing in the single-fighter training space.  On one end, there were mock-enemies made of reeds and straw, set up as if attacking.  The sand was clear of anyone and everyone, having been brushed smooth after the last set of prints had marred the smooth expsnse.  Had he ordered it cleared as he came in?  He didn't remember.  The sand felt good under his bare feet.  Where had his sandals gone?  He didn't mind; he had missed being bare-footed on the sand.  He pushed his toes into it, squeezing it between his toes and the soles of his feet as he considered the space.  His chest tightened, some tension he hadn't noticed before making itself known and hitching his breath.

Damen paced forward.

The dummies were strong and thickly built, showing wear from training swords but otherwise looking solid.  Meant to simulate the feeling of striking flesh and bone, they were bare except crude bucket-helms and cruder training swords of their own.

He engaged the first lightly, toying with his 'enemy' in idle fashion, watching its arms swing slightly as it took the flat of his sword, mindful of the way his new scar tissue stretched, tightly uncomfortable.  It was a good discomfort.  He had missed physical exertion, had missed the weight of a sword, the shuffle forward and back.  He was tired, though, made weak by his weeks in bed, and he resolved to take it easy, just follow through the basic forms.  They were the same forms he had sped through, faster than thought, a master of the art mere dozen or so weeks ago when he had sparred with Laurent.  So few weeks were nothing to his form, but his muscles complained with each new motion, telling him to take it slow, a luxury he had not had for a very long time.  Damen frowned in concentration, trying to focus on the forms and only the forms, attempting to block everything and everyone else out for just a few minutes.  He took a deep breath and pushed it out slowly, eyes closing, willing himself to relax.

"I am here for my nephew."  The words appeared as if out of nowhere and everywhere, as if the Regent was whispering them into his ear.  Damen jumped, half-turned, and remembered that he was dead and gone, that the man he heard was a ghost.  He took a steadying breath and faced off with the dummy again.

"You can't have him," Damen muttered.  "He doesn't belong to you.  He never did."  

The steel in his hand gleamed as it arced above his head.  A last minute twist of his wrist took the dummy's sword arm off cleanly.

Undeterred, Damen stepped to the next one, pressure building in his chest, a fire called out of the past, out of that day in the Kingsmeet.  The Regent laughed quietly, as dangerous as his nephew with none of the softness, none of the heart.  Damen thought he felt a hand on his shoulder, a plot-laden smile curling against his ear, an imagined proximity.

"Laurent is going to get down on his knees..."  The voice held more laughter, and Damen felt phantom body heat press against his back, his muscles tensing, hands curling, one into a fist and the other squeezing the handle of the training sword.

"No, he isn't," Damen ground out, denial rough in his voice.  He swung once, twice, taking notches from an arm and a side, unaware of the gaping holes he left, the materials coating the floor.  His body tingled with power, with rage, with a fierce desire to rip the Regent apart, still living, hear his screams, feel the Regent's blood run down his hands and arms.  He wanted justice, and more; he wanted revenge.

"...and beg me to take him. Aren’t you, Laurent?"

"No, he isn't!" Damen shouted, a clean stroke removing head from neck, the momentum carrying him blindly around in a circle, his heel the axis; had the Regent actually been there, he would have been cleaved from shoulder to hip in that one large motion.

Panting, eyes stinging, body heating in his rage, Damen swung his head low, searching the arena like a bull ready to charge.  

There was no one there.

Stumble-stepping back, Damen put a hand to his head, trying to stop his eyes from blurring with tears, fighting to blink and swallow them back.  His body was on fire, begging him to take action, but there was no one and nothing to kill, there was no way to make what had been done to Laurent right, there was no way to take all of that pain and suffering away from him, there was nothing he could do-

Another step back; he fell into someone's chest.  Someone who leaned forward, arms wrapping around him and laughing softly in a voice like creaking wicker, "He has knelt for me," his breath hot and wet in Damen's ear.

"STOP!"

The word broke loose from Damen like a roar, like thunder bouncing off the cliffs by the sea, and again he whirled around, catching a flash of ink-black hair, a beard framing that venomous mouth, the blue eyes as cold as winter's frost that held everyone as inferior to him, scornful, with none of the warmth that his nephew's eyes held-

"Leave him alone!"  A complex move twinged Damen's side but whipped the Regent's arms away, out, leaving him open, arms spread as if receiving a benediction from Heaven, letting Damen stumble back and away from him, gaining him the space he needed.  All Damen saw was the Regent looking down, Laurent kneeling before him, begging the man who had injured him so deeply, and the awful pleasure the Regent took from the submissive pose, the pain he was causing Laurent.  

The world turned red, all color suffused with the darkening color of blood.  Damen's arms and legs moved of their own accord, doing as they would, and Damen's mouth opened in a scream.

"LEAVE-"

One arm on the ground, hitting the sand with a thud.

"-HIM-"

A hand, curled up and still clutching the sword, closely followed by what remained of the arm, sending shockwaves through Damen's feet when they too hit the sand, a vicious pleasure in his pain.

"-ALONE!"

The tip of his sword, embedded in the Regent's chest, Damen two-thirds his blade away.

Damen stepped closer, crowding, shaking in his anger, knuckles white on his hilt.

"Laurent," he hissed, a voice of pure venom and hatred, his face an inch from the Regent's, eyes stinging anew with tears of rage, "Laurent is not yours.  He has never been yours.  You are dead and he is safe from you, you son of a bitch, you scourge of the Heavens, Laurent is pure, and wonderful, and no matter what you did to him and after all the things you tried to do, you could not take him away from himself, or make him like you.  He is perfect and perfection.  He is the smartest person I have ever encountered, the most infuriatingly brilliant mind I have ever known.  He beat you at your own damned game and you couldn't even see it until it was too late and your own neck was on the block!"  He stepped closer, his scar crying out as he twisted, shoving the blade into the Regent's chest up to the hilt and bearing him to the floor as something crackled.

Kneeling above the Regent's body, keeping him pinned with one knee and the pressure of his blade, Damen felt something hot running from his eyes, dripping from his face and eyelashes; he payed neither heed nor care.  He pressed into the Regent's space once more, his voice nothing but a vicious growl.

"You," Damen snarled, spittle dabbing the Regent's face, "are dead, and Laurent is safe.  He is my love and my lover, he is my intended, he is my  heart and my world, and I will not ever let you lay hands on him again."  A rumble rose in his chest as he twisted the blade in the Regent's chest, hearing the cracking and popping of ribs.

"I," Damen whispered, "am going to keep him safe from you for the rest of his life.  From your touch, from your influence, from the ghost of your memory.  You will never hurt him again, not in any way.  I will not allow it."  He paused, panting, his face a contorted mask of fury above the Regent.  

His shoulders shook slightly on an exhale, and something sounding suspiciously like a sob crawled from his throat.  Damen closed his eyes, willing tears away to little effect.

"Damen!"

Damen choked and jumped and half-spun, half-fell off the Regent and the grip on his sword, facing the new voice, the new threat, some familiar voice-

There, in a beam of sunshine, stood Laurent, panting slightly as if from a run; over his shoulder, Nikandros could be seen, panting similarly, concern clear on his face.  The roiling red of the world seemed to pale.

"Damen?"

Called by the soft, uncertain tone, so unlike the voice and the man it belonged to, Damen's eyes could do nothing but shift back to Laurent.

With a feeling like he was falling and a sensation of his eardrums popping, Damen's eyes seemed to waver out of focus before the world sharpened again, colors back where they should be.  Laurent's face, paler than usual, became the center of his focus, blue eyes wary and worried.

Damen became suddenly aware of the wreckage around him.

Three mock arms on the ground, chips and large chunks of dried reeds scattered everywhere; the sand, showing where he had whirled and stumbled and plunged, dark gashes in the ground noting where Damen had become frantic, where caution had faded.  Damen's eyes slowly shifted to the mass beside him.

The dummy had been ripped off its post, which was splintered explosively at the end, showing where Damen had thrown his whole body into his struggle; the portion which had been set into the ground was splintered in the same way, an abrupt and violent end point just a few inches away from the ground.  Again, mock arms sprawled across the ground at odd angles, and the body of the dummy was showing fresh stresses and marks.  Its "skull" had given way at some point, the bindings snapping to let the reeds spring free and splay across the sand, and, of course, Damen's sword driven straight through what approximated a ribcage, the reeds having frayed and splintered and snapped there too under the force of his drive and twist.  

Damen's hair was matted by sweat, and his skin gleamed with it; he was barefoot, sitting in the sand all by himself, sand sticking to him where his sweat-sticky skin had touched the ground.

He slowly raised his gaze back to Laurent, suddenly anxious at his destructive display.  He bit his lip and anxiously kneaded at the sand under his palms, just barely.

Laurent took a slow step forward, eyes on Damen.

"Are you here?" he asked, a soft, calm voice.  Damen gave a small nod; Laurent stepped closer again.

"Are you all right?"  Laurent's eyes snapped down to Damen's side. Seeming satisfied, he returned his view to Damen's face, slowly taking his steps closer and closer until he was coming to his knees in front of Damn, a mere hand space away.  

Disgust roiled up inside of Damen, and he closed his eyes against it, trying to drive the memory away, sucking an unsteady breath in through the nose.

"Damen, look at me."  A cool hand on his cheek made him flinch back, away from the touch.  He felt the hand pause, not touching him but close, before slowly making contact again, enveloping his cheek in its palm.

"Look at me."

Damen opened his eyes to the soft tone, obediently raising his eyes to Laurent, stretched uncomfortably forward to keep his contact with Damen.  Unable to keep his gaze for more than a moment, Damen looked down to the sand between them.  Laurent's thumb gently brushed across his skin.

"I'm sorry," Damen murmured, ducking his head but not pulling away again.  "Laurent, I am so sorry."

"For what?" Laurent's voice was light and easy, a smile in his voice.  "For destroying your own training space?  Apologize to whomever will have to fix it, you ox."

"No, not..."  Damen sighed and looked up, muscles relaxing and going slack.  "I'm sorry that you have to see this, that you came here and saw..."  He trailed off, unable to properly describe what this actually was.

Laurent paused, something Damen couldn't define playing across his face before it disappeared, crawling behind his calm mask.  "Yes, just what was this about?"  His tone, so easy before, was painstakingly careful just now, as if a misstep would mean disaster.  "Surely there are men you could have sparred with, and avoided the need to replace this equipment altogether?"  Damen licked his lips.

"I have been thinking," he admitted slowly.  "All the time in the healing house, and before then.  Ever since the Kingsmeet."  Laurent stiffened.  Damen kept talking.  "I have been...trying to keep myself in check, telling myself that there was nothing I could do about it, and yet...there has been an anger building, a disgust and a hatred that I simply-"

Laurent looked down now, to the sand, forehead creasing.  His hand curled slightly on Damen's cheek and made as if to pull away.

"No!"  Damen gently captured the hand with his own, keeping it where it was, shifting closer and closing the distance between them.  It was his turn to speak softly, coaxingly.  "Laurent, not for you.  Never for you.  For him.  Ever since that moment I have wished to rip him limb from limb, render him no more than a stain on the ground and a rattling husk.  I have never, ever felt this way toward any enemy before...and it was not for my sake that I felt it."  Laurent was looking at him again, a good sign, though he looked afraid and uncertain.

"What are you saying?" he whispered, still pale.

"Laurent."  Damen let himself look down again, look at the shattered pieces all around him, the proof of his rage, and his mouth was suddenly spilling of its own accord, his eyes fixed once more on Laurent.

"I am saying that I hate him, Laurent, with everything that I am.  Not because he played me like a fool, not because he acted the victim of your temper when he was the one causing it, and not even because he marched into my kingdom and my home with the full intent of becoming its king.  I hate him because of what he did to you.  I hate him for how he treated you, for the ways he hurt you, for taking advantage of you.  I hate him for causing you so much pain, for making you miserable, for isolating you from everyone who should have stood by you.  I hate him for all the little things that I see clearly now, all the times you have hesitated or pulled away from me, every moment you have had cause to be afraid, needed to be angry to protect yourself.  I hate him for all the ways in which he caused you harm, every single one of them, and for your sake I wish I could rip the sun and the stars from the sky and bring them down upon his head.  I wish I could tear the world apart for you, Laurent, so that you could have some measure of revenge, a fraction of the proper return that he should be receiving for what he did.  I am only sorry that I cannot give it to you."

Laurent was still and quiet for a long time, his breathing ragged, his face turned down.

"You feel so much on my account?"

"Of course I do."  Damen scooted slightly closer again, releasing Laurent's hand in favor of opening his own arms to him, an invitation.  Laurent hesitated for a moment, then slowly crawled forward, face still turned down, fitting between Damen's arms and nuzzling into the hollow of his throat.  Damen wrapped his arms around Laurent, cocooning him there, one hand in his hair.

"I also," Damen added, soft and soothing now, "love you for all the ways I see you resist him.  You played a long and horrible game with him, and you never gave up; you didn't let him win, and you didn't let him change who you were."  A low, broken laugh from Laurent.  "You fought him daily, not just his actions but the way he tried to twist you into something and someone you weren't.  I see you resisting, even now, and I love you for it.  You are one of the bravest men I have ever known, Laurent."  Damen swallowed, hard, feeling his eyes sting suspiciously again.  He lowered his voice to a whisper.

"I want you to know two things.  Well, three.  How much I admire and love you is first, and I cannot put it into words.  Second and third are very tied up together...I want you to know how much it means to me that you trust me enough to love me, even to be near me.  The times we have had together--those nights we had each other, and I didn't know how much effort it must have been for you to be with me, to let me touch you, and trust that I was doing it out of love of you and nothing else--" Laurent's breath hitched; Damen kept talking.  "You calling upon me to come with you when things were dangerous, your sole support at times.  Trusting me to play master when we went to the brothel.  Trusting me again when we were in the hills; you didn't seem afraid at all, even though we were crammed together in that ridiculously tiny tent."  Damen smiled when Laurent made a tiny sound.  It could have been a laugh.

"The third thing I want you to know is that it is all right if that is not the way you act all of the time."

Laurent pulled away enough to look up at Damen, confusion plain.  "I-"  He swallowed and seemed to decide against speaking.

"Laurent, I do not expect that kind of bravery or trust all the time.  I can't.  It isn't fair to you, and it would not be fair of me.  I do not want you to feel like you must always be trusting, always be open to me, always have faith in me to do what is right by you."  Damen cupped Laurent's cheeks gently, rich brown framing fair ivory, and his heart gave a painful throb.  "It is my duty and my desire to always be worthy of that trust, but it is likewise my duty and my desire to be understanding of you.  If you need to pull away, if you need me to stop what I am doing, if you need to lean on someone else for any reason; I want you to know that I will be understanding of those needs, of your desires.  My heart will ache, but it will ache because you are hurt or afraid, and not because I am unwilling to do what is needed.  I love you."  A kiss to his forehead, gentle and unassuming.

Laurent was quiet and still, eyes downcast, clearly struggling to process.  Somewhere in the back of his mind, Damen felt guilty that he was causing Laurent so much distress.

That train of thought was completely cut off when Laurent looked up, eyes shining with tears, and surged forward to kiss him.

Yielding in surprise to the unexpected motion, Damen let himself be pushed back, falling to the ground, Laurent staying with him; the kiss did not break, not until one of them pulled away for air.  Laurent propped himself up, his palms flat in the sands on either side of Damen's head, and simply looked at him, as if drinking him in.  A tear fell from his lashes, splashing on Damen's cheek, but Laurent was smiling at him.  Damen smiled back, suddenly feeling somewhat shy.

"I hope-"  Laurent cut him off with a kiss to the corner of his mouth, and Damen had to laugh.  "I am sorry that this is how this happened," he said, trying to regain some sense of seriousness.  "I wanted...I should have said something before.  Weeks ago."

"Yes, you should have," Laurent agreed.  "But that would have deprived you of the opportunity to break things, and I know how much you love that."  He grinned above Damen, and he looked like the sun.

"Yes," Damen agreed, "and it also would have deprived you of seeing me shining with sweat, and I know how much you love that."  He laughed when Laurent wrinkled his nose.

"I enjoy the view.  Not the smell."

"Well," Damen said, chuckling, "if you would prefer, I could start rubbing oils all over instead, but there are some parts I cannot reach by myself."  He smiled, but watched Laurent carefully.

Laurent simply grinned again.  "You are hopeless."  He relaxed his arms, lowering himself to lay on top of Damen, looking content as he pillowed his arms over Damen's chest to rest his chin there.  "I suppose I can assist you."  He paused, and seemed to sober a little.  "Thank you," he murmured, eyes flicking down for a moment before he seemed to force them up again, meeting Damen's eye.  "For what you said.  For everything."

Damen wrapped his tired arms around Laurent and squeezed gently.  "You are welcome.  Thank you," he said, and in favor of detailing every single thing he was thankful for (most of them having to do with Laurent), he leaned up and into another kiss, heart aching again, happiness filling it to bursting.  "I love you," he reminded Laurent as soon as they broke to breathe again, and he was rewarded with a smile and with Laurent's arms wrapping around him.  His head settled on Damen's chest, legs relaxing and tangling with Damen's, and Damen closed his eyes, grateful that he was here, that they were both safe, and that they would be facing whatever came from now on together.  Laurent stirred slightly, tilting his head to make eye contact with Damen, and he smiled again.

"I love you too."