She was standing over the crumpled form of her sworn sword when he arrived. In her hand was something that looked like a charred severed arm she'd torn off someone to use as a weapon. It hung heavily in her grip, made the breaths she was heaving in and out seemed an effort. The braids she'd woven that morning had come undone. The robe he'd given her hung loose over one shoulder, looked like it'd been through a few raids and some fights in between. She was staring at the man on the ground like it'd been a beast she'd struck down, and was trying to decide if she should leave it alive or make sure it never rises again.

Lasura halted his steps and willed his heart to slow, catching lost breaths as he tried to understand what had happened. He'd been tracking Djari and Rhykal since they left the cave, trying as best he could to avoid being discovered. But the moment he heard her screams, his legs had gotten him here like a mad man completely devoid of logic. He hadn't given a single thought of what to do when he arrived. There wasn't time.

None of it was necessary, after all. By the time he found her, whatever had happened, Djari seemed to have dealt with it.

He stepped closer, and realized the object he'd thought to be a severed arm was only a log, still smoking around the edges. She must have pulled one out from the fire to beat him unconscious. However the opportunity had come by, one might as well call it divine intervention. What had driven her to strike at her sworn sword, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. There had been screams. Djari hadn't screamed when she was drowning. Hadn't made a sound when she took those fingers off.

But there had been screams.

"Djari." He took a step closer, pausing at a considerable distance to give her space and time.

She turned to him with the absentmindedness of someone not yet awoken from a trance, like a ghost, lost and made to wander for a place to haunt, to stay.

And then he saw it––the parts of her clothes that had been torn to shreds, the way it left her breasts half-exposed, the raw, red band in the shape of a hand around her throat, the trace of tears that ran down her eyes, smudging her face dirty together with the soot.

It didn't need an explanation. Not this, not the ladies in waiting trying to cover the bruises around their wrists, not the bar maids' trembling hands being grabbed as they served, not the slave girls sobbing under kitchen tables. Not his women in the Tower when the princes found out what they were to him.

It struck him without warning––the rage and horror he'd long kept a bay, the helplessness of having to stand by and watch, every pain he'd carried for two decades all rolled into one unstoppable beast with no way to reason with. And it leapt out of the cage. It broke itself free. It lashed out snarling.

"Son of a b––"

The sword sprang to life in his grip. His legs shot forward, got him next to Rhykal before he finished the sentence. Djari stepped in between them, slammed a hand on his chest, dug her heels into the sand, and pushed him back with her weight. "Don't," she said, made sure he knew the sword would strike her down before it touched her sworn sword.

It tripled the rage, snapped whatever leash he had on it, blinding him from everything but the man on the ground and where he was going cut him open. "Get out of my way," he shouted at her, at him, at the gods who had let this happen, at whatever lay between him and the man who was supposed to be protecting her.

"Stand down!" Djari barked another warning, met him head on with eyes that looked like his mother's on the verge of sending eight thousand prisoners to their deaths. "This is between us. You will not interfere."

If there had been a shred of sanity left in him, it was gone with those words, it bursted like bubbles into thin air, and in its place, dumped in whole like a barrel of oil tossed into open fire, the pressure in his chest, the wound in his stomach, the pain that had been accumulating, hammering for a way out exploded.

"Between you?" It speared out of him like a loosed arrow he could no longer stop. "What about me, Djari? What about what I want? What of my life, my reason to live? I am alive. I feel. I exist even if you choose to ignore it. I am a part of this now whether or not you want me to be. My life is tied to yours, my heart is in your fist, and I'm not going to stand here and watch you tear it to pieces because you need to save a beast. You don't get to make that decision, not alone, not while I live. I can't––I won't––stand aside for this. You can't make me!"

He realized then, as he stood there facing Djari, chest heaving from having emptied it out on her all at once, that he had just laid himself bare and naked at her feet. It didn't matter anymore. He was done hiding, pretending he didn't give a shit. Sooner or later he was going to have to face it, live with rejection, and put it behind him somewhere.

They were standing face to face, close enough for him to feel her warmth on his cheek, to see the bruises on her neck, the hurt in her eyes. It pulled him back to reality, to the fact that he had just lashed out at a woman whose tears had yet to dry from being assaulted the second time.

He clenched his fist around the sword, tried to force down the rage that still painted his vision too red and raw to host any measurement of calm, and found himself failing at the task. He parted his mouth to speak, to tell her he was sorry, but the words didn't materialize. He wasn't that big a man, that selfless, or that kind.

Perhaps that's why she's here, protecting him, not you.

Djari stood still as she listened, holding his heart hostage between her teeth. She stared up at him from a height that neither suit the determination in her eyes, nor the size of her will. She said, "Maybe I can't. Maybe this won't be the last time he tries to hurt me. But whatever happens, there's something you need to understand."

The palm on his chest drew back, took something from him with its weight, and placed it back when she touched his sword hand. It was shaking badly, her hand.

"He is my sworn sword, my own flesh and blood. If he has to die, I will decide how, I will decide when, and I will do it, I'll kill him myself before this happens again. For now, I need him alive, and I need you to respect my decision."

My decision, she said. "You are asking me to walk on fire."

She closed her eyes, drew a breath, steadied herself, and made aim. "Lasura," she called his name––without titles, without spaces, without walls. "Trust me. Put the sword down."

It hit him with the precision of an arrow shot at close range, threw him off a height he wasn't meant to survive with his hands tied and his mouth gagged from screaming. She took it all from him––his pride, his integrity, his will to fight––and she'd done it with one word only. One.

He knew then, that there had been no way, no room from the start to come out of this intact. Djari held the rein, she knew how to steer the horse, and he could be the corpse dragged behind her chariot or he could be something else, something more.

"I will do whatever you ask of me," he said as he dropped the sword by his side in exhaustion, in defeat. "But you're going to let me in this time. You're going to have to let me in. Wherever you must go, whatever you must do, let me be a part of it. That is my price."

She made a sound in her throat, and caught it with her teeth before it slipped past her lips. He brought his hands to her cheeks, held her face between his palms, forced her to look at him, to see. "I'm right here, Djari. You can take my hand when he can't be by your side. My sword is yours when he's not here to fight. My shoulders are free when you have to cry. Give me that place in your life. I'll take it, if that's the only thing you have left to spare."

And there, under the stars that seemed to hold their breaths watching, feeling the beat of his own heart hammering against his ribcage, Djari closed her eyes and cried, like a newborn's first time tasting air.

He wrapped his arms around her, remembering that night in the Prayer Room of Eli, when courage didn't get him far enough, fast enough to do what another man did. Djari wept and beat at his chest as she clung to him, crying in bursts of rage, of long suffocated screams, of tears held back for decades, the same tears she'd shed in her sworn sword's arms.

It had to be enough, this space in her heart, this small privilege. What more could he ask for but scraps and leftovers? Life didn't come with offerings wrapped with a bow for the likes of him. You could take a half-eaten apple, or you could die waiting for something whole if you were born an outcast. Half an apple was enough to keep him living. It had to be enough.

'My life is tied to yours,' he'd said. He wondered, with a sudden shiver running down his spine, if this had been what the gods had in mind when that lightning came down in the Hall of Marrakai, carving a line between them.

Djari cried herself to sleep that night, or cried until she collapsed from exhaustion, he wasn't sure. Saya appeared some time later, went straight to Rhykal, and bound him to a tree. He held on to Djari, trying to keep his eyes open despite the fatigue. Saya might change her mind any minute, and he had given Djari a promise to keep her sworn sword alive.

"You don't have to stay up," said Saya, who must have noticed him trying to stay awake. "He will be alive in the morning."

That surprised him, actually, how she hadn't used the opportunity to kill him. "Why the change of mind?"

She turned away from the fire, kept her face from the light. "I saw him."

"Who?"

"Amar," she said. "He came back. That's how she managed to strike him down. "

It took him a second to put it together, and another to register the horror of it. "You saw what happened? You were there the whole time?"

"I was."

"And you did nothing."

"I wanted to see if he would come back." The tone was flat, lifeless. "And I was right."

Even then... He bit down on that thought before it finished, and decided to let it go. It shouldn't have surprised him. Saya had left him behind before, and had been prepared to do a lot more than that to Djari. Expecting something from her would have been a lost cause, if not unrealistic to begin with. She had also called Djari competition. "You're waiting to see if he would wake up as Amar?"

"He might."

"And if it's Rhykal?"

"I'll kill him then."

"I can't let you do that."

She snorted. "You can't stop me."

That, he couldn't. It didn't take a genius to work that out. Against her, his skill was useless, with or without the wound in his belly. He sighed. "No, I suppose I can't."

She stilled for a time, then turned on her side to look at him. "Then why are you still here?"

Why? He'd never given it a thought, and couldn't come up with an answer that made sense. "I have to try, I guess," he said. What else was there to do?

Saya stared at him, like a child waiting for the next line of a bedtime story she was interested in. "She risked her life for him, she took off her fingers to save him. What has she done for you?"

A genuine question, never mind how badly it stung. He'd come to realize lately, that he didn't have it in him to despise Saya. She seemed to him merely a child who'd been raised too long in isolation––fearless for having had nothing to lose, heartless for not having learned to love, insensitive, because all her senses had yet to develop. You could get mad at someone like that but not hold a grudge, unless you were a child yourself.

"They call me the half blood son of a Shakshi whore." He tossed another piece of wood into the fire, and chuckled at how catchy it actually sounded. He'd tried to remember who started it once or twice, and decided it was too much work. "The Tower finds me an extra mouth to feed. My brothers used me for sport and entertainment. My mother hates the sight of my face because it looks like her enemy's. Believe me, I would be dead a long time ago out of sheer boredom and complete lack of attention if I needed someone to do something for me to decide what to do with my life."

If there had been pity on her face, it didn't show. Saya watched him from the ground, supporting her head with a hand on an anchored elbow, listening with nothing but curiosity and keen interest. "But you will do this? You will be his substitute, her second choice for life? What for?"

If there was a good reason for that, he didn't know it. There wasn't much to gain, not even hope that he would get anything but pain and sufferings, but he had never been one to think much before he acted. He did what he wanted to do, most of the time when he could, sometimes when he couldn't. He shrugged. "Maybe I'm bored. Maybe I want some attention. Maybe..."

It snuck up on him unaware, the reason that might have drawn him to her. An old absence, long ignored and cast aside, revealed itself in the light, catching him by surprise. "Maybe that's what I need. Someone capable of loving me that way, that much."

The way a mother should love her son.

The fire crackle. The wind blew. A wolf howled, somewhere far away. His wound sent a jab of pain, once, twice.

Saya stared at him in horror, like a child seeing a dead body for the first time. "But you'll lose either way."

He would, wouldn't he? By then he'd come to realize that he had been jealous of what they have, that for all the times he'd wanted the Sparrow dead, there was a part of him that needed to see Djari stand by her sworn sword, at any cost. "I suppose that makes two of us."

She scowled, but only halfway. "That's not why I'm here."

"Why, then, are you here?" He turned to gesture at Rhykal, or the Sparrow, not that it made much of a difference. "You know you can't have him, no matter what you do. If he lives, he lives for her. If he dies, you lose him. You lose either way, and yet you are still here."

She stilled for a time, seemed to be thinking, trying something on for size, then decided it wasn't what she wanted to wear. "I want to kill this pain." She pressed her lips together. "I want it to go away."

A child, learning about love and the consequences of it. "And then what?" he asked. "What will you do, when the pain is gone? Go back to Al Sana? Live out your life in peace with your father? Die old without scars?"

"Is that not what everyone wants? A life without scars?"

"I don't know about everyone." He shook his head in earnest. "But if you ask me, I don't want to die old, safe, and bored with a life story nobody can stretch past a page. I may never be the hero everyone needs, but at least in my own story I can be one. And no good heroes ever run from scars and pain."

"And you want to be that hero."

He shrugged, tossed her a signature grin. "It gets me laid."

Saya laughed, for the first time since they'd met. A strange sight but one not exactly bad. He might have laughed too, if he could manage. She said, "You're not so bad, you know that?"

He smiled at that, dropped an old jest he'd used a dozen times. "Tell me that again after you've had me in bed," he said, surprised how natural it came with Saya. It wouldn't have been at all with Djari. With Djari...

With Djari everything was more complicated, like being with someone who could see right through his walls and facade, to catch all the ugliness he was trying to hide. She made him feel naked most of the time, but somehow all his scars and imperfections seemed all right with her.

Or she simply didn't care, because it didn't matter.

He couldn't remember what Saya said after that, or the expression she made for that remark. He remembered holding Djari in his arms, and hating himself for wishing that her sworn sword wouldn't wake up tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after, that the privilege he had tonight would last.

***

Lasura jolted awake to the sound of splashing water, and immediately doubled over from the pain in his stomach. The sudden movement had probably opened up the wound again, but bleeding to death was the least of his worries right now. His worries––

He scrambled to his feet in panic, cursing himself for having fallen asleep when he noticed Djari and Saya weren't there, then sighed in relief when he spotted them both by the tree to which they'd tied the Sparrow.

Djari was standing over her sworn sword with a flask in one hand, a dagger in the other when he arrived. Saya stood a few steps behind, watching them like a prison guard expecting some kind of an uprising. On the ground, face drenched from the water Djari must have thrown at him, the Sparrow began to twitch and stir.

Lasura held his breath as he watched. Saya's hand moved toward the hilt of her sword, ready to draw any minute. Djari's blade twitched, catching the sunlight, holding it hostage by the tip. He could only see her from behind, but something about her didn't feel right. Something in the way she stood, in how she held herself, in the presence she radiated that felt foreign and yet familiar at the same time. Djari had reminded him of his mother before, but not like this, not with this accuracy.

The man on the ground opened his eyes, blinked a few times to adjust to the light. He swept his gaze hazily around the surrounding, then came to a pause on Djari. His expression relaxed as soon as he saw her, and the tension that clung to his shoulders seemed to disappear all at once, his gray eyes, too, softened immediately. He parted his lips to speak, took some time to find his voice, and managed to croak a single word. "Djari."

It was merely a whisper, but the affection in it was unmissable, unmistakable. The Sparrow, Hasheem, or Amar had returned, and no one was going to die today. Behind them, Saya released a sigh. He kept his eyes on Djari, not sure how to feel about it.

'You'll lose either way,' Saya had said. It did feel like a loss in the middle of a celebration. But he had been prepared for that, hadn't he? He'd told Saya as himself as much.

Before him, Djari stood painfully still, breathing lightly, quietly. It would take her some time, he supposed, to deal with all these emotions that would be flooding her now. A lot had happened since they left Al-Sana. No, a lot had happened since they entered the Black Desert. They hadn't, Lasura realized, been given a chance to talk, after all this time.

He watched her take the last needed breath before lowering herself to the ground, balancing her weight on one knee. She brought the flask to his lips, and offered him whatever was left in it.

The Sparrow drank quickly and to the last drop, breathed the fresh air like a man who'd just been released from a lifetime of imprisonment, and said, "Thank you, for saving my li––"

The hilt of Djari's dagger rammed into his jaw before he finished the sentence, knocking the man halfway to the ground, spilling blood.

It tipped over the moment like the first punch to start a bar fight, sent a shock that got him and Saya backing up a step to grip their blades. Djari straightened her back, flipped over her dagger and pointed it at her sworn sword, right under his chin.

"Try to fool me again, Rhykal izr Zoren," she said, jaw clenched tight enough to hear the words scraping through her teeth, "and I will take from you a finger, or a toe."

The Sparrow stared at her, wide eyed, before erupting into a laugh of pure delight. It settled after a time, behind a smile showing straight white teeth.

"I'm impressed," said Rhykal izr Zoren. "When did you know?"

Djari breathed in and out slowly, took her time to reply. "Hasheem would have begged me to kill him for what you have done. That is the first thing he would do."

Rhykal kept the smile. "He would do that, wouldn't he? I've almost forgotten how pathetic he is."

She dug the knife in deeper, drew blood. Rhykal ignored it, and made himself comfortable as he leaned back against the tree. "What's the point, Bharavi? You won't kill me. You can't. Put the knife away."

Djari stilled at those words. Lasura wondered if she remembered the promise she'd made last night. A part of him wanted to see the Sparrow die, the other couldn't live with what it might do to her.

She took her time, the hand that held the dagger turned white from how hard she clenched her fist around it. It was a difficult decision, one she seemed to be fighting with all she had to make. And when it was done, when she drew in a breath and finally let it go, the blade came away slowly from his throat.

And went right back in.

Rhykal made a startled sound, followed by a groan at the sudden pain in his shoulder where her dagger was buried. Djari, for all the signs that told him how close she was to breaking, held on to that blade like it was the only thing keeping her from falling apart.

"I am a Bharavi," she forced out the words, through clenched teeth and collapsing windpipe, "a daughter of Za'in izr Husari, and Ravi's chosen vessel to end this war. I have been raised to carry that weight if it would cripple me, to marry an army if it would win us the war, to kill my own horse when tradition calls for it. You are an extension of me, my own flesh and blood. But don't think for a second that I won't cut off my limbs when necessary." She forced the knife in deeper, let out a strangled cry, as if it had been her flesh it went through. "I have a duty to this land, a responsibility to my people, and I will survive to carry that weight even if I have to tear my heart to pieces. Threaten my life again, and I will have no choice but to end your life, Rhykal izr Zoren. I will kill you with my own hands, or he will. Remember it, and don't make me do this. I don't want to."

It ought to be enough a warning, Lasura thought, chest filled indescribably tight with something he might very well die from. He'd forgotten who Djari was, and what her priority had always been. If she had to kill her sworn sword out of necessity, Rhykal izr Zoren would die with the Sparrow holding his own throat exposed for her to slit. From the looks of it, and the way that smile never returned, Rhykal seemed to have learned that lesson, and would likely remember it for a long time to come.

When she was done, when she was certain her point had been taken, Djari pulled out the knife and rose to her feet. She dried her cheeks with the back of her hands, sucked in the rest of her tears, and turned to him.

"Take me to Deo di Amarra."

***

A/N: Aaaand here we go, off to Samarra, where the rest of the cast are. This is going to be fun.

Also, it's about time our boy Lasura gets laid T_T Or at least a hug.