Figurehead

epilogue

Silence.

Comfortable silence, and not quite full silence because I can hear our gentle breaths and the occasional crackle of flame. I turn to face him and not the ceiling, and he touches the poultices on my torso. "I told you I was fine," I murmur with a small grin.

He rolls his eyes, returning his arm to where it was previously lying across my stomach. "Alright, alright."

I move my head so it rests next to his again as I stare, unseeing, at the ceiling. It would be so nice not to have to face tomorrow. There is so much to face. There is so much uncertain. I stifle a sigh. I can't keep wishing responsibility away. I can't keep wishing I could run or simply leave. Life doesn't work that way.

He shifts his hand from my hip to brush his fingers along my jaw. "Janf."

I look at him. He smiles, his vivid blue eyes as beautiful as ever. "Yeah?" He fingers a strand of my hair before cupping my cheek, kissing my forehead, my nose, my lips. Warmth fills me and I deepen the kiss.

"I was going to say something," he says distractedly, after we part.

I grin. "So say something."

He pauses, staring at me before blinking. "Right. I want to show you something." I raise an eyebrow, and he laughs. "Not here. It's.." He trails off, sighing. "It's hard to describe," he says finally. His smile is gentle.

"Where is it?"

He pauses, touches his lips to the side of my neck. "Get dressed. It will be colder up there." I furrow my eyebrows at him. Up? He rolls onto his back. "If you don't get dressed, we'll have to stay here and you won't see it."

I sit up, ignoring the brief look of concern he gives me. "Fine," I sigh. He sits up too, passing me my cloths at my gesture. "Where are we going?" I ask, wrapping them back around my upper torso. I pause, poking his cheek. "This was your idea," I remind him.

He blinks, returning his gaze to mine. Despite the heat of his gaze, I maintain a blank face. Even if my cheeks are flushed. "Right," he finally says, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Where are we going?" I repeat, getting off the bed. This time, he looks away as I wrap my other cloths around my hips. I grin a little when he fails to answer again. "Dein." I laugh at the look of frustration on his face.

"Why did I tell you to get dressed?" he mutters, partly to himself as he too leaves the bed and wraps his cloths around his own hips. I shrug, pulling the rest of my clothes on. He shakes his head a few times before doing the same.

"Where are we going?" I repeat for the third time. His arm encircles my waist, helping me stand properly without putting much weight on my left shin.

"Up."

I raise an eyebrow at him as he leads us out of the bedroom. "Up." I repeat flatly. He nods, leading us into one of the other rooms. "The Archive is not 'up'. It's the opposite."

But he ignores the panel covering the descending steps. Instead, he releases me and crosses to the other side of the tiny room- walking only about four steps away, really-, reaching up to the wall. He runs his hands over it in a similar way to how Lus ran his hands over the ground before lifting the panel, when he took me to the Archive.

Dein glances back at me with a grin before he reaches up further, tugging on something, and catches something else before it drops to the ground. A.. Box? It's quite large. I glance up at the ceiling, shaking my head. How a box that size could be safely stored up there is a difficult thing to understand.

"Ready?" I turn back to him, furrowing my eyebrows. The.. Box thing is on the ground and he's crouching next to it. Ready? For what? His grin widens and my mouth parts as he starts pulling the thing apart, rearranging parts of it.