[Fic] Weight of the Sword
Title: Weight of the Sword
Pairing: Zhou Mi/Kyuhyun
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, historical, goat anti!Kyu
Warnings: fictional violence, trauma from fighting, thoughts of suicide that are not acted on
Prompt: Either Mi or Kyu is a soldier (in any war, historical or fictional) and he's finally, after so many months of being unable to make contact with the other, coming home, albeit a bit wearier and a bit sadder.
A/N: This beginning snippet has actually been in my to-do pile for almost three years. So it has finally found a reason to be finished.
***
The scrape of Kyuhyun’s sword on the ground heralded his passing, a hiss as it passed over hard-packed earth, leaves and twigs. It was too easy to imagine dropping it, leaving its weight behind. But he had been taught since he could walk that a soldier never abandoned his weapons. Ever. Until death took him, and strength left him. His scabbard had been torn from his belt, and he carried it in his opposite hand. He did not think to look and check its condition. He had barely enough energy to keep his legs churning. He had staggered too many times already. Any more, and he would go down.
It seemed as though he had been walking for hours. If he could have closed his eyes for more than a moment, he would have seen the carnage. Bodies strewn, lifeblood seeping. Villagers, soldiers, men and women and children. Livestock. Screams and desperation and weeping and fear. Acrid sweat and metallic blood, and the sting of his hands where the sword shuddered against another. It had not been his village. He had been there to defend it, as other soldiers had been when his own village had been attacked. He recalled nothing of his parents, only that he had slept in the sway of a horse’s mane for many weeks. A tiny child whose everything had been taken away, and then in some small way, given back.
He would do as the soldier who raised him had done. And he reached that goal. But there had been too many who raided the village, seeming scores of screaming men on horseback and on foot, with swords and axes and fire. It had been the fire that had driven him away, unable to breathe, choked by it as he searched for survivors. Sweat pouring down him as he saw his comrades dead, and the people they were protecting with them. Someone needed to bury them, he thought dimly. He had been struck in the head, falling under another soldier, and he had woken there. Mid-morning, sun shining, smoke thick, and death everywhere around him. Looted, burned, and abandoned. He staggered away to get air. And then found himself incapable of stopping.
He did not register the obstacle ahead of him until he had nearly fallen over it. A man, prone and dead. Perhaps at the hands of the fleeing marauders. From his dress, not a soldier. Another person, taken wrongly. His knees bent, and met the ground like a felling tree, just barely keeping himself upright because of his sword in the ground. Wounds on his legs stretched and bled, and he moaned against it.
The pain was like dogs snapping at him, and he waved his hand, as though it would sweep it away. The hip in front of him was wet, bloody, and through all the death he had seen that day, that warm, tacky cloth against his hand was the one thing that sickened him. Had he had the energy, he would have vomited. He was not the one who had killed this man, as he studied the long fingers, and the ring that signified a healer. A man, unarmed, killed for what? Because of whose greed for wealth or power? Perhaps here with an innocent, it was his time to die as well. His wounds, as tired, as worn as he was, would not kill him. But he could lie down beside this person, and it would take little more than an accidental move of his own sword to end everything. No more nightmares. Perhaps, if they were lucky, a tiger would come upon them, and take them to a better place.
Too tired even for tears, he set his hip on the ground, prepared to lower himself, and didn’t know for how long.
And that was when he heard the moan.
Despite the blood, and coolness of his flesh…he was alive?
He felt over the man’s hip and stomach, surprised to find no mortal wounds. Perhaps, as a healer, the blood was not his. Adrenaline brightened his mind, and he turned the man onto his back, seeing no other obvious signs of blood, only a knot on his head. Which explained why he was unconscious. They had both been felled by a blow that day. He didn’t know what he could do to help, or if there was anything he could do. He had no water, no food, no supplies. All he had was a sword.
It took superhuman effort to drag the man and his bag off the trail. He could not stand, the strength of his legs abandoning him. But with one hand in the man’s collar, he crawled, heaving him inch by precious inch into the loamy forest. The rough leather shoes had cleared the edge of the path and the bulky bag tipped over. He licked his lips, hoping that perhaps there was a water skin inside. And again, the stranger surprised him. What he found was wet, yes, but it was not water. The bundle he pulled from the bag was not a water skin, but a child. A baby, seemingly no longer than his forearm. The rags that surrounded it were bloody also, though the child lived, sleeping hard and even despite the jostling. He tucked the baby back into the bag that had protected it, pushing it close against the man’s chest, as it had been when he had found them. And with the baby in its makeshift bag between them, he stretched out on the earth with nothing but a rotting log as his pillow. He traced the man’s nose, and slack mouth, with his eyes, and contented himself that he was still breathing. He had lost everything, failed everything.
“My name is Kyuhyun, and I swear I will protect you,” he told the unconscious man. The sword that might have ended his life, lay beside him as a sentinel. The sleep that took him was filled with strife, danger and blood. He shuddered on the earth as the light brightened, and gradually, as though the sun drew him up with it, he dreamed of a baby’s cry, and a soft touch to his face. He dreamed of life-giving water soothing his throat, and a voice bidding him sleep. And then he dreamed no more.
***
“My name is Zhou Mi,” the man told him when he woke. He woke feeling as though he had not slept, but also as though he could sleep no more. “You saved me?”
“I dragged you from the road,” Kyuhyun corrected him.
Zhou Mi smiled at him, some infuriating, knowing smile that told him that Zhou Mi thought that those two things were the same.
“Are you injured?” Zhou Mi prompted him. Ever the healer.
Kyuhyun wasn’t sure. He hurt. Everything hurt.
“Follow me,” Zhou Mi said. They would see. And while they walked, Zhou Mi spoke to him. The child was male, two weeks from his birth and no more than that, it seemed, and Zhou Mi led Kyuhyun, stiff and bloody, to the stream.
“You are a soldier,” Zhou Mi said as Kyuhyun stripped himself of his leather armor, leaving it and his sword on the bank.
“Yes,” Kyuhyun said, and wondered if he should leave it at that. “I have trained since small. We have tried to protect the villages from raiders. Of the men I trained with, none are left. Did the child’s mother die?”
It would make sense, perhaps, if the mother was dead and the child had no father.
“His parents live,” Zhou Mi said, rinsing his clothes of blood that would never come clean. “I am charged with bringing him to safety, back to her arms.”
And Zhou Mi shuddered, recounting helping an injured man, and the passing horses, the blow he faintly remembered.
“I could have woken to find him gone, or crushed beneath me or-“ The child gurgled pleasantly as Zhou Mi touched his tiny foot. “I must find a town soon, and purchase a nursing goat. I had one but she fell ill. The farmer I left her with had none.”
Kyuhyun knew nothing of nursing goats, and less of babies. There were secrets in Zhou Mi’s eyes, ones he would not speak as he told Kyuhyun of his plans, telling Kyuhyun of the child’s birth with some fondness that had Kyuhyun wondering if Zhou Mi was the father.
But his body free of blood and sweat - bruised and cut in places but none that Zhou Mi made worried noises over.
“I will see you to this city, and see you safe to where you are going,” Kyuhyun said.
Zhou Mi’s eyes went wide, glancing at Kyuhyun’s sword, which Kyuhyun tucked more firmly against his side.
“I can’t protect a village alone, but I can try to see that you do not sleep in the middle of some road again. The child’s mother will wish to see him soon.”
He did not tell Zhou Mi that he was afraid to his bones and yet still was afraid to stop, but Zhou Mi nodded slowly at him. Zhou Mi had no reason to trust him, but Kyuhyun inhaled as Zhou Mi put hands on either side of Kyuhyun’s face and just looked at him. Zhou Mi looked until Kyuhyun was the one to look away, feeling his face heat.
“We would be pleased to have you travel with us, Kyuhyun,” Zhou Mi said after a moment.
Zhou Mi helped him to fashion a makeshift belt for his sword and scabbard out of cloth, and with the baby in arms, Zhou Mi led them to the road, to the village. Zhou Mi led them.
***
They walked for three hours before they found a farmer with goats, and by that time, Kyuhyun was not sure that Zhou Mi would have taken no as an answer. They bought a goat with a dead kid, Zhou Mi did, leading the goat with a rope with them down the road. It was a jaunty smile on Zhou Mi’s face as he motioned Kyuhyun out of the shadows and to follow him back into the trees so that Zhou Mi could milk his new prize. The baby was hungry, and had been without for almost a day besides water and what juice Zhou Mi could get from fruit they had found. The baby was fretful, and Kyuhyun understood that. He didn’t understand why he wasn’t being fed, and Zhou Mi was doing his best to supply. Though Zhou Mi had two charges, Kyuhyun realized that. He wondered if Zhou Mi would have left quicker, traveled faster, as Kyuhyun worked the stiffness from his limbs. But Zhou Mi had been injured as well. Milk from the goat’s teats made almost a hissing sound, falling into what looked like a small clay pot fashioned so a child could drink from it. Zhou Mi’s fingers were deft, the ring glinting in the fading sunlight. Strong hands, but gentle also. They had been lucky with the light holding.
Zhou Mi worked his best, until the goat nearly knocked the pot over.
So Kyuhyun met the goat, holding her upright and still so Zhou Mi could finish.
“He sold me fruit and cured meat as well,” Zhou Mi said, from near beside his face. “You should eat while I feed him, and rest.”
Kyuhyun ate, anchoring the goat to a nearby bush and watching her as she began to graze. But his exhaustion overcame his hunger as he watched Zhou Mi cradle the baby. Only a moment he would close his eyes. Only just a moment.
Kyuhyun shuddered in sleep, the blood stalking him. Dead hands grasping at his clothes, pulling him down, urging him to rest with them. He was so tired, but he was not ready. He had promised, and he was hungry, and his eyes latched on the moon, reaching for it and crying in agony as a sword sliced over his shoulder. That was how those he killed suffered, they told him, pulling him. It was time to rest. He had not saved them. He could not continue on.
But he had tried, he had-
“Kyuhyun.”
Kyuhyun lashed out with his hands, startling to find solid flesh and not a ghostly hold, and came awake half slid away from the tree he had leaned against to sleep.
“Oh,” he said, seeing the outline of Zhou Mi’s head and shoulders.
“You were having a nightmare,” Zhou Mi said, keeping a hand on Kyuhyun’s face and anchoring him in the moment. “I thought it was best to wake you from it.”
His heart and breathing were just barely under his control again, and he nodded, not caring if Zhou Mi could see or not.
“Yes. Thank you. I- I hit you? Did I wake the baby?”
“You grazed my side with a hand, but nothing else,” Zhou Mi said, and Kyuhyun heard the soothing in his voice. Different from how he talked to the baby, but warm still.
He’d brushed Zhou Mi’s side. It was lucky he had not reached for his sword. At the thought, he pushed himself up, leaning heavily against the tree.
“Here, drink,” Zhou Mi said, pressing the water skin into his hands. And he did, as they sat in silence. It steadied him, just having that moment to himself, the cool water and the breeze cooling his face. Zhou Mi did not hum at him, as he sometimes did the baby, but there was comfort in him only being near.
“Thank you,” Kyuhyun said again. And after a moment, he realized there was something else he had not said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Do you have nightmares like those often?”
Often enough. “Yes. After the fighting, I saw too many people die. I think I carry them with me.”
Zhou Mi leaned beside him, careful, as though he was afraid that he would make Kyuhyun uneasy, or that Kyuhyun would not want him close. In fact, the opposite was true. He had always enjoyed sleeping near to the other solders, the sounds of them around him comforting him and making him feel not alone.
“Do you fight in your nightmares?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I am fighting for my life, or the life of someone long dead. Sometimes the dead call for me to join them.”
“You must not,” Zhou Mi told him, and his voice was an order in the dark. Kyuhyun’s spine tensed for a moment as Zhou Mi’s hand, a bit rough, grasped his. “No matter what, you must not.”
Kyuhyun wondered if Zhou Mi would be glad if he knew that he had given Kyuhyun a purpose, and that he was the reason that in dreams he fought where before sometimes it had been so easy to imagine just resting down his head with those he had let down.
No. He could not have saved everyone. The way Zhou Mi squeezed his hand told him that Zhou Mi would have thought so, too. He had tried. He had fought the only way he knew how.
He had known Zhou Mi two days only, and Zhou Mi seemed to understand him, more than he was accustomed to since the day his mentor had rescued him.
He was not sure when he slept, but he did not let go of Zhou Mi’s hand. When he woke, Zhou Mi was feeding the baby, and the birds were stirring. But for a little while at least, the nightmares had stayed away.
***
Zhou Mi was a man of means. Kyuhyun was not entirely startled to learn it, because very few men spoke as Zhou Mi spoke, and could heal, without first being born to a family who could provide all they needed. But it was one thing to assume, to walk beside him and wonder where exactly there were going and why, and another to know.
“We are here,” Zhou Mi said, drawing a circle on the ground, and then a second one further away. “The city is here. Between, there is a river, and we can hire a boat to take us across. On the other side, I had planned to buy a horse, and finish the journey quicker that way.”
“You can buy a horse?” Kyuhyun asked, staring at him.
Zhou Mi looked up at him, from his crude mapmaking, before he stood. “Yes. And now that you travel with us, I will buy two.”
They already had a goat, clothes, and food. He wondered if Zhou Mi had money sewn into his skin. But that Zhou Mi would tell him showed a great deal of trust, trust that Kyuhyun might not have had. Greed was a powerful thing, when it was the wrong man.
Zhou Mi’s hand curved over the hilt of Kyuhyun’s sword, close to his side. And though he did not touch Kyuhyun’s body, a flush passed over Kyuhyun as though he had.
“This is not a thing you wear to steal with,” Zhou Mi said. “You don’t have to look at me with such concern and surprise. I… I have other secrets, ones I can’t yet tell you. Though you should not think less of me, when I reveal them.”
“Can’t?”
“Won’t,” Zhou Mi corrected himself. “But it is because of a promise I made, not because of lack of trust in you.”
“What, are you the king as well?”
Zhou Mi’s lips curved. “A healer king?”
They laughed together, and Kyuhyun tightened his fingers against his hip to keep from curling them around Zhou Mi’s hand. It was not only because he did not feel it was his place, but because he did not want to hold Zhou Mi’s hand to the sword. Kyuhyun had no doubt that Zhou Mi would pick it up to defend the child - but he would not have to. Not as long as Kyuhyun was there.
***
The baby was more fragile than watching Zhou Mi with him had led Kyuhyun to believe, but also sturdy at the same time. His limbs were long and frail, but his head was heavy and solid against Kyuhyun's neck as he tried to calm the weeping. Zhou Mi had been carrying him for hours, alternating with the sleeping and the wailing, and Kyuhyun had been unable to walk freely while doing nothing. The movement of his walking seemed to do most of the calming, though he made the occasional low sound in his throat, like he had seen parents do in the villages. He had held babies before, briefly, holding them with two hands as their parents thanked him. It had almost felt as though the parents were asking him to give some sort of blessing, one he felt ill equipped to pass along. He was only there helping them because his own parents had been killed. He might have been one of those farmers or those merchants handing his own child to a soldier to perhaps pass along some measure of strength.
Or perhaps he had it wrong. Perhaps instead they had been trying to pass along what strength they could to Kyuhyun, that he could keep fighting, keep protecting them. That there were those as small as the babies they handed him, still in want of protection and care.
Zhou Mi smiled at him when he carried the baby, or held him when they were resting, and Kyuhyun always frowned back at him. For whatever reason, that seemed to make Zhou Mi smile more. Kyuhyun liked the baby more than the goat, but one was only there because of the other.
Zhou Mi coaxed stories from him, how he had grown up, the places he had been. It felt strange to tell someone those things, when they weren’t being traded by men over fires for want of anything to distract them from the knowledge that they could soon die. Zhou Mi asked because he wanted to know, smiling at Kyuhyun as long as there was light. There were touches to Kyuhyun’s knee, laughter as Kyuhyun spoke of falling off a horse when he was ten, and nearly freezing himself in a river. He tried not to let the touches affect him, the grasping of Kyuhyun’s wrist, or the press of their shoulders together. It only made him wonder why Zhou Mi spoke to him, and touched him as he did. All Kyuhyun had known was fighting, a world of men, and Zhou Mi was so much different than that. A musical voice that soothed him, even as his touches made Kyuhyun clutch inside.
They arranged themselves together, creating a barrier between the forest and the child. The purchased goat was tethered by two means, since Kyuhyun did not trust her not to free herself. Sometimes he was sure she thought he was a demon sent to pester her, but he thought she was a hot and stinky companion. Kyuhyun sent one last look in her direction before settling back against the tree. Zhou Mi was beside him, curled on the ground and half covered by a blanket. His pants were wet after being washed from an encounter from the baby’s back end, so he slept while they dried over a bush - far away from the goat’s mouth.
Kyuhyun felt naked without his armor even days later, but he could not turn back to retrieve it. The comforting weight of the leather had been left at the stream’s side. He had not been the first to wear it, or the second, or the third. It had been too damaged to wear, and too heavy to carry when it took all his ability to keep himself walking beside Zhou Mi. The sword weighed on him too, but he would have left behind his own leg before leaving that. Zhou Mi had purchased new clothing for both of them, when they had bought the goat. It did not all fit right and the cloth was somewhat worn since they had bought the clothes from a farming family, but they had been willing to part with the clothing for the price Zhou Mi had given. It was clean, and there was no blood on it.
Just beyond Zhou Mi’s head, the baby slept after his last feeding. Clean, full, warm, the baby had the best of their situation. He extended a fingertip every so often, to make sure that the baby was still warm, having seeing Zhou M do the same. It was still warm at night, but Kyuhyun would have appreciated a fire. Something warm to drink. The smoke would have been too visible, though. They did not need thieves in the night, no matter how many goats that Zhou Mi could buy.
Zhou Mi seemed to sigh, turning in his sleep. The blanket pulled, leaving most of the length of one leg exposed, and Kyuhyun’s knees raised in response. He should reach for the blanket, cover Zhou Mi again. But he was mesmerized, that one look with Zhou Mi none the wiser. He’d seen Zhou Mi wash, seen him strip those pants off earlier that night, but not so close. There was no danger in looking, he reasoned.
Or to touch, just for the briefest moment.
Impossible thighs, Kyuhyun thought, his hand resting inside the nearest one, just above Zhou Mi’s knee. Slender and curving, he wonder what the fine skin felt like further up. But as his fingers moved, Zhou Mi made a soft sound. He took back his fingers immediately.
“Kyuhyun? The baby?”
“He’s fine. Go back to sleep,” Kyuhyun said. But instead of relaxing, Zhou Mi pushed himself up and closer, all but radiating heat against Kyuhyun’s side. Zhou Mi had done that before, when he was offering comfort. But Zhou Mi did not know what Kyuhyun had done or why, or he would not have stayed so close, or welcomed Kyuhyun on his journey. Kyuhyun took several steadying breaths, hoping his voice sounded as usual. “If you get me warm, I won’t be able to stay awake.”
Zhou Mi hummed out a quiet version of his laugh. “We’re far enough away from the road it should not matter unless the baby cries.”
Perhaps. Perhaps…
Kyuhyun nearly shivered as Zhou Mi’s fingertips landed against his collarbone. A press that had Kyuhyun was holding his breath as cloth Kyuhyun had loosened to relax was pulled. It was just his shoulder, he thought, leaning his head back and trying to keep his breathing even. Perhaps to make himself more comfortable. Perhaps.
But his breath caught in his throat, as Zhou Mi’s lips pressed to the top of his shoulder. Skin that he had never thought to be sensitive, until he felt Zhou Mi’s breath against it. It was not to comfort, no. Zhou Mi had felt his touch. It was…a question. Kyuhyun wanted to close his eyes, and retreat into himself. But he could not do that either, not with Zhou Mi so close. And when he let himself look, Zhou Mi’s thigh was still bared to him, bared and closer than before. It took only a shift of his hand to touch it, palm it, let his hand curve to it as Zhou Mi breathed against him. He wished he could breathe so easily, feeling like all the air in him was backed up in his lungs. Yes. It was the only answer he was returning, for Zhou Mi to accept or reject.
And his eyes were on a branch beyond them, a leaf moving in the slightest breeze, as Zhou Mi’s lips brushed his jaw.
He wondered if Zhou Mi could hear his heart beating, feeling Zhou Mi there close and waiting. But as Kyuhyun’s head turned, he felt Zhou Mi’s hand cover his, holding him there against Zhou Mi’s thigh. Stay. Words would have been too harsh in the moment, where even their harsh breathing rocked them, fragile. He did not see it, eyes closed, as their lips pressed together. Pressed until his teeth bit into the backs of his lips, and they eased together. Soft, puffs of air against skin an urgent stroke, angling faces as each kiss made him want another - until he felt Zhou Mi smile, Zhou Mi’s head lowering so that his cheek rested on Kyuhyun’s shoulder.
Ah, he had woken Zhou Mi. Strangely he was not outwardly moved, even as his heart continued to beat quick and even. He tilted his head, resting his head against Zhou Mi’s, and napped until the sun rose.
***
That night they feasted on food bought in the village they had passed through, steamed fish and vegetables and heavy servings of rice. They ate as though it would be stolen from them, sitting knee to knee facing each other on the grass where they had hidden themselves. Beside them, the baby snorted in sleep as they used their hands to eat the rich food.
“Now I know what he feels like after he’s fed,” Kyuhyun said, nodding at the baby. He hadn’t had a meal like that since before the fighting against the raids had begun. They’d foraged, hunted wild animals, but the villagers had often been too poor to supply much food even with the service they were being provided. Oh, they would have split the food they fed their families, but it was impossible to accept when they saw the children and elderly watching the food being cooked.
It would have been like stealing food right out of their stomachs.
“Do you need me to pat your back until you go to sleep too?” Zhou Mi asked, a smear of sauce along the edge of his mouth.
“I might need it tonight,” Kyuhyun said, and they split the last of the food so that they both had an even portion until there was nothing left, not even a grain of rice.
“Perhaps the walking will help,” Zhou Mi said, and kept talking when Kyuhyun opened his mouth to protest. “It’s not safe to sleep this close to the village. Even if they were kind and sold this to us, we can’t be sure.”
No matter how enthusiastic Kyuhyun was about staying right where they were, he agreed. Though on the road they had to be twice as cautious, since those traveling at night could be desperate to get to where they were going, or willing to prey on those in travel. The thought of pulling his sword made him both determined and sick, but he walked and listened as his stomach settled. The moon changed position through the trees, and Zhou Mi stopped when they heard a stream ahead.
“Here?” Zhou Mi asked quietly.
Kyuhyun waited silently, and followed Zhou Mi through the brush, through a hollow and to higher ground facing away from the road. They found the goat a bush to demolish when she wasn’t sleeping, and the baby a safe place to rest. He was still full, pleasant, from their dinner, and could imagine sleeping easily. But as he began to lower himself in full view of the goat and child, his sword laid out behind him, Zhou Mi bumped him and sent him sprawling. The sound he was making was half groan and half laugh as Zhou Mi laughed against him, turning him.
“I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
Aside from his cheek hitting the ground, he thought so.
“You didn’t hit me-“
Kyuhyun’s breath and words faltered, as Zhou Mi brushed the dirt from his face. His fingers were cool, so close to Kyuhyun even though he was shadowed with the moon behind him. Sometimes Kyuhyun thought he had imagined those midnight kisses, the touch that he should not have allowed himself. But he had not. His whole chest ached as Zhou Mi’s lips nestled against his, a hesitation that Kyuhyun did not accept, sliding his hand over the tail of Zhou Mi’s hair and pulling him closer.
Zhou Mi’s hand on his side tickled, and he gasped into the kiss, grunting as Zhou Mi landed on him. But he could breathe again as Zhou Mi lifted himself, and Kyuhyun licked his lips, staring at Zhou Mi’s shadowed face.
“You,” Zhou Mi began.
“Please?” Kyuhyun said, supplying what he hoped was the end of Zhou Mi’s sentence. It was perhaps too forward, too much like a jest. He held his breath, Zhou Mi nuzzled his nose beside Kyuhyun’s for a moment before speaking.
“Do you know what I thought when I woke to find that you had dragged us off of the road to safety? You were dirty, and injured, and asleep. I thought you were too beautiful to be real.”
The scoff was almost out before Zhou Mi soothed it back with his fingers.
“This man who offered to protect me, protect us, with no knowledge of who we were. That determination and kindness in your eyes was even more beautiful.”
Kyuhyun closed his eyes, hands finding Zhou Mi’s ribs.
“Tell me this is not gratitude,” he nearly whispered.
“My only gratitude is that you want this too,” Zhou Mi said.
Then it was enough talk. Enough of beauty and feelings. That he wanted, Zhou Mi had to know his thoughts were the same, that at times he stared at Zhou Mi’s mouth, at his hands, his shoulders. They were not just to admire.
He pressed up, catching Zhou Mi in an awkward kiss. But he was met, and again, telling Zhou Mi without words what it was that he wanted. Kisses, the stroke of his hands, catching Zhou Mi against him until they breathed and moved as one unit. Kyuhyun moaned, his fingers curling into the back of Zhou Mi’s shirt, and they muffled themselves against each other as they kissed and petted.
He breathed hard against Zhou Mi’s chest, sprawled out against him on the ground like a tired child, when the baby stirred. The goat made a sound that sounded almost judgmental. And they had that moment more to laugh together.
***
Zhou Mi purchased the horses alone, against Kyuhyun’s judgment, and wishes. It was true, he knew the value better that Kyuhyun himself, but leaving Kyuhyun with the baby to buy two horses seemed foolhardy. And the goat, of course. Kyuhyun could hardly be rid of the goat. Zhou Mi had tried to name her that morning, and Kyuhyun had none of it. She eyed him like his shirt looked like her next meal, and he’d scowled back. Reduced to that by a creature who couldn’t even talk. But Zhou Mi had acquired the horses, saddles and bridles as well. Neither looked sick, but one looked rather aged.
“I bought this old man at a reduced price,” Zhou Mi said, patting the horse’s neck. “But he’s sound. He’ll last the journey. I’ll take him myself.”
Because he was lighter. Even with the baby, he was lighter.
Kyuhyun was charged with riding with the goat. He would have complained, would have wondered how that duty fell to him, but it was clear. Zhou Mi had enough to worry about making sure the baby was safe with him on the horse, and they were moving too fast for the goat to be led along behind them. There were plaintive goat-y sounds, and attempts to eat Kyuhyun’s clothes as he’d feared. The sounds he couldn’t do anything about, but the eating of his clothes he could. He wasn’t sure who glared harder, him or the goat, but he thought he was victorious. He began packing grass and snatching at branches with leaves still on them so the goat could graze a little, going so far as to give her water from his own supply. It was all for the baby, he reasoned. And for Zhou Mi. Every step they took, every stride of the horses, seemed to ease between Kyuhyun and the blood behind him. It was never far, but he learned in the worry for Zhou Mi how to press his palms against it and hold.
Though he had not let himself be talked into trying to milk the goat. He was content to hold her still as Zhou Mi did that by himself. They stopped several times during the day to do just that, letting the goat and horses graze for a while as Zhou Mi carefully fed the baby.
“Why did you want to be a healer?” Kyuhyun asked Zhou Mi, during one of those times. The baby was eating with determined focus, and Kyuhyun’s eye was on the goat to make sure she did not run.
“I am good at it,” Zhou Mi said, smiling a little. If he was surprised by Kyuhyun's sudden interest and question he did not show it. “I learned at the knee of a woman my father knew, learned her secrets and wrote them down. I have that book, back at home, but many things I remember. It makes me happy to help people. If it did not make me happy, I would attempt something else.”
“Have you ever held a sword?”
Zhou Mi hummed, shifting the baby to his other arm. “Yes. My father taught me to defend myself. I am not opposed to fighting, especially when the goal is to protect. I would certainly fight to defend myself, or my family. And this little one.”
“And yet all you carry is a knife,” Kyuhyun pointed out.
It was a long knife, to be sure, and it could be used to parry a sword, but what it lacked was reach.
“My goal was to avoid confrontation, and travel unnoticed. A healer with a sword would have called attention.”
There was some truth to that, and yet still Kyuhyun was not satisfied, frowning as Zhou Mi patted the baby’s back.
“Won’t traveling with a soldier call attention to you?”
Zhou Mi’s eyes flicked from Kyuhyun’s boots to the top of his head, causing heat to rise in his face. Perhaps Zhou Mi had intended that, but his answer was a shrug of his shoulder.
“You are dressed as any villager is. If someone was suspicious, I could tell them the baby is your child and you are escorting me to where I can heal him after his mother’s death.”
It was a story that could be easily believed, so Kyuhyun grudgingly grunted and nodded. Another tale could be that Zhou Mi had hired him to accompany him, or that they were simply traveling in the same direction. Certainly when he had made his determination that he would see Zhou Mi safely to his destination, he had not thought to bring more danger to Zhou Mi. So far he had not, but it was clear that Zhou Mi had been thinking ahead of him.
“We can leave if you are ready,” Zhou Mi said.
And Kyuhyun stood, holding out his arms for the dozing baby. He steadied Zhou Mi’s horse until Zhou Mi could mount, and then held the horse again after passing the baby up, until he was safely tucked against Zhou Mi. It was indulgence, that he let his hand linger a moment on Zhou Mi’s knee, before putting the bleating goat in front of the saddle and mounting his own horse.
“Ready,” Kyuhyun said.
***
After the horses, they slept in shifts. It was easy to hide in the woods, just two men and the baby, but two men, two horses, a baby, and a goat was too much. There were too many noises, too much space, and too many tracks to cover. They ate fruit, dried meat, as Kyuhyun looked with envy at the fish swimming in the stream.
“When we are safe,” Zhou Mi had promised him, laughing against his shoulder as they ate and had their fill of water.
He could see that Zhou Mi was tired, and more worried as the days went by. Every village they passed, Zhou Mi grew quieter, as though his silence would make their journey end quicker. It was focus, and listening. Kyuhyun made sure to stay awake the first shift, to make sure that Zhou Mi slept any at all, though he wasn’t sure that Zhou Mi knew that. Still, Zhou Mi woke quickly when Kyuhyun pressed a hand to his shoulder. He had once considered staying up the whole night to see Zhou Mi more rested, until Zhou Mi had woken, unhappy with him. So they had agreed to split it as evenly as possible. By the time Zhou Mi was properly awake, Kyuhyun usually had no problem going back to sleep. He had dealt with several hours of keeping the baby quiet and fed, a long day of travel. It took barely closing his eyes before he was asleep most nights, but not that one.
His bag had been a serviceable pillow for days, and it was annoying him. There was nothing hard inside it but he moved his shoulder, his face, trying any position that seemed comfortable. He’d slept with less, succumbing to exhaustion, using his arm or a tree root as a pillow. But that night, nothing was satisfying. The horses and goat were chewing, and the baby’s breathing deep and even. He turned his head, trying not to let his mouth turn into a pout as he looked for Zhou Mi. And of course he saw what he expected, Zhou Mi against a tree, lit only by the moon.
“Can you not sleep?” Zhou Mi asked, voice quiet so as not to disturb the baby, but it still made Kyuhyun jump.
And he’d thought he was being quiet.
“I can’t seem to get comfortable,” he said, rolling himself over fully so that he faced Zhou Mi. But he blinked, seeing the legs stretching out in front of him. Warm. Not cold like his pack or lumpy. Kyuhyun scooted himself forward, waiting to see if Zhou Mi would object as he rested the side of his face on Zhou Mi’s thigh. The cloth was rough, but it was firm and higher than his pack.
He could feel Zhou Mi muffling the laugh and nearly pushed himself away before Zhou Mi rested fingers against Kyuhyun’s head.
“Get some rest,” Zhou Mi told him.
He didn’t care if he was being like a child. Human contact soothed him, and he’d realized it had when he was holding the baby, when the baby was quiet at least. But Zhou Mi was different to that, like a cool stone on a hot day that softened the tangled knot that threatened to choke him.
When Kyuhyun woke and freed him from not moving, Zhou Mi stretched, smiling the same smile as ever as he milked the goat, and fed the cranky baby. Kyuhyun still felt tired even after washing his face, and chewing on some of the dried meat from their pack. Still he was not unhappy listening to Zhou Mi’s soothing sounds. When he felt more alert, he checked the horses, stroking necks and eyeing the bark they’d stripped during the night to supplement their grass and leaves.
“One day, you’ll have all the grass you can eat,” Kyuhyun said, and got barely a flick of an ear for his trouble. He looked back at Zhou Mi and asked, “Are we moving on soon?”
“He’ll be ready,” Zhou Mi agreed, voice muffled as he took on the arduous task of keeping the baby’s tender skin clean.
Then he could saddle the horses. By the time Zhou Mi was finished, they would leave, eating more along their journey to not waste time.
But before Kyuhyun could take the baby from Zhou Mi’s arms so that he could mount the horse, Zhou Mi pulled him closer. He tensed as even with the baby between them, Zhou Mi’s face was against his neck.
“Do not ever doubt how much of a comfort you have been to me,” Zhou Mi said. “Even in sleep, being near you have kept me from worrying.”
“The goat would have listened to your troubles,” Kyuhyun jested, feeling Zhou Mi smile, and standing still again as Zhou Mi pulled away and kissed his mouth.
“You are more than any goat,” Zhou Mi said, voice amused as he let Kyuhyun take the baby from him.
Considering he stank because of her, he should hope so.
***
The child that would one day rule.
Kyuhyun had held him. Fed him. Been pissed on by him.
When Zhou Mi had told him, they had been a day’s ride away from the city, Zhou Mi so very close to him. Kyuhyun understood why Zhou Mi had not told him before. Firstly, he could not have known if Kyuhyun was trustworthy, and it was possible that there were spies looking for anyone with a baby. To deliver the next ruler would be quite a coup, but there were others still who would rather see him dead. Secondly, Zhou Mi had promised to keep the child’s identity secret. However, he could not have taken Kyuhyun with him into the city without revealing it.
Zhou Mi told him when the light was still high, eyes on Kyuhyun’s face to see if he was surprised or if he’d wondered, or if he was angry. Kyuhyun had mostly looked to the baby, in the process of noisily sucking on his hand.
“This baby?”
“Give him a few more years,” Zhou Mi suggested, laughing at Kyuhyun only slightly. “He has to walk and talk first.”
Zhou Mi had left his home, traveling in secret to deliver the child, and Zhou Mi was taking the child to join with his parents in the city, by a different route. There had been threats made to their lives, and it seemed safer to split them up. Zhou Mi spoke of a mother’s tears, and bidding them safe journey.
“He is a cousin of sorts,” Zhou Mi said, surprising Kyuhyun further. “My father was an illegitimate child of the former king. “He studied and worked, and I was allowed to learn healing. So even if he is not mine, I feel as though I am connecting back to my ancestry, protecting it.”
“You don’t wish to rule?”
Zhou Mi shook his head, smiling down at the baby. “How could I, when he will do so well?”
Kyuhyun scoffed at the sentiment, but they leaned together as the night grew cooler and Kyuhyun contemplated how they could enter the city. If they would be stopped. If he would need to fight for them.
“Tell me what I should do,” Kyuhyun told him, shivering as Zhou Mi slid their fingers together, grasping his hand tight.
“Stay beside me,” Zhou Mi said.
It was nearly a plea. But he knew they would not sleep easily, with their goal so close.
***
The city was larger than Kyuhyun had imagined, the horses skirting between guards and the flow of people. No one stared up at him or Zhou Mi and recognized them, and for that he was grateful. No one stared when he rode with one hand on his sword and the hand holding the reins stabilizing the nanny goat in front of him - no happier to be there than he was to have her. In the city, though, they would find a woman to nurse the child, and the goat could fill someone’s stewpot. And still he stroked her back to calm her at all the scents and sounds. He just kept the nose of his horse pointed to the tail of Zhou Mi’s. From behind he could watch for dangers.
Zhou Mi led them toward a higher wall, dismounting and waiting for Kyuhyun to do so as well.
“This is where we take him?” Kyuhyun asked.
“Yes,” Zhou Mi said.
“Then I will leave you.”
Zhou Mi was already reaching out for Kyuhyun’s arm, as though he’d anticipated the words before Kyuhyun could form them. “You have done his family and myself a great service. I would see you compensated.”
Kyuhyun’s face moved into a scowl, but Zhou Mi squeezed his arm through the cloth. Zhou Mi had said nothing about compensation, and he suspected he knew why if Zhou Mi thought he would refuse. Zhou Mi seemed to have something else waiting on his tongue to say, some coaxing when Kyuhyun shook his head.
“Until the child is given, and you say what you have come to say.”
Zhou Mi smiled at the wall, not at Kyuhyun but Kyuhyun understood him.
***
Let me fight. That was all he asked. A new mother holding her son, her husband, and the king had all been staring at him as Zhou Mi stood beside him. The men he had fought beside were dead, and there was work yet unfinished. Battles to be fought. The king looked to Zhou Mi as though asking for his opinion.
His request was granted.
Kyuhyun was granted new armor, a new sword, a better horse, to be dispatched to a village several days away. It was pivotal, that town, a gate to keep thieves and raiders out. He had a little strength left in him, he thought. Zhou Mi was safe, and the child, and he was lost in a maze of buildings and feasts and sounds.
He had a day before he was set to leave, a day that Zhou Mi took. Zhou MI had a home, a place to heal, outside of the palace walls. That spoke to him of Zhou Mi. He could have lived in the palace, treated the royal family or the servants. Instead he placed himself with the common people. They washed in warm water, a luxury Kyuhyun could almost not remember. He could feel Zhou Mi’s eyes on him at first, pushing closer until warm fingers touched his shoulder, his arm, his hand. Fingertips traced the scars there, along his back, his hips. Some white or fading pink or red, they were marks that would never be washed away, that spoke to the fights he been in over years of his life. Some were from training, others not. Kyuhyun shivered as Zhou Mi held him, Zhou Mi’s hand spread across his chest where his heart beat strong and fast.
It seemed as though more than dirt was washed away as Zhou Mi tipped water over Kyuhyun’s head to rinse him.
Zhou Mi dressed him in his own clothes for the evening, feeding him from overflowing platters brought from the palace itself.
“They would have had us eat there, but I did not think you would want the ceremony,” Zhou Mi said, smiling up from his food.
Kyuhyun laughed, forcing his shoulders to relax from the tenseness at even the thought. He had not been raised to speak to royalty. To be polite, yes. Even knowing the connections Zhou Mi had to the palace, Zhou Mi was different. He was familiar. A friend. He imagined Zhou Mi would have smiled to hear it. But his smile slipped when he focused on Zhou Mi’s hands, and remembered that he would be sharing no more meals and laughing at the sound of Zhou Mi’s laughter. It was laughter that seemed so much more free since the baby was safe, and the worry was gone from Zhou Mi’s posture. He remembered Zhou Mi telling him how much worry he had taken from him, how much comfort Kyuhyun had been. He’d dismissed it then, even knowing Zhou Mi still held secrets. If Zhou Mi had still been strained, he wondered how deeply his face would be marred by tiredness then, even more so than he was.
“Are you finished?” Zhou Mi asked, and Kyuhyun’s head snapped up. He hadn’t realized he’d been drifting.
“Yes. Yes, I’m through.”
Zhou Mi brought a clay bowl, pouring out the food from the finer platters onto it.
“There are children,” Zhou Mi explained as he did so. “Most have families, but many are hungry or try to provide for parents who cannot work.”
“So you feed them.”
“Not enough,” Zhou Mi said. “Never enough.”
“You can’t feed everyone.”
Zhou Mi looked up at him, smiled. “It is good I have a cousin on the throne, then. Every time I see him, I speak to him of it. One day.”
More and more to Zhou Mi that he could not have imagined. Zhou Mi took the bowl outside, set it on top of a woodpile.
“The dogs will not get to it there,” Zhou Mi said, as he shooed Kyuhyun back in. “I won’t know who takes it, but I know that they share it amongst themselves. The bowl will be back there and clean by morning.”
The door was latched, and Kyuhyun was lost as Zhou Mi turned to him.
“You heal the sick. You transport future kings. You feed the hungry. You dabble in politics. What do you not do?”
“I do very poorly at caring for myself sometimes,” Zhou Mi said. “And my mother despairs to see me. I let worry overtake me even when I will not stop to let it.”
Zhou Mi’s eyes closed as Kyuhyun touched his face. Tired. Strong boned. There was nothing he could say, no advice he could give that Zhou Mi did not know. His question had mostly been in jest. He knew Zhou Mi was not perfect. He was impatient, and tense, and held too much in at times. He was perhaps too nice in instances, but there was that strength beneath it. Zhou Mi smiled against his hand, as though he could hear his thoughts.
“You should rest. You have a journey ahead of you tomorrow.”
Yes, perhaps it was best. He watched as Zhou Mi blew out the lamp, and picked up another, and then followed Zhou Mi into the other room. It was smaller with a small covered window, a bed and table. It was more personal than the outer room, with its shelves of pots and drawers of secret healing items. A room for him to escape, separate from his identity as a healer.
There had been no bitterness in Zhou Mi’s voice when he spoke of Kyuhyun’s journey, and Zhou MI had not tried to talk him out of going. Perhaps he knew that Kyuhyun needed to go.
And for Kyuhyun, he would have been satisfied as long as he was given a corner to sleep. It would not be open to the outside, and he would feel safe in Zhou Mi’s home. Or he thought, anyway, as Zhou Mi set aside the light and turned back to him. He paused for only a moment, grasping at the cloth, the tie of Kyuhyun’s clothes. And using those ties, Zhou Mi pulled him close.
“Would you share my bed?” Zhou Mi asked. No tree roots in his back, or animals begging for his attention, or baby crying to be fed. Just clean, and soft, and welcoming. But not more so that Zhou Mi himself.
One night, he thought, as he stepped forward and kissed Zhou Mi. There was no guarantee he would return, or survive to do so. So one night was all they would have.
***
In the early morning, Zhou Mi stood with him beside his horse. Kyuhyun had been fed, dressed to Zhou Mi’s specification. He was tired, but ready, nodding at the men waiting to lead him out of the city.
“If your nightmares return, I will be here,” Zhou Mi said, holding his arm and looking at him.
The men around them kept that touch distant and impersonal, not that Kyuhyun could have felt him through the armor he wore.
Beneath Zhou Mi’s words there was another message. If Kyuhyun became tired again, if he thought of letting his head rest and not standing again, Zhou Mi would pull him up. Of course, it was a small concern - the greater likelihood was that Kyuhyun would not have that luxury. He’d seen too many men killed or injured to think he would live to see the city again.
“You could have stayed,” Zhou Mi had said only the once. With Zhou Mi. With his soft bed, and his smiles, watching Zhou Mi give away pieces of himself. There was nothing he wanted more, he realized. And that was why he went.
***
The worst of it was that he was alone, even among so many people. A dozen soldiers sleeping around a fire, and Kyuhyun was cold, and solitary. He had grown too used to Zhou Mi leaning against him, to using some part of Zhou Mi as a pillow or to have conversations in the middle of the night about a goat or a child. Meaningless things. Things that had become too habitual. He’d had only hours in it, too short to miss Zhou Mi’s bed and the way that Zhou Mi had wrapped an arm around him. They were hours when he had not wondered where his sword was, listening to Zhou Mi’s even breaths. They had become more familiar to him than the wind, when he sometimes woke to push Zhou Mi’s jaw up from where it had sagged. An insect could’ve run in. How Zhou Mi had glowered.
But he could not think of that while fighting. They were tracking a band of poachers and thieves, rarely in one location for more than a day, for almost two months. His sword met more blood, before they took prisoners back with them for their fate. And then the invasion. It was not a man or two, but hundreds - fighting them back to keep them from the city. They saw burned villages, and people killed right in front of them. Bodies lining the streets waiting to be buried. Men, and women, and children, whose only sin had been to be in the way. When they had been turned back, only a few solitary groups remained.
The last of the old people, the babes, had been moved to the walled village. To safety. Another attack had been stopped, from their own people, from taking advantage of those who had lost everything.
And when Kyuhyun made to stand, he thought he would be joining them. His leg gave out beneath him, and he lay as though dead until another soldier found him, puffs of breath moving the dust away from his face. He spent time in fever dreams, moving between worlds, and nightmares, and battles. He reached for his sword, and did not find it, choked as broth was poured into his mouth, and bitter medicines. He cried as though plagued by demons, and slept with them chasing him.
And when he woke he was wrung out, like meat left too long in the sun. His walk was more of a hobble, and the healer hissed profane things at him for moving.
The only thing his dreams had told him was that he needed to be away from that place. He had no village to return to, no family or allegiance. He had one man. One man, who likely thought him dead.
The blood in his hair had dried part of it to sharp, hard spikes that took extra effort as he washed. He wasn’t sure how much of it was his own blood. A shiver went down his spine as he dried and dressed. Someone had given him clothes not cut and stained, and he wasn’t sure how to find them to thank them. He wasn’t sure if he could stop himself to do so, as his shoes were secured and he was ready.
Kyuhyun traveled. It took a week, and part of another. It was afternoon, he thought, perhaps. He hadn’t eaten in a day, barely slept. He wanted, needed, to move.
He waited, hesitant in the doorway of the long building that he’d last seen months before.
Zhou Mi sang, something that sounded sad and old, in a language that Kyuhyun could not speak. In one hand he held a fan, moving in slow rhythmic strokes, moving steam across the surface of a pot. On the floor, one bare foot rubbed against the dirt either in time to the fanning or Zhou Mi’s song.
Zhou Mi looked up at the shadow, voice faltering as he saw Kyuhyun’s face. It was luck that he was still standing, really, the ache in his hip from the walk caused bolts of pain into his thigh and up his side. There was that tremble in his knee that made him wonder if he did step forward if he would just fall onto the floor. Somehow Zhou Mi must have seen it, walking forward to grasp both Kyuhyun’s arms and steady him. There were no words, Zhou Mi taking in his face like some kind of caress, meeting Kyuhyun’s eyes as though shouting that he could not believe that Kyuhyun was standing in front of him.
Kyuhyun shivered as though he was cold.
“Can I sit?” Kyuhyun asked, swallowing down his pride and his emotion.
“Yes. Of course, yes.”
Zhou Mi never let him go, walking with him the scant steps it took to get to a low stool, only to help him onto it. His leg stretched out in front of him, the pain abated, and he could gather his thoughts again.
“How badly are you injured?” Zhou Mi asked, crouching in front of him and resting a gentle hand on Kyuhyun’s thigh.
“I was cut across my hip,” Kyuhyun told him, still wincing as he remembered the slice of the blade. “I was forced immobile for…I don’t remember how long, after a healer sewed me back together.”
“But it pains you,” Zhou Mi said.
“Yes. I was brought here in a cart, because I could not sit a horse for fear of opening the wound, tearing it. It festered a little, but it is finally healing. I can’t run. Or fight.”
“I will look, if you wish. Though without further injury it sounds as if it should mend,” Zhou Mi said, but the frown had not left his face. “Did you come here for me to heal you?”
“You are the only healer I know,” Kyuhyun told him.
“And you will go back to fight?”
“No,” Kyuhyun said, and wished he could stand to pace and settling for looking over Zhou Mi’s head. “I was…tired, when I found you on that road. I am tired again. Tired no matter how long I sleep. There was too much blood, too much-”
He closed his eyes as Zhou Mi’s soft hand cupped his neck.
“Then you should rest,” Zhou Mi told him gently. “There is a place for you here.”
“Do you have goats?”
There was a tremor in Zhou Mi’s voice that betrayed his laughter. “No goats.”
Kyuhyun would have stayed if there had been a hundred goats, all walking over his face as long as Zhou Mi touched him and made him feel somehow connected again. Like pieces of himself weren’t spinning beyond his head, and fingertips. He had not told Zhou Mi of the nightmares, of the sweats and grasping for a sword he did not sleep beside for fear of hurting someone he did not mean to. But he shook his head, before he was lost to it.
“How is the child?”
“He walks now,” Zhou Mi said, smiling at Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun warmed at the soft stroke of Zhou Mi’s hand. “He has a name now. When I let them know you return, you may be able to see him. They will be glad you returned safe. I am glad.”
A sound broke him from his eyes taking in every bit of Zhou Mi’s face.
“Your pot,” Kyuhyun said, blinking over Zhou Mi’s head.
With a squawk, Zhou Mi stood, rescuing the pot from boiling over as Kyuhyun laughed at him. It felt good to laugh, like stretching a muscle out of use. The healer he had come from had told Kyuhyun that he had willed himself to live, because he had never seen a wound so wanting to fester heal. Perhaps some of the old woman’s tinctures had healed him. Perhaps wanting to be there, to see Zhou Mi hiss between his teeth as he carefully stirred his brew. Zhou Mi was the same. Of all that had happened, and changed, all the ugliness inside of him, Zhou Mi was the same.
“What do you make?”
“A remedy for the stomach. For the hurt, and sickness. It helps to calm it.”
“It smells disgusting.”
Zhou Mi’s look was half amused, half guilty. Then it probably was disgusting, but as long as it helped there was no cause to complain. Zhou Mi pressed a cup of water into his hand, and Kyuhyun stared at the surface of it. Just ripples and the dark of the ceiling.
“Did the injury stop you from protecting the villages before you were ready?” Zhou Mi asked, kneeling beside him. His face was very solemn, the lines of it very plain. Perhaps he thought that Kyuhyun had meant to die before stopping, and been denied.
“I don’t think it is in me to fight again,” Kyuhyun said, reaching for Zhou Mi’s hand. He held it, felt the knuckles beneath his thumb.
“I fight nothing here but pain and death,” Zhou Mi told him, but he held Kyuhyun’s hand tightly.
“Perhaps I’ll be of some use when I’ve recovered.”
Zhou Mi’s lips against his temple, breath against his face caused pain so deep inside him that he wobbled on the stool. If Zhou Mi was worried he would leave, he would put his mind at ease. The only use he wanted his sword to have was protecting Zhou Mi. Otherwise, he would set it aside as proof that he had perhaps not saved all lives he had wanted, but he had tried. If he could not walk properly, he would crawl. He would bring Zhou Mi wood, or cook his meals. He would be of use, no matter what.
“Kyuhyun,” Zhou Mi whispered.
And in Zhou Mi’s voice, there was promise of home and rest.
***
Pairing: Zhou Mi/Kyuhyun
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, historical, goat anti!Kyu
Warnings: fictional violence, trauma from fighting, thoughts of suicide that are not acted on
Prompt: Either Mi or Kyu is a soldier (in any war, historical or fictional) and he's finally, after so many months of being unable to make contact with the other, coming home, albeit a bit wearier and a bit sadder.
A/N: This beginning snippet has actually been in my to-do pile for almost three years. So it has finally found a reason to be finished.
***
The scrape of Kyuhyun’s sword on the ground heralded his passing, a hiss as it passed over hard-packed earth, leaves and twigs. It was too easy to imagine dropping it, leaving its weight behind. But he had been taught since he could walk that a soldier never abandoned his weapons. Ever. Until death took him, and strength left him. His scabbard had been torn from his belt, and he carried it in his opposite hand. He did not think to look and check its condition. He had barely enough energy to keep his legs churning. He had staggered too many times already. Any more, and he would go down.
It seemed as though he had been walking for hours. If he could have closed his eyes for more than a moment, he would have seen the carnage. Bodies strewn, lifeblood seeping. Villagers, soldiers, men and women and children. Livestock. Screams and desperation and weeping and fear. Acrid sweat and metallic blood, and the sting of his hands where the sword shuddered against another. It had not been his village. He had been there to defend it, as other soldiers had been when his own village had been attacked. He recalled nothing of his parents, only that he had slept in the sway of a horse’s mane for many weeks. A tiny child whose everything had been taken away, and then in some small way, given back.
He would do as the soldier who raised him had done. And he reached that goal. But there had been too many who raided the village, seeming scores of screaming men on horseback and on foot, with swords and axes and fire. It had been the fire that had driven him away, unable to breathe, choked by it as he searched for survivors. Sweat pouring down him as he saw his comrades dead, and the people they were protecting with them. Someone needed to bury them, he thought dimly. He had been struck in the head, falling under another soldier, and he had woken there. Mid-morning, sun shining, smoke thick, and death everywhere around him. Looted, burned, and abandoned. He staggered away to get air. And then found himself incapable of stopping.
He did not register the obstacle ahead of him until he had nearly fallen over it. A man, prone and dead. Perhaps at the hands of the fleeing marauders. From his dress, not a soldier. Another person, taken wrongly. His knees bent, and met the ground like a felling tree, just barely keeping himself upright because of his sword in the ground. Wounds on his legs stretched and bled, and he moaned against it.
The pain was like dogs snapping at him, and he waved his hand, as though it would sweep it away. The hip in front of him was wet, bloody, and through all the death he had seen that day, that warm, tacky cloth against his hand was the one thing that sickened him. Had he had the energy, he would have vomited. He was not the one who had killed this man, as he studied the long fingers, and the ring that signified a healer. A man, unarmed, killed for what? Because of whose greed for wealth or power? Perhaps here with an innocent, it was his time to die as well. His wounds, as tired, as worn as he was, would not kill him. But he could lie down beside this person, and it would take little more than an accidental move of his own sword to end everything. No more nightmares. Perhaps, if they were lucky, a tiger would come upon them, and take them to a better place.
Too tired even for tears, he set his hip on the ground, prepared to lower himself, and didn’t know for how long.
And that was when he heard the moan.
Despite the blood, and coolness of his flesh…he was alive?
He felt over the man’s hip and stomach, surprised to find no mortal wounds. Perhaps, as a healer, the blood was not his. Adrenaline brightened his mind, and he turned the man onto his back, seeing no other obvious signs of blood, only a knot on his head. Which explained why he was unconscious. They had both been felled by a blow that day. He didn’t know what he could do to help, or if there was anything he could do. He had no water, no food, no supplies. All he had was a sword.
It took superhuman effort to drag the man and his bag off the trail. He could not stand, the strength of his legs abandoning him. But with one hand in the man’s collar, he crawled, heaving him inch by precious inch into the loamy forest. The rough leather shoes had cleared the edge of the path and the bulky bag tipped over. He licked his lips, hoping that perhaps there was a water skin inside. And again, the stranger surprised him. What he found was wet, yes, but it was not water. The bundle he pulled from the bag was not a water skin, but a child. A baby, seemingly no longer than his forearm. The rags that surrounded it were bloody also, though the child lived, sleeping hard and even despite the jostling. He tucked the baby back into the bag that had protected it, pushing it close against the man’s chest, as it had been when he had found them. And with the baby in its makeshift bag between them, he stretched out on the earth with nothing but a rotting log as his pillow. He traced the man’s nose, and slack mouth, with his eyes, and contented himself that he was still breathing. He had lost everything, failed everything.
“My name is Kyuhyun, and I swear I will protect you,” he told the unconscious man. The sword that might have ended his life, lay beside him as a sentinel. The sleep that took him was filled with strife, danger and blood. He shuddered on the earth as the light brightened, and gradually, as though the sun drew him up with it, he dreamed of a baby’s cry, and a soft touch to his face. He dreamed of life-giving water soothing his throat, and a voice bidding him sleep. And then he dreamed no more.
***
“My name is Zhou Mi,” the man told him when he woke. He woke feeling as though he had not slept, but also as though he could sleep no more. “You saved me?”
“I dragged you from the road,” Kyuhyun corrected him.
Zhou Mi smiled at him, some infuriating, knowing smile that told him that Zhou Mi thought that those two things were the same.
“Are you injured?” Zhou Mi prompted him. Ever the healer.
Kyuhyun wasn’t sure. He hurt. Everything hurt.
“Follow me,” Zhou Mi said. They would see. And while they walked, Zhou Mi spoke to him. The child was male, two weeks from his birth and no more than that, it seemed, and Zhou Mi led Kyuhyun, stiff and bloody, to the stream.
“You are a soldier,” Zhou Mi said as Kyuhyun stripped himself of his leather armor, leaving it and his sword on the bank.
“Yes,” Kyuhyun said, and wondered if he should leave it at that. “I have trained since small. We have tried to protect the villages from raiders. Of the men I trained with, none are left. Did the child’s mother die?”
It would make sense, perhaps, if the mother was dead and the child had no father.
“His parents live,” Zhou Mi said, rinsing his clothes of blood that would never come clean. “I am charged with bringing him to safety, back to her arms.”
And Zhou Mi shuddered, recounting helping an injured man, and the passing horses, the blow he faintly remembered.
“I could have woken to find him gone, or crushed beneath me or-“ The child gurgled pleasantly as Zhou Mi touched his tiny foot. “I must find a town soon, and purchase a nursing goat. I had one but she fell ill. The farmer I left her with had none.”
Kyuhyun knew nothing of nursing goats, and less of babies. There were secrets in Zhou Mi’s eyes, ones he would not speak as he told Kyuhyun of his plans, telling Kyuhyun of the child’s birth with some fondness that had Kyuhyun wondering if Zhou Mi was the father.
But his body free of blood and sweat - bruised and cut in places but none that Zhou Mi made worried noises over.
“I will see you to this city, and see you safe to where you are going,” Kyuhyun said.
Zhou Mi’s eyes went wide, glancing at Kyuhyun’s sword, which Kyuhyun tucked more firmly against his side.
“I can’t protect a village alone, but I can try to see that you do not sleep in the middle of some road again. The child’s mother will wish to see him soon.”
He did not tell Zhou Mi that he was afraid to his bones and yet still was afraid to stop, but Zhou Mi nodded slowly at him. Zhou Mi had no reason to trust him, but Kyuhyun inhaled as Zhou Mi put hands on either side of Kyuhyun’s face and just looked at him. Zhou Mi looked until Kyuhyun was the one to look away, feeling his face heat.
“We would be pleased to have you travel with us, Kyuhyun,” Zhou Mi said after a moment.
Zhou Mi helped him to fashion a makeshift belt for his sword and scabbard out of cloth, and with the baby in arms, Zhou Mi led them to the road, to the village. Zhou Mi led them.
***
They walked for three hours before they found a farmer with goats, and by that time, Kyuhyun was not sure that Zhou Mi would have taken no as an answer. They bought a goat with a dead kid, Zhou Mi did, leading the goat with a rope with them down the road. It was a jaunty smile on Zhou Mi’s face as he motioned Kyuhyun out of the shadows and to follow him back into the trees so that Zhou Mi could milk his new prize. The baby was hungry, and had been without for almost a day besides water and what juice Zhou Mi could get from fruit they had found. The baby was fretful, and Kyuhyun understood that. He didn’t understand why he wasn’t being fed, and Zhou Mi was doing his best to supply. Though Zhou Mi had two charges, Kyuhyun realized that. He wondered if Zhou Mi would have left quicker, traveled faster, as Kyuhyun worked the stiffness from his limbs. But Zhou Mi had been injured as well. Milk from the goat’s teats made almost a hissing sound, falling into what looked like a small clay pot fashioned so a child could drink from it. Zhou Mi’s fingers were deft, the ring glinting in the fading sunlight. Strong hands, but gentle also. They had been lucky with the light holding.
Zhou Mi worked his best, until the goat nearly knocked the pot over.
So Kyuhyun met the goat, holding her upright and still so Zhou Mi could finish.
“He sold me fruit and cured meat as well,” Zhou Mi said, from near beside his face. “You should eat while I feed him, and rest.”
Kyuhyun ate, anchoring the goat to a nearby bush and watching her as she began to graze. But his exhaustion overcame his hunger as he watched Zhou Mi cradle the baby. Only a moment he would close his eyes. Only just a moment.
Kyuhyun shuddered in sleep, the blood stalking him. Dead hands grasping at his clothes, pulling him down, urging him to rest with them. He was so tired, but he was not ready. He had promised, and he was hungry, and his eyes latched on the moon, reaching for it and crying in agony as a sword sliced over his shoulder. That was how those he killed suffered, they told him, pulling him. It was time to rest. He had not saved them. He could not continue on.
But he had tried, he had-
“Kyuhyun.”
Kyuhyun lashed out with his hands, startling to find solid flesh and not a ghostly hold, and came awake half slid away from the tree he had leaned against to sleep.
“Oh,” he said, seeing the outline of Zhou Mi’s head and shoulders.
“You were having a nightmare,” Zhou Mi said, keeping a hand on Kyuhyun’s face and anchoring him in the moment. “I thought it was best to wake you from it.”
His heart and breathing were just barely under his control again, and he nodded, not caring if Zhou Mi could see or not.
“Yes. Thank you. I- I hit you? Did I wake the baby?”
“You grazed my side with a hand, but nothing else,” Zhou Mi said, and Kyuhyun heard the soothing in his voice. Different from how he talked to the baby, but warm still.
He’d brushed Zhou Mi’s side. It was lucky he had not reached for his sword. At the thought, he pushed himself up, leaning heavily against the tree.
“Here, drink,” Zhou Mi said, pressing the water skin into his hands. And he did, as they sat in silence. It steadied him, just having that moment to himself, the cool water and the breeze cooling his face. Zhou Mi did not hum at him, as he sometimes did the baby, but there was comfort in him only being near.
“Thank you,” Kyuhyun said again. And after a moment, he realized there was something else he had not said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Do you have nightmares like those often?”
Often enough. “Yes. After the fighting, I saw too many people die. I think I carry them with me.”
Zhou Mi leaned beside him, careful, as though he was afraid that he would make Kyuhyun uneasy, or that Kyuhyun would not want him close. In fact, the opposite was true. He had always enjoyed sleeping near to the other solders, the sounds of them around him comforting him and making him feel not alone.
“Do you fight in your nightmares?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I am fighting for my life, or the life of someone long dead. Sometimes the dead call for me to join them.”
“You must not,” Zhou Mi told him, and his voice was an order in the dark. Kyuhyun’s spine tensed for a moment as Zhou Mi’s hand, a bit rough, grasped his. “No matter what, you must not.”
Kyuhyun wondered if Zhou Mi would be glad if he knew that he had given Kyuhyun a purpose, and that he was the reason that in dreams he fought where before sometimes it had been so easy to imagine just resting down his head with those he had let down.
No. He could not have saved everyone. The way Zhou Mi squeezed his hand told him that Zhou Mi would have thought so, too. He had tried. He had fought the only way he knew how.
He had known Zhou Mi two days only, and Zhou Mi seemed to understand him, more than he was accustomed to since the day his mentor had rescued him.
He was not sure when he slept, but he did not let go of Zhou Mi’s hand. When he woke, Zhou Mi was feeding the baby, and the birds were stirring. But for a little while at least, the nightmares had stayed away.
***
Zhou Mi was a man of means. Kyuhyun was not entirely startled to learn it, because very few men spoke as Zhou Mi spoke, and could heal, without first being born to a family who could provide all they needed. But it was one thing to assume, to walk beside him and wonder where exactly there were going and why, and another to know.
“We are here,” Zhou Mi said, drawing a circle on the ground, and then a second one further away. “The city is here. Between, there is a river, and we can hire a boat to take us across. On the other side, I had planned to buy a horse, and finish the journey quicker that way.”
“You can buy a horse?” Kyuhyun asked, staring at him.
Zhou Mi looked up at him, from his crude mapmaking, before he stood. “Yes. And now that you travel with us, I will buy two.”
They already had a goat, clothes, and food. He wondered if Zhou Mi had money sewn into his skin. But that Zhou Mi would tell him showed a great deal of trust, trust that Kyuhyun might not have had. Greed was a powerful thing, when it was the wrong man.
Zhou Mi’s hand curved over the hilt of Kyuhyun’s sword, close to his side. And though he did not touch Kyuhyun’s body, a flush passed over Kyuhyun as though he had.
“This is not a thing you wear to steal with,” Zhou Mi said. “You don’t have to look at me with such concern and surprise. I… I have other secrets, ones I can’t yet tell you. Though you should not think less of me, when I reveal them.”
“Can’t?”
“Won’t,” Zhou Mi corrected himself. “But it is because of a promise I made, not because of lack of trust in you.”
“What, are you the king as well?”
Zhou Mi’s lips curved. “A healer king?”
They laughed together, and Kyuhyun tightened his fingers against his hip to keep from curling them around Zhou Mi’s hand. It was not only because he did not feel it was his place, but because he did not want to hold Zhou Mi’s hand to the sword. Kyuhyun had no doubt that Zhou Mi would pick it up to defend the child - but he would not have to. Not as long as Kyuhyun was there.
***
The baby was more fragile than watching Zhou Mi with him had led Kyuhyun to believe, but also sturdy at the same time. His limbs were long and frail, but his head was heavy and solid against Kyuhyun's neck as he tried to calm the weeping. Zhou Mi had been carrying him for hours, alternating with the sleeping and the wailing, and Kyuhyun had been unable to walk freely while doing nothing. The movement of his walking seemed to do most of the calming, though he made the occasional low sound in his throat, like he had seen parents do in the villages. He had held babies before, briefly, holding them with two hands as their parents thanked him. It had almost felt as though the parents were asking him to give some sort of blessing, one he felt ill equipped to pass along. He was only there helping them because his own parents had been killed. He might have been one of those farmers or those merchants handing his own child to a soldier to perhaps pass along some measure of strength.
Or perhaps he had it wrong. Perhaps instead they had been trying to pass along what strength they could to Kyuhyun, that he could keep fighting, keep protecting them. That there were those as small as the babies they handed him, still in want of protection and care.
Zhou Mi smiled at him when he carried the baby, or held him when they were resting, and Kyuhyun always frowned back at him. For whatever reason, that seemed to make Zhou Mi smile more. Kyuhyun liked the baby more than the goat, but one was only there because of the other.
Zhou Mi coaxed stories from him, how he had grown up, the places he had been. It felt strange to tell someone those things, when they weren’t being traded by men over fires for want of anything to distract them from the knowledge that they could soon die. Zhou Mi asked because he wanted to know, smiling at Kyuhyun as long as there was light. There were touches to Kyuhyun’s knee, laughter as Kyuhyun spoke of falling off a horse when he was ten, and nearly freezing himself in a river. He tried not to let the touches affect him, the grasping of Kyuhyun’s wrist, or the press of their shoulders together. It only made him wonder why Zhou Mi spoke to him, and touched him as he did. All Kyuhyun had known was fighting, a world of men, and Zhou Mi was so much different than that. A musical voice that soothed him, even as his touches made Kyuhyun clutch inside.
They arranged themselves together, creating a barrier between the forest and the child. The purchased goat was tethered by two means, since Kyuhyun did not trust her not to free herself. Sometimes he was sure she thought he was a demon sent to pester her, but he thought she was a hot and stinky companion. Kyuhyun sent one last look in her direction before settling back against the tree. Zhou Mi was beside him, curled on the ground and half covered by a blanket. His pants were wet after being washed from an encounter from the baby’s back end, so he slept while they dried over a bush - far away from the goat’s mouth.
Kyuhyun felt naked without his armor even days later, but he could not turn back to retrieve it. The comforting weight of the leather had been left at the stream’s side. He had not been the first to wear it, or the second, or the third. It had been too damaged to wear, and too heavy to carry when it took all his ability to keep himself walking beside Zhou Mi. The sword weighed on him too, but he would have left behind his own leg before leaving that. Zhou Mi had purchased new clothing for both of them, when they had bought the goat. It did not all fit right and the cloth was somewhat worn since they had bought the clothes from a farming family, but they had been willing to part with the clothing for the price Zhou Mi had given. It was clean, and there was no blood on it.
Just beyond Zhou Mi’s head, the baby slept after his last feeding. Clean, full, warm, the baby had the best of their situation. He extended a fingertip every so often, to make sure that the baby was still warm, having seeing Zhou M do the same. It was still warm at night, but Kyuhyun would have appreciated a fire. Something warm to drink. The smoke would have been too visible, though. They did not need thieves in the night, no matter how many goats that Zhou Mi could buy.
Zhou Mi seemed to sigh, turning in his sleep. The blanket pulled, leaving most of the length of one leg exposed, and Kyuhyun’s knees raised in response. He should reach for the blanket, cover Zhou Mi again. But he was mesmerized, that one look with Zhou Mi none the wiser. He’d seen Zhou Mi wash, seen him strip those pants off earlier that night, but not so close. There was no danger in looking, he reasoned.
Or to touch, just for the briefest moment.
Impossible thighs, Kyuhyun thought, his hand resting inside the nearest one, just above Zhou Mi’s knee. Slender and curving, he wonder what the fine skin felt like further up. But as his fingers moved, Zhou Mi made a soft sound. He took back his fingers immediately.
“Kyuhyun? The baby?”
“He’s fine. Go back to sleep,” Kyuhyun said. But instead of relaxing, Zhou Mi pushed himself up and closer, all but radiating heat against Kyuhyun’s side. Zhou Mi had done that before, when he was offering comfort. But Zhou Mi did not know what Kyuhyun had done or why, or he would not have stayed so close, or welcomed Kyuhyun on his journey. Kyuhyun took several steadying breaths, hoping his voice sounded as usual. “If you get me warm, I won’t be able to stay awake.”
Zhou Mi hummed out a quiet version of his laugh. “We’re far enough away from the road it should not matter unless the baby cries.”
Perhaps. Perhaps…
Kyuhyun nearly shivered as Zhou Mi’s fingertips landed against his collarbone. A press that had Kyuhyun was holding his breath as cloth Kyuhyun had loosened to relax was pulled. It was just his shoulder, he thought, leaning his head back and trying to keep his breathing even. Perhaps to make himself more comfortable. Perhaps.
But his breath caught in his throat, as Zhou Mi’s lips pressed to the top of his shoulder. Skin that he had never thought to be sensitive, until he felt Zhou Mi’s breath against it. It was not to comfort, no. Zhou Mi had felt his touch. It was…a question. Kyuhyun wanted to close his eyes, and retreat into himself. But he could not do that either, not with Zhou Mi so close. And when he let himself look, Zhou Mi’s thigh was still bared to him, bared and closer than before. It took only a shift of his hand to touch it, palm it, let his hand curve to it as Zhou Mi breathed against him. He wished he could breathe so easily, feeling like all the air in him was backed up in his lungs. Yes. It was the only answer he was returning, for Zhou Mi to accept or reject.
And his eyes were on a branch beyond them, a leaf moving in the slightest breeze, as Zhou Mi’s lips brushed his jaw.
He wondered if Zhou Mi could hear his heart beating, feeling Zhou Mi there close and waiting. But as Kyuhyun’s head turned, he felt Zhou Mi’s hand cover his, holding him there against Zhou Mi’s thigh. Stay. Words would have been too harsh in the moment, where even their harsh breathing rocked them, fragile. He did not see it, eyes closed, as their lips pressed together. Pressed until his teeth bit into the backs of his lips, and they eased together. Soft, puffs of air against skin an urgent stroke, angling faces as each kiss made him want another - until he felt Zhou Mi smile, Zhou Mi’s head lowering so that his cheek rested on Kyuhyun’s shoulder.
Ah, he had woken Zhou Mi. Strangely he was not outwardly moved, even as his heart continued to beat quick and even. He tilted his head, resting his head against Zhou Mi’s, and napped until the sun rose.
***
That night they feasted on food bought in the village they had passed through, steamed fish and vegetables and heavy servings of rice. They ate as though it would be stolen from them, sitting knee to knee facing each other on the grass where they had hidden themselves. Beside them, the baby snorted in sleep as they used their hands to eat the rich food.
“Now I know what he feels like after he’s fed,” Kyuhyun said, nodding at the baby. He hadn’t had a meal like that since before the fighting against the raids had begun. They’d foraged, hunted wild animals, but the villagers had often been too poor to supply much food even with the service they were being provided. Oh, they would have split the food they fed their families, but it was impossible to accept when they saw the children and elderly watching the food being cooked.
It would have been like stealing food right out of their stomachs.
“Do you need me to pat your back until you go to sleep too?” Zhou Mi asked, a smear of sauce along the edge of his mouth.
“I might need it tonight,” Kyuhyun said, and they split the last of the food so that they both had an even portion until there was nothing left, not even a grain of rice.
“Perhaps the walking will help,” Zhou Mi said, and kept talking when Kyuhyun opened his mouth to protest. “It’s not safe to sleep this close to the village. Even if they were kind and sold this to us, we can’t be sure.”
No matter how enthusiastic Kyuhyun was about staying right where they were, he agreed. Though on the road they had to be twice as cautious, since those traveling at night could be desperate to get to where they were going, or willing to prey on those in travel. The thought of pulling his sword made him both determined and sick, but he walked and listened as his stomach settled. The moon changed position through the trees, and Zhou Mi stopped when they heard a stream ahead.
“Here?” Zhou Mi asked quietly.
Kyuhyun waited silently, and followed Zhou Mi through the brush, through a hollow and to higher ground facing away from the road. They found the goat a bush to demolish when she wasn’t sleeping, and the baby a safe place to rest. He was still full, pleasant, from their dinner, and could imagine sleeping easily. But as he began to lower himself in full view of the goat and child, his sword laid out behind him, Zhou Mi bumped him and sent him sprawling. The sound he was making was half groan and half laugh as Zhou Mi laughed against him, turning him.
“I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
Aside from his cheek hitting the ground, he thought so.
“You didn’t hit me-“
Kyuhyun’s breath and words faltered, as Zhou Mi brushed the dirt from his face. His fingers were cool, so close to Kyuhyun even though he was shadowed with the moon behind him. Sometimes Kyuhyun thought he had imagined those midnight kisses, the touch that he should not have allowed himself. But he had not. His whole chest ached as Zhou Mi’s lips nestled against his, a hesitation that Kyuhyun did not accept, sliding his hand over the tail of Zhou Mi’s hair and pulling him closer.
Zhou Mi’s hand on his side tickled, and he gasped into the kiss, grunting as Zhou Mi landed on him. But he could breathe again as Zhou Mi lifted himself, and Kyuhyun licked his lips, staring at Zhou Mi’s shadowed face.
“You,” Zhou Mi began.
“Please?” Kyuhyun said, supplying what he hoped was the end of Zhou Mi’s sentence. It was perhaps too forward, too much like a jest. He held his breath, Zhou Mi nuzzled his nose beside Kyuhyun’s for a moment before speaking.
“Do you know what I thought when I woke to find that you had dragged us off of the road to safety? You were dirty, and injured, and asleep. I thought you were too beautiful to be real.”
The scoff was almost out before Zhou Mi soothed it back with his fingers.
“This man who offered to protect me, protect us, with no knowledge of who we were. That determination and kindness in your eyes was even more beautiful.”
Kyuhyun closed his eyes, hands finding Zhou Mi’s ribs.
“Tell me this is not gratitude,” he nearly whispered.
“My only gratitude is that you want this too,” Zhou Mi said.
Then it was enough talk. Enough of beauty and feelings. That he wanted, Zhou Mi had to know his thoughts were the same, that at times he stared at Zhou Mi’s mouth, at his hands, his shoulders. They were not just to admire.
He pressed up, catching Zhou Mi in an awkward kiss. But he was met, and again, telling Zhou Mi without words what it was that he wanted. Kisses, the stroke of his hands, catching Zhou Mi against him until they breathed and moved as one unit. Kyuhyun moaned, his fingers curling into the back of Zhou Mi’s shirt, and they muffled themselves against each other as they kissed and petted.
He breathed hard against Zhou Mi’s chest, sprawled out against him on the ground like a tired child, when the baby stirred. The goat made a sound that sounded almost judgmental. And they had that moment more to laugh together.
***
Zhou Mi purchased the horses alone, against Kyuhyun’s judgment, and wishes. It was true, he knew the value better that Kyuhyun himself, but leaving Kyuhyun with the baby to buy two horses seemed foolhardy. And the goat, of course. Kyuhyun could hardly be rid of the goat. Zhou Mi had tried to name her that morning, and Kyuhyun had none of it. She eyed him like his shirt looked like her next meal, and he’d scowled back. Reduced to that by a creature who couldn’t even talk. But Zhou Mi had acquired the horses, saddles and bridles as well. Neither looked sick, but one looked rather aged.
“I bought this old man at a reduced price,” Zhou Mi said, patting the horse’s neck. “But he’s sound. He’ll last the journey. I’ll take him myself.”
Because he was lighter. Even with the baby, he was lighter.
Kyuhyun was charged with riding with the goat. He would have complained, would have wondered how that duty fell to him, but it was clear. Zhou Mi had enough to worry about making sure the baby was safe with him on the horse, and they were moving too fast for the goat to be led along behind them. There were plaintive goat-y sounds, and attempts to eat Kyuhyun’s clothes as he’d feared. The sounds he couldn’t do anything about, but the eating of his clothes he could. He wasn’t sure who glared harder, him or the goat, but he thought he was victorious. He began packing grass and snatching at branches with leaves still on them so the goat could graze a little, going so far as to give her water from his own supply. It was all for the baby, he reasoned. And for Zhou Mi. Every step they took, every stride of the horses, seemed to ease between Kyuhyun and the blood behind him. It was never far, but he learned in the worry for Zhou Mi how to press his palms against it and hold.
Though he had not let himself be talked into trying to milk the goat. He was content to hold her still as Zhou Mi did that by himself. They stopped several times during the day to do just that, letting the goat and horses graze for a while as Zhou Mi carefully fed the baby.
“Why did you want to be a healer?” Kyuhyun asked Zhou Mi, during one of those times. The baby was eating with determined focus, and Kyuhyun’s eye was on the goat to make sure she did not run.
“I am good at it,” Zhou Mi said, smiling a little. If he was surprised by Kyuhyun's sudden interest and question he did not show it. “I learned at the knee of a woman my father knew, learned her secrets and wrote them down. I have that book, back at home, but many things I remember. It makes me happy to help people. If it did not make me happy, I would attempt something else.”
“Have you ever held a sword?”
Zhou Mi hummed, shifting the baby to his other arm. “Yes. My father taught me to defend myself. I am not opposed to fighting, especially when the goal is to protect. I would certainly fight to defend myself, or my family. And this little one.”
“And yet all you carry is a knife,” Kyuhyun pointed out.
It was a long knife, to be sure, and it could be used to parry a sword, but what it lacked was reach.
“My goal was to avoid confrontation, and travel unnoticed. A healer with a sword would have called attention.”
There was some truth to that, and yet still Kyuhyun was not satisfied, frowning as Zhou Mi patted the baby’s back.
“Won’t traveling with a soldier call attention to you?”
Zhou Mi’s eyes flicked from Kyuhyun’s boots to the top of his head, causing heat to rise in his face. Perhaps Zhou Mi had intended that, but his answer was a shrug of his shoulder.
“You are dressed as any villager is. If someone was suspicious, I could tell them the baby is your child and you are escorting me to where I can heal him after his mother’s death.”
It was a story that could be easily believed, so Kyuhyun grudgingly grunted and nodded. Another tale could be that Zhou Mi had hired him to accompany him, or that they were simply traveling in the same direction. Certainly when he had made his determination that he would see Zhou Mi safely to his destination, he had not thought to bring more danger to Zhou Mi. So far he had not, but it was clear that Zhou Mi had been thinking ahead of him.
“We can leave if you are ready,” Zhou Mi said.
And Kyuhyun stood, holding out his arms for the dozing baby. He steadied Zhou Mi’s horse until Zhou Mi could mount, and then held the horse again after passing the baby up, until he was safely tucked against Zhou Mi. It was indulgence, that he let his hand linger a moment on Zhou Mi’s knee, before putting the bleating goat in front of the saddle and mounting his own horse.
“Ready,” Kyuhyun said.
***
After the horses, they slept in shifts. It was easy to hide in the woods, just two men and the baby, but two men, two horses, a baby, and a goat was too much. There were too many noises, too much space, and too many tracks to cover. They ate fruit, dried meat, as Kyuhyun looked with envy at the fish swimming in the stream.
“When we are safe,” Zhou Mi had promised him, laughing against his shoulder as they ate and had their fill of water.
He could see that Zhou Mi was tired, and more worried as the days went by. Every village they passed, Zhou Mi grew quieter, as though his silence would make their journey end quicker. It was focus, and listening. Kyuhyun made sure to stay awake the first shift, to make sure that Zhou Mi slept any at all, though he wasn’t sure that Zhou Mi knew that. Still, Zhou Mi woke quickly when Kyuhyun pressed a hand to his shoulder. He had once considered staying up the whole night to see Zhou Mi more rested, until Zhou Mi had woken, unhappy with him. So they had agreed to split it as evenly as possible. By the time Zhou Mi was properly awake, Kyuhyun usually had no problem going back to sleep. He had dealt with several hours of keeping the baby quiet and fed, a long day of travel. It took barely closing his eyes before he was asleep most nights, but not that one.
His bag had been a serviceable pillow for days, and it was annoying him. There was nothing hard inside it but he moved his shoulder, his face, trying any position that seemed comfortable. He’d slept with less, succumbing to exhaustion, using his arm or a tree root as a pillow. But that night, nothing was satisfying. The horses and goat were chewing, and the baby’s breathing deep and even. He turned his head, trying not to let his mouth turn into a pout as he looked for Zhou Mi. And of course he saw what he expected, Zhou Mi against a tree, lit only by the moon.
“Can you not sleep?” Zhou Mi asked, voice quiet so as not to disturb the baby, but it still made Kyuhyun jump.
And he’d thought he was being quiet.
“I can’t seem to get comfortable,” he said, rolling himself over fully so that he faced Zhou Mi. But he blinked, seeing the legs stretching out in front of him. Warm. Not cold like his pack or lumpy. Kyuhyun scooted himself forward, waiting to see if Zhou Mi would object as he rested the side of his face on Zhou Mi’s thigh. The cloth was rough, but it was firm and higher than his pack.
He could feel Zhou Mi muffling the laugh and nearly pushed himself away before Zhou Mi rested fingers against Kyuhyun’s head.
“Get some rest,” Zhou Mi told him.
He didn’t care if he was being like a child. Human contact soothed him, and he’d realized it had when he was holding the baby, when the baby was quiet at least. But Zhou Mi was different to that, like a cool stone on a hot day that softened the tangled knot that threatened to choke him.
When Kyuhyun woke and freed him from not moving, Zhou Mi stretched, smiling the same smile as ever as he milked the goat, and fed the cranky baby. Kyuhyun still felt tired even after washing his face, and chewing on some of the dried meat from their pack. Still he was not unhappy listening to Zhou Mi’s soothing sounds. When he felt more alert, he checked the horses, stroking necks and eyeing the bark they’d stripped during the night to supplement their grass and leaves.
“One day, you’ll have all the grass you can eat,” Kyuhyun said, and got barely a flick of an ear for his trouble. He looked back at Zhou Mi and asked, “Are we moving on soon?”
“He’ll be ready,” Zhou Mi agreed, voice muffled as he took on the arduous task of keeping the baby’s tender skin clean.
Then he could saddle the horses. By the time Zhou Mi was finished, they would leave, eating more along their journey to not waste time.
But before Kyuhyun could take the baby from Zhou Mi’s arms so that he could mount the horse, Zhou Mi pulled him closer. He tensed as even with the baby between them, Zhou Mi’s face was against his neck.
“Do not ever doubt how much of a comfort you have been to me,” Zhou Mi said. “Even in sleep, being near you have kept me from worrying.”
“The goat would have listened to your troubles,” Kyuhyun jested, feeling Zhou Mi smile, and standing still again as Zhou Mi pulled away and kissed his mouth.
“You are more than any goat,” Zhou Mi said, voice amused as he let Kyuhyun take the baby from him.
Considering he stank because of her, he should hope so.
***
The child that would one day rule.
Kyuhyun had held him. Fed him. Been pissed on by him.
When Zhou Mi had told him, they had been a day’s ride away from the city, Zhou Mi so very close to him. Kyuhyun understood why Zhou Mi had not told him before. Firstly, he could not have known if Kyuhyun was trustworthy, and it was possible that there were spies looking for anyone with a baby. To deliver the next ruler would be quite a coup, but there were others still who would rather see him dead. Secondly, Zhou Mi had promised to keep the child’s identity secret. However, he could not have taken Kyuhyun with him into the city without revealing it.
Zhou Mi told him when the light was still high, eyes on Kyuhyun’s face to see if he was surprised or if he’d wondered, or if he was angry. Kyuhyun had mostly looked to the baby, in the process of noisily sucking on his hand.
“This baby?”
“Give him a few more years,” Zhou Mi suggested, laughing at Kyuhyun only slightly. “He has to walk and talk first.”
Zhou Mi had left his home, traveling in secret to deliver the child, and Zhou Mi was taking the child to join with his parents in the city, by a different route. There had been threats made to their lives, and it seemed safer to split them up. Zhou Mi spoke of a mother’s tears, and bidding them safe journey.
“He is a cousin of sorts,” Zhou Mi said, surprising Kyuhyun further. “My father was an illegitimate child of the former king. “He studied and worked, and I was allowed to learn healing. So even if he is not mine, I feel as though I am connecting back to my ancestry, protecting it.”
“You don’t wish to rule?”
Zhou Mi shook his head, smiling down at the baby. “How could I, when he will do so well?”
Kyuhyun scoffed at the sentiment, but they leaned together as the night grew cooler and Kyuhyun contemplated how they could enter the city. If they would be stopped. If he would need to fight for them.
“Tell me what I should do,” Kyuhyun told him, shivering as Zhou Mi slid their fingers together, grasping his hand tight.
“Stay beside me,” Zhou Mi said.
It was nearly a plea. But he knew they would not sleep easily, with their goal so close.
***
The city was larger than Kyuhyun had imagined, the horses skirting between guards and the flow of people. No one stared up at him or Zhou Mi and recognized them, and for that he was grateful. No one stared when he rode with one hand on his sword and the hand holding the reins stabilizing the nanny goat in front of him - no happier to be there than he was to have her. In the city, though, they would find a woman to nurse the child, and the goat could fill someone’s stewpot. And still he stroked her back to calm her at all the scents and sounds. He just kept the nose of his horse pointed to the tail of Zhou Mi’s. From behind he could watch for dangers.
Zhou Mi led them toward a higher wall, dismounting and waiting for Kyuhyun to do so as well.
“This is where we take him?” Kyuhyun asked.
“Yes,” Zhou Mi said.
“Then I will leave you.”
Zhou Mi was already reaching out for Kyuhyun’s arm, as though he’d anticipated the words before Kyuhyun could form them. “You have done his family and myself a great service. I would see you compensated.”
Kyuhyun’s face moved into a scowl, but Zhou Mi squeezed his arm through the cloth. Zhou Mi had said nothing about compensation, and he suspected he knew why if Zhou Mi thought he would refuse. Zhou Mi seemed to have something else waiting on his tongue to say, some coaxing when Kyuhyun shook his head.
“Until the child is given, and you say what you have come to say.”
Zhou Mi smiled at the wall, not at Kyuhyun but Kyuhyun understood him.
***
Let me fight. That was all he asked. A new mother holding her son, her husband, and the king had all been staring at him as Zhou Mi stood beside him. The men he had fought beside were dead, and there was work yet unfinished. Battles to be fought. The king looked to Zhou Mi as though asking for his opinion.
His request was granted.
Kyuhyun was granted new armor, a new sword, a better horse, to be dispatched to a village several days away. It was pivotal, that town, a gate to keep thieves and raiders out. He had a little strength left in him, he thought. Zhou Mi was safe, and the child, and he was lost in a maze of buildings and feasts and sounds.
He had a day before he was set to leave, a day that Zhou Mi took. Zhou MI had a home, a place to heal, outside of the palace walls. That spoke to him of Zhou Mi. He could have lived in the palace, treated the royal family or the servants. Instead he placed himself with the common people. They washed in warm water, a luxury Kyuhyun could almost not remember. He could feel Zhou Mi’s eyes on him at first, pushing closer until warm fingers touched his shoulder, his arm, his hand. Fingertips traced the scars there, along his back, his hips. Some white or fading pink or red, they were marks that would never be washed away, that spoke to the fights he been in over years of his life. Some were from training, others not. Kyuhyun shivered as Zhou Mi held him, Zhou Mi’s hand spread across his chest where his heart beat strong and fast.
It seemed as though more than dirt was washed away as Zhou Mi tipped water over Kyuhyun’s head to rinse him.
Zhou Mi dressed him in his own clothes for the evening, feeding him from overflowing platters brought from the palace itself.
“They would have had us eat there, but I did not think you would want the ceremony,” Zhou Mi said, smiling up from his food.
Kyuhyun laughed, forcing his shoulders to relax from the tenseness at even the thought. He had not been raised to speak to royalty. To be polite, yes. Even knowing the connections Zhou Mi had to the palace, Zhou Mi was different. He was familiar. A friend. He imagined Zhou Mi would have smiled to hear it. But his smile slipped when he focused on Zhou Mi’s hands, and remembered that he would be sharing no more meals and laughing at the sound of Zhou Mi’s laughter. It was laughter that seemed so much more free since the baby was safe, and the worry was gone from Zhou Mi’s posture. He remembered Zhou Mi telling him how much worry he had taken from him, how much comfort Kyuhyun had been. He’d dismissed it then, even knowing Zhou Mi still held secrets. If Zhou Mi had still been strained, he wondered how deeply his face would be marred by tiredness then, even more so than he was.
“Are you finished?” Zhou Mi asked, and Kyuhyun’s head snapped up. He hadn’t realized he’d been drifting.
“Yes. Yes, I’m through.”
Zhou Mi brought a clay bowl, pouring out the food from the finer platters onto it.
“There are children,” Zhou Mi explained as he did so. “Most have families, but many are hungry or try to provide for parents who cannot work.”
“So you feed them.”
“Not enough,” Zhou Mi said. “Never enough.”
“You can’t feed everyone.”
Zhou Mi looked up at him, smiled. “It is good I have a cousin on the throne, then. Every time I see him, I speak to him of it. One day.”
More and more to Zhou Mi that he could not have imagined. Zhou Mi took the bowl outside, set it on top of a woodpile.
“The dogs will not get to it there,” Zhou Mi said, as he shooed Kyuhyun back in. “I won’t know who takes it, but I know that they share it amongst themselves. The bowl will be back there and clean by morning.”
The door was latched, and Kyuhyun was lost as Zhou Mi turned to him.
“You heal the sick. You transport future kings. You feed the hungry. You dabble in politics. What do you not do?”
“I do very poorly at caring for myself sometimes,” Zhou Mi said. “And my mother despairs to see me. I let worry overtake me even when I will not stop to let it.”
Zhou Mi’s eyes closed as Kyuhyun touched his face. Tired. Strong boned. There was nothing he could say, no advice he could give that Zhou Mi did not know. His question had mostly been in jest. He knew Zhou Mi was not perfect. He was impatient, and tense, and held too much in at times. He was perhaps too nice in instances, but there was that strength beneath it. Zhou Mi smiled against his hand, as though he could hear his thoughts.
“You should rest. You have a journey ahead of you tomorrow.”
Yes, perhaps it was best. He watched as Zhou Mi blew out the lamp, and picked up another, and then followed Zhou Mi into the other room. It was smaller with a small covered window, a bed and table. It was more personal than the outer room, with its shelves of pots and drawers of secret healing items. A room for him to escape, separate from his identity as a healer.
There had been no bitterness in Zhou Mi’s voice when he spoke of Kyuhyun’s journey, and Zhou MI had not tried to talk him out of going. Perhaps he knew that Kyuhyun needed to go.
And for Kyuhyun, he would have been satisfied as long as he was given a corner to sleep. It would not be open to the outside, and he would feel safe in Zhou Mi’s home. Or he thought, anyway, as Zhou Mi set aside the light and turned back to him. He paused for only a moment, grasping at the cloth, the tie of Kyuhyun’s clothes. And using those ties, Zhou Mi pulled him close.
“Would you share my bed?” Zhou Mi asked. No tree roots in his back, or animals begging for his attention, or baby crying to be fed. Just clean, and soft, and welcoming. But not more so that Zhou Mi himself.
One night, he thought, as he stepped forward and kissed Zhou Mi. There was no guarantee he would return, or survive to do so. So one night was all they would have.
***
In the early morning, Zhou Mi stood with him beside his horse. Kyuhyun had been fed, dressed to Zhou Mi’s specification. He was tired, but ready, nodding at the men waiting to lead him out of the city.
“If your nightmares return, I will be here,” Zhou Mi said, holding his arm and looking at him.
The men around them kept that touch distant and impersonal, not that Kyuhyun could have felt him through the armor he wore.
Beneath Zhou Mi’s words there was another message. If Kyuhyun became tired again, if he thought of letting his head rest and not standing again, Zhou Mi would pull him up. Of course, it was a small concern - the greater likelihood was that Kyuhyun would not have that luxury. He’d seen too many men killed or injured to think he would live to see the city again.
“You could have stayed,” Zhou Mi had said only the once. With Zhou Mi. With his soft bed, and his smiles, watching Zhou Mi give away pieces of himself. There was nothing he wanted more, he realized. And that was why he went.
***
The worst of it was that he was alone, even among so many people. A dozen soldiers sleeping around a fire, and Kyuhyun was cold, and solitary. He had grown too used to Zhou Mi leaning against him, to using some part of Zhou Mi as a pillow or to have conversations in the middle of the night about a goat or a child. Meaningless things. Things that had become too habitual. He’d had only hours in it, too short to miss Zhou Mi’s bed and the way that Zhou Mi had wrapped an arm around him. They were hours when he had not wondered where his sword was, listening to Zhou Mi’s even breaths. They had become more familiar to him than the wind, when he sometimes woke to push Zhou Mi’s jaw up from where it had sagged. An insect could’ve run in. How Zhou Mi had glowered.
But he could not think of that while fighting. They were tracking a band of poachers and thieves, rarely in one location for more than a day, for almost two months. His sword met more blood, before they took prisoners back with them for their fate. And then the invasion. It was not a man or two, but hundreds - fighting them back to keep them from the city. They saw burned villages, and people killed right in front of them. Bodies lining the streets waiting to be buried. Men, and women, and children, whose only sin had been to be in the way. When they had been turned back, only a few solitary groups remained.
The last of the old people, the babes, had been moved to the walled village. To safety. Another attack had been stopped, from their own people, from taking advantage of those who had lost everything.
And when Kyuhyun made to stand, he thought he would be joining them. His leg gave out beneath him, and he lay as though dead until another soldier found him, puffs of breath moving the dust away from his face. He spent time in fever dreams, moving between worlds, and nightmares, and battles. He reached for his sword, and did not find it, choked as broth was poured into his mouth, and bitter medicines. He cried as though plagued by demons, and slept with them chasing him.
And when he woke he was wrung out, like meat left too long in the sun. His walk was more of a hobble, and the healer hissed profane things at him for moving.
The only thing his dreams had told him was that he needed to be away from that place. He had no village to return to, no family or allegiance. He had one man. One man, who likely thought him dead.
The blood in his hair had dried part of it to sharp, hard spikes that took extra effort as he washed. He wasn’t sure how much of it was his own blood. A shiver went down his spine as he dried and dressed. Someone had given him clothes not cut and stained, and he wasn’t sure how to find them to thank them. He wasn’t sure if he could stop himself to do so, as his shoes were secured and he was ready.
Kyuhyun traveled. It took a week, and part of another. It was afternoon, he thought, perhaps. He hadn’t eaten in a day, barely slept. He wanted, needed, to move.
He waited, hesitant in the doorway of the long building that he’d last seen months before.
Zhou Mi sang, something that sounded sad and old, in a language that Kyuhyun could not speak. In one hand he held a fan, moving in slow rhythmic strokes, moving steam across the surface of a pot. On the floor, one bare foot rubbed against the dirt either in time to the fanning or Zhou Mi’s song.
Zhou Mi looked up at the shadow, voice faltering as he saw Kyuhyun’s face. It was luck that he was still standing, really, the ache in his hip from the walk caused bolts of pain into his thigh and up his side. There was that tremble in his knee that made him wonder if he did step forward if he would just fall onto the floor. Somehow Zhou Mi must have seen it, walking forward to grasp both Kyuhyun’s arms and steady him. There were no words, Zhou Mi taking in his face like some kind of caress, meeting Kyuhyun’s eyes as though shouting that he could not believe that Kyuhyun was standing in front of him.
Kyuhyun shivered as though he was cold.
“Can I sit?” Kyuhyun asked, swallowing down his pride and his emotion.
“Yes. Of course, yes.”
Zhou Mi never let him go, walking with him the scant steps it took to get to a low stool, only to help him onto it. His leg stretched out in front of him, the pain abated, and he could gather his thoughts again.
“How badly are you injured?” Zhou Mi asked, crouching in front of him and resting a gentle hand on Kyuhyun’s thigh.
“I was cut across my hip,” Kyuhyun told him, still wincing as he remembered the slice of the blade. “I was forced immobile for…I don’t remember how long, after a healer sewed me back together.”
“But it pains you,” Zhou Mi said.
“Yes. I was brought here in a cart, because I could not sit a horse for fear of opening the wound, tearing it. It festered a little, but it is finally healing. I can’t run. Or fight.”
“I will look, if you wish. Though without further injury it sounds as if it should mend,” Zhou Mi said, but the frown had not left his face. “Did you come here for me to heal you?”
“You are the only healer I know,” Kyuhyun told him.
“And you will go back to fight?”
“No,” Kyuhyun said, and wished he could stand to pace and settling for looking over Zhou Mi’s head. “I was…tired, when I found you on that road. I am tired again. Tired no matter how long I sleep. There was too much blood, too much-”
He closed his eyes as Zhou Mi’s soft hand cupped his neck.
“Then you should rest,” Zhou Mi told him gently. “There is a place for you here.”
“Do you have goats?”
There was a tremor in Zhou Mi’s voice that betrayed his laughter. “No goats.”
Kyuhyun would have stayed if there had been a hundred goats, all walking over his face as long as Zhou Mi touched him and made him feel somehow connected again. Like pieces of himself weren’t spinning beyond his head, and fingertips. He had not told Zhou Mi of the nightmares, of the sweats and grasping for a sword he did not sleep beside for fear of hurting someone he did not mean to. But he shook his head, before he was lost to it.
“How is the child?”
“He walks now,” Zhou Mi said, smiling at Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun warmed at the soft stroke of Zhou Mi’s hand. “He has a name now. When I let them know you return, you may be able to see him. They will be glad you returned safe. I am glad.”
A sound broke him from his eyes taking in every bit of Zhou Mi’s face.
“Your pot,” Kyuhyun said, blinking over Zhou Mi’s head.
With a squawk, Zhou Mi stood, rescuing the pot from boiling over as Kyuhyun laughed at him. It felt good to laugh, like stretching a muscle out of use. The healer he had come from had told Kyuhyun that he had willed himself to live, because he had never seen a wound so wanting to fester heal. Perhaps some of the old woman’s tinctures had healed him. Perhaps wanting to be there, to see Zhou Mi hiss between his teeth as he carefully stirred his brew. Zhou Mi was the same. Of all that had happened, and changed, all the ugliness inside of him, Zhou Mi was the same.
“What do you make?”
“A remedy for the stomach. For the hurt, and sickness. It helps to calm it.”
“It smells disgusting.”
Zhou Mi’s look was half amused, half guilty. Then it probably was disgusting, but as long as it helped there was no cause to complain. Zhou Mi pressed a cup of water into his hand, and Kyuhyun stared at the surface of it. Just ripples and the dark of the ceiling.
“Did the injury stop you from protecting the villages before you were ready?” Zhou Mi asked, kneeling beside him. His face was very solemn, the lines of it very plain. Perhaps he thought that Kyuhyun had meant to die before stopping, and been denied.
“I don’t think it is in me to fight again,” Kyuhyun said, reaching for Zhou Mi’s hand. He held it, felt the knuckles beneath his thumb.
“I fight nothing here but pain and death,” Zhou Mi told him, but he held Kyuhyun’s hand tightly.
“Perhaps I’ll be of some use when I’ve recovered.”
Zhou Mi’s lips against his temple, breath against his face caused pain so deep inside him that he wobbled on the stool. If Zhou Mi was worried he would leave, he would put his mind at ease. The only use he wanted his sword to have was protecting Zhou Mi. Otherwise, he would set it aside as proof that he had perhaps not saved all lives he had wanted, but he had tried. If he could not walk properly, he would crawl. He would bring Zhou Mi wood, or cook his meals. He would be of use, no matter what.
“Kyuhyun,” Zhou Mi whispered.
And in Zhou Mi’s voice, there was promise of home and rest.
***