In the sweet embrace of the morning light, Avett's already had plenty of time to come to the terms that he's been forcibly detained in one of their makeshift cabins. Not as their guest, but as their prisoner. The room only has two windows—one above his bed, and the other on the door—and if he lies on the wooden floorboards and presses his head against the wall, his toes can just about touch the other side.
The flap in the door rattles. A tray rattles against the ground as it slides over. Surprisingly, the food actually looks good—though anything's better than the glorified slop Auren serves, especially when it's got meat in it.
He lets his eyes drift off onto the tray of food. It's a bit far from his bed. They've tied not only his wrists together, but his legs too, because they're scared that he'll kick down the door or something. Lord knows he could do it regardless. Not like he's planning to—not yet, anyway. The fact that they haven't attempted to smother him in his sleep is proof that they're willing to listen to him. He's sticking with Lilith until her full recovery. Worst comes to worst, he's not above assaulting his would-be assailant and making off with Lilith.
It's mashed root vegetables and generous slices of roast beef. Steam is wafting off the tray.
"I'm so glad you guys do room service," he says. Loud enough for his waiter or waitress to hear, but not loud to the point of aggression.
At first, there's no response. Then a feather-light voice responds with, "You're welcome, sir."
A kid. A boy, judging from his intonations. But he's not really sure because he's also got the same accent as Lilith; the boy sounds like he's trying to talk around a mouthful of bread.
If he's young, it means that he's impressionable, which means he can bargain with him. He looks to the tray on the ground. "No utensils?" he asks.
"Will said you're going to have to eat out of it like the animal you are, but personally I don't agree."
The words juxtaposed with his childish tone throws Avett for a loop. Gotta start them young, he guesses. In truth, he'd much rather be spoon-fed than to wriggle over and plunge head-first into a pile of mashed potatoes. He's already decided that he's not eating a lick of that food, but it's getting harder with each passing second; his Kattish nose is betraying him big time, and it smells absolutely salivating. He hasn't eaten since yesterday's noon.
He flexes his hands against his restraints. "Mutual exchange. If you untie me and get me a spoon, I'll tell you where babies come from."
"Sorry, mister cat-man." The boy is walking away. "I already know."
Avett curses under his breath. Kids grow up so quickly these days. A certain frontliner could learn a thing or two from him.
His stomach growls, so he rolls over and faces the wall. The things he'll do for Lilith, he swears.
—
Chaos, the slam of wood against wood, and a guttural slurry of swears and commands. Something rattles across the floor and hits the wall. Avett jerks awake just in time for someone to throw him off the bed and hoist him up into a chair.
He squints. Rage boils through his body. "What the fuck do you want?" he spits. "I'm sitting here, I'm being a good boy—I could've fucking kicked down this flimsy piece of shit in seconds but I fucking didn—"
Warm and soft. There's something warm and soft in his mouth, kind of like mashed potatoes but with the additional tang of soap and grass. It is disgusting. Every muscle in his mouth revolts with the urge to spit it out, but the person in front of him—the woman from last night—holds him down by the shoulder and says, "Swallow it. We don't starve our prisoners."
Avett finds himself saying something, but his words are obscured by a mess of uncontrolled fury, bleariness, and drool. So he obliges, for this spoonful, and then the next.
On the third spoonful, he dodges her hand. "Could just untie me."
She stops, puts his spoon back into the tray, and sits down on the ground with her legs crossed. Her eyes remind Avett of the colour of steel, and her skin is an uneven, deep bronze—tanned from living in the forest. "Sweetie, you could've done a lot of things. You said so yourself."
"Don't fucking sweetie me. Just tell me if Lilith is fine."
He watches her jab the spoon into the pile of mashed potatoes and soap. "Is that her name?" she asks. "The name of the Human you so generously exposed to gumboots?"
Avett coughs. "To what? And—you think I used her as bait?"
"Doesn't matter." The woman shoves a spoonful into her mouth. "The other schmucks in the village council forbade me from interacting with you, said they'd send someone else 'cause they can't trust me to use my magic. But fuck it, eh?"
Before Avett can respond, the woman stands and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. White residue sticks to her sleeve. "Let me get your name."
Her words sting with the stench of ether. He finds himself complying with her demands, as the water flows, as the clouds go—it's not just in his nature to spill everything he knows about himself to this stranger, but necessary. "Avett Ironsturm. What are you doing to me?"
"Guess those elders were on to something." She taps her foot against the ground and darts her eyes around the cabin. Then she breathes, steels herself, and says, "That's not your actual family name, but it'll have to do."
Avett presses his lips together. He'll spill if he opens up, but thankfully the woman relents and shrugs. "Guess space pirates get their share of family drama too." The ether subsides, just a smidge, allowing Avett to breathe.
Something isn't sitting right with Avett, but right now, rage is all he can feel. "You think I'm a space pir—"
Another wave of ether washes over him. "We were attacked last month too. Were you aware of this?"
"I did not commit myself to this field for five years, only for some backwater bitch who's never even heard of the IRC Numerical System to tell me I've been collaborating with pirates," he responds through gritted teeth. "No. I wasn't."
Surprise graces her features. She hesitates—then raises an iron-toed boot. "You're a space alien or something, I know that much, but I'm willing to bet that you've got the same set of jewels every man on this damn wasteland of a world's got."
Her steel-cold eyes darken into the shade of water-logged storm clouds.
Avett feels like he's going to throw up from the pressure of her ether alone. So he does. Verbally.
"Actually, we're not space aliens, it's more like we're from an alternate universe where we just evolved in a slightly different way, which makes us pretty much the same genetically. So, yeah, I would have an impressive pair of balls. And my cock's pretty substantial too. My measurements are modest, kind of average, but I've got—"
He throws his head back with enough force to knock his skull against the cabin wall; this instantaneously shuts him up. The chair tips over, and he lands on his side with his face pressed right against the tray of food. He groans, his side and rib cage stinging. At least he's not spewing out inappropriate numbers in front of strangers anymore.
The woman looks worse for wear. She's clutching her head and stumbling backwards, probably because she's just accidentally used up the vast majority of her personal ether by letting it spiral out of control.
A groan tumbles out of his lips. "C-can I see Lilith now?"
Finally, the woman flops back onto the ground. She shoves a healthy spoonful of mashed potatoes into her mouth like she's starving. Then she waves a spoon at Avett. "Cilantro and thyme. It's what keeps us all from fucking going off the edge from gumboots here. You're lucky the council decided to add it into your portions. Coincidentally, it also powers us. Our magic. So eat up."
"So ether," he breathes.
"Is that what you guys call it?" She laughs.
"We've got a whole dictionary of situational jargon for things you aren't even aware of." He raises his arms. "I'm not here to do harm. I swear."
The woman slides a knife out of her pocket and unsheathes it. He's freed within seconds, and it surprises him—though that's probably because he's grown accustomed to Lilith's incompetency. Then he looks at her muscular build, then at her towering physique, and then he's wondering why he'd ever doubted her competence at all. She could easily suplex a lesser dragon and have it for dinner with her family on the same night.
She offers her hand. He refuses it and pushes himself to his feet instead. His wrists feel so nice to rub; Fuck, he's forgotten how it good it feels to be free.
The woman looks off at the door and rubs the back of her head. "I'm Marina. They call me Mari here. Sorry about all of this—I was too quick to judge the situation, and as it turned out, I was wrong about you."
"A lot of people tend to be." He shrugs. "Comes with the profession. And the ears."
Mari doesn't answer, but she does offer him an apologetic smirk as she holds open the door. "After you then, sweetie."
As he walks through the village, he tries his damndest to ignore the armour-piercing stares that the villagers offer him the moment he steps out of the cabin without his restraints on. Despite having Mari's 'protection' at his side, he's still unwelcome—though none of the Humans try to engage him verbally, instead choosing to hastily resume whatever they were doing prior to his appearance.
"I apologise on behalf of their behaviour," Mari says once they're out of earshot. "Most off-landers who visit come with the intention of causing us harm. You're the first we've let out of that cabin unshackled."
Or alive, for that matter. Something uncomfortable settles in his stomach at that intrusive thought before he remembers that he's not here to do harm to them. He shrugs and continues to walk. "I'm used to stares. Another perk that comes with the ears."
Mari arrives at a cabin that's bigger and more intricately built than the others. It has an overhang above the entrance that's supported by two stripped logs. It's clear that someone of authority lives here, maybe multiple, even. As requested by his tour guide, he removes his shoes before entering. She leads him through a spacious kitchen and down a corridor before stopping in front of a door.
Lilith's face is still. And red. The nurse at her side has placed a damp cloth on her forehead, and there are multiple syringes on the table, their chambers filled with a dark, greeny substance. Mari nods to the nurse, and he leaves the room.
"Your partner's a fighter," Mari says. She's next to him, her powerful arms folded. "No one's ever been this exposed to gumboots—and left with just a fever."
"More of a wet rag than a fighter." Avett takes the nearest stool and drags it over to the bed. "But she's got it where it counts."
Silence. Then, testingly and teasingly, she asks, "I see how it is, then."
"Oh?" He turns and props his elbow against the counter. Playful mirth dances across his features. "You think we're in a relationship?"
A low, gut-quaking laugh. "Excuse me. She was all you wanted in the cabin."
Avett glances back at Lilith. In spite of her current condition, this is the most peaceful he's ever seen her. "Relationship is… stretching it. I hardly know her. She's just a colleague."
He looks down at his hands. The word 'colleague' doesn't seem to fit; it's too narrow, too stoic for someone like Lilith. It's a tenuous term that falls apart under scrutiny. She's not 'just a colleague' because that would imply that he puts on airs in her presence. She's the only person he trusts, and he's only just realising that now. It's just a shame she won't return the sentiment. He's only got himself to blame for that.
The soft slap of leather against wooden flooring snaps him back from his stupor. Mari's chucked off her jacket and thrown it against the floor. A stool rattles up to his side, and she sits right next to him, her eyes searching Lilith's face with unhinged curiosity.
Then she says, "Not really seeing a wet rag here, Avett."
"She's more wet behind her ears than anything." Avett doesn't have to force himself to remember all the times she'd thrown herself into the midst of danger at the expense of her wellbeing. If he dares to take his eyes off of Lilith for even a second, she'll probably find some obscure, out-of-the-way method to kill herself under the guise of 'the better good.'
"Wet behind the ears?" She grins. Then she tilts her head. "You look a little light on the years yourself. You sure you're allowed to say that?"
"I've been in the mercenary workforce for three years now, and she's been in for two weeks. I can say whatever the hell I want."
"Three years." Mari briefly counts on her fingers. Her hands are big—they're stubby and coarse from years of woodworking, he presumes, but there's a feather of softness to them. "Jeez—how old are you?"
"Twenty."
Another laugh. "When I was seventeen, I was a fucking handful for my parents. Not out being… an intergalactic bounty hunter, or whatever it is you do."
Avett catches himself before he makes a quip about his outburst from earlier. Mari's eyes have lost their ferric shine.
He presses his lips together. "Lilith also lost her parents."
"I know." She turns to look at a dent in the floorboards. "A miracle if she still had them."
The silence that follows after is deafening.
She stands and straightens her back. Her smile returns as quickly as it had disappeared. "I'm surprised that, as a mercenary, you haven't thought about getting back your weapons yet. Am I that distracting?"
He blinks. Then—fuck. He pats down the pockets on his pants; the cloth flattens against his thighs. He turns to face Mari again, but she's already heading towards the door. "Come on," she says. "I'll take you to Will's and show you around the council."
She dips around the corner. Avett flashes one final glance at Lilith as the nurse ushers himself back in with a bucket full of clean water and a freshly folded cloth.
—
When he enters the armoury, his mouth nearly drops at the sheer amount of—shit that's in there. Blasters, auto-crossbows, energy cannons and swords of every make and mark line the warehouse walls. And as he admires the rack of state-of-the-art blasters, he realises, with a fearful lurch of his stomach, just where they're all from. Off-landers used to own these, dead off-landers—and judging from the model, they've been obtained pretty recently.
Mari waves to a figure in the distance. A blond man is hunched over, quite possibly polishing away at weaponry he doesn't even own. "Hey, Will! You got this guy's stuff?"
"This guy?" He turns briefly to look at Avett, looks back, then does a double-take. "You fucking brought him in?"
"Yeah, he's not one of 'em, I checked him myself. He's with the girl."
Will's seat clatters to the floor as he stumbles toward a particularly heavy-laden rack of blasters. It takes a moment for Avett to realise that they'd fully intended to—stars, he doesn't even want to say it. "Christ, Mari, don't fucking bring him in here. Get him out. Out."
"Will, he's not—"
"Fuck, man! Just go! Wait outside, dammit!"
The warehouse door slams shut behind them. Mari shrugs. "He's a bit rough around the edges, but he's a real softie underneath it all." She pauses, bends over slightly so that she's face to face with Avett, and raises a curious eyebrow. "You alright? You're looking kind of white."
He releases a breath. Inhales. Does it again as he's nodding. "Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine." What the fuck is he doing? Dragons try to eat him on a good day, and on a bad day… what happened yesterday probably counted as a bad day, but he's definitely had worse. The day he'd met Lilith was significantly more unbearable than any other day, and that's including the time he had to wade through an endless underground network of broken sewers for a relic. Auren had refused to talk to him, and though Ysh'vanna had been more mature about it, she later suggested for him to relocate to the armoury with a temporary mattress "for the foreseeable future." The smell didn't wash out for weeks.
In desperate need of a distraction, he brings himself to meet Mari's eyes once more. "You're all capable of manipulating ether then?"
She shakes her head. "It's not ether. It's magic. What we can do is different from what you're capable of."
He freezes. Stars save him if he's actually managed to piss off this woman.
"…is what I think the other members of the council would try to say." Mari sheepishly rubs the back of her head and grins downwards. "They think we're different from the pir—uh, off-landers because we can't use those wings or something. That whatever we have is less harmful and more productive, but that's stupid. We're just as capable of destruction."
She rubs her fingers together, and a misty swirl of pure black emanates from her fingertips. Avett doesn't know what it is, but her point is proven regardless. She snaps her fingers, and then the flame is gone.
"Have you ever had someone lose their magic?" Avett asks.
"Eh, not really." She shrugs. "That's not a thing that happens. I'm not as well versed in magic as the other members of the council, but I'd like to think that I speak for all of us when I say that it's a part of me—it's not something you can just lose and still—" She bites her lip. "—still be mentally sound. Why?"
He's about to tell Mari about Lilith when the blond man from early slams the doors open. His arms are full of weaponry. Avett's weaponry. He should not be handling his incendiaries like that.
Avett takes them back the moment Will offers them to him with a swift lunge, narrowly avoiding what could've turned his day from bad to fucking disastrous. Pretty soon, he's got all of his gear strapped in again. Will stands by, his face impassive as he watches him slide his blasters through the holsters.
"This guy is definitely not safe," he whispers. He must think he's out of earshot, but Avett's ears perk straight up anyway. He's about to bristle and cave in when Mari answers for him.
"I tested him myself, I told you. He wasn't lying."
"And we all know how reliable your magic is."
"Yeah, well, it went fine this time." Mari folds her arms, her eyebrows knitted in defiance. "Lilith—the girl, is his partner. They're mercenaries passing through."
Avett's ears lower as Will strides up to him with his shoulders squared and chin tilted upwards. This guy definitely didn't get benched during high school tournaments; on the contrary, he's probably intimidated far more coaches than he's been threatened with the bench. Avett wonders if he could take him, should the need to defend himself ever arise.
"Mercenaries, hm?" Will prods.
"My ID's right here." Avett narrows his eyes. Not like it'll prove anything.
Will waves a hand in dismissal. "We saw when we went through your belongings. Put it right back, though."
He circles Avett like a hawk.
"They're real," Avett grits out. "Lilith has one too."
"Oh, does she?" He stops circling and flashes a glance to someone that's behind Avett.
Then he leans over. He's like a skyscraper, and Avett's just the dwarfing tourist underneath him. Straight back, he tells himself. Fuck him and his Kattish genes for making him like this.
Then he starts talking again. "They're made out of a grainy, eco-friendly plastic—means there's enough grip on the surface for a pencil to draw over it. The back lists your biological details, and the front lists your specialisation and ship. If you hold the card up to the light, a signature appears on the back—three, vertical strips, with a line running horizontally through all of them. Am I wrong?"
Avett stares at the man, his mouth parted and still. Mari steps in between them. "Will, what's gotten into you? I told you—he wasn't lying when he said he didn't know about last month. He's not dangerous."
Will grabs Mari's shoulder and pushes her aside. "Am I wrong?" he simply asks again.
"How the fuck did you know about the signature?" Avett asks. It's not a thing someone who's never seen nor heard of an ID card thinks to test for, especially not a Human. Unless he's seen them before.
Slowly and carefully, Will reaches into his pocket and closes his hand around something. It takes every ounce of control for Avett to not leap back with a hand on his blaster and the other on his incendiaries. Whatever he's holding is an off-colour white and doesn't catch the sunlight at all. He takes it out and lets them all scatter against the dirt.
ID cards. At least fifty of them. That's, at the very least, ten ships.
This time, he actually does stagger backwards, right into the firm grip of another Human. He thinks about fighting back briefly before he remembers that it's Lilith's life on the line. Though maybe if he makes a run for it, they'll think that she's just a hostage he plucked from the Hive and that she's not associated with him at all. Except it's hard to move when he's been pinned to the ground with a blaster pointed into his skull.
"Will, what the fuck?" Mari starts, her hands clenched into fists.
"Perhaps we can try redoing the interrogation, now that we know what they are." Ether is rolling off his body in waves. "I've always hated the term 'space pirates.'"
A grunt leaves Avett's clenched teeth. The kiss of cold steel against his skull is not a feeling he's well acquainted with. "Waste your time," he spits. "Go on."
"Gladly, mercenary." Will's eyes briefly meet with Mari before he turns back to Avett. "Mari deserves a proper demonstration. But first—a fresh subject."
A second body thumps to the ground next to him. The pathetic, light moan informs him that it's Lilith that's just been tossed to the dogs. Her hair pools around her head. She doesn't bother with picking herself up, instead choosing to lie there with her face against the dirt.
Then—ether. It's powerful, overcoming yet controlled, and it's whipping right past Avett's ear like a narrowly avoided bullet.
"Does it feel good to betray your own people?"
She quivers but stays silent.
He leans down until his mouth is right above her head. It's then that Avett realises that there's not a single person out. The square is completely empty—and they're the centrepiece. Will is making a point out of them. "Do you find the idea of slaughtering an entire Human settlement entertaining?"
Lilith just coughs. Not to send a message; she's genuinely sick, as if she might pass out at any moment. It's buying her time, but Avett just wishes she would hurry up and answer instead of stubbornly fighting back. Will grits his teeth. Mari is adjusting her stance and raising an eyebrow.
"Do the cat ears make it better?" His tone is cold, smooth, and—surprisingly—even. Like he's a fucking snake. Avett thinks about launching himself at him, but the barrel at his head serves as a reminder for exactly what type of predicament he's stuck in. The Human won't miss shooting both him and Lilith at this range. All he can hope for is sit back and wait for their interrogation to go well. And from the looks of it, he's probably about to move on to Avett himself.
"Will—" Mari starts again.
Still no response. Instead of cutting his losses and moving onto Avett, Will leans back and barks, "Lift her head up. By the hair, please."
Avett sees Mari hesitate for a second. She shakes her head. "No. I'm done with all of this pointless violence—you just want to prove a point. Go fuck yourself. Do it yourself."
"Fine." A loose exhale. This is more of an annoyance than anything.
With conviction, he tangles his hands in her hair. The muscles in his arm tighten into cords as he lifts her head up and off the ground. Avett flinches—then he yells, rage boiling in his veins like he actually gives a fuck about what'll happen to her.
But then Will's shoulders go still. And then he drops her right back onto the floor. He backs off, each of his steps taking a century and a half.
"Lili," he breathes. He says her name like she's a fucking unicorn—a manmade cognition of pure fantasy. He could pass his hands through her body if he tries hard enough. A laugh rattles out of him, and he covers his eyes as he looks to the sky.
"Sir?" The Human that has Avett pinned to the ground loosens his grip for a second.
"Release them. They're not dangerous."
The Human rolls away from Avett before he gets the satisfaction of throwing him off. As he crawls up to his knees, he manages to catch precisely how Will regards Lilith. She's a cloudy reflection in his eyes. He's not focusing on the fact that she's there, but on the fact that she's Lilith. Like he's looking at an ant that's managed to escape the hoard.
"Will?" Mari asks. "You know her?"
He stops laughing. "Man. Oh, man." Draws in an over-exaggerated breath. Exhales loosely. "The girl's incapable of evil. Incapable of making her own decisions too—but she'll draw the line at evil."
Lilith digs her nails into the dirt. She clenches her hand and leaves five deep gashes in the ground.
"Lili, I'm defending your cause." His voice turns soft, as if he's talking to a child and not to someone in her early twenties. "The least you could do is be grateful. Say thank you. I didn't get to relieve my stress today, and I'd like a little compensation."
Even Mari is taken aback by his tone. Avett's just glad he's not getting fed a mouthful of blaster pellets. He slides Lilith's arm over his shoulder. Her body remains hot against his, and her head slumps against his arm.
At first, she lets him pick her up. But then Will tilts his chin upwards with a sly grin plastered onto his face.
"You're like a cancer cell that's dropped off from the main body. You won't last long without your host." He's still using that mockingly soft voice. "Say thank you, Lili Wang-Rosales."
Something snaps in Lilith. Avett feels it in the way her cheeks have tightened into knots. It reminds him of the ship, when she'd blinked and—for the first time in the short days he'd known her—exposed her foundations and steel beams and metal pipes and just screamed at him. She'd told him that everyone she knew was gone. He meets Will's eyes for a split second. Not everyone.
"We've come to fucking kill and plunder and pillage your village," she spits. Quite literally too; she's somehow managed to pool her saliva in her mouth in her delirium. "We've got tens of thousands of mercenaries and space pirates just waiting behind our backs, and they're going to kill all of you—"
Avett slaps a hand over her mouth, turning her empty threats into wordless muffles. He's about to tell her that the amount of brain cells she's lost is clearly in the quintuple digits when he meets Will's eyes again.
They're glittering with a satisfaction Avett can't quite place his finger on.
Then Will turns to Mari and says, with a demeaning smirk, "That last part was a lie. That's how you interrogate."
He leaves and slams the door of the warehouse on his way in.
Mari almost follows him, but she stops mid-step and bends down to sling Lilith's other arm over her shoulder. They stand up at the same time. Lilith's body is awkwardly tilted upwards.
Avett blows his hair out of his eyes. "I can take her. It's fine."
"No, it isn't." Her voice is tight and quick. She corrects her tone not a moment after. "I need you in tip-top shape for tomorrow. So go get some rest. Some real rest."
He doesn't say anything as she effortlessly lifts Lilith from him. The idle bumble of the village is back, and he's thankful it's providing him with an ambient noise that isn't the occasional rustle of the trees in the mid-afternoon breeze. He does, however, start talking when Mari starts heading off without explaining herself.
"What for?" he asks as he paces next to her.
A thoughtful pause. She glances over to the village gates—two wooden stakes that have been stuck into the mud and sharpened at the ends. "There's an abandoned department store off to the east from the village gates. It's huge, there's always another shop to pillage—but it's not exactly safe there, and our powers seem to weaken when we're outside of the village. We send out retrieval teams often when we're short." Her attention turns back to Avett. "And we're kind of short on food right now."
He looks towards the small patches of tilled farmland that every cabin has in their backyard. There isn't a single garden that doesn't have rows upon rows of leafy vegetables, and he's willing to bet that there are plenty more growing underneath the dirt.
"You think Will's gonna like me more if I'm directly helping the village," he finishes.
She only shrugs. "See you in the morning, Avett. Sleep in the room opposite Lilith's tonight."
—
Avett's eyes snap open. An urgent sense of wrongness shoots through his body, and when he stops to catch his breath, he hears the soft, front-heavy footsteps of a certain frontliner and the click of the front door. He swears and reaches for his jacket, but by the time he's dressed and ready, Lilith is already gone. The giant double-doors of the cabin have been left wide open.
He shivers as he steps outside and closes the doors behind him. He doesn't worry about locking it—none of the houses in the village have locks installed anyway.
Lilith is nowhere to be seen. But then he catches it on the wind; the slightest hint of their ship's cheap and shitty three-in-one shampoo. He heads towards the forest. He can't believe that he's the modern descendant of a proud, 200,000-year-old race and that he's using their evolved traits for something as menial as this instead of—fuck he doesn't know. Hunting, he guesses. He could've been hunting rabbits right now.
The forest is incredibly dense. Branches stand from their trees to prod him in the sides, and sometimes the grass gets so tall that he has to whip out his utility knife and scythe it down. How the fuck had Lilith managed past all of this with her painfully average Human eyesight, he has no idea. He just knows he has to find her before she does anything stupid in that fever-induced psychosis of hers.
He pushes past another clump of foliage, fear gripping his stomach as he accesses his surroundings for an idiot in a white dressing gown. Her scent is strong now, unbearably so, but he still can't find her.
"Lilith," he hisses. Then he realises she probably can't hear her, so he raises his voice just a smidge. "Lilith, you've got a fucking pair on you, I swear."
Lilith doesn't respond, even though he knows for a fact that she's within earshot. Avett holds back on pounding the nearest tree trunk with his fist and continues his search instead. Then he thinks about turning back briefly because his jacket's proven to be absolutely useless against the midnight chill.
He winds up a kick, faces the tree—then whirls and sends his foot into a bush instead. It rustles softly. He's going to kill Lilith if she doesn't do it herself.
But then he sees her. She's sitting down with her back leaning against the tree and her face streaked with tears. Her cheeks are still very red.
He freezes, then takes off his jacket. "You've still got a high temperature, Lilith, stars."
Avett moves to drape his jacket over her shoulders, but she jerks away at the last second. "You need that," she says, with difficulty, "more than me."
"I'm not the one here whose organs are getting cooked from the inside." He lunges to drape it over her again, but she dodges—and promptly falls onto her side. Avett does what he's come here for and props her back up onto the tree.
"You'll be cold," she says.
He flicks at an invisible fleck of dirt on his shoulder. Today's interrogation is still a pain in his ass, and he's willing to bet it's been one for Lilith as well. The way she'd snapped sticks with him more than the actual garbage she'd spat at Will in the heat of the moment. He's still not quite sure what she was thinking at the time. No one gets accused of crimes they didn't commit and then doubles down on them without a motive.
Avett settles in next to her. "The reason why I haven't just picked you up and taken you back to the village is because you're crying." He slides a packet of tissues from his pocket. "So tell me what's wrong."
"I don't feel so good." She sniffles.
"Duh. You're sick, and you're cold."
"The cabin smells, like, really strong wood. I wanted to get out, that's all."
He ignores the fact that it doesn't actually smell that bad. "So you came out here?" He motions to the forest. "With the Equaliser at large?"
She coughs. She's so pathetically out of it right now that she doesn't even bother refuting what he's insinuated. "Sometimes, when I get a fever, I start crying."
"...Really." He feels his stomach lurch in what he thinks is disappointment.
Lilith shrugs. Then she lets out an angry moan. "The stuff they inject me with every morning, I don't know what it is… but it's making everything worse. Could you tell them to stop?"
"It's cilantro and thyme. It's meant to stave off the dragon's aura and amplify your magic or something."
"It's garbage. I doooon't want it."
"It's good for you."
"No, it isn't."
Enough is enough. She's clearly too sick to carry out a conversation, let alone to be outside in the chill of a midnight breeze. He scoops her up in a carry and stands up. "We're going back to the cabin, and I'm fucking making sure you stay in bed this time. There's a dragon in the woods, Lilith. Be scared or something."
She breathes. It leaves a hot brand on his neck that quickly fades in the cold. Then, with a quiet stillness, she says, "That's not even remotely close."
He shoves past a particularly annoying branch. "What isn't?"
"The dragon."
Another delirious ramble. He finds himself smiling and exhaling. "How so, princess?"
"Could you look at me when I say this, Avett?"
"Is this another one of your young adult novel things—"
Lilith coughs again. "So you know I'm not lying."
He stops in his tracks. "Fine. I'm looking."
Her eyes—usually an iridescent hazel—are now pure obsidian in the darkness.
Then with her words carrying the pin-prick precisity of a woodpecker, she says, "It's the other way around. The dragon protects them."
Lilith's words ring like toll bells in his head. He blinks—he's about to ask why, but she's out cold in his arms.
Leaving him alone with her warning.