Part Twenty-Six — What We Decided, Together

　We talked about running.

　I want that on record, because it would be easy to tell this part of the story like courage was ever really in question.

　It wasn't quite that simple.

"We could go further west," Fenrik said, the morning after the scout, voice rough from a night none of us had slept well through. "Past the coast. Somewhere a temple with resources still has to work to reach."

"Could," Doran agreed. "Wouldn't guarantee anything, though. Patient people follow patient trails. Distance slows that down. Doesn't stop it."

　And running assumes I get to keep being someone worth chasing less, the further I go.

　I don't actually believe that's true.

　Whatever I am, geography's not going to change what I am.

"I don't want to spend however long I've got left always looking over my shoulder," I said, quieter than I meant to. "I've done that once already, in a different life, and it didn't save me that time either. I'd rather live like this actually matters than survive by making it smaller and smaller until there's nothing left worth protecting."

　Nobody argued that outright.

　Though I could see Fenrik weighing it, turning the shape of real fear over against the shape of the life we'd actually built.

"That's easy to say," he said, not unkindly. "When it's mostly your life on the line. Doran and I get a vote too. Feels worth mentioning."

　Fair.

　More than fair.

　I forget, sometimes, that this isn't just my risk to weigh.

"You're right," I said. "It's not just mine to decide. What do you actually want to do?"

　He was quiet a long moment.

　Looking at the ashes of last night's fire.

　At Doran.

　At me.

"I want to keep going," he said finally. "Not because I'm not scared. Because running from something I can't even name feels worse than facing whatever it turns out to actually be. I didn't leave my village to spend the rest of my life running from something new instead."

　That's braver than it sounds, coming from him.

　I know exactly how much running he's already done in his life.

　Doran, when it came to him, took longer to answer than either of us expected.

"I've run before," he said finally, quiet, more admission than either of us had heard out of him in years. "From something. Not going to say what, not tonight. Just――I know what it costs, running. Costs more than staying and facing it, most of the time. Learned that the hard way, once."

　There it is.

　Another edge of the door.

　Still won't open all the way.

　I've stopped minding that it doesn't.

"So we stay the course," I said. "Careful. Together. Watching each other's backs harder than we already do."

"Together," Fenrik echoed.

　Doran just nodded.

　The kind of nod that didn't need words attached to mean everything it needed to mean.

　That night, once the other two had settled, I stayed up a while longer.

　Watching the dark treeline the way Doran always did.

　Understanding, for the first time, exactly why that particular habit never fully went away in him.

　Whatever's coming.

　Whatever "the temple" actually wants with something like me.

　I'm not running from it.

　And I'm not letting either of them pay a price for a fight that's mine to have.

　I don't fully know yet what I'm capable of.

　I know I'd give everything I do have, without a second thought, to make sure this――the three of us, exactly like this――doesn't end because of what I am.

　I promise that.

　Quietly.

　To no one but myself, because that's the only kind of promise I actually trust anymore.

　I didn't know yet how little that promise would end up being worth, against what was already on its way toward us.

　But I meant it, that night, more than I'd meant almost anything in either of my lives.