Name: "Light the brightest fire from the highest mountain so the whole world knows that your spirit can't be broken"
Story: waking the dawn
Colors: chrome 02
Supplies and Styles: Chiaroscuro, Mural
Word Count: approx 10k
Rating: 15
Warnings: Grief, despair. (The memory of) mind/memory manipulation. Offhand body horror. Narrator's deeply unreliable self-esteem.
(AO3 link)

The first four times, the Lord of Dawn despaired of victory and rode to a brave, heroic, and ultimately futile death in battle. This time her eldest is going to convince her otherwise, even if it means meeting her where she's at.

(It turns out if you take a hope-named scion of dawn and run them through the wringer badly enough, what you get is someone who can-and-will fight anything including his own despair. And win.)




Everything Hanno does now is shadowed with the weight of all the times he's lived these years before. This is the third time he's set out to convince his mother not to ride to her death; the second time he's ridden from Guae's bedside to do it.

He leaves it to the last minute, because he doesn't want to leave him; because the knowledge that it didn't work last time is heavy on his shoulders; because he has to catch her by surprise and on the cusp of despair.

Last time, he took a moment, a league or two beyond her wards, for his own despair. Last time, he thought this would be easy; the crown was out of play, and he was still riding the high of his easy triumph over the engines of the schtörtfesk. Your own despair is different, he knows that now. He may be called reckless, and headstrong, and stubborn - and there is truth in all of those - but no one can say he does not acknowledge his mistakes.

This time, he rides closer; he will take that moment again, only partly because he needs it, and this time, his mother will know.

It feels manipulative. It is. But if it works it will be worth it. Guae's voice cracking, in the grey after; I did worse things for love. The way he tried to take all the blame on himself, as if he was the only one.

It wasn't true then, and it's certainly not true now.



Now, Guae's presence in the back of his mind is distant. Not for anything as trivial as distance, the thing between them grown too strong for that, but because some things you have to do alone. Even when four lifetimes with your minds tangled up together have left you what Vero describes as alarmingly codependent. Perhaps especially then.

Guae only fussed a little about it. Self-aware enough to know he has no leg to stand on. Hanno isn't walking open-eyed into Moravin's hands for the fourth time - the third that Guae remembers, the second when he knew what he was doing. Hanno's only going to talk to his mother, who is not dead yet.

(This time.)



Ilvhan doesn't argue with him over making camp tonight rather than pushing on into the dark; he might only remember the first time mother died facing Moravin, and none of them are up to talking through their other lives in any detail, but Ilvhan trusted Hanno with a belay rope in the long dark and he trusts him to know what he's doing now.

(It probably helps that he doesn't have any visceral memory of how many times Hanno has fucked up and failed and everything has gone to hell and everyone other than him has fucking bled for those failures.)



He leaves them starting a cook-fire and setting up enough shelter to anchor the camp-wards; Ilvhan gives him a troubled look, but lets him be. He's armed and armoured; not his full field harness but the lighter kit fashioned after his hunting-gear from the long dark, reinforced with blackened steel and boiled leather where it matters most. Bow on one shoulder, Guae's sword slung across the other; quarrels at his hip, and walking-spear in hand. There really isn't much risk in it, for a scion; anything he can't handle will light up mother's wards like sunrise.



Walking away alone, even into the gathering dark, even on a balmy summer's evening, feels far too much like walking into the snowstorm in the hell-white. It shouldn't; the sky's clear, the moon's rising, the air is warm and still, and the footing is good, even when he leaves the road and starts heading up-mountain.

It's not deep forest, this far west; he skirts the scattered lights of herders' cottages and the faint tolling of bells from summer pastures; sticks to the deepening shadows under trees in full leaf. It's dark, and it's warm, and no-one could ever mistake this for true winter, let alone the hell-white.

And yet.



He walks until he starts to feel his mother's despair bleeding out from her outer wards. She isn't doing it on purpose; she probably doesn't even know that she's doing it at all. The Lord of Dawn is - was - should have been the hunter, the path-finder, the one who walks where others fear to tread and returns bearing food, water, knowledge, hope. She was not made to know despair.

(Neither were her hope-named scions, but even one lifetime was more than enough for Hanno to learn its taste. To learn that it will swallow him alive if he gives it half a chance. It's certainly not that he doesn't understand what his mother's dealing with.)



*



This will do; there's a drop-off a little way downslope, where the land must have slipped recently enough to take down the grand old trees; the new growth below has no more than ten or twenty years on it; if he stands on the outcrop he can see almost all the way down to the river. From here, the dawn ought to be glorious; he'll take his rhetorical points where he can.

Hanno slips his bow and Guae's sword from his back; sweeps a patch at the foot of a big old chestnut clear of last year's spines, sets bow and scabbard down beside him, and settles down with his back to the trunk, the rising moon before him, the naked blade across his lap. Opens the door in his mind.



To the grief familiar as an old friend. For Guae, first, foremost, always. For the times the only mercy was that they fell together. For the time he went first, a hundred thousand tears shed in the grey while Guae made his slow descent to the inevitable end. For the time Hanno's own damned mistakes left him unable to do anything but watch as Guae rode to his death.

For his siblings; Makna whose subsequent deaths have never been quite as cruel as the first; Delfi, who he got killed trying to save Guae.

For mother, who has died the same damned way every time, and Vero, who has died differently every time. Everyone dies, over and over, and everything he tries only seems to make it worse.



To the first, worst guilt, the one which has never stopped gnawing; if he'd only been better - faster, stronger, more skilled, more able to think past his anger, whatever it would have taken to be good enough; if he hadn't fallen, the first time around, if he hadn't died - then Guae wouldn't have lost his damned mind in his grief, and it wouldn't all have ended so badly. Or if he'd just been willing to let it go, to wait patiently for Guae to wake, and settle for whatever peace and healing the grey would afford them; another life together, one day, in the manner of mortal folk.



To the banked fire of anger, at himself and at Guae and at everyone for the mistakes they all made, but most of all at Moravin for starting his stupid damned war -

- and last, worst, to the fear: that it will never be enough. That he will have to watch, again and again, living or dead and equally helpless either way, as Guae puts himself into Moravin's hands, as Vero bloodies his teeth, as Anaie gives herself over to ruthlessness and Laina to grief; as Delfi learns fear -

- and as his mother rides to her death.



The grim tide of emotion would bury him if it could.

He lets it. Pushes Guae's concern very gently away; he knows what he's doing.

Sinks both hands into the dry leaf-litter around him. Lets all the warmth and colour fade - out of himself, out of the world, out of everything but Guae's sword. By the time he realised the sword might not be the most appropriate thing he could have turned into a symbol and reservoir for hope, he'd already done it, and after that - well. It worked.

Everything else bleeds away into the cold emptiness where doubt makes its home, until there's nothing left but him, Hannothferan, first scion of dawn, whose very name is a prayer for hope - and the memory of all the dashed hopes he's left behind, rising over him like a wave.

Galadhé shaped him from raw nothingness in the form of her will and her hope. The thing between them is patterned after the talith child-bond, but it runs deeper and stronger. There is no way she cannot not feel him here; no way she will not answer.



*



The first time around, he didn't know. Even after the siege, he didn't understand; Galia had to explain it to him, gentle and patient, and the burning anger when it finally made sense drove him like a whip, onward to his death.

The second, he was the only one who knew.



*



(Hanno's fucked this up, and it's probably not recoverable.

Guaeth is right there, he's right there, and Hanno's never been so alone, because this isn't his Guae, scarred and fractured and vicious, this Guaeth is young, unbroken, unafraid - and just as observant and suspicious as he always was. And Hanno was so used to being the only person Guae really, unquestioningly trusted, after - even over his nearest sister, let alone their other siblings - that he didn't account for having those razor wits turned on him. Of course he's ringing wrong. He doesn't think Guae loved him, this far back, but he was certainly paying attention, and Hanno isn't this Guae's reckless, carefree friend; the harder he tries to pretend, the more Guaeth notices the hard edges and the rage he can't quite set down.

So when Hanno tried to warn him - about Moravin, about his father - it only made Guaeth suspect him. And now he's walking into his own personal hell, and there's nothing Hanno can do to stop him. He'll follow his father, who's more than halfway to being Moravin's puppet already, and he'll throw himself into the trap to get his siblings clear of it.

This is the last time Hanno will see him unbroken, and it's breaking his heart.)



*



The third time, Guaeth listened, and Maurush paid a price he will never remember, and neither of them will ever forget.



*



(Guae's safe. Guae's safe and at his side, because Hanno begged him, on his knees and desperate, to make different choices, to walk away from his father before the trap closed around them all, and Guae listened. Guae listened, and got them out - and then the reschtört snatched Maurush, and Guae knows intimately what his youngest sibling is going through now.

It's driving a wedge between them, gnawing guilt, because Guae knows damned well Hanno's never even liked Maurush, in whom all Guae's sharp wit is turned to viciousness. Guae thinks Hanno considers that an acceptable trade, an acceptable price - he hasn't outright said it, he's trying not to even think it, but he can't keep that suspicion out of the bond -

- just as Hanno can't entirely hide the fact that he doesn't - but only because Guae can't, only because it's tearing Guae up inside. He loves his siblings, always has, even in their first life, after he gave himself up to protect them in the hell-winter, when he was so badly hurt he couldn't bring himself to trust them the way he trusted Hanno. And now it's Hanno's doing that the youngest of them is going through hell.

It's tearing them apart, and it's Hanno's fault, and it hurts.)



*



Is it even fair to expect Galadhé to hear him, expect her to heed the bonds of family between them, when he proved so very long ago how little value he places on such things?



This time around, he had to let Guae go; they had to let go completely, thin the bond between them down to almost nothing and ward it with everything either of them had. Because last time Hanno couldn't bear it, couldn't stop reaching out, trying to help, bleeding away his own strength into the bottomless pit of Moravin's hunger. And all he achieved by it was to give Moravin access to both of them, over and over, because Moravin always made sure he forgot.



*



(Moving troops in the hell-white is a matter of having the right gear, being careful with the warding, and not pushing the horses or the people too hard; Hanno's had a lot of practice. Makna grumbled a bit about the wardings he was using and concluded the designs were Guae's - which they are - but has been grudgingly willing to accept that he's getting them through the bond. Mother hasn't, as far as he can tell, been suspicious at all, she's just got him doing a lot of it.

With Guae's designs, a decent will-worker can move a column without too much trouble, at least for a certain distance before exhaustion starts to kick in; most of the sfitá use teams of mage-priests; it's more reliable. Hanno's not reliable, not now Moravin's really started working on Guae, but he's still got more range, which is why he's out now, riding across the now-barren plain towards the forward camp.



Pain spikes in the back of his mind. He reaches for Guae without thinking; it isn't Guae who answers.

«Back again, Galadhéné? I'm starting to think you like our little games.»

Vision going dark under the weight of Moravin's attention, nothing left to spare for what's happening around him. All he's getting from Guae is screaming.

He throws himself forward with everything he's got, shield and defender; knows that if Guae had any more presence of mind, he'd be telling him not to; knows, down in his bones, that Guae wouldn't want this -

- no amount of knowing would be enough to make him stand by and let Guae suffer.

Moravin knows that, too, laughing in his mind.

«After all, who else would understand? Who else has done what you're so desperately trying to do?» Searing light ripping him apart, rifling through his memories. «Except, of course, I didn't drag anyone I loved through this hell with me.»

Poison drips from Moravin's claws, twisting and changing everything he touches; Hanno can't breathe for how much he hates it. Can't flee, even into memory, without the poison following. Can't get away from the bitter taste of fear in his throat.

(He knows he can't say it. Knows he can't try. They'll part in the morning, and they won't see each other again until mother marches an army to the gates of fallen midnight, and in between now and then - he might as well be handing his beloved over to Moravin's tender mercies with his own hands.

«Hush, my heart,» they're dancing, his head on Guae's shoulder, close enough that Guae probably could murmur in his ear, but it's beyond habit, now. «I can hear you thinking.»

There's nothing Hanno can say to that. He settles on, «I hate this,» which is hardly news.

Guae's edged bitterness wraps around him as firm as his arm. «No you don't.»

He's hanging on to the strength not to argue, not to plead for mercy or forgiveness, and he certainly can't restrain the impulse enough that Guae doesn't know damn well what he's thinking. He's holding far too hard physically. Hurting his beloved with his own hands, like some kind of perverse prelude to what's coming.)

He didn't do that, he didn't, this isn't how it was -

«Are you sure, Galadhené? Memory is so malleable even when you don't abuse the way you have, living the same days over and over. All this -» the pain he can't think past - «is your doing, what difference does the detail really make? Is this how it was - or perhaps how you would have liked it to be?»

(«Play up,» Guae's hand grips his like a vice, «we're getting out of here. I have better things to do.»

«Discreetly?»

«Absolutely fucking not. Let them all stare; they won't dare interfere.» Guae's laughing in his head, sharp and harsh; dips to kiss him, all teeth and possessive aggression.

Hanno yelps as Guae sweeps him off his feet.

Guae's still laughing in his head - «you can scream better than that, my heart - and you will,» but heads turn anyway, and just as swiftly turn away as they realise what they're watching.

"Put me down, Guaeth!" It comes out hysterical, frightened, as helpless as his attempts to wrestle his way out of being put over Guae's shoulder and bodily carried out of the hall. Guae's calling the tune here; nothing he does or says matters any more. Only Guae's thoughts, what Guae wants, crashing into his mind like an avalanche, smothering anything else he might have been. He doesn't even want it to stop.)

He does, he absolutely does, this never even happened, Guae didn't, Guae wouldn't -

«Are you sure?» Moravin's fucking poison purr in his ear -

- he doesn't even mean to answer but the words fall out anyway - «I've never been less sure of anything in any life and it doesn't matter, I don't care, I'm here for Guae.»

«Do you really think he'd do the same for you, Galadhené?»

Temper flares. «Do you think he isn't?»

«Ah. Well. There is that, isn't there. Does your mother know how far from the tree the apple has fallen?»

(«My heart,» Guae sets him on his feet, somewhere in the maze of the walled gardens; crowds him up against the wall. «Mine. Do you trust me?»

«Always.» How could he not? Melting into the touch like there's nothing else left in the world.

«Then trust that I know what I'm doing.» He can hardly do otherwise, even when Guae's peeling him layer by layer out of his formal robes to leave him shivering and exposed.

Chokes back a sound that isn't sure what it wants to be other than panicked, because they are not alone - "fuck, Guae -"

"That's more like it," low, almost too low to hear. "Now hush. There's someone I want you to meet." Light growing in the dark garden as the intangible sense of presence draws nearer. "Or, rather -" no, no, this isn't Guae any more -

"We've met, of course, but not quite like this, have we, Galadhené?")

He flinches, flees from false, twisted memory back to a present that is worse - his bones are burning, twisting white-fire agony that tastes of rot - light so bright he can see shapes moving even behind eyes squeezed shut, reaching, and he can't move,

Can't so much as flinch away from Moravin's voice - "back with me, Galadhené?"



«My heart -» Guae, really Guae this time, frantic - «Hanno, stop this, he wants you here, this is a trap -» hands on his shoulders - he hasn't even the voice left to scream at the redoubled pain as Guae drags him bodily backwards into the utter relief of darkness -



- and out, to biting cold and damp, clawing with bloody nails at the door slammed closed in his mind, and it's burning bright still but it's less, it takes him a moment to come back far enough to realise it's not hurting any more, realise he can move, shield his eyes - open his eyes, blinking back snow-brightness -

- less than he's expecting, somehow; slow understanding - someone else has picked up the wards, there's a warm hand on his shoulder -

- he's on his knees in the muddy slush of the road, in among the supply wagons. Someone must have gotten him off his horse, he doesn't feel bruised enough to have fallen - familiar face in familiar colours kneeling beside him, but names are being slow to come back.

He blinks, focuses; their lips are moving, but the world is as soft and silent as the grave -

- he heaves in one breath, then another, and battle-noise hits him like a wall - shit, he's needed; he pushes himself up -

"Are you back with us, sir?"

The fighting is over there, not right here - "yes," and his voice isn't the hoarse croak he expects, "thank you, Chlafots -" he lets himself be helped up. "Report?" even as he's reaching out to get his own assessment -

"Thirty-odd reschtört, a couple of hundred regular infantry. Broke cover right as you went down, like it was planned;" they're back in the cover of the supply wagons and a small guard; the main force are engaged on foot and being pushed back; "Fikelia has the wards -"

"They're holding steady," it's taking all they've got, but they're holding steady. It might not be a smooth hand-back with how hard they're concentrating, but they're not sagging yet; if they can keep it up then Hanno can go on the offensive.

Chlafots has worked with him long enough to guess what he's thinking. "Should you be going into the fight right now? What happened, sir?"

Hanno opens his mouth to answer, even as he's checking his gear, and freezes as he realises he's got no answer. Just blankness, and the sense that whatever it was hurt. "I - don't know." Half his attention still on the fighting, even as he's looking around for his shield. "I don't think there's a better option." It's not going well out there.

He's been running wards because he's got the stamina, but Hanno's good at offensive, and what he needs now - needs with a desperation like fire - is something to fight.)



*



Guae tells him - told him almost from the start, though it took him a few lifetimes to understand - that Moravin's most poisonous lies are the ones built around truths you don't want to admit to yourself. And there have been moments, this time around, when he's wondered if that was one of them; if maybe Moravin was right about him.

Certainly he'd have gone in Guae's place in a heartbeat, if he could've, and he's no longer sure that what that says about him is wholly admirable. He can't deny that there's part of him which would have preferred the pain and the poison to the silence and the helplessness of not knowing.

Not all of him, but - maybe too much.



It wasn't just anger driving him, not by then, but the idea - still so painfully naive - that if he stayed angry enough, despair couldn't touch him. That if he ran fast enough, fought hard enough, took enough risks, he could get ahead of the fear he hadn't even acknowledged to himself, yet.



There's a moment, the first time around - after the hell-winter, the exact dates escape him.

Standing on the ramparts of the reclaimed Gates of Midnight. Guae more or less as healed as he'd ever be, in body at least, his hand in Hanno's trembling. Unseeing eyes staring past him at the sealed door in his mind, the bond between them he'd blocked so very thoroughly that even after careful weeks of work Hanno could sense the fear rolling off his skin, see it writ large in body language, but feel nothing more than a whisper from him, still. Reduced to guessing at its cause; guessing, and guessing wrong.



*



("Powers, Hanno -" Guae's voice shakes. Drops to a whisper that's almost lost in the air. "What if I hurt you."

Even after everything, Hanno comes so close to rising to what wasn't meant as a challenge. Go ahead, he catches himself on the brink of saying; do it. Bites his tongue hard, as clarity, understanding, sears through him.

Plenty of people are afraid of what Guae might have become; Hanno isn't, refuses to be, and he hadn't quite let himself see that Guae is. Cowardice, entire.



He tightens his grip when Guae starts to pull away; not so hard that he can't - he has most of his strength back; he might, honestly, be stronger than he was before; another thought Hanno should probably be more concerned about - but enough to leave Guae in no doubt that Hanno doesn't want to let him go.

"I could ask you the same, beloved," he counters.

For a moment Guae actually looks at him, rather than through, away, down. It might be surprise.

"I don't think you realise just how much I've learnt. Dusk has - the Altsi have - experts. In - the making and breaking of bonds."

"You should've had them break ours." Grey, flat.

Hanno knows he should be careful, but something stubborn flares. "I could do that myself. Could have done it months - no, years ago, now. I don't want to."

The frozen moment hangs. He's going to have to say it.

"I think perhaps - beloved, are you afraid that you may still be bound to his will?"

Guae raises his head. Bares what are not quite reschtört-fangs in what is neither quite a grin nor a snarl. "You think." And now he looks at Hanno; now he meets his eye, and seems of a sudden more solidly in the world again, no longer a ghost moving through it. "Moravin was a world-shaper. If there was ever a time to learn caution, Hannothferan -"

There's a weight to it, an anger, a challenge he doesn't manage to stop himself from rising to. "You have no idea what I have learnt," he snaps back, anger matching anger. It's proximity-resonance, not bond-resonance; Hanno can tell. He might be the foremost expert on the ways this is different for them than it is for talith or sfità. "About what could have gone wrong. About the damage we could have done to each other, by carelessness, by accident - or out of malice. There's an Altsi saying, that they're called bonds because we are bound in them. It's dangerous. They taught me so that I could protect myself, of course, but -" something sour and wry - "it's not like I haven't always been better on the offence. I could -" he catches himself, the flare of temper turning cold and sour.

Whatever Guae's feeling is so deeply masked Hanno doubts he could name it even to himself, but he's watching very closely.

"I - would be able to tell. If you let me back in." It's not untrue, it's even what he originally meant to say, and it still feels like a lie.

"And what else? Say it, my heart." Guae's raised eyebrow is crooked. The scar looks more like rough handling than something done deliberately.

Hanno can't call the anger back, and without it, it's hard to even think the words, let alone say them aloud - "I could - bind you to my will. I wouldn't, beloved, I swear to you wouldn't, but - I meant to say, I'm trying to say, the risk isn't all mine, in this, I'm not - defenceless, you don't need to protect -"

The finger Guae puts to his lips has been... Re-shaped, around the nail-bed. A subtler change than what they see in the reschtört, but a change, nonetheless. One long breath. Two. Three. Holding hard onto the impulse to ignore that signal and explain, disclaim, promise.

"Ssh. I know." He almost fancies he feels the fondness from Guae, just for a moment before his eyes go cold and his face goes hard. "I wish you would."

Hanno reaches up to catch Guae's other hand. Looks up at him with his heart in his mouth and his teeth clenched hard around the things he shouldn't say. Let me in, and find out. I don't care if it hurts.)



*



Even if Guae were the only one he's put through hell with the choices he's made, that would be bad enough, but - he's not, and he doesn't know how to make better ones.

Vero - dear Vero, his oldest friend even before he started all this and redefined the scale; who was a dancer and a poet and a little bit of a philosopher, who kept his heart's secrets and the grief of mortal lovers behind laughing eyes - all-but consumed, now, by fear. It was Ethevis, first, but then Moravin, and now even his own little sister and sometimes most of all of himself. And now the laughter in his eyes is a little more forced, and the secrets behind them are lines crossed and death in the dark, and he keeps doing this anyway.

Sweet Vero, Guae calls him, who knew love and letting go before the hell-white; who has forgiven him a hundred times, a thousand, and Hanno can't forgive himself for what he's done in return.



*



(They're mostly just wrestling - Hanno's bored, Guae's very bored; Hanno's getting twitchy and Guae's nowhere near well enough to do anything about it; Vero probably isn't bored but equally probably needs a break from running the whole damn fortress. It's entertaining Guae and it's slightly less charged than anything else they may have done in this fortress, in other lifetimes, and it's probably good for Vero, too. He's not settling well into his mother's power, this time around, Hanno's winning handily, which, here and now, he really shouldn't be.

He's not expecting Vero to set his teeth into his shoulder and bite hard enough to draw blood, and from the way Vero freezes, he thinks neither was he.

Guae... might have been. «He's expecting to die here.»

"What?" Hanno's startled enough that he says it aloud.

Vero might not actually even hear him, the way his eyes have gone glassy. Blood on his lips. Feels like walking on questionable ice. Guae doesn't mean now, he means when the siege comes -

«And it is when, in his mind.»

Which - no, they have a plan -

«I don't think he knows that, my heart.»)



*



There's a reason he doesn't usually let himself stop. No matter how he berates himself for cowardice, but he doesn't like looking in that mirror.

He didn't even notice the damage he'd done, that he'd left Vero - the kindest if perhaps not the gentlest soul Hanno has ever known; whom he loves differently but not less, a hearth-fire to return to rather than the towering, all-consuming inferno he shares with Guae - believing himself to be acceptable collateral damage.

That he'd become someone Vero could believe would do that.



How far has he changed?

If mother doesn't hear him now - is it the obliviousness he can't help but resent, or just that she no longer recognises him?

Attavia sees the change in her own children every time, the moment they come back. Mother's never even noticed. It doesn't sting any less even when he reminds himself that his brother had a whole entire child and she didn't notice. Even knowing he and Makna share it.

Delfi doesn't. Delfi noticed, last time; one more entry on the long list of things Hanno's handled badly because he just didn't notice.



*



("I'm not fretting."

Hanno's teasing his sister out of pure social reflex, his attention locked on Guae, he doesn't like letting go, even with their minds tangled closer than ever; even when he won't let Hanno take his damned armour off and hug him properly.

"No, but -" Guae's voice gives out, but that doesn't mean Hanno can't feel the shape of what he's trying to say.

«No -» Guae thinks that, and probably a hundred other terrible things, Moravin's poison growing where they have neither time nor strength to root it out right now, but Delfi doesn't, she's only teasing -

«My heart,» so very gentle, as though he's the one in need of care - «she's been worrying about this since we came back. Let me?»

He concedes because if he doesn't, Guae's going to say it anyway, and hurt himself saying it from his own throat.



"No, but you do think I forced him."

It's like thinking through syrup, dread turning numb, as his little sister says, with all indications of calm, "I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered the possibility."

"Why?" He's reeling from the implication, only half-aware of saying it aloud.

"I don't believe your bond was new at the midsummer banquet that year. And I know something both terrible and intangible happened to my brother right before the pair of you suddenly became inseparable."

He doesn't know how Guae can be calm about this. «Hadn't you noticed her manufacturing opportunities to talk to you privately?»

«She's always done that -»

«The first time around?»

He's not sure he even remembers those days clearly enough. Too much poison on everything, and Guae's in too much pain for this. He'd be angry, if he had more space for anger.

«She's been worried about you, my heart. She could tell you were hiding some deep hurt. From her point of view you did change overnight; I was the most obvious cause, and - she barely knew me; what else would she think?»

«No-one else noticed.» There's a sullen sort of grief in that.

«Didn't I, when you went back without me?» The stab of pain is no less than he deserves. «Didn't Veron? Who else loves you like she does, knows you like she does, and didn't already know?»

Mother, but he already knows what Guae will say to that; mother understands the intent she had in making him far better than she understands the outcome.)



*



He was so angry, when Guae died, when he started this. He remembers that anger; knows now that it was grief, at the heart of it, for all the lost chances. And now there are whole lifetimes more chances he's thrown away, and all that defensive anger is buried beneath a landslide of despair.

He is deep beneath that crushing weight when she comes.

She has not truly come alone, not in such times as this, not so close to the edge of her ward-bounds, but she leaves her guard down by the road. Neither sound nor sight nor scent betrays her, here in these woods where she hunted in happier times; that he feels her approach at all is only because she permits it. Hanno does not wonder that there are those among the sfità who revere the First almost as gods.

He's not sure he ever wondered, at that. In the long dark, the first time, perhaps.



He can taste her despair more surely now, kin to his own, and that is not something she is choosing to let show. He's not entirely sure she's aware of it at all.

"Hannothferan," she calls, still beyond a bow-shot's distance, her will carrying her voice to him more than the air does; he lets her feel his acknowledgement. This caution she taught him herself, long years and lifetimes gone.



"Hannothferan -" she says again, soft and helpless, from the edge of the little clearing, where an old beech held its ground when the land slipped away.

"Mother," he breathes, hardly more than a whisper. He can hardly make it be more than a whisper; he's so tired. So afraid. She came, but -

- but she has the power to tear down mountains, the power to crush mortal minds beneath her will, to break them as Moravin breaks the reschtört, and he has come here today to set his will against hers, and he knows - he who stood his ground against Moravin on the field, the first time around - he knows in his bones that he's unequal to the task.

He's never even been able to bring himself to tell her the truth; never been sure if it's fear or shame or just the bitter resentment; she never noticed.



She's noticing something now. Cautious as she taught him to be with wild things, her approach slow and oblique. She doesn't try and touch; stops out of sword-reach, settles to the ground.

"I'm here." It's an overture, but - he has nothing to offer back. Only the crushing weight of the inevitable, and that, she can already feel.

He closes his eyes.



"Hannothferan, first-hope -" she wants to ask him what's wrong, he can feel it in her, and feel the way she won't let herself say it. "I never wanted this for you."

"I know." He can't keep any of it out of his voice, the fear or the dread, and he doesn't try.

"Oh, my child." Neither can she, and she is trying. "I know it feels like there's no way out, no way forward - believe me, Hanno, I know. I know it hurts. And - this, in this hour - when - hope hides her face, when all seems lost - this, the bitter truth is we none of us knew what we were doing, when we made you, and - I think now, it was cruel of me, but - Hanno. Hannothferan. An noth thferantz. This moment, days like these - this is what I named you for."

That's - a worthwhile reminder, actually. Breathe through the ache of it.

"Forgive me," she says, with all the weight of ritual behind it; even with his eyes closed he feels her make the gestures. And then - very gentle - "I know I haven't always been - very supportive. They told me he was healing well, but -"

The concern catches him by surprise. Guae's presence in the back of his mind - mildly irked, just now, because he thinks Hanno's taking an unreasonable risk - is a constant, a touchstone, he knows distant and quiet from closed from fractured far too well to mistake any of them for dead and it hadn't occurred to him that she'd light on that as an explanation for his misery. Obvious, in hindsight.

"He is," he manages to say, one thread of hope in the whole rotten weave. The safe hold waiting for him to take it, the one he isn't reaching for because - because. "It's just - everything else."

"Oh - powers." The flicker of relief is small, but it's more than he expected her to be able to muster. She's never actually liked Guae, as far as he knows, and she's certainly never been anything other than - at best - confused by their relationship.

There's a moment of silence in the still pre-dawn woods.

"I - don't know if it helps," she says. Reluctant. The words aren't a lie; the attempt to make them sound optimistic is. "But - I do have - the beginnings of a plan."



It really doesn't.

"It won't work." Harsh, but she already knows that. He lets the cold certainty of despair roll over them both. "You will die. And it will all end -" as it has before - "in blood and pain and prices paid." By everybody but him.

"Does it have to be like that?" Galadhé's voice doesn't precisely wobble, but it is very soft. "Does it have to end that way?"



(Yes.)



Hanno curls his bare right hand around the hilt of Guae's sword; reaches for the hope she named him for. His fingers settle more-or-less in their familiar places on soft leather. Chamois, whose living kin have fled, as all that lives and runs has fled: up-mountain, into the deep forest, outwith the Hunter's reach. He has not been subtle, in his presence here. No rustle of voles among the bushes, no chatter of squirrels, no calling of small birds; only the wind in the leaves, sighing soft.

"It might." Ash in his mouth.

He breathes in; tastes the dew on the cool air, the heady richness of damp earth and moss. Your own despair is different, but at the same time, it's not different at all. Breathes out dread.

On the second breath, he catches the lingering traces of saddle-soap and leather and horses; forms better words. "It might not."

He feels his mother's impulse to speech as much as he hears her drawn breath; makes the hunt-signs for quiet and wait with his left hand. He doesn't think he could take his right from the sword if he tried; he doesn't want to.

Mother goes still and more than still; blurs her weight on the world, becomes a heaviness in this quadrant of her ward-lines rather than a definite presence.



The third breath is steel and blade-oil; he opens his eyes. 

The First Lord of Dawn is kneeling in the leaf-litter, tears in her eyes and the first blue-green glow of a new day on the horizon behind her. There's a stained-glass window in Faltkuss almost exactly like that; The Hunter Grieves The Kill.

In the window she carries no sword, only the hunting-bow on her back and the knives at her belt. But that was in the long dark, and if - here, on what is still her home ground - she is not fully armed for war, she still goes prepared to fight if she must.



In this hour - he is far from unaware; it rolls from her like a wave unbidden - he has made her burden heavier. The Hunter Grieves Her Child, he might call this. There's guilt in that, and regret, and they cannot be allowed to matter.

He meets her eyes. The pain in her calls to the pain in him, and that, too, cannot be allowed to matter.

The wind is coming up warm from the north, from the river. Around them the forest waits, still and dark and quiet. Mother is not the only thing here that is older than he; he lets the forest be a buttress; leans into the stillness beneath trees that had stood for centuries before she brought him into this world. Feels the life of the deep forest, on the edge of his awareness; whatever else he has become, he is still his mother's son, and enough of a hunter that the forest knows him.

He allows himself one more breath.



"One day, it will not," he says, very quietly, and the faith comes up out of the sword, out of the bones of the mountain and down from the deep forest, hope burning as the sun burns away the creeping mist. There is always another sunrise, for as long as he can bear to open his eyes and greet it. Always another chance, for as long as they can bear to step onto the Arch one more time.

For all Galadhé's power - for all his love for his mother - she cannot stop them, no matter how badly she takes this. It can only hurt, and what is one more drop of pain when the whole world is screaming already? Moravin cannot stop them, and Moravin has tried, has bent his will to breaking in the full knowledge that the only way he can win now is if he can make them give up. Even the world-shapers cannot stop them, so long as they have the will to go on. Hanno's will burns fierce and unstoppable in this hour, and somewhere far distant, Guae feels the change, and answers - as, in this hour, Hanno knows he will always answer - with warmth, and with love, with a solid strength to anchor the tendency to flightiness that he's self-aware enough not to pretend he doesn't have.

Galadhé's breath catches; her silhouette wavers, almost loses coherence; reforms a little flaky around the edges. And now her voice does wobble, but there's something new in it. Or something very old.

"How did you -" her focus sharpens, into something that from anyone mortal he might call awe - "how long have you been this?"

Hanno reaches out, left hand for her right. There are times he's feared her - feared all the First, the legacy of Moravin's hand - but this morning's spring-steel certainty has no place for that. He reaches, and knows in his bones she will reach back.



"Since the morning you made me," he says, as she strips off her gloves and shuffles close enough to take his hand in both of hers. Gentle as if he were a new-born calf, but - no longer wary, not in the same way, not of him nor of the sword in his hand. "Since you took me to the Fastness of Dusk in the third year of the hell-white." Three lives and half of a fourth he's kept this from her, lead on his tongue, and now he meets her eye and tells the truth. "Thinking to leave me in your sister's care because there was there was nothing more you could do for me. Because I believed Guae had betrayed me and I couldn't get past that, and you thought he was rinsing me for tactical information through the bond. We were both wrong, but that - wasn't the point." That never happened, this time around; she's listening, stone still, not so much as a breath or a heartbeat.

Three lives and half of the fourth afraid she wouldn't.

"Since Guae handed you the crown and it chewed you up until you threw your life away against Moravin and it fell to me as the best of a bad lot, because Vero couldn't lead on the field and sure as hell no-one would follow Guae. By then they were only even tolerating him because they thought I had him leashed. And - the damned thing was poison. Sucked the marrow from your bones and the hope from your heart." He shudders still, thinking of it; it's so obvious, in hindsight, what it was doing to him. "Since I took the field against Moravin and died -"

Mother remembers to breathe again, if only so that she can sigh - "oh, Hanno."

"That part was easy," he says, and there's still something dark enough in her humour to appreciate his; the stifled noise isn't a laugh, precisely, but it's not nothing either. "The hard part was having to watch from the grey beyond while my beloved lost his damn mind."

"And so - you came back."

"I did. And - failed again. Failed harder, because I was a damned fool for trying to do it on my own." He's not exactly being subtle, here. "And then we came back together, and found - started finding - so many new ways to fail. And piece by starveling piece - ways to fix things. But this -" breathe out despair and dread, breathe in confidence and hope - "maybe this goes back to my first life, and the hell-white. Poor Vero had to tell you what Attavia had done -" he didn't need to, this time, and Hanno doesn't actually know why - "I didn't understand it at the time, but looking back - Guae's nightmares were leaking through, which wasn't helping, and - I wasn't consciously trying to go out in a blaze of glory, but - you took any chance of that away from me, and Vero wouldn't let me lay down and die. So I had to find another way."



She's stone-still again, taking it in. It's a lot, and he's not telling it in the most coherent way possible, but - that's not really what matters. What matters is that there's something in her that wants to hope, unfurling, reaching. Turning her face to the sun, in metaphor if not in form.

"It's not because it brings light that dawn means hope," he mutters, looking past her to the brightening horizon. "It was - I got pretty tangled up about that, for a while in the hell-white. The first time. Vero reads a lot of philosophy - well." He finds himself laughing, just a little, and meaning it, "honestly, Vero mostly reads incredibly scarlet romances. And poetry and music theory and what-not, but - I don't have the patience for poetry, I've always been a lousy music theorist, and I certainly wasn't in a state of mind to appreciate other people's happy endings -"

Oh, of course. Hanno can feel the curiosity that is as much a fundamental part of her as hope ought to be; hardly needs the flicker of her hands requesting clarification.

"I was - look. You had - honestly, good reasons, when you took me to the Fastness. I wasn't happy about it, but I wasn't happy about anything. There was an ambush - it nearly went very badly. We think - Guae and I think, now, that it was just coincidence; we've seen what happens when - look. Moravin's been in my head. Not in this lifetime, we were - very careful, this time, but - we know what it feels like, we know what he can do. That first time - it was just me being tired and reckless and in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I don't - can't - blame you, for thinking it was something else. I was trying to run fast enough to stay ahead of my own thoughts. Turns out -" still not bothering to be subtle - "you can't actually do that."

The First Lord of Dawn looks down. She nods. She knows.

"Vero thinks I was mostly angry, underneath, and that I was afraid of what I was going to do, stuck there with nothing to kill. That I was wearing myself to the bone on purpose. He might be right, though - the way I remember it, I doubt I was thinking that clearly. I wasn't sleeping, I hadn't been able to sleep without running myself into the ground for - a long time. He says I'd eat if they put food in front of me, I don't think I tasted a damn thing. Kept ending up on the walls, or getting ushered back inside because the talith didn't think I was wearing half enough clothes to be out there. I don't know how long it took Vero to decide he needed to do something about it; it's just a blur, in my memory." He can say it plainly enough, now that it comes to the point. Neutrally enough, even, though he does have to consciously relax his white-knuckled grip on Guae's sword afterwards.

Half the hope in the sword is for this, more than anything; the reminder that Guae will always come back to him.



"Veron was helping you, then?" She prompts, when he's been silent for perhaps a little too long.

"He didn't fix it; I had to do that myself. That's important. But - helping, yes. He just - wouldn't let me give up. And - I'm not going to lie, I think at first I just did what he wanted because it was easier than arguing with him, and I hadn't got it in me to care. He figured out he could sing me to sleep. Pretty much didn't let me out of his sight for - a few weeks, at least. Even when I kept nearly kicking the shit out of him half-waking out of Guae's nightmares. Even when I had a good stab at it on purpose. You both named us well, you know. His hope's more - in the small things, in doing what you can, in looking to the better future. I can't say that he always feels it, but he always acts it. Mine, well -" one-handed shrug, left palm to the sky. Breathe in leaf-mould and resin; steel and leather-wax; hope. "I don't know about cruel, I -" whether she saw what he would be and named him for that, or saw what he would need to be and shaped him for that, he's not sure he wants to know - "you were right about me. Hope in the cold shadow of despair."

"You don't always feel it, either."

He finds himself laughing, a little. "Absolutely not. But -" taps the sword, which she's surely worked out he's holding for a reason - "I can - always - find my way home. And that, Path-Finder, Ice-Walker, Lord of the High Passes and the Deep Woods and the Dawn - is something I got from you."

She makes a face at the epithets, but she does take the point.



"I've had help." No harm in drilling that point home. "I've had a lot of help, over the years, and a lot of it came from Dusk in the hell-white. Not just Vero, even." His attempt at a smile is probably more of a grimace. "Being lectured by three different sfità priests is an interesting experience. For all parties. Part of my problem was, ah, 'reckless mishandling' of my bond with Guae, of course - you weren't actually wrong to be worried about that - honestly, you should probably have been more worried; it's - what it is now is - something we built without understanding what we were doing to ourselves, ripped to shreds twice over, rebuilt from the ground up when we came back together, and - it's only gotten deeper. He's in the Fastness," two dozen leagues north-west, as the crow flies, "and the only reason he's not watching through my eyes right now is that this -" he waves - "was something I needed to do alone. And besides, hope's not really his thing. Grim endurance, honestly. But - a truly new bond that went as deep as ours does now - I think even the Nenn would worry about that. And even the other talith think the Nenn are weird; most of the sfità are horrified by them. The Vetuk are just like, ni khell nu khulik, straight-up blasphemy. Which was -" he grins; this was genuinely funny even at the time and it's more so now that it doesn't hurt. "Kind of hilarious, actually, because by the same tradition, Guae and I are definitionally incapable of blasphemy. Which is bullshit, because what Moravin's been doing is blasphemy if anything is. But try telling them that. Especially if you're Vero; the Vetuk have... very mixed feelings, shall we say, about him. You could almost hear the mental contortions."

He's getting off the point, but at least she's looking curious rather than... anything else.

"But - anyway, I was pretty tangled up around the whole thing and - it helped, the philosophy. With getting some distance. Always another day, always another dawn, always another chance to find the way out. And there's hope in Dusk, too. Just - a different kind. Hope for respite, perhaps."



"Being lectured by my son is also an interesting experience," she observes. The flicker of a smile that plays around her lips and never quite touches her eyes is more than enough to take the sting out of it. "You've never told me any of this before."

"No." Not in this life, obviously. Not in any life.

"Why tell me now?"

Of course hints weren't going to cut it. "Because you're contemplating doing something stupid and heroic and it's going to get you killed. And nothing else I've ever tried has made you listen." It comes out bitter. "I know think you're the only one left who stands a chance of defeating Moravin. I know why you think that. But - on the one hand, you're not, and on the other -" if has to fight her over this, he's going to fight as dirty as it takes - "you can't. You can't win against him."



She goes strange at the edges again. Takes a moment, and when she does reply, it's not what he expects.

"My sister knew."

He tries not to wince. "So Vero tells me. He also tells me that sort of insight is more in their nature than ours." It's not quite a platitude, but perhaps it will blunt the apology he really doesn't want to hear.

"She wrote to me." Which is still not what he's expecting. "If your eldest ever comes to you with a warning he cannot explain - listen to him. I'm listening, Hannothferan. You tell me there's hope here, and then you tell me I can't win. Talk."

"I think you already knew you couldn't win against him." Flat.

He can feel her suppressing the impulse to argue.

"And if you don't know that yet - trust me, mother, I do. I've watched you ride against him and fall four times now. The third time, you took Makna with you. It didn't help. Moravin is not wholly what he should be; you're outmatched."

For a moment, the stubborn set of her shoulders, the way her head comes up, is like looking in a mirror. "I know that. But my sister is gone, and my brother is dead, and everyone else is even more outmatched."

"Only if you fight fair." As mild as he can make it. "He won't."



She considers him. Really looks at him, the way she looks at the landscape, at her path, at her prey, but never at people.

"You see a better way," she says, in the end, and it's not a question.

"I believe there is one. We did kill him the first time around, Ilvhan and I. I had - more or less what was left of your power, after you fell. Ilvhan had Attavia's, mostly. Pulled from the wards and shaped into a weapon. That's a - different problem. And then the third time, Anaie turned the Fastness of Dusk into a smoking crater with him in the middle of it. Along with basically everyone else who wasn't already dead. Not good outcomes, but - killing him and dying is at least a step up from dying and not killing him. And he can't come back up the Arch; the world-shapers promised me that. We can. All we have to do is keep going until we get it right."

"That's your husband's influence," she observes, a little stiffly.

Well. He supposes it is obvious. "Yes. Some days it's easier than others. Look -" he shifts up to his knees; reverses Guae's sword and leans close enough that he can wrap her hand over his on the hilt. "Can you feel that?"

"It's his sword," she says, after a moment. "But - your working, I think?"

Hanno nods. "You - remember when Moravin called them all home, near the end of the long dark? It was the same last time. Guae went, knowing what was going to happen, because - not doing that made things worse. He gave me this, before he left. Made a horrible joke about how he wasn't going to need it until I came for him anyway, but - it was a promise, in a way. That we were going to get through this. Something to hold on to. I didn't - at first, I don't think I really knew quite how much power I was putting into it, it wasn't deliberate. And then I didn't really notice until I gave it back to him, last time - well, the second time I gave it back, really - and he laughed at me." He can't quite keep himself from grinning, about that; it was the first real laugh he'd heard out of Guae after the hell-white. "And - it's not so much that the sword came back with us but the pattern did, all the - everything from last time was there again the first time I touched it. This time, I mean."

"That's why you kept arguing with the arms-masters," mother's laughing at him, too, a little, eyes dancing.

"That, and I'm honestly better with this, these days; I've had more practice than their theory accounts for. Guae made me one to match, last time. Well. He and Thari; I'm pretty sure she didn't just supervise, I don't think he could have done the delicate bits -" Moravin made a hell of a mess of his right hand, last time, and has done exactly the same this time, which is more than a little disconcerting - "and this one was her work, originally."



Some of the solemness comes back into her face, but not, he thinks - he hopes - quite like it was before. "Is he - how is he?"

Hanno winces. "A mess. He'll - I think he'll be alright, but - I don't think it gets any easier."

"How many times?"

"Four. No. Three that he remembers." Her eyes narrow. And one where I talked him out of it and Moravin grabbed Mauro instead. That was a mess."

"You didn't lose count, just now."

"No," he looks down; at their hands, at the sword. Tries to make it wry. "I do know whereof I speak, when I say that throwing yourself to the wolves to try and spare everyone else doesn't work."

"Oh, Hanno. You've never learnt anything the easy way, have you." She reaches - hesitates -

- he leans in; lets himself be held. Finds the strength to set the sword aside and curl into the warmth of his mother's arms.



The laughter bubbles up out of nowhere. "I really don't know what you expected from me."

"Nothing less than miracles, my first-hope. And you have certainly delivered. Come on -" there's new lightness in her - "let's find my people, and your people, and start figuring out how we win this time."