"I had a talk with your... boyfriend," Rudra started. "Percival Leonhart."
"He is my friend," Tish said flatly. Then she added, "And what relationship I have with him is none of your business."
"I am not trying to—"
"You are. You are deflecting."
"My point is he made me understand!" Rudra said. "In the past timeline, you didn't save me because you had some hidden motive that I didn't, couldn't, see. You did it because you are you. You help. Like dragons burn things, you mend things." He tore his eyes away from hers and looked outside. Although it was barely midday, the light was already thin and grey, and he felt the day was coming to an end.
"So that's it?" Tish sounded offended. "You just needed a pep talk to stop meddling in my life?"
Rudra didn't answer. He kept his eyes on the window, on the daylight, which was weak even at noon and seemed to be dying too soon for the long cold night. But he was clenching his jaw so hard it ached.
"You are a real piece of work," Tish whispered. "I get what you are saying. I really do. But when you see me losing fingers and suddenly announce your self-realisations, I can't help but realise what a selfish person you are."
Rudra slowly turned.
Tish wasn't looking at him anymore. She was looking at her hands, palms spread. Her head was ducked, and golden hair veiled her face. "I keep forgetting you do not care about anything but yourself."
"They are after Nayan."
The words tumbled out of him before he could hold them back. But Tish didn't ask what he meant. She didn't even say anything.
Fuck it.
"The shapeshifters. They want to kill her," Rudra said, looking back at the window. "Because I killed Suba, their King, a year back. His brother, Marich, is the new King. He decided that since I killed his brother, he would kill my sister."
"Is she—" Tish finally spoke.
"No," Rudra said. "She isn't! It is just..." The words were failing him. Everything felt too confusing. His father's negligence in finding the Sword of Mamon. The shapeshifters. Everything.
Rudra took a long breath to organise his thoughts. Then he spoke slowly. "In the past timeline, after you departed for Benevia, I didn't chase you down. I focused on hunting the shapeshifters and aiding my father. For three years." He didn't know why he was saying these words, but he continued. "Then my father had to send Nayan on a diplomatic mission to Benevia to make sure our countries were on good terms, not that he cared. It was a formality." He shrugged. "But she went anyway. And she came back in a box. Assassinated. And I lost all reason. I went to Benevia and took the thing they considered most precious. I took you and flew to Alaka."
Tish was so quiet it made him nervous. Perhaps he was oversharing.
"My point is," he cleared his throat, "it all started because Nayan died in the past timeline. Now that I've come back, I can't let her die again. It's not that I don't care if you..." He corrected himself quickly. "I mean Benevian soldiers as a whole, including Konstantin, die or not." His tongue felt slippery, and Tish's silence was somehow worse than her shouting. "It's just that you have a habit of walking into fire, and the person I care about more is also following you into that fire. You can heal, Tish. But Nayan? She'll stay dead."
Tish finally lifted her head and looked at him. She didn't look surprised or offended. Her face looked... open.
"She is not my sister," Rudra repeated. "But she is the only person who treats me like a human. With her gone, I'll just be a dragon."
A minute passed.
Then Tish let out a shaky exhale. "I get what you are saying," she whispered. "That woman tolerates you and finds reasons to care about you even though nobody should."
Her words should have stung him. But they didn't.
"How about you make a deal with me," Tish offered. "You protect my people, and I'll protect your person. With me around, she will never perish."
She said it a little too quickly, as if she were persuading herself too.
It was a tempting offer. "I can't trust you," Rudra said honestly. "You hate me, and I don't believe you'll hold up your end of the bargain."
Tish frowned. "You traumatised me back in Partha—"
"I didn't mean to—"
"Then you attacked my country and almost succeeded in dragging me back to that hellhole," Tish continued, again not giving a damn about whatever Rudra was saying. Again.
"I told you! I had reasons!"
"—and I am still trying to trust you, and you're acting like I'm the one with the moral compass of a pirate!"
Really, the temple should hold anger management classes for their Saintesses.
"You care about Nayan Dev?" Tish asked. "I care about my people too! I care about Mirek, who died who knows how! And Yakov, gods, he is missing. His Highness Mamon, and Percival, who is, who is my friend, why are you making that face!"
"I am not making any face!" Rudra protested, but he could feel his lips twitching. "All I'm saying is I don't care about your special friends."
Tish paused. Absorbed the mockery. She blinked slowly, and her mouth twitched.
Then she scrambled out of bed, the blanket tangling around her legs. Part of Rudra was scared of another holy power outburst, and the other part was just curious what she would do.
He stepped back and leaned against the wall.
She didn't come at him. She had only meant to stand and look him in the eye, but halfway up her gaze snagged on the table beside the bed, and she froze.
The clay pot of herbal paste, left there by the Kroskoslav medic who had rewound the bandage around her hand. And sticking out of it, handle up, was a spoon.
Rudra hadn't noticed it. The paste reeked so strongly of roots and mint that it buried the smell of metal, and he had spent the last hour at the window with his back to the table.
His stomach dropped.
For twenty years nobody had known about his fear of spoons, since nobody knew what Saroth had done to him to force his first transformation. He had never needed to check a room for them.
Tish pulled the spoon out of the paste slowly, the way you'd lift something that might bite. Then she held it with purpose.
She turned to glare at him. "That time you threw away my rice pudding..."
Rudra struggled to understand what she meant for a few seconds before he recalled the first time he had really seen Tish. Ah.
He remembered Tish fumbling with the box of rice pudding and then holding up a spoonful of it towards him.
A spoonful.
And him snapping, not because he was angry with her but because he was scared. Scared of Saroth. Scared of the memory of a spoon being forced between his teeth, when he had been six, to keep his mouth open while Saroth stabbed a needle into the soft palate of his mouth to make his first draconic transformation happen.
And he had taken that out on her. On someone who had no clue about his past whatsoever and who had spent hours writing six... seven letters just to have an afternoon walk with him.
Just because she was a healer. And because she had held a spoon in front of his face.
"Right," he said, throat dry. "That." He couldn't look at her face for some reason. He couldn't say how he had gone to find her two hours later, only to make it worse.
"Yes," Tish stepped closer, eyes narrowed. "That." She still held the spoon in front of her like a knife. Rudra pressed himself against the wall. "I didn't take you to be someone who holds grudges over wasted food." He tried to smile. But then Tish pressed the bowl of the spoon against his jaw, and the smile faltered.
She couldn't have known. Not from that one encounter. And that would mean...
"Saroth," he growled. "He told you?"
Her eyes widened, and then they narrowed. She looked... offended. "No! He didn't tell me this! I figured it out!" she snapped, pressing the spoon further against Rudra's jaw. The cool smooth metal made Rudra's pulse jump. But at least it was far from his mouth.
Still, he kept his face turned away as he listened in quiet horror to Tish's observations of his habits, habits he thought nobody had ever noticed. "In your quarters, you always eat using your hands!"
"That's our tradition!" It was true. Mostly.
"You use knives to cut steak!" Tish grabbed Rudra's collar with her free hand. "You don't avoid knives or chopsticks. Just spoons!" She cornered him both physically and logically. "So yes, I figured it out." She paused, as if piecing the rest together.
Rudra realised that Tish didn't know it all. But she knew enough.
She looked back at Rudra and glared. "You treated me like a villain when I first came to Partha because you compared me to him!" She grinned. "And now I'll behave like one."
Rudra quietly prayed to Goddess Rāva.