ELRIC'S POV
He is drowning in someone else's blood.
Elric wakes gasping but he is not in the cave. He is somewhere else. Somewhere made of stone so old it remembers empires. He is small. He is so small. His hands are tiny and his feet are bare and there is a woman in front of him with eyes made of winter.
The empress.
She is teaching him. No. She is teaching someone else. A girl. A girl with dark skin and sharp bones and eyes that do not want to be afraid but are afraid anyway. The girl is maybe six years old and she is crying.
"Stop," the empress says. "Feeling is weakness. A killer does not feel. A killer does not cry. A killer is nothing but function."
The girl stops crying. Forces the tears back. Forces her face into blankness. It takes everything inside her but she does it.
Elric watches this happen and realizes with horror that he is seeing through someone's eyes. He is inside someone's head. He is living someone's memory.
He is living Kira's memory.
The scene shifts. The girl is older now. Maybe eight. She is fighting a man twice her size. The man hits her and she does not flinch. She does not show pain. She just keeps fighting. Keeps moving. Keeps the blankness on her face even when blood runs down her chin.
"Better," the empress says. "You are learning what it means to be useful."
The memory shifts again. The girl is ten now and she has already killed someone. Elric feels her horror at what she has done. Feels her trying to bury that horror so deep that nobody will ever find it. Feels the empress praising her for the kill. Feels the girl learning that killing is love. That obedience is survival. That feeling anything is the fastest way to die.
Elric tries to pull away from the memories but they will not release him. They pull him deeper. Show him every moment the fortress stole from Kira. Every hour they spent teaching her to be a weapon. Every piece of her they broke down and rebuilt into something that could kill without hesitation.
He sees the girl she was supposed to be. The child who liked flowers and laughed easily. The girl who wanted to be loved. All of it ground away until nothing remained but function.
Elric wakes screaming.
He is back in the cave. His face is wet. He is crying. His whole body shakes like he is freezing but the cave is not cold. The cold is coming from inside him. The cold of understanding what was done to her. The cold of knowing that everything Kira became was not her choice.
She was made into a weapon the way a blacksmith makes a sword.
And then they sent her to kill him.
Kira is awake beside him. Her eyes are open and she is staring at something that is not in the cave. Elric realizes what is happening the moment it clicks in his head. She is still inside his memories. She is seeing his life the way he saw hers.
She is watching him starve.
She is watching him choose to go hungry so a younger street kid could eat. She is watching the night Mara found him. Watching the old woman clean his wounds with water she probably could not spare. Watching the years of surviving on nothing but will and the desperate need to keep breathing.
Kira's face breaks.
Tears slide down her cheeks silently. She is looking at Elric but she is not seeing him. She is seeing the boy he was. The boy who should have been loved and was only abandoned. The boy who learned to steal to survive because the world gave him no other choice.
She is grieving for him.
Slowly Kira comes back to the present. Her eyes focus on his face. They just stare at each other in the darkness of the cave and Elric understands without words what has happened. They have seen each other completely. Not just the surface. Not just the function they were designed for. They have seen the broken children inside the weapons.
"I am sorry," Kira says. It is the first time Elric has heard her apologize for anything. "I did not know. I should have known but I did not."
"You could not have known. The empress made sure of that."
"I was sent to kill you and I did not care. I just followed orders."
"Because you were taught that caring kills you."
Kira nods slowly. Through the bond Elric feels the weight of understanding settling on her. Feels her beginning to comprehend that the person she has become is not who she chose to be. It is who they forced her to become.
"The old woman," Kira says. "Mara. She loved you."
"Yes."
"She gave you something I never had. Someone who chose you just because. Someone who wanted you to survive."
Elric reaches out and takes Kira's hand. He expects her to pull away. Expects her to reject the tenderness. But she does not. She holds his hand like it is precious. Like his touch is the first kind thing that has ever been offered to her.
"You did not have anyone," Elric says.
"No."
"The empress was supposed to be like a mother and she was only cruel."
"She was only cruel."
They sit like that in the darkness. Holding hands. Connected by the bond and now also by understanding. The rage that was between them yesterday feels far away now. Not gone. But complicated. Transformed into something that is harder to name.
"Can you forgive me," Kira asks.
Elric does not know. Part of him still feels the terror of that moment in the alley. Still remembers looking at her and knowing he was about to die. But another part of him has now seen inside her. Has felt her training. Has understood that she was just as trapped as he was. Just trapped in different ways.
"Maybe," he says. "If you can forgive me for surviving when you were learning not to."
Kira's hand tightens around his. Through the bond he feels something shift inside her. Feels her beginning to understand that survival is not weakness. That wanting to live is not a betrayal of the fortress's teachings.
"There is something else," Kira says. Her voice is careful. "Something I saw in your memories."
"What."
"The jewel. Mara gave you the jewel. And in those memories I could feel it. I could feel that it was meant for someone specific. Someone with royal blood. It was waiting for you."
Elric nods. He has been trying not to think about that. Trying not to acknowledge what it means that an old woman who found him in an alley somehow had a jewel that could wake dragons.
"There is something you need to know about me too," Kira says. "Something the empress never told me but I feel it in my blood now. The same way you feel the dragon calling you heir."
"What is it."
"I am not just the empress's weapon. I am something older. Something from before the empire. The dragon recognized it when it bound us. I could feel it choosing me for a reason. I am connected to the old magic too. Connected to the bloodline."
Through the bond Elric feels the truth of this. Feels something ancient in her blood that matches something ancient in his. Feels like maybe the dragon did not make a mistake binding them together.
Feels like maybe the dragon understood something about them that they are only beginning to comprehend.
"What does that mean," Elric asks. "If we are both connected to the old bloodline."
"I do not know yet," Kira says. "But I think the dragon brought us together for a reason. Not as enemies. Not as captor and prisoner. As something else entirely."
She looks at him and Elric sees something in her eyes that was not there before. Something that looks almost like hope. Almost like the beginning of something that could become trust.
He squeezes her hand and feels her squeeze back.
Neither of them knows what comes next.
But for the first time since the dragon bound them, neither of them is afraid of facing it alone.