Half a second before the grenade hits, Gabriel sees its shadow on the sand in the corner of one eye. On the dunes, you can see almost anything--and the grenade is about twenty yards away.
"BackbackBACK! GRENADE!" And he knows it’s too late, but he shoves back the first silhouette he makes contact with.
People stumble past his vision, lost in their own trailing shadows. There’s a whining boom of impact, and he thinks the shifting pale green is from afterimages--but it’s from Saleh’s faded trenchcoat instead, and Gabriel’s a little confused as they scatter.
It doesn’t help when people start shouting, and then--and then his face hurts? Like looking into high-noon sun--
I saw her a mile off the white sand of Jhalna, comes the first line of Francis Marten’s poem.
Someone gives animal bellows of pain. It might be him, because his throat’s starting to hurt.
And oh, what my desert can conjure
Upon the eastern wind--
He scratches through reddened sand, spattering more blood as he flails.
“Gabe?!” Saleh grabs him, and the blue of a neutralizing spell pales against the blood in his eyes.
Her dress is an oasis--
“Wind-flung and sweeping green--” He can’t control his body, his voice, even his emotions--the grenade must have been enchanted for confusion. Or for turning people berserk--and oh fucking hell he has to get away--
“Where are you going?!” Dirt flies a few feet off as Saleh heads after him. “GABE!”
Marten’s poem dissolves into mush.
---
"--el. Gabriel?"
He wakes up to someone shaking him carefully, and winces. Oh boy, blinking hurts. "Saleh?" His face is wrapped in gauze.
"That one did a number on you," he says. "Don’t die in your sleep before my arm gets back to normal."
"Shrapnel?"
He shakes his head. "My anesthetic got hit. It soaked my sleeve." He presses Gabriel’s chest. "Stay down."
Gabriel puts his hand out again, and it hits canvas instead of plastic: This is his sleeping tent. "We’re not in the medic’s tent?"
"We... we don’t need it."
"Did you lose the med tent? You have shit luck." He’s trying to joke, but Saleh doesn’t move.
"We don’t need it," Saleh repeats, numb and fragile. He doesn’t choke, but Gabriel knows that tone. He hasn’t heard it since in high school, when Saleh ran from his parents and his hair wasn’t quite gray yet.
Something’s wrong. He shoves himself up, ignoring the pain and Saleh’s attempt to keep him down again. "Where is everyone?"
No answer.
"Saleh?" He pushes down the layer of gauze, and he can finally see: Saleh’s hiding in his faded green coat, his hair blending with the canvas. So Gabriel breathes out and leaves him alone.
He knows from the pain in his face that Saleh can’t have healed him up, at least not much. After he takes off Gabe’s bandages, he pulls the vial of blood-thinner and waits.
“Saleh,” he doesn’t know why he laughs, but he does. “Blood-thinner doesn’t hurt.”
“But stitches do,” the medic apologizes.
“I’m not made of paper,” Gabe says with more confidence than he feels. “Just go ahead after the scabs are gone.”
---
When the sun sets and the nighttime cold numbs the ache in his face, Saleh curls up under his arm. He’s whispering something in Arabic. Gabe can only pick out a few words--he grew up in the south of Jhalna, not the west where most Arabs lived, and he only took one year of Arabic in school. But he knows what a prayer sounds like.
The next morning, when the slash on his face is almost scabbed over, he staggers out of the tent where Saleh is standing at the height of the dune. Something narrow is stuck in the sand by him.
It’s Mallory’s gun, wrapped in the team’s dog tags--they flash like stars in the morning sun. Saleh repeats the prayer from last night as he brings up three palms of sand, trickles each one carefully around Mallory’s gun, and pats the golden sand down when he’s finished. His shoulders are starting to hitch.
He waits for Saleh to finish before he manages to talk. "All of them?"
"Yes."
"We have shit luck." Gabe thuds into the sand.
"Yes." Dark spots hit the dune by Saleh’s feet. “You didn’t go berserk. It was a confusion spell. Half the squad was hit by it.”
“Thank God I was useless instead of trying to kill my crew.” Gabe’s hands clench. “Do you know what happened?”
“Same thing that usually does. Grenade hits, spell kicks in, lots of guns.”
“How did we avoid the guns?”
“We were too far from the impact point by the time they got in. Probably thought we were dead already.” Saleh sits with him. “Why you were running?”
“I thought I was berserk,” Gabe tells him, shaking, and he can’t figure out how to wipe his eyes between the stitches and the gauze. The salt hurts like a bitch. “Fuck. I was trying to get out of the kill zone.”
“Thinking you’re berserk when you’re not is better than the opposite.” Saleh helps him wipe his face off. "This’ll scar if I don’t finish healing it."
"No." He keeps him there, as much for comfort as to make sure he doesn’t use magic.
"You’re not in a position to refuse healing," the medic retorts, which is a good sign because an arguing Saleh is a less-depressed Saleh. “What if it gets infected?”
“But if you die of magic exhaustion before we get ambushed or rescued, I’m even more fucked than I am now.”
“Gabe, don’t be a martyr--”
"I asked you to marry me and you said you don’t know." He knows it’s a cheap shot, but they’re stuck on the dunes anyway. "I’m not letting you die without an answer just to fix my face."
"Fine." Saleh presses his mouth to a less-shredded part of Gabe’s face.
Even that tiny thing makes him wince, but at least it’s bearable. "Does that mean yes?"
"It means we’re not going to die."
---
The rescue chopper arrives a little past noon after three days, with Major Asra binte Haleed and a few members of her platoon. She takes one look at Gabe’s wreck of a face and orders him on R-and-R leave until they’ve gotten to Berteh. Or when they get a mage who isn’t exhausted, whichever comes first.
“Everyone else, shut the fuck up,” she adds while the medics hook Gabe to a stabilizing crystal. “I don’t want anyone asking what happened. The news is gonna do that.”
“They all died,” Saleh says. “What’s there to tell?”
“I know, but this was a shit move for General Carrigan. Journalists want details of the tragedy.” She sighs and hugs him. “Ever since the queen died, he’s been going off the rails--who the hell would be dumb enough to cross the Kabye? It’s a desert, not a carnival.”
“Fifteen thousand men from England?” A medic asks wryly.
“Important people,” Asra corrects. “Anrehar and Italy headed for Lake Huliateh, as sane armies do. All we had to do was wait for the Kabye to kill the unlucky bastards with heat stroke, fill Barakaok Pass with patrollers just in case, and keep everything west of the Broken Mountains under watch so we can pick off whoever survives. But no, Carrigan sends people into the actual desert.”
“You know how the war’s going?” Gabe wonders.
“Badly,” Asra says. “Officially, everyone’s called off the whole ‘religious war’ bullshit, but we still have to get everyone out. Negotiate peace treaties, which I think are going to be a shitload of ‘we’re cool now, and we’re never doing this again’ repeats.”
Gabe groans and digs harder into Saleh’s shoulder.
“Saleh ain’t gonna protect you,” Asra informs him. “He can’t even fix your face after two weeks in the desert.”
“Let me pretend, woman.” He tries to sleep.
---
After four days of healing the normal way, Gabe’s face injury has scabbed over without any serious infection--but it also means that moving half his face is gonna hurt like hell until they come off. So he’s ordered onto soft foods and put on an IV drip to head off any vitamin problems, and Gabe basically sleeps through the first few days.
“Sarge,” Mallory says, and he accidentally rips his IV out from how she scares him. “It’s not your fault.”
“See, that’s how I know you’re dead. You’re not the bleeding-heart type.”
“I’m not a liar, either,” she retorts as she sits with him. “Wrong place, wrong time. Don’t beat yourself up too much.”
“Saleh could have fried them with lightning,” he argues.
“Not without collecting some bullets.” Mallory smiles. “He’s too pretty to get shot in the face.”
“I didn’t get shot, it was shrapnel.” He checks the IV wound: The blood’s slowing down, but it’s not scabbing yet. “Why did he follow me?”
“‘Cause you were tripping balls, Sarge,” she reminds him. “And it’s not like we had fifty mages in a basic-ass squad. One taase’ mage is fine, plus--”
“A Level Six with Henry.” He digs into the pillow. “Did he get hit with the confusion spell?”
“Wrong place, wrong time.” Mallory repeats without answering his question, and the earth starts to billow underneath them. “Don’t beat yourself up too much.”
“Wait,” he stumbles out of the bed.
“There was nothing you could do,” she wavers out of his sight, but her voice is still there and the earth heaves under his feet--
“Wait--Mallory!” But she’s gone. “Is everyone with you?!”
“Gabe,” Saleh’s shaking him. “Gabe!”
“I need to talk to them!” He clutches his arm where the IV got ripped out, and then he hears the whine of the grenade-- “WAIT!”
“Gabriel.” Saleh’s hands press hard into his shoulders. “No one’s here.”
“I saw Mallory,” he blurts out.
“Give me your arm,” Saleh tells him patiently.
Gabe reaches out clunky like he’s seasick, and Saleh wipes the blood off with his sleeve before he blows a mist onto the IV wound. Something like a tuning fork hums in his skull, too high and fragile to be from a human, and the ground stops moving. “Did… did you hear them?”
“Hey.” Saleh tightens his grip around Gabe’s shoulders. “You’re okay. Breathe.”
“Saleh, did you hear them?” Gabe’s eyes are burning. “Are they talking to you?”
“Shhhhhh.” His voice is like wind through Gabe’s hair, but Gabe struggles away to scrape into the corners, the bathroom, the hallway, and he looks out the window just in case.
He waits up for a sign of the others, muscles humming tense, until the stars fade into black and Saleh needs to close the open window.
Mallory doesn’t come back. Neither do the others.
Through the sleep dragging at his mind, and Saleh’s shoulder pressed warm by his temple, he hears her voice again:
There was nothing you could do.
---
Saleh can speed up the healing for Gabe’s face to one week instead of two or three, but since they missed the two-day mark back in the Kabye, there’s a thick net of scars when the scabs come off.
It’s about the same kind of injury as most of the other soldiers from the Kabye--maybe better, since it’s not too red and lumpy--but it’s still right below his eyes, and even some other combatants wince when they see him.
It is really, really weird to see Nem decked in full royal garb when he arrives in the infirmary, handing out medals to the recovered combatants.
See, everyone knew in theory that Nem was Prince Nehemiah Flint, but that’s hard to remember when you’re desperately heading east with Thalonne’s undercover princess. When Nem wasn’t being suspiciously competent at fighting and managing their money, he spent most of his time drinking, horsing around with the young people, and flirting with Abbess Natasha Dobrosław. Sure, Natasha was about two decades younger than most priestesses thanks to war-promotion, but it’s the principle of not hitting on clergy that made everyone forget the whole “royalty” thing after a week.
Riiiight up till they got to the Jhalnan embassy in Poland, in which Nem walked up to Queen Zeruya and she not only didn’t slap him into Jhalna for at least ten breaches in protocol, but she fucking hugged him.
---
“Why did nobody believe me?” Nem complains on their drive to Northfall Hold. “I was with you guys for a year.”
“Because kings don’t hit on priestesses,” Gabe reminds him.
“She’s Protestant!” Nem shoots back. “And if I said anything that was actually out of line, she could have shot me with some god-light.”
“Surrrrre,” Gabe laughs. “The harmless blonde priestess would maim and/or kill someone for annoying her. That totally falls under ‘self-defense or defense of others’ in her oaths.”
“Or she could have slapped me,” Nem adds.
---
Nem won’t have a coronation for another year or two: He has to bury his mother, fix the palace, marry Natasha so he can get an heir in the works, and other important shit that matters more than a fancy party.
Of course he’d ask Gabe to stay in Northfall Hold--after the year they went through, that gives you a pretty good idea of someone’s capabilities.
But Gabe’s too tired right now.
“You don’t need us,” he says. “What are we gonna do, be on standby in case you can’t shoot or stab someone in three seconds? Or your priestess fiancée can’t shoot them with her god-magic? I could scare ‘em with my new scar, I guess.”
The king doesn’t notice that his joking’s only a habit. Or maybe he’s ignoring it, like he’s ignoring how Saleh hasn’t talked since they got here. “I don’t need paperwork and references for you two,” he says, grinning. “I will take anything that lightens the workload right now.”
“Nem,” Gabriel shakes his head. “We can’t do this.”
“Of course you can,” Nem laughs. “You know your shit, and you’re not crazy. You’re fucking over-qualified compared to Carrigan and Bandi--”
“I meant we don’t want to,” he finishes.
“Hmm.” The redhead sets his shoulders, corded and tan from the desert, and Gabe catches a glimpse of King Nehemiah. “I understand.”
It’s a while before anyone talks again, and Gabe looks at the office for the first time. You can’t tell anything happened to Northfall from the outside. The fire was mostly to smoke people out. But the room is still half-empty of furniture, and traces of black hint at the scorch marks that couldn’t get cleaned.
“I understand you,” Nem repeats in a little broken hitch, and Gabe has to hug him because of course he does. (But that doesn’t make it easier.)
“We’re done.”
And he feels his hand flick out once he reaches the door: A clink means that Saleh’s hand must have checked the side where his gear’s hanging.
Then the mage follows his signal, three steps behind.
---
They take a plane to the Philippines, then a ship the rest of the way to the Igun Islands, where Himumo Kagash is the landlord for their soon-to-be apartment. Arabic is perfect for that space between Southeast Asia and Malaysia, but Saleh complains that Iguni Arabic is so gravelly compared to Jhalnan Arabic. Gabe can’t comment on it, but Himumo laughs.
“Maguyu, you’ll get used to it,” Himumo assures him in her crackled old voice. “Just ask if they know English, especially if they’re your age. Young ones love meeting Europeans.”
“Are we still European if we’re from Jhalna?” Gabe jokes. “We’re a boat ride from Lebanon.”
“Saleh might be Asian, but you’re darker white or lighter black,” she retorts lightly. “And that means you speak English.”
He doesn’t realize that he’s settling closer to Saleh until Himumo’s eyes flick over to him in a warning. “Oops.”
“Be careful, sahib,” she says. “People are better now, but there’s only so much King Mabasu can control. If people don’t like you, there’s a lot of things they can do that won’t be illegal.”
“We’re used to that,” he admits.
---
The apartment building is in the lower side of Namakaone Valley, about twenty minutes from Juha’one City; the people downstairs are set to move in around next month.
“Perfect! I won’t scare off too much tourists with my face!” Gabe says.
“Sahib, we have plenty of people who are actually ugly,” Himumo assures. “Scars just scare away the shallow or dumb ones. You’ll fit right in.”
Giant clusters of leaves trail at the sides of the entrance, easily reaching their chests, and orange bird-head flowers rustle in a breeze.
“These aren’t real,” Saleh tells Himumo, inspecting one of them with a grin.
“Ayyy, maguyu! They’re birds of paradise, from Africa. Look it up--they exist.”
So Himumo gets their deposit check, gives them the keys, and points them to the laundry rooms before she helps them stack up their boxes of stuff--not that they have much, thanks to half a year of being undercover and the other half being back in the army. It’s only an hour before they’re done, and she shuttles off to return the truck.
---
Gabe finds out the hard way that Southeast Asia’s heat might be nice for most of his skin, but it doesn’t do well with his scar. He has to take a break about an hour into unpacking.
“I told you to get it healed up,” Saleh tells him, grabbing the jar of lotion from his bag. “But you had to bring up the proposal.”
“The fuck do you not know?” Gabe screws his eyes shut and prods the thickest corner. “Ow.”
“‘Not yet.’” He starts on Gabe’s right side, where the main scar frays into a mesh of stiff threads.
“When is yet?” He doesn’t mean to snap, but his face hurts and it’s been a year and a half, and his face really fucking hurts. “You’re the one who keeps saying that, so just tell me when and I’ll mark that shit on the calendar! ‘April 26, good time to re-propose to Saleh--’”
“We barely survived getting out of Anrehar when you asked me.”
“Normally that speeds up the wedding.”
“Well, we have bad luck. As usual.” Saleh reaches the point of Gabe’s cheek, and Gabe twitches a bit before he settles down. Something goes wrong about half an inch down, because shitshitshit it’s like he’s getting shrapnel in the face again--
“Sorry!” A strange note of music sounds: Healing magic. “You might have a neuroma--”
“Don’t care,” Gabe grinds out. “Magic, please.”
Even with the healing, he barely manages to let Saleh finish the rest of his scar before he gives up and stumbles to the bedroom. He feels less like his face got blown up, and more like it’s slowly getting torn in half with a fork--not much better, but welcome compared to what it was.
“It’ll hurt less in another week or two,” Saleh tells him. “Just get your fluids and lots of sleep.” He checks the time. “It’s a little late, but do you feel like eating lunch?”
“It was Tuesday afternoon when we boarded our flight, and it was Monday night when we got off.” Gabe shoves himself into the blanket. “It’s anyone’s bet what time it is now.”
“Wednesday, Gabriel. Time zones don’t work that way.” Saleh sits on the bed.
“Whatever. Time’s still screwed.”
So Saleh laughs and pillows down next to him, and it’s like they blink before they wake up to the bare black window.
Damn it, now Gabe has even less of a clue what time it is.
A silver thing shifts at the corner of his eye: Saleh’s up. “Is it Saturday or Tuesday again?” His voice is hoarse with sleep.
He sits up and wrangles his phone out of his pocket. “7:39PM. Still Friday.”
“Now we’re both confused,” the mage notes, and his smile presses into Gabe’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry for the calendar thing,” he says.
“I know.”
“I get why you’re not sure,” he stumbles on. And he doesn’t really know why his eyes start leaking, but there’s a lot of reasons he can think of and he feels like it’s been a long time coming. “I do, Saleh, at least in my head, but I keep--feeling like--”
They’re friends with at least three royals and what’s left of their families, and their squad is dead, and his face has been hurting for three weeks, and Saleh doesn’t fucking know if he’ll get married, and they flew across the world to try to get away from that shit--
“Like something’s wrong,” he wipes at his face with a blanket corner. “Not with you or your answer, with everything. Fucking everything. And I thought, please, just once.” Gabe winces when the blanket scratches. “Let me have something go right once in this life, whichever immortal--bastard… thing is watching me up there! And I swear I won’t ask for anything else!”
“Of course,” Saleh laughs, but it’s bruised. “Of course you finally remember you have a religion when you’re desperate. Christians are weird.”
“What about you? I didn’t hear you praying five times a day.”
“I had no time,” Saleh tells him, weary. “Either no time or no energy, and usually both. But now I can pray at a normal schedule because I’m not about to die, and that’s okay with Allah.”
Suddenly Gabe remembers the prayer at sunset: Was it really the same as the funeral one, or was it just a normal prayer since Saleh’s ‘going to die’ switch was shut off? Muslim prayers take five or ten minutes--that’s easy for normal life, but not when you’re shooting people or trying to stitch them up.
How long did it take for Saleh to hunt down their squad’s tags and Mallory’s gun? Was he praying between corpse-hunting, or did he not want to since his second (and more importantly, non-abusive) family was shot to pieces in the dunes?
Why does Allah go Old Testament God on Saleh? He was a normal kid, an angry, abused teen, and a depressed college student, and Gabe’s trajectory wasn’t much better since he replaced college with joining a gang and all the things that came with it.
The army was the only thing that ended up good with them.
And there comes that feeling he gets, when he sees the sand rolling white under night skies. Nameless and inevitable, with the slow crush of fate.
“We were supposed to die when the grenade hit,” Gabriel realizes. “We were supposed to die and I fucked it up by being stupid, and now we’re in fucking Igun.”
“Hey,” Saleh holds him, like he always does. “Hey. You’re okay. We’re not gonna die.”
“Is that the only thing you want?!” He tries to yell, but it comes out as a sob. “‘Oh, I’m not dead? Praise Allah for my self-preservation instincts!’”
“You’re not dead, either,” Saleh says. “That’s two things.”
All Gabe can do by now is laugh his ass off, even if it makes his scar hurt.