It’s amazing, how you make your face just like a wall; how you take your heart and turn it off. How'd I turn my head and lose it all?

Reve, I miss you. With everything in me that doesn't belong to Bria, I miss you. I //need you, and I can't have you. I'm so tired of pretending everything's okay. I've already lost my son — our son, who looks so like you — must I lose you too? I know you had to go, to leave me. But it hurts. Ah, Faranth, it hurts not to hold you. To grieve for our son and what could have been. Together.I can't do this alone. Please, love. Please?//

He lies there in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, the loneliness overwhelming. When will I see you again, my love? When will I feel your touch again? Please. I've never been this alone, and I'm scared. I //need you.

And it's unnerving how just one move puts me by myself. There you go, just trusting someone else. Now I know I put us both through hell.

It feels so selfish to need to just… for a moment… to not be strong, to need comfort instead of lectures, to be heard, to be given the grace to hurt, and to show it. Why does no one understand that? Is it really so hard to believe that I, too, am merely human? I must stay here. Here, with the memories and the pain. To crave you, to look for you… oh, Reve, my love. Are you lonely for me? How I yearn to know that you will come back to me. And how I fear that you will not. That you will forget me in some other man’s arms.

**Is it my turn to wish you were lying here? I tend to dream you when I'm not sleeping. Oh, is it my turn to fictionalize my world — or even imagine your emotions to tell myself anything? **

How I’ve tried to forget you between the legs of another — and I can’t. Even when I hold her, it’s you I see. It’s you I feel. I don’t know how to ease this ache, sweet Reve. How do I fill the hole you left in me? Tell me, my heart: when does it stop feeling so empty without you? I lie awake, remembering the last time I held you. Ah, love, I… I can’t stop remembering. I wake, crying your name, begging you to come back to me, to say it was a mistake, that you could not do without me.

Damn it, Reve, tell me how to ease this aching. I cannot do without you.

Oh, is it my turn to hold you by the hands, tell you I love you, and you not hear me? Oh, is it my turn to totally understand — to watch you walk out of my life and not do a damn thing?

The fog and the mist rolls in, creeping soft-footed through his mind in a wash of wordless love. She is there, as always, the anchor and the mountain, the soft place to lay down the armor of brave cheerfulness. Here, the despair at losing them both is cradled as carefully as a newborn kitten, taken unto the heart of her lair, curled around and protected.

Broken pieces, break into me: so imperfectly what you should be. I don't want you to go, don't want to see you back out in the cold. The air you're breathing out fades you to gray, don't run away! Find me.

//:I am here.: //

Briamiorth.

En'rys rolls to his side, knowing she was there — and she was, her nose at the edge of his bed, her eyes the yellow of worry — for him.

: I cannot fix this. But I can listen. Tell me. :

“Tell you what?”

: What you could not tell the small angry one. :

And so he tells her everything — the heartache, the despair, the fear that she would never return to him, though he had given her his heart.

The doubt and the need and the rage.

All through the night, he talked, and Briamiorth listened. And as he spoke, two Turns’ long buried grief came to the fore in tears, soaking into the green hide of the one creature on Pern who would not judge him for it, who did not want him to keep it hidden because it was too much to share the burden of.

*~*~*~*

I'm here for the hard times; the straight to your heart times; whenever it ain't easy, you can stand up against me, and maybe rely on me, and maybe cry on me, yeah…

En'rys is struck, again, with the need to talk: about his son, his girl, and the weight of his own helplessness with the whole situation in the aftermath of that last disastrous meeting with Xanthee. It wasn't long before he decides to visit A’lira, that tall, quiet, so-gentle man who always seems to have time for him. Well aware that A’lira has many, many duties having nothing to do with a greenrider not of the brownrider’s wing, En'rys has kept these meetings few and far between times. And yet, he's always felt welcomed by the man.

So today, he's asked discreetly for a bit of the wingsecond’s time, and the reply had been prompt and warm.

Briamiorth and Kyprioth settled — the brown willingly going along with a mental prowl by the young green, keeping her occupied against intrusion in this sensitive time, leading En’rys to wonder if A’lira had somehow cottoned on to his need. And it was confirmed in the brownrider's kind, if blunt greeting: “You need to have a chat about the mess ‘tween you an’ Reveka. C’mon, then, I can do that much for you.”

The telling took what felt like hours, and an ocean of tears and guilt. And A’lira listened, without judgement or advisement until he was asked for it: a welcome relief for the young greenling’s mental peace.

“You won't move past it, you know.” A’lira says gently as he smoothes the young greenrider’s hair behind his ear. The boy — not really a boy, they're nearly the same age — had come to him, needing a human ear to lay his troubled heart to rest. En’rys looks up at him from the pillow he'd curled up on, wondering and confused. “Clearly, you didn't expect me to say that.” The tall, dark brownrider laughs. “But it's true. You've lost someone you love, and a child into the bargain. No sane person gets past that.”

“So what am I supposed to do, then?” En’rys asks, frustration straining his normally smooth tenor. He drops his hand hard against his narrow thigh, huffing an aggrieved sigh. “Everyone's constantly telling me how to feel — I'm supposed to be kind and supportive to her. But she's the one who’s left. She's the one with everyone rallying around her, like this doesn't affect me too. Like I don't have the right to expect the same level of support from my so-called friends, or feel rejected by her yet again — I feel like I have to bury my damn feelings so I don't upset anybody and I'm tired of it.”

A’lira looks around at him, calm and unruffled by the explosion of words. With a slight frown for the unusually weak color of the herbs he'd been sorting, he comes to settle down next to the slender man, wrapping both arms around a long, upraised leg. “Look, hard emotions are hard for some. Xanthee, for instance, is a determinedly positive person, so feelings like grief would likely be difficult to just sit with, and not try to fix. Maybe when she's lived a little more life, she'll understand a little better that some things can't be fixed; they're meant to be what they are: painful and dark.” He sighs, shrugging one shoulder in a quiet gesture of commiseration. “Feeling bad is often seen as… not healing. And yet it is.”

Clearly, the very idea of this is confusing, if En’rys’ expression is anything to go by. A’lira leans in to explain further. “Look, we're not dragons to forget loss. It settles into memory, changes us forever. The key is to sit with it, to become comfortable with it — it's a part of you as surely as the Threadscore on your face, or the scars on mine. Your normal is now different. You will simply have to learn to adjust to the difference. You will lose friends, as a rider: Threadfall takes so many of us. Denying that you will always grieve the loss of Reveka is damaging.” He smiles, then, crookedly. “But eventually, the sorrow will be gentler. Maybe she comes back, maybe she doesn't. Maybe you two will come to an understanding and be able to rekindle a relationship. Or not — only time will give you that answer. But to answer your original question: you are not wrong to feel the way you do, And I think you know that. It is a rejection of what you offered. And it hurts. Let no one rush you to feel differently, no matter how they wish you to do differently. Fact is,” A’lira shrugs again, ever comfortingly, “You were right, no matter how rudely you phrased it — you need, right now, to simply be heard, not told to think of her feelings. Xanthee’s or Reveka’s. You've had nearly two Turns of puttin’ a brave face on it, and it's about bloody time ya stopped carryin’ it by yourself. And nah, Xanthee got no place expectin’ you to handle it the way she would. You ain't her.” A’lira grins mischievously at En’rys, who is staring at the brownrider open-mouthed. He's never heard that many words at a stretch from the man! “One of these days, she'll understand the difference in when to help and when to just sit there, shut up, and listen. I had t’learn, to. Girl wants to make you feel better — sometimes just listenin’ helps, even if what you hear ain't exactly comfortable hearin’. Right?”

“Right.” En'rys is forced to agree with a grin of his own. He'll probably have to talk to his sister again, at some point — but not now. Maybe when he felt less like throttling the girl for being so intent on putting herself where she didn't quite belong.

A’lira eyes him sidelong, then offers him a bottle of Zingari red. “Wanna help me finish this? That kid of yours, man… his lungs are bigger’n the rest of him.”

En’rys snorts, then begins to laugh, helplessly. It was such an odd thing to say — and then En’rys realized something. A’lira was gently letting him in on the health of their shared child, giving him a window into Rae’s growth and development. He'd been allowed to hold and play with the boy on occasion, giving him a chance to develop a relationship with Revaerys that he might otherwise not have had. He hadn't truly lost his child! It was a weight off his shoulders, knowing that A’lira both supported and encouraged it. “More is better when it comes t’loving hands for an infant.” The brownrider told him placidly when he'd asked.

But tonight, his son was among the Zingari — En'rys had yet to really visit them — and A’lira had been alone. All too happy to welcome company, he'd gotten them food and drink to share while En’rys poured out his heart. He feels better, now; a little bit drowsy, and — “Hey. You put somethin’ in that last cup?” He asks A’lira muzzily.

“You need t’sleep. Somethin’ you ain't done much of this week.Your dragon told Kyp. Who told me. I ain't put nothin’ in your drink, you just tired and relaxed now. So g’wan, sleep in there.” A long brown finger points En'rys to the guest bedroom. Bria is all curled up asleep too, her and Kyp. Ima bout to go to bed too. See ya in the mornin’.” A’lira disappears into his own bedroom.

And as En'rys lays himself down, he sighs and allows the warmth of being cared for to wash over him and carry him into sleep. For once, he doesn't dream of Reveka.