#(which of course she reveals in the clumsiest most hamfisted way possible. and then never acknowledges again)

[ehlnofay]

“Pax,” Martin says suddenly.

She looks up from the small seam tear in her gambeson. “What?”

Martin opens his mouth, closes it again. They’re sitting in his too-big room, Pax cross-legged and stitching on his cushy bed, Martin fidgeting in the chair next to the cupboard. He still doesn’t have many things here, though it’s been months. Not much more than a stack of books, a few changes of clothes, exactly two items of sentimental value. It can’t be nice to rest in such a cavernously empty room. Pax should really get him some more little knick-knacks, the kind a person has when they stay in the same place for a while. A paperweight shaped like a cat or some such nonsense. They wouldn’t know.

The bareness of the room makes it feel a little stark, uncomfortable, like all Martin’s awkward restraint is pressed into the walls. Pax will freely own that they don’t know what a normal person would do in this scenario, but they don’t think it would be whatever Martin’s doing. They’d at least get a paperweight or something.

At least the Xarxes isn’t here, radiating whatever fiendish miasma bothers everyone so much and poisoning the air of the room further. (Pax is willing to bet he would have brought it in here to study, but apparently the Blades wouldn’t let him.)

Martin still hasn’t said anything. Pax jabs the needle back into the padded wool fabric. “Spit it out.”

Martin wrings his hands.

He says, “Jauffre tells me you’re getting to be quite renowned throughout Cyrodiil.”

“Mm-hm.” The needle is sticking near the seam – Pax brings the cloth to his face and shoves it through with his teeth. “Can’t go three steps in the Kvatch gambeson without someone asking if it’s me. Talk like I’m going to fight off Oblivion single-handed. Black Horse Courier wrote a pamphlet about me and all.”

Martin nods – then keeps nodding, head bobbling up and down like a socially inept chicken. “Right,” he says, pauses again – spit it out, Pax wants to say again, he gets so ridiculous sometimes – “Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Doesn’t what bother me?” Pax pulls the thread taut. “The pamphlet? It’s a bit early in the day for them to write a whole book about me, Martin Priest.”

“I mean – the way people talk, as you say, like you’ll end the crisis single-handed. Like you’re a hero.”

Pax’s eyes flicker over to Martin’s drawn face.

“I am a hero,” she says, tugging the needle sharply enough that the thread almost snaps.

“Of course!” Martin practically trips over himself trying to eat his words; the tight set of Pax’s jaw softens. “That isn’t what I meant, Pax, of course you are. Just.”

He’s visibly struggling again.

Pax shuffles to the end of the bed and thumps the mattress with his foot. “Come on,” he says. “Sit.”

“I am sitting.”

“Over here, you git.”

Martin sits.

“All right. Now spit it out.”

Martin sighs, hands flexing on his knees. “Just. You are a hero, Pax, but you aren’t like heroes are supposed to be – you’re just a person. And yet everyone acts as though you’re not, as though you’re more an idol to be glorified than you are you. Doesn’t it grate on your nerves after a while?”

Pax says, “Nah.”

Martin cants his head. Pax stares at the rip in the gambeson – it’s almost all mended now.

When Martin doesn’t speak, they stick the needle in the wool and take a rustling breath. “I ever tell you,” they say, “that my parents were highwaymen?”

They can feel Martin’s watery old-man eyes on their scalp.

“No, you did not.”

“Well, they were.” Pax is painfully uncomfortable. “Are, I guess. They’re probably still kicking around the lower Niben.”

“I assumed they were dead.”

Pax shrugs, still staring down the eye of the needle. “Reasonable assumption, but no. And they weren’t bad – weren’t bad parents. Bad people. Fine parents.”

Martin shifts so that Pax just gets the rustling of his blue skirts out the edges of her eyes. He says, “Why did you leave?”

“Don’t push it, Martin Priest.” This is already more personal than Pax would like. “I’m just answering your question, I think. No-one’s ever what the stories say they are, you know? My mother terrorised the Yellow Road for years, I saw posters when I was in Leyawiin, but. She was my mother, you know? There’s always a person behind the myth.”

“So you’re already more comfortable with being misinterpreted?” Martin tries.

Pax shakes his head. “No. Well – yeah, kind of, but. I think.” He doesn’t know how to say this part – how to explain why being idolised never bothers him, why he remembers it all so well, the stew and the talking and the smell of the paper, the stain the candlewax left on the table. “I’m six years old, right? And I’m telling strangers I’m lost so they dismount and my parents can rob them, and my father’s training me with a bow so I can help when I’m older, and the travellers always look so upset with me when they find out. And I’ve never seen a dead body up close but I know the smell of blood well enough to know when it’s time to close my eyes. And we go back to the wagon and the adults are laughing and I’m reading Pelinal by candlelight.” And now he’s just recounting his childhood memories and it’s weird and he hates it, and Martin looks all sympathetic when he peeks up and it’s weird and he hates it, but the only way out is through and Pax pushes along through his terrible nightmare explanation. (He’s not even sure Martin understands what he’s trying to get at.) “And I don’t mind stealing but the blood turns my stomach and I don’t like how they always act betrayed because I lied. Even though I don’t owe them anything. And I’m reading Pelinal and at least the blood has a point. And at least there’s a song at the end of it. And then I put myself to bed and my parents say goodnight and I know if we all dropped dead in the night no-one would care, and I get older and I know that if I left they probably wouldn’t follow me. And no-one would remember me. You know?”

Martin, stymied, lays a compassionate hand on Pax’s shoulder and says, “I definitely don’t.”

Pax knocks it off.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says, ever earnest. Pax groans.

“Forget it,” she says, and tips her head back. Revises her answer. “No, it doesn’t bother me. It’s nice. The Hero of Kvatch is important. People are happy when I show up.”

“It’s nice to be wanted,” Martin says softly.

Before they have time to think better of it, Pax replies, “Yeah.”

They press their chin to their chest to hide their face and resume sewing.

Martin, because he’s annoying, does not tacitly agree to stop talking and never bring it up again. “But at least people want you because you – did something. You earned your reputation.”

His face is pinched and pale, brow furrowed, and he’s beginning to wave his hands about in the way he does when he’s getting het up. Pax screws up their face. He’s been fidgety the last few days, tucking himself and his books into odd corners and wincing whenever someone addresses him –

“Ah,” Pax says, and they lift their head, aggressively grateful to pass over the spotlight. “This is about your doubts.”

He presses his lips tight together, a strand of hair falling in his face. He’s got to do something with that, it’s getting too long to just leave loose all the time. “Pax, I’m really doing my best, but I still don’t feel –”

He huffs and goes quiet. He’s getting himself into a proper state about this. Pax stretches out her legs and drops her feet in his lap, much more comfortable now they’ve returned to the status quo of Martin being the weird and weepy one. He gives her a look.

“Emperors are supposed to be – mighty,” he manages. “Blood of kings, the divine right to rule, they know what they’re doing. I’m no Emperor. I don’t know what I’m doing!”

Pax knots off his stitching and drops the gambeson on the floor. “Martin, I met the last Emperor.” He spreads his arms, makes sure Martin’s paying attention. “He was literally just a weird old man.”

“Pax.”

“You’re a slightly less weird, slightly less old man. I’m pretty sure you’re fine.” Martin is staring, aghast, as though they just told him they ate a divine relic – or something else ridiculous bordering on blasphemous. “I don’t think Emperors are that special, Martin, they’re just lucky. You’re the same as all of them.”

He still looks shocked. Pax crawls over the mattress so she can prod him in the chest.

“Ow,” he says. “Rude.”

“Calm down, Martin Priest. I promise you the Blades won’t arrest me for treason for saying you’re just a person.”

He frowns, pushes his hair back behind his ears. “I don’t know that you’re wrong,” he says reluctantly. “But I don’t want to believe you.”

Pax sits back on their heels. “Why?”

“I don’t know what it means if you’re right.”

They are quiet for a bit before Pax reaches around him and steals his pillow.

“Doesn’t make much difference, does it?” she says as he snatches it back out of her arms. “We have to do what we have to do anyway.”

Martin clutches the pillow to his chest. “I just wish I had a little more certainty.” He cracks an awkward smile. “Or some of your confidence, if you’ve any spare.”

Pax is not a touchy feely person. They flop against his side. “You know I’m not – I’m not the hero everyone thinks I am, right, like you said?” they ask. Martin nods. “It’s just that I want to be. I like that they think that. I’m going to keep going in that direction because I want to be what people think I am.”

Martin’s hair is really too long; they can feel it brushing the top of their head.

“I want to be a good Emperor,” Martin says quietly. “I want to do this right.”

“Then you’ve got a good start,” Pax says. He draws his knees up to his chest. “Just keep going in that direction.”

I’m with you all the way, he doesn’t say, because he’s said far more than he likes to already.

It doesn’t need to be said, anyway. They both know.