#and aventus will meet literally anyone and go 'you're here to kill someone for me right? right?? yes? good yes'

[ehlnofay]

content warnings: discussions of abuse, death and violence

The knife Torr usually uses is too thick and blunt to split the pane from the frame; with a muffled curse they sheathe it and feel for the letter-opener in their sleeve. (Katla gave it to them a few weeks back, managing to look guilty and irrepressible at the same time. They’d sighed, enough to make the guilt flicker, and told her that they’d told her to stop taking shit, that they weren’t going to stand for it, where did she steal it from? She’d told them. They’d told her they’d go and give it back. They lied, of course; it’s a nifty little blade, and it wouldn’t be missed by the stationer’s shop, what good would returning it do? They just needed there to be no point to it, to make sure she wouldn’t do it again.)

The house is a bitch to break into, worse than Torr anticipated. The locks, he’d expected them to be beyond his skill level – he’s a novice pick at best – but from what he could glean with his awkward fumbling they’re even tougher to crack than he’d thought they would be. He almost cracked his pick in half just trying to dislodge it from wherever he managed to stick it. No dice there. None of the lower-floor windows are open, and thanks to the weird layout getting higher up would be practically impossible, not to mention very visible. He’s already more obvious than he would like; tucked just behind the corner of the house, in clear view of anyone who passes through the road, very obviously fucking with a window.

He's chosen the most time-consuming way of getting in, too, but what else could he do? Doors won’t work and smashing a window’s a terrible idea for so many reasons. (The situation in there is going to be sensitive, judging from everything Torr’s heard; strange rumours bleeding poisonous through the city and Griss’ dead certainty that she saw him, her less-than-favourable description. The last thing they need to do is freak the kid out, ruin it before it’s begun. Plus if they shattered the window it would let the cold in. Probably the last thing the boy needs.)

The letter-opener works better than the dagger. The narrow blade worms into the space between the windowpane and its sturdy wooden framing, chipping away at the glaze, widening the gap bit by bit. Whenever Torr shifts its angle there’s a hair-raising sound of metal point scratching glass. The wood creaks. It’s all quiet enough that Torr can only just hear it when they’re inches away, but in the strange and silent shadow of the lopsided house it feels deafening.

Torr keeps going, carefully listening out for anyone approaching, preparing potential excuses or escape routes just-in-case. He doesn’t have to use any of them; no-one comes, not in all the time he spends separating the glass from the wood. It takes more time than it feels like it should. More time than Torr has. There’s a million other things he could be doing right now.

(It’s a market day, and there’s always work to be had when the stalls are out – runner errands, mostly, and it’s a pittance but it’s something. Skrauti at least is probably down the markets, begging maybe, or helping with some of the stalls there if the vendors let him. They probably are – they like him. Talres might be there as well, if Idrela is. And then there’s checking up on Skygna, who he hasn’t seen in long enough to worry, and asking around for jobs for Ogaefa that would let her bring her sister as well. He needs to figure something out about Kyrri’s nightmares, too – he won’t go to sleep half the time and it’s not sustainable.)

But. There’s a kid in there that needs his help. Needs something. (Another Windhelm orphan. You’d think the city would get sick of making them.)

The gap Torr’s made reaches all the way around the glass. They chip away extra along the place where it joins at the bottom – the frame looks peeling and scrabbled, like an animal ate away at it – and then finally the pane shivers, loose enough that when Torr drops the letter-opener into the snow and presses it down it slips right out of place without a fuss. They ease it out of the window-frame – it’s heavy, they always manage to be surprised by how heavy glass is – and lean it gently against the wall by the door.

The good thing about this method is that the window can go back in. (More or less. As long as no-one touches it, or the wind doesn’t blow too hard the wrong way.) Hopefully, the house will stay insulated. Torr doesn’t want to give the boy in there hypothermia. (Torr doesn’t need to see that again.)

They take up the letter opener again, cold and wet with snow, and slide it back into their sleeve. (Its freezing shape against their skin feels like a brand.)

They take a breath.

The boy’s name is Aventus Aretino. That’s what Torr’s heard. His mother was well-known in political circles, apparently – her death, a few months back, caused quite a stir. (So they’ve heard, at least. Naalia Aretino wasn’t exactly part of Torr’s social strata.) Torr doesn’t know if the kid left, or kept real to himself, or what, but he’s there now, holed up in his house, performing a ritual to summon assassins. Apparently. That’s the talk, anyway – it’s all swear on the Nine, my cousin heard him, scared her half out of her wits kind of stuff. Not substantiated. But some of the kids have heard noises in the house – not assassin cult rituals necessarily, but something – and who else would be in there? The place is shut up. Plus Griss is dead certain she saw him once (creepy boy with a lip split from the cold that talked to himself) and Skrauti thinks they might have met when they were younger and was worrying about it. So Torr had to check, to assuage their concerns, and to help how necessary. Who the hell would he be if he didn’t?

Torr braces his hands against the emptied frame, splintered wood digging into his palms, and hoists himself deftly through the deconstructed window.

 Inside, the house is both muggy and colder than Torr feels like it should be.

The windows haven’t been open – no airflow – but it doesn’t feel like there’s been a fire lit, either; at least not today. Maybe not for a while. It doesn’t feel like a place someone should live. But, separated by the thin walls (sans one window) from the noise of the city large, Torr’s pretty sure he can hear something somewhere upstairs.

The windowpane Torr took out let him into what looks like – a larder, maybe? Some kind of storage room? An aboveground cellar? Fuck if he knows; he’s never lived in a house with more than two rooms (or any houses, for that matter, in the last four years) and this seems excessive. Whatever it is it has shelves and not much else. Whether that’s by design or the place has been cleared out, he couldn’t say.

The shelves are covered in dust, mostly; the wind whistling in through the empty window-frame, clingy collections of dirt and debris tumbling merrily along the wooden surfaces. There’s nothing in here.

Torr moves on.

The hallway isn’t much better – all creaky floorboards and dark, no windows or fireplaces to light it up. They have to blink hard to adjust. There’s pictures on the walls but in the dim lighting they can’t make them out.

Torr checks the whole ground floor (two rooms and a hallway, already more than they’re used to) and finds nothing. The place feels like a mausoleum. All the curtains that there are, are drawn. Half the furniture seems to have been taken away and what’s left is just gathering dust. It’s all a strange warped tableau of how these people lived, before, but now the mother is dead and the son – well, who’s to say?

Torr feels a bit weird in what looks like a study, running his fingers over inkpots that have long since congealed, glancing over a shuffle of papers left precariously at the corner of a desk. (One of the pages has fallen onto the floor. He can see the track it left in the dust.) After a few seconds, he leaves; there’s nothing for him there.

(Yet. They didn’t rummage through the desk drawers. Could be something valuable in there, and it’s not like anybody else is using it. Not like they’d care too much if they were.)

The staircase groans obnoxiously as soon as Torr puts a foot on the first step – even though he has nothing to fear from discovery, he freezes. No-one comes peeking around the corner of the upper floor, though. Even though by rights someone should – Torr can definitely hear something higher up in the house. A sort of banging, he thinks. Slow and rhythmic, as if on a drum.

The rest of the steps squeak as well, but they’re quieter about it. The pounding gets louder the higher he goes. Thud, thud… thud. The staircase leads onto a landing that’s as blank and dim and dusty as everywhere else.

A bedroom with the bed stripped. Toys on the windowsill (nice ones, the kind Torr points out in shop windows and lets the kids imagine having). The door was closed when Torr came in. No-one has been in here, he thinks, for a long time.

They close the door again behind them.

The noise is on this side of the house, they’re sure of it, so they don’t bother crossing to the other half. (It’s strange – they’ve been poking around, and they’ve definitely not been quiet about it. If there’s someone in the house, they should have come to look.) There’s a sort of living room – a nice space, with chairs and an ashy fireplace; and it’s not dusty, wouldn’t even be dark if not for the heavy drapes drawn over the windows. The drapes trap everything in. The dark. The sweaty cold. The smell.

There’s definitely a smell. Torr thought initially that it might just be mould. It’s not.

On the other side of the living room, there is a door. On the other side of the door is the banging noise. Torr takes a deep breath – almost chokes, because it stinks. (They’re used to normal bad smells – fucking have to be, spending time with so many children who’d barely know how to bathe themselves even with regular access to washing things – but this is something else. Sickly sweet and rancid all at once. They can taste it.)

(It isn’t wholly unfamiliar. Shit.)

Torr takes another steeling breath, this one shallow, and crosses the room, giving the arm of a chair an absent pat as they go. The door is cracked just a little bit open. There is something very bad on the other side.

They nudge it open.

It’s brighter, in this room, and stuffier. The smell is much worse, settling around their shoulders like a shroud, worming through their ribcage into their lungs – they don’t gag, but it’s a near thing. The room is brighter, even though its curtains are drawn as well, because it is lit by candles. Several of them. The smell is worse because of the mess of rotting meat laid out over the floor. (Torr recognises some – that’s a human heart, for example, there between two candles; he’s seen one in Nurelion’s shop, though it was much better preserved. Good for poisons, but only if you really know what you’re doing.) There are bones, too, carefully arranged in a caricature of a person’s skeleton. And before it all is the child.

The kid is here. Torr doesn’t know whether that’s worthy of relief or not.

The boy is the one making the noise. He kneels, huddled, a fraying blanket draped around his hips and puddling on the floor behind him. It might have been covering his shoulders at one time and slipped down quite badly. He’s bent almost in two, hunched over his own thighs, so bent Torr wonders if it’s a spinal condition, a kitchen knife in hand, rhythmically lifting it up and bringing it thudding down into the floorboards.

The knife leaves deep grooves in the wood. Periodically it hits one of the bones and splinters them into bits.

Torr’s not sure how long they’ve been watching. Fuck, they don’t know how long the boy’s been here, doing this. He doesn’t move to acknowledge them; didn’t seem to hear them come in. Doesn’t shift to pull the blanket back up or change the position of his legs or stretch his back. He just stays, head lowered, lifting the knife like it’s the heaviest thing he’s ever held, plunging it into the floor over and over and over again. Knees tucked under him, bent almost in half, forehead almost touching the ground, he seems almost to be prostrating himself. The candleflames rise and fall with the knife. The shadows flicker over the rotting heart with eerie regularity. A languid, lifeless beat.

Torr steps into the room. He’s not quiet. Aventus Aretino doesn’t move but to stab the space between the bones again.

“Hey,” Torr says, “Aventus,” but there’s nothing.

He kneels down, bending over the candles, trying to get a look at the kid’s face.

His lips are cracked, like Griss said; it’s hard to see in the strange lighting but his cheeks look hollow. The veins stand out on his hands. His eyes stare into fathomless distance as though seeing through the smoothed-out knots of the flooring; and his mouth moves, though all Torr can hear is the rattling of breath in his chest, and that’s only if they really listen.

“Aventus,” they say again, sharper, louder, but he doesn’t seem to hear, bloody lips almost kissing the floor, corpse-scented oxygen whistling in and out of his lungs. His mouth forms the same shapes again and again. Prayer. Supplication. Deadly benediction. Torr was already not particularly religious; this is going to put them off it for life.

Even so, in their head, they offer the Nine a quick, impious plea. Something is very badly wrong; they need whatever help they can scramble to get.

“Aventus,” they snap, placing a hand on his shoulder, and he responds then, flinging himself away across the meat and bones and fire, the knife at least left standing straight up in between two wooden planks where he can’t hurt himself with it. The bones scatter. There is an unpleasant stain on the boy’s sleeve. The knocked over candles, dripping wax, fizzle out before they manage to set either the walls or his hair alight; small mercies.

The boy stares, eyes bloodshot and hollow – eyes like gore dripping down a too-pale throat and beneath a collar, eyes like poison splattered on a bedspread, eyes like dirt and blood and snow. He gapes at Torr with something like wonder; when he smiles, it looks like it hurts, the dark scabs on his lips reopened. The hope on his face is the worst thing Torr has ever seen.

“You came,” he says, his voice so cracked and raw it’s barely audible. “You came, you –”

He’s still lying there, among the candles and the remains – he seems to register this at the same time Torr does, and he starts to scramble into a sitting position, the process looking much more laborious than it should. Torr reaches out to help, a hand on his arm pulling him to his feet, but the boy’s head drops into Torr’s palm and they freeze.

With a sound not unlike a sob, but also not quite like anything in the world, he rubs his matted thatch of hair into their hand.

Torr feels their face creasing; very deliberately, they smooth it out. “Okay,” they say, soft and soothing, and they adjust the angle of their knees so they can reach him without being in danger of tipping over. They crook their fingers enough to scratch gently at his scalp and he makes another horrible sound. “Okay. Let’s get you up, yeah?”

He ends up having to shuffle over on his knees. The kid can’t or won’t move until Torr’s basically holding him up, an arm tight around the shoulders, one hand still in his hair. Torr’s pretty sure he cracks one of the bones, stepping on it. He hauls the boy, trembling, to his feet.

“You’re here,” the kid mumbles. Torr can feel the points of his shoulder-blades through his shirt. They almost forgot the blanket – he hooks it around his shoe and shuffles it into the next room with them. The poor bugger clearly needs something to keep him warm.

He pauses to pull the door closed behind them with his unoccupied foot. They don’t need that right now. “I am. You’re Aventus Aretino?”

The boy nods, near-frantic. “I – and you – I –”

“Relax,” Torr says automatically as he lowers him into an armchair. Aventus sounds like he’ll cough up a bloody lung if he keeps trying to talk. “You need to drink. You got water in here?”

Aventus points mutely to a bucket next to the cold fireplace, but when Torr goes to get it, he clings. Like he’s a mirage. Like he’ll disappear if he stops touching him.

Torr ruffles Aventus’ hair again unthinkingly, his mind elsewhere. So there’s water, and the boy knows where it is, even in his state. (Whatever his state is – all Torr really knows is bad.) But they’d bet money he hasn’t been eating, enough or at all; he’s pale, slow, his eyes sunken. Torr knows that look far too well. He hasn’t been sleeping, either, or going outside – curtains all drawn and doors all locked. And his behaviour – well.

It’s not promising.

Gently, Torr detaches his arm from Aventus’ grasping fingers and goes to get the bucket. He hears the kid’s breathing kick into something sharp and uneven behind him. The bucket, he finds, is indeed full of water; there’s a mug lying on the bottom, under the surface. He brings it back, scoops out the mug, offers it to Aventus, who, naturally, can’t manage to get his shaking fingers to get a hold of it; he lifts it to his lips and tips down his throat. A bit of water splashes down the boy’s chest; he doesn’t seem to notice. Torr doesn’t think it matters.

Aventus isn’t able to drink much before he starts coughing. Torr sets the mug down. Aventus grasps for him again; he grabs a fistful of sleeve and tips his head back, air rattling in his chest. Torr stays crouched by the chair, looking up at him, and waits.

“You’re here,” Aventus repeats, gazing unfocused at the rafters. “I knew – I knew you would be. I prayed.”

Torr’s face scrunches. “You prayed for me?”

“Again and again.” The words sound like a prayer in the boy’s reedy voice; a litany. “And again and again and again and again… with the bones and things. I kept praying. I knew you’d come. I just had to be patient.”

Ah.

Shit.

Torr closes a hand around the boy’s wrist. He opens his mouth to speak, but Aventus beats him to it – his eyes slide down from the ceiling, vague and bottomless, and he confesses, “I’m tired.”

“I’m sure you are,” Torr says, rubbing their thumb in comforting circles over the point of his wrist. They keep their voice level. “Aventus. I’m not an assassin.”

In the blink of an eye, the boy is sitting bolt upright.

“Yes you are,” he says, saying the words louder than he really seems able to, wheezing them out with as much fierce desperation as he can manage. His scrabbly little fingers dig into Torr’s arm. His face is frightening. “Yes, you are. You are, I prayed, I prayed so much –” He chokes. His grip is actually beginning to hurt. “Did I do something wrong? Please, don’t go, please, I can do it right!”

“Aventus,” Torr tries.

“I can do it right,” Aventus insists. The frenetic energy with which he speaks makes him stretch his lips more than advisable. The scabs are splitting open. “I can, I can, and I can pay, I promise, I promise, I promise – !”

Torr shoves into the chair next to him, crushing him against the arm (just a little, just enough to force him to stay inside his body) and pulls him to leaning on Torr’s shoulder. He can feel his jaw still working, like with the prayer. He wraps an arm around the kid’s neck and threads fingers into his hair and waits for the shuddering to subside.

“I can,” he mumbles weakly after a few minutes of desparate silence. “I promise.”

“Stop talking,” Torr tells him, and he does. “I believe you, okay? Just try to keep calm. I’m here to help you.”

Aventus’ hands, crabbed and clawed, are fisted in the folds of Torr’s jacket. Even through their layers they can feel his bony fingers pressing into their ribs. He isn’t letting his eyes close, no matter how soothing a presence Torr tries to be, carding their fingers through the knots of his hair as best they can, badly humming that lullaby Swims down the docks taught them. It has the slow rolling cadence of the waves lapping at the barnacle-covered board. Aventus doesn’t stop shaking, but at least it slows.

Torr squeezes his shoulder. “There you go.”

The boy heaves a rasping breath.

“Why do you need an assassin so bad, anyway?” It might be a bad idea to ask – just rile him up again – but Torr has to know. He’s met a lot of kids with a lot of problems and none of them have ever tried to hire a hitman in reaction.

(Skygna might come close, he supposes, but no money ever changed hands. And besides, it’s not like she ever asked him to.)

Aventus takes another shaky breath, still clinging to Torr hard enough to bruise, like he’s trying to put down roots in their chest. “Grelod,” he says, and then doesn’t say anymore.

Torr pauses, replies, “I don’t know who that is.”

“They made me go to the orphanage,” Aventus croaks. The side of his head is pressed hard against Torr’s shoulder. “In Riften. After my mother –”

Another pause.

Torr tries to tease the knots out of his hair one-handed. “I never heard much about the orphanage,” he muses; it’s often been mentioned, but no details, except, “I hear it’s nicer than the street.”

“It’s not,” says Aventus with sudden, unshakeable conviction; considering the fact that he evidently travelled back from the Rift up to Windhelm alone, and has been in this house doing fuck only knows for a while, Torr’s inclined to think he would know.

The corpse smell permeates this room as well, even with the door closed.

“It was bad enough that you learned how to invoke the Dark Brotherhood?”

“Black Sacrament,” Aventus mutters, still leaning into Torr’s hand like a starved dog; they’re not sure if it’s a correction, or just information, or what. “I learned it on accident in a bookshop. First time I ran away.”

What the hell kind of bookshop includes instructions for ritualistically summoning a quasi-folkloric murder cult? “How many times did you run away?”

“Three.” He offers no other information. He tucks his face into Torr’s sleeve and says, muffled, “I want her dead.”

“Who?”

“Grelod.”

“Why?”

Aventus’ whole body quakes. His hands dig into Torr’s torso; they feel like he’s going to try to pry up their ribs and rearrange everything underneath. “She can’t,” he starts, then stops, like a fire sputtering in the absence of fuel. “It’s not fair. She doesn’t – she – I need – and everyone else –”

“Slow down,” Torr says, slipping into the soft voice he uses when things get bad; he doesn’t think he’ll end up having any other voices with Aventus. “So she’s in charge of the orphanage?”

Aventus nods into his shoulder.

“And she’s not nice?” Torr can’t really make heads or tails of anything the kid’s been saying, but this seems like hazarding a safe guess.

He tries to press closer, though that isn’t really possible with how he’s already clinging. He mumbles, but his voice is rasping and whispery already, and all Torr can make out is the word monster.

There’s some familiarity to it all, and not in a good way. Aventus’ desperation for touch and reassurance is reminiscent of Gellir when the anger goes. His reticence and scrunched-up posture reminds them of Skygna back when they first met her. Something is very wrong – that much is clear, has been clear since Torr broke into this bloody house – but they don’t know what.

They want to ask, but they don’t want to make it worse.

But then Aventus’ chin nudges at their arm. He’s doing it again, the mouthing – only not quite; when Torr cranes their head, almost snapping their neck in half, they can actually just about hear his whispers.

(Not understand them – they’re an unsettling stream of consciousness – but they can hear them.)

“… the keyhole,” he murmurs, teeth dampening their sleeve, nails scraping against the fraying fabric. “Just in the dark with the keyhole. In the dark, days, and she’d put your face in it. Make you sick.  Made Hroar sick, and she was too old, even with the cane, and she made us. Made us hate each other. But I can’t leave them. They’re my friends.”

“Aventus,” Torr says gently, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Sorry,” he says, automatic, and then they feel his face screw up, his nose pressing itself flat against their arm. He’s quaking again.

Not crying; Torr checks. Just shaking, jaw clenched tight enough to crack a tooth, his eyes huge and hollow.

Torr holds him, silent, for another few minutes, and thinks.

Malnourished, sleep deprived, mannerisms too close to kids who have been through shit Torr wishes he could have protected them from. Won’t meet Torr’s eyes. Won’t cry, just shakes. That state he was in when they arrived – trance-like, unfocused. Lost it when Torr stepped away to grab water. Disjointed speech. Blood on his lips.

Open-ended questions, thus far, have not gone well. “Did she hurt you?” Torr asks.

The kid nods into his sleeve.

He swallows the how. “Are you afraid she’ll hurt the other kids in her care?”

Aventus mumbles, “Already did. Can’t do it again.”

Won’t stop. Have to make her go away. “Right,” Torr says, low and drawn-out, pondering more than they should; and then, “Aventus. How long have you been praying?”

He lifts his head. “I don’t,” he starts, and squints, his eyes more focused than Torr’s seen them. “I’m not sure. Whenever I’m awake.”

“Since how long ago?”

“I don’t know.”

Griss saw the boy matching Aventus’ description almost five weeks ago. Torr’s been hearing rumours of the Aretino kid trying to summon assassins for two.

How does a ten-or-so-year-old even get his hands on a human fucking heart? On bones? How long has he been in that room, swaddled by the stink of flesh putrefying, methodically carving a hole into his dead mother’s floorboards? If he’s been praying to the Dark Brotherhood for a month, then where the fuck are they?

This is a terrible idea. Hafgrim and the guards and whatnot, they were all one thing; they were pragmatic. Necessary. Close to home. Surely this Grelod woman being a hold away is enough distance?

Only it’s not, clearly. Whatever put Aventus here was bad, bad enough that he hasn’t escaped it, isn’t going to with the threat of it lingering. If it were enough distance the windows would be opened to clear out the smell. And what of the other children down in the Rift, left to rot – sucks to suck, kids, maybe you should have suffered closer to home?

Torr has to draw a line somewhere, he knows that. He can only just manage the responsibilities he’s taken on as is. And yet.

If I don’t, no-one will.

Torr doesn’t groan aloud, if only because it would frighten Aventus more than he already is. Instead, they say, “You said you could pay?”

He snaps to attention quick enough that the top of his head clips Torr’s chin. “I can,” he assures them, so terribly eager. “Anything. Promise. There’s a family heirloom.”

Bloody hell, they’re not doing this. (They are.) (They’re already thinking – need to research the cheapest ways to travel fast, because they can’t get away for long. Borrow some money – from Nurelion, maybe, they’ve got enough of a rapport with him he might actually consider it. They’ll probably need to steal as well. Which is a shit. They don’t even like it. There’s just so rarely a better option. Sort things out with the kids as well, get food and things arranged, get someone to keep an eye on the rabble – Kat and Talres will help, of course, and maybe if they ask Eirmund and Ambarys…)

“Okay,” Torr says eventually. He gently, but not without difficulty, unhooks Aventus’ hands from his jacket and begins to stand. “Okay. I’m going to get you some food, right, kid?”

Aventus’ face crumbles. “But –”

“I’ll take the contract.” And he’s committed now. Damn it. “Okay? But you’re going to eat first. Get some sleep, too. Condition of the deal.”

“Okay,” Aventus copies, blinking; he nods. “Yes. I will. And then you’ll go to Riften?”

“I need to sort some things out first.” A lot of things. Torr really doesn’t have the time for this. (He’ll have to make it.) “But I will soon. Swear on –” and he stops; what do Dark Brotherhood types swear on? Should he tell the kid he’s not an assassin? Is he now, effectively, an assassin, thereby negating the point? Is the honesty worth it, or will it just be confusing? Is it better for him to believe that his prayers were answered, or to know that they weren’t but someone will help him anyway?

It really doesn’t matter in the end; Aventus cuts him off before he can figure out how to end the sentence. “Thank you,” he says, far too earnestly, scrambling to his feet.

Torr holds out a hand to stop him. “Don’t,” he says, and he retrieves the blanket from where it’s crumpled on the floor and spreads it over the boy’s lap. “Rest. Remember? I’ll be back in a bit with some food, yeah?” He glances at the closed door behind him. “I’ll dispose of your Sacrament, too.” It can’t be healthy to be in a house with rotting remains.

Aventus blinks; his face twists like he’s just now realising the smell, or perhaps like he’s about to cry. “Thank you,” he repeats.

“No problem.” Even if it is, a bit. Nothing they can’t handle.

Torr wraps the mess in the fraying scarf that he’d planned on using as repair material. Aventus’ eyes are already closed by the time he comes back into the living room, though he doesn’t look any less stressed. Torr thinks about squeezing his hand or ruffling his hair, anything to make him relax, but if he is dozing they don’t want to wake him up.

So they just leave, replacing the window in its framing as they go. There’s a lot they need to do.