#not the the tightest thing ive written but eh

[jelzorz]

183.

The damage to the castle is pretty extensive. Callum doesn't need to be architect to know that. He and Rayla had managed to fly back in just after dawn this morning, their hearts clenching at the sight of its broken silhouette on the horizon, afraid to even wonder who'd made it out and who hadn't and whose bodies might still be in the rubble. It's pure coincidence that they spot Soren and Opeli riding in from the South Gate with a handful of troops, every one of them haggard and obviously exhausted, but alive in spite of the blood and ash on their faces.

"We're all fine," Opeli tells them while Soren is barking orders at the soldiers to start a sweep for survivors and to salvage what little they can. "Most of us, in any case but there are a number of civilians who have not been accounted for. We've sent word to King Ezran to inform him of what happened but it could be days yet before his return, and even longer before we get anymore aid."

Rayla presses her hand over her lips, her face pale. "How can we help?"

"We need supplies for the rest of the survivors," Opeli tells her briskly. "And we need to start retrieving bodies. Those who were unlucky deserve their rites and their families deserve closure. Help the soldiers, if you can. Bandage up any survivors. It's all we can do. If you'll excuse me, Your Highness, My Lady." She nods at them both and hurries away, first aid pack swinging from her shoulder to help a couple of the soldiers drag an unconscious civilian out from beneath the rubble.

Callum just wants to throw up.

Soren gives them more specific instructions when he spots them—"Check the East Wing for survivors, let us know if you find anyone,"—before he too hurries away to help pull bodies from the ruins. Callum has never heeded any instructions from him in his life, but he and Rayla do as they're told without argument.

They pick their way across the ruins, sifting through powdered bricks and molten stones for people, for supplies. Rayla finds one of the maids trapped under a support beam miraculously still alive, and Callum finds a number of slightly singed bedrolls that still work perfectly and are better than not having one at all.

He doesn't tell anyone that he's on the hunt for a third thing in the ruins of his old bedroom. It's neither a person nor a supply and can't be considered a priority in any regard but it's still important, if only to him, and it'd be a heavy loss indeed if he doesn't find it: a book, bound in blue and gold, small enough to fit in his pocket but unlikely to have survived.

His dad's poetry collection.

Callum doesn't remember him very well at all, but he was a good man who loved him and his mother with all his heart. He wrote more books, but this one was written for his mother, and for him when he was born, and if it's gone too—

It's not the same as another death, but it's something else lost. Something else to mourn.

The hours pass. The sun begins to set. Soren calls off the search for the day at dusk and starts herding soldiers and civilians back to the carts at the gates. Callum is still moving rubble when Rayla gets to him, her touch soft on his shoulder.

"We have to go," she says quietly. "We're losing light. We can keep looking in the morning."

"It's not—" Callum stops, his throat clogged emotions he'd managed to bury until now. This was his home. There are a line of bodies in the square, people whose names he'd known growing up, people who'd helped his mother through her grief when his father died, all of them lost to anger and violence and hate. His dad's book is nothing in comparison but it's all he has left of him, and everything else is gone so if he just—

"I can't stop yet," he manages. "I need to find it."

"What's 'it'?"

"My dad's—" Callum swallows. "My dad's poetry collection. It's—I don't have anything else, and everything else is gone. I just—it's all I have left of him, Rayla."

Her eyes soften. She touches his face. "I'll help," she says quietly. "Let me tell Soren we'll meet them back at the temples and I'll help you look, okay?"

"You don't have—"

"Shush." She presses her lips to the corner of his mouth and brushes his hair out of his eyes, her touch jarringly soft against his skin after a day of shifting rubble and ash. "I get it," she says. "After everything you've done for me and my parents, helping you find your dad's book is nothing. I'll stay. Okay?"

Callum swallows. "Okay," he manages. "Thank you."

She squeezes his hand.

She's the one who finds it, in the end. It's a little singed on the edges but was well protected under his collapsed bookshelf, and the gold lettering still shines in the moonlight when she presses it into his hands. Callum breaks when she hands it to him, his exhaustion and his grief catching up with him in one great rush, but Rayla's arms are warm and steady, her presence a shining beacon in the dark.

She is his truth for a reason, and in the ruins of his old home, he's grateful to still have one in her.