Friendly Fire

Oh, how the night's winds howled, bit, and churned. They fell and slipped on one another, sluicing from the forest's edge like starving wolves on the hunt. They carried sharp hints of cold and pungent scents of earth. It was a wailing, whipping, wild wind.

"No, no," a man began, his voice only dull vibrations in his jaw under that wind, "we aren't late. He will come."

"Good... g-good. Are you sure it is h-him?" a woman's voice asked.

"Of course. Can't you tell?" the man asked. His left hand was tucked in the pocket of his coat, and something wispy leaked up along his forearm. It was smoke, or something like it.

"I s-sense n-n-nothing yet. She could be d-dormant. Or b-burning low."

"As you say, Eva."

The man stood alone.

The wind blew from the forest onto a trail that rimmed a corn field. The wind yanked branches taut out and over the path, ripping off leaves into windstrewn fervors over the rows of cornstalks. At the man's side, grey strands of smoke twirled into the gusts.

"Feel the dirt," the woman's voice said, calling from the dark.

"I... what?" Arlin asked.

"R-reach down and f-f-feel it. It has b-been... too long. I w-want to f-feel it."

"Feel it yourself," Arlin spat.

Arlin winced at a sudden pain. His hand shot up to his forehead, and he grunted, nodding and reaching down to slide his hand along the earth as she cooed.

It was cold. So cold.

"Dane, it's after midnight. You can't possibly have anything that needs treating to that can't be done in the morning."

"I do, and it can't," Dane said, speaking to his wife over the wooden table in the foyer of their shanty home. "I'll be back before morning. Won't take long." He was holding an axe, balancing it oddly while pulling on a wool coat. He had brought it into the house to polish earlier. He preferred doing it outside - but it was windy all day.

"We have enough wood to last us the night," she said. "Don't you go cut any more in this wind."

"Not cutting wood," he said, and she just stared at him. His knuckles were white on the handle, and he'd stopped pulling on his coat. He just stared at the floor, lost in thought.

"You give a woman worry, Dane."

Dane suddenly looked at the axe in his hands like he'd forgotten it was there, and laughed deeply.

"Is that supposed to be reassuring?" she asked. Dane had always talked in his sleep, and she'd heard him go on about some gruesome things once or twice... oh, how he made a woman worry.

"Nobody's getting hurt tonight, Mel. Don't worry." He placed the axe on the table, and finished pulling on his coat. "I'm just going to put the axe in the shed."

"Then you're coming right back?"

Dane studied her face for a while, watched her eyebrows furrow as she looked down. His boots were laced up fairly tight, and she knew he'd have left them looser if he was just going to go put an axe in the shed.

"No," he finally said, feeling at something in his pocket. "No, I guess I'll be a little while. Don't stay up for me."

"Dane..." she said, watching him open the door. The foyer was full of lit candles; Mellory loved them, and Dane was only happy to buy them. But when Dane opened the door, the night gusts blew in, and every one of the lights wavered. Mellory gasped at the cold.

"Damn wind," he grimaced, facing the darkness. "Love you, Mel." The door slammed shut behind him.

"Love you too, you oaf." Mellory sighed, hands on her hips. "And of course he forgot the axe. What's going on, Dane?"

She'd have to put it back in the shed herself, or leave it in the house until morning. At the very least, it didn't belong where it was, perhaps it could lean against the wall, with the coats next to the door. She picked it up, and jumped. It clattered back onto the table, and she stared at her hand in disbelief.

The handle was scalding hot.

"Oh, Dane, you idiot... why tonight?"

"Dane?" a woman's voice asked. "Is that you?"

Dane was alone.

"Oh, isn't this enough," Dane whispered to himself, setting out toward the fields on the other end of town. "I hid, like a coward. That's what they wanted, right? It's been years! That should be enough. It should be damn near enough."

"Is something wrong?"

Smoke poured out of a pocket in Dane's coat, where his hand reached deeply. The greyness lathered out along his wrist, dripping into globs that misted away in the wind.

"It's Eva," Dane said aloud. "And Arlin. They found me, somehow. They wanted to meet me, and they wouldn't say why."

"You spoke to them?"

"No, they sent a boy with a letter."

"It is surprising that Eva can still enkindle, given what happened."

"Flames are always full of surprises, Ossa."

A knowing laughter rose from his pocket. "So they are," she said.

Dane walked along the middle of the road. He walked past several clustered houses, and peered down main street where a few porters and drunks stood about some horses near the tavern stables. It was late, but tomorrow was far away for a drunkard in the cold.

"Will they try to hurt you?" Ossa asked.

"Why else would they come?" he told her. "Nothing else has gone their way. Arlin's flame was damaged. Chances are he ran, too, to avoid being snuffed. And after all this time... if Eva is still burning, him lighting her can't be safe. They want something."

"If you don't help him, he will find some way to tell the other Torches where you are"

"I know. That's why I agreed to meet him."

"Do you think he knows I still burn?"

"Of course not. We are both still burning, Ossa. If he knew that, he wouldn't have come."

Dane shivered in the wind. Did he know? He couldn't, but... what if it was a trap? What if Arlin already told the rest, and Dane was just walking into an ambush? Mel...

"Dane," Ossa said. "How long has it been?"

"By my count, twenty years."

"You feel... older. I admit, Dane, you are nothing like the man who wielded me last. Though it could logically be no other, I... I find it hard to believe. That you are he," she said.

"You always did speak so freely," he said. Which was unusual, for a flame. Torches rarely allowed that kind of autonomy - a flame was a flame, more a tool than something sentient. Whatever thought they had, it was only to be directed into how to best obey their master. But... Dane had a heart. Perhaps that was the source of his troubles.

"It hurts you," she said. "To be reminded of your aging. You do not like hearing this."

"No one does," Dane said. "Death is unpleasant."

"Not always," she said softly. "Have you forgotten?"

He had, and it embarrassed him. He could tell she was hurt by that - it was he who had ultimately killed her, back then. He had changed. Only now did he realize he had gone so long without remembering her, burning alive on that slab of marble from the fire he threw. Oh, of course, flames volunteered, and the ritual had to be done as such for the proper bonding, but...

"I'm sorry, Ossa. You're right."

"It was not painful, more like... like slipping into a steaming-hot bath. Though that was likely all the Momo leaf I ate. There was a sense of... dread," she added, pausing, "and, well, sometimes... sometimes I do wonder, you know, if things could have been different. Perhaps I'd be a musician. Or a blacksmith. Or a priestess!" Heavy puffs of smoke erupted from Dane's pocket as Ossa considered other exciting possibilities.

To a dormant flame, no time passes. To Ossa, it had been no time at all since Dane had set her aside. Was she upset, or even jealous? He could tell she was hurt about... something. Because of what he'd become? Because he'd spent all this time without her, never bothering to wake her up just to tell her how he'd been? No, for someone who thought he treated his flame better than most torches, he really did see her as a tool. He only drug her out tonight because of Arlin - without him, would Dane have ever even bothered? This woman he'd spent some of the best years of his life with, all those memories of being a soldier, yet... to cast her aside. Dane felt himself a fool.

"Ossa," he said, "I'm sorry."

"You are sorry again?" she asked. "You were only just sorry. You repeat yourself."

"No, no, about... about this. It's been twenty years, Ossa. The world has changed, and everything's changed, and you don't even know where we are! I should have talked to you more often, brought you out, I don't know. It isn't fair to you."

Ossa said nothing, but he felt a humming between his finger. She paused for a long time, with the two of them moving between the smoke-chimnied houses in silence. Then she spoke.

"You were afraid of burning out," she said. "Flames and torches do not last forever. The longer you spend away from me, the longer you live happily and composed."

What she'd said was true, but...

"This is the nature of flames and torches," Ossa spoke, with some reverence. "What would you prefer, then? To keep me burning after you ran, instead, and have both of us burn out after just two years? Would you rather burn brightly and have us both fizzle out, or preserve me as long as possible?"

"I..."

"I am your flame, Dane, and you are my Torch. Twenty years, or two - it does not matter. I am yours, and I will always burn for you."

And with her last words, there was a warmth that filled his coat, warmer than just the heat of his body. It seeped into his boots, and a curtain of heat rose into his face that warded off the wind.

"Although... " she added, "perhaps in the future, you may wish to check in every so often. I know nothing about this... this new you! There are new scars, and... silver hairs! Goodness, Dane. What if you had... found a woman, without even telling me?"

"There's something I have t-"

"Oh. You did. Oh, Dane... you really did."

"Her name is Mellory."

"We are going to have a long talk," she said, coldly. "After we deal with Eva."

"She's my wife."

The heat around him subsided, and the cold wind bit back into his face. In fact, it felt even colder, now that he'd felt Ossa's warmth.

"Ossa? Are you alright?"

There was no response, save for a small chuff of smoke that blasted from his pocket. Dane almost thought she was pouting.

Arlin sat alongside some wooden fence railing, surveying the dark fields and trying to keep his thoughts to himself. It had become much harder, lately.

"W-will he recognize y-you?" she asked.

"No" Arlin said. "At least, I don't think so. That's why I sent that farmboy with the note. Either way, he will know the note is authentic."

"It w-was clever," Eva told him, "trac-c-cing his old equipment. S-selling it was a mistake."

"That it was, even after keeping it for as long as he had." Arlin said. "A sad thing, when a Torch has to sell his own leathers to make ends meet."

"He is no l-longer a Torch."

"Neither am I. They banished you, remember? For what you did."

"They banished us!" she shrieked, and the pain came to him again. He doubled over as a great gust picked up, which knocked him off the fence onto his side. "And it was your fault! You and your cursed plotting. Twenty years with you, twenty!"

He couldn't speak. He tried, but he couldn't snuff her out, which wasn't really anything new, lately. Something had changed between them, and it had started with the pain. Eva... she had done something to him. Flames were mere tools, but she had broken her restraints somehow. He always thought she spoke too freely... but lately, lately she had become a nuisance. He could not set her to sleep half the time without great struggle, and even then she sometimes proved to be too much for him.

He felt no signs of burning out, but would he even know? All torches burn only temporarily. Perhaps he had much more time? It was hard to say. At any rate, Eva refusing to sleep would soon enough ruin him.

"You are petulant," he finally managed through a clenched jaw, but the pain only tripled. He felt her fury grow as the thick smoke rolled out of his pocket.

"Petul-ul... p-p-p-pet... you are p-petulant!" she said. "Cursed bother! Waste of a man! You don't deserve the b-body you walk in! Give it to me!"

The pain only grew, and Arlin felt something cold at the back of his head. It was not the wind. It was something worse, but he didn't know how it was happening.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "You're going to kill us both!"

"S-silence! Unhand me! P-petulant! What is this? Oh, oh, oh..."

He'd been trying to snuff her out, but his hand fell away from her as the pain grew, and doubled again. It was wintry, frigid, and even the wind felt warmer. Something pushed on his skull, and he felt like his eyes would pop out if he didn't cover them with his hands.

"P-petulant! Your master! We! W-we!"

"I did what you wanted," he panted between sobbing breaths. "I always have, please!" The pain at the back of his head split open, and he heard a cracking hiss from the eruption. The last tendril of smoke fell from his pocket.

"Twenty years!" she screamed. Was she even listening to him, or was she, oh, the pain, he just wanted to... TWENTY YEARS. INSUFFERABLE. YOU ARE MINE. No. Get out. Get out of here, this is TWENTY YEARS. PETULANT, PETULANT PETULANT, P-P-P-P... Mine. Mine. We are partners. You're my flame, I'm your torch, your t-torch. I'm your PETULANT.

Arlin remembered throwing the torch. He didn't want to look, and he never did, and it killed him to think about it. But he was there again, back in that room with the marble dais. He felt it leave his hand as he swung it up and eased his grip, heard the crackling as all the loose bits of dry leaf and twigs ignited into a whirling blaze.

No, he wouldn't look. Eva was there, his Eva. She was fine, she'd be a flame afterward, and she volunteered, she did, and once it was over she'd be...

LOOK AT ME. LOOK. I WANT TO FEEL IT.

No, he never looked. He never looked, he couldn't remember, he couldn't. LOOK. DO YOU SEE US. In the fire, we have no skin. Blackened bits of meat fell everywhere, and our charred bones sagged down into the fire. Our face was melting, and our eyes, our eyes... they watched him. Watched us. Our eyes were lined with soot-black tears. As they fell, he fell, into an endless ocean of her charred fear.

"Dane," Ossa said, speaking for the first time since they'd gotten out of town. "There is something... wrong. It's Eva. I can barely feel her, but... "

"You don't recognize her, probably. If I felt different after twenty years, it stands to reason she would, too."

"This isn't just a change of nature, Dane. It's change of being. I can't explain it, but she seems to be unbound."

"Well, stay on your toes, then. And try to burn as little as you can. We want them thinking they have the advantage."

Her response was an abrupt halt to the smoke pouring from his coat pocket. He still felt her in his hand, but it was very slight. Like the warmth of a winter sun. It pulsed once at that last thought, for warm reassurance.

Arlin's letter had simply stated a time and place, and to come alone. With Eva's unique singeprint, there was no doubting the letter was truly from him. It had been so long, would Dane even recognize him now? They were really no more than kids, back then.

And there he was. Sitting on the ground, leaning against a fence post. Dane was right. He wouldn't have recognized this man but for the way he always knew Arlin sat - slouching forward, with his chin perched on his left hand.

"Arlin?" Dane asked.

"Dane? P-pleasure to see you again."

Ossa shook in his pocket. Dane had both hands tucked away, feigning a need for warmth. She shook again; she was worried. She had to be. Something was wrong.

"What's this about, Arlin?"

"Always straight to the point, aren't y-you?" he stuttered.

"You hunted me down somehow, Arlin. You want something from me."

"I want you to t-tell the others. Tell them the tr-truth. That it was all your doing. You can c-come with me, and t-t-tell them everything that h-happened."

"It's been twenty years, Arlin. They aren't going to listen to me anymore. They won't even know it's me. I don't have a flame anymore, so there's no singeprint to prove my identity. I'm worthless to you."

"You know that's a l-lie!" he screamed. "You p-p-petu-la... pe-petu... you..."

"Arlin? Are you...?"

Ossa was furiously humming, now. She couldn't talk to Dane here, not without Arlin hearing it.

"Twenty years!" Arlin said, but... higher pitched? "Twenty years, trapped! Because of you!"

"You killed all those people, Arlin. You were the one who couldn't control your flame. Not me. Are you... what's going on?"

"Trapped with him! T-taken from my own... burning... I will snuff you out, you witch. I will. LOOK AT ME!"

Arlin started to stand up, but stumbled forward onto his knees. The back of his head... Ossa stopped shaking, when she saw what Dane saw.

There was no hair, no flesh. It was just a blasted out hunk of char, a crater where his skull had been. He was dead, or worse... no, it was worse.

He'd burned out.

"Dane," Ossa spoke urgently. "Arlin is gone. I don't know how, but he's gone somewhere I can't see him. It's just Eva."

"SHE'S HERE," a woman's voice shouted from Arlin's mouth. "ARLIN SHE'S HERE HE LIED SHE'S HERE I won't let you, I won't let you, not me, I'm not too far gone to end you too STOP IT get out GET OUT GET OUT!"

"We have to go, Dane, right now. Unbound like this, she could-"

Ossa was cut off by a roaring of air, as great bright lances of fire shot through the air and pierced through Dane's left foot into the ground. He cried out, and dropped to one knee in pain.

"Dane!" Ossa screamed. "I can fix it, we can run, just... hold on..."

Dane felt Ossa running through his blood almost the same way she'd always done it, but she was fumbling. It wasn't her fault - she was as sharp as ever, and being dormant hadn't changed her a bit. She fumbled because his body was twenty years different - it rejected her. Only a little, but enough to slow her down a bit.

"THIS IS YOUR FAULT," Eva screamed, through a mouth that wasn't hers. Another lance of fire shot toward Dane, but a blast of heat from Ossa sent it sprawling into rogue bursts of flame.

"Dane, I can't help your foot, it's too different, I..."

"It's okay, Ossa. Just do your best." Dane could finally stand, but he limped heavily to one side.

"I won't l-l-let you l-leave I WON'T," something screamed, something not so much Eva nor even Arlin, but coming from his body nonetheless.

More lances of fire shot through the air, and more waves of hot air rushed out to disrupt them. Most Torches only let a flame burn through their own control, but right now, Dane was glad Ossa had always known how to manage well enough solo.

And his feet were on fire. He tried to run faster, move faster, but all his effort only caused him to stumble. He saw the ground lurching up to meet him, felt the impact as he slammed into the cold dirt.

Great roars of fire blasted along the howling wind, and then he felt something latch onto his ankle.

LOOK AT ME.

"Ossa?"

Dane was in the room with the marble slab again. He was looking toward the door, and he felt the torch in his hand. No... that wasn't his hand. These weren't his clothes.

"Ossa, where are you? Ossa?" Dane pleaded.

I WANT TO FEEL IT.

Dane turned, and saw Eva on the marble. Human Eva. She was kneeling in piles of dry kindling, dead branches and grass. Her eyes were dead and glazed with a pure, solid black; her mouth hung open, and the words seemed to come from somewhere else.

TWENTY YEARS TWENTY YEARS TWENTY YEARS.

Dane felt something cold at the back of his skull.

LOOK AT ME.

He was on the ground again, and all around him was scorched earth. Something tugged at his legs, and he saw a hand dragging along as he tried to kick it loose. Half of Arlin's body was latched onto his legs, climbing, climbing...

MY BODY. I WANT TO FEEL IT.

His neck was cold, his ears felt like they were bursting, and the air was sharp. No, he had to fight it, he had to.

"Ossa?" he asked again. There was no answer. He felt her in his pocket, in his hands, but she was silent. Cut off.

Arlin's body wheezed, and the blown-out head came closer as it tugged up his legs.

So he kicked it in the face.

He kept kicking, shouting, fighting it as the chill grew along his spine and froze his mouth solid until he couldn't even shout. And oh, the pain, the pain. He felt each kick land, felt the sickening feeling of bones and flesh sloughing off a skull, but the chill grew, and...

"Dane!" someone shouted. "Tuck your legs in!"

Mel? No, Mel...

"Tuck!"

He tucked. Arlin's head was twitching, crawling, focused, and it lurched forward to latch onto Arlin's tucked legs.

And then an axe came down and sliced off the head.

"Dane!" Ossa blurted, relieved, as if she'd been holding her breath until now. "Are you alright?"

"Are you alright?" Mel asked at about the same time.

"Dane?" Ossa said. "Who is that?"

"Is that... " Mel paused, and knocked Arlin's hands away from Dane with the head of the axe. "Oh, Dane... "

"I'm fine," Dane said, to both of them. "Mel... how did you know to come?"

"Because you are an idiot, Dane."

"Ah, this is your wife," Ossa said. "Hello, it is a pleasure."

"Hi," Mel said, tightening her grip on the axe. "The pleasure's all mine."

"I feel like my head is going to explode," Dane said. "Can we just hold on for a second?" He got two nods. Well, one actual nod, and the strange knowing sensation of another.

He sat up, and cringed a bit when he saw what was left of Arlin's headless body. It was missing the bottom half, its legs nowhere to be seen. Ossa must have done that after he fell.

"She was unbound," Ossa said in response to his thought, "and easily overpowered me on contact. You should have never let her grab you like that," Ossa said.

"Right... " he said. "I guess I'm rusty."

"So it's true," Mel said. "You really are a Torch."

"How did you...? Mel, you knew?"

"You say the most curious things in your sleep," Mel said, hands on her hips in the usual way. "At first, I thought maybe you were just fanciful... but the things you would say. Oh, you make a woman worry, Dane. You and your past."

"And you never said anything?"

"Let sleeping dogs lie," Mel said. "Is what I think. Though, you're still an idiot for not telling me."

"I like her," Ossa said.

"To think, you had another woman in you for twenty years, and never even thought to tell your wife."

"I haven't spoken to Ossa since before we met, Mel."

"You haven't even - you haven't even told her? Dane, it's been years! She's been... what is it,dormant, this whole time? You are an idiot. A callous idiot. I married a donkey of a man. A donkey!"

"I like her," Ossa said, a bit too excitedly.

"And now you go running off to fight... well, whatever that is," she said, pointing toward the rest of Arlin. "And what are people going to say, now that there's a body out here?"

"They will say nothing," Ossa said, right as an unnecessarily potent fury of heat and sound enveloped the bits of Arlin that were left. It left nothing but a cloud of dust that got blown into the wind, and the sizzling hiss of baking blood.

"Ossa," Dane said, sternly.

"I am helping!"

"You are unbearable," Mel said. "Both of you. Get up, come on. We're going home, and we're going to have a long talk."

"A long talk sounds delightful," Ossa said.

But Dane just wanted to sleep.

Mel got Dane's arm over her shoulder, and they walked back together, saying nothing. The wind whipped harshly, but a warm heat took to both of them, a firm wall against the world's cold fury.