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Usually, Collei finds the sound of lightning storms soothing. She likes the patter of rain on her window panes. The crack of the thunder doesn’t bother her, even though it gives Tighnari headaches, and she likes the flash of lightning that occasionally floods her room with light.
But tonight the rain sounds more like pounding.
She slides out of bed with a grumble and tugs her cloak on. Her bare feet patter across the cold floor.
There must be a branch pummeling the side of the hut, she reasons. What else could it be? She figures she’ll just push the branch away and it will stop banging on her window.
But when she flings the shutters open, and, admittedly, gapes at the figure leaning in her window frame, she notes for the first time the banging sound was oddly human. The pounding sounded less like the scrape of a branch and closer to the wrap of knuckles on glass.
He braces the sides of the window for support and sways forward when the shutters fling open. He looks as diaphanous and washed out as a ghost, with his pale eyes sliding over her and the space behind her shoulder.
“Pardon my intrusion, cheri,” Freminet mumbles.
He speaks in a hushed tone, just like how he used to. It’s so familiar and surreal, she can’t comprehend what’s going on.
“You wouldn’t mind me staying the night, would you?”
Rain streams down his face, tinted pinkish red with blood. The storm clouds rolling up above allow moonlight to occasionally slip through, and it highlights his pale hair and face, the dark bruise running along his jaw, and makes him look even more like a ghost.
Collei nods, since all words evade her. She’s still discombobulated from sleep and Freminet’s face sends a chill through her body like frost.
He’s alive? Or is he just a spirit? She almost can’t tell when he places his hand in hers. It feels cold, like it could be a corpses’, like Freminet had dragged himself up from the bottom of the ocean floor as a water warped body.
He swings a leg over the window frame and tumbles forward. Collei reaches out to catch him, but falls to the ground with him instead.
His body feels solid in her arms and she can hear his heavy breathing. He doesn’t seem to be a figment of her dreams after all.
“You’re alive?” She hates the way her voice quavers.
There was the letter, thirteen months ago, explaining how Freminet contracted a disease and passed away in the night. She almost thought it was a cruel prank, until she saw the return address was directly from a hospital, stamped onto the corner of the envelope with undeniable officiality.
It was surreal, to be a million miles away from where everyone else was grieving. No one else in Sumeru knew him, no one understood why she felt so hollow inside. In Fontaine they held the funeral, and she missed it, burrowed away in her bedroom, spending the day rereading his old letters.
But now here he is—looking worse for wear— but alive. Tangled in her arms and bleeding, but present and breathing.
Freminet shifts in her arms and tries to sit up. She can feel it when he shivers through his coat, heavy and wet and bulky.
“I’m alive,” he confirms with a raspy voice.
He wraps an arm around her waist and lingers there. The embrace makes her cold and wet, but she leans into it.
When he pulls away he notes, “You’re alive too.”
Collei wipes angrily at the tears forming in her eyes.
“They told me you died!” she exclaims.
He brushes the bangs out of her face and grimaces. She thinks it was supposed to be a smile. “That was a year ago, Collei. I’m a changed man.”
She lets out an indignant laugh and inspects every inch of his face, trying to drink in the sight of him. It’s hard to believe he’s alive.
“Boucher hospital sent me a letter telling me you died and-”
“‘Boucher Hospital’ doesn’t exist, dummy.”
Doesn’t exist? Does he mean it was somehow destroyed? Or is he saying it’s fake? She doesn’t really care about the details, she just wants to know where he was and if he’s alright.
“What happened?” Collei ponders incredulously. “Where were you? Are you okay?”
The image of past friends flits through her mind, even as she tries to banish the thoughts. Sallow faces swim in her memory, blood flecked smiles flitting across their faces as rare as moths in the day. Each and everyone of them was dragged under by the weight of the experiments and body manipulation. Sickly children buried beneath the sands of time, perhaps forgotten by all but Collei.
She’s used to being the only one to survive, now. It’s become second nature to repress loneliness and push onwards. Never before has someone come back for her.
Freminet shakes his head and draws away.
“Unimportant.”
“Yes, important. Tell me.”
He escapes her arms and casts a look around her bedroom. She didn’t bother to light her oil lamp, so the only illumination in the room comes from the moonlight peeking through rain clouds. He inspects the corners and long shadows with a blank look.
Is he curious, judging it, or looking for threats hidden in the shadows? His shoulders heave in another shaky breath, with his body hunched in on himself. His body sways again, and he gently lays down on the carpet.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now, Collei.”
She frowns. Collei can recognize the pain in his body language, the way he curls in on himself like an injured animal.
She can also recognize how he’s withholding information from her, and she hates being left ignorant. But she decides to address his wounds before addressing his apparent distrust in her.
“You’re hurt,” she informs him. Like he hadn’t already noticed.
She scoots closer to him on the rug and inspects his damaged face. Now that the downpour isn’t washing it away, Collei can tell he’s bleeding somewhere from his temple. A watery drop of blood rolls down his forehead.
“Where does it hurt?” she asks.
She smooths back his hair to see better, but he quickly jerks away.
“Don’t…” he mutters, grabbing her hand away.
His grip is surprisingly strong, considering the fact he seems to be exhausted. His eye bore into her like a warning, even as he’s huddled on her bedroom floor.
She returns his look with a scowl.
“I’m trying to help you. Show me where you’re hurt,” she commands.
“I’m not asking you to help me,” he retorts, but cuts himself off when she glares.
Finally, reluctantly, he motions to his leg.
“I got into a bit of a scrape,” he admits. With the confession, he finally allows the fatigue to seep into his voice. He gives up any endeavors to seem composed.
He begins to unlace his boot before edging it off. He rolls up his pant leg, where Collei can more clearly see a crimson stained cloth wrapped around his calf, which, upon closer inspection, is partially wedged inside the wound. Freminet removes it gingerly to reveal a deep gash beneath.
“Oh.”
Collei can’t stop the way she involuntarily cringes at the injury. It reaches down to the bone.
No wonder he was so unsteady on his feet; he’s likely battling lightheadedness from blood loss. And she can’t tell how old the wound is yet. Maybe infection is already setting in.
“Pretty bad, huh?” He’s watching her face, and immediately she feels bad for reacting so terribly. She could’ve at least made an effort to hide her dismay, but now he’s seen it and she can’t hide it.
How did he get this injury? she wonders. It looks like a sharp sword slid right through his flesh. Or maybe the bad side of a tiger’s claws did. Whatever the case, it’s sickening.
Collie tries on a hopeful and fake smile to reassure him. But he isn’t the kind of person who is easily lied to, and she’s never been good at things she hates.
“Lucky for you, I’m a forest ranger. We have first aid kits lying around everywhere.”
Collei gets to her feet and rummages through her drawers. The medical kit is tucked inside, shoved beneath her combs. She draws it out and pops the lid off. Fortunately, this particular case isn’t used much, so all the gauze, string, disinfectant and needles are stocked.
The wound is undeniably severe. Not lethal, if Collei works fast, but certainly a pressing issue that will require stitches. Collei begins wringing her hands together as she consults her options.
Finally, she decides time is of the essence, and she is capable enough.
“Tighnari taught me how to do this,” Collei explains as she settles back down beside him. She spreads her equipment out on the floor as she sucks in one trembling breath after the other. “And while I’m fixing you up, you’re explaining everything to me.”
Freminet gives her an unreadable look.
“D’you have a box like that in every room?” Freminet asks incredulously, ignoring Collei’s last assertion. His voice is notably more strained.
“Kind of.”
Collei readies her equipment and calms herself. Though Tighnari taught her how to hypothetically give someone stitches, she’s never actually put it into practice. Hopefully it isn’t all that different from knitting; she’s decent at knitting.
Oh, archons, please don’t let me hurt Freminet, she thinks earnestly at her ceiling, hoping some archon will overhear.
“Are you praying?” Freminet inquires dryly.
“Ah. Maybe.” Collei chuckles, even though now is an atrociously inappropriate time to do it.
The process is tricky, and Collei gradually and increasingly becomes aware of how inadequate she is. She should have gotten Tighnari, Collei grieves, but it’s too late now.
(Or maybe it’s not too late and maybe that’s just what she keeps on telling herself. Because although the circumstance is so much more consequential than stupid love drama, she still doesn’t want to tell Tighnari that there’s a boy in her room at midnight. It feels forbidden, and she somehow needs to make up for the misdeed herself.)
Her only consolation is that Freminet hardly even flinches as the needle threads through his flesh, though she can’t tell if that’s because it doesn’t hurt or if it’s because his consciousness is weaving in and out.
The string criss-crosses across his flesh, and Collei pointedly ignores the white bone flashing up at her. Bright, red, blood slides over her fingers as the wound is reopened.
She needs something to distract her, just partially, as she works, because the blood is making her lightheaded. There’s a lot of it, and it makes her sick. She hates thinking about blood, and even though she should be over it by now, it’s always been a strong dislike of her’s.
She can’t be fuzzy minded when dealing with a needle and puncturing another human’s flesh. Maybe Freminet’s words can ground her.
“Tell me how you got hurt,” Collei orders. When she opens her mouth to speak, she realizes how tight she had been clenching her teeth.
“Uhg,” Freminet’s brows knit together and his face contorts, as if the question was causing him more pain than the injury. “You’d like to know?”
The needle pulls through again, in a slightly crooked stitch, but she can’t help it. Her fingers are still trembling.
“Yes, I want to know,” she insists. “Tell me how you got hurt.”
“Angry cat,” he finally admits. “Richbo-?”
“Rishboland tiger,” Collei finishes for him.
It makes sense, since Rishboland tigers don’t take kindly to foreigners. They can smell the nation clinging to visitors’ clothes, and Irminsul knowledge running through their veins gives them a healthy distrust for outsiders. It wouldn’t be too unbelievable if Freminet claimed to have been attacked by one of them.
But that doesn’t explain away the bruise coloring his jaw and the light nicks dotting his clothing. A rishboland tiger couldn’t be responsible for those kinds of damage. She could attribute the gash to one, but not everything else.
“I suppose the Rishboland tiger has a pretty good uppercut,” Collei muses.
She catches his reaction out of the corner of her eye. He frowns, caught in a lie.
“Freminet, just be honest: what happened?”
Immediately, he shifts, and she has to readjust her needle. It almost slips out of her hand, slick as it is with blood.
“Nothing happened. It was a cat, Collei. A tiger. Whatever. In the forest.”
Collei falls silent as she finishes his stitches. With a not-so-expert final stitch, the wound is closed.
“Stop lying. I know this-“ she grabs a handful of the coat fabric, filled with pock holes “-Isn’t a rishboland tiger’s work. It looks like… like…”
Like bullet marks? She isn’t sure. Her stomach twists at the horrifying implications.
“Stop touching me!” Freminet snaps, and he pushes her away. She falls back on the palms of her hands, and she glowers at him.
“I’m helping you, Freminet! Just talk to me.”
“You can’t help me,” he retorts. “You’ve never been able to. So stop pretending like we can be friends, since we can’t. Stop pretending like you like me. Stop pretending to be nice. Just stop. I don’t want to-”
He glares at her, his chest heaving in and out.
“All I asked for was a place to stay. I didn’t ask for you to… to heal me. Or talk.” A beat. “I never should have come here at all.”
Collei clambers to her feet and resists the urge to slap him. It’s always been a first instinct for her, violence, one that she’s spent a lifetime learning to hold back. But Freminet so sorely deserves it.
She just wants to bring him to his senses. Doesn’t he recognize how much she missed him? She doesn’t understand how he can be so cruel, and doesn't want to think that he didn’t miss her too.
It’s pointless to try to dissuade him from his secrets, she finally resolves. Like leading a dog away from its bone, she’d likely get bitten if she pried too much. So no matter what she does, he’ll refuse to tell her the truth. Even before he was ‘dead’ he was always keeping secrets. Things he never explained except in backwards, vague responses.
So it’s useless to get upset about it, she tells herself. He won’t change if she gets angry. She can’t change him.
He’s like the frozen lakes she saw in Fontaine. A beautiful surface, but everything else hidden beneath a layer of ice. She supposes someone would have to break it to ever see beneath. Throw a boulder and see the ice crack.
“I thought you were dead,” Collei mutters.
She scoops up a crumpled jumper on the floor and wipes her bloody fingers off on it. She’ll wash it tomorrow.
“I did too.” She barely catches it, almost drowned out in the sound of rain.
Collei glances at him sharply.
“I thought you were dead.” Freminet continues. “That’s what I was told.”
“But I’m not.”
“I know that now, but I didn’t then. There were reports of you being killed by an inebriated eremite or something like that. I only found out the truth a month ago.”
Then Collei realizes what he’s saying and clarity washes over her.
“Oh.”
She feels a small stab of guilt. He couldn’t have tried to contact her if he thought she was dead. It wasn’t his choice to disappear. He hadn’t intentionally abandoned her. He was lied to, just like she was. So she had no reason for being angry at him for leaving.
“I figured it all out a while ago.” Freminet expounds. “On the same day they told me you were dead, they sent the letter to you saying I was dead. Orchestrated both of our fake deaths to make sure we didn’t talk to each other anymore.”
“Who’s ’they’?”
“My Family,” Freminet says bitterly. “My Father. They think you’ll create a rift between me and my… my job.”
Collei grows silent. Okay, dang. And she thought her family was over-reactive. Apparently his had gone so far as to forge official looking documents to convince their son his girlfriend died.
“That’s insane,” she finally says. “Like, mad.”
“I know right?”
A ghost of a smile flashes over his face and it’s so wildly depressing and funny that he can smile at it she can’t stay mad at him anymore.
“So why are you in Sumeru?”
Freminet rolls his shoulders absently.
“Work.”
“The same job your family was worried I would get in the way of?” Collei asks with a sly grin. The irony isn’t lost on even her, illiterate as she is.
“Yes,” Freminet says. “How quickly the tides turn...”
He watches as she strips one of the blankets off her bed and tosses it in his direction. He catches it deftly and without a word, and passively holds it instead wrapping it around his shoulders.
“You should take off your clothes,” she suggests.
When Freminet gives her a look, she rolls her eyes.
“So you don’t freeze your butt off in your soaking clothes,” she elaborates. “Archons.”
Freminet heeds her instructions and begins unbuttoning his jacket. Collei turns around to give him privacy, but she spots the neck of his diving suit peeking up over his shirt collar right before she does. It startles a laugh out of her.
A year later, it’s still the same old Freminet. Wearing a diving suit under his clothes like always.
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
“You’re wearing your diving suit,” she observes. “Just like you did when I first met you.”
“I’m always prepared,” he agrees with a sage nod.
Collei snickers at what she thinks is a joke and rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet. She stops immediately when she realizes what she’s doing.
After all this time, he’s still capable of making her into a fool. Same old Freminet.
“So. How did you find me?” Collei finally chances.
The question has been bothering her for a while. He won’t be honest about how he got hurt, or be straightforward as to why he’s in Sumeru or why he’s not dead, but maybe he’ll tell her why it’s her he chose.
It can’t be coincidence he showed up at her window of all places. There are at least fifty other huts in this particular sector of woods, not to mention this area is secluded and far away from other cities. He couldn’t have possibly chosen a house at random and fallen into her bedroom. It was too unlikely.
Freminet stares at her for a long second, before he does the unthinkable.
He lets out a breathy chuckle. Freminet hardly ever laughs. She can’t even remember if he’s ever done it in her presence before. Even when he smiled earlier she thought it could be a trick of the iffy lighting.
Maybe the blood loss is making him delirious.
“I’m in Sumeru doing work here, right?” He stares at her ceiling with an unreadable smile. “At this point, I already know you’re alive. And I can’t help but try to learn where you are. I swear to myself I’ll keep a distance, but I just want to see you again, even if from far away. Comme la lune regarde le soleil. And then, I get hurt, I mess up… and I have nowhere else to go.”
He looks meaningfully at her.
“I’m glad you came to see me,” Collei finally says. And it’s the truth. I’m glad I can protect you.
She sidles up next to him on the floor. There’s still red dripping down his face, and it bothers her to look at.
“Let me patch you up…” she offers, and brushes the blood out of his eyes.
The medical equipment is still strewn across the floor, and she picks up a bit of gauze. Her bloodied fingers mar the pristine white bandage, and she holds it up to his temple.
“Collei, can you do me a favor?”
“Hm?”
“Don’t forgive me. It’d be easier if we hate each other.”
Collei squints at him in the darkness. Is this another joke? He says it so bluntly and suddenly, she’s inclined to think it’s supposed to be.
But Collei finds no trace of hilarity in his expression, only earnesty. He’s deadly serious, she realizes with a twist in her gut.
“What do you mean?”
“I want you to hate me.” Freminet explains. “I want you to forget I ever existed. If that makes sense.”
“It’s hard to forget you when you’re sitting right in front of me,” she points out wryly. Freminet isn’t smiling anymore.
“I know. But once I leave I need you to do me a favor. Hate me.”
“I don’t follow.”
Freminet is an enigma. She wonders if he’s purposefully elusive, or if he’s just as confusing to himself as to others.
“It’ll hurt you if you don’t hate me,” he whispers.
But how can she hate him?
Yes she was angry at him, but she can’t hate him. He’s Freminet, for heaven’s sake. The first and so far last boy she’s ever loved in this type of way.
“I can’t hate you,” she assures him.
“But you should,” he says, with sudden conviction. “I’m horrible, Collei. I hate you, say you hate me back.”
She remembers Fontaine. She can’t forget. Moving through the night like thieves, romaratime flowers and kisses at the Aquabus transit. It felt like a lifetime ago.
There were eight letters from him in total from just over a year. How can he possibly say he hates her? He signed off in each letter Yours, Freminet, like he belonged to her and she belonged to him.
“I can’t hate you,” Collei repeats. “And I don’t believe you hate me either.”
“But I do hate you.”
He sounds as if he’s really only trying to convince himself.
But Collei can’t help but believe it, even for just a second. Maybe it was all so much grander in her head. Maybe he’s never thought of her as more than a companion he occasionally writes to. And maybe he grew to hate her over time and think of her as an inconvenience.
But then he’s wrapping the single blanket she gave to him around her shoulders, wrinkling his brow at the way she’s shivering in her pajamas. Her heart gives a start, and she grabs his hand in hers.
“If you really truly hate me, I’ll never write to you again or speak to you again, if that makes you happy. And if you hate me, I’m sorry for loving you.”
Her voice comes across tense, like a challenge. She dares him to contradict her.
Conflicting emotions battle behind his eyes. He still looks tired, insurmountably so, but his face is hardened with resolve and sincerity.
“Okay, I lied. I like you.”
“Be honest.”
“Je t'aime,” he says again, this time in his native tongue. She knows just enough of his language to understand.
“When I said I hate you, what I really meant was I don’t want to lose you. I couldn’t bear it. And then I’d hate myself.”
Collei gives a fluttering smile that disappears quickly. The declaration feels like a spark of electricity through her veins, like her dendro vision had been swapped out for an electro one. All of a sudden she feels nervous.
She cups his face in her hand, and he does too, if hesitantly.
“I love you,” she whispers back. “'Uhibuk. And when I said I could never hate you, I meant it.”
He leans his forehead against hers, and she looks down at their clasped hands.
“Je t'aime,” he repeats. And then, quietly, “May I kiss you?”
She hums.
He’s still cold, like ice, like rainwater sitting still, but his touch sends warmth through her.
She reflects on the picture of a frozen lake. Perhaps throwing stones was the wrong idea; shattering the ice would turn up jagged, sharp, broken responses. Maybe warmth like a summer’s day was the best way to draw him out from behind his walls.
Freminet’s fingers find their way along her temple, trail timidly down to her chin to push it down and part her lips. Collei responds by leaning into him, bracing herself against the floor while falling further into him—
Thunder strikes, and they both jolt. Pulling away hastily, like they were caught doing something wrong. Freminet smiles again, tired but sweet, and Collei presses a consolatory kiss to his cheek.
She tries to persuade him to take the bed, but he doggedly refuses. Finally, Collei gives up and pulls all the blankets free from the bed. She arranges the quilts over Freminet because she knows he won’t give in, and he observes her through hooded eyelids.
“Hey,” he grouches.
“Hey yourself.”
She drops to the floor next to him and wraps her own blanket around herself. Collei scoots closer to Freminet and together they create a comfortable nest of blankets to sleep in.
“How long are you staying in Sumeru?” Collei asks as they’re settling down.
Freminet hums noncommittally and doesn’t provide a further answer. Collei hopes it’s forever.
“Tomorrow, I’m going to make you pancakes,” she promises. “With blueberries. Your favorite, right?”
Voice blurred by sleep he responds, “You’re my favorite.”
Collei grins like an idiot into her pillow, glad for the darkness to obscure her hot face.
You’re my favorite, too, she thinks.
Gradually, gently, Collei is lulled to sleep by the sound of rain on the roof and Freminet’s breathing.
She’s ignorant of the fact Freminet won’t be here by morning.
But for just a night, the two can sleep beneath a canopy of tree tops and rain and by each other’s side and forget all of their worries.