"One more left...ah, c'est trop..."

It was just as bad as Emir had warned. Mirk had been hauling patients from the rooms nearest the transporters over to the aides waiting by the barrier to the second floor since the moment he'd come in. For the moment, the healers from the Tenth were capable of doing the real work, though they needed the assistance of all the available nurses and aides to handle the waves of casualties. Mirk hadn't had a spare second to ask what was happening, where all the moaning and half-conscious men were coming from and why exactly the Seventh or the First hadn't been sent out along with them to cushion the blow. All Mirk had time to do was choke down the blocker Danu had pressed into his hands along with a bun to take away some of the bitterness of the potion before getting back to work.

They'd been working so hard that Yule hadn't once taken a break to complain or gossip with them about the reason why so many men were coming in shredded, as all the other healers referred to wounds that were so terrible that they'd have been deadly if not for the support of the combat healers that had ferried the fighters back to the infirmary. Danu and Yule were already far off down the hall ahead of him, while Mirk was still back by the field transporter, leaning against the wall with one hand and catching his breath. Mirk had been hoping that all his work at the infirmary had been making him more resilient. But his head was still pounding, despite the blockers, and his back was tense and aching.

Another five years, Danu always reassured him, and it wouldn't be so bad. Yule never hesitated to tell her she was delusional.

Just as Mirk willed himself to push off the wall and hurry after Danu and Yule, something crashed into him from behind. The blow sent Mirk reeling back into the wall as he flailed around to see what had nearly knocked him off his feet. It was an infantryman, stumbling down the hall from the transporter. Mirk recognized him. The man that he'd been tending to the night he'd found Genesis unconscious in the street.

He was worse off than the last time Mirk had seen him. The infantryman was stumbling about in a daze, his eyes glassy and distant. He was clutching his forearm, severed completely at the elbow that time, to his chest with his uninjured hand.

Mirk rushed to the infantryman's side, all his fatigue and aching banished by panic. "Oh dear! Oh, no, not again, here, let me help—"

A stream of blood trickled down the infantryman's face from the corner of his delirious smile. He didn't seem to hear Mirk. Instead, he laughed to himself, weakly, as he looked down at his mangled forearm, petting at it like an old noblewoman did her toy dog. "Hell of a day..." the man slurred, his forearm slipping from his bloodied fingers.

Before Mirk could get a good hold on his remaining arm, the man collapsed, falling flat on his face with a crunch that made Mirk wince backward, the infantryman’s pain cutting through Mirk's shielding like he had none at all. The infantryman's back was a skinned and bloody mess, muscles sheared away to reveal the bones underneath, shards of metal sticking out of his back in a line along his spine. Mirk's stomach lurched, but he still knelt down beside the infantryman, reaching out to him with the smallest tendril of magic he could pass over his shields without lowering them fully. If he wasn't careful, the man's pain would overwhelm him completely. Mirk wasn't on strong enough blockers to heal that kind of wound.

"Comrade?" Mirk called out, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Comrade, can you hear me?"

The infantryman didn't respond. Distantly, Mirk heard the transporter engage, spitting out another casualty. Mirk ignored it, focusing all his attention on the infantryman, reaching out to the man's life energy, that spark of warmth and purpose buried deep within everyone. There was the sound of moaning. Gagging. Staggering footsteps. Another healer would have to tend to the new arrival.

"It'll be all right, comrade, it'll be just fine, just focus on the sound of my voice and breathe, breathe in, breathe..."

The body splayed on the floor in front of Mirk began to convulse. Mirk felt the warm fluttering of the man's soul brush against his own magic, just for a second. Then it was gone and the infantryman went limp, a growing pool of blood fanning out across the stones around him. Frozen, Mirk stared down at the mangled remains, struggling to pull his shields back up into place. They were coming apart at the edges from the combined force of his own horror and the pain battering against them from the outside.

As Mirk stared helplessly down at the infantryman’s body, he heard the transporter crackle to life again and again. Though he couldn't bring himself to look up and see with his physical eyes how badly wounded the fighters reeling out of the transporter were, he could feel their amassed agony towering over him, a wave seconds away from crashing down on him.

Then Mirk felt hands under his shoulders, hauling him back up to his feet. Yule. And Danu. She was pressing another potion into his hand. Mirk recognized the label on the bottle. It was the same strength blocker that Eva had given him when he'd needed to heal Slava. Shaking his head, Mirk forced himself back to the present, lifting his arm and gulping down the blocker. Instantly, the pain around Mirk dimmed. But that time, there was too much of it for the world to take on the glow that he remembered. It only blunted the pain enough to allow Mirk to find his feet again.

"Sorry, so sorry, Danu, Yule...what's happening?"

"The Tenth's calling it. You're in," Yule said, taking the empty bottle from Mirk and slapping another one into his hand. Weaker than the first, but still terribly strong. Mirk glanced up at Yule. The older healer was grinning at him, humorlessly. Unbidden, Mirk remembered the smile that'd been on the face of the infantryman now lying dead at his feet. "Guess you're rich enough to be first up."

The blockers still didn't feel strong enough, somehow. He needed Danu and Yule's help to make it down the hall to the surgical room that'd been readied for them. The other members of his team both set to work assisting Mirk, fetching supplies from aides and sending them back off with fresh orders. Mirk’s legs were trembling. He wished that Danu and Yule would come back. He didn't understand — they had both been in the infirmary for over a decade; why was he being called to heal before them? But it wasn't his place to question. It was his place to endure, to work, to save as many men as he could. A few seconds after Yule and Danu returned to his side, two aides swung their first patient up onto the table smeared with blood that Mirk was bracing himself against.

It was a blast injury. Like the one that'd killed the infantryman Mirk had left behind out in the hall. The man's uniform and skin were all seared off from neck to navel and a twist of metal was buried in his chest. The man was barely breathing. He had a head injury of some kind too, but Mirk could only do one thing at a time. Danu pressed her hands to either side of the unconscious man's bruised face, taking command of his soul. Someone barked a curse at them from the doorway, but Yule handled it, hurling a curse back, saying something about how if they wanted to burn Mirk's potential, they had to deal with the rest of his team supporting him.

Sucking in a deep breath and banishing his shields, Mirk plunged into the barely-human gore laid out before him.

He called to the metal fragment stuck in the man's chest, drawing it out of him as carefully as he could as he channeled his magic down into space where it once was, tugging together flesh so that more blood couldn't leak into the man's punctured lung. But that didn't fix the disturbance Mirk could feel in his other lung, didn't stop the blood that was seeping out of his ears. The man died.

Without fanfare, his body was dragged aside and another replaced him. A leg severed at the knee, and a wound on the inside of the other leg that was causing blood to pour out of it. Not so bad; Mirk healed the wound without much trouble, following instinct rather than his lessons, doing his best to make whole what had been broken. There wasn't much he could do for the missing part of the infantryman's leg other than seal off veins and arteries oozing blood onto the table. That man was still groaning when he was taken away and replaced by another.

More bodies, one after one, Danu holding their souls steady while Yule passed him all the potions and powders he could bully out of the aides and gave Mirk terse recommendations about which wounds he needed to pour his life-giving potential into first for the men to have even a passing chance at survival. Fractured skulls, exposed and shredded innards, skin charred blue-black from magic burns, all of it passed under Mirk’s hands and before his eyes in an unrelenting torrent of human suffering. He was too dazed and afraid to fully comprehend all of it.

Mirk reached the blocker limit before he ran out of potential. He was switched to laudanum. Its euphoria was a distant thing; it barely did him any good. The next man who was loaded onto the table in front of him was gone below the knees.

Why did they keep bringing these men to him, more wound than body, more dead than alive? Did they think he was some kind of saint, capable of calling down miracles to spare the men they brought to him final judgment? Did they think the well of life inside him was bottomless? Mirk was too shocked to do anything more than ask the questions in the spare moments he had between bodies. He did his best to ignore all of it and focus on his work. Some questions were the providence of God alone.

As it dragged on and on, Mirk did everything he could not to think. Not to feel. But the pain was wrapping around him so tightly it felt like he could barely breathe, and tears were streaming down his face along with sweat, and he couldn't speak any more, he had to keep biting down on his lip to keep from breaking down into sobs. Even though he tried not to feel, every so often he'd catch part of it, when Danu's strength faltered and she lost her hold on the mens' souls. Visions of women with vibrant smiles and warm eyes, the feel of the strong grip of a father's hand on a shoulder, the calling and laughing of children in languages Mirk couldn't understand.

The laudanum limit came too soon. Then there was no relief but the haziness of alcohol, which the senior healers had decided Mirk could process almost indefinitely without risk of injury, something about a healer's constitution, about regeneration, about having an angel for a father. None of it mattered. No amount of gin would be enough to wash the blood off his hands.

Still, Mirk forced himself onward — he healed one artery only to have the patient bleed out from another, saved one leg but lost an arm, squeezed the life back into a heart while the brain faded and died. Another. And another. Dead, dead, alive, but just barely, dead, alive yet maimed so badly that magic promised the man only the ghost of the life he'd once had.

Yule was the one who stopped the parade of dying men. Two aides tried to swing yet another body up onto the table, but Yule shoved himself in front of it, warding them off with a warning that if they wanted to save more of their own, they'd get Cyrus to cave and let the Twentieth take charge of the rest. It must have worked. The two nurses Danu called in from the hall to help carry Mirk off to the third floor had to step aside at the doorway to let Emir slide past and take Mirk's place beside the table.

Emir's robes were soaked in blood up to their elbows. If the commander looked that bad, Mirk could only imagine what he had to look like.

- - -

Even though he was overwhelmingly, bone-achingly tired, Mirk couldn't make himself fall asleep.

His mind was too busy for it, or perhaps it was that the four hours he'd spent passed out up on the third floor had granted him just enough energy to ruminate on what had happened that afternoon. Mirk probably wouldn't have woken up on his own if he'd been left in peace, but the bed the nurses had dropped him in was needed for a patient.

After struggling into a fresh set of robes that weren’t stiff with dried blood, Mirk had attempted to shuffle back downstairs and help with the remainder of the patients however he could, fetching supplies or stitching, but Sheila had caught sight of him on her way upstairs and had put a stop to that. The pain from the injured men didn't impact her as badly; she fed on it rather than withering underneath the weight of it. She had more than enough energy left to accompany Mirk down to second, where she'd pried Yule out of a room where he was arguing with a healer from the Tenth and sent them both off back to the dormitory.

Yule had tried to talk Mirk into going to the tavern instead of back to the dormitory. Though he'd felt guilty about it, Mirk had turned him down. Yule was always good company, even when he was in a mood, and since the Seventh hadn't been involved in that day's fighting, K'aekniv and the rest were bound to be there, ready with a bawdy story or joke to help take the edge off all the things Mirk had witnessed. There wasn't a doubt in Mirk's mind that they were all masters of the best way to forget about dead men by the score and the numbed or sobbing comrades they left behind.

But Mirk wasn't strong enough for any of it. The laughter and singing spilling out into the street from the tavern's open doors, along with the rowdy amusement that went along with them, had been too overpowering for Mirk to bear in his weakened state. So he'd left the drinking to Yule and had returned to the dormitory alone.

It'd taken all his remaining strength to haul himself up the four flights of stairs to his room, strip off his robes and use them to clean off the worst of the blood still left on his body, and collapse onto the bed in nothing but his braies. Mirk had been hoping he'd pass out right away, just like when the nurses had thrown him into the bed on third. Emir had said to both him and Yule as they’d left that he expected them to both be in as early as possible the next morning. The infirmary was packed; they needed every last set of hands they could get, even if they weren't recovered enough to heal.

Instead, Mirk was left staring at the wall his bed was pushed up against, trying and failing not to think about anything. An impossible task, but Mirk felt he had to try. He counted his breaths, holding each a bit longer than the last, hoping to calm himself. All it did was leave him feeling dizzy.

There was a barely audible click. Mirk had been concentrating so hard on his breathing that he'd forgotten about the fact that his room wasn't entirely his own, at least at the moment. It had surprised Mirk, but he'd come to realize that it was surprisingly easy to not notice Genesis's comings and goings, mostly because the commander did everything so silently and quickly that he was easy to miss unless Mirk was making a point to watch and feel for the tell-tale signs of Genesis's magic.

Though he didn't hear any footsteps, Mirk could guess at what Genesis was doing behind him. It had to be after midnight by then, which meant that Genesis had most likely just finished with all of his nightly cleaning rituals. He'd be putting away all his potions and tonics, meticulously ordering them all in the top drawer of Mirk's dresser.

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Mirk hated to bother Genesis. But he hated the thought of having to get out of bed even more. Even lifting one hand and waving it to catch the commander's attention was a trial.

"Would you put out the light, please? I...forgot about it. And I don't have enough magic..."

Genesis didn't respond, but the magelights went out nevertheless. The dimness was a relief. The tiny magelight under the desk was just enough to make the room seem warmer, like it was lit by firelight instead of by magic.

"Thank you, messire."

Again, no reply. Mirk wasn't expecting one. If Genesis had started exchanging the common pleasantries of everyday sociability with him, Mirk would have been forced to sit up and give the commander a once-over for head injuries. Mirk couldn’t hear Genesis approaching, but he shifted over flush against the wall regardless. Reflexively, Mirk tensed, trying to raise shields that were no longer there as he felt Genesis's weight on the mattress beside him. Then he let it go along with a sigh.

That was another thing that it was harder to get accustomed to than Mirk was anticipating. He always braced himself for the press of emotions when Genesis was nearby like he needed to with most other people. But none ever came. All Mirk could ever feel was the staticky touch of Genesis's magic, and that was only if he made it a point to search it out.

It was cold against the wall. Mirk hadn't bothered to get under the blankets before crawling into bed; just taking off his robes had felt like too much to bear. It would be warmer under the bedclothes, at least a little, though the difference between curling up against the wall or turning and doing the same to Genesis felt negligible, at least in terms of temperature.

But there was a certain comfort in hiding under a pile of blankets, using them as a shield against the harsh and unfeeling world beyond. Especially when he was drained, when his mind was raw and vulnerable, half of him wanting company to help distract from the aching in his head, and half of him unable to bear even the thought of another person's presence. And a small voice in the back of Mirk’s mind whispered that he didn't deserve comfort, that he'd done nothing to earn it.

The rest of him was too desperate to take the voice seriously. Mirk clawed his way under the quilts.

Mirk knew he should have left Genesis alone. The commander had tolerated his closeness up until then, but he hadn't felt like he did now before, at least not while Genesis had been present. Hurt, afraid, alone, emotional. Genesis always seemed uneasy with people who were emotional. Tears and rages only ever seemed to bring out a distant sort of perplexity in Genesis, as if he was watching some kind of foreign ritual he didn't understand and wanted nothing to do with. That and Mirk knew he still had to be filthy, despite his token attempt at cleaning himself before crawling into bed.

Still, Mirk couldn't help but want to turn over to face Genesis. If he wanted the comfort of closeness without the pain of another's emotions, who better to go to than someone who felt like nothing at all? The small voice in the back of Mirk’s mind snapped at him again: forcing someone into comforting you? Pathetic. Selfish. Desperate.

Desperate. He was desperate. Mirk heaved himself over onto his other side. A moment later and he was clinging to Genesis, his arms wrapped tightly around his thin frame and his head buried against his chest.

Though he'd been prepared for Genesis trying to push him away, extracting himself from the unprompted embrace, Genesis was still. The same unnatural, yet oddly comforting kind of still he always was. Genesis was always the same, always nearly cold enough to mistake for dead, always faintly smelling of all his potions and soaps that he used to scrub himself mercilessly, impeccably clean. No matter how badly beaten Genesis was, no matter how close he got to becoming nothing more than a shattered wreck of a body, like all those men Mirk had felt slip away from him that afternoon, Genesis always came back the same. As if nothing had happened. As if nothing would ever happen.

Mirk suddenly felt foolish for having accosted Genesis so. But it still wasn't enough to make him apologize and let go. A testament to his weakness. None of the other healers were reduced to such theatrics after a hard day. Most of the injured fighters themselves bore up under it better than he was at present. Though his mind felt cloudy and the right words were slow in coming, Mirk felt he should cough up some kind of explanation for himself.

"I'm sorry, messire. It's just..."

Just what? Was awful? Was unbearable? Was inhumane, was terrifying, was nonsensical, was cruel to the point of madness? What amount of gold was worth all that agony, all those ruined and lost lives? Mirk was certain Genesis had to have seen worse. Genesis went through the transporter with the rest of the men instead of idling around on the other side, waiting for the dead to be brought back through.

To Mirk's surprise, Genesis answered him. "It would...concern me more if this did not upset you. I heard word of how...brutal this contract was. K'aekniv and I discussed assisting them. However, their...pride would not allow even North to accept the help of poor foreigners in obtaining their final victory on that particular realm."

Was Genesis only humoring him? Mirk didn't think it was likely. Genesis was sympathetic to his friends' plights, Mirk thought, but he was always honest and practical in his response to them. Perhaps Genesis thought he had some sort of responsibility to tolerate Mirk's clinging, some misplaced sense of obligation or duty due to Mirk being willing to share his room with him.

It was pointless to wonder. Genesis wasn't one to divulge his inner thoughts, and Mirk couldn't sense a single one of them. Mirk sighed, making himself loosen his death grip on the commander's midsection. But he couldn't make himself let go entirely. Or look up into his face. Not yet. "Still. It's...I should be able to take care of myself by now."

Genesis was silent. Just as Mirk was about to apologize again and let him go, the commander carefully worked one hand out from underneath Mirk's trembling body and patted him on the back. Three times. Three mechanical, laboriously precise and calculated times, as if Genesis expected Mirk to crack into a million pieces if he did it wrong.

It wasn't nice. Mirk knew it wasn't. He should have said something encouraging, something supportive. Instead, Mirk burst into laughter, his face still pressed against Genesis's chest. It was just so ridiculous that a man who didn't hesitate to throw himself into the worst fights, who challenged the most cunning opponents without batting an eye, would be so apprehensive about something as simple as a pat on the back.

But in a way, he shouldn't have been so surprised. Everything had to be exact with Genesis. Precise. Even things that were meant to be instinctual, like comforting someone.

"...what?"

Though Mirk tried to stop, Genesis's tone of voice made him laugh harder. The commander sounded bemused, as if he couldn't fathom why his textbook response was anything out of the ordinary. The fact that Genesis started muttering to himself not long afterwards, in hisses and clicks rather than English, only made things worse.

"Oh, no, it's all right, Gen, it's just...you..." Mirk wanted to reassure Genesis that his efforts were appreciated, that his strange response made Mirk feel better than any heartfelt embrace or sentimental words of condolence. But the thought of how bemused that explanation would inevitably make the commander only made Mirk keep laughing.

"I don’t understand," Genesis said, his frustration finally escaping in words Mirk recognized.

After a few more gasps, Mirk found his composure again. It wouldn't do to leave Genesis with the impression that his efforts weren't appreciated. Otherwise the commander might not have dared to be friendly to anyone ever again. Genesis couldn't stand being wrong once he'd made the leap and done something. Even if it was on a subject he couldn't be expected to know much about. "No, it's fine, messire. You did it right. It's...well. You're a bit stiff."

"Stiff?"

"It's more like this," Mirk said, lifting a hand to the commander's shoulder, rubbing it in the way that was as instinctual to him as blinking. The kind, supportive but not too close gesture he used whenever he saw someone in the infirmary who he thought would be better helped with touch than with a few encouraging or sympathetic words.

"I...see."

"You don't have to be so...proper? Correct? Sais pas. I'm grateful either way, of course. You've made me feel much better already."

After deliberating for a time, Genesis raised his hand to Mirk's back again. He repeated with eerie exactness the same motion Mirk had just made against the commander's shoulder. It was fully correct, a perfect copy. Which was what made Mirk dissolve into laughter once more. Genesis sighed, pulling away from him.

"No, no! You were right!"

"Then why do you laugh?"

Because it was all hopelessly, impossibly endearing, in the odd way that only Genesis could manage. It was honest. Heartfelt, in its own peculiar way. If Genesis was willing to try, then it had to mean he really wanted to help comfort him. And that earnestness made it all the more effective.

Genesis’s support, strange as it was, really had made Mirk feel much better. More like himself, achy and tired still, but not so lost, so hopeless. Mirk didn't know if Genesis would understand that kind of explanation, though. The commander preferred reason over sentiment, an exact chain of rational cause and effect that left room for no other conclusions. So Mirk settled for a half-truth. "You're just being silly, that's all."

"...silly." Genesis sounded almost offended to have the word applied to him.

"Not that you aren't smart, messire. You're the most clever person I know. It's only that you can't really do this kind of thing wrong. You don't have to worry about offending me. You aren't going to hurt my feelings by being kind. Or by patting me on the back. I know you'd never hurt me on purpose."

Genesis didn't respond. Which made Mirk feel inclined to encourage the commander further. He nudged Genesis with his knee, letting his arm slide back to where it'd been before, around Genesis's narrow waist. "What is it you're always telling me? You should do as you will?"

Mirk thought Genesis was going to do nothing more than lie still beneath his arm. Then, after a long time, the commander cautiously lifted his hand again, that time to the back of Mirk's head. He began to stroke Mirk’s hair, almost too lightly to be felt.

It wasn't what Mirk had been expecting. He'd expected something less familiar, more like his precise pats on the back. But it would be better not to tell Genesis that, lest he get the impression that he'd done something wrong again. Mirk had told Genesis to do what came most naturally to him. And it wasn't as if Mirk didn't like it. No one had been so tender toward him in a long time. Not since his mother had passed. And this felt different than when his mother would press him to her breast and console him, somehow, less like he was being treated like a blubbering child. There was no pity in the gesture, no condescension. Only understanding.

"See? Nothing bad is going to happen," Mirk said, squeezing Genesis a bit with both arms to emphasize his point, lest his words not get through to the commander. "It isn't such a terrible thing, being close now and then. Didn't you ever have someone you were close to, before you came here?"

"No."

Though Genesis didn't sound troubled by this fact, Mirk couldn't help but reflexively reach up to rub his shoulder again. As if companionship in the present could make up for a joyless, empty past.

Of course, Genesis had never said that was what life had been like for him as a child. But Mirk couldn't picture it having been any other way, considering how hard the commander found it to trust other people. It was all probably something terrible and cruel, something that would have seemed too awful to be real if it hadn't left marks on Genesis’s character to serve as evidence. It had to be something like the terrible punishments from fairy stories: abandoned in the woods and left to fend for himself, locked in a cage in a dark cellar, or forced to slave away cleaning an enchanted palace every night while an evil king and queen slept peacefully in their chambers.

Only no hero had come to save Genesis, probably. Knowing the commander, he most likely had killed and magicked his way out, freeing himself, but ending up just as alone as he had been before. No happy ending.

"I'm sorry," Mirk said, softly, when Genesis didn't choose to share anything further.

"For what?"

"It isn't fair for anyone to have to be alone like that."

"Fairness...is not an essential quality of existence."

Mirk wanted to protest, to tell Genesis that some things were just too much for one person to bear, too painful a burden to be carried alone. But just as he was about to say something, Mirk let out a yelp of surprise as something cold ran down the back of his neck. Genesis immediately went tense. It had only been one of the commander's fingers, still ice cold.

"Oh, it's all right," Mirk said. "I just forget how cold you are sometimes." Mirk took hold of Genesis's other hand, pressing it tightly between his own in an attempt to warm it. He hoped the contact would be enough to convince Genesis he'd done nothing wrong. Yet the commander remained silent and still beside him. Mirk looked up at him, smiling. Genesis’s face was blank. "Go on," Mirk said. "I didn't say I wanted you to stop."

Grumbling, Genesis resumed stroking his hair. Mirk had been honest — despite Genesis's coldness, he had no desire to pull away from him. There was something soothing in Genesis’s touch, something in his purposeful and careful movements that undid the knots that tightened in Mirk’s stomach hour after hour in the infirmary. It left Mirk feeling relaxed and wobbly in a way he didn't quite understand.

Mirk returned to rubbing at Genesis's long, delicate fingers. He had no idea how someone who did so much swordwork kept his hands so perfect and smooth. Even the best noble ladies' hands that he'd bowed over and clasped couldn't compare to how fine and delicate Genesis's hand was between his own perpetually stained and stumpy ones. Genesis’s hands were a marvel, truly. And they weren't getting any warmer, despite Mirk's best efforts. Sighing, Mirk gave it up, though he kept one of his own hands clasped over Genesis’s, in the hopes that the commander at least wouldn't get any colder.

As he propped his head back against Genesis's chest, Mirk noticed that the commander had begun to shake. Not violently, like Genesis had when he'd been ill. It was barely perceptible, would have been easily overlooked if the commander wasn't usually so still. Mirk shifted his head, looking up at Genesis's face again, studying him. He didn't look upset. But that didn't necessarily mean that he wasn't.

"What is it?" Mirk asked.

Genesis frowned, his eyebrows arching. The yellowy glow of the magelight underneath the desk cast faint shadows across his face, softening Genesis's angular features along with the frown. "I did not…say anything."

"You're shaking."

The commander glanced down at himself, thinking. "So...I am," he said, slowly, as if he was as surprised by it as Mirk was.

Mirk pressed the back of his hand to Genesis's forehead. Cool, normal. So was the side of the commander's face. For a moment, Mirk felt an urge to leave his hand there to warm him. But that would undoubtedly press Genesis's tolerance for physical touch too far. "You don't have a fever," Mirk said. "That's strange."

Mirk lowered his hand, tucking his arms around Genesis's narrow body once more. The shaking was worrisome, but he couldn't feel any pain coming from Genesis, and in his weakened state, Mirk knew he would have picked up anything severe. He tried to help himself dismiss it by shifting into a more comfortable position, scooting up further against Genesis's side, finding that certain place on his shoulder that wasn't too bony, above the clavicle and close to his neck. Mirk had always thought Genesis would find this too intrusive, but the commander had never commented on it thus far.

And he was still stroking Mirk's hair, every touch the exact same length and pressure. Mirk smiled. No one else could compare to that exactness. Or in any of a dozen other ways.

"You should go to sleep, Genesis," Mirk said.

"It is not that simple."

"I know. But it doesn't hurt to try." Not that Mirk had to put any effort into it himself — he'd been exhausted to begin with, and now that he didn't feel so hopeless and alone, he was fading fast. "Just close your eyes and think of better things."

Better things. Like a warm bed, a soft quilt, and a friend to share both with. A friend who warded off all the fear and guilt simply by being himself: not exactly warm and sentimental, but there for him nevertheless. And full of hidden eccentricities that made being around someone as unchanging and steadfast as Genesis less dull than it properly should have been. Mirk still wasn't certain whether Genesis was comfortable with him being so close. But Mirk liked to think that he wasn't a total burden to Genesis, at least. Not anymore.

It was a silly train of thought, certainly one more imagined than it was real. But Mirk felt entitled to a few pleasant thoughts as he drifted off. Especially after such a horrible day.