Chapter Text
The first thing she becomes aware of is cold.
Not the cold of winter's bite or even the sea wind that whips through Highever's towers. This is the cold of stone against her cheek, seeping through fabric, settling into bone. The kind of cold that suggests long abandonment, the whispers of places forgotten to time.
Theda's eyes crack open hesitantly - as if fearful but what is there to be afraid of in Highever? - and the light is wrong. Not firelight. Not torchlight. Daylight, gray and weak, filtering through...
Trees?
She jerks upright and immediately regrets it. Her head explodes with pain, a sickening throb that radiates from the base of her skull. Her stomach lurches and she barely manages to turn her head before she's retching, bringing up nothing but bile. Her throat burns. Her eyes water.
When the heaving stops, she stays on her hands and knees, gasping, trying to understand.
Trees, yes. Sparse, skeletal things with bare branches reaching toward a colourless sky. The ground is hard-packed earth and dead leaves. No grass. No undergrowth. Just... emptiness. Silence. That wasn't right.
There's no smoke. No screaming. No Highever. Just -
"You're awake."
Theda's head snaps toward the voice and the movement sends another spike of agony through her skull. She presses a hand to the back of her head and feels the tender knot there, sticky with dried blood.
Duncan stands a few paces away, arms crossed, watching her with that same unreadable expression. He looks exactly as he did before. Unmoved. Untouched by the horror of last night.
"No." Theda pushes off from the tree, takes a stumbling step toward him. " I need to go back."
"You will not." Duncan doesn't move, doesn't raise his voice, but something in his tone stops her cold. "Howe's men control the castle. You would be dead before you reached the gates."
"I don't care !"
"You should."
Theda stares at him. At this stranger who knocked her unconscious and dragged her... where? Where are they? She spins, looking around wildly. Trees. Empty land. No roads. No landmarks. Nothing familiar in the slightest.
Her voice cracks when she asks, "Where are we?"
"Half a day's ride from Highever," Duncan says. "You were unconscious through the night and into morning. We are heading south."
South. Away from home. Away from everything.
"Take me back." It comes out as a command, but it sounds like begging. "Take me back now, I need," she faltered. "I need - "
None of this makes sense, nothing. She was in the castle. She was fighting against the entire world flipping on its goddamn head. She was trying to reach her mother and then Duncan was there and then...
Then nothing.
"You hit me," Theda says, and the anger feels good, feels better than the panic clawing at her chest. "You knocked me out and you - you took me - you're a kidnapper!"
"I saved your life."
"I didn't ask you to!"
"No," Duncan agrees. "You did not."
Theda wants to scream. Wants to hit him, wants to run, wants to wake up in her bed and discover this is all some wine-soaked nightmare. But her head is pounding and her body aches and she's wearing a ruined dress stiff with dried blood— whose blood? Her father's? Her mother's? Some guard whose name she never learned?—
Her legs give out.
She doesn't fall. Duncan moves faster than she would have thought possible, catching her arm in a grip that's firm enough to hurt. He hauls her upright, not gently, and steers her back toward the tree. There's a fallen log nearby and he pushes her down onto it with all the ceremony of moving a sack of grain.
"Sit," he says. Not a suggestion.
Theda sits. She doesn't have a choice. Her body won't obey her anymore. Everything hurts. Everything is wrong.
Duncan moves away and she tracks him with her eyes, not trusting him, not trusting anything. He crouches by a small pack she hadn't noticed before - his pack, she assumes - and pulls something out. When he returns, he's holding a waterskin and something wrapped in cloth.
"Drink," he says, holding out the waterskin.
She doesn't take it. Doesn't move.
Duncan's jaw tightens. "You are dehydrated. Drink."
"I want to go home."
"There is no home to return to."
"You don't know that they've... maybe it's..." Yet Theda isn't a complete idiot. The truth is just beyond her, acceptance lying between them.
"I do. I know." He crouches in front of her, bringing himself to eye level, and his gaze is hard. "I saw the fires. I saw Howe's men securing the castle. I saw the bodies in the courtyard. Your home is gone. Your family is dead. You have seen it, too. These are facts. Accept them."
The words should hurt. They do hurt. But they also feel distant, like he's talking about someone else's tragedy. Someone else's family.
She remembers her last hope. "We need to find - my mother, she might have -"
"Your mother is dead."
The words are a blade between her ribs, precise and cold.
"You don't know that," Theda says, but her voice wavers. "She could have made it to the larder, or the - the eastern tower, there are passages -"
"I saw her fall," Duncan says, and there's something in his voice now, not quite gentleness but perhaps its distant cousin. "In the main hall. She fought well. She died protecting those who could not protect themselves."
Of course she did. Of course. Because mother was everything Theda was not - brave and selfless and good, right down to her last breath.
"My father," she cries.
"Dead."
Theda barely hears him, remembering.
"Fergus, Oriana - oh gods, " with that one a strange sound, like some sort of dry sob, vibrates in her throat.
"Gone," Duncan said with that ever implacable fucking face.
Each word is a hammer blow. Each word is true. She knows they're true. She saw it. She saw the blood, the bodies, the flames. But knowing and accepting are different things, and she can't - she can't -
Duncan shoves the waterskin into her hands. "Drink. Now."
His tone brooks no argument. Theda's hands move automatically, raising the waterskin to her lips. The water is lukewarm and tastes of leather but it soothes her raw throat. She drinks more than she means to, suddenly desperate, and when she finally lowers the skin she's gasping.
Duncan nods, satisfied, and unwraps the cloth. Bread. Hard cheese. He breaks off pieces and holds them out.
"Eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"Eat anyway."
She wants to refuse. Wants to throw the food in his face and demand he take her back, demand he explain why he saved her when everyone else died, demand something. But her hands take the bread. Her mouth chews. Her body, traitorous thing, is grateful for it. The food sits heavy in her stomach but it quiets something. The shaking in her hands eases. The world stops tilting quite so violently.
Duncan watches her eat with the same impassive expression, brows heavy. Offers the drink again. When she's finished, he takes the waterskin back and tucks it away.
"We have a long day ahead," he says, straightening. "I have no intention of carrying you the entire way."
The entire way. The words register slowly.
"Where are you taking me?" Theda asks. Her voice sounds so foreign, distant.
Duncan looks down at her, and for a moment she thinks he won't answer. Then:
"Far."
That's it. One word. As concise as ever, the brick of a man.
Theda stares at him. At this man who appeared at her home days ago— was it only days? It feels like years— and somehow survived when everyone else burned. This man who knocked her unconscious and stole her away and now stands here telling her to eat, to drink, to accept that everything is gone.
She should hate him, and she probably does. Somewhere inside.
But he's also the only thing standing between her and the complete emptiness of the world. The only solid thing in a reality that's dissolved into smoke and blood. She has nothing. No family. No home. No future.
Just him. She almost reaches for his arm, an instinct she didn't know she could have. The realisation settles quickly over her like a weight. She's clinging to him because there's nothing else to cling to. Because he's here and he's real and he pulled her out of the flames even if she didn't want to be pulled.
She's alone except for him.
The thought should terrify her. Maybe it does. But mostly she just feels... numb. Hollow. Like something vital has been scooped out of her chest and all that's left is this strange, calm emptiness.
Shock, probably. She's in shock.
"Can you walk?" Duncan asks.
Can she? Theda looks down at her legs, at her ruined slippers caked with mud and worse things. She flexes her feet. They respond. Huh.
"I think so," she says, almost disappointed.
"Then we move. Stay close. Do not wander. If you fall behind, I cannot wait."
He says it like a promise. Like a threat. Theda nods because what else can she do?
Duncan turns and starts walking, not checking to see if she follows. For a moment, Theda stays on the log, staring at his retreating back. She could sit forever. Could refuse to move. Could let him leave her behind in this empty place with its skeletal trees and grey sky.
But then what? She decides to stand. Her legs shake but they hold. She takes one step. Then another. Following Duncan because there's nowhere else to go. Nothing else to do.
They walk into the empty land, and Highever burns far behind them, and Theda feels absolutely nothing at all.