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Kattigan doesn’t know when they’d lost track of the boy.
In the chaos of skirmishes, it was easy to lose sight of each other. They tried the best they could, had systems in place—sound-off between pushes, always rush in pairs—but no system was perfect, and it had been a long day in a series of long days in an already long fucking war, so by the time they realize that he’s no longer with them, there’s no way to know how long he’s been missing.
It’s none of their faults, but the guilt lingers for a long time.
It’s Thimble who finds him, flitting rapidly as only she could in and out of foxholes and craters across the vast expanse of a thrice-damned battlefield. It’s Thimble who alerts them before she flies off to find any help she could bring back, but she hesitates before she leaves. Her gaze flicks over Thjazi and Kattigan almost too fast to catch, and there’s no relief in her eyes.
Kattigan knows they're too late the moment they get to the kid’s side. Drops to his knees in the mud beside Azune, curled up small in the shadow of a foxhole, can already see the blood staining his hands where they’re pressed against his stomach, the pallor of his face under the muddied red shock of his hair. The reality aches in his jaw like a rotten tooth.
From behind him Thjazi laughs, breathless with relief, because he’s not as close. He can’t see what Kattigan can, not until Kattigan pries Azune’s hands away from his stomach—while the kid flinches from him, tries weakly to fight, to protect himself, delirious from blood loss and fear and pain and Kattigan is surprised he’s even still conscious—to reveal a ragged hole like a hellebore punched through layers of chain mail and tunic and deep into his abdomen.
Too deep. Even if they picked him up and ran, met Thimble flying back, none of them could fix that kind of damage. Teor could’ve, maybe, after a night’s sleep, but not now.
Kattigan gets his own feet out from under him and hauls the kid up from the mud and halfway into his lap, his back pressed against Kattigan’s chest. He doesn’t try to put pressure on the wound because there’s nothing he could do for it now that wouldn’t just cause the kid more pain, just wraps his arms high across his torso. Azune sobs as the movement jars him, an awful, inchoate sound that doesn’t quite leave his throat, and tries to curl away. His fingers scrabble at Kattigan’s wrists, but he’s too weak to do more than scratch at him, than leave shallow stinging lines.
It’s out of pure desperate hope that Thjazi drops to his knees next to them. That he presses one hand to the kid’s face and another against the wound, and tries to coax Azune into reaching into his own well of power, the magic that, while instinctive, hadn’t ever come easily to the boy. Tries to talk him through it the best Thjazi knew, how to heal himself, to give himself more time for them to get him help, as if the kid hadn’t probably tried, hadn’t probably exhausted himself trying.
And the kid still tries again, because it’s Thjazi asking. Uses the last of his rapidly waning strength to try to find that magic and fails. Shakes his head, face contorted in shame, and for just a moment, Kattigan hates Thjazi for asking it of him, hates Azune for trying, for exhausting himself further when he’s already slipping away. Scared and in pain and still trying so hard to prove himself, to be useful, to do what he’s being asked, even when he’s dying. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how, I don’t know—”
Panic creeps into Azune’s voice, and on instinct Kattigan starts to rock them like he would’ve a far younger child. He tamps down hard on his own anger and catches Thjazi’s eyes over the kid’s head before Thjazi can speak again, can ask him to try again. Forces himself to keep his voice low and steady, because Kattigan loved Thjazi, Kattigan wasn’t immune to the gravitational pull of Thjazi Fang, the fierce loyalty he engendered, but the height of his expectations could be cruel. “Don’t do this. He thinks the fucking world of you. Don't let him go like that, thinking he failed you.”
(My brother has a kid his age, Thjazi had said when the Choir had first dropped Azune on them, scrawny and cowed like a lamb for slaughter. Alogar. Twelve this year. Hal keeps telling him he's too young to go to war. Hal’ll kill me if he finds out about this one.
But Thjazi had taken a shine to the kid, and likewise. They'd been good for each other. Thjazi had been around his age when he'd first gone to war, too, and although the circumstances were far different, it had helped Azune to open up more when Thjazi talked about his own time as a kid on the front lines, how hard it was but how fulfilling, too.)
They’d fight about it later, as they fought about many things over the years, whether or not Azune could’ve saved himself if he’d just been pushed a little harder, but in the moment Thjazi assents, drops his gaze and brushes loose hair out of Azune’s face as the kid starts crying again, silent shivery sobs that shake his whole body. When the kid reaches out for him, Thjazi takes the hand in both of his and cradles it to his chest.
“It’s okay, it’s alright, ‘zune. You did good,” Thjazi says, and Azune shakes his head, trying to disagree because he failed, because the world had already taught him that trying didn’t matter if he still failed, and they’d done fuck-all to disabuse him of that. “You did good.”
Kattigan keeps rocking them, and eventually Azune stops crying, tapers into little hiccuping sobs and simply lets himself be held. Reaches his free hand up, fumbling at his collar as he tries to reach the necklace he kept tucked under his tunic. Kattigan helps him pull it out, clasps a hand over his, and squeezes Azune’s fingers around it.
“Katt,” he whimpers, voice already so much weaker. Starting to truly fade, now. “Katt, it hurts.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“Is it bad?”
And Kattigan wants to lie, wants to say no, that he’ll be alright, of course he’ll be alright, but he can’t, not when they’ve never lied to him before, never pulled punches or softened blows. Never shielded him from the realities of their life. “Yeah, bud, it’s bad.”
“‘m cold.”
“You’ll be warm soon, you’ll see. You—You can let go, it's okay.” And Kattigan knows he’s telling him it’s okay to die, but he doesn’t know what else to do. Maybe if they’d found him sooner, maybe if they’d just never lost sight—
Kattigan didn’t want to imagine how long Azune had been there alone, holding on, just for them to not be able to do anything to save him. And as sick as he felt that it was Azune, Kattigan was glad at least that they found him before he could pass curled up thinking he’d been abandoned. He would die scared and in pain, but he wouldn’t die alone.
He isn’t the first person they sit with until he passes, and he wouldn’t be the last, but it would remain one of the hardest.
It was difficult to lose anyone; any death brought with it shame that they couldn’t save a friend, but it was different when it was one of the babies. One of the kids that should’ve been tucked safe at home, parents and siblings and warm meals and a future to dream about.
It was different when Azune’s voice was still dropping, when it still broke mid-sentence in a way he found mortifying, when the first year he was with them, he’d lost his last stubborn baby dogtooth and Thimble and Cyd had made a whole ordeal out of finding him something to celebrate the occasion with, a hard-won sweet Azune had savored for weeks.
Eventually, somewhere in the silence, Azune lets go. His fingers go slack under Kattigan’s grip and the little shivers stop and Kattigan breathes out long and slow and presses his cheek to the boy’s hair when his head lolls.
Thjazi keeps holding Azune’s hand for a long moment before he lets it go, lays it as gently as possible across his stomach. Pinches the bridge of his nose in a way that made it clear he was trying not to cry and walks away.
Kattigan wishes he could cry, wishes he didn’t feel hollowed out.
He keeps holding the kid’s body for a long time. He doesn’t realize Thimble had come back with anyone until Teor is suddenly knelt beside him, pressing paws to Kattigan’s arms in an effort to make room to work.
“You’re late,” he says, tone flat even to his own ears.
“Katt—”
“He’s gone. Unless you can raise the fucking dead, you’re just going to waste your energy.”
It doesn’t stop Teor from trying, from pressing both paws to the ragged, ugly wound in Azune’s stomach and reaching deep into his wholly drained healing reserves to pour any drop that remained into this child, this boy they let stay at war with them when there could’ve been another option. When there had been another option—when Halandil had found out about Azune, he’d immediately offered him a place far away from the front lines. Azune had declined, and they let him. They could’ve pushed harder to get him to see that it would’ve been better for him, safer, in Dol-Makjar with Hal and his family. Thjazi could’ve pushed harder, could’ve pushed at all, because Azune would’ve listened to Thjazi if he had put his foot down.
And maybe it would’ve felt like abandonment, like he was being cast aside again, but he would’ve been alive to feel it. And he was a smart kid; he would’ve understood, eventually.
Instead, Kattigan watches as golden light emanates from beneath Teor’s paws, watches it suffuse the wound and watches as nothing happens, as the magic dissipates because there was nothing left for him to give and no one left for him to save. The boy in Kattigan’s arms stays dead, warm like he was simply asleep and maybe in a kinder world that might’ve meant something, but in this one, he wasn’t any less gone, wasn’t any more savable.
“Satisfied?” Kattigan bites, needlessly cruel, but that’s always been how he grieved, ugly and angry. The wounded look that passes over Teor’s face as he sits back is gutting, but he doesn't have it in him to apologize, not when there’s a child dead in his arms. Again.
He squeezes the hand still in his grasp, feels the edges of the necklace Azune had reached for in his final moments, the little child’s bracelet he’d come to them bearing. He’d never explained it, but Kattigan knew the kind of loss a thing like that implied.
(Later, in a moment of selfishness, as they’re settling his body onto the pyre, Kattigan takes that necklace. Hopes it was something Azune could’ve forgiven, when it had obviously meant so much, when even dying, he’d reached for it for comfort. Needed something to remember him by, even if the memory hurt.
He clutches it when they set the flames, when the bodies catch, feels his heartbeat in his palm as the metal wears ridges into his skin.)
Teor reaches up to close Azune’s eyes, stays knelt by their side until Kattigan could brace himself enough to get up, to carry Azune away from the dirt and blood and spent-magic slag of a battlefield to somewhere as soft and clean and warm as they could find. They would have to make him presentable; Kattigan has done it before, knew how to straighten little limbs for the shroud. How to bury a child, and how to survive it after, and at least Azune was bigger than—
He’s so small when Kattigan finally picks him up. Even as dead weight, he was still bird-bone thin. He’d never had time to fill out, not at war, not when they were constantly fighting, constantly moving from skirmish to skirmish. Even with the extra rations and extra calories they’d foist upon him whenever they could, he’d burned through it all so fast it hadn’t made a sliver of difference. But he’d hit a growth spurt a few months back, around his sixteenth, had been growing like a late spring shoot trying to make up for lost time. He probably would’ve gotten as tall as some of them, eventually. Wouldn’t ever be, now.
Most soldiers that fell were burned, vast pyres of the dead meant to help stave off disease and scavenging creatures, and to remove their bodies from play so the Tachonis couldn’t make shambling cannon fodder puppets of their friends. The Banner had been counted lucky not to put anyone to the pyre in a while, and although putting Azune on it feels wrong, none of them know anything about the kid’s family, what their customs might’ve been, if there was anything they could’ve done to honor him better.
The pyre burns all night, far out beyond the edge of their camps, and in the morning an uncommonly strong wind scatters the ashes.
Years later, Kattigan Vale stands at the Farramh of Thjazi Fang and holds that boy’s necklace in his palm. He intends to leave it with Thjazi, who Azune had so dearly looked up to and who was going to get the kind of burial Azune had deserved, too; the kindness of soft shroud and grave gold and rich, dark earth. And maybe whatever part of the boy that lingered could find rest in that.
But Kattigan stands at Thjazi’s side for a final time and can’t make himself put it down. In the end, it’s Teor that makes the choice for him. Teor, who had been glad to see him, had greeted him with warmth even after so long apart, even with the weight of their history. Teor, who finds him there and closes Kattigan’s hand over the necklace, puts a paw against his back and tells him to hold onto it, for a while longer at least.
Not a day later, he finds himself reaching for it while Varen gets them horses to leave the city chasing Cyd and Casimir north. Standing before the vast stone sprawl of names at Falcon’s Rest, he knows he doesn’t have the time to find out if Azune’s name was among them, if anyone had known to honor him.
High above them, aloft on the current, a lone falcon circles.