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She's -
She's big now. She's human-sized. How?
Of all the incomprehensible things that have happened tonight, this is the one that's threatening to break Occtis entirely. Not the pit of bones or the bloodied bird or the shrieking ghouls. Not the sound of his father screaming, or the twin bodies stretched out beneath shrouds at his feet -
- no. Somehow, it's the simple truth of Thimble's human-sized body that's threatening to undo him. It shouldn't be so shocking. It's not as if he doesn't know what she looks like. Of course he knows her. She's his oldest friend. He's touched her before too, so many times, just -
- not like this. Not chest to chest, heartbeat to heartbeat, hand to hand. Her arms are wrapped tightly around his ribcage, and she squeezes with a surreal strength that would probably cause pain, if Occtis was still capable of really feeling it. Her tears trickle down his neck, soaking the starched collar of his shirt. She smells like pollen and sunshine, like all good and golden living things.
If he still had a heart, it would be racing. She's so close, suddenly, and there's so much of her. There's always been so much of her, obviously. She's boundless, Thimble is. She's magic and mirth and bravery taken form -
- but she's surrounding Occtis now, and he can't run away. That's really the crux of it. She's alive, even though he ran away, even though he abandoned her - and she's warm and breathing, not cold and lifeless on the floor, and no one has touched Occtis like this in forever. He wouldn't let them - he still can't let them, but it's her, so he can. And she's so - she's so very -
"How did this happen?" he whispers into her shoulder, clutching her desperately. Maybe he's wrong. Maybe she's a dream after all. Maybe she's the last good dream he'll ever have, and she'll float away if he doesn't hold her tight. "How are you -"
"I don't know," Thimble says. Occtis recognizes the strange chord beneath the words, a fey twist on the truth. She does know, or at least she knows some of the explanation, but there's parts she doesn't know, and she's focused on those, so it's not technically a lie. "I don't...oh, so much has happened. Fuck. I couldn't save them. I couldn't - Kattigan. Kattigan. I'm so sorry..."
She wheels around, pulling free from the embrace and searching for the other soldiers in the gathered crowd that spills across Hal Fang's living room and out into the hall. Occtis is aware, vaguely, when she starts talking about the manor, telling everyone about the terrible things they saw there, but he can't really muster the energy to listen.
All his focus has narrowed down to the one singular point of warmth that remains - the place where Thimble's hand is still linked with his, her grip tight, like she needs reassurance just as much as Occtis. Sadness that they're no longer hugging mixes violently with a petrifying, skin-crawling desire, the one that burns more vividly than any other sensation these days. A pleading, clawing, starving type of need: Touch me. Touch me. Please touch me. Don't let go.
***
Thimble doesn't let go.
Occtis's tear ducts aren't working anymore. The fluid doesn't replicate as it should, but his muscles still remember the movements of a sob, and they've been trying valiantly to recreate them ever since Thimble walked in the front door. She doesn't let go of Occtis, even as the planning begins. She stays perched on the armrest of his chair as their co-conspirators talk, still light and agile as a butterfly, even without her wings.
Occasionally, she'll squeeze Occtis's hand absentmindedly, as if she's reminding herself that he's not gone, that he's still here. He squeezes back every time. Fear and shame and want well up like groundswater at the base of his throat. It's good that he can't choke anymore. Or, more accurately, that he died choking, and is growing somewhat used to it.
Gods. Thimble's okay. She didn't fall to the life-sucking touch of a ghoul. She didn't tumble limply to the ground like Hannan, didn't get sliced in half by the corpse of Raimond Davinos, didn't get crushed beneath the polished black boot of Ethrand or Trimus or Koral.
Instead, she's here. Occtis isn't ever going to leave her side again. She's his size. He can hold her now! He can hold her, and tell her that he -
Tell her that he -
Oh.
Oh, shit.
***
The rest of the evening passes in a blur. Eventually, Thimble's hand does separate from his. Some big revelation has been uncovered, something about Thjazi being in Julien's shadow? It isn't kind of Occtis to keep her from her best and oldest friend, so he doesn't fight when she lets go.
Instead, he allows the world to darken once more, receding into a miasma of gloom. Moments stand out in multicolored flashes - Kattigan pinning him against a wall, Wick talking about birthday parties, Vaelus admitting she didn't think of him when she broke the Stone - but they soon submerge back into the dizzy, hazy storm of Occtis's brain.
When he licks his lips, they taste like honey and roses, some remnant of the Orchard that Thimble leaves behind in the air. She's shrunk back to a smaller size, now. It seems she can switch at will. It's the bracers, definitely. Julien has been staring at them all night with solemn recognition, when he's not glaring down at his shadow like he wants to burn the damn thing away.
It suits her. Not the new size - well, no, that suits her, obviously, anything would suit Thimble, but the freedom of being able to shift? To move as she chooses; to act as she wants? That's beautiful. She's been through hell, but there's a lightness about her - literally, a new quality of iridescence, a fae strength and mastery that radiates from her laugh and her smile and her skin.
She's got a new braid in her hair. It bounces as she moves, brushing the top of her shoulder. Something about it makes Occtis's stomach twist, like his guts are struggling to rearrange themselves, though not necessarily in a bad way.
He can't stop staring at her from the far side of the room. He's probably being weird. The lack of blinking definitely doesn't help.
Eventually, he manages to rip himself away and tend to Pin, forcing his focus to restrict itself to the fox's unwavering button eyes. It's comforting, as are most things concerning Pin. The rest of the world fades away, buried beneath the clarity of purpose and intent. Fix the wounds slashed through peaks of stiff white fur. Sew them up with the needle Thaisha tucked into the pocket of his coat. Stitch, stitch, stitch. Don't think about Thimble. Don't think about how close she was to death. Don't think about how beautiful she looks. Okay. Okay.
"Occtis?"
Never mind. Impossible to accomplish.
When Occtis flicks his eyes up, she's there, hovering at eye level. She's shrunk back down sometime in the last few minutes. Her wings glow with faerie dust. Her eyes are red from crying, but her mouth is sure and strong, and her lips look incredibly soft, oh, fuck.
With no small effort, he manipulates his facial muscles to approximate a grin. It must look ghoulish and odd, but he's deathly afraid of the alternative, which is alientating her entirely. That would be the worst thing in the world.
"You're staying here tonight, right?" Thimble glances back over her shoulder at Hal, who's halfway through ushering the rest of the employed faction out the door. "Thaisha said you had a room. And if we're leaving together in the morning -"
"Are you staying?"
"Yes."
"Then I'm staying too."
It's not a question. It doesn't require a thought. Thimble's lips twitch up as he says it, the ghost of a smile not yet returned. And even that much is...if this is the moment when Occtis dies again, the moment when his soul shreds fully into ribbons and his bones go to the ground, it'll have been worth it. It'll all have been worth it, just for that promise of a smile.
Thimble flies forward to bump into his forehead gently, almost teasingly. Occtis closes his eyes, tries to drink in the warmth of her wings pressed up against his pallid skin, to appreciate the brush of her hands against him, so much smaller than before. He was holding those fingers, half an hour ago, holding them in his own.
It seems impossible that that was true. After Obrimus, reality feels thin and frayed, like a rope bridge coming apart beneath his feet. Was it a hallucination? Was it born of this seeping, creeping want, this almost childlike desperation he's only now starting to realize the true dimensions of?
"It's not a dream, right?" he says carefully, just to be sure. "I touched you earlier. You survived. You're real."
Thimble's warmth disappears. Panic flares in Occtis's chest for half a beat, before he opens his eyes and finds her standing over him, boxing him into the chair. Her hands are on his shoulders now, her body once again full-sized. Her eyes burn yellow-white, pulsing and flashing with something strange he absolutely doesn't know how to name.
It only takes the slightest pressure for her to pull him up onto his feet. She might be exactly his height, in this form - or maybe an inch taller, or maybe it's just that he slouches, one of many bad habits which Koral always used to yell at him for. Whatever the difference, they're close enough for her to press their foreheads together. The warmth returns, blossoming through the dead echoing spaces of Occtis's skull.
She's still glowing. She's still in the world. Shapers. If only he could cry.
"Come here," she says, and tugs at his arm. He follows without hesitation, lets her lead him up the creaking wooden stairs of the Fang house.
The room they stumble into must once have belonged to Alogar. The tiny, whirring part of Occtis's brain that never stops analyzing and drawing conclusions parses the details in an instant: toy soldiers, old playscripts on the desk, half-worked bits of metal by the windowsill, faded training ribbons from the Barrowguard hung up on the wall. The bed has been made recently. It's strewn with pillows and downy comforters, all clearly handcrafted with a lot of love.
Not for the first time, it's hard not to wonder what it would have been like to grow up here. Thaisha is his friend, his mentor, not his mother, but the question still lingers. The curiosity at the back of his throat always tastes just the slightest bit sour, the slightest bit bittersweet.
"Occtis?"
Reality creeps back in as Thimble's fingers interlock with his. The sound of the door shutting behind them catches up to Occtis a few seconds too late. Oh. They're - they're alone now, for the first time since the ghoul fight. For the first time in hours, but also in forever. The first time since his death, really. Alone together. Alone in the dark.
Thimble steps forward quickly. Faster than light. The tips of her boots tap against his own. Now they're alone but up against each other, her shoulders bumping into his and his shoulders pressing into the door. Her forehead is against his own, her hips an inch away, her entire body so much more accessible than before. She's so close that he can't categorize and process it, so close that he can only really panic.
Except for once, the panic feels kind of good.
"Can I kiss you?" his mouth says, entirely on impulse, without thought or plan at all. The sudden stab of terror in his throat is almost as sharp as the garotte that killed him, but he presses on regardless, the words tumbling out, searing and unstoppable. Because he's feeling something again. He's feeling something. She's alive, and he's something adjacent. And she's here with him. He doesn't want it to stop. "I mean - you can say no to that. It's okay if you say no to that. Nothing has to change if you don't want it to. I just - I just want to be so close to you, and - you're here, I can't - fuck. I can't believe it. You survived -"
Thimble's eyes go wide, glinting in the dark. Her hand cups his cheek - and then she's closed the rest of the distance, and her lips press to his.
Oh. It's - Occtis had wondered about how this would feel, before. It's warm, and sweet, and kind of strange. Not because it's her, that's the least strange part of it - it's just because he hasn't done this before, and he doesn't have a cheat sheet for it, so he doesn't actually know how -
- okay, scratch that, she definitely knows how, which is something of a relief. The calcified knots of worry in his stomach dissolve, replaced with a swelling glow, a pulse of light that starts in his throat and sinks down to nestle in his bones. Thimble bites at his lip like it's a promise, threads one hand through his hair and pulls him to her as if there's no death between them at all. It's impossible not to respond, impossible to keep from gliding his hand down shyly to the small of her back. He runs his fingers along the divot of her spine, marveling at the curve of every vertebrae.
It's - mm. Oh, kissing is good. Odd. Still strange. But good. Occtis hasn't really understood the appeal, before this. Maybe it's the circumstances, or maybe it's Thimble, or maybe it's him. But it is making more sense, the deeper they get - the further their mouths soften against each other, the more their bodies press flush together.
Hmm. Maybe this is why everyone's so crazy about intimacy. Maybe this is a new area of study. At the very least, he's willing to explore.
She's closer than close like this. Somehow, he needs her closer still. If he could crawl inside her skin, he'd do it. He could keep her safe like that, couldn't he? He could keep her safe forever, and everything would always be all right.
"Are you okay?" he mumbles into her mouth, half-giddy and half-frightened and entirely transported. "Please tell me you're okay."
It's not what he means to say, not really. He doesn't know how to say the real thing, though. The words I love you have never meant anything that matters - and if anything matters, it's Thimble, and Occtis can't allow himself to hurt her more, so he's not going to try to say them. They'll only come out wrong.
"I'm okay," Thimble whispers back. Tears are streaking down her cheeks again, tumbling like rain. Something twists in Occtis's chest cavity, but...she's smiling, too, which might be a good sign. When she reaches up to run her thumb along the line of his lips, he lets her. She tastes like fruit and summertime, like crass words and courage and hope. He leans his head into her hand, and holds her tight. "I'm okay, Occtis. We're okay."