But once he’s situated himself, legs crossed beneath him, there’s too much distance between them still. He feels the emptiness, the stretch of space separating them. Bass wants to recreate their closeness from before, somehow.
It feels so good to be close to her. The wolf-man’s doing, he’s sure.
Inside him, the wolf-man laughs and it echoes in the chamber of Basuin’s chest where his heart is missing.
“I want to teach you something,” Ren says, hand outstretched toward him. And as if she’s the sun in the whole blessed sky, Basuin leans closer to her, seeking out her light and warmth. “Hold my hand.”
He swallows hard. Then, he slides her hand into his from underneath, keeping her palm face up. No god mark ruins her left hand, and none wears his right. Like this, they’re a mirror image of one another. As the wind rustles her hair again, it tangles with the long curls of his that have unraveled from the low bun he knots at the nape of his neck each morn.
Ren holds his gaze for a moment, but when her eyes drop away, his return to the stark white of her palm, milky in the dregs of light falling from the stars in the dark sky.
And then a knife slashes through her skin, drawing red blood to the surface, bubbling up hot.
Bass scrambles forward, fingers hovering over the gash in Ren’s palm. Her eyes are unreadable, face smooth and even when he looks up. Her bone dagger gleams in her god-marked hand where she flips it in her grasp.
The cut is deep and it runs with the smell of rust.
“Heal it,” she says, and Bass freezes.
“I can’t,” he says in one big burst. “I can’t do that.” His hands aren’t for healing. They are for hell, and hell only.
“You can,” she says instead, but when Bass presses his thumb to the cut to staunch the bleeding Ren winces. Her wrist twitches with pain and he can feel the icy grip of panic rise and curl in his throat. “Like I showed you, with the weapons. Imagine—”
“I can’t,” he snarls, louder, with an edge so harsh he could break a blade on it. Snap it, brittle and mean. These hands have never healed anything. Haven’t saved a single soul, man or not-man. All they have done is killed.
The wolf-man sinks its teeth into him somewhere, but he can’t even feel it. All he can feel is panic as dark blood oozes from the wound Ren’s made in her own damned palm.
Like she can read his mind, Ren tells him, “It’ll scar.”
A curse falls from his lips. There’s a shake in his fingers. Anything but that. She’s too delicate to scar.
“Imagine threading your magic into the cut,” she says, softer this time. Lurid, somehow, in the darkness of the forest. “Imagine using it to stitch the wound. You’ve done that before, haven’t you?”
Bass clenches his eyes shut. Pulling a tin needle through Tehali’s calf with thick thread as she chewed on a leather bit. Fishing a bent needle out of his own shoulder with trembling fingers, hoping to god someone would come and save him from himself.
No one ever did, and the nightmares never fucking stopped. The nightmares only stopped when he came to this forest—this godsdamned forest where Ren sits in front of him and bleeds until he can dredge up some half-hero, half-killer courage that sprouted up inside him and withered to death in Valkesta.
“Basuin.” She says his name quietly. Blood is crawling down her arm.
“Fuck,” he curses again, culling his shallow breathing and shaking his head. “I don’t know how to.” It comes out more whine than words, like a kicked wolf pup. He sounds defeated, but he hasn’t even tried. He thought he could do this; he needs to do this. But this is just a reminder that Basuin’s hands cannot fix. They can only break.
“Listen to me,” Ren says, and her voice draws his eyes to her face again. Unreadable, still, but softer. “Imagine your magic as needle and thread. Stitch it up. Use it as a balm. Mend it.”
He swallows again. Her blood is smeared across her palm and sticking to his thumb.
“Mend me,” she whispers, and Basuin shudders a breath.
Just as she’s taught him—with the light and food and supplies and guns and weapons and the almost nightmares—Bass calls the red pinpricks of his magic into his mind. The pressure under his thumb lessens, but the weight of Ren’s blood doesn’t.
They can all heal her; Qia and Ko and Hou-tou. It’s only him, the Wolf God, the guardian of the Forest God, who cannot.
But he has to. She’s cut herself open for him, trusting that he’ll save her. A second chance, to prove her wrong. She can trust him again.
Bass snaps the thread of his magic from where it’s wound around his soul. Then he weaves it through the gash, the rift Ren has cut into her own palm. With his eyes closed, Bass moves his left hand over the wound, the heat of his magic sinking into her skin. He pictures it, stitching it closed. Using the string that’s tied his spirit to hers to fix her hurt.
“Open your eyes,” Ren asks of him, and he does. The gash is gone, leaving unmarked skin behind. The blood she wore has disappeared, like it never existed. All he can see anymore is the smile on her face.
It’s so fucking gentle and so bright and graceful and fuck. He feels shattered by it. Like the light of her is bracing against the darkness caged inside of him, trying to slip through the cracks forming in the carefully crafted armor he bears on his back. She’s trying to undo him. Break him.
