Lethe drops his hands. Stares at the wall.
I have to go back in there.
He has to go back. The wounds still need tending. The ribs are freshly wrapped and the forearm stitches need checking and the forehead gash was hastily bandaged and Lethe left his professional standards on the floor of that cage along with his composure and both need retrieving.
He picks up his satchel.
***
Zazyrus holds himself stiff when Lethe enters.
Lethe sees it immediately. The beast is rigid against the wall, every line of his body drawn tight with a tension that is different from his usual controlled stillness. His usual stillness is a choice, a deliberate allocation of energy. This is the opposite. This is the stillness of a creature trying very hard not to move, as though movement itself has become dangerous, as though his body has proven itself untrustworthy and he's holding it on a leash.
He doesn't look at Lethe. His eyes fix on a point on the opposite wall and stay there, and his jaw is clenched so hard Lethe can see the muscle jumping beneath his skin.
He thinks he's scared me off, Lethe realizes. He thinks the grab was too much. He thinks I won't come back, or I'll come back different, and he's bracing for it.
The realization lands in Lethe's chest with a thud.
He kneels. Opens his satchel. Takes out his supplies and arranges them on the cloth and his movements are deliberately normal, deliberately routine, the same sequence he's performed every visit since the first. He doesn't rush. He doesn't hesitate. He lets the familiarity of the ritual speak for itself.
"Morning," he says. "I need to redo that bandage on your forehead. I made a mess of it yesterday. Sorry about that."
Zazyrus doesn't respond. The tension doesn't ease. His eyes remain fixed on the wall.
Lethe talks.
He talks the way he always talks, the steady, unhurried stream that fills the cage and asks for nothing. Soot chased a moth last night and knocked over a bag of flour and Maren threatened to evict her and Lethe negotiated a stay of execution in exchange for mopping the kitchen floor. The weather above is turning warm, apparently. A guard mentioned it. Spring coming. Lethe doesn't know what spring looks like aboveground. He's been down here six years and the seasons are abstract concepts, but he imagines they involve flowers, and he tells Zazyrus about the flowers he'd grow if he had a garden, the list that he keeps adding to.
He works while he talks. Removes the hasty bandage from Zazyrus's forehead. Cleans the wound properly, the way he should have done yesterday before everything went sideways. Applies salve. Stitches, neat and even, the work he's good at. Bandages, clean and snug.
He hums.
He doesn't decide to do it. It happens the way things sometimes happen with Lethe, the automatic behaviorssurfacing when his conscious mind is occupied elsewhere. He hums a melody he learned from Maren, something old and slow and gentle, and the sound fills the space between his words, low and warm, and he doesn't realize he's doing it until he's three bars in and by then it feels wrong to stop.
The tension in Zazyrus's body changes.
Not all at once. In increments, in degrees, the way ice melts. The clench of his jaw loosens. His shoulders drop, fractionally. His breathing, which has been shallow and controlled, deepens. His eyes, which have been fixed on the wall, move. They move to Lethe's hands, first. Then his face. Then away again, then back, as though testing whether looking is permitted.
Lethe keeps humming. Keeps working. Checks the forearm stitches, pleased with his work from yesterday despite the circumstances. Checks the rib wrapping. Everything is holding.
"You can look at me," Lethe says. Quiet. Almost amused. "I'm not going to shatter."
Zazyrus's eyes find his. The expression in them is guarded and uncertain and searching, and Lethe holds the gaze and lets himself be seen, the way he always does in this cage, and what Zazyrus finds in his face must be sufficient because something in the beast's body releases. Not all the tension. Not even most of it. But the leash he's holding himself on loosens, incrementally, and the rigidity softens into something closer to his usual contained stillness.
A sound. Low. The rumble that Lethe has learned to interpret as acknowledgment. It resonates in the cage, vibrating in Lethe's sternum, and Lethe's chest does the thing, the expanding thing, the warm and terrifying thing.
"Good," Lethe says. "Now hold still. I want to check the wound on your hip."
He reaches for Zazyrus's waistband and the beast's breathing hitches and Lethe pauses, just for a moment, and meets hiseyes. "I'll be careful," he says. Calm. Sure. The voice that doesn't break.
Zazyrus holds still. Lethe checks the hip wound. Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
***
The dynamic shifts.
