YAAF
Yaaf lowered Tomek into the case himself, in part because he couldn't allow anyone else to do it, and in part because the boy wouldn't release his neck. He eased him down onto the blankets and stayed bent over him, close, until the small fingers loosened and the thin arms dropped.
The Guardian climbed in after him, folding his bulk into the padded space next to Tomek. He settled, got an arm around the boy, and then took Tomek's small hand in his and shook it, gravely, as if sealing a contract between equals.
"I'm Bowen," he said in the Brotherhood tongue, slow and careful and heavily accented, but clear and grammatically correct. "You and I are going to be buddies for the trip, and just so you know, I'm very good at being a friend. Once we are in the village, I'll teach you how to make a bow from a tree branch. Have you ever built a bow?"
Tomek shook his head.
"Do you want to learn to make one and then practice shooting with me?"
Tomek nodded enthusiastically.
"Then we have a deal." He shook the boy's hand again. "And now it's time to close your eyes and dream about pleasant things. When you wake up, the trip will be over, and your mama will be right there to receive you, and she will give you a big hug."
Yaaf felt the thrall settle over the boy. Tomek's eyes drifted shut between one breath and the next, his face going slack and peaceful.
Sullha's entire body was shaking. She'd reached the end of her reserves, expelling the last of it on arguing with Bowen and trying to get into the case with Tomek.
Trembling, she stood rigid at the lip of the case, her eyes fixed on her sleeping son and the large Guardian lying down beside him and tinkering with a breathing tank.
Yaaf acted on instinct, wrapping his arm around her and drawing her into his side.
She didn't stiffen, didn't hold herself apart, pretending like she had been doing for days that there was nothing between them. She leaned into him, letting him take some of her slight weight. Yaaf stood very still, not sure what to think about this unexpected gift of trust. After keeping him at arm's length for so long, she gave in to her exhaustion and rested against him.
It melted something in him. Turning something hard soft.
The other seven parts of him retreated, folding themselves back into the quiet recesses of the hive mind, leaving him alone in his own head in a way he hadn't been since they had first merged. He'd carved a private corner before, a province they respected, but this was different. This was all of them stepping back at once,deliberately, drawing their attention away and leaving him the whole of his own skull for the length of this moment.
The silence was profound. The solitude of a single mind felt strange.
They'd done it for him, recognizing that this moment belonged to him and Sullha, and them alone.
Another Guardian came over to close the case and seal it once Bowen gave the sign that he was ready. A third joined to help lower it to the water. A diver already suited and waiting in the shallows took hold of the towing cable, gave a thumbs-up to the men above, and then the case slipped beneath the surface and was gone, drawn out into the gray water toward the open sea and the submarine waiting beyond.
Sullha's shaking worsened the instant her son disappeared below the water.
Yaaf couldn't bear it. He reached into her mind, smoothing the jagged edges of her fear and laying down beneath them a current of calm, images of the case reaching the sub, of the backup team waiting there, of Bowen lifting the lid and Tomek waking warm and safe and greeted by friendly hands.
"Stop that." She slapped his arm and pulled back enough to glare up at him. "Get out of my head, Yaaf."
"You were afraid. I only wanted?—"
"I know you meant well, but it's my right to be afraid for my son. I'm allowed to worry about him. You don't get to reach in and tidy it away because it makes you uncomfortable. Not unless I ask you to do it for me. The choice is always mine."
Yaaf withdrew at once.
He respected what was underneath the chastening. Sullha hadn't asked him to make her feel better, and he shouldn't have done that without asking her permission first. It was her right to feel badly, to carry her own fear in her own way, and there was a strength in that.
"I'm sorry," he said. "You're right. I shouldn't do this without your leave."
"Thank you. It's a mother's right and duty to worry about her child." Once the heat had gone out of her, she slumped against his side once again, her gaze drifting across the shelf to where her mother was being fitted into a set of diving gear by a Guardian.
Leehy seemed perfectly at ease, much more composed than her daughter was.
Sullha's mother stood quietly while the Guardian buckled the harness and checked the regulator, asked questions, and waited patiently for the Guardian to find the correct words in her language to answer her. She corrected him, politely and with a smile, bearing the strange equipment and the even stranger circumstance with uncharacteristic composure.
Yaaf remembered her from before, specifically the vacant look in her eyes that was nowhere to be seen now.
