The tide had eased by the time Ira managed to sit upright. His body still ached as though the sea had dragged him under and wrung him dry, but the burning had dulled into a slow, steady rhythm beneath his ribs. Every inhale felt deliberate, measured, as though the very act of breathing required approval from his bruised lungs. The whispers in his blood lay quiet, patient for once, waiting without prying.
Rust crouched near a broken piling, tossing stones into the waves with more force than the small act required. Each splash echoed sharp against the hush that had settled over the pier, carrying a hollow kind of finality.
"Week," Rust muttered finally, without looking up. "A whole bleeding week you were out. I thought you were gone. We both did."
Ira's head turned slowly, heavy as iron, his gaze lingering on the mottled wood beneath him. "A week?"
Rust snorted. "Closer to eight days, if you count the hours. Could've been eight years, the way she—" He stopped himself mid-word, then scowled. "Ah, to hell with it. I'll say it. Zadie never left your side. Sat through your thrashing, your muttering, the whole sorry mess. Drove the rest of us off whenever we came near. Even me. Said it wasn't our hands you'd need, if you woke at all."
Zadie stiffened, straightening like a blade pulled taut. "Rust."
But Ira's eyes were on her now, searching, restless.
Rust only raised his palms in mock surrender. "Don't glare at me. He deserves to know. Nearly tore herself to pieces keeping you alive, and you'd have slept through it like some babe in a cradle if not for me telling you now."
The silence that followed pressed heavier than the mist, draping over the pier like a damp shroud. Zadie kept her arms folded, jaw tight. She tried to meet Ira's gaze and failed, eyes sliding to the water, to the faint gold gleam breaking the horizon.
"Someone had to keep watch. That's all," she said, voice clipped, as though to trim away the edges of the truth.
Ira swallowed. His throat felt raw.
She said nothing More as he pushed himself upright, wincing as his weight settled unevenly on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. Fragments of memory rose unbidden—not from memory, but from the glimpses the map had offered while he drifted in darkness. Images of the room he could barely place, of shadows brushing against the faint candlelight, of Zadie kneeling beside him, her hands steadying him when he twitched or murmured in unconscious terror.
Her eyes—those same sharp, dark eyes he had faced in duels, softened when she thought he wasn't watching. Her brow furrowed in worry, lips pressed together as if holding words in that would have broken the moment's quiet. The delicate care in her movements, the measured hesitation, the gentle rhythm she maintained while tending to him.
And always, at the end of each day, a ritual that seemed to exist solely for him: a soft press of her lips to his forehead, a fleeting touch, almost imperceptible in the dim glow, before she would rise and step back, leaving him to the shadows and silence once more.
He blinked, letting the memory settle like salt into a wound, sharp and stinging, yet strangely warm.
Rust, sensing the shift in the air, kicked another stone into the tide. "Well. Seems my work here's done. You two can sit in silence or kill each other with looks—either way, I'll be elsewhere." He stomped off down the pier, muttering under his breath about lunatics and sea spray and how the gods must have been drunk that week.
Zadie exhaled slowly once he was gone. She uncrossed her arms, letting her hand drift to rest lightly at her side—not threatening, more as if to steady herself against something invisible. "Don't make more of it than it was. You'd have done the same."
"Would I?" Ira asked quietly, voice low but steady, weighted with the knowledge of what he had seen.
Her eyes finally met his, dark and sharp but with something softer flickering beneath—something he had glimpsed before, in moments when the world hadn't demanded his attention or her discipline. For a long moment, she didn't answer.
"You used to," she said at last. "Before the first swap."
She said as silence enveloped the room as memories of a distant time resurfaced like a freshly cleaned wound having the scab ripped right off.
He leaned back against the post, closing his eyes briefly as the words sank into him deeper than any blade could reach. Images surfaced unbidden: the sound of her laughter echoing through stormlight; the way her fingers had hovered over his shoulder after a fight, steadying him when even he had doubted his own strength; the quiet ritual of her lips brushing his brow before she left the room each day, leaving him untouched, yet somehow held, as if the faintest thread of her presence had wrapped around him to keep him tethered to the world.
When he opened his eyes again, she was watching him still, guarded, unflinching, but no longer merely vigilant—there was something else there, a weight of care carried quietly beneath her measured posture.
The tide rolled below, steady and patient. The dawn crept higher, painting the mist in pale gold that burned away the last of the night's haze. And though the whispers still lingered in his blood, their voice subdued, it was not the loudest sound in his mind. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Ira allowed himself to feel not hunted, but observed—not by a predator, but by someone who had fought alongside him in silence, in patience, in care, even when he could not acknowledge it himself.
Zadie shifted, letting the faint scrape of her boots against the wood echo in the morning calm. "I'm just glad you survived," she said, softer now, almost to herself.
Ira gave a short, dry laugh, a sound that barely carried. "Oh is that concern i hear from Mrs. Ironheart Merrin?"
"Don't Push it Mister Finch," she replied, her tone low, edged with a kind of unspoken understanding. "Those days and that name are behind me." she retorted with a chuckle.
"Plus its not accurate since someone had *has* it in the palm of their hands." she said whispering the truth.
Unbeknownst to her the maps presence did not allow for her whisper to go unnoticed by Ira who for the first time in many years smiled a genuine smile.
The sun climbed higher, and the mist thinned. Rust's footsteps faded, replaced by the steady lapping of water against timbers. And in the quiet that remained, Ira sat, bloodied and weary, yet tethered to a memory that carried more weight than any blade: the knowledge that even in darkness, someone had watched over him, had held him with care, and had done so quietly, deliberately, without need for acknowledgment.
For once, he allowed himself to just be, letting the rhythm of the tide and the faint warmth of that remembered presence carry him forward. And though the whisper still waited somewhere in his veins, for the first time he felt the calm steadiness of choice—his own, absolute, unshared, and fiercely his alone as they moved along the pier.