[Estinien’s may fade when he takes stock of himself and what had brought him here, but to replace it… when he confirms for her in his own words that he is all there, at least all enough there to call himself the man she had come to know, finally… Hayame let’s herself feel joy, swelling to fill the gap he leaves behind. It may not be a simple, cheery sort of happiness that washes over her shard beneath his knuckles, but it is still something good, whether hard-won and barely believed or not.

She might fail to save that village of orphans if she can’t return home… maybe she already had failed them, failed every jinba that ever existed if her world were gone and she was the only one that remained. She had surely failed Matsukaze, whether she could make it back fulfill her promise to die in his arms or not, unable to believe in the future he had offered her among his herd strong enough to betray everything she’d ever known. She might have failed to capture a single Kenoma in Venera and only managed to leave Achamite heads in her wake, she might have failed to let take the holy man into custody, had to watch him be snapped up as a traitor before her eyes, but this time-

This time she’d saved someone. This time, finally, she feels a well of something like pride and relief swell in her breast, filling both her hearts momentarily to the brim.

Momentarily.

And he squeezes her fingers in his, which makes her hyper focus on the desperate thrumming of her pulse, strong because of how close to her auxiliary heart their hands were, clutched between her half unbound breasts. Suddenly, she realizes how shameless she is being, had been capable of being when his eyes were closed, but now-

Her hold had been so tight with nerves that she struggles to unlock the joints and release him, even as a flush of color creeps up her skin. Even as she says-]

You are a fool, Estinien. A rash, reckless fool who does not keep his word.

[It might be a bit difficult to get up from where she had awkwardly arranged his limp body on her “lap”, and she would normally move to assist him… but not yet. Instead, she forces herself to keep looking him from this scandalous distance, even as the flush of a woman who has never held a hand creeps up her neck. First, before she can accept his apology-]

Did I not tell you that you had my bow? If you had asked—- if you had asked, I would have let those magic healers touch me.

[… Sooner. She would have done it sooner, she must mean, because in order to find him, thinking she may have been left behind because she’d been weak enough to admit to being injured… she had swallowed her pride and bowed her head low to human men she chafed to subserviate to, let hands by laid on her to knit back flesh and bone.

But once she says it, it sounds too selfish, too womanly to speak only of herself, so presumptuous to think it was her he should have called, and so she quickly tries to add-]

I am sure— I am sure that there are plenty of others who would have answered your call, instead, and yet-

[He came here alone, to a place that the ptarmigan lizard claimed the aion Tehri had already warned him not to tread, he hadn’t told a soul that she could identify. Maybe she cannot even feel glad to have saved him, when the pta- when Naruhodo might have even been good enough, and so Estinien-]

Were you not fool enough to offer me your service? If so-

[She had not truly believed him, then, when he’d said that. Even if it was just niceties, maybe nothing near as heavy or binding as such words would be in her own world…]

You will claim to me now that you will not do such a witless thing again until that winged monstrosity is out of you.

[She isn’t fool enough to demand he swear it, and make an oath breaker of him. Anyone will do. It didn’t have to be her…

But she is fool enough that her fingers clutch tighter at his hand without realizing it.]