A/N So we don't have internet for a long while, updates once or twice a week max. I'm sorry. 

TW: (A little bit of consolidating origins, because why not?) Sometimes you have to lose everything, just to start again.

Title: ~First Night~

He remembered the light. There had been shouting, too; once-familiar voices raised in desperate cries, but so far away, so… unreal, now, fading like the ghosts of a dream beneath the unleashed brilliance that shimmered all around him. Then there had been falling, or something like it, until even that incandescent aftermath caught and died, whirling away into the unmaking swirl of nothingness – and everything went black.

The word 'malfunction' drifted through his failing mind, a brief wisp of fading concept, gone as fast as it had appeared.

But he remembered the light.

~~~

Cold.

The sensation was… new, somehow. He recognised it, but nothing else came with the sense – no recall of the last time he had felt it, no specific memory of icy chills or cool wind, nothing but that now-first impression, crisp against his skin.

Snow. Snow, under his face. He inched an eyelid open, each nerve fizzing like something just unpacked, raw and bright under his skin. The view was unfamiliar – unsurprisingly – as his gaze tracked out across the thick layer of sugared white, until it was cut by a nearby tree, rising up like an exclamation from the wintery turf.

Very cold.

After a few moment of listening to his own heart beat, he cautiously identified where his limbs seemed to be and levered himself into a sitting position. Verticality brought a whole new raft of doppelganger-familiarity, and he peered thickly down at his own legs, vaguely wondering if they were right. His trousers were a little scuffed, and a lot covered in melting snow, and he drew his knees up against his chest, wrapping his arms around them for the warmth.

He was shaking. It was probably the cold. Was it winter here?

Where was here? He had a feeling that was something you should know, really, but locational information seemed as blank as the rest of his mind. He was near a tree. It had been snowing. And that was it.

Possibly he should be concerned by some of this. People… generally knew where they were; he was fairly sure of that.

As he shifted, pulling his chilled knees a little closer to the rest of him, something clicked under his hand, and he looked down. There was a little symbol pinned to the front of his double-hued shirt – some sort of upward pointing arrowhead. It clicked mechanically under his touch as he pressed it again, but nothing happened.

Maybe I like badges. Or clicking?

He sat there a while longer, staring at nothing, and tried to fit that information into the vast, empty warehouse that seemed to make up his mind, but every thought just seemed tiny and alone, blurred into impotence by the sheer… nothing that echoed back.

It was going dark. He blinked, and focused again, to where the tree's shadow had crept another few inches long the ground since he had last noticed it. Sitting in the snow in the dark didn't seem like a good idea, and he finally managed to unfold himself into standing, swaying slightly.

He was quite tall. Another cursory investigation of outer sensations identified a certain stylised roughness to his chin and cheeks, and he carefully filed that information next to the other lonely fragments. So – tall, cold, bearded. It wasn't much to go on, but at least reflective surfaces shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.

Where to? He wobbled forward, rubbing at his numbed fingers, and tried to get walking to work properly. He must have done it before. Must have. But where to? There didn't seem to be any to; there was no there, just here – just him and snow, and cold, and falling darkness, and –

Dull scraping and a rising strangled groan, filtering through trees which suddenly seemed so much closer together than they had been before. Panic might have been new, but it was potent, and he lurched away from the sound, trying not to focus on how it changed direction after him, trying not to hear the mirrored shufflings and creaks of degraded voices that began to rise to either side, or the other sounds, as darkness closed in like a falling curtain.

What kind of place is this?

The ground was uneven, earth half-frozen under his boots as he skidded along, near blind, with his heart hammering a beat of rising terror against his ribs. Things grasped for him out of the thickening night – mostly bits of tree, admittedly, but not always – and he didn't dare turn for what might be following. Moonlight filtered in through the entwined branches above, giving scant illumination, just enough to give the shadows shape – but suddenly his desperate gaze caught another glow, a faint flicker of a different light, and he plunged towards it. The trees seemed to tense up all around him, folding in closer and closer, and then broke apart as the forest reluctantly gave way.

It opened up into a small clearing, mostly natural but widening a little at the sides, with raw stumps sat sullenly beneath their unhewn brethren. The ground ran upwards at the far edge, mounding up in boulders and slopes into the start of a small hillside. There had been more activity between two of the largest outcrops; rough-cut wood had been wedged around the gap, forming a slanted doorway with spare planks stacked up beside it.

A crude torch was jammed into a holder above the frame. That little flicker of firelight spat tiny red-gold sparks into the air, and was possibly the most welcome thing he had ever seen.

He froze again at another snap-scrape of lurching footsteps, not all that far behind, and ducked in through the doorway. The little cave within was muddy and shallow, but it wasn't outside, and he stuck the torch into the floor as he grabbed at the spare wood, wedging planks and bits of split tree back across the opening in as braced-in a way as he could manage.

His legs finally gave out, fear and a rising exhaustion taking their tax, and he managed to drag himself into the back corner of the cave. It wasn't exactly cosy, but he curled himself around the little torch, drawing some semblance of comfort from the pool of warm light. Hopefully the almost-door would be enough. The single flame flickered and danced above his fingers, and he tried not to hear any noises from the dark outside.

Tomorrow. Let there be a tomorrow, and he could worry about everything else when it came.

~~~

Morning came, and it was loud. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but the almost-peaceful cloak of slumber broke away abruptly at a sudden incursion of sunlight and bellowing. It took a few seconds of heart-thumping shock before his brain finally caught up with events, and by that point he had already been dragged half-upright by his collar, and identifiable words finally resolved from the thundering orange blur that was shoved up against him.

" – the hell are you doing in my hole?" The blur moved back slightly, and he found himself staring down into pair of angry blue eyes, glaring out from under eyebrows like bristling ginger caterpillars. The rest of the sudden new figure's facial features seemed to be mostly beard and braids, capped by a horned metal helmet; metal, infact featured heavily in his overall attire, what of it there was, and even the gloved fingers digging into his own shirt were visibly re-enforced.

He managed to get his feet into a more stable position and straightened up fully – realising as he did so the scale of the yelling man, as the top of his helmet only came up about as far as his own chest.

Either I am very tall, or…?

"You're… some sort of bearded dwarf?" he muttered, blinking, and the new figure snorted. He let go and stood back, chin tilted upward defiantly, and folded his stout arms.

"Yeah, ya bugger; what of it?"

He blinked again.

"I – nothing. I just… I'm lost." That was true enough, and didn't sound too insane, and he gestured weakly with the burned down torch back out through the doorway. "It was dark and a bit… scary…" he trailed off, a faint flush of embarrassment reaching his cheeks. The ginger man renewed his stare, pursing his lips somewhere behind the beard.

"Yeah, bad things come out when night falls. You could get in an awful lot of trouble, blundering around out there in – " his gaze tracked briefly up and down, arcing a brow " – those, what, fucking pyjamas? You even got a sword, mystery hole man?"

He shook his head. The dwarf shrugged and turned, stepping back out of the cave, and he followed him. The clearing was more obviously occupied than it had been last night, with a crude bench set up against a tree, and a few tools jammed into the ground. They were all simple wooden things, except the blue-white axe – leant with more care against the bench, decoration and a few small gems gleaming across the blade and handle, scattered with symbols unfamiliar to him. Although that wasn't too surprising.

"You want to be more careful, honestly," the dwarf said, gruffly but without apparent rancour now, and began to root around in the open crate. "There's creepers and all sorts of shit about."

"Do you live here?" he hazarded, and got an odd look in response, difficult to interpret through the beard, as the dwarf slammed the crate lid down abruptly.

"Passing through. Middle of bloody nowhere out here." He looked at him again, sniffed, and wandered over to the bench, where more rough-cut wood had been laid out. There were a few long minutes of silence, as the dwarf shuffled things around for a while, then looked back up at him, his eyebrows scrunching together again.

"So? Who're you, anyway?"

He blinked. It probably wasn't an unusual question, but the nature of it sent a clench of dread through his gut. How in the hell did he answer that?

"I'm Honeydew," the shorter man continued, then a little more firmly added. "Proud dwarf of Khaz Modan!" The way he had said it seemed to be waiting for some kind of response – eyes narrowed slightly in his own direction – but whatever the subtlety might have been, he had no idea.

"I'm – " he hesitated, frowning as he desperately sought around in the emptiness of his mind. A name. A name, for godsake; how hard could that be?

A name…

There was something. It wasn't so much a real memory – a sideglance familiarity of lips and tongue, said so often it was barely a word anymore – a reflex – but even then as slippery as an eel, skidding and skimming away from his throat as he tried to focus on the almost-known sound.

"Zz – eff – " he managed, and gritted his teeth, glaring at nothing, as if that would chastise his unhelpful thoughts into line. " –oss?"

Yes. That was so very nearly familiar. He tried again, as Honeydew eyed him a little warily.

"Xephos. I'm… Xephos."

I think. His shoulders sagged, his knees weakening all of a sudden, and he sat down abruptly on the edge of the crate. There was heat at the sides of his eyes and he blinked furiously, digging his fingers into his thighs, trying to draw some focus from the little points of pain.

"…and I have literally no idea who I am," he muttered. He rubbed at his face, trying to scrub away the threatening wet blurring, and took a long, shaking breath. Somehow, saying it, putting actual words around the idea made it all more… real. Worse.

Oh god. What am I going to do?

His vision was suddenly full of dwarf. Sitting down, Honeydew barely had to stoop to catch his gaze, and his own pale stare crinkled as if trying to work out some tricky puzzle. Then he stood back, enveloped one of Xephos' hands in his own thick fingers, and gave his arm an elbow-wrenching shake.

"S'good enough for me. You know anything, er – " he frowned, then brightened again. " – about knowing – anything about digging, there pal?"

"No."

"Well then." He straightened up – ish – and clapped his hands together with a faint clang of metal. "I reckon that’s our number one priority. You aren't gonna get far out here without a bit of the ol' diggy diggy."

Xephos stared at him, a strange tightness in his throat, and he scrambled for words.

"…seriously? But you – but even I don't – I could be anyone! Anything, I don't remember – "

Honeydew rolled his eyes.

"Well, if you turn out to be a maniac, we can have a rethink." He jerked a thumb at the crate. "Grab some torches, and watch a master work."

Xephos glanced down, to where another bundle of thin wrapped shapes were visible through a crack in the crate lid, and his fingers tightened against the wood. Sheer relief bubbled under his surface, threatening to swamp out what coherence he could find, and he swallowed.

"Thanks… friend." The last word was hesitant, half-awaiting a rebuke, but Honeydew waved one hand, hefting a wooden shovel with the other.

"S'fine. We're looking for coal, right? Not… saving the world, or anything." He grinned, shaking his head in amusement. "So what's the worst that could happen?"