Jason slammed his fists against the stone wall of the Cave for the third time. He was swearing and shouting plenty of angry things he didn't mean. Mostly directly at Eddie, because he wasn't here. He... wasn't here anymore. He left us, and trapped us in here.

There was so much more room in chest where my heart had been and yet, I still could barely breathe.

"Jason..." I called out, my tongue felt numb. "Stop."

He turned towards me, breathing heavily. Occasionally bits of his skin would flicker as he sparked. I might have thought it was cute if I wasn't so empty. He looked at me, crouched on the floor and miserable. His face softened. When people say that I don't always know what they mean, but I could see it now. The creases on his forehead ironed out, and the sharp points of his snarling jaw became round like an old rock in and older river.

"I'm sorry," he said, and sat down next to me.

"Do you think... this whole time...?"

"Maybe, I knew we shouldn't have trusted him." Jason watched me, "but... I wish we could."

We sat in silence for a bit, then Jason moved toward the small makeshift torch we'd made. He reached his hands into the flames and picked them up into his finger like it was a cat.

"We should probably put this out, we don't know if there's an opening for oxygen to get in. At least until we figure out a way to get out."

We were plunged into darkness.

I remember how he looked me dead and the eye and said he hated me. He'd had fire in his hands and poison in his mouth. I had trusted him, Kosmos, I trusted everyone, didn't I? I was so stupid. Peri nuzzled into my hand, trying to comfort me. I pet him gently, scratching his cheeks and watching the last of the light reflect off his feathers.

Something bit in the palm of my hand and I realized Peri had something clutched in his talons. I ran my thumb over the shape, it was a necklace. A wooden carving on a cord, of an axolotl, with the runes of fire on her back. Eddie's finished carving, he must have dropped it on his way out.  I felt my throat close up, emotions pressing against my neck and chest and stealing my air.

"Oh Kosmos," I cried out. "This is all my fault. Curse my fickle heart, I wish the spirits would eat it out of me."

"Hey, it's not your fault. I... I didn't know there was anything wrong." Peri said, his voice strained from distress. "He smells just like you when under her power. I thought it was okay."

I winced, and couldn't stop the sobs the tore themselves out of me. "I hate having these powers. They hurt people even when I try to help them. I just... I just want to help people. He was happy, I just wanted everyone to be happy."

I pulled at my hair and rocked back and forth gently. "I can't... I can't breathe."

Jason rested his hand on my shoulder. "Craig, listen to me."

He drew closer, and wrapped his arms around me, I pressed my face into his chest. I speckled his shirt with salty tearstains and snot. I don't think he minded. He was so warm, warmer then before I think. As if he'd stopped swallowing the fire in his soul and let it move under his skin freely.

"We're going to be okay, I'm right here, we're going to get out of here."

I sucked in a shaky breath. "You understand, right? You know why I hate this?"

He rubbed my back gently. "I know."

I don't know if it was the darkness concealing our faces or my scattered brain that made me want to pour everything out. "How... how do you deal with it?"

He sighed, a big, and steady motion, like when you stand under a field and hold the sky in your arms. I could feel his chest rise and fall like the mountains in the horizon, like the hills at our feet. "Hmm, well first, I don't think of things as good or bad. Nothing is life or death except Life and Death themselves. Though... I have to admit Craig, you're pretty good."

I clenched my fists. "I let us get betrayed by Eddie."

Jason shrugged. "You were kind to him. That doesn't happen very often."

"But... but what about the people I've hurt? You didn't like it when I looked at your memories. Bundi wouldn't talk to me for a few days."

Jason was quiet for a moment, "when... when I was younger. I lived farther North than your Pack. There were lots of pine trees, but some of them were massive. The elders always used to say that the crown of those trees stretched into the Kosmos, and that's how we communicated with our dead. They were very special however, because the seeds of the trees couldn't be grown normally. They had to be burned into order for the pinecone to open up. That was the only way to keep them alive."

I blinked, and the weight on my chest subsided. "Fire was the only way to them to keep living."

Jason took my one of my hands in his larger, bonier ones, "and if the life on the forest floor were to keep growing, it would have choked everything else."

Cycle after cycle, two creatures biting another's tails as they ran. Life and death, Zoi and Than, me and him. I could see us in new mates in spring and I could see then in the bloody wolf's maw. I could smell us in the nutrients a body supplies to nature, in the fungi that eats the rotting wood.

"We need each other," I realized.

Warmth blossomed in my chest and tingles spread throughout my entire body. Then, I could see Jason's face. My hands glowed with a bright green light, like the sun hitting leaves in the summer. Jason's eyes widened, and I smiled wide. My cheeks were going to burst from calm and happy I felt now. We laughed, most importantly we laughed together.

His eyes sparkled, "I've got it. I know how to get out of here."

"Yeah?"

He stood up and took my hand, pulling me to my feet. "Come on Craig, we're getting Felix back... tonight."