The army watches, the forest trembles, and Kallan waits. 

Maybe for an answer, or perhaps simply basking in this small victory, Charlie can't be sure. 

Either way, Oliver does not lift his gaze again from where he fixes it to the forest floors beneath them. 

Part of Charlie wants to plead with his brother to look him in the eye. 

But he can hardly find the words, let alone the belief that he deserves anything more than a pitying glance, or a hateful glare. 

So he too turns his gaze to the ground.

All he can hear is the sound of his blood coarsing through his veins, thundering in his ears. 

Then the soft clink of metal from the treeline beyond. 

The ranks part again at the centre, caught by a sudden, unseen tide that pushes them apart down a single seam. 

Another squadron, but their cargo is far less capable of putting up a fight. 

Charlie hears the sound of the chains before he sees them.

Smells the silver on the air as clearly as he can taste the blood at the back of his throat, and their rattle pulls his full attention.

Each link the width of a broad hand, the weight is enough to require several people to hold it between them as they cross the forest floor, shining chains in hands. Taking the utmost care not to allow a single inch of it to touch the dirt beneath their feet.

They will not sully the silver.

His skin recoils, the beast lurking but even it is silenced at the sight of the chains.

Instead it paces, back and forth at the surface of his skin. Aware of the fate coming for them, desperately searching for an escape before Charlie allows them to succumb to it.

But Charlie's resolve is steadfast.

"Kneel," Kallan's order comes with a tone better suited to suggestion, that boredom creeping closer.

Charlie swallows past the dry lump at the back of his throat, and obeys. His knees cracking on the dry earth.

They adorn him with the chains the same way a child set free with colours might attempt their first painting. Heavy handed and uncertain, and perhaps a little too merrily.

Unaware the marks made to the canvas would be ever lasting.

As the first links wrap around his right arm, he stiffens, bracing against the pains shifting and grimacing beneath the weight of the chains, as the connect with his ribs, his soft skin.

The sensation sets him ablaze, every ounce of his soul collapsing beneath the pinning chains.

They work until his arms and wrists are bound by the silver, pulled into taut and awkward angles behind him. They weave across his chest in an intricate, crossing pattern.

If his skin were glass, the pain, the chains would have been enough to crack it but not shatter.

But crack it did.

Chains were only ever a temporary fix, and they never lasted long enough.

But his humiliation is far from over. 

One man holds a circlet of silver, it glimmers in the mid-day sun. The stranger, this newcomer, is by no means a small man, yet his hands are trembling beneath the weight of it. 

But he is quickly freed of the burden - for this is a task Kallan takes upon himself. 

The leader steps forward, and all at once the chains pull taut around him. 

So harsh, so sudden that his bones might have fractured beneath the sudden imposition of the pressure. Like it might decapitate him clean at the torso if he so much as tumbled or attempted to struggle. 

He is pulled taut as Kallan steps towards him again, that circle of silver in his grip. 

Collar, the word echoes not just through his mind but through his bones. 

And all he can do is swallow as the stranger snaps it shut around his neck. 

So tight that it pinches the skin, at first Charlie can barely breathe.

As it snaps shut, around him the forest reacts. 

Trees wilt, the sunlight dims, and fresh blossoms hit the earth, dead. 

Even the forest knows to accept defeat. 

As the last of the weight settles on him, it is heavy enough that the earth feels like it might give way beneath him, sending Charlie falling into the drowning depths.

Even after all these years, the weight of it, the stinging taste of silver on his flesh is as familiar as the warmth of his mother's hug might have once been, as familiar as the laughter of his brothers.

Now those memories have faded, but this remains ever sharp, ever bright.

Any hopes Oliver might have harboured of a last minute get away are quickly quashed as chains are strapped to his wrists, and ankles too. The weight sagging against the skin, they aren't silver, aren't thick enough to encompass the earth.

But the sight of them is enough to make Oliver visibly flinch as they are brought over to him too.

This close, Charlie takes in more of his brother.

Sees the red, raw patches of skin circling the wrists and ankles. Angry, hurting flesh, the smell of infection on the air, faint now but it wouldn't take much for that hint of hot fever to spread.

Charlie didn't dare ask how long Oliver had been dragged along with this.

All for him.

"Surely that's overkill," Charlie's voice breaches the quiet, the sound hoarse and desperate. It seemed small and quite possibly stupid, but in a lifetime of failing his brother.

Oliver is back to refusing to meet his gaze.

"Surely he poses no threat to you."

It was rare that, where he was in a room, anyone thought to even consider whatever sliver of a threat someone else might be capable of causing.

His brother wasn't even armed - and though much could change in a decade, Charlie didn't remember thinking highly of his brother's fighting skills.

That small comfort, meagre and might have been interpreted as mocking.

Kallan's features morph, though slightly. Something caught between admiration and frustration.

It is then, and only then that Charlie sneaks enough of a peel of Kallan's cheek that he can see the dark shades of blue.

It seemed his brother had at least managed to get at least one swing in.

"That brother of yours had more wits than we gave him credit for." The voice is a grumble.

Oliver doesn't so much as look up, nor smile.

Curiosity kindles in the young man at that, but the troops snap to attention around him before he can consider the meaning of the words.

The strangers fingers curl into fists at his sides, as though partly tempted to hit, to prove something.

Charlie stiffens with the expectation of it, whether the blow was to land on him or his brother.

But it is neither, the man resists it, and brings that broad hand to itch at the dark stubble adorning his sharp jaw. "We learned not to view your brother as human after a while, too many tricks up his sleeve."

Again Oliver seems especially fascinated in the jagged rocks littering the earth here.

"Though we suppose it's only natural after living with you as many years as he did, that he'd learn many ways to run and hide."

It is that, of all things that wretches Oliver's attention from the forest floor.

Something half way to a glower burning in dark chestnut eyes.

Charlie knows he'd said it to see the reaction.

Could feel it in the careful way Kallan's gaze shifts, sets firmly upon him as the last words fall from his narrow lips.

The young man flinches, but does not rise.

Whether because he cannot or will not, Charlie can only guess.

That, apparently, proved something for the stranger.

As any hint of injured pride fades, and with it the hint of the angry bruise. Kallan steps forward, he takes the end of one of the chains - split between four men now, and yanks it.

The power behind the wrenching gesture would have sent any other man sprawling into the forest dirt.

It merely adjusts Charlie's stance by a matter of inches, it barely unbalanced him.

Surprise doesn't so much as flicker over Kallan's expression, only a smile, an expectation.

And Charlie takes a step forward, the chain slackening slightly between them.

His guard mirrors the movement, second only to the reaction speed of his shadow.

The tendrils of the chains aren't allowed to so much as slacken as they move. Pulled taut, but these strangers are in such a harmony with Charlie that he isn't swayed or pulled in one direction.

The degree of orchestration is somewhere between impressive and terrifying.

Oliver has been encompassed by his own guards, a smaller number, without quite so many restraints.

Charlie can't see his brother through the tide of grey and blue uniforms.

But he can feel him.

Feel the eyes of his brother tracking him even at this distance, as closely and as carefully as the starved predator watches the first prey its seen in weeks.

The two brothers, now more chain than flesh, they are two ships, metres apart but stuck in the same storm.

A shout booms from Kallan, the sound echoing into the treeline.

And with a thunder of leather boots on dry, forest earth, the small army falls into line around them.

Those who had kept to the treeline, the shadows finally folding out into the morning light.

And for the first time Charlie can see exactly how cornered his Forests had been.

Not the couple dozen he'd originally believed, but as more and more fold away from the trees, out of the consuming shadows of his own home.

The number is closer to a hundred, possibly stretching further beyond even that.

The weight of it might have sent Charlie stumbling backward, had the chains given him room for anything that isn't complete obedience.

Kallan's gaze drags across the assembled force before him, two neat rows of five by five, standing abreast, at attention.

Save the 5 surrounding Charlie, and the 2 surrounding Oliver, all eyes are in one direction.

Fixed, unshakeably, upon Kallan.

Who drags his gaze across them, studying them, taking them in.

Then a satisfied smile splits his features, and he nods.

Turns on his heel, and strides into the shadows of the treeline once more.

And as one breath, one force of movement, a tide that sweeps through the forest. The small army follows him.

The forest is silent, unmoving as it watches them go.