Armand's eyes screamed out in protest as he opened them. The inside of his head throbbed in a steady rhythm with his heartbeat, like someone had crushed it in a vice. He let out a low moan and turned his head. His vision cleared a bit as he stared into the eyes of a healer. Her brown hair was tied back at the neck and she surveyed him with cool, distant blue eyes.

"He's awake," she said as she looked to someone sitting at the foot of the bed. She shook her head. "I'll be back in a few minutes with a cold cloth and something for the pain. Take as long as you need."

"Where am I?" Armand groaned as he struggled to sit up. He looked around him, head wobbling, trying desperately to get the room to stop spinning. He clutched at his temples as Gabriel's face came into view. He was sitting in a chair at the end of the bed, staring at Armand intently.

"You hit your head," Gabriel said. 

Armand tried hard to focus. He touched the back of his own head and flinched. It made his entire head hurt. All he remembered was following the hunting party out, and fighting with Griffon, and walking, but after that there was nothing but a few fuzzy images he couldn't puzzle out in a way that made sense.

"How did I hit my head?" he asked after a few moments of trying and failing to remember on his own.

Gabriel looked away and folded his arms. His eyes were glassy and wet, and had dark rings under them. Armand started to get a sinking feeling in his stomach, like something very bad had happened, but he couldn't piece together what.

"You don't remember," Gabriel said.

"No," Armand replied. 

"We got attacked by some reavers. You got kicked in the head. We took you back on a litter and you passed out. We weren't sure if you were going to wake back up," Gabriel explained in short, clipped tones.

Armand clutched at his stomach. What was he thinking? Stupid. He was so stupid. Of course he wasn't going to prove anything by going out with them. Instead he'd just nearly gotten himself killed. He willed the bed to open up and swallow him whole so Gabriel couldn't look at him. 

"Where's Griffon?" he asked. He was probably too angry to even look at him. Either that or he was off pleading with Aegan on Armand's behalf. Armand shuddered. He'd be surprised if he was allowed to stay anywhere in the caravan, let alone near the guard tents. 

"Gone," Gabriel said as he pressed his knuckles to his jaw.

"When's he coming back?" Armand asked as he clutched at his forehead again. It was hard to focus on anything but the pounding behind his temples. He closed his eyes until the burning subsided a little and opened them again.

"What do you mean, when's he coming back?" Gabriel asked. His eyes flashed fire and Armand looked away from him. His face burned. Was Griffon really that mad at him? He guessed he couldn't blame him.

"I get it," Armand said. "He must be pretty pissed."

"Armand," Gabriel said, and the annoyance faded and was replaced with a sort of pity that made Armand want to slap him. "Griffon's dead. He didn't make it back."

Armand stared at Gabriel for a few moments as the information filtered into his head. It took several more seconds for it to compute before it hit him like a rush of hot air on the hottest of days. Armand's chest constricted so tight it ripped a hole right through his ribs. 

"No," Armand said. That couldn't be right. Griffon couldn't die, he'd come close too many times already. He wouldn't die. He wouldn't do that to him.

"I'm sorry," Gabriel said in a weak voice. He covered his eyes with his hand and leaned forward.

"I want to see him," Armand demanded as his voice cracked. His voice got hot and panicky and his heart started to pound again as all the air suddenly got sucked out of the room. "I want to see him right now!"

"You can't," Gabriel said.

"Let me see him, you asshole!" Armand shouted as rage ignited and swallowed up the panic. It grew and grew until it filled his head and his eyes and every inch of him until it was all he could do to keep from leaping off the bed and punching Gabriel over and over until he stopped moving.

"We left the body," Gabriel said.

"Fuck you," Armand said under his breath as his shoulders started to shake and tears began to pool under his eyes. "Fuck you, you should have brought him back!" He grabbed the sheets on his cot and squeezed so hard his knuckles went white. Armand felt like he was fraying. Splitting into a million tiny little pieces no one would ever be able to glue together back into a whole person.

"We couldn't," Gabriel replied. His tone had ceased to be either level or annoyed and instead he was crying openly. "We had to take you back with us because you were still alive."

Armand wanted to kick himself. It was all his fault, every little bit of it. His heart screamed out in protest. He scratched at his arm, hard, to make sure he was still awake. An unreal ache started to spread inside him when his fingernail cut into his wrist and yet nothing changed. No Griffon. No nothing. He was already awake.

The pain consumed him like a flame until he was nothing but a shaking, sobbing mess curled up on the bed. The healer wandered back to their corner of the medic tent, then immediately turned around and walked away again. It wasn't okay. Nothing was ever going to be okay again, Armand was sure of it, and it was all because he was selfish and stupid and petty.

The room continued to swim and pulse until Armand couldn't cry anymore and the walls finally steadied and he regained the ability to breathe. Every gasp hurt like he had a sucking chest wound. He let out a few ragged breaths and looked up at Gabriel.

"I need to go," Gabriel said as he stood, folding his wings against his back as he did. He stood and strode out of the tent like he was in pain. Armand's eyes followed him out. He wondered how much Gabriel hated him for killing his friend.

The healer came back and pressed a cloth to his forehead. It stung but he was too tired to protest. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do now. He would be extremely lucky if Aegan didn't strangle him with his two hands. She held out a vial of something that smelled awful and tasted even worse, but he drained it all anyway in the hopes that it would make him stop caring, if only for a minute.

It didn't help. Instead it just made his head more fuzzy and less able to process. His fault. All his fault. Every inch of it, every scrap of what happened, all because of him. All because he didn't leave well enough alone.

He remembered when he was just a kid and he clung to Griffon's legs like a kitten. When Aegan had yelled at him for falling and ripping his pants and the other kids laughed and he'd worn them for the next three weeks until Griffon learned to sew and silently patched them for him. 

And when a boy pushed Armand in the dirt because one foot turned out and he couldn't run very fast. Griffon had stormed up and shouted in their faces and they never did it again, not even when Armand got bigger and the leg straightened out so he could keep up right along with them. And when he got scared at night because the desert made noises, and Griffon stayed up with him until he fell asleep.

All the while he'd seen the raw scars that ran across Griffon's chest, around his hip, and down his back. How it tied his arm to his body but he never let it bother him or let Armand think that it was because of him, even way later on when he heard Griffon mutter in his sleep and realized with horror that he'd gotten them pulling Armand from a burning building. And now he repaid him by killing him.

Armand's chest burned with a fire he could not escape as he cried.

---

A heartbreaking chapter for Armand. He's lost the only family he has, and by all accounts, it's mostly his own fault. Do you feel bad for him? What would you do if you were Armand?