"Get that medicine to the people who need it," Alicia orders, helping drag crates from the cart, the people of the Commons rushing to meet her. Oliver jumps down from the cart, moving to help her, but Alicia raises her hand, narrowing her gaze at him. "Not you. You're injured."

"I hit my head, I didn't break my damn arms," he replies, staring her in the eye as he grabs a crate and tugs it towards himself. Alicia slams a hand down on the wood, refusing to back down.

"I want you to go and get some rest. Thank you."

"You're incredibly frustrating, you know that, right?"

"And you're stubborn." She jerks her chin, directing him away from the manual labour. With all the eager hands reaching for the supplies, they don't need his help anyway. "I'll meet you back at the house." Alicia reaches for another crate as Oliver narrows his eyes at her. She heaves it into her arms, a gasp leaves her, her left arm buckles from the fire that crawls along her skin, and she has to set the crate back down before she drops it.

She hates the knowing look that sparks in his sterling gaze.

"Come on, let me look at your wound back at the house." He turns on his heel and walks, clearly expecting Alicia to follow him.

Glaring at his back, Alicia contemplates ignoring him, but as she roles her shoulder and sweat gathers in the hollow of her throat despite the chill air, she decides to let her pride slide and go after him.

Hazel eyes flick back to the supplies they got, crates full of much needed resources that'll help them survive. There was even a good stock of black powder, something David clearly used in his traps.

But also, there was the key. Lifting a hand, Alicia presses her palm to her shirt where the key rests against her skin on a leather cord. She doesn't know what it opens and a part of her doesn't want to know, still trying to tear herself from her grand ideas that only hurt people.

Going after the duke again could be a mistake. It could destroy what little she's managed to scavenge for herself, the tiny piece of the world she's taken back to call her own. It could ruin everything.

As her thoughts consume her, she steps through Oliver's door, her hand still covering the key under her shirt. Fingers brush her elbow and Alicia blinks up as Oliver watches her, head tilted and eyes shadowed.

"You look troubled," he observes.

"Just sore." She pastes a smile on her lips and drops her hand from the key, trying to ignore the warmth of the metal against her skin while deciding she needs a safe place to store it so she's not constantly reminded of the path she's decided to walk again. Or maybe she needs the reminder, needs to make certain she really wants to take this road again after what it's already cost her.

Her ma may have struck some sort of deal with the grand duke, but that doesn't mean they're safe from that man. No one's safe from him.

His gaze flicks between hers and the small flutter in his jaw tells her he wants to speak, but he doesn't. Instead, he turns towards the kitchen and gestures for her to sit by the table. The flowers Alicia had replaced in the vase on the table have wilted, the once vibrant red petals now wrinkled and dull. She doesn't know how much longer they'll be staying here to warrant changing them again.

As she sits, she unbuttons the top of her shirt and pulls it over her shoulder to reveal the bandage beneath, spots of blood darkening the white.

Oliver sets a chair down in front of her and lays out a satchel of supplies on the table, a small crease between his brows. She watches him as he picks up a pair of scissors, lifts an edge of her bandage with careful fingers, and begins cutting through it.

Alicia takes full advantage of his close proximity to study him, like a direwolf that's decided to sit next to her and not tear her throat out. She glances at the cut on the shaved underside of his head. It'll heal with barely a scar thanks to Kendra's neat work. Alicia learned the woman served as a medic in the war alongside Sam.

"What did your sister do in the war?" Alicia asks, remembering the grainy picture of him and his sister in their uniforms. The band around her arm would have indicated her duty if Alicia could have seen the colour.

Silvery eyes flicking to her as he pulls the bandage away from her wound, he doesn't answer. Instead, he studies the damage she's done to the deep teeth marks and torn flesh. "You've pulled your stitches," he murmurs, his voice so distracted it makes Alicia believe he's not really thinking about her injury.

Whatever it is he doesn't want to remember, she's forced him to.

"I'm sorry," she says, wincing as he cuts away her stitches.

"Anika wasn't where she was meant to be," he tells her and Alicia blinks. "She was a medic in training with Sam, but she was pulled to the front line."

"Why?" The word comes out as a hiss as Oliver swipes something over the wound that burns. She's done it to herself enough times to stop herself from lurching away.

"Because I made some very powerful people mad." Oliver begins to stitch the wound closed as she stares at him, mulling over his words, hardly feeling the pain.

"The duke?"

His single, stiff nod says it all.

Oliver fought against him, Alicia realises. After the tomb, after Sergey threatened him and his family and forced him into servitude, Oliver refused him. And it cost him, just as it cost her.

They're going to have to pay again if they continue down this path.

Alicia draws in a breath as the needle hits a particular spots and her nails bite into her palm. "You've done this before?" she asks, needing a distraction but not wanting to see the flicker of pain in his gaze anymore.

"I have. Mostly on myself."

"As have I." It's a small piece of herself she gifts him, but it's still a piece. After he's opened up so much with her, she finds she wants him to see more of who she is, show him that she knows his hurt like it's her own.

No one should have to be so alone that they're forced to stitch closed their own wounds.

His gaze darts over her face, reading whatever is expressed on her features.

Alicia reaches down and tugs up the hem of her shirt to reveal her stomach and one of the many scars littered over her body. "Knife," she says, nodding at the slash that had tried to gut her. "Some asshole in an alley tried to follow me home."

"What happened to them?"

Pressing her lips together, Alicia shrugs. "Let's just say he won't be following anyone home again."

"And this one?" He gestures to the wound below it and Alicia glances at it, the round scar still pink though it's four months old.

Has it only been four months since she exiled herself?

"Bullet. Kathryn stitched that one though. I was lucky." Alicia drops her shirt as Oliver finishes his stitches and leans back, wiping his hands on a cloth.

"Are you going to tell me what that is?" His eyes flick down to Alicia's partly revealed chest from her unbuttoned shirt. Her mouth goes dry as she looks down, but catches a glimpse of the key.

She nearly rolls her eyes at herself, instead she shrugs again and lifts her arm as Oliver wraps a bandage around her shoulder. "I found it in Yorvik Keep where he was probably once buried. I think the duke was looking for it."

"Why do you think that?"

Her throat closes and she stares at the brown hair that curls over his forehead as he bends close to her. She hasn't told him about the notebook. She hasn't told him a lot of things that she perhaps needs to if they're going into this fight against the duke together.

But speaking about it makes it real. It means she's throwing herself back into this fight. She supposes there's no one better to hold her accountable to her goals to tear Sergey down.

"I've never really told you why I was exiled," she starts, because why hide it anymore? Oliver knows she has a plight against the duke and she may as well reveal the only ammunition she has against the man. It's their only hope. "I stole something from him that he came to collect. My pa died in the struggle."

Oliver's hand settles around her upper arm, his thumb stroking her bare skin. "I'm sorry, Alicia."

Nodding, Alicia refuses to acknowledge the emotion that tries to strangle her. "I suppose I stole his diary. A lot of his thoughts about Ghuls and the Reaper's Curse are in that book. I was going to take it to the council, but..." But instead she ran and she's refused to look back until now.

"Will you show it to me?"

Alicia buttons her shirt once he's done bandaging her shoulder. She has to commit now. She's come too far to turn back again.

Standing, Alicia grabs her satchel where she dumped it and reaches inside to toss the book onto the table before him. Oliver reaches for it and flips through it, eyes widening.

"How did you get this?" he breathes and glances up at her.

"I stole it," she repeats. "Read it. I'm going to take a bath." And she doesn't want to see anything that's in that book again. The experiments, the Ghul's harvested organs, the talk of Traveller stories like they're fact, none of it leaves good feeling in Alicia's stomach.

She's going to regret picking this fight up again, but if not her, then who? She's already lost everything, what's a little more pain?

Alicia sinks into the brass bath that resides in the centre of the washroom, the water warm. The small abrasions that litter her skin sting as she soaks in the water, careful not to wet her new bandages. She stares at the ceiling with unseeing hazel eyes, steam rising around her that she curls around her fingers.

The quiet is a lie, it tries to tell her that she isn't in the Dead Lands, surrounded by walking corpses. It tries to tell her that if she opens that door, her family will be waiting for her with open arms. Kathryn, ready to teach her how to shoot, how to spit, how to punch without breaking her wrist. David, his laugh able to fill a room, the smile lines around his eyes having formed when he was young and foolhardy. Her pa, his hugs so tight they squeezed her ribs, like he was making up for all the years he didn't love them enough to put down his bottle. Her brothers, fingers ready to pull her hair, Kieran eager to show her a new tune on his lyre, Adrian ready to slip a book into her hands with a cheeky wink.

Maybe her ma would be there too, lips twisted, spine rigid, but she'd have that spark in her eyes, the one Alicia was always searching for. The spark said 'I love you' even though she never would.

Alicia reaches for the glass of whiskey on the floor that she brought in with her for a scenario just like this. She takes a hearty gulp to lose herself in the warmth of the water and the heat of the alcohol in her belly. She lets go, pushes away the expectations, the hopes, the fears. She pushes away her family and what they once could have been, what they can be no more.

"Alicia?" A light knock comes to the door and Alicia sits up, but Oliver doesn't enter.

"Yes?"

"I've read a lot of the book and..." Whatever he says next is lost behind the wood of the door, but without even seeing him, Alicia knows he's hurting, for whatever reason.

She rests her chin on her forearm draped over the lip of the path, her own hurt like shards of glass shifting inside her chest. "What was that?"

"We need to find a way into the capital," he sighs.

If Alicia hadn't been preparing herself for that exact scenario, she might have wept to hear his words, and they wouldn't have been tears of joy.

She left the capital for a reason and it wasn't with the intention of ever returning.

"Do you have a way?" she asks.

"No."

"I might." Closing her eyes, she wishes she didn't have to speak such words.

"How?"

"The tomb, Oliver. The tomb beneath Muovea. I have the map. It'll help us get out of there, we just need to find a way in."

The silence that follows has her draining the rest of the whiskey from her glass, neither of them wanting to say the words.

Two times now they've nearly died in ancient tombs they have no right to tread in. They're beginning to push their luck.

"Once you're done, meet me at the tavern. We should speak with Sam."

Alicia swallows the bile that stings the back of her throat and stays in the bath until the water becomes cold.

None of this is simple. After she wrapped that crimson scarf around her mouth and replied to the name 'Raven', she knew it'd never be simple again.