It was silent for a few moments, neither of them speaking. Rannok waited a few more after Mantu left to let go of Sasha's hand and stand up out of his chair. His head throbbed along with the rhythm of his heartbeat. His fault or not, a child was hurt, and it could have been prevented if he had just been paying attention.

"Two years," he said. He snorted a laugh. "I don't know if I can make it another six months here, Sasha. I keep screwing up."

Rannok swallowed hard and glanced over at her, but she wasn't looking at him anymore. Instead she picked at the cuticle on her left thumb, a worried furrow in her eyebrows. He leaned against the wall and shook his head.

"Where are we even going to go?" he asked. He wasn't sure if there even was a 'we' in that sentence, but it felt like it should be there. It felt like it was right for it to be, even if he sometimes said the wrong things or stole from innkeepers or failed to watch young children. 

"I don't know," Sasha said. Her voice was weak, like a starving kitten, and her arms folded across her lap. There was a shine of water on her eyes. Rannok reached out in her direction, then caught himself and stopped. Her eyes closed. "Rannok, I can't." Her chest heaved in and a noise like a sob escaped her throat. "I'm sorry. I'm going to disappoint you. I can't help it."

This was the wrong place and time for this discussion. Rannok pinched the bridge of his nose before sighing deeply and sitting back down. 

"Sasha, what are you talking about?" he asked, careful to keep his voice quiet and nonthreatening. Careful not to make her feel like he was accusing her.   

"You don't understand, I'm not what you think I am. I can't--" she said, and suddenly Sasha looked frail. There were circles under her eyes, and blotches on her cheeks, like she'd been worried this entire time and he'd been too stupid to notice. Because of course he had been. He opened his mouth to say something, then paused for a second, for once, to think it over.

"I'm pretty sure I know you by now," he said, once he was sure it wouldn't come out wrong and he wouldn't just tell her she was broken again. "Try me."

Sasha's fists got tight, so her knuckles blanched, and her hands curled around her shirt. "We can't have the kind of relationship you want, Rannok. I don't know how to explain it to you." She paused, and Rannok drew back. His heart pounded in his throat. 

All those moments hiding in the woods, and sleeping under the stars, and talking to each other about difficult things when he could manage them. All those moments using her to hide from the inside of his head. The smell of her hair after they got caught in a rainstorm. The way she looked at him when he'd said something only he thought was funny.

"I thought—" He swallowed. "I kind of thought we already did actually."

The tension in the room grew thick. Sasha dragged her foot across the uneven wooden flooring. She wouldn't look at him, but there were tears gathering below her eyes. Rannok reached out to touch her, to do anything to make her stop crying. Anything to take back that he'd stolen and gotten them here and this.

"You flinched away when I kissed you." Her eyes darted to him, and then away again. Her back stiffened, like that memory hurt.

Rannok winced. He was such an idiot. Of course she didn't know. Of course he had to tell her. He wished he'd just told her to begin with. He sighed and wiped a hand across his face.

"Sasha, when people kiss like that in Terres, it's a marriage proposal. They don't do it otherwise. I figured it didn't mean the same thing to you but that didn't stop it from catching me off guard." Rannok paused. He sighed very deeply and tried to push down the frustration bubbling in his chest. All of this over something that could have been fixed if she'd just given him a chance to talk.

All at once he understood why he frustrated her, and rocked back in his chair a little bit. 

Sasha raised one eyebrow at him, and the tension came out of her shoulders. "Oh. I didn't know that."

"I tried to tell you before. You didn't give me a chance to explain." 

Sasha blinked a few times, then turned towards him. "How do you go that long without--" She bit her lip.

Rannok shrugged. "My parents wanted me to marry some girl I'd never met from the next village over. I don't even remember what her name was. Her parents had money I think. I fledged before it could happen." He rubbed his arm with his hand. "I was twenty...it was already kind of late for that anyway. I never really thought about it again until now." 

He had never really thought about it then either honestly, how other places might not do it that way. It was just the way things were. You married someone near your age, got a stray if they displeased you, had kids. You grew up. He never even remembered feeling relieved it hadn't happened, though the caravan and the guardsmen were too much for him to really think about much else.  

"That sounds hard," Sasha said, still looking at the ground. "I'm sorry."

"Not really. It was just what people did. I didn't know about anything else."

For a moment Sasha was quiet. Rannok couldn't stop picking at his fingers. The air grew thick again. His hand inched over to hers, but she pulled it away, as if he were a snake she expected to bite her. Like his fingers stung. Dread settled in the pit of his stomach. He was going to lose her again, once they were out of here. The fact that he did not know why made it worse.

"Sasha."

She shut her eyes again for a second, and her shoulders stiffened back up. 

"Sasha, are you okay?" 

For a long moment she didn't answer, but he could hear the shuddering in her breathing. He could feel the constriction in her chest, the fear. Rannok closed his eyes and braced himself for whatever it was she wanted to say.

"The thought of you touching me scares me," she said, her voice so quiet he could barely hear it. There were tears running down her cheeks from below her closed eyes. The words came out in a rush, like she couldn't stand to get them out fast enough. Like they burned. 

"I care about you. I do. But you can't touch me. I don't know if that will always be true or not but right now it is and I'm sorry." 

 Rannok tensed. It wasn't that he hadn't known, because he'd always known. Rannok just wished he'd killed the man when he'd had a chance to. He wished he could go back and take all that pain from her. But there was nothing he could do to fix this.  

"Your father," he said, one single sentence that said enough of what needed to be said that there wasn't room for anything more.

A deep sob bubbled up her throat. "I'm so sorry, Rannok. I'm just too broken."

Rannok took her hand again. He squeezed it tightly in his, and this time she did not pull away from him.

"Sasha, if I cared about that I wouldn't still be here," he said, voice low and soothing. He scooted a little bit closer and put his arm around her, careful not to scare her, like he was dealing with an injured animal and not a broken person. "It's okay."

"It's not okay," she said, and her voice suddenly shook like the howling of a windstorm. "You can't possibly say you wouldn't like that, Rannok. You can't."

Rannok closed his eyes and tried to focus. For a moment, it was hard not to feel insulted. It was hard not to think about all the times she'd flinched away because he'd raised his voice a little, or the times she'd latched herself onto him in the middle of the night from a nightmare. It was hard not to think of all the times they'd leaned on each other. All the times he could have rejected her but didn't. 

Then he reminded himself that this was not about him. It couldn't be about him. It had to be about her.

"I said I love you, the other day. I meant it. I already sort of knew you wouldn't want me to touch you like that." He sighed and drew her a little bit closer, then was a tiny bit pleased when she didn't resist. "That's why I didn't push it."

"What if it's never different?" Sasha asked, and her eyes were pinpricks of fear, like she didn't want to hear his answer, like she was terrified of it. 

He sighed. "Then it's not different. It's not that important."

Sasha made a noise and Rannok couldn't tell whether or not it was relief or more crying. She leaned her head into his chest and let out a deep, shuddering breath that made her shoulders shake. 

"I love you, too."

"When I say it's okay can you please just try to believe me?"

Sasha nodded and didn't move except to wrap her arms around his waist. Her shoulders still shook like a boat caught in a storm. He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and kissed the top of her forehead.

She was enough.