47: Weaknesses

"Philip," I said to the hunched figure, sitting in the centre of the railed wooden platform on the tree tops.

He turned, face flushed, throwing me a lazy smile. "Mo, is that you my girl?" His eyes vacant and his smile fleeting. This wasn't right.

I huffed and climbed onto the platform. An empty bottle laid against the rails. When I laid my hands on his shoulder, the coldness stung my skin. "You're freezing!"

I threw the blanket over his shoulders.

"Really?" He muttered, staring up at me, his lips twisting into a frown. "I feel toasty."

"Philip let's go down, it's too cold up here," I said softly, kneeling before him.

He shook his head, his gaze glued to something behind me. "The little ones told me, up here, I could touch the heavens." He raised his hand, the blanket slipping off his shoulder. I quickly replaced the blanket and sighed, following his gaze. He wasn't lying, the stars looked magnificent up here, but I could hardly enjoy them not when he was like this.

I took off my scarf and placed it securely round his neck. I lowered his hand, lifted the other and rubbed them warm with my own. The cold barely bothered me.

"You're warm, Mo," Philip smiled. I continued rubbing his hands, noting how huge his were compared to mine. "Can I get a hug?" On a normal day, I'd have probably refused, but when my friend was obviously torn apart and his smile seemed so forced, I knew he truly needed a hug.

I moved under the blanket, stretching an arm over his broad back. Another over his shoulder, his cold cheek pressed against mine. His long arms encircled me with an urgent squeeze, not like when he had hugged me when he had missed me but with a deeper longing, with a need to feel safe. His body void of warmth, his mind a haze, his fire drowned by the alcohol. I held him, wanting to keep him warm for as long as he needed.

"I'm sorry Mo," he whispered in my ear.

I sat back, still keeping my arm round his back, as he held me close as well.

"Don't say that, you did nothing wrong," I murmured.

He forced a smile. "If we'd met when we were younger you'd have hated me and I'd have hated you as well." I remained quiet, allowing him to go on. "I was a bratty kid who went along with what everyone said. I hated vuruks. I've said and done things to vuruks, I can't ever be forgiven for. And even when I found out I was a one, I didn't want to believe that I was anything like the monsters I believed they were. Then I became a knight, and I fought alongside them and they died for me, laid in my arms till their last breaths and I realized how stupid I was all along. I don't deserve you." His hand fell and left me longing for his touch.

"You were young then, now you know better. It's all part of growing up, you learn, you regret, you move forward," I said tenerderly.

"Have I actually grown?" A bitter laugh left his lips as his eyes glassed over. "I never should've promised La-ance." At the break in his voice, my heart dropped. "He knew and he played me right into it."

"He'll understand."

"Does it matter?" His words hit me like a hot slap. Words I'd heard before, but just as weighty every time they're said. "I hurt him. I love my old man but Lance is like a second father to me. He thought me all I know. He made me into the knight I always longed to be, the knight I so" —he pounded his chest as the first tear escaped —"proudly flaunt. But now I've raised my sword against him and I can't go back from that."

A tear trickled past his cheek and stained the wood. I rubbed a hand down his cold back, forcing my own tears back. After my first test, after I had almost gone down a path I knew I'd never return from, he had been there for me. He wiped my tears and he told me I'd be fine. And I hadn't yet thought of him as a friend then, but that had hardly mattered to him.

And now, he'd hurt someone so close to him. Someone so dear to him. Someone like a father. Just thinking about it, made me think of me harming my own father, the man who raised me. No, impossible, I'd never. But Philip must have thought so as well, and now he'd done it.

"He won't eat," he breathed. "He won't take food from me. Or anyone else. He'll starve himself. He won't listen. He'll stay chained down there like a criminal, bruised, cold and hungry."

"Don't worry, I'll, I'll bring him something, I promise he'll eat." But I wasn't so sure my promise carried much truth, I didn't know how I'd do it, but I knew I had to try. "Let's go now."

His head dropped onto mine as he released a frosty breath. "Not yet."

For a while we just sat, holding each other, staring up at the millions of sparkling stars and the luminous moon. I wished I could wash his worries away. Make him smile. Make him laugh. Bicker with him for being so carefree. I wished, I could make him forget why he was down in the first place.

But all I could do was hold him, keep him warm so he wouldn't freeze to death and be with him so his thoughts couldn't crush him. I hoped that helped, at least a little.

"Thank you Mo," he whispered.

"What are friends for." I shifted in my seat.

"Don't," he gasped, "go."

I inched closer to him as I had intended to in the first place. "I'm here, and I'll be here for you. Don't worry."

"Mo..."

My eyelids hanging heavy. "Hmm?"

"I love...you."

His words banished the droswe from my mind.

I peeked up at him, to find his eyes falling close. I brushed the weight of his words aside, he was half asleep and drunk, he didn't mean it. But I hung on to it for a moment, wondering what it would mean if it were said under different circumstances. And what I would say back.

What would I say back? I didn't know, because no one who wasn't my family had ever said those three words to me. And perhaps that was the reason why, even after I told myself it meant nothing, I kept thinking it over, prolonging the pleasure of those words.

I closed my eyes and let sleep have its way with me. But when I woke I was on my bed. Still dark out, I considered the chance that I had dreamed up everything of the night, from the attack on the general to Philip. But when I found Brise, paler than paper, I knew it was no dream. I brewed a hot pot of soup and woke Brise to feed her. Half asleep she sipped the spoons I served her. When she had enough, she brushed me off and went back to bed.

The sky turning a purple hue, with the sun's first rays escaping the horizon, I packed a bag full of food. Smoked pork, a hunk of bread and cheese, a waterskin and some ointments. But just as I was about to leave, she arrived.

"Where are you going?" Brise asked, her dark hard eyes regarding me.

I gripped the bag and hid it behind me, my eyes anywhere but on her. "He won't eat."

"And you think he'll take it from you, someone who he thinks he doesn't know?"

"I can't just let him starve."

"Well then what are you going to do?" Her voice raising slightly and sharply. "Tell him who you really are? Risk someone listening!"

I turned away. Trying but failing to mute her as I heard her last words. "You're weak."

She wasn't wrong. But I wasn't going to admit to her, how right she was. And what that meant to me truly. I was weak, because I chose those close to me over others.

With the candle lights in each home dimming against the rising sun, I made my way up the tree to the next level and to the detention center. The guard on duty let me pass after I showed them the food I had brought to feed the prisoners. But unlike Philip, Rowan and Lucius's cells, Lance's was on the second floor, in the roomed cells.

I crept along the hall, staring in through the bared rectangular opening of the doors to find empty cells and cells occupied by certain people who are sure to send a shiver scuttling down your spine.

Then I saw him, his wrists hanging over his head by shackles, his long grey hair draped over his face, his bare chest grimy from blood and dirt, on his knees on the sure to be freezing floor. I pulled at the door, only then realizing I had no access to it.

But then I heard the rattling of metal and I hid behind the tree trunk. A figure accended the stairs and arrived at Lance's door. He glanced about and entered: Nareem.

I opted to return some other time, when no one was around but the young boy's words glued me in place. "Was it you? Were you the general who left us that day?"

A/n: ayo not me redoing iroh's incarcerated scene. Damn atla really knew how to tug at our heartstrings.