Chapter Text
Rae hopped up on a fallen log, spreading his arms out as he carefully balanced on top, slowly walking down the length of the wood. It felt steady under his feet, and despite the subtle wind making its way through the trees and rustling the leaves, he felt secure up on his little perch.
Centross was watching him from a few feet away, tending what would be their fire when night hit in an hour or two. The nights weren’t as cold as Rae was used to, in fact, as they headed further south it almost got too warm for the fires at night, but the light was nice. Consistent.
His foot slipped, his heart racing for a brief second before he found his footing again, A soft chuckle reached his ear and he turned, glaring at Centross, who was barely hiding his laughter as he moved their supplies. They’d used what the Duke had given them first, and were now making their way through the bits Rae and Ghosty had managed to pack in the pocket dimension.
He started walking again, more careful of his footing this time. He found his gaze trailing away from the log under his feet and back towards Centross and he sighed, continuing his back and forth while speaking, “How much longer do you think it’ll take for us to get to the border?”
Centross glanced up, setting down the stick he’d been holding. He reached for his bag, pulling out the map the Duke had given them what felt like forever ago despite it being maybe two weeks. Time was a little weird on the road, there was no fixed schedule or reports due that helped him figure out when exactly in the week they were, and the days had quickly blended together.
“Should be another 3-4 days depending on how tired to horses are, then about the same before we reach the capital.” Centross replied, rolling the map back up and tucking it into his bag. Rae frowned, momentarily getting distracted just enough for him to misjudge his next step, slipping and this time not being able to steady himself before he fell, landing on the ground with a small groan.
He heard a snicker, though by the time he looked up at Centross the other was clearly trying to cover it with a cough, looking away from him and failing to hide the smile on his face. He scowled, pushing himself off the ground, glancing at their surroundings. His eyes fell on the leaves gathered, and he quickly scooped up an armful, taking advantage of his inattention and chucking them on his friend.
Centross whipped his head around as the first leaves hit him, eyes widening as he lost his own balance and slipped off his seat. Rae jumped into action, grabbing more leaves and pilling them on top of Centross until only his arms and the top half of his face could been seen, particularity the glare he was currently sending in Rae’s direction.
Rae laughed, taking a long moment to enjoy the view before offering Centross his hand, which he begrudgingly took before his own smirk filled his face and suddenly Rae was laying face down in the pile of leaves. He lifted his head, frowning as he spat out part of a leaf that had found its way into his mouth, and shoved Centross’s shoulder.
Leaves crunched behind them and Rae twisted, spotting Ghosty stepping back into the clearing with his eyebrow raised. He looked down at them with a look Rae would almost dare to call fond, setting down the wood he’d been out gathering before fully turning his attention to them, his lips twitching into a smile. “I left for five minutes. What happened.”
Rae and Centross shared a look, both turning back to Ghosty at the same time, simultaneously pointing at each other and speaking in unison, “He started it.”
Ghosty kept a straight face for all of two seconds before bursting into laughter, shaking his head at them as he moved to grab his jacket from where he’d left it across a log earlier. Rae watched him as he slung it over his shoulders, then moved towards him and offered him a hand up. He took it gratefully, briefly considering pulling him down with them but resisting it in favour of smiling up at him.
Once he was on his feet he let go of Ghosty’s hand, turning towards Centross who was still on the ground, and rolling his eyes before once again offering him a hand. This time he accepted it properly, using the extra leverage to unbury him from the remaining leaves, though a few still clung to his clothes.
Centross reached over, punching Rae lightly in the shoulder with a grin before calling over to Ghosty, “How’d the wood collecting go? Think we have enough for the fire now?”
Ghosty nodded, motioning to the pile he’d dropped earlier, “I mean, as long as you weren’t planning on cooking anything on it, we should be good.”
Centross rolled his eyes, “Oh no, I was planning on cooking our cheese and slightly stale bread on it. I thought it might make it a little less bland.”
Grinning, Ghosty laughed, “Ok mr. we-cant-stop-in-a-town-until-we’re-far-from-the-boarder-even-though-we’ve-been-travelling-for-almost-two-fucking-weeks.”
Rae laughed, even as Centross glared at him out of the corner of his eye. He looked between the two of them for a moment, then sighed, moving back to where he’d left his bag before they’d gotten distracted with the leaves. He pulled out the map he’d been looking at, staring at it for a minute before sighing.
“There’s a town a bit south of our original route. If I say we can stop there tomorrow will you two please stop bringing that up?” Centross asked, looking between Rae and Ghosty exasperatedly.
Rae raised his hands in defence, “Not our fault you complain about the food the most despite being the one who could do something about it.” He shot a look at Ghosty, matching grins on their faces. It was ironic that Centross had the most issues, considering how often he’d spent on long campaigns with his men. Still, it was nice to know he wasn’t the only one still adjusting to the sudden shift in their environment.
Centross rolled his eyes tucking the map back into its spot and eyeing the wood Ghosty had grabbed. “I’m gonna get the fire set up, you two go… be elsewhere.”
Ghosty grinned even wider, turning to Rae with an expression that glowed with an ease he’d been getting used to seeing after only knowing him in the harsh situation in the castle. It was a look that fit him well. “Come on, lets leave grumpy alone. We should probably redo the bandages over your eye anyway.”
Rae nodded, shaking himself from his stupor and grabbing for his bag before crossing the small clearing with Ghosty. They settled on the log Rae had initially been trying to balance across, their knees barely interlocking as they faced each other in a way that allowed Ghosty to reach what he needed to.
Wordlessly, Ghosty reached for the bandages, pulling them apart where they’d been secured the night before it a moment much like this. Rae winced as the last strip fell off of his face. He couldn’t see from that eye, but the shift in light was still barely perceptible, even with the sky dimming as the sun sank through the trees and below the horizon.
It felt strange, watching Ghosty from this angle as the other inspected his wound. It was a task he would normally take on himself, or ask Jamie to help with, but the lack of mirrors and said assistant had required him to ask for help elsewhere. He hadn’t wanted to, but even without seeing it he knew it was getting worse, and at some point he’d stopped being able to hide it from the other two and he’d been forced to accept it the first time Ghosty sat him down and insisted on taking a look.
His eyes flicked up, meeting Ghosty’s, “How does it look?”
Ghosty sighed, “About the same as yesterday. The purple is spreading, and it doesn’t look like any sort of bruise I know anything about. The cuts do seem like they’re scarring over nicely though. Can I…?” He trailed off, lifting his hand and waiting for Rae’s nod before resting it against his cheek, gently tilting his face to get a better look.
Rae tried to ignore the way his breath caught in his throat, focusing his gaze on a tree he could see over Ghosty’s shoulder. Ghosty hummed, mumbling for him to look in different directions, which he did wordlessly. After a moment that felt both too long and not long enough, Ghosty let his hand drop, reaching into his own bag to swap the old bandages for new ones, the old ones saved to be cleaned and reused at a later point.
They sat wordlessly for a moment as Ghosty secured the new bandages, and then finally his hands fell to his lap and he shifted back in a way that made Rae briefly miss the warmth their closeness had created. He met Ghosty’s eyes for a moment before turning his head, focusing his attention to Centross, who had well and started the fire by now.
“I’m going to, um, see if he needs anything. Thanks for helping with my eye,” Rae mumbled, pushing himself off the log and quickly crossing the clearing before sitting down next to Centross. His friend eyed him, but he stayed silent, waiting until Ghosty got up and muttered something about grabbing water from a creak he’d seen and checking on the horses before groaning and face planting into his hands.
He heard a snort from beside him and peeked out from behind his hands, “Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Centross said, the grin on his face audible with the statement.
“You didn’t have to,” Rae replied, leaning over to bump his shoulder against Centross’.
Centross rolled his eyes, fiddling with a stick he’d been holding for a moment before snapping it in half and tossing the pieces on the flame. “I’ve been meaning to ask by the way, what’s the plan for introducing you when we reach the Overworld?”
Rae frowned, “What do you mean?”
“Are you going to be Sir Morningstar, the renowned researcher and recently declared heir to the End, or do you want to be someone else? This would be your chance, if you wanted to.”
He paused, considering this for a moment. It really would be that easy. To just… leave behind the name he associated with that part of his life. But, it had been his name before, well, he was fairly certain it had been, and if he wanted any chance of his family recognizing, he shouldn’t change it. Did he even want them to recognize him though? He wasn’t who they remembered, maybe it would just be easier to be someone else to them.
“Are you going to be someone else?” He asked instead, hoping Centross’ response would help him figure out his own.
Centross sighed, but nodded. “I’m… recognizable, in a sense. People will know my name, my family. Part of me hopes that if they see me publicly defying my family, and by extension the crown, well, maybe I can make up for some of what I did under her.”
Rae hummed, reaching for the edge of his cape and rubbing it between the tips of his fingers mindlessly. “People are going to make assumptions if I arrive as me. I think I need to be Rae, because I don’t think I could give up that tie to my mom, but I’d be ok leaving Sir Morningstar in the End. At least for now.”
Grinning, Centross reached up to clap him on the shoulder, his hand lingering as a familiar comfort. “Sooo, about the little scene I watched before you came over here…”
Rae groaned, throwing his head back and using both of his arms to shove Centross as hard as he could, forcing him to use his own arm to stop himself from falling to the ground for the second time that day. “Shut up, I don’t even know him that well. We trauma bonded and became super close but now there’s less stress and I just, don’t really know how to act around him.”
“Do you want to tell him?” Centross asked.
“Which part?”
Centross shrugged, “Any part. We should probably tell him some of it, but do you want to tell him the whole truth about who you are?”
The whole truth, what a wild statement. The truth that not only was he the apparent heir to the End, which he still hadn’t fully processed, but he was also Enderian’s son, and Queen Isla’s. In fact, he was the very prince Ghosty had come to find and yet he’d told him straight to his face that that prince was gone. Which was still not a lie, no matter what anyone would have to say about it.
“Not yet,” he answered simply, reaching up to run a hand though his hair. It had been getting in his face a lot the last few days, he should see if he could find something to use to tie it back when they finally stopped in a town. “Like I said, I feel like I barely know him. I haven’t even told Jamie and I’ve known them for years.”
Centross nodded, eyeing the growing flames of the fire. He leaned over, grabbing his bag and digging through it for a moment before passing Rae part of their remaining food and taking some for himself before setting aside the rest. “Do you want to change that?”
Rae frowned, “Change what, exactly?”
“How well you know him, obviously,” Centross replied, taking a bite of the bread and frowning at it.
Rae took a bite of his own bread. It was definitely not fresh, but it was edible. It did make him look forward to warm food again. “I don’t want to feel like I’m overstepping. I mean, how do I explain it? Just go up to him and say ‘hey, I would trust you with my life but not my notebook because I know you’re capable but basically nothing else about you?’”
The crunch of leaves told him Ghosty was coming back towards them, though the way Centross’ smile changed made Rae wish he’d stay away for long enough for him to stop his friend from whatever the fuck he was about to do.
“Don’t worry, I got this,” Centross said, completely ignoring the death glare Rae was giving him as Ghosty sat on one of the other logs they’d pulled by the fire. Centross passed him the food, and the three of them sat in silence for a minute before Centross cleared his throat.
“I gotta ask,” he started, drawing Ghosty’s attention, “What exactly is it you do? Because I’d assume you’re a spy of some sorts, but you got caught in like, 2 seconds of being in the castle.”
Ghosty rolled his eyes, “Why does everyone bring that up? I was against a lady who can basically make herself invisible, its hardly my fault I got caught.”
Rae raised an eyebrow, “Did you not know about her powers coming in?”
Ghosty paused, pressing his lips together, “…I did.”
Centross lifted an arm out, “See? Your fault. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“You kind of answered yourself if you think about,” Ghosty said, grinning, “Clearly, I’m not a spy.”
Sighing, Centross turned to Rae, who was trying to not laugh as the two went back and forth. “Why did he come with us?”
“Because he said he was going to and neither of us said no?” Rae offered.
Centross paused, his eyebrows furrowing as a grin split onto his face, “Huh, yeah,” he turned back to Ghosty, moving back to his original topic, “So if you’re not a spy, what are you?”
Ghosty opened his mouth like he was going to respond but then paused, frowning. “I’m sort of… an ambassador? Of sorts? I don’t think I have an official title to be honest. Half the time I go where I want, and half the time I go where the King has something for me to do.”
For a moment Rae froze, his brain flooding with possibilities akin to what he knew Centross had been asked to do by the Queen, and by the way Centross tensed next to him he imagined his friend was having similar thoughts, though he was the one to voice it. “What kind of things?”
Shrugging, Ghosty took another bite of food before answering, not seeming to notice how tense they’d become. Or if he did, he didn’t mention it. “Mostly messages, sometimes trade discussions when the usual adversary was already elsewhere. Oh, and I once basically babysat the prince of the Nether for a few weeks. That was a more of I happened to be in the right place at the right time. They’re pretty cool though so it was easy. Really smart too, I think you would get along,” he finished, nodding towards Rae.
Rae sighed, grinning and nodding along to Ghosty’s comment, “I’m sure we would.” He asked something else, not entirely sure what he’d said as his mind drifted, but it seemed to be enough for Ghosty, and Centross after he’d relaxed a little, to continue on the conversation.
He knew the Overworld wasn’t the End. He knew the Nether wasn’t the End. Hell, he knew the End was only the End because of his… Enderian, and Perix, but still. Hearing the ease with which Ghosty spoke about the rulers he worked under but foreign ones as well, the very ones whose lands they were travelling through, helped to ease him just a little.
If he looked out through the trees, even the little he could see from the light of the fire as the sky grew ever darker, he could almost imagine a path, leading him on. Away from everything he’d known, well, everything he could remember, into something both familiar and utterly unknown. The curiosity, the knowledge that things wouldn’t be the same as they were, was intoxicating.
Hopefully that was a good thing.