This wasn’t an infection. Jaan didn’t know what this was, but it was nothing like what he had encountered with Caeden earlier. It wasn’t anything like he had encountered before. He was chained in a room that was locked and… it wasn’t human, Imperi, or Estraellan. It was coming towards him and it knew him.

Jaan stared, watching as Caeden’s bloody fingers were healed from where they were cut. All he knew in that moment was that he didn’t want that creature near him. He jerked away on the chain again. Jaan gripped the collar, his hands frantically searching for any sign of weakness, scratching his neck rapidly as he did. When he felt no fault in the collar, he scrambled to the wall, pulling at the chain violently.  The chain and the mount in the wall didn’t yield. He knelt, pushing against the wall, groaning with effort and terror.

"You're weak and small. Tired and battered." The Imperi kneeled near Jaan, his eyes glazed over. "You crave vengeance. We will give it to you."

As he felt and heard the voice come closer, Jaan stopped his desperate battle against the chains. He threw his wings up over his head, an entirely childish defensive measure, ducking his head down. Of course, his hair was still visible on the chopped wing side.

He tried to not think about the truth in those words as he panted from his old hurts and frenzied attempts. The truth shown in the very fact that he couldn’t even cover himself fully in his wings right now. A part of his brain was hissing to him, it’s not real, when he knew it couldn’t be false.

The last words struck him though. His hands, which had been white knuckled in his hair, loosened, “Y-you’re wrong,” he hissed. “I just want my own peace, my freedom…”

A troubling memory threatened to interrupt his thoughts. Caeden’s hand on his back, that oily feeling that was making him sick now present, and Jaan turning with a dagger, telling the Imperi to die… was that peace? Hadn’t he been fleeing after killing his human master?

“I just want to be left alone,” his hands clenched into his hair. He was refusing to look at Caeden, using his wings and ducked head to hide his face, so the words came out muffled.

A hard ball rose in his throat at the embrace, feeling himself drawn into the other’s arms. No, don’t touch me, let me go, stop, Jaan immediately began to wiggle, pull. He didn’t budge, “Let me go,” his voice was choked, “No, please, don’t, let me go, don’t touch me, stop!” His voice progressively got louder, but he couldn’t dislodge the other. His arms and hands were within the wings, within the embrace, and he couldn’t get them out to push him. The clammy skin instantly made him sweat, the closeness to that slick oil, was his skin moving? A loud, long groan escaped him, nearly sounding like crying. His heart was pounding and he couldn’t catch his breath. He could feel unshed tears welling up in his eyes. “Let me go..” it was barely a croak. He was so focused on being released that he nearly missed the other mad words Caeden was saying.

“What.. no.. we are…? Let me go, please, stop, who is we?!” Jaan crawled forward in relief when the Imperi fell, when he let go. He pinned his back against the wall, trembling. Watching Caeden convulse, he didn’t know if he wanted him to recover or to die. This was too much… herald of darkness? He didn’t approach the convulsing Caeden, instead slowly raising a quaking hand to his neck, feeling the chain gone. He blinked in surprise, and felt one of the unshed tears drop down his face.

The tear seemed to jar him and he washed it harshly away. He washed it all away, swallowing some dangerous emotions down. He scrambled forward, putting a hand on Caeden’s chest, “Caeden!” he hissed, half wondering if he should attempt to heal him, if he could heal this.

He… he still needed Caeden.

He had gotten the other creature out.

Focus, don’t be scared.

He sent an experimental pulse of glowing, warm energy into Caeden’s chest. Once, and waited to see if there was a result.

In the back of his mind, he was still calming the emotions from being held. They were screaming behind a wall at him to go hide where no one could touch him.

No, focus, d-don’t be scared.

He sent another experimental pulse.

Jaan leaned over Caeden, half straddling him, his dark dreads falling messily around his face. The beads clattered slighty. The expression on Jaan’s face wouldn’t have been familiar to Caeden. There was none of the defensive anger that followed the Estraellan, just a wondering, hesitant fear. That was, at least, until Jaan smacked him across the face none so gently. He didn’t move off of him, but did jerk back, as though expecting a recoil. “That better f.ucking be you i-in there,” Jaan could still feel leftover tremors over his body, keeping him tense.

Jaan scrambled off of him, standing, grabbing his hair, and beginning to pass. “What the F.UCK is wrong with your species?!” With that, Jaan spilled every detail, none of which was spoken in anything less than a quiet yell. He pointed at the broken pots, the stitches. He pointed at Caeden’s mouth as he described the double voice. Caeden had seen Jaan furious, dejected, haughty, but the Jaan in front of him was shaking off his high fear with high volume. “And then it touched me! T-touched me. Held me. It wouldn’t let me go!” and he shared all the words that Caeden had said before convulsing. Jaan’s terrified retelling ended with him shaking his head, standing stiffly in the corner, muttering several sentences in Estraellan which were not complimentary of the Imperi.

“I can still smell it, that disgusting smell your people let off. It was so much worse.”

Jaan stopped, furiously trying to reconcile what had happened to with him with regaining this normalacy. He couldn’t look at Caeden. He didn’t want to remember the grin that had crossed the other’s face. “It was… powerful,” he breathed. “Broke the pot, the lights… the chains just disappeared, Caeden,” he looked over at him, stomach clenching for a moment at the look of him before breathing out. “You had said the infection was small.”

“It’s…” he waved his hand, “around. Distant.”

“That’s what happened,” Jaan said, enunciating each word. “Maybe you don’t know yourself as well as you thought. Maybe being away from that ant hill you call a home did something. In any case, it was terrible, and I hated it, and we will have no explanation why we are unchained.”

His chest rose up and down, hesitating, “You said everyone is asleep.” He looked over to the heavy, locked door. He could imagine Rhys coming in the next morning and finding them unchained. For a man who had seemed so innocuous at the beginning, he was now quick with his knives and fists. Jaan didn’t envy that future.

Jaan still looked at Caeden strangely, especially when he grinned, as though expecting that grin to go a few inches too far. “Easy…” Jaan scoffed slightly. “We discussed this before bed and we couldn’t find a solution,” of course, they had both been chained up. Jaan shuddered as he remembered the chains turning to dust, Caeden’s arms wrapped around him as the chain evaporated around him. Jaan scowled, one hand rubbing his neck. He could barely think sometimes without going down a dark trap in his mind. He looked at Caeden, seeing his easy confidence. It was like they were back at the city, amongst his kind.

“I’m not leaving Mowgli,” he said firmly. “Besides, how are you going to open that door?”