They are still alive.

There's something to that at least. They are still alive.

Caj's left arm lies useless in the sling looped around his neck, hanging like a dead thing as they trudge through the thick snow, toes numbing in the persistent cold that creeps through their boots. He has his good hand out, fire melting a path before them, but the spread of flames is narrow and snow clings to their pants, clumping onto their boots.

He can hear Fae trudging along behind him, and he can almost see her, her slender frame hunched over, arms crossed around her chest to stave off the icy grasp of the cold. They are going to have to halt for the night so she can huddle up next to him and hold her shaking fingers over the fire.

"We'll stop soon," he says, his breath a rush of white mist. "Just over the ledge there, we can use it to block the northern winds."

She murmurs something, a wordless noise of agreement and huffy surprise. Surprise, Caj supposes, that she is here, in this horrible thing that Hiran, if he was here, would aptly call "deep shit."

He might be dead, Caj thinks, but he shoves the thought aside. They might be dead, if their luck runs out. This is no time to ruminate on who lives and who dies, no time for the slow breaking of final words and regrets. This is the time to survive.

They make it around the ledge and Caj goes to work clearing the ground of snow. Fae has the much more unpleasant task of trying to build the snow up at the sides, packing it with blue, trembling fingers, moving as quickly as possible so it can be over as quickly as possible.

He hates that he can't help her, hates that his arm just dumbly hangs in the sling. If they only had a Nature-caller—Hiran, or Allayria, or Lei—they could craft a hut of snow in no time, using the packed frost and ice to insulate the heat of their bodies and the fire, making them truly warm, not just partially. But it is just Caj and Fae, and feeble, knee-high walls are the best that they can expect. At least it cuts down on the wind.

She's building the other side up when he plops down and concentrates on growing the flames in his palm as large as possible. They had tried kindling and pine branches the first night but the materials were so wet from the frost and drifting snow. If they had had a Nature-caller...

A few minutes later, Fae collapses next to him, leaning in and pressing her shaking fingers around the yellow blaze. He never gets used to it, the jolting sensation of her shoulder pressed against his, her knees tucked along his own. It's for warmth, it's for survival—Caj isn't an idiot—but it unnerves him all the same. His gaze is anywhere else, but the rest of him, all of his instinctual senses, is fixed to the long line of clothed limb touching clothed limb.

It's annoying.

He's half-vexed, half-disarmed by it, stubbornly wanting to just banish the feeling away, but slowly yielding to it. He wants to give into this one thing, to let himself take the easy path for once in his life.

Because it's very easy to like her.

Fae shifts next to him, pulling her hands back for a moment to blow on them before reaching back toward the fire. He could do that for her—his breath would probably be much warmer than hers as his core body temperature surely must be better preserved, but that skirts too close to things he doesn't want to think about. Things that, if he thinks about, will make this much more uncomfortable than it already is.

"How much farther do you think it is to the Keesark border?" she asks, and her voice is low, almost husky. She's taking the extra precaution, keeping noise to a minimum in case someone is still looking for them, though Caj thinks the smoke and light from the fire would be a much bigger giveaway. Still, he has to resist the urge to flinch, to shy away. He had taken so many precautions before, when they had been two of seven, when he heard the warning knells in the faint stirrings of his heart. He kept his distance, placing at least another person between them. He kept quiet, avoiding one-on-one conversations.

And still here he ended up, huddled together in a poor excuse of a snow fort, her face almost pressed against his, her hands hovering just above his lap. She's literally in seventy-five percent of his line of vision.

Caj doesn't believe in deities, but he has to wonder.

A thickly padded elbow nudges his side and he turns on instinct, catching a close up view of her green eyes, of the slight threads of yellow at the center of them, and how they grow to a more vibrant, forest green on the edges. He jerks his face away.

This is a nightmare. I am in a nightmare.

"What do you think?" she asks, and he has to trawl back in his memory for her question to answer it.

He gives a one-armed shrug which is a mistake because his arm just slides up and down against hers, making him even more acutely aware of her closeness. There is nothing he would like more right now than to shuffle away, to put a good arm-span between them, but he can't. It's too cold and she needs to warm her hands.

"I hope it's soon," she says into the quiet darkness, and in his periphery he sees her head droop a little, almost as if she means to set it on his shoulder. "It'll be warmer, and maybe I'll have an opportunity to shoot something."

He grunts his answer and feels his stomach noiselessly rumble too. It has been a long time since they have eaten. They've taken to boiling pine needles in the morning, the bitter, woodsy taste alleviating the worst of the hunger pains, but Caj knows it's not helping Fae. She isn't used to going hungry.

He feels a hand at his wrist and looks down.

"You've been Skilling all day—you're going to burn your hand," she says, giving his wrist a small squeeze. "You should stop for a while."

He glances at her fingers, bright red now, even without the orange wash of the light.

"You need to warm up a little bit longer and then I'll stop," he answers, but her hand doesn't let go.

"I'll be fine," she says, clearly oblivious to the level of frostbite threat she's currently under. "Rest."

He's figuring out the best way to argue against this when she adds:

"I'll shove my hands in my coat either way, so it would just be a waste of energy."

He knows that tone well enough to not argue it and he lets the flames die. But as she draws her hands back he extends his good one forward, grasping one of hers and holding it. It is, as he guessed, still ice cold— fool of a girl—and he holds her fingers against his overheated palm.

"Thanks," she says in the darkness.

He grunts.

"You don't like to talk much, do you?"

No, but you do, he almost says but holds off, feeling a little ashamed. His feelings are not her fault.

"If you don't want to chat a lot that's fine," she says and, blast it all, he feels her head settle on his shoulder, "but can we not spend the entire trip back to Bear's Spear in silence?"

He nods, but then realizes she can't see him.

"Okay," he says and his voice is a ghost of a whisper.

Caj remembers his last trip back to Bear's Spear. Fae had not gone with them that time—she had been picked to go with the Paragon. It had been Caj and Finn and Lei instead. None of them had been prone to conversation, which had been perfectly fine with Caj.

The prisoners had been another matter.

Well, that is not entirely true: the Beast-caller and Nature-caller were quiet enough. It was the non-Skiller, the leader, who had wanted to talk. To him. On occasion.

"They don't understand you," he had tried to tell Caj. "They don't trust you. These people will never give you a fair shot; never solely judge you on your character and not your Skill or pedigree."

Caj knows how this goes. Suspicions of his loyalty, his trustworthiness run deep both ways because everyone knows that a Smith Skiller, no matter what kingdom of origin, is fickle and calculating. A Smith Skiller cannot be trusted. So his side always prepares for the inevitable betrayal and the other always reaches out, assuming in sly comments and clever appeals that he will take their better deal.

In truth though, it can't just be the Smith Skilling—there has to be something else, something else about Caj because it has been this way, even way back then when he had a rooted home, when he had Nan.

The villagers didn't trust him then because he was slight and poor—and, yes, quiet.

"Light fingers," they had said, watching him with narrowed eyes, "and silent steps."

The Smith-Skilling would have only confirmed what they already knew, given them solid proof of the barely whispered rumblings. Of course, he left long before fire sparked on his fingertips.

He left when Nan died.

It was easy—he had already had one foot out the door before she was gone and she had known it. He remembers in those final days that moment, that moment of strange lucidity that sparked in her eyes, that allowed for the limp curl of her fingers around his to strengthen into a vise-like grip.

She couldn't say much at that point, couldn't wrangle the words around her tongue, but she managed one word for him:

"Careful."

The ground hadn't settled around her grave when he left town. He had learned, at the age of eight, that people can't be trusted.

"It's just that," Fae's voice suddenly says, breaking through the memories, and he hears the sleep in it, the drowsy yawn of half-lidded eyes and drifting consciousness, "I sometimes think you don't like me very much."

He feels her head shift on his shoulder, her forehead drooping down against the side of his neck.

"I do like you," he answers into the dark. "I do like you."

A/N: Is it favoritism to say Caj is one of my favorite people to write? I so love the trade off between the tones of everyone, but Caj's chapters always feel so sincere to write, like beneath all the armor and guard there's something true and undeniable.

And he's gotta big ol' crush.