The news leaks out of the tower like blood.

Amidst a crowd of whispering people, Ben is just another face in the same rough coat, the same peeling shoes. He moves among them, watching the story pass over their faces, these low people to which the likes of Urilong would pay no heed. He watches the horror grow strong.

Checkmate.

A glimmer of something like victory is in Meg's face when he turns back to her too, and he steps forward now, up onto the platform, and the murmuring begins to quell. There are new faces tonight, and it is them to whom he will have to speak.

"You've heard the news then," he says to the crowd, and they fall silent. "You've heard what Queen Urilong's guard dog has done."

Their expressions are hard in the torchlight, cracking along pursed mouths and flared nostrils. He paces.

"A child lost, a child sacrificed at the altar of what? A girl who has spent her whole life in a gold-plated house, in comfort and safety not given for any goodness of her own, but the fine accident of her birth." He stops, turning back to them all. "Too many children have been sacrificed for the sake of these gold-laden liars."

"Burn them!" someone shouts from the back, and Ben sees the fear in some of the newcomers' faces. The uncertainty.

"Not them," he says, ignoring the furrowed brows and sharp looks. "This."

He points to the wide opulent hall they are squatting in, the large velvet tapestries and tall, marble columns.

"Burning people like Urilong is a waste of time," he tells them. "Throw down one and another will just crop back up, as vain and self-absorbed as the last. Break the system though, take their fine things, cut their support at its knees—kill the guard dog—and there's nothing left to prop them back up."

They're staring now, and he knows he has them.

"A child died tonight," he reminds the crowd. "Not because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not because he was weak. He died because he stood up for himself, he made the point that he would not be another cog in her machine, another piece on her—" he throws an arm out, pointing to the dark tower, "board. A child died for the chance to be what he could be, not what they expected him to be."

He looks at them all, each newcomer in turn.

"So what are you going to be?" he asks them.

He turns back and takes the unlit torch Meg proffers.

"Burn the system," he tells them, tossing the torch to a nervous-looking man in the front. He catches it, holding the wooden stick in both hands, his wide eyes narrowing.

"Level the playing field," Ben says as others take the stage, bringing up bats and axes, knives and swords. The crowd shifts, but they don't ask who these weapons are from. Their hands stretch out, reaching as the arms are passed out.

Yes.

"Show these people who would look down on you," Ben says, light and fury burning bright in his chest, "just how small they really are."

He is awake in that low stretch of time, between twilight and dawn, when even the fires of smoke-strewn Solveigard City have quelled to a simmer. The evidence of the night is still stained on his hands, on the edges of his sweat-slick clothes, but Ben has not changed, has not even gone to sleep. Not yet.

He's hunched over a small desk, candlelight flickering by his arm, fingers sprawled out on a heavy census book which lies open across a faded, pinned map, smelling of dust and that lovely, oak-paper smell of binding and trees, of ink and memories made physical.

Another row of names, he had told himself, his gaze skimming along the trailing list, his foot tapping on the creaking floor to keep him alert. Just a little more...

The words blur before him, wavering as the light dims beneath his eyelids, flooding back in only when he flutters them open. His head falls into hand, leaning, drooping...

He feels it like she's there curled around him, legs stretched along his thighs, arms looped around his middle, chin tucked into his neck. He can feel the ghost of her breath on his skin, the way her hands run under his shirt, over his skin, conjuring goosebumps as her mouth presses behind his ear.

"I thought you liked history," she murmurs, her voice husky, a trailing end to a conversation held years ago, and he says the words he said in answer before, the words he meant then and means now.

"I'm so happy you're here," he whispers. "I'm so happy you stayed—"

"Kiss me," Allayria orders, and he wakes up.

Ben leans back in his chair, alone in this dark, dim room. The shadowed ceiling spins above him, but he doesn't really register it, doesn't really see it as the rest of his body is slow to come back from memory.

Sometimes she feels so real.

He's too tired to pretend now, too tired to put up a fight against these thoughts or the phantom sensation of the warm body his hands yearn to grab.

If she was here right now, he thinks, she would be afraid.

He knew that even before the clifftop at Lethinor, knew her wariness, her unease in a crowd. He had planned to ease her into it, planned to show her that a mass of people did not have to mean her harm, that they could protect her, could stand with her and she with them, as he knew she could. He had planned to show her how strong they could be together, instead of apart.

He presses a hand over his eyes, holding it there for a moment to shutter out what little light is in here.

It wasn't real, he tries to tell himself, but this is as much a lie as it would be to say it was real. The events of that year were all something in-between, a murky mix of unsaid truths and left out lies. But the smell of her pressed against him, the feeling of her warm body underneath his, the light in her eyes when she looked at him, this was all real.

But so were all the ugly things, he reminds himself, sitting back up, pulling a hand through his hair and shutting the book. All the ugly things I told her about, the ugly things the people out there fought against tonight.

He pulls off his clothes in the starlight, stumbling back to a cold bed with plain sheets and a thin blanket. He doesn't need more, even if he might want it.

"It's called sleeping, and it's one of my favorite things to do. Maybe you should try it sometime," she says in his memory, chin rolling on his shoulder, voice hazy with exhaustion. "Now might be good."

He burrows down into the blankets and pillows, the tension across his back easing in a hard, aching way as he spreads out.

"Stay," she says, half a dream, half a nightmare. "I don't want to sleep alone in this place."

A/N: Benny, dearest, you might want to get that hallucination checked out.

Chapter notes: The dialogue about history and desire between Allaryia and Ben originates from Paragon's "Halcyon Days" chapter. Her plea to stay is dialogue from the "Dead Man Talking" chapter.

Final chapter of Part 1 coming up....