The other side of Reincarnation

　There was a town on our rotation called Millhaven that I’d come to think of as close to a second home, in the loose way anything could be a home when you spent most of your life walking between places. We passed through it every few months, work permitting, and the innkeeper there — a broad, cheerful woman named Sera who’d stopped asking questions about us somewhere around our third visit — had started keeping a room aside without being asked.

　”You three again,” she said, the way she always did, like our return was a running joke she never got tired of. ”Don’t suppose you’ve finally settled down somewhere and just forgotten to mention it.”

　”Not yet,” I told her. ”Doran gets twitchy if we stay anywhere too long. Something about old habits.”

　Doran, unpacking his gear by the door, didn’t even look up.

　”Heard that.”

　”Good. Wasn’t trying to hide it.”

He’s gotten better about letting the jabs land without flinching. Small thing. I notice it anyway.

　Millhaven was also where Fenrik had, against what I assumed were considerable odds, developed something like a reputation.

　”You’re the beastkin who settled the Harmon dispute,” a farmer said to him outright, the second afternoon we were in town, shaking his hand with a little too much enthusiasm. ”My cousin’s been talking about it for weeks.”

　Fenrik looked faintly mortified by the attention, which was, in itself, hilarious to watch.

　”It wasn’t that complicated. Two families arguing over a fence line. I just pointed out the old boundary stone nobody had bothered to dig up in a decade.”

　”Saved them a court fee and a blood feud, is what I heard.”

　”That’s—”

　Fenrik glanced at me, silently pleading for rescue.

　I offered none.

　”That’s an exaggeration.”

It’s really not, though. I was there. He handled it better than I would have.

　Later, once the farmer had wandered off satisfied, I couldn’t resist.

　”Local hero.”

　”Shut up.”

　”I’m serious. You’re good at this. The talking-people-down thing. Better than me, some days.”

　He went quiet at that, the deflecting kind of quiet, ears doing the flattened thing they did when a compliment landed somewhere he wasn’t used to compliments landing.

　”...Never really had the chance to find that out about myself,” he said eventually. ”Before. Wasn’t exactly getting invited to settle disputes, where I grew up.”

There it is. Small piece, offered freely this time instead of pulled out of him. I’ll take it.

　”Well,” I said, ”you’re finding out now. For what it’s worth, I think you’re good at more than you give yourself credit for.”

　He didn’t answer that directly, but he also didn’t look quite as uncomfortable the rest of the evening, which I decided counted as a win.

　Doran’s contribution to Millhaven’s opinion of us was, predictably, quieter — a reputation built entirely on being reliably competent and saying almost nothing about himself while doing it.

　The local guard captain, a stocky man named Voss, had taken to consulting him whenever anything vaguely combat-related needed solving, which Doran tolerated with the specific patience of a man who didn’t mind the work but had no interest in the attention that came with it.

　”Voss wants you on retainer,” I told him, relaying the offer over dinner. ”Permanent position. Good pay, from what he’s implying.”

　”Not interested.”

　”Didn’t think you would be. Told him I’d ask anyway.”

　”Appreciate that you did, and appreciate that you already knew the answer.”

That’s Doran in a sentence, honestly. Steady. Uninterested in permanence, even when permanence is handed to him on a plate.

　I wondered, sometimes, whether that restlessness of his connected to whatever he still hadn’t told us — the scar, the door-watching, all of it.

　I’d stopped pushing a long time ago. But I noticed things, the way I noticed everything, and filed them away in the same growing ledger I kept on both of them.

　That evening, the three of us ended up on the inn’s rooftop, an old habit of ours by then — better view of the stars than anywhere else in town, and Doran liked the sightlines, old habit dressed up as aesthetic preference.

　”You ever think about what happens after this?” Fenrik asked, apropos of very little, staring up at a sky thick with more stars than Tokyo had ever shown me.

　”After what?”

　”This. The circuit. Wandering job to job. Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that goes on forever.”

Huh. Fair question. Haven’t let myself think about it much, honestly.

　”I don’t know,” I admitted. ”Some days I think I’d be happy if it did go on forever, more or less like this. Other days—”

　I paused, choosing the next words carefully.

　”Other days I know there’s things I still need to do. People I owe an answer to. That’s not going away, no matter how nice Millhaven’s stew is.”

　Doran didn’t ask what I meant by that.

　He never had, not directly, not in years — but I caught him looking at me all the same, quiet and steady, like a man keeping a private count of the same debts I was keeping.

　”Whatever it is,” he said finally, ”when it comes time. You won’t be facing it alone. Figured that went without saying by now, but I’ll say it anyway.”

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I already knew that. Still good to hear it out loud, though.

　I looked back up at the stars, and for a while none of us said anything else.

　It didn’t need saying.