Breakdown

Writers: Sia, Iluva
Date Posted: 3rd August 2025

Characters: O'rosin, R'fayne
Description: R'fayne goes to O'rosin after the bad Threadfall
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 9, day 28 of Turn 12
Notes: Mentioned: R'kehr and Thadath

O'rosin

R'fayne

O'rosin stood at Aeoluth's head, one arm tucked underneath the broad, blocky jaw, and the other hand absently rubbing soot off the dark bay-coloured hide. He could feel every breath Aeoluth took-- deep, slow, measured. He wasn't in pain anymore, at least. He'd been in a panic when they'd landed, and it'd taken the dragonhealer and O'rosin together to get him calm enough for the dragonhealers to work. The 'scoring on his chest was minor, all things considered, and the brown would be no worse for the wear in a few weeks. Some scarring, probably. It was his wings that were the bigger concern, the joints wrenched too hard in the unpredictable gusts. The dragonhealers had given him a brace to immobilize the joints that he absolutely needed to keep on, even as he shifted in discomfort now. A warming analgesic had dulled the pain, at least, and O'rosin had been given instructions on how to reapply when necessary.

Later, when the adrenaline had faded and the panic calmed, Aeoluth would look almost comical. Now, he looked so sad and pathetic.

Now O'rosin's hands couldn't stop trembling. His own aches and pains were nothing compared to Aeoluth. He didn't need the infirmary, aside from a cursory once-over after numbweed had been applied and Aeoluth was calm. He was bruised and battered and still covered in soot, but _fine_.

Much better than Aeoluth was. Or R'kehr. Or Thadath. He couldn't think about Thadath. He could still see the bronze falling, as clear as day. He could see the hide sizzling. His stomach roiled.

}: Thadath made it. :{ Aeoluth supplied, }: He was in pain, but not right now. He knows we didn't mean to. :{

O'rosin choked back a sob. Took a deep breath. Stroked the warm brown hide.

}: Skadith, are you nearby?:{ Aeoluth privately and gently mentally nudged the blue. }: We can probably have visitors.:{

R’fayne wasn’t far. Just on the other side of the infirmary, actually, where Affaya’s leg was freshly wrapped and suspended in a long, white sling. The bed she lay on was technically a stretcher, but it worked for now. She was barely awake anyway, head lolling from the fellis and the exhaustion and mostly hiding where her face had been shredded down that whole side. She still looked like herself at this angle. Almost peaceful now that she lay comfortable and had cried the worst of it out. R’fayne sighed and finally let go of her hand. Stepping away, he ran his hands through his damp, gritty hair, trying to calm himself back into himself. But then he was already back over and adjusting the pillow jammed under Affaya’s head. Her beloved cascade of curls had been sheared off in the Thread, splaying out around her in uneven tendrils like they’d been drawn by a child’s hand.

R’fayne closed his eyes, sighing again. Then came Skadith’s voice, a smooth and even force through his mangled mess of feelings, }:Aeoluth-:{ and all at once the images flashed across R’fayne’s eyes, unbidden, uninvited - the brown leaving formation, his spout of fire, the surreal screeching sound that came burning past his periphery in the wind. }:He is there, too. His needs you.:{

You’re okay. Just breathe.

It didn’t take R’fayne long to find them. Aeoluth was a sorry sight. Worse than he expected. And as good as it was to see with his own eyes that the brown was technically still intact, albeit injured, R’fayne could really only take in O’rosin - on his feet. Not unconscious, gone, dead. Looking wrecked and awful, but alive. R’fayne shivered as he grabbed him and pulled him to him, ignoring the way his soaked jacket hung in a gnarled mess from his shoulders. It was barely a single piece of leather at this point, as if it too was only strung together by adrenaline and willpower. “Hey,” R’fayne breathed - he just needed to feel him. “I got you.” The words were barely a murmur against O’rosin’s cheek, and as odd as they sounded to his own ears, it was the only thing he could get out to communicate both relief and reassurance.

O'rosin didn't resist the pull. Couldn't have, even if he'd wanted to. He sagged into R'fayne's embrace, one arm still half-under Aeoluth's jaw, the other reaching to curl around R'fayne's back with a kind of frantic, uncoordinated urgency.

"I didn't see him." He murmured. His voice was raw, like he’d been shouting for hours, though he didn’t remember making a sound since the moment Aeoluth had screamed. “Thadath. He was right there, and I didn’t--” The words fractured, snapped off mid-thought. His whole body was shaking now, not just his hands, as if the heat and exhaustion and fear had finally caught up to him in one suffocating wave.

R'fayne sensed what was coming - blindly. Like Fall today, and the quiet massacre still tearing its way through the Wings, across the infirmary. And like O'rosin now, crumpling against him as if he'd just washed ashore, bruised and battered.

“I know.” He said softly against O’rosin’s ear, gripping him close. "I know. It's alright.”

But it wasn’t.

Just a hot burn that lived behind the eyes. R’fayne wasn’t sure what was worse - clear-eyed terror at the chaos above, or feeling its shadow as it tore through O’rosin’s solid frame now.

“Fuck. ’rosin, I’m sorry.”

Gingerly they sank down beside Aeoluth, R’fayne’s arms tight around O'rosin for what felt like a long time and no time at all - silent aside from the slow, deep, purposeful rhythm of his breathing. Distantly painful. Controlled.

}: Not like that! :{ Aeoluth protested. R'fayne was supposed to make him feel _better_, not _worse_--

He lowered his head, trying to keep the boys in view, and very nearly cracked the underside of his jaw against the top of O'rosin's head. He straightened his neck and shook his head, momentarily bewildered, before shuffling enough to keep one whirling eye on them.

"F- sake, Aeoluth!" O'rosin said, though there was no heat to the words. His voice cracked on the first syllable and barely held through the second. He pushed a hand across his face, the heel of his palm trying and failing to push tears off his face. "I can never keep him in sharding formation. We're lucky we made it home at all. I panicked, and-" He let out a shaky breath. "He'll be okay, if I can get him to take it easy." Pressure burned behind his eyes and he swiped his hand across them again, smearing grime and tears. He'd never been able to get him to take it easy.

Silence washed over them. They don’t teach how to handle this kind of grief in training. The kind with no direction and no bounds. There would be little point in trying. R’fayne looked up at poor, miserable Aeoluth and the platoon of dragons sidelined by this one terrible ‘Fall and already felt exhausted, stretched too thin. He’d been feeling that way for a while. But if Skadith had come back scored, or flamed, or if they had made an error of that magnitude…

R'fayne fingers gently ghosted the path of O’rosin’s hand over his face. Still holding him close, they brushed tears away wherever they could. Skadith, though weary, pressed in quietly at the edges of his awareness, stronger and far more insistent than usual, and R’fayne just let both of them lean into that calm.

As he looked the brownrider over in pious assessment, his dark eyes were soft in this light, in the close proximity to one another and the comforting warmth of O’rosin’s dragon. O’rosin looked wrecked, but at least he was _here_ beneath his hands. Finally R’fayne’s breathing eased.

But beneath R’fayne’s skin, muted anger. His hand stayed on O’rosin’s grimy cheek a moment longer before dropping. The silence that followed wasn’t heavy, just real. He let out a low breath. “No one was where they were supposed to be, ‘rosin. It is _not_ your fault. Thadath… took it bad. He did. But it wasn’t reckless - you were just trying to fly Thread. It was one mistake during an insane sequence of events. An accident. Fuck, everything was sharding sideways out there.”

Anything could have happened, and that had R’fayne leaning in and kissing O’rosin’s cheek, then the other, then his forehead and cheek again.

He didn’t mean to flinch when R’fayne kissed him, but something in his shoulders drew tight anyway. Too many nerves on fire. Too many thoughts running in all directions and none of them helpful. He was grateful. He was. For the warmth. For the steadiness. For R’fayne being here at all. But it landed against a skin already rubbed raw. There was nowhere left inside him to put it, so the gesture just folded itself into the hollowness, joining all the rest.

He pressed both palms to his knees, trying to will stillness into them. It didn’t work. The tremble had gone bone-deep. 'Not his fault'. But it was, wasn't it? Maybe not all of it, but enough to stick in his throat like ash. Enough that he couldn’t unsee the way Thadath dropped from the sky. Or the way Aeoluth had shrieked when his wings gave out. Or the half-second of panic in the dark of _between_, not knowing if his visual was enough for Aeoluth to make it home.

He’d been trying to keep up from the first day he arrived. An entire turn now of struggling to keep up. Trying desperately to understand formations and weyrlife and every contingency he was expected to remember in Threadfall. He tried to keep up in 'drills. Some days he thought he was managing, even if the weyr never quite felt like home and his stomach still dropped whenever the ground fell away. He was always a beat behind, always second-guessing. He counted himself lucky that the injuries they _did_ get in Threadfall were minor, that maybe he was finally getting a handle on it. But there was never any confidence that he _was_, just a knot in his chest and the slow ache of dread in his bones.

Aeoluth murmured in the back of his mind; gentle, still dulled with pain and confusion, but comforting. Loyal. Unquestioning. Not a single piece of him blamed his rider for the pain he was in, and even still he trusted him to make that pain go away. That loyalty felt like another weight. Another thing he didn’t deserve.

He opened his mouth, closed it again. The words swam just below the surface. “I don’t know how to fix it.” His voice cracked somewhere in the middle.

And the worst part was knowing he’d have to get back on Aeoluth in a few sevendays. A month. Same orders, same formations. The same sky full of death.

And he didn’t know how to do it.

He let his head drop further, forehead pressed to his fists, whole body curling inward like he could fold himself small enough to hide inside the space between heartbeats.

R’fayne was still beside him. Still steady. Still breathing. O’rosin didn’t look at him. Couldn’t. He wasn’t sure he could stand to see the concern on his face.

He’d tried. He really, truly had.

But trying hadn’t saved them.

And it wouldn’t be enough next time, either.

Last updated on the September 1st 2025

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Breakdown