Chapter Text
The second time he finds the temple is a lot like the first. Abram is a trembling wreck from watching the fight his parents had earlier that day, and as he lies awake with the distant screams of his mother echoing in his ears, he can’t take it anymore.
The moon waxes wearily overhead as Abram slips out of his window and climbs swiftly down the vines that grow along the terraced walls of his family's castle. His hands are trembling, but he ignores that as his feet touch the ground and he begins running towards the forest. One day his father will lock the windows in his room permanently, and Abram will have no way of getting out, but that hasn’t happened yet, so Abram takes advantage of his way out while he can.
He usually only uses his exit to hide in the corner garden until morning, but his feet pull him forward without a thought, across the open fields and into the dark woodlands he’d gone to all those weeks ago. One hand grips the amulet now permanently situated around his neck, so it doesn’t get caught on any branches, while the other one carefully traces the trees he passes by.
As he goes farther into the forest the amulet begins to glow faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat. Abram isn’t sure how it’s meant to let him find the temple again, isn’t sure if he wants to find that place again, but the steady glow is calming. After a while his hands even stop shaking. That’s when Abram notices how quiet his surroundings have become, the usual noises of the night fading until they are absent entirely.
Abram pauses in his walking and looks around, realizing he’s standing where he had originally found the amulet. He frowns at the ground but can’t remember how exactly it was he got here. The vines underneath his feet hold no answers either. It has to be some sort of magic this place holds, but for Abram magic was something as foreign to him as the ocean. A force that only existed in people's stories, though he knows they must be true to some degree. Stories do not rise from nothing, after all.
“You’re back,” Andrew’s voice rings through the silence, and Abram looks up to find him sitting on a fallen pillar. There’s something a bit disbelieving in the twist of his lips, as if he never expected to see Abram again.
Abram relaxes just slightly, and after a hesitant moment walks over to Andrew and sits down next to the boy. Andrew turns his head to regard him, and Abram realizes there’s a small silver glow in the middle of his shadowed eyes that he can’t remember being there last time, like the most distant star in the night sky. “You said I could come back, if I wanted to.”
“And, did you want to?”
It hadn’t been his intention, but Abram isn’t sure that matters now that he’s here. “Yes.”
Andrew doesn’t seem to have words for that, his gaze drifting up to the branches overhead and the sky that surely lies beyond. Abram wishes he could read the other’s face, but Andrew looks as calm and indifferent as he did the first time. Maybe that’s just how he is, or maybe it is a mask he puts on for others to see. Abram doubts he’ll ever find out.
“Do you get visitors often?” Abram asks instead, wondering how many wanderers have accidentally stumbled onto this place.
“You’re the first.” Andrew doesn’t look over to him. “It’s meant to be hidden.”
Abram frowns. “But I found it.”
Leaning back on his hands, Andrew cranes his neck as if he is watching something pass through the night sky, but there is no sky, only leaves, and Abram feels a shudder creep up his spine at the thought of the boy seeing something he can’t. “So it seems.”
“What is this place?”
“What do you think it is?”
Abram considers the question for a moment. “I think it used to be a temple.”
“And now?”
“Now it just seems like a ruin.”
Andrew lets out a breath, and the night seems to sigh with him. “Time does that.”
“Was it something else, before?” Abram is curious if the stories are true or not. The being before him is definitely old, and while he usually curbs his questions in order to not invoke the wrath of others, he’s let his guard down around Andrew. If only a little. It should bother Abram more than it does, but he feels like he can trust the spirit for some reason.
Andrew stands and turns to him, eyes distant and dark. “It was a sanctuary, not anyone can just enter here.”
“But I did.”
“You did…”
“And then, you let me keep the amulet,” Abram says, rising to stand beside the boy. He only just notices it, but Andrew is slightly shorter than him. Which is truly a feat, seeing as Abram is considered small for his age.
“I did…” Andrew’s gaze bores into Abram’s own, and there is definitely a light there that didn’t exist last time. This close Abram thinks it looks less like a distant star, and more like the moon hidden behind layers of thick clouds.
Abram looks over Andrew’s shoulder to the white expanse of weathered stonework that lay in heaps and piles around them. “Is there more to this place?”
Andrew follows his gaze, and nods slowly. “Yes.”
“Can I see it?”
Andrew tilts his head towards him and studies him a moment before he replies, “Yes.”
________ __________ __________ _________
He doesn’t know why he keeps coming back to the decaying temple, not really. There’s something about the place his mind sticks on no matter how far away he is, or what he might be doing. His mind inevitably wanders back to Andrew and his odd eyes whenever his concentration slips.
His father has started to notice something is distracting him from his lessons, which makes everything worse.
But he goes back, and each time Andrew is there waiting for him.
He wouldn’t admit it to the boy’s face, he’s much too prideful for that, but Andrew has become one of the only good things in Abram’s life. He likes sneaking out of his window in the dark of night to wander the old temple grounds with the spirit. It’s quiet, peaceful even. Something Abram isn’t used to. His home is always loud with yell’s, and when it’s not the silence is so oppressive Abram can’t stand it.
It is the first time in his life that Abram hasn’t felt alone, and he isn’t sure he’s ever talked as much as he does with Andrew. While Abram hasn’t grown up entirely alone, he’s never spent much time with others his age. Though some of the servants have children his age he doesn’t see them ever, and he’s not sure he wants to count his encounters with Lord Tetsuji’s adopted children as anything more than the forced interactions that they were.
While he does speak to his mother, she’s distant. Cold. Abram thinks she blames him, in a way.
So it is nice, not being totally alone.
Abram’s eyes wander back to the boy walking along at his side, and he wonders if this is what having a friend is like.
Andrew catches him staring, the clouded moons in his eyes seem brighter each time Abram sees him. “What?”
“How long have you been here?” Abram gestures to the ruins around them. They’re in what once was probably a pavilion of some sort, located in a high walled courtyard, and Abram can just imagine the types of gardens it must have contained. Now it’s just overgrown weeds and sprawling trees.
Andrew frowns, the expression scrunching up his light brows and twisting his lips. The dim twin moons in his eyes dance and flicker out for a moment. “I’ve always been.”
Andrew sometimes says strange things. Abram tries to convey this with a look. Andrew rolls his eyes in response, but doesn’t say anything else, seeming to find the trees much more interesting all of a sudden as he walks away from Abram.
Abram huffs, and speeds up to keep stride with the boy. He rethinks his question, knowing Andrew has no intention of elaborating on his answer. “How long ago was this temple being used?”
Andrew pauses. “Who’s currently ruling?”
“Emperor Moriyama,” Abram spits the name like a curse.
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Lucky.”
Andrew gives him a look, then turns back to the tree he’d been examining. “There used to not be trees here.”
Abram looks around them, at how the dark forest had invaded the temple grounds. “It is pretty overgrown,” Abram supposed that meant it had been quite a while, then.
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Andrew turns to him, slim fingers tracing invisible runes over tree bark, they flicker blue for a split second before fading again. “This mountainside used to be barren.”
“But this forest has been around for thousands of years,” Abram says, eyes widening in surprise.
“And this temple has been here longer.”
“And so have you?”
Andrew stares at him blankly.
Abram stares back. He’s pretty sure the answer is yes, but Andrew likes weaving around his questions, especially when it comes to his past. It’s frustrating, but not in a bad way. Abram can talk in circles too. “Are there others like you here?”
“No,” Andrew answers bluntly.
“So, you’re the only spirit left here.” The thought makes Abram a bit sad.
“No, there are other spirits.” Confusion crosses Abram’s face, and Andrew decides to continue. “They stay away though.”
“Ah.” Abram nods. “It’s probably because of your personality.”
Andrew whips around to face him, and Abram yelps as the other boy shoves him over. On instinct Abram reaches out to grab Andrew’s arm to steady himself, but that ends up only sending them both tumbling onto the moon stained grass with a thud.
“Ouch,” Abram mumbles, reaching back to rub at his head.
Andrew grumbles something unintelligible from where his face is pressed awkwardly into the grass. Abram sits up and looks over to him. “What?”
Flipping over Andrew gives him a small glare. “Idiot.”
Abram feels a laugh bubbling up his throat and before he can stop himself it spills out of his mouth and into the night like chimes. His hand is covering his mouth a second later, and he stares down at Andrew with wide eyes.
Andrew’s looking back at him, mouth slightly open, a dusting of color brushing his cheeks, and the light in his eyes glowing steady and warm. He turns his head away a moment later, and mumbles another ‘idiot’ under his breath.
Abram curbs the grin slipping over his lips before Andrew can see it.
________ __________ __________ _________
“I’ll rip his throat out the next time he hurts you,” the words should tear out of Andrew with anger, but instead they are shrouded in a deadly calm that puts Abram on edge all the more.
He weakly shakes his head in protest. “You can’t.”
“I can.”
“Don’t, it’s not worth it.”
Andrew looks up at him, and Abram gets the feeling that if he wasn’t healing Abram’s wounds, he’d be running off to stab Abram’s father on the spot. It was a nice thought, but in the long run it would be more destructive than good. Abram is a bloody mess for simply mis-stepping in his interaction with one of his father’s guests. Surely if his father was killed now, he’d simply come back from the underworld to bind and torture Abram for the rest of his short life. The grip on Abram’s wrist tightens. “You’re worth it.”
Abram sighs and closes his eyes, he’s so tired.
Too young to be this tired, really.
“When I’m stronger I’ll make him pay,” Andrew says under his breath, and Abram isn’t sure if he was meant to hear that or not.
Abram cracks his eyes open and says a soft “no,” that floats into the air like a crack of thunder. Andrew looks up at him sharply. The black mist clouding his eyes seems to be back ten fold, and Abram can feel him pulling away. He grabs at Andrew’s hand gracelessly, and the boy stiffens. “No, no. I just want to make him pay myself.”
Andrew’s eyes bore into his, and he nods slowly. “Then you will.”
“You sound so sure.”
“I am.” Andrew slips his hand from Abram’s grip, but a moment later his touch returns, and he turns Abram’s hand over to trace a complex rune into his palm.
Abram watches with vague, distant, awe as swirls of silver light consume his palm. It doesn’t hurt, only tingles slightly, but it does leave behind a faint mark. Abram thinks it resembles the amulet he wears around his neck. “What is this?”
“My blessing,” Andrew says, and curls Abram’s hand into a fist. With his hand cupped between Andrew’s a wave of warmth sweeps over him, settling into his soul. “When the time is right you will make your father pay.”
Abram feels the words settle like a weight in his gut; Andrew for once doesn’t sound indifferent.
The twin moons in Andrew’s eyes are brighter than Abram has ever seen them, a stark contrast to the darkness that his eyes held the moment before, and Abram can’t look away. Andrew’s hands are trembling slightly where they grip Abram’s. “And until then I will protect you, I swear it, Abram.”
Abram gazes at his friend for a long moment before his eyes slip shut again against his wishes. The last thought he has before sleep takes him is of acceptance, and the knowledge that he believes Andrew’s words entirely.
He doesn’t understand, but he believes.