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So, here's what happened. Autsu spotted Patrick, and Patrick talked. Autsu, being Autsu, went still. Then stiller. He was a thing of looming in the shadows, a dark dreamed thing with wings of desert sky and eyes of silence. He did not so much tense as he became tension. And then, Patrick stopped talking.

"Going." And it was difficult to say who he was talking to. There'd been someone approaching, wearing a security T like Autsu's own. But he didn't look at the man, and he didn't look at Patrick either. He just walked out.

And then he was going. He was going to his car. He was going to Kian's house. He was going inside, and he was going to the basement.

He did not knock. He did not call out. He did break the knob off the door with the handle of one of his knives.

And then he walked inside.

Something was wrong. It was probably bad. He would deal with it.

There are two men in a room and no welcome between them. There are many stories that could begin with such a moment. Could begin with the air hung dark and shadow thick, shuddering with a burden as yet unspoken.

It is unlikely that this will be any of those stories.

Autsu learned to speak again first as a toddler, though the winning and the loss of speech did come and go with moods and anger. Yet here, and since Patrick's arrival, he was not angry. But he wasn't talking.

There was Kian, sitting silent with his back to the door. In and of itself, that was strange. Autsu's lover was not incautious and someone breaking into the basement should have roused him.

He was quite clearly not interested in rousing.

Autsu didn't respond to the invitation to leave, certainly not by leaving. He walked across the distance between them and took a seat beside the other dark skinned youth on the couch.

And he waited.

There was a young black skinned alien sitting on a couch who happened to have no idea what another young black skinned alien was talking about. It happened that way, sometimes.

There were things that Autsu could have said, and might have said, otherwise to other people. Words like 'it's okay' or 'I'm here for you' or the ever popular 'It's not your fault' might have worked. He didn't say any of those things.

He considered the other for a moment, and then he got off the couch and knelt on the floor in front of his lover. His wings rose and swept around the two of them, forming a wall of blue feathers between Kian and the world. Now the three eyed alien could either look at his face or look at his wings, the rest of the room hidden away. Stupid things had there uses.

"Talk, ally." His own voice was not devoid of emotion. Those who knew how to listen to the subtle rhythms of Autsu's words would catch concern there. He wasn't trying to hide it. "Explain."

A pause, as he considered. "You may wait, if you are not yet ready. I will wait here, with you."

Autsu's expression remained mostly impassive as Kian spoke. Oh, he was listening, but the words were coming from someone who had all the connective tissue to and being heard by someone who had none. Autsu was weaving the words together into an idea of events. Enough to understand why Kian was hiding himself away in a basement anyway.

"You may mourn." He said after some more time of silence. Reaching up, he caught Kian's hand against his cheek, holding the slightly shaking fingers steady with his own firm grip. "She loved you, and is gone."

"You may not destroy yourself. If you wish it, when you are ready, we will destroy them. But you serve no one in this. Least her."

He was a statue, this solid mass of ebony and turquoise. He knelt, and he looked up, and he waited until he might know what to do next.

There were many times, many, many times when Autsu existed as a man torn. A man divided between loyalties and worlds. His mind, especially around Kian, was given to being lost to guilts and hopes and confusion.

There was none of that here. Indeed, it was quite possible that Kian had never before seen Autsu so present within the moment. A pity then, that the other was so far away.

If there was something there for a moment in Autsu's words, reproach or anger, Autsu ignored it. His departure, though it waited like a spider, squat on the horizon, wasn't important at the moment. It would happen eventually.

This was happening now.

As Kian began to push contact, Autsu rose to his knees and closed the gap between him. His hand slid under Kian's t-shirt and came to rest against his chest. There was nothing sexual about the gesture, it was there as a reassurance, to Kian or to himself. They were both there, they were together.

"You were not unaware of what they were. It's why you are here now." His words were measured and slow. "We can deal with them, together, when you are ready. There is no such thing as a road that travels in only one direction."

His own brief moment of near irony then, "I have come to understand that."

"For now, we must deal with what is. My people burn their dead. Here, I understand that burial is more common."

"Oh, Blade at my Throat..." It was the only phrase in Autsu's language that Kian would be familiar with. He used it not infrequently, in charged moments of emotion or passion. He used it mostly because he was not entirely comfortable with the lack of nuance in the language which they shared. "Come."

And he pulled the other roughly against him, his wings enclosing them both in desert's blue, his voice a low whisper of breath against Kian's cheek. "My love. My love."

And then, for a bit, he didn't say anything, and his arms were strong and protective. Kian could break away, if he tried, but he'd have to try.

"We will give her the funeral she deserves." He promised, the business of the moment again catching up with him. "My father will give her soul his Lady's blessing, and she will find sweeter tomorrows."

Autsu was not religious, but he believed in souls and gods. Who, on a world such as theirs could do otherwise?

"After she is honored, we will make other plans."

Autsu allowed, even welcomed the brush of lips against his own in something that wasn't exactly what he'd usually call a kiss. He held Kian, and he let him speak, and when he was done speaking, he added no more words to the moment.

It was silent in the basement. It was possible that Autsu might kill any who dared to break that silence.

There were those who might think Autsu cold. Many. Maybe Patrick, who he had walked out on earlier without expressing his intent. Maybe Archie, who saw only and always the soldier. Maybe Avrin, who had seen him kill without seeming thought or concern.

But he wasn't a soldier, not really. It was only that it was easy to interpret him as such. What Autsu was, what he had been as Esuth and what he had rebuilt himself as on Gaia, was a protector. Yes, he'd be quick to identify himself as a tool, and it was a role he often fulfilled. But the essence of the role, the truth of his need to serve was his need to protect. To make safe in whatever manner offered itself.

When Kian was strong, Autsu could exist as the ghost at his side, the shadow that watched for what the other might missed, that waited in silence. When Kian was weak... when Kian was this, Autsu strove again to protect him. He could be, for the moment, the one that made the plans, the one that held his lover close and listened to the rise and fall of his breathing. He could be this, and remain this, and when Kian stood strong again, he could retreat, and become what the new moment required.