If I Had a Heart

"I don't know!" the man said fearfully. "I don't know anymore. I'm just a miner!"

Elias caught sight of them at last and came to a stop when he saw the miner. "Oh dear," he said. "Who do we have here?" The fellow was so thin Elias could see the outline of his intestines against the sallow skin, and his eyes had an unfocused look to them. Obviously he'd been down here a long time.

Nikolai had been giving Raptor a look that could be described as a little expectant. When he heard nothing after his denial, he sighed and looked away for a bit at the cave wall. He thought that maybe Raptor didn’t want to be stared at right now. The blue glow had been the brightest light they’d seen in the caverns so far, but it had gone out and now it was just the light of their two ribbons on the wall, gray-blue and pale white.

It was so clearly false. From what he’d seen in the fight, the damage the monster had inflicted had seemed quite survivable, but bad enough to be rather painful. He’d heard Raptor cry out. He could see the injury. And he knew that if Raptor was really fine, he certainly shouldn’t have been able to see his ribs.

“Is this a trust thing?” Nikolai asked quietly, looking back at Raptor. “Because I get that, to some extent. We pretty much just met. I haven’t been able to tell you anything about myself. There’s not much someone could use to guess much about me, either, besides a notebook, an easily recognizable Russian accent, and that I’m somehow carrying little glass balls that can make a monster go to sleep.” He shrugged. “So... I guess that makes me a stranger.”

But I don’t want to be a stranger to you, his thoughts said— and his face said that as well.

He couldn’t just tell Raptor to trust him with secrets or a weakness. It didn’t work that way. So he sighed and stared down at the ground in front of his feet.

“I’m not going to make you tell me anything. But if we’re going to get out of these caves, we’re going to be working as a team and rely on each other. That takes trust.” He paused for a few seconds. When he spoke again, his voice was even gentler. “Now might be a pretty good time to start building that.”

Nikolai was hurt by him not telling the truth.

He hadn't outright said it, but Raptor could hear it in his voice. He could see it on his face. Raptor knew he had to be secretive. That was all he had known as long as he could remember. But he had never been told how much the secrecy of a magician could hurt the ones they kept the truth from; he had never been in a situation where he knew he had to hide the truth but wanted to share it so it hurt less.

"It's not that I don't trust you," Raptor said, spreading his hands out a little to cover his gash better. Some of the bone was still showing, but it was harder to see. Nikolai would have to look closer to easily pick it up. "I do...do trust you."

...But if he really did trust Nikolai, wouldn't Raptor be more willing to tell him the truth? Wasn't that how trust was supposed to work? He was planning on telling this secret to May soon, but she was one of his few friends. They had known each other for years at this point - and it wasn't like she would be satisfied with him keeping his armor on. She would want to know why he was wearing it.

"I want to trust you," Raptor corrected.

He grabbed onto the strap of his bag, giving it a tight squeeze in a poor attempt to make him feel less nervous. It mean that the gash was mostly revealed, but Nikolai had already seen it before. Raptor had to accept that hiding it now wasn't going to do anything.

"I'm not keeping secrets because you have amnesia," Raptor said. "Not for the reason you think - it's...different. I don't know how to explain it to you. And I...I don't know how you're going to react. I'm not hurt. I was just...changed before I got here. And I've been hiding it because the last time someone saw me without this armor, they were terrified."

On second thought, the last person who had seen him without some of the armor - the helmet - had been Bartimaeus. But Bartimaeus was a demon, and a demon was understandably more comfortable with his current appearance. The djinni had probably taken it as a guise before, or known another demon who had.

He took a deep breath.

Nikolai had trusted him. He had to return the favor.

His grip on his bag loosened. He raised his shaking hands to his helmet and carefully undid it.

"This is what I was trying to hide," he whispered, holding the helmet close to his chest in front of him.

His secret was now clearly on display for both Nikolai and the old man. His head was a skull. His neck was just bones. The gash on his chest plate showed his rib cage. Even with most of his armor still on, the truth was obvious.

He was just a skeleton.

A giant, six foot something tall skeleton with a black cloak he still had folded up in his bag.

Aumrauth ignored Elias and kept walking, picking up the pace a little bit out of impatience. He finally caught sight of the back of Mel's head, and then Ainsley, and the bearded man who looked like he was one day away from death.

"Huh," Aumrauth said, unimpressed. "Bearded guy. You wouldn't happen to know where the hell we are would you?"

The old man's eyes widened, and he leaned back against the wall, face going as white as Raptor's skull. He murmured something in his language, making a gesture over himself.

***

The man jerked as Aumrauth spoke, and Elias touched the elf's shoulder lightly.
"Speak gently," he muttered. If what he thought might be the case was, in fact, the case, then Aumrauth was going to he a liability with his boorish tendencies and loud voice. Elias looked to Ainsley. Honestly, it was probably a blessing that one had been the one to find the miner. "Ainsley, who is this?"

Aumrauth looked at Elias’d hand on his shoulder in disgust. He gingerly grabbed Elias’s hand and pointedly plucked it off of him, dropping it like he was glad to be rid of it.

“Don’t touch me, mortal,” Aumrauth hissed under his breath.

"I found him down the spiral tunnel," Ainsley said and pointed in the direction from which he and the man came. "He's been here a long time. Someone--I don't know who--left him here to work." He gestured to the pickaxe the man held. "There could be others."

Ainsley revealed the little information he was given. He had hoped the man would be willing to reveal some more information as they continued their journey, but he wasn't so sure now. Mel's outburst had scared him, and understandably so.

He looked at Mel. "You mentioned you had water a ways back. Do you have any food?" Ainsley glanced at the man. His threadbare trousers hung from his frame and he looked dazed. "He clearly hasn't eaten in a long time."

So maybe Mel felt a little bad that she had misread the situation and intimidated the scrawny miner man, but she didn't regret it because she'd rather scare some random man than risk Ainsley getting hurt. Although, if this random man was aggressive, she'd have no idea what she would do.

Right on cue, Aumrauth and Elias then showed up, and Ainsley began to explain the situation.

"I did have water, but used it all when Aumrauth was getting cooked," Mel said, already going through her bag and sifting through the many robes she had stuffed in there. "I have some food, though."

She pulled out a cloth bag and then took out a bar that looked like it was made out of various dried vegetables and grains.

"Uhhh," she said, dangling it in front of her as she stared at the bearded man. "Do you want it?"

Elias rolled his eyes.
The miner nodded tentatively, reaching out. "How many of you are there?" he asked nervously.

The bar Mel handed the man looked hard as a brick, but Ainsley figured any food was good food if you were as malnourished as the man was. He could only imagine what it was like, being taken away and forced to work in the dark caves alone and empty-handed. Ainsley shivered at the thought. No thanks.

“There are four of us,” Ainsley explained to the miner. He pointed at each member of the party. “This is Mel, Elias, and Aumrauth.”

Hesitantly, Mel walked forward and reached out to gingerly place the bar on the man's hand, acting as if she was feeding a frail animal.

The man flinched as the bar touched him, and he closed his hand around it before retreating back quickly. He turned it over in his hands for a moment, then raised it to his mouth and bit down. There was a sickening crack as one of his blackened teeth crumbled and fell, bleeding slightly. The man ignored it and crunched into the bar, losing a few more teeth in the process.
"What are you mining down here?" Elias asked him. The man didn't speak, absorbed in consuming the bar.

Nikolai had been silent so far, watching him. His face was a little bit difficult to read as Raptor was talking, but he was listening closely, and it seemed like he understood what he meant.

But why would anyone be scared?

His face promised that wouldn't happen.

Then Raptor slowly, hesitantly started to take his helmet off— exactly what he'd tried to avoid earlier, inside the chamber where they'd found the old man. Nikolai held his breath, waiting to see signs of a face. He'd wondered a few times what Raptor looked like. But it wasn't a human face he saw. It was a human skull.

Surprise flashed across Nikolai's features for a brief moment, but he didn't step back or cry out, and he didn't look terrified like Raptor thought he might. Besides the second monster's noises that they'd been ignoring, the room had fallen silent again. Then the old man started mumbling something behind him that he couldn't understand.

Then the surprise visibly shifted into something more... sad. How long had Raptor been hiding away like this? No one should ever have to do that. Nikolai had strong empathy, but he didn't need it to know how hard that had to be. No wonder Raptor had been worried about how someone would react.

He'd mentioned that he'd 'changed' before coming here. Did that mean he hadn't always been this way, that he'd been a normal person once? If so, that made it even worse. Nikolai's heart was hurting for Raptor.

He knew this wouldn't make a difference to him. He was sure he could trust Raptor.

"I'm not afraid," he whispered, being completely honest.

And then a moment later, he'd hurried forward and wrapped his arms around Raptor in a tight but gentle hug.

The glowing red lights in Raptor's eye sockets grew smaller - it was the closest thing he could do to widening his eyes now. Nikolai could have been lying when he said he wasn't afraid, but Raptor could hear the sincerity in his voice right before Nikolai surprised him with a hug.

Raptor froze again when Nikolai suddenly pulled him into an embrace. He vaguely registered that the old man had been muttered something when he saw the skull hiding underneath Raptor's helmet. He could still hear the monster barking in the other room. Its sibling or partner or whatever the other monster was to it was still dead on the ground nearby, blood pooled around its severed leg and head.

But all of that seemed to fade away in the moment. Raptor let the helmet fall out of his hands and hit the ground. As it made a clank and rolled to a stop next to Nikolai's feet, Raptor leaned into Nikolai's hug.

After a moment of hesitation, he returned the hug - arms awkwardly extending and wrapping around Nikolai. It was strange being hugged as a giant skeleton wearing an equally giant suit of armor. But his last hug had been one that May had surprised him with in one of their shared dreams weeks ago, so strangeness seemed to be a key feature of all of his hugs.

"Thank you," he whispered.

Nikolai realized he liked being hugged. And maybe this was the most unusual hug in his personal history— though he had no way of knowing for sure— but it might also have been one of the best. He didn't really want it to end.

He didn't know what to say in response to Raptor, but he nodded and closed his eyes, letting out a deep breath. The silence was comfortable, if you ignored the rather angry beast that was still alive. But that didn't matter right now.

I'm glad he made it. Nikolai sighed softly in relief. This didn't scare him, but the attack had. They'd gotten incredibly lucky, and he didn't think they'd have been able to win that fight by force. And if he hadn't been so worried about Raptor, he wouldn't have thrown that glass orb. How that ball worked was beyond him, though it had seemed... well, magical.

Hopefully they'd all figure that out later. Nikolai couldn't see the old man, but he wondered what he thought of all this. It was probably the most interesting day he'd had in a long time if they'd been in the caves so long.

"Are you sure you're going to be alright?" he asked Raptor quietly.