[ LYSANDER ]
Elyra had cleared him to sit up properly on the second day of consciousness.
Not to leave. Just to sit. The distinction mattered to her in a way that she communicated clearly — sitting was recovery, walking around was a different conversation they weren't having yet. He'd accepted this because she was right and because his body had made its own opinion on the matter abundantly clear the one time he'd tried to stand too fast.
He was sitting up with his back against the headboard, the left arm resting in its binding across his lap, when the infirmary door opened and Taro came in.
He came in the way Taro did most things — with presence, with energy, with the specific quality of someone whose body operated at a higher frequency than the spaces it occupied. His wolf ears were fully forward. His tail was moving. He had clearly been told to be quiet in the infirmary and was clearly making an effort that was not entirely successful.
He stopped when he saw Lysander.
The energy didn't disappear exactly. It just — changed quality. Something in Taro's face shifted in the half second between seeing him and composing a response to seeing him. His ears stayed forward but the tail went still.
Then he crossed the room and dropped into the chair beside the bed with a loudness that Elyra, from her desk, acknowledged with a look that communicated everything without saying anything.
"Hey," Taro said.
"Hey," Lysander said.
Taro looked at him. At the arm in the binding. At the general state of him — the pallor, the way he was sitting carefully, the specific quality of someone whose body was making everything cost more than it should.
"You look terrible," Taro said.
"I know."
"Like — actually terrible. Not just tired." He tilted his head slightly, ears adjusting. "What did you do to your arm?"
"Joint."
"The whole joint?"
"Yes."
Taro absorbed this. His tail started moving again — slowly, the specific rhythm of someone processing rather than reacting.
"Valeria brought you in," he said. Not a question. He already knew.
"I heard."
"She told me you twisted your ankle." A pause. "I believed her for about four seconds."
Lysander looked at him.
Taro shrugged. "You don't twist ankles. You break joints apparently." He leaned back in the chair, arms crossing, the posture of someone who had decided to be casual about something that wasn't casual. "I came yesterday. Elyra said you were still sleeping."
"I didn't know that."
"Yeah." A beat. "I figured."
The infirmary was quiet around them. Distant sounds from the academy outside — training grounds, bells, the ordinary noise of a place that had continued without either of them noticing.
Taro looked at the window for a moment.
"You were gone for a week," he said. His voice had shifted slightly — still Taro, still the same energy underneath, but quieter. The specific quiet of someone choosing words more carefully than usual. "Nobody knew where you were for three days before Valeria showed up with you."
Lysander didn't answer.
"I checked the room," Taro continued. "Both days. Thought maybe you'd just — I don't know. Gone somewhere." His ears dipped slightly. "Your stuff was still in the room," Taro said. "Jacket on the chair. Everything where you left it. Just you and the sword gone." A pause. "That was the part that didn't make sense. You don't leave like that."
Lysander looked at him.
Taro met his gaze. His expression had the specific quality of someone who had decided to say a thing directly and was doing it. "If the sword is gone it means you're out there doing something. And the things you do—" he gestured vaguely at the arm, at the general situation, "—are apparently like this."
"I'm fine," Lysander said.
"You have a broken joint and cracked ribs."
"I'm alive."
"That's a low bar."
Lysander considered that. It was, technically, accurate.
Taro exhaled through his nose — not quite a laugh, not quite frustration. Something in between. His tail had settled into a slow steady movement that Lysander had started to recognize as Taro at rest rather than Taro performing.
"I'm not going to ask what happened," Taro said.
"Okay."
"I'm just — noting that it happened. And that it was bad. And that you're going to tell me eventually." He looked at Lysander with the same expression he'd had in the clearing after the Ironhide Troll — patient, certain, not pushing. "Same as before."
Lysander looked at him.
He didn't know what to do with the fact that Taro had checked the room. Both days. That the sword being gone had been the specific detail that worried him. That he'd come yesterday and been told Lysander was still sleeping and had come back today anyway.
He didn't have a category for it. His previous life hadn't built one.
"Okay," he said.
Taro nodded once. That was enough.
Then his ears perked forward and the energy came back — not forced, just returning naturally now that the quiet thing had been said and acknowledged. "So Elyra says you're stuck here for at least three more days."
"Yes."
"That's rough." He looked around the infirmary with the assessing expression of someone calculating something. "I'll bring food. The infirmary stuff is fine but it's boring." He stood, stretching both arms above his head, tail moving with the restored energy. "Any requests?"
Lysander thought about it.
"Anything that isn't broth," he said.
Taro grinned. "Done." He moved toward the door, then paused. Looked back once.
"For what it's worth," he said, "the ranking board is a mess without you. Three people challenged your position in the first four days." A beat. "None of them held it."
Lysander blinked. "What?"
Taro's grin widened. "Someone's been defending your rank." He shrugged with the specific expression of someone who knew more than they were saying and was enjoying it. "No idea who."
Then he left, the door swinging shut behind him with slightly more noise than Elyra preferred.
Lysander sat with that for a moment.
Then looked at the chair Taro had been sitting in.
Then at the book still on the side table.
He looked at the ceiling.
He genuinely did not know what to do with any of this. The food offer. The rank being defended. The checking the room both days.
His previous life hadn't built the category.
He was starting to think he was going to have to build it himself.