A few hours later, Chanyeol was awake and able to sit up if propped up against the cave wall.  He appeared to have gone through mild Burn Out again, since he’d picked up one of Seoyeon’s shoes to give back to her and the flames had gone racing up his arm and dived through his tunic over his heart.  Seoyeon wondered if it was because of him burning the monster.

He seemed to be aware of the unicorn’s visit too, mentioning something about light and how thankful he was for more food, and that he’d heard about the unicorn Guardian but had never met it before.

Seoyeon could have wept with relief at him finally being well enough to get up, even if he was still very weak.  The blackness in his veins had receded, and the bruise on his arm was rapidly fading.  She felt her eyes watering as she changed the compress yet again.  His arm seemed to be recovering very quickly now, for some reason.

She could feel Chanyeol’s eyes on her as she worked.  His gaze was a little unnerving even if it wasn’t critical, and she couldn’t seem to stop her fingers from trembling.

“By the way,” he said softly as she cut a bandage to the right length and started to tie it, “I think I owe you an apology in return.”

She raised her head, confused.  He chuckled.

“We’re both stubborn, you know,” he told her.  “I know I’ve been unpleasant to you sometimes, but I told myself I wasn’t going to apologise until you’d done so first for how rude you were to me.  Petty, huh?”

Seoyeon blinked at him.  “Petty,” she repeated flatly, somewhere between questioning him and agreeing with him.

“Regardless,” he said, “I apologise, and I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner.”

For some reason, it brought a lump to Seoyeon’s throat.  “I didn’t even realise you were awake,” she mumbled.  Her own apology had come in the middle of a tearful breakdown.

“I was awake for most of the fever,” he told her.  “I was just too weak to do anything.  I nearly Burnt Out again getting rid of the iuneu, but I had to do something.  I don’t think I’ve ever had such trouble sitting up before in my life.”

He leaned back heavily on the cave wall, resting his injured arm on a little ridge protruding from it.  Seoyeon frantically thought back over everything she’d done while she’d thought he was unconscious, hoping there was nothing embarrassing.  She ended up meeting his eyes and pulling a complete blank.

For a moment, there was a very charged silence between them.

“You need to believe in yourself more,” he murmured suddenly.  “The Guardian told me you still think you’re worthless.”

Cheeks burning with chagrin, Seoyeon dropped her gaze.

“No, look at me,” he said firmly.  “Give yourself some credit, Han Seoyeon.  You might feel that you’re in over your head and that things are out of your control — which is largely true — but you haven’t just rolled over and let that happen.  I’m proud of you.”

For some reason, that last sentence made Seoyeon tingle all over.  His brown eyes were very serious as he looked at her, and she wished she had the backbone to meet them longer.  But the longer she met his eyes, the more it felt like he would be able to hear how erratic her heartbeat was.  She looked around for something to do and started packing her medical things awkwardly away into her satchel.

It was only as she was doing the satchel up that she realised she couldn’t feel any pain at all from the injuries the iuneu had given her, and she paused, pulling up the sleeves of her dress.

There were thin scars along her arms, exactly where the iuneu’s claws had pierced.  She stared at them in confusion, wondering how long she had been unconscious (or asleep?) for until the unicorn had come.

“Wow,” said Chanyeol, peering over her shoulder.  “Those must have been nasty.  The Guardian said he’d treated our physical injuries but that you’d done everything that needed to be done about the poison and all he could do was speed that up a bit.”

Seoyeon turned back to him.

“The snake bit you,” she accused, “and you didn’t say anything about it, you absolute idiot.”

“I didn’t realise.”  He nodded towards her foot.  “Is your ankle better?  It should be.”

Seoyeon poked at it, and was surprised when it didn’t even hurt.  She nodded.

“Excellent.”  Chanyeol looked at the food the Guardian had left them, and then at the fire.

“Oh,” he said.

“What?”

“He’s left me a springboard.”  Chanyeol pointed at the flames.  “It’ll help me open a whorl.”

Seoyeon perked up.  “So we can go from here?”

“Yes.  We would have needed to go on a few miles further for me to do it originally—”

“So can we go now?”

“I’d rather be able to stand and walk about first.”

“Oh.”

Chanyeol reached out and pinched her cheek, and Seoyeon felt her heart beating erratically again.  She froze in shock, wondering what on earth to make of it.  Was he teasing her again?  Was it supposed to be affectionate?  Why?

“Pass me something to eat?” he requested as though nothing had happened.  Seoyeon snapped out of it at once and passed him an apple.

It was much more pleasant in the cave that night.  Now that Chanyeol was well enough to engage in conversation, Seoyeon realised that she’d been incredibly stressed by him being sick.  Everything felt so much more under control, even if he was barely able to stand.

Sprawled out on the floor on her stomach with her ankles crossed in the air, she watched as he tested out his fire powers to see what he was and wasn’t capable of after the second Burn Out.  She wondered how to tell him that she’d broken his Borderlander orb.

A rain of brightly coloured sparks fizzled out by her nose and she jumped, seeing that Chanyeol had turned his attention back to her.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Seoyeon grimaced and decided to come straight out with it.

“I kind of broke your orb?”

He raised his eyebrows at her.

“You said…”  She swallowed.  “You said if anything happened to you, I should try to find the plane’s Guardian, so I looked at the little map thing you showed me on the orb but I accidentally put all the flames out.”  She gulped again.  “I didn’t really understand it, though.  I don’t think it would have done me any good.”

To her relief, he didn’t tell her off.  With a simple nod, he fished it out of his tunic and stuck a fingernail into the relevant groove.  The little loop sprang out, complete with tiny flames.

“Looks fine to me,” he said with a frown.  “Maybe it just didn’t like you.  Or maybe you were able to call the Guardian somehow and it was too much of a strain for it.  Never mind.”

He tucked it away again and extended his hand towards the fire.  The flames detached, streaming towards his hand like a thick rope, and he caught them.  They followed him from side to side as he moved his hand around.  Seoyeon wasn’t completely sure, but it looked like something dark trailed just outside the flames, and she was certain she caught the sound of gale-force winds briefly, as though from a distance.

Chanyeol brought the flames round in a circle of fire and the air in the circle darkened momentarily before he dispelled it, flicking the flames back towards the camp fire.  There was a loud snap as he did so.

“Should be a few more hours.”  He settled back more comfortably.  “You should get some sleep.  You look exhausted.”

“I’m not tired,” she tried to insist, but he shook his head.