Something jostled Chiya out of a sound sleep, the best she'd had in weeks, in an actual bed under an actual roof. Ketvia mumbled something and rolled over, but a bitter, metallic scent made Chiya's small, human-sized nose twitch and her eyes blink open to stare into the darkness. For a moment, she could see nothing, blinded by a night without stars, even though her metaphysical senses told her the sun shone hotly outside the windowless room. Still half-asleep, she couldn't identify the smell which had kept her awake, but it made her stomach try to twist with nausea.

Then a darker shadow interposed itself between the darkness of the ceiling and Chiya's gaze, dirty, tangled hair brushing against her blankets and face. She came suddenly, fully awake as she caught the glint of the scant light off of dead black eyes. Calling up a small flare of light, the halfling's sallow, angular face was cast into sharp relief. He flinched back from the light, eyes squinting shut, and Chiya let out a little scream as drops of something thick and warm fell from his flesh to hers.

Ketvia was awake in an instant, with a roar that would have been better suited coming from a dragon's muzzle than her wide, human mouth, and she leapt at the half-breed. They tumbled from the bed together, Ketvia expertly rolling him underneath her, straddling his thighs, slamming his shoulders to the ground and pinning him there with a powerful hand. Chiya sat up quickly, turning her light from pure white to a shade of blue that did not hurt the eye, and hurriedly wiped her face with a sheet, shuddering at the thought of blood touching her skin.

The half-breed let out a little squeak as Ketvia's other hand closed around his skinny throat, but he only struggled a little beneath her. Trying to think past the filthy feeling of his blood on her skin, Chiya extended her mental sense towards him, not understanding what he had done, what he had been trying to do, much less why. There was nothing malicious, nothing angry or hating, and she frowned. Why would he have been on her bed, looming over her, if not to bring her to harm? What she did sense was fear-- but also relief, a warped kind of pleasure, and a grim expectation. And what he expected--

"Oh, no! Ketvia, let him go--" Breathless, disgusted, full of pity, Chiya scrambled from the bed to pull her friend off the half-breed, leaving him laying on the floor, gasping for breath through a bruised windpipe, staring at them with an expression Chiya couldn't read.

"Chiya, dammit," Ketvia snarled, "don't you go all soft on me again! I know what he was going to do-- he was going to murder us in our beds, that's what he was going to do! Crazy little dog, I never should have let my guard down, I should have--" She choked off abruptly as Chiya's silencing spell sealed her lips.

"He wasn't going to do anything of the sort," she told the infuriated Fire firmly, but her voice lost its edge and started to shake as she tried to explain. "He was-- he thought-- gods, Ketvia, the only time he's ever seen a bed is when that demoness who kept him locked away was going to have sex with him, to abuse him in ways I don't even want to think about-- but I can't help it, because I touched his mind and they're there, in his memory, and I can't get them out of my head now! Ketvia, what else do you think he would have done, seeing us in a bed for the first time since he's met us, when he doesn't know a bed is supposed to be for sleeping in?"

The half-breed lay in a bloody, confused huddle on the floor, staring at them as Chiya's voice rose to a wail. She could sense that he knew he'd done something wrong, but not what it was, not how to make it right, and she had no way to explain it to him. Frustrated, worn by the constant burden of trying to anticipate him and put up with Ketvia's disapproval, she grabbed his shoulders and shook him. "You do not hurt yourself!" she shouted, as if by being louder she could somehow force understanding on him. "Do you hear me? Not for me, not for that monster who raised you, not for anyone! Don't ever do it again!" And then she burst into tears, freeing him to fall back to the floor and scramble away from her, and freeing Ketvia to speak again.

Shocked and chagrined, Ketvia forgot she had been angry and rushed to fold Chiya in her arms, let her cry into her tunic. The Light dragon buried her face in Ketvia's shoulder, sobbing, while Ketvia murmured reassuring nothings into her hair. The half-breed had the grace to look guilty, as if he were well aware that Chiya's breakdown was entirely his fault. He actually looked so dismayed that Ketvia didn't have the heart to even glare at him-- not until he started licking his self-inflicted wounds clean with his own tongue, at least. At her warning look he cringed, bared his unnatural fangs at her, but still stopped, instead letting his blood drip disgustingly onto the floor.

Finally, Chiya wore herself out with crying and lay quietly in Ketvia's embrace, snuggled against her, awake but quiet. Ketvia settled back against the foot of the bed with her, stroking her hair soothingly. In all the time she'd known her, Chiya hadn't fallen apart like that more than twice: once after having to deal with her family when her father died, and once after the first battle of the Tris'Hath war. It reminded Ketvia that her kind, patient, loving travel companion had her limits, too, and this time she knew that she, herself, had helped bring her to the breaking point. She promised herself, right then, that she would do her part to get the half-breed safely to Sanctuary and not complain about it. No matter how much the little thing made her want to.

As if thinking about him had summoned him, the bloody boy crawled towards them looking pathetically humble and apologetic. Chiya cringed and Ketvia tensed, but he just knelt in front of them, dark eyes, half-hidden by his ragged hair, fixed on Chiya's. She twisted around in Ketvia's arms, stretched out a hand, and rested it on his cheek. The gashes he'd given himself closed slowly, leaving behind nothing but the lines of blood running down his limbs, and he shut his eyes, whispering something that sounded almost recognizable. As Kevia blinked at him, she realized he had said, heavily accented, sibilant, and butchered by his raspy voice, but still in the common speech, "Sorry." He said it again, and again, shuddering as if he were about to start sobbing himself, or as if expected to be beaten, until Chiya touched his lips to quiet him.

"I know, it's all right," she answered, though Ketvia knew he couldn't understand the words-- but then again, if he had picked up that much so far, who knew what he might know by now?

He seemed to at least understand what she meant, from her tone and whatever psi she could attach to the words, for he relaxed slowly and curled up at their feet with a whimpering sigh like a whipped puppy. Ketvia wasn't sure whether she was feeling her heart break for an abused, helpless child or utter revulsion because that same child was touching her with his bloody, half-demon flesh. Chiya didn't seem at all disturbed, she just lay her hand on his dirty hair and let him stay, so Ketvia tolerated him and didn't make a comment.

"Ketvia," Chiya whispered, "we can't keep doing this... we have to take him somewhere. Now. Tomorrow. Somewhere where someone can at least teach him our language-- put it into his head, even. But we can't keep doing this-- I can't keep doing this."

"I know," Ketvia sighed, "I'm sorry. I haven't been very helpful, either, I know. I'll be better."

Ketvia felt her smile more than saw it, and somehow that made her feel better. "Thank you," Chiya finally answered softly. "But it isn't just you. He doesn't mean to, but just trying to communicate-- it's tiring. Unless we can somehow teach him common, I can't even tell him a simple thing like why he can't claw himself up like that, or make him understand what our names are."

"Then we'll take him to someone who can teach him common," Ketvia promised. "And we don't even have to go to Sanctuary to do it. I know an aerie of Air dragons in the Low Mountains. I visited them a few times before I met you, and there's a pretty strong psionic there who would know how to just dump our language into his head."

"Even his head?" Chiya stroked his hair anxiously. "Even as-- as cracked and broken as it is?"

"If he can't, we'll take him to Yihoto in Sanctuary. If anybody can deal with him, he can." Ketvia felt her hesitate, then nod slowly. "We'll fly across the gap tomorrow-- he'll probably be so apologetic he'll forget to be afraid, too-- and meet him by dawn, or if not then, by the night after."

"Thank you," Chiya said quietly.

"Hey," Ketvia chuckled gently, "I'd do anything for you, this is nothing."

Chiya's smile then was beautiful, and Ketvia couldn't help but smile back-- demon in their charge, or not.