Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For the longest time, all he knows is sensations. Hot and cold, soft and hard, wet and dry. Life is nothing but a combination of these things. Sometimes one, sometimes multiple. It's hard to pick them apart into categories but slowly he starts to realize a pattern.

Wet and cold often go together, as do warm and dry. Sometimes warm and dark go along hand in hand but that's not a hard and fast rule because light and warm go together often too. 

Sometimes it's light and cold and hard all together at once. He feels like he should dislike times like those but he hears the most encouraging sounds in times like those too, so he doesn't mind too much. 

Oh yes, he can hear things now too. 

There's more to listen to when it's light. When things are dark, the most he often hears is a soft lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub that never fails to lull him back to sleep. He likes that sound the most. Sometimes, with how familiar the sound is, he thinks he might have known it for years and years and years. It's his favorite sound. 

But when the world is light around him, he hears the overlapping chatter of voices and noises that remind him of places and things and foods. 

It's too much, at first, to pick out any particular noises from another. Especially when it's loud, they overlap and merge and melt together until all he can hear is a wall of sound. Eventually though, he learns to pick his way through them, fishing out the pieces and parts of particular voices until he can learn to recognize a few. 

There's the high-pitched voice of a child, who chatters faster than he can keep up with. There's the softer voice of a girl and a handful of voices that sound like boys on the cusp of adulthood. There's the deep voice of a man, an accent lilting his vowels. But his favorite voice is nothing special at all and perhaps all the more special for it, just the same familiar voice he's heard his whole life and knows better than his own.

The voices move too fast for him to pick anything out most days but it's a comfort just having them there all the same. The voices revolve around him as the world goes from dark to light and dark again and he knows that he's never alone.

And then one day he opens his eyes. 

------

He opens his eyes.

He's in bed, it seems. The room is dimly lit around him. It must be early yet. For a half-second, he wonders if there is something he is supposed to be doing at this early hour but the thought drifts away before he can recapture it.

There's someone lying next to him. Lying over him, he realizes slowly. There's an arm across his waist and a dark-haired head snoring softly on his chest. Their legs are a tangle together beneath the covers.

There is warmth on his other side though too and it takes him far longer than it should to realize that there's a second person in bed with them. He turns his head, trying to see who is next to him and is greeted with a mop of long, blond hair on the pillow next to him. The blond-haired man has a gentle face with crows feet starting to make their impression around his eyes like he smiles a lot. Maybe he does. He isn't sure. He's not sure if he knows the man or not--that tip of his tongue feeling is back again--but if he's sleeping here with them, with himself and the man lopped across of him who he feels he trusts more than anything, the third man must be safe also.

His twisting wakes the man on top of him and silver-blue eyes blink up at him sleepily for a second before they widen with recognition and excitement.

"Brand! You're awake!" he says.

He blinks. Brand. Is that him? He feels like it might be.

"How are you feeling?" he is asked. Brand blinks. He's... What is he? It's hard to capture his thoughts, each one drifting away like a cloud in the breeze before he can close his fingers around it. He's tired, so tired.

Thinking hurts his head so he closes his eyes and lets his thoughts slip away again.

------

When he opens his eyes again, he's sitting at a table. The wood is hard beneath his arms. There's an empty bowl sitting in front of him, the spoon still sitting within it. There's a clink beside him and he turns to see the same man from before watching him, a smile on his face.

"You're getting better," he points out. "This is twice now." Brand tries to frown but he's not sure his face works the way he wants it to. Instead, he looks back. There's the taste of broth in his mouth, salty and savory. Was he eating? 

"Addam was sad he missed you last time," the man says. "He's away for work right now." 

Brand blinks. He has that feeling of tip-of-his-tongue again except it feels like he's missing more than one thing. He tries to chase the fleeing thoughts but they vanish like mist. 

"Do you want to go sit outside again after lunch? It's sunny today." 

Brand's head is starting to hurt again between the conversation and trying to remember who this is. Is he supposed to be doing something? 

He closes his eyes just for a moment to blink and then- 

------

He opens his eyes again to see the flickering of a television lighting up the darkened room. He takes a moment to take stock. There are the huddled shapes of people on the long couch beside him, just bumpy shapes beneath blankets and pillows. 

Something moves at his side and he looks down to see a small, dark-haired boy curled beneath his arm. The boy is enthralled with the movie but he looks up when Brand shifts. They lock eyes for a long moment, then the boy smiles. He's missing one of his front teeth. 

"You're my favorite, Brand," the boy says in a husky voice before turning his attention back to the movie. He snuggles in closer, tugging the blanket on their laps up higher and tucking it around the stuffed octopus clutched in his arms.  

Brand watches him for a moment longer before he looks around. He catches the gaze of someone else watching him. The blond man from before is looking at him, warm eyes crinkled in a silent smile. He's sitting a few cushions down from Brand, hands interlocked with the familiar man from before. 

There's a squeeze of their hands, then the other man looks up too. They both smile over at him and he feels...something. A tug is the only way he can think to describe it. Something tugging at his brain or maybe his heart. His very being, maybe too. Just a little ask for something, although what, he isn't sure. 

He doesn't know how to answer it. 

Silver-blue eyes meet his own and despite the smile that hasn't faltered, they feel sad. After a moment, they turn back to the movie and so does he. 

He ponders the feeling as he lets the movie slip by unseeing in front of him. He's missing something... 

He just doesn't know what. 

------

The moments of lucidity become more and more common until he's barely losing time at all. It's fall now, the crispness of the air filtering through the windows of the dining room remind him of something long lost. Fall has always made him feel this way, he thinks. Like he is missing something that he used to have. But he knows things now too. He knows the people who revolve in and around him during the day. Rune and Addam. Corbie and Anna, Max and Quinn and Queenie. Mayan and Corrine. 

The latter work together to put together a strict training regime for him, working daily to help him get his motor control back. 

He had dexterity once, he knows. He has the muscles from it, even as they slowly fade away as he works to regain control of his limbs. He has lost some part of himself, he just isn't sure what. 

Day by day, he throws himself into it until he can hold a spoon and eat an entire bowl of soup without spilling a drop. The day he walks the length of the ballroom and then the hallway before he has to flop down onto the couch to rest, he grins with fierce determination. Mayan smiles down at him with obvious pride. 

"You are getting better, Brand. Soon, you'll be able to keep up with me," he teases.  

Brand flips him off but it doesn't steal the grin from his face. 

------ 

Fall turns to winter and winter to an early, hot spring. Everything has been going well right up until it goes wrong. Or perhaps it goes very right. 

He and Addam are lying outside on the back courtyard taking in the sunshine of the first warm days of almost-summer. He's lying back in his lounge chair just enjoying the sunshine and the fact that he's outside. Addam is shirtless next to him, taking full advantage of the sun's rays to get his summer tan started. They're both half asleep and lazy under the relaxing warmth of the sun's rays. 

Brand's eyes shoot open as a bolt of panic and adrenaline shoots through him. It isn't his. "Rune," he says before he's aware of what's happening. Addam bolts upright at the same time beside him, sharing a worried look. He meets Brand's eyes for a second before he scrambles to his feet and takes off at a dead sprint for the beach. 

Rune was watching the kids down by the shore this morning, letting them swim in the cold water of spring. There shouldn't be anything dangerous on the beach right now but shouldn't be and aren't are two entirely different things. 

Brand pushes himself to his feet, wobbling for a second before he's off behind Addam. He's still not very steady on his feet yet so he can't go too quickly despite the panic fueling his brain. If he falls out here in the yard he's not sure he'll be able to get back up on his own. And he refuses to leave Rune and Addam to deal with this danger on their own. 

He doesn't know what's down at the beach but he won't leave them to face it without him. He has no weapons. He doesn't know what he'll be able to do if it's a threat except be a big, slow, hobbling target for whatever the hell it is but he'll even do that if it means it keeps Rune and Addam and the kids safe. 

It takes him only a few minutes to make it down to the beach but it feels like an eternity. When he finally crests the last dune, his heart calms. Rune and the children are all present and accounted for, Addam at their side. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong at all for several long seconds until the water thrashes out beyond the breakers and a kraken shows several tentacles above the water. It's just a little one. It must have slipped past the wards somehow. 

The sand shifting below foot makes walking on his own through the sand treacherous but he doesn't stop until he's at Rune's side. 

"We're okay," Rune assures him, sounding a little like he's reassuring himself at the same time. He's wet from the ocean still but Brand throws his arms around him in a hug anyways, not caring at all about the cold seawater leeching into his shirt. Rune's arms wrap around him in return and they stay that way until Brand can feel his heart return to its normal rate.

As they peel apart, Addam smiles at them. "He said your name," he informs Rune proudly. Brand blinks. He had, hadn't he? 

Rune beams up at him and squeezes him again. "Brand," he murmurs and it's pride and joy and thankfulness all in one. 

Brand smiles back. 

------

It's easier, after that. Somehow speaking that once has unlocked something in his brain, letting the words trickle out from wherever they had been locked up. It's not always easy; sometimes if he tries to think about it too much they get dammed up behind his tongue again and he's left frustrated and wordless. It seems almost that the less he tries, the more instinctual it is and the easier he can talk. 

"Rune" is his first word, that day in spring. 

"Thanks" is his second, said instinctually to Addam a few days later when Addam sets a coffee down in front of him at the breakfast table. The joyful smile Addam gives in return warms him to his core. 

"Fuck off" are his third and fourth. Mayan is the recipient of those ones one day when Brand is tired and sore from his PT and Mayan insists on pushing him further and further in their training bout. The gleeful look Mayan gets at him speaking makes him want to say it all over again but of course when he wants to, the words don't come. Fortunately, Mayan has had decades of interpreting Brand's glowers and knows what he means all the same. It pulls a rare laugh from the elder Companion and that in of itself is almost worth all of the aches and pains. 

He's getting better though. It is slow going, oh so fucking slow, but he is making progress. He can go from sitting to standing on his own and can get up off the floor now too, even if it takes him first finding his hands and knees and pushing himself upwards from there instead of gracefully rolling to his feet like he used to be able to before. 

His motor coordination is getting better too. He holds silverware now just as good as the rest of them and is working on Mayan's resolve to let him start training with knives again, although Mayan seems to think he'd cut his own leg off. Hell, maybe he would. He's getting better though and that counts for something. 

He still sleeps with Rune and Addam, nestled in between them. He tried one night returning to his own bed in the room next door but it felt wrong, too big and too cold despite the bed itself being far smaller than Rune's king-sized bed. He gave up after a few hours of lying awake staring up at the ceiling far above his head. Rune and Addam were happy to welcome him back. 

He can feel them now, just a little. That's another new thing. It started that day on the beach and it's only grown since then. 

Brand has taken to going to the sanctum with Rune when he goes these days. He sits alongside Rune, eyes closed in silent meditation and just feels. Now that he's looking for it, he can find that formerly impenetrable wall in his mind and he can feel the cracks starting to spread in it too. He sits there for hours, picking at the gaps until they become larger and more emotion can spill through. He and Rune test his work after every sitting, seeing how much Rune can push through to him and how much he can send back. It's a work in progress but it's progress all the same. 

It lets him feel closer to him and Addam too. He can feel their bonds stretching three ways between them - him to Addam, Addam to Rune, and Rune back to him, and then all of that in reverse too. It makes him feel connected to them and he loves it. It's just a tiny reminder of his boys during the day, like no matter where he goes, he carries a tiny piece of them along with him. It's perfect. 

------

It's a year and a half after he opens his eyes that he asks about it. 

They're lying in bed together, Addam at his left and Rune on his right. The lights are low; Rune is finishing up reading something and Addam is watching a video on his phone. 

"What happened?" Brand asks. He feels Rune still beside him.  

Addam shifts first. "To you, you mean?" 

Brand nods. "I'm not like you. Or Rune. Something happened." 

He can feel sorrow wash forward from Rune for a brief second before it's abruptly tugged back and locked away. "Oh, Brand." 

Brand turns to look at him. Rune closes his book and takes his time setting it on the nightstand. "You don't have to be like us," Rune finally says. "We will love you regardless." 

Brand frowns at that. He feels like there's something Rune is dancing around that he won't say. "But I used to be different," he insists. "Better. Than this. Right?" 

There are tears welling in Rune's eyes. "You got hurt," he says in a fragile voice, taking Brand's hand in his own and lacing their fingers together. "You were protecting us and you got hurt." 

A kiss presses against his shoulder from behind. "You will get there again, Brandon," Addam promises. "Just give it time." 

Brand lets the conversation go. He doesn't know how to express that that wasn't what he was worried about. 

------

He asks Mayan next. One day after their training session he sets his blunted knives aside, reaching for the water bottle he left sitting on the edge of the room. He regards the taller man as he takes a long swig. 

"What happened to me?" Brand asks when he's done. Mayan gives him a knowing look. 

"Are you asking because you want to learn from your actions or torture yourself with the knowledge of where you went wrong?" Mayan says bluntly. Brand scowls at him. 

"The first one." 

Mayan raises an eyebrow. "You do not need to know to get better," he points out. "Let us go again." 

"I'm tired," Brand shoots back. "Just tell me what fucking happened. We're done for the day." 

"You think you will not be tired when your enemies come for you again?" Mayan asks. "Do you think they will wait until you wake up well rested with your morning coffee at hand before they come for you?" He laughs. "Think again." 

Brand grabs for his knives and moves into a ready position. He can tell this conversation won't go anywhere. 

He ends up flat on his back a moment later, Mayan's twin knives tucked beneath his chin. Brand taps the floor to show his acknowledgement of the defeat.  

Mayan pauses. "I will tell you when you are good enough to best me," he offers. Brand's eyes narrow. 

"Have I ever bested you?" he asks. 

Mayan offers him a hand up but only smiles. 

------

Corrine is his next chance. He corners her one evening in the library. 

"Listen," he starts. "I know something fucking happened to make me like this and I can't train to fix it if I don't know what it was, alright? You have to help me with this." 

Corinne's eyes turn sad. "Brand," she warns. 

"Please," he tries. "One Companion to another. I'm better now. Stronger. Whatever it was, I can handle it."  

She turns her head away. "It isn't my story to tell." 

"Then whose is it?" he demands. 

She levels him with an even look. "Rune's," she answers. "You need to talk to Rune." 

------ 

He talks to Rune. 

"I need to know," Brand presses. Rune shakes his head. 

"No, Brand. I won't."  

"Why not?" he demands. "Why shouldn't I know what happened to me? Why are you hiding this from me?" 

"Because I don't want it to happen again!" Rune nearly shouts, fisting a hand in Brand's shirt. "I can't lose you again, do you understand me? I can't." There are tears of grief welling in his eyes. 

"You didn't," Brand insists. "I'm still here." 

"Perhaps," Addam suggests gently from behind him. "There are ways we could...check." He's choosing his words carefully. He's dancing around some hidden subject too but he seems to be trying to convince Rune also so Brand doesn't call him out on it. 

Rune swipes at his cheeks. "I can't lose him again, Addam. I can't." His voice breaks over the last word. Addam's arms close around him and Brand steps closer too, reaching out to tangle their fingers together. Rune swipes at his face once, then again when the tears don't stop. He's scared of something. It worries Brand to his core. What the hell happened that scared him so badly? 

He needs to know. 

------

They make an appointment with Ciaran. 

Rune still hasn't said much else and Addam is also being tight-lipped about his injury, leaving Brand feeling very on-edge. Rune is visibly anxious about this visit although not about seeing Ciaran himself, which is puzzling. 

Ciaran welcomes them at the door, then leads them to a room with several long, low couches. He waves them towards the seating. Addam and Rune sit on one, Ciaran on another, and Brand settles on the edge of a third. 

Rune bites at his nail before Addam gently pulls his hand away and covers it with his own. 

"If," Rune starts quietly, "There was a geas on someone. Could you tell?" He sounds terrified. His gaze never leaves his Companion's. 

Ciaran's eyes snap onto Brand's. "I could." 

"Will you look?" Rune whispers. "Please?" 

Ciaran takes in Rune's scared face and Addam trying to be brave for him. He sees Brand putting together the pieces of what that could entail, horror slowly dawning. "I will," he answers. 

He stands, coming closer and placing one gentle hand on Brand's cheek. His thumb touches Brand's temple and then all of a sudden Brand can tell he isn't alone in his head. Ciaran is thankfully quick. There is what feels like a snap of static that runs through Brand's head but then Ciaran is stepping back, shaking his head. 

"There is nothing," he says. "There was in the past, but it no longer has hold over him." 

All Brand can focus on is Rune's face, crumbling from terrified hope to relief all in one fell go. "He's safe now?" Rune pleads.

"He is," Ciaran confirms. 

Ciaran excuses himself as Rune comes to Brand's side, kneeling in front of him. Two identical tears slip down his face as he takes Brand's hands in his own. Brand looks down at him, mind whirling.

"There was a geas?" he asks slowly. Rune nods. 

"Since when?" 

Rune's face is open and sorrowful. He looks penitent, on his knees on the floor. He doesn't answer, just looks at Brand, eyes sad, and that is all Brand needs to know.

He feels sick. "They had me under a geas for decades?" he whispers, horrified. "Did you know?" 

Rune's hands grip his tighter. "I'm sorry," he says. "It would have killed you if you had known. It almost did when they-." 

"It could have killed you!" Brand protests loudly. "Rune-" He bites his tongue before he starts saying things he'll regret. Fury burns hot in his chest.

Addam is at his side. Brand doesn't remember him moving. "If Rune should be blamed, then so should I," he offers softly. "It was to keep you safe, Brandon. That is all. Neither of us could have lived with ourselves had we lost you needlessly."  

"If there was any way I could have told you without putting you in harm's way, I would have," Rune promises him. "I swear it, Brand." 

The tug is back and this time Brand knows how to accept it. He lets the emotion sink in, seeping through the cracks in the wall a little at a time until suddenly, the whole wall gives way and emotion sings through him in a flood of feeling. He can feel Rune's guilt and fear and love and pain and sorrow, and sorrow, and sorrow.

He knows he would have done the exact same thing if he were in Rune's place. 

He lets his own anger and fear and frustration seep through but it's steadily being replaced by understanding and forgiveness and love, and love, and love. He was a walking fucking threat for Rune for decades but he can feel Rune's grief in holding the secret captive and it tempers his anger. He would would keep any secret in the world too if someone was holding a knife over Rune's throat. He'd be really fucking hypocritical if he held that against him.

"I'm still mad at you," Brand croaks. There are tears on his own face somehow too. "You're never allowed to pull that shit again. Never." 

Rune laughs and then sobs and then laughs again and then they're all laughing and crying, three sets of arms around one another until he doesn't know where one set ends and the next begins. 

When they eventually pull back, Brand grabs the hem of his shirt and mops at his damp face. "That was the stupidest fucking thing you've done in a while," he warns Rune. "Don't ever keep something like that from me again, you asshole." 

Rune shakes his head vehemently. "Never," he promises. "I never wanted to."

"It could have killed you. I could have killed you." 

Rune is already shaking his head. "We're tallas, Brand," he smiles. "You never could have. It saved us twenty five years ago and it saved you two years ago and it always will save you if you need it."

Brand can feel it then, that now-familiar warmth traveling between the three of them, like honey and adoration and love and everything good in the world singing through his veins and knows that it is true.

------

Chapter Text

Two years prior... 

Brand stands beside Rune and Addam, his gun drawn and aimed. The man beneath them on the ground spits a mouthful of blood at their shoes. Brand's aim doesn't waver. 

He is the last, the Hare. The last one, run down to ground. The last one on their list of tormenters who haunted them and stalked them from the shadows for decades. The very last of them all.

And yet, he smiles up at them, like he knows something they don't, even beaten and broken down. "You made a grievous mistake," he chortles. "Even after all this, he's still mine," the man hisses, smiling up at Brand with bloodied teeth.

Brand has a split-second to wonder what he means before brutal pain lances through his head like a red-hot ice pick driven through his brain. The pain is worse than anything he's ever felt before. It sends him to his knees. It doesn't end. 

He dimly hears someone shouting his name, sheer panic in their voice and he's also aware of someone screaming in raw, throat-tearing pain who he thinks might be him but all he can focus on is wrapping his arms around his head as tightly as he can so that when his brain inevitably explodes into chunks of viscera like it feels it might, at least he won't let it hurt Rune or Addam.

He clamps down on their bonds and draws them closed against the floodgate of pain with every ounce of willpower he has left as his brain shreds itself apart because at the end of it all, he won't let his pain also be Rune's. Rune has suffered through enough already in his life; if he can only spare him this too, it will be his last gift...

The pain tears through his memories and his thoughts alike, leaving nothing but mindless pulp in their wake. It hurts too much to even scream, then he forgets entirely how to do even that. 

He tastes blood.

------

Rune leaves the Hare as a pile of ash that blows away in the wind. He deserved worse but there's no time.

Brand is convulsing on the ground, Addam's arms already around him as he attempts to use a healing spell to no avail. Rune knows there's nothing to heal.

Addam's eyes are wide with horror. "What did he do to him?"

"It's the geas," Rune whispers in fear. Brand's screams have faded to hoarse groans of agony. He bleeds from his nose and ears and eyes, crimson streaks draining his life away as he shudders in Addam's arms. "He activated the geas."

His worst nightmare has come true. 

Rune falls to his knees in front of them, his shaking hands coming to cradle either side of Brand's face and draw him closer, forehead to forehead. He closes his eyes and draws on the deepest well of magic he can, funneling the Arcana Majeure and their renewed talla bond and every ounce of love he's ever felt for his Companion. He can feel Addam's fear and helplessness and love across from him in their bond and pulls on that too, pushing every bit of strength he can towards Brand. He cradles Brand's face in his hands. 

"Don't you give up on me, Brandon Saint John," Rune whispers. "You come back to me. Come back to me," he orders. "Come back to me."

------

And, in the end...

He does.