Chapter Text
Despite having expanded greatly while Dragon had been… out of commission, Ravenloss was by no means a sprawling metropolis. But that didn’t mean she enjoyed carrying her four sizable moving boxes through the underground city. It didn’t help that the inn, where she had been residing previously, was all the way on the other side of town. It could have been worse, she supposed. If she’d still been living in Falconreach, she would have needed to carry them to the portal in the dead of night, and then all the way down those stairs, which sounded like a recipe for disaster. Even then, she wouldn’t have asked for help. She was the hero of Lore; she had a reputation to uphold.
And if upholding that reputation meant awkwardly balancing all her belongings in her arms as she trekked across Ravenloss, then so be it.
“Dragon! You’re here!” Aegis exclaimed excitedly as she approached. She couldn’t see much over her stack, but he must have been waiting outside of the house for her to arrive.
“Of course I am,” she said under the strain of the weight. “I said I would be, didn’t I? Wait—I did say that, right? Did I get the date wrong? Because I already checked out of the inn, and I do not want to drag all of my stuff back to—”
“No, no, you got the date right,” Aegis assured her, closing the distance between them as Dragon continued to struggle under her load. “Do you want some help with that?”
She brushed him off. “I got it. Could you get the door, though?”
He obliged, and Dragon thanked him (though it came out as more of a grunt—she was really starting to feel like she was about to collapse under the weight of these boxes) as she stepped inside—
—and immediately lost her footing on the icy floor.
Aegis just managed to catch her before she hit the ground, but he wasn’t able to keep the box on top of her stack from sliding off. Both Weaver and Ally cringed as it hit the ground with a thud.
“Are you alright?” Aegis asked nervously as Dragon steadied herself and placed her three remaining boxes on the ground. “I’m sorry about that; we should probably get a rug or something…”
“I’m fine,” Dragon promised with a reassuring smile. “I don’t think there was anything breakable in that box, anyway.” She had thought ahead and put the one with her plushies on top, just in case of an incident like this one. She looked over at the stairs, then back down at the boxes, and frowned. “I… might have to take you up on that offer to help, though.”
“Of course!” Aegis smiled and picked up two of the boxes. “Why didn’t you say so sooner?”
“I have a reputation, Aegis.”
Aegis snorted at that, and Dragon shot him a glare. “I don’t doubt it!” he said defensively, leading her up the stairs. “Anyway, the bedroom is on the left here.” He shouldered the door open and stepped aside to let Dragon enter.
It was more than a little dusty, and the wooden bookcase against the left wall was rotten beyond repair. The dresser by the window, though, looked like it could be alright with a little TLC, and the metal bed frame was completely functional, if a little tarnished.
“I had to get a new mattress,” Aegis explained, and yeah, that was going to be her next observation. “The old one was full of spiders.”
“Ew,” Dragon commented, placing her boxes on the bed. “Thanks. Seriously, thanks. I am so glad I didn’t have to deal with that.”
“You’re very welcome.”
Dragon looked back at Aegis. He had set his boxes down but was still hovering (figuratively and literally) in the doorway, hesitant to enter.
“Want to help me unpack?” Dragon said. She wasn’t sure why he seemed so… uncomfortable .
“Oh… sure, if you want!” he agreed, with obviously forced enthusiasm that only served to deepen Dragon’s concern. “Where should we start?”
“We can make the bed first. My sheets and stuff are in one of those two boxes.”
They talked as they worked; first on making the bed, then dusting and sweeping, then carrying the bookcase down the stairs to be thrown away later. Much to Dragon’s relief, Aegis gradually seemed to be loosening up and was starting to act more like himself. By the time they were sorting through Dragon’s various trinkets, they were chatting comfortably about some weird monsters Dragon had recently encountered on some random escort.
“Uh, Dragon?” he asked out of the blue, interrupting a stretch of rambling. “Is this…?”
Dragon turned her attention from the poster she was hanging to where Aegis was kneeling on the floor. He had opened her box of plushies and was holding one of them up.
“Oh, hey! Big Aegis found Little Aegis!”
Aegis stared at his plush counterpart. “You have a plushie me? ”
“Yeah! There’s a Tomix in there too, and Riadne, and a bunch of other people you probably don’t know—”
“Why? ”
“No clue!” Dragon said cheerfully. “The guy at the store just had them, and I didn’t really bother to ask. Hey, I wonder if his shop is still around—we could talk to him about paying you some merchandising fees or something.”
Aegis didn’t seem to know how to respond, and yeah, Dragon couldn’t really blame him for that.
Soon, everything was unpacked. The bed was neatly made (with several extra layers of blankets to ward off the chill), posters were hung, and Dragon’s plushie collection was displayed on the dresser—except for Little Aegis, who was sitting in the place of honor of her bed. Mostly because Dragon wanted to see Big Aegis’s reaction.
“I’m… honored?”
“Good, because I don’t sleep with just any plushie,” Dragon said, and finally got a real laugh out of Aegis. That was something of a relief. As excited as he’d been when they’d first made this plan, Aegis still seemed a little on-edge, perhaps worried that Dragon would get cold feet and back out. Well, her feet were certainly cold, as was the rest of her. And maybe, right now, this place was threatening to bring certain icy memories to the forefront of her mind.
But seeing her friend laugh sealed it, she thought with a smile. There was no way she was going to leave now.