Bucky didn't figure out it was a dream until later, when he woke up in his own bed and had a chance to think it over. All he knew while it was happening was that he was out on the street, and it was late--so late there wasn't anyone else out--meaning, so late he must've snuck out, because there was no way his folks would have let him out the door at this time of night--and there was a kid crying somewhere nearby.
He looked into one alley, then another. In the third one, he found a boy around his own age, sitting on a milk carton and sobbing like the world was ending.
"Hey, you," he said. "You okay?"
The boy's head shot up. His eyes were red enough the crying must've been going on for a while before Bucky heard it. "I am well enough," he said, without taking any of the measures most of the kids Bucky knew would have (which is to say he didn't ask Bucky what he was looking at, or if he wanted his lights punched out). "Word came to Cair Paravel earlier this night to say that my father, King Caspian, has been injured in a skirmish, far from home."
"Oh," Bucky said. He had a lot of questions, starting with why this kid was talking like that--didn't he know someone was going to hit him in the face if he kept that up?--and ending with what Cair Paravel was, but in the end he went with, "How bad's he hurt?"
"Badly. They say he will live, but..."
Bucky got this, all the way down in his bones. "My friend Steve gets sick a lot," he offered. "His mom always says it's not that bad, but..."
The way her eyes looked sometimes, when she said it; the way she'd always glance over at Steve, like she was checking to see if he believed it. How red her eyes were some days, when Bucky came over to see Steve when he was stuck in bed. Steve never cried--Steve never seemed to think of crying for a minute--but his mom's eyes looked just as red as this kid's too much of the time.
Bucky stood there awkwardly for another few seconds (which felt like about three hours, the way standing around awkwardly usually does). Then the kid wiped a hand across his eyes and stood up. "Though I feel you must have guessed it already, I would be remiss if I did not introduce myself. I am Prince Rilian."
"I'm Bucky. Bucky Barnes."
They shook, then talked of other things for a while. Later, Bucky would wonder why he hadn't asked Rilian what, exactly, he thought he was prince of...but at the time, it didn't even occur to him. Instead, they cast around for subjects for a minute, before settling on games. Bucky couldn't quite figure out what Rilian meant, when he talked about the games he played, or the friends he played them with, all of whom had names like Squirrel or Fox; and Rilian's brow furrowed when Bucky talked about stickball and other street games.
As they talked, they walked down the dark, still-quiet streets. At times, the buildings to either side seemed to shiver and change, so that instead they were walking in a forest somewhere instead, with huge trees to either side of them, and a dirt road beneath their feet.
As weird as it all was, Bucky didn't think to question any of it until it was over, when he woke up in his own bed without any memory of sneaking in a window, and with all the questions he hadn't asked Rilian bursting up from under the surface. He wasn't tired enough, either, to figure he'd really been out half the night with a kid who was the prince of someplace Bucky hadn't asked about, but suspected had to be a really long way away.
In the end, Bucky had to figure it had just been a dream. A neat dream, and one that still seemed solid and clear in the light of day, where his other dreams always faded in the sun no matter how real they'd seemed while they were happening...but a dream, whatever way you shook it.
*
A few months later, Rilian came back, right when Bucky had stopped wondering if he was going to have another one of those dreams.
"How's your dad?" Bucky asked.
"Quite well, now," Rilian said, brightening, which was how Bucky learned that his face shone more than most people's when he smiled. "Though at first he refused the Cordial. Drinian told him he was being a fool, but my father told him...well, I'm not sure, because no one would tell me, but then my mother told him he was being a fool, and so he gave in. His leg was healed completely, and he walks without a limp, where he'd have had one for the rest of his days otherwise."
"That's great," Bucky said, even though he'd only gotten about half of that other than the part where Rilian said his dad was doing okay.
"And your friend?"
"Better," Bucky said, which was true. Februaries were always rough, but Aprils tended to be one of Steve's better months.
*
It wasn't until a couple years later, when they'd met about ten more times, that one of them finally pointed out how weird it all was. Even though Bucky thought about it constantly when he was awake, and planned all the questions he was going to make sure to ask Rilian the next time, only to completely forget them in the moment, it ended up being Rilian who said, "Haven't you noticed how strange it is?"
"How strange what is?"
"We only ever seem to meet during the darkest of nights...and wherever we are, our surroundings seem to change all around us. It's as if we're someplace thinner, somehow."
"Yeah," Bucky said. "Yeah, I noticed." It was as if some spell had been lifted, so that he was then able to say, "I'm always in the city at night, but I don't think you are."
"No," Rilian said. "But I see your city sometimes, I think...buildings taller than any tree, and a strange rough cobblestone beneath my feet. I wonder...could it be you're from another world entirely?"
"Are you?"
"I think perhaps I must be," Rilian said.
*
The next time Rilian came, six months later, he opened by saying, "I have been thinking upon the matter, and asking questions of my tutors. If we are from different worlds, as it now seems we must be, I believe I know the reason we are permitted to meet in our dreams."
"Why's that?"
"My mother is daughter to a star. Stars may journey wherever they please. As I am half-human, I cannot so journey in my waking life (at least, not yet; I intend to attempt the matter again when I enter my maturity)...but my dreams are another tale altogether."
A little questioning led Bucky to learn exactly what kind of star Rilian meant...and while he wouldn't have believed anyone who tried to sell him that in his own real life, he couldn't help but believe it utterly here. And, maybe because Rilian had been able to say it, and Bucky to believe it, he was finally able to ask, "So what are you the prince of, anyway?"
So Rilian told him all about Narnia, and Bucky in turn told him all about Brooklyn, and this time they had about a million questions for each other, saved up from all the months where they'd forgotten them as soon as they fell to sleep.
*
Growing up, they saw each other every few months, and every few months one or both of them was a little taller, or a little broader, or had a changing voice. For the most part, Bucky had stopped thinking about Rilian when they weren't together. It seemed easier to let what happened in dreams stay in his dreams, so that he could focus on what was happening in the real world. It was where he was most of the time, after all. It made sense. More sense than spending all his time thinking about and pining over some guy he only saw in his dreams, when the real world had plenty of girls he could see anytime.
When Bucky was twenty, the visits started to slow down. Instead of seeing Rilian a few times a year, he'd see him every year or even every two. Then it slowed down a little more. By the time he'd been drafted, it had been a couple years since the last time, and he'd started to think, when he let himself think about it at all, that maybe he wasn't going to see Rilian anymore (and sometimes even that maybe they had been dreams all along).
So, when he ended up walking down the streets of Brooklyn the night before he was set to leave for basic training, still wearing his uniform and with no idea where Steve or their dates had gotten to, he wasn't really expecting anyone. When a guy with a sword stepped in front of him from out of an alley, it took him a second to recognize Rilian. His eyes were just as red as they'd been the first time they met, but there was something else shining out of them, too--something Bucky would recognize later, when he thought about it more, because how many times had he seen that kind of look in Steve's eyes, when he was dead-set on trying to enlist for the third or fourth or fifth time (and nevermind that the third or fourth or fifth doctor wasn't going to be any more keen to take him than any of the others had been)?
"Long time, no see," Bucky said cheerfully, feeling at once a fierce delight (at seeing a beloved friend) and a piercing guilt (at having doubted Rilian's existence for the last year or two). "...You okay, buddy?"
Rilian didn't answer. Just looked to the left, and to the right, like there was anything there but the sidewalk and the street. "Have you spied it anywhere about?"
"...Spied what?"
Rilian looked straight at Bucky then. His eyes were wild, and there was something else in them, too. Bucky didn't remember Rilian ever looking at him like that. Like he didn't matter. Like he was in the way. Even when they both had a lot going on, Rilian had always had time for him. Bucky hadn't realized how kind his eyes always were, until that kindness was totally gone.
"What happened?" Bucky asked. "What are you looking for?"
Before Rilian could tell him--if he even would have--he disappeared again. One second he was there. The next, he was gone, leaving Bucky to wonder what was happening over in Rilian's world, to make him look like that.
*
Basic training, then Europe; through all of it, Bucky couldn't help but wondering whether Rilian was okay. He couldn't seem to manage to separate his real life and his dream life anymore, kept seeing Rilian's eyes every time he closed his own.
The next time he saw Rilian was when he was on Zola's table. He never was sure whether he really did see him, or whether it was a dream (an actual dream, the kind that hadn't happened so much as he'd wanted it to happen). For one thing, although he was on the streets of Brooklyn again, and it was night there, he kept flashing back to where he really was--on that cold steel table, with bright lights in his eyes, and people in lab coats talking about him in German so that he didn't understand more than a word here or a word there, and injections that burned through his entire body after they gave them to him. Sometimes, after they gave them, the table would rattle and rock beneath him; later, he'd be pretty sure he'd been having fits.
He'd flashed between his city and Rilian's forest before, but never between his real life and the dream...still, when Rilian showed up, standing in front of him dressed all in black this time, Bucky wanted to believe it was really him.
"Did you find it?" he asked, because asking was better than getting into what was happening to him, somewhere out there. "Whatever it was you were looking for?"
"I know not of what you speak," Rilian said, in a kind of snotty tone. "Who are you, and to what do you refer?"
"I'm Bucky," Bucky said. "Bucky Barnes. You know me."
"I'm quite certain I do not," Rilian said. His hand dropped to his sword. "What sorcery is this? I warn you now: If you intend any harm to my lady, I will strike you down with neither hesitation nor mercy."
"...I have no idea what you're talking about," Bucky said.
By now he was pretty sure it was a hallucination after all. It had to be. That was better than the alternative, which was that something even worse had happened to Rilian this time. He was still looking at Bucky like he was in the way, or even an enemy...but behind that look was none of the wildness or purpose that had been there the last time. There was none of the kindness, not even any of the crazy. As far as Bucky could tell, there wasn't anything behind it at all.
"What happened to you?" he asked, stepping forward...
But that was when he flashed back to the table and what was happening there. It was a trip that only lasted a few seconds...but when he flashed back to the street again, it was just as empty as Rilian's eyes had been, when you got under the surface of things.
When Bucky flashed back to his own real life the next time, there wasn't anything left in the street to take him back out of it. All he could do was stay there, and take it...and worry about what was happening with Rilian, a whole world (or maybe a few) away.
After a while, Steve showed up, and then Bucky had to split his worrying between the two of them (or the three of them, sometimes, when he let himself think about what they'd done to him...which he didn't, most of the time). A while after that, Bucky took a fall, and after that...after that, he didn't really remember anyone well enough to do any more worrying.
*
The Soldier woke, and did not know where he was. It was night, and still, and quiet, but there was nothing within sight that he recognized.
That much wasn't unusual--every place Outside was unfamiliar, known only in that there was an objective, and he had been told how to get from wherever he was to where he could achieve it. No, what was off about this was that he couldn't remember his mission. There must have been one, for him to be here instead of frozen. He wasn't permitted to be here, otherwise. And he wasn't...he hadn't defected. He hadn't run. He would remember if he had, as he remembered the other times. They always left those memories, or parts of them--left them, so he'd remember what he'd been punished for.
If he didn't remember the mission, if he didn't complete it...there would be consequences. He would be punished. He would be wiped.
The Soldier was not used to wanting, and he did not want now. There was nothing for him to want. But shining through the lack-of-want was this: he did not want to be wiped again. This not-want eclipsed the lack-of-want; it subsumed whatever else there might have been. It was what drove him to act, when his finger hesitated on the trigger and he could not think of why. It was the thing that caused him to flatten out every thought he might have had, as soon as he noticed it burbling up. If he didn't think, if he didn't feel, then no thought and no feeling would show on his face. If nothing showed, he wouldn't be wiped.
(He didn't know he'd used the same strategy any number of times in the past thirty years, or that he'd always failed, in the end. But even if he had known, it wouldn't have changed anything: They were always improving him, updating him; he'd have decided there was a chance it would work this time.)
The mission. He couldn't remember. He searched himself and found no weapons, no instructions; he walked to the corner of the street and back again and found no answers there, either. He stood there again, in the place he'd been when he'd woken up, but as hard as he tried, he could not remember what orders had brought him here.
He had been standing there for some time when he heard the sound. Someone, somewhere, breathing in short, hard gasps. It was the only thing he'd found to follow, and so the Soldier did, not knowing if this was the mission or a distraction, a trap or even a test.
The sound seemed to come from just around the corner, but when the Soldier got there, it had moved on, sounding like it was coming from the next block. He followed it doggedly, just as he'd followed some targets over terrain that had been much more difficult to navigate than a sidewalk. The other times, he'd had a weapon with him, a sniper rifle or a knife or a needle--whatever he needed to make the termination look like what it was supposed to look like. This time, he figured he'd have to make do with his hands, if the sound was the target after all. He'd done it before, though he didn't remember where, or when.
He'd tracked the sound for a few miles when he came to an alley. He looked in, like he'd looked in all the others, and instead of seeing nothing, which was exactly what had been in all of those, he found a man bound to a chair. He was writhing, twisting his arms and hands in a way the Soldier recognized: as if, if he fought his restraints hard enough, for long enough, he would manage to free himself. From the way he was tied, it was clear he didn't have a chance, not unless the chair was much flimsier than it looked; but he was still so focused on trying that it was several minutes before he looked up to see the Soldier.
"Help me," the man said, and it was so clearly an order and not a request that the Soldier nearly moved to do it. "Free me from this hateful chair. Whoever you are, standing there in the shadow. I cannot make out your features...but I can see from the way you stand that you are as Human as I am, and not one of her Earthmen. Surely our greatest desires must be the same: to return to the surface and to our homes, and to have another guard our back on the long journey."
The Soldier had been begged before. He'd been cajoled, threatened, bribed. So although the man in the chair had started out strong, it was easy to see the desperation underneath, the more he kept talking. What wasn't easy to see was what he was supposed to do. Was this the target? If it was, was he supposed to end it now, or was he supposed to extract intelligence first? Or was this intended to be a different story, one where he untied the man from the chair, and staged it to look like a mugging?
There was no point in asking the man--targets always thought he should let them go, as long as they promised to keep their mouths shut (about what was usually outside of the mission parameters...and usually taken from the Soldier again as soon as anyone knew he had it in the first place)--and so, in the absence of a missions or a plan, what the Soldier ended up saying was, "There's no reason you shouldn't be able to see me. I'm standing in the light."
It was true. There was a lightbulb on the wall (though the Soldier thought, so distantly he didn't know he thought it, that there hadn't been one before). The man should have been able to see his face from where he sat. It didn't seem like a dangerous discrepancy, but it was a discrepancy all the same.
The man in the chair went completely still--not the sagging type of still and not the flopping type either, but rigid-still--and said, in a voice much more strangled than before, "Your voice--it sounds so like that of a dear friend of my youth."
"I'm not your friend," the Soldier said.
"Still, I would that you would come closer, so I may see for myself, and banish his image from my mind, if indeed you and he are not the same." The man moved, this time as if he were trying to scoot the chair closer...but either it was too heavy to be moved, or it was bolted to something, because it didn't budge an inch. "What is your name?"
"I don't have one," the Soldier said, but although this was starting to seem like it had to be a test, and the way to beat a test was to never do what someone who wasn't his handler wanted him to do, he stepped forward.
When he did, the man in the chair gasped. "Bucky? Do you not know me? It is I, Rilian of Narnia."
"Never heard of you."
The man in the chair looked at him for what seemed like a long time, then gave a curt nod. "I would that I can say I do not comprehend how that could be so. But I have been under my own enchantment these last few years, lucid for but a single hour of each night--and I can see in your eyes that you have been under your own enchantment." His head jerked to the side, like he was listening to something the Soldier couldn't hear; when he turned back, there was a new panic in his face. It was something like what had been there before, only wilder, and even more desperate. "It must be that my hour nears its end, for I hear them coming--her, and some of her guards. They will untie my bonds a few minutes from now, when I no longer know myself; I will go with her, as I go every night. Until the next hour comes upon me, I will know only what she wants me to know, and know only lies."
Something was moving, underneath the surface. Just as the Soldier was never quite certain what had caused him to run, the few times he had run, so he did not know what strong dark current from below led him to step closer to the man. Close enough to touch. Close enough to reach for the ties around the man's wrists.
"It will do no good," said Rilian. "Do you not remember? We are in a dream. We may take nothing we have done with us when we return to the waking world. It has always been thus."
"You're not dreaming," the Soldier said--and so saying, ripped away the bonds tying him to that chair, one after the other. "You said you're only awake for one hour a night. You said you're awake now."
As the man jumped up from the chair, there came a sound of footsteps from somewhere beyond the wall. The man dashed quickly to the right, picked up something the Soldier couldn't see; it made a rasping sound, like metal on metal. The man turned, his back toward the Soldier now, and for a moment they were somewhere other than the alley, in a room with a fireplace, and now the Soldier could see that what he had in his hand was a sword.
There was a closed door in the room, right where the end of the alley was supposed to be. As it opened, the man whirled toward it--
And then the Soldier was back in the alley. For a moment, he thought he heard a clanging sound, steel on steel...but then the sound was gone, and he was standing there in the quiet, alone. Even the chair was gone from the alley, leaving no sign it had ever been there to begin with.
The Soldier stayed there for a while, waiting--for the man to come back, or for someone to tell him whether he had passed or failed the test.
But no one came, and eventually he must have woken up, though he couldn't have said just when it happened, or where the line was between dreaming and waking, or even what he was doing or where he was when he finally did wake up.
*
The Soldier was clamped into the chair, and the chair was sitting in an alley. There was a lightbulb shining on the wall, darkness and quiet beyond its perimeter. He didn't know how long he'd been here, or when he'd gotten there from where he'd been before, the usual spot in the usual room with the usual questions. He didn't know where they were, the doctors and handler who would usually have been there to do the questioning.
He was alone there until he wasn't. First, he sat stiff and still, in case it was a test. Then he looked down, surveying the machinery for any weakness. He didn't find any...and when he looked up, someone was in the alley with him, an unknown man with rage and something else--something strange--in his face.
"Bucky?" the man asked.
It was a question, but one with no answer the Soldier knew. "I don't understand," he said, because not understanding wasn't usually seen as defiance.
"I do, I think," the man said, slowly. "The last time we met, you freed me from my bonds. Now I am meant to free you from yours."
He drew his sword (he had a sword, apparently), and advanced upon the Soldier and the chair.
"That won't work," the Soldier said, because he'd tried...he didn't know what he'd tried, couldn't actually remember having tried anything. It was just that the knowledge was there, a solid foundation beneath floors of rot that suggested experience of some kind at some time before now. It was a lot like the way he knew how to use a gun, or drive a big truck into a building and jump out of the driver's seat shooting.
"We shall see," the man said, and raised the sword, and brought the blade down on the cuff over the Soldier's left wrist.
Three blows later, the chair and the cuffs looked no different, but the sword was in pieces on the asphalt. The expression on the man's face had changed--the rage and the something else was still there, but now there was something pained in there with it. It hurt to look at, though the Soldier could not have said why.
"I have failed you again," the man said. "And worse, it is not the first time I have so done. You needed me years ago, but I was so blinded by my enchantment that I did not see, did not act. Perhaps I could have done something then. Perhaps it would be different for you now, if I had. Of all my regrets, this must now be the greatest."
The Soldier had little idea of what to say about any of this. Perhaps that was why he said, without knowing he meant to say it, or even if he agreed with it, "It's all right."
"Nonetheless, though I have failed to free you from this accursed chair (and if it is not enchanted in quite the same manner as mine own silver chair, it seems to me that they are alike enough in intent), I think...perhaps the barrier between worlds will be thin once more, when you are to return to your own. I will stay with you, and challenge whoever comes for you to battle. I do not know if I shall succeed--but if I do not, it will not be because I have forsaken you once more."
So saying, he drew a dagger from somewhere, and set to waiting. The Soldier recognized the look: that of someone on a stakeout, readying himself for something to happen so he could complete his mission.
The Soldier had never been comfortable in this chair. He'd never once been able to relax while sitting in it, and knowing that whatever was going to happen to him was going to start out bad and get worse from there. He wasn't able to relax now, either, even though he'd finally placed the 'something else' in the man's gaze as something pretty close to kindness. (He'd never seen kindness, but he thought he knew it anyway. Maybe it was another foundation beneath the rest, unseen but keeping everything else from falling down.)
So he and the man waited together for a few minutes, until footsteps started from the other side of the wall. They echoed, not like footsteps on the asphalt on a quiet night, but like footsteps on linoleum in a narrow hall. The sound was enough to put the Soldier into a cold sweat, and to make his teeth grind together.
"They're coming," he said.
"All will be well," the man replied, stepping between the chair and the wall. "This I swear to you."
He stood there, solid and unmoving--
And then he was gone, and so was the alley. The Soldier was back where he'd been before, the usual spot in the usual room with the usual...
"Mission report," the handler said.
The Soldier put the man away, as he'd learned to do with everything it was better for him not to think or remember or feel, and answered.
*
After he gave his report, the Soldier was sent on another mission. This one involved tracking the target deep into the wilderness, and took three weeks. There was a lot of waiting, and a lot of time to think. By the time he was done, the Soldier was almost sure he remembered the man, in the same way he'd remembered the indestructibility of the chair, and the way he'd remembered what kindness looked like. Nothing else would explain why he'd been less wary of the man than he usually was of anyone new, when new people always meant new pain.
He was in the chair again, waiting to be asked for the mission report (never offer information that hasn't been asked for, never show initiative when you're the weapon instead of the person aiming it...other foundations, lessons he didn't remember learning but knew all the same, down in his bones) when a sound came from out in the hall. Not the usual sound, footsteps and voices echoing, but something else. A rattling noise, and the voices that could be heard between rattles were crying or screaming or saying things like "please don't shoot, please."
Usually, the Soldier was the one causing those kinds of sounds, far away from here. When he was the one doing it, the voices usually didn't take very long to stop--but this time, they kept going, either getting softer and softer, like they were getting farther away, or outright changing what they were saying ("just down that hallway" or "it's in there").
Then the door opened, and a man stepped inside, carrying a really big gun. The people around the Soldier raised their weapons, but the man mowed them down like the Soldier was pretty sure he hadn't everyone else from outside. When there was no one left to aim anything at him, the man stepped over to the chair, and that was when the Soldier recognized him, more by the look on his face than anything else.
"You can't be here," the Soldier said, knowing it with certainty, another foundation. "This isn't a dream. It's not even part of a dream. This is real."
"I am half a star. I may go where I please, as long as Aslan wills it so," said Rilian (another foundation, and they were coming quickly now, and with them memories, mere flashes but more than the Soldier had had since the last time they'd wiped him; and he knew, with another certainty, that these flashes were the main reason they'd ever wiped him). "Now, there must be a way to free you. Do you know it?"
"Over there," the Soldier said, gesturing with his chin towards the controls. "It's one of those."
He guided Rilian through pushing the right buttons, pulling the right levers. They freed his arms first, then his legs, and then he was standing, and Rilian was there, and even if the Soldier couldn't remember much more than flashes, he knew they'd known each other for a really long time. For longer than he'd been the Soldier, maybe (and knew that even suspecting there had been a before was another thing that would have had them wipe him).
"Where are we going now?" the Soldier asked, when they had stood there for a few seconds without anything else happening, or either of them disappearing.
"...I'm not certain. I know not the lay of the land, nor how you may wish to proceed. Perhaps we will take the battle to the other sorcerers in your world, to prevent them from ever again casting such a spell on another. Or perhaps you will consent to come with me to Cair Paravel, where I now sit in rule as king. The air is healing there, and there are none in that land who would harm you. My subjects love you without ever having known your face, for there is not one of them who does not know what you did for me."
"What did I do?" the Soldier asked, but by the time he'd finished asking, he'd remembered pulling at the bonds of a chair Rilian sat in, Rilian picking up a sword from the void and swirling around to face whatever was coming for him. "I don't know what I want."
Rilian nodded. "I thought it might be so. Perhaps it would be best if we found some quiet corner of your world, where you might rest and begin to recover yourself. It is a long and taxing process, but one I know myself--I may be able to help guide you through the very worst of it."
"...Maybe," the Soldier said, though he had so little idea of what he wanted that he wasn't even sure he wanted that. "But first, we need to get out of the building. They're going to send people after us. They've probably already done it."
Rilian handed him the machine gun (and in so doing, his fingers brushed the Soldier's, leading him to wonder, over yet another foundation, if this could be something now that they weren't dreaming anymore...but whatever that meant, it slipped away from him just as quickly as it had come, so that he wouldn't even remember thinking about it until around the time he remembered his name, a few days later), and took a somewhat smaller gun from behind his back. "I do not think our exit will be quite so quiet as my entrance."
"...That wasn't quiet."
"It was for the first few hours of my journey. Admittedly, it became less so toward the end. I became lost, and was forced to ask for directions. From there, I could no longer think of stealth, but of speed alone."
It was a good thing he had; if he'd waited long enough for word to get back here, they might very well have sent the Soldier after him. What was going on now would have been a lot different, if they had; even if he'd hesitated with his finger on the trigger, it wouldn't have changed the way this all would have ended.
But that wasn't what had happened, and what would happen now would be something else, too.
"Let's go," the Soldier said, and stepped out into the hallway with Rilian covering his back.
He figured he could sort the rest of it out later, when he'd had a chance to think it over.