The east study looked exactly as Corin remembered it, the same tall shelves of old military histories, the same worn leather chairs arranged before the hearth, the same heavy oak desk where his father had spent countless evenings across Corin's whole childhood, reviewing dispatches long after everyone else in the household had gone to bed. His father sat in a wheeled chair near the fire, a blanket arranged over his legs despite the room's considerable warmth, and looked up at the sound of the door.
FTH: Corin.
His voice carried the same deep, familiar register it always had, and for one brief, disorienting moment, Corin's mind supplied the memory of his father standing, tall and composed, exactly as he'd always been, before the actual sight of him properly registered, and the disconnect between memory and reality landed with a quiet, devastating force.
COR: Father.
FTH: You made good time. I wasn't expecting you until tomorrow, at the earliest.
COR: I didn't want to waste any of the days I had.
His father studied him for a long moment, something warm moving behind his tired eyes despite the visible strain in the rest of his features, the particular exhaustion of a man who had spent months learning to live inside a body that no longer answered him the way it once had.
FTH: You've grown. Two years does that, I suppose, though I confess I hadn't quite braced myself for how much.
COR: Mother said the same thing.
FTH: Your mother's rarely wrong about such things.
He gestured toward the second chair near the hearth, the one that had always, across Corin's whole childhood, been understood as his own particular seat in this room, and Corin crossed to it and sat, the familiar leather creaking beneath him exactly as it always had, and found himself, despite everything, uncertain how to properly begin.
FTH: How is Solmere treating you.
COR: Well enough. The academics are demanding. The company's proven more interesting than I expected.
FTH: Interesting how?
COR: There's a rival there. Someone I hadn't anticipated finding worth the effort of rivaling.
His father's mouth curved into something that might, in better circumstances, have become a genuine smile.
FTH: That sounds promising. A good rival sharpens a person considerably faster than easy company ever manages.
COR: That's rather what I've concluded as well.
They sat for a moment in a silence that carried more weight than either of them seemed prepared to address directly, and Corin, watching his father's hands rest carefully on the blanket over his legs, found himself unable to look away from the particular stillness of them, hands that had once handled a blade with the same easy confidence Corin had spent his whole life trying to match.
FTH: You're staring.
COR: I'm sorry.
FTH: Don't apologize for it. I'd rather you look directly than pretend not to notice. Pretending helps no one, least of all me.
He said it with a plain, matter-of-fact honesty that Corin recognized, with quiet discomfort, as the exact same register he himself defaulted to whenever a subject grew too difficult to approach gently.
FTH: I won't walk again. I imagine your mother's already told you as much, but I'd rather you hear it from me directly, plainly, without either of us dancing around it.
COR: She told me.
FTH: Good. Then we needn't revisit it further tonight, unless you have questions.
Corin had questions. He had, in fact, an entire journey's worth of questions, accumulated across four days of travel and considerable private turmoil, but found, sitting in the familiar chair beside his father's unfamiliar, wheeled one, that none of them arrived in any usable order, and settled, in the end, for the smallest and safest of them.
COR: Does it hurt.
FTH: Less than it did. The worst of that's passed. What remains is more inconvenience than pain, most days.
COR: That's not really an answer.
His father regarded him for a long moment, something considering behind his tired eyes.
FTH: No. I suppose it isn't. Give me time, Corin. I've had eight months to grow accustomed to this. You've had four days. We needn't arrive at the same place at the same pace.
COR: I understand.
FT****H: I don't think you fully do. But you will, given time, the same way I've had to.
It was nearly the exact words his mother had offered earlier, and Corin, hearing the echo, felt something in his chest tighten uncomfortably, the particular helpless frustration of confronting a gap he could sense clearly but couldn't yet properly cross. They spoke for a while longer, careful, surface conversation about Corin's studies, about the household's winter preparations, about news from the wider province that his father, even now, kept careful track of with the particular diligence of a man who had not yet learned, or perhaps had simply refused, to stop considering himself responsible for its wellbeing. Neither of them mentioned the war directly again that evening. Eventually, his father's exhaustion became visible enough that Corin, recognizing it, rose to take his leave, the particular unspoken understanding of a conversation that had reached its natural limit for the night.
FTH: I'm glad you came home, Corin.
COR: Of course I came home.
FTH: I mean it more than the words probably suggest. I wasn't certain, when I wrote, whether you'd resent the summons. Whether being called back to see this-
He gestured, briefly, at the chair, at the blanket, at the whole unfamiliar shape of himself.
FTH: -would feel like one more thing being asked of you that you never chose.
Corin, standing at the study door, considered this for a long moment, and found, in the honest quiet of his father's admission, something he hadn't expected to receive tonight.
COR: I'm glad I came too.
He said it simply, and meant it, despite everything unresolved still sitting heavy between them, and left the study with his father's tired, grateful eyes following him to the door, and stood for a long while in the corridor outside, gathering himself before making his way, finally, toward his own familiar childhood room. The real conversation, he understood, standing alone in the quiet corridor, hadn't happened yet.
But something had begun tonight regardless, however small, however incomplete, and Corin, exhausted from four days of travel and the whole unbearable weight of finally seeing what the letter's careful words had only gestured toward, found that beginning, however modest, was considerably more than he'd allowed himself to hope for on the long road east.