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Bariyan slowed to a gradual halt to look at Martin more closely. He quirked an eyebrow.

"You look quite a bit older than a few months," he said, but this, too, was accompanied by a smile. It faded as he took the rest of Martin's words into consideration.

Of course he didn't understand fully -- he didn't know the details, and he wouldn't ask. He didn't feel like it was his place. And it would have been strange, for both of them; for one to inquire intensely for details of something that the other might have expected him to know. But it seemed, at least, that something here had been fixed.

Saved, perhaps? Bariyan's smile returned, faded, distant.

"Was that a good thing?"

Martin had to watch Bariyan's expression for a while to find his bearing, somehow guess at what his explanation was even doing for him. He was nervous – almost giddily so – and the feeling kept him teetering in a confusing tightrope walk between fear and excitement, a hope for...for what? For some light to click? For the Bariyan who recognized him, cared for him to suddenly be there, just as alive? As though talking about himself as Darkov was enough to reverse whatever circumstance caused this change.

A boy's imagination, perhaps.

It was the question that rattled that imagined end. No revelation, just one more question and one more flutter in Martin's stomach. He couldn't read Bariyan's expression well enough anymore – it was too animated, too influenced by things the boy had little claim to or...or none, if it were all from that other world.

"It was," he said, a little weakly. It was a tone he quickly corrected, speaking up, insistent, earnest. "It was the best thing. I'm here because of it."

He couldn't stop himself from reaching, grabbing at Bariyan's arm to stop him, no longer minding a stranger's manners.

"You gave me a whole new life," he said, his mouth breaking into a smile, quickly twitching with a shade of fear when he realized he had overstepped. He let go, holding his breath, feeling his face heat up.

"But please don't...Don't think you owe me anything! It's the other way around...Did I say so before?" He was faintly certain he did. "I promised..."

"Oh," Bariyan said, weakly, as Martin reached for him. He recoiled a bit -- mostly out of surprise -- but not enough to avoid the grip entirely. And he stayed, when he felt those fingers close around his arm. But he did not do anything when Martin drew away afterwards.

It was strange, listening to Martin, hearing the obvious adoration in the boy's voice... adoration for another man with Bariyan's name, Bariyan's face, Bariyan's character. Strange. Strange to see how obviously loved this Bariyan was. But here was Bariyan now, lost, confused, distant, feeling rather like a uninvited stranger.

This wasn't his life. This wasn't his place.

But nevertheless, he was here.

"You don't owe me anything," Bariyan said, gently. He picked up walking again, at a slower pace, looking up to the dome above them as he went. He laughed. "Please don't worry about me. I'm just glad that I-- or, someone like me-- I'm just glad that your life is good now."

He raised a hand to rub at the left side of his neck. "Everyone deserves to be happy. We've all only one life to be happy in, after all."

He didn't understand because it wasn't time to understand. That was the truth of the matter, but even with Truth whispering deep within, Martin the boy, a breathing figure in Time, couldn't hear it well enough to understand himself. Instead, it was another unhappy Why? Another pulse of hurt, of feeling slighted by some mystery circumstance.

It wasn't supposed to be that way. He had to have been doing something wrong to feel as he did, he thought; he was supposed to have a happier life. Being a human was different. He didn't need to be remembered to do the right thing.

Only one life? Was that the way of it? The way Bariyan thought of it – at least, in this moment. He had to believe otherwise – the "he" who knew him. Who lived on after "life." This Bariyan didn't know yet.

So it's alright, isn't it? he thought, trying to comfort himself as he fell further behind in step, feeling a sharper, sharper tightness in his throat. It kept him from saying anything, so all he could offer was a closed-lipped sound, neither approval nor disapproval.

It's alright, he repeated again and again, coaxing himself off a rattled, nervous edge in his mind. He could catch up again, then, with a blank, mild smile etched on his face. Eyes forward. It's alright.

Bariyan paused when he noticed Martin falling behind, calling the boy's name out once before falling silent to let Martin catch up himself. Bariyan knew it had to be hard for the boy, too; here he was, a relative stranger, a poor substitute for whoever it was that Martin held so dear in his heart. And no guarantee that the other would come back.

If it'd been as sudden for the other Bariyan as it'd been for him, then there wouldn't even have been time for a proper goodbye. Bariyan thought about that, and swallowed.

"I'm sorry," Bariyan said, as Martin came forwards again. He reached out, placed a hand on Martin's shoulder, light and uncertain and ready to pull back should Martin show any sign of discomfort. "I'll try to be as good to you as he was."

It's alright.

Martin stared up at him, slow to understand what he said, what he meant. Slow to react. It sounded like something he, himself, would say, actually. Strange. He was sorry to not remember, right? To not understand. But it wasn't his fault, even if it hurt.

"It's alright," he said, echoing his thoughts, and pushed ahead, out of reach. "You can just be you, and that's good."

A few paces ahead, he turned around, pushing a better expression. "I can protect you either way. So you should just do what you like best."

This time Bariyan lingered behind, watching carefully, a little sadly. He didn't understand, probably never would; didn't understand why he had to be protected, what he'd done to deserve this. Any of this. But all the questioning in the world wouldn't help him. He was too far away. Had missed out on too much.

He followed after Martin, silent for a while, eyes wandering through the gardens and taking in the quiet.

Then: "How old are you?" Bariyan wasn't sure if there was an answer to that. Martin was boy in his mind, looked like a child, but it was obvious that there was much more to him.

"I don't know," he said, a flash of pain in his smile. It was hard to answer the big questions, couldn't he have the means of answering the simple ones? "Someone helped me pick a birthday...In September? Do you know about months?"

"That I do," Bariyan said, though birthdays was a bit of a new concept to him. He let that one slip by, though.

He considered Martin carefully, rubbing his chin.

"You don't look very old," he said. "Perhaps... fourteen or so."

Sixteen. Sixteen was Bariyan's reference frame for all children. Sixteen was when Ko had left home. Sixteen was the age that Bariyan remembered and knew best.

"I'm older than I look," he insisted. "I always looked...smaller."

Granted, the shoes were getting more snug and the pantlegs a little shorter, but not by much. Not noticeable yet. "So maybe older than that."

He ducked a branch – a well timed, validating branch. See, he had to duck things, too! But what did it matter, his age? A lot of people seemed to be really intent on knowing...

"How old are you?"

"Me? Thirty-four. I'm an old man." Bariyan laughed to himself. "I'll be dropping dead any moment now."

Thirty-four... thirty-four was a good time to die, perhaps. Better than sixteen, better than fourteen or fifteen or however old Martin was. Thirty-four was long enough to have made mistakes and learned from them, and if you hadn't -- well, then. Then you wound up where Bariyan was.

Martin's expression distorted in a quick wince. Of course, he knew very little about human biology; for all he knew, they lived twice the life a Darkov (more true) or twice as less (not so true). The notion of having Bariyan die at any moment...

"You mean that?" he asked, afraid to assume anything otherwise.

"Ah-- no, I don't! Don't look so worried." Bariyan couldn't help but laugh, though. "I won't be dying here. At least, not in any way that I can predict."

Unless Cat was here, and just hadn't found Bariyan yet. But Cat seemed so remote now, in the face of all this new strangeness, and Bariyan wasn't convinced that he'd been followed. Still, he nearly shuddered to think of what might happen if Cat stumbled upon him with Martin. Martin had spoken of protecting....

"You won't have to worry about that," Bariyan murmured.

He watched Bariyan, not wholly reassured. The laugh...Bariyan didn't laugh much. At all. And in the context of being alive, well...Martin was left very uncertain.

Was it best to take him at his word? What did it say about him if he couldn't do that? Bariyan was different now, but still Bariyan. Laughter, life...pieces of Bariyan he hadn't know until now. That's all, right? It was as he'd just said: it wouldn't matter, so long as he could take care of him.

But not worry about him? Impossible.

"Is it better here?" he asked, trying to get ahead of his circular thoughts. "Now that you're healed...seeing this place. What are you thinking about it?"

"It's strange," he said, quite truthfully. "There's much that I don't understand. And I don't like the weather -- I'm from a much warmer, drier place."

He contemplated the question some more as they walked, navigating around the broken statues, avoiding going over carefully tended flower beds.

"But I like it," he added, after a bit. "It's... alive. There's people here, and they're living as best as they can, and it all seems to be holding together. I'd... like to stay, I think."

He didn't think he would be allowed, though. He had faith that death would come and find him, sooner or later. Most likely sooner.

In that quiet time breaking his response in two, Martin worked to keep as much of his attention on Bariyan as he could without risking tripping over or smacking into something. That much had changed little between bodies: still a very single-minded boy, giving nearly his all to one thing at a time (though nature mercifully allowed him to keep up the involuntary stuff like breathing business as usual). He nearly did trip, scuffing his step before a root snagged the toe of his shoe, but only quietly hissed a sound before stepping over it. Not his fault, not the root's...he had been wondering about warmer, drier places.

That was where he was from? Something like that bright, dusty land they had all just been in? Bariyan rarely mentioned things of the past, and always pretty briefly...Martin was quick to jump at the chance to know more. Even if this Bariyan didn't know him...somehow, Martin could know him better? And be better for it, if he were to see the one he knew the best ever again.

That idea fluttered nervously into his head at stay. Martin watched him as much as he could between steps and turns, ignoring the scenery for the most part.

What if he did stay, like this? Alive, smiling...laughing sometimes. A stranger for the most part, but...would it always be that way?

Scary thoughts, he felt. A betrayal to what he already loved? Even if it was the same Bariyan, estranged?

...More confusing than scary, then.

"You might stay," he heard himself saying, barely aware at the start. He hesitated, licking his lips. "I mean, there's little control over it, from individuals...some stay a long time. Some don't."

Bariyan thought about that. He'd spent the past day assuming that it would all be undone, soon, that he'd blink and feel a sharp edge against his throat and that would be that.

He hadn't dared to think about what would happen if he were allowed to stay here. A while. A few years. Perhaps longer....

No. That couldn't be allowed to happen. He was not going to run away from death.

So he laughed instead, a defense mechanism that kept his doomed mindset from cracking through the surface, and looked forwards.

"Perhaps," he said. "That appears to be out of our control, however. Have you been here a long time, Martin?"

"I think so..."

But then, what constituted a long time? If it were the Martin he was before, it may as well have been a century. If clarity poured out freely through his senses once more, it was barely the length of a single breath. The moment he was in, the way he was...it almost inevitably put him in the middle of both.

He still didn't really know much about calendars and date-keeping, either.

"I don't know many people here who have stayed as long as I have. A lot have gone." Vanished, or dead in certain cases. Gone.

His smile quirked faintly. "But I never learned enough about how things work here, after all that time. That's strange, isn't it?"

"Not so strange," Bariyan said, "not considering how little we know about the world in general. Or... worlds, as the case may be."

He deliberated on the next question; it'd come to mind immediately, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to ask it. Now it had been hanging in his head long enough that he assumed the only way of making it go away would be to answer it.

So he sighed, and ran his hands through his hair.

"How long was... I here, then?" Bariyan asked. "Before this, I mean."

Martin took nearly as much time to answer as Bariyan did in asking. He really had no way of knowing for certain, and counting would've been impossible. He'd have hardly thought to try tracking back on the network, as technically un-savvy as he was.

"As long as I have, at least," he said, his shoulders lifting a little. "You were one of the first people I ever encountered in this place, back before." Back when the both of them were so different.

"I see," he said. He left it at that.

Everything else, he kept to himself, turning over in his thoughts. If he was here, then he must have come here in the past. He was certain of it. There was simply no way that it could have happened in the future, because he didn't have enough of a future to do so. But wasn't he supposed to remember, then? Wouldn't he have recalled being here...?

Perhaps not. Some sort of magic was obviously to blame, and magic did strange things that Bariyan could never hope to understand.

Easier to think of himself as two separate people, then. Himself, and the one who'd come here, the one who might have led a happier life.

"Did I tell you...." Another question that he wasn't sure he ought to ask, though this one had only just occurred to him. "Did I tell you anything about my own family?"

He stared for another lapse of time, as much wondering about the question as he was trying to find the answer. He'd been curious to know for a long time, but never outright asked. Not even in talking about his own family – an easy segue.

Yet even so.

"No," he said, dragging the sound out a little as he thought. "But I...know you have a son. Or I'm only sure of it."

The way he cared for him? That was one thing. Very like Peter. But in being called back from the start, a lot of those feelings were for a son, my son, echoing out into an expanse people couldn't perceive. It wasn't as easily forgotten as much else, yet Martin had kept it to himself, feeling it wrong to do anything other than that.

"I had a son," Bariyan corrected, gently, and found that even that was too much. He shook his head, smiled, added, "He couldn't have been much older than you when he left," and said no more.

It'd been a long while, now, and so much had happened since, but some things would always hurt. Some things were a long time dying.

Ko was gone, now; and Bariyan soon would be, too. Ko had converted to he Court after he'd left home. Ko had believed in an afterlife. Bariyan didn't.

He would, maybe. He would have to, wouldn't he? After what had passed...what would pass, for him. Between the both of them. And even with his recollection bound and blurred from the things humans rarely know, Martin was certain there was more than decay waiting for them. That son, too.

But the shift in Bariyan's demeanor kept him silent; he'd be unhappy if he had to talk about it, wouldn't he? Even with that look on his face. There was already too much unhappiness...Martin didn't want to be the cause of more if he could help it. That wasn't why, he felt, he was there.

So he kept silent, following along, trying to tilt and weave himself in a way as to make the least amount of noise. That body of his wasn't trained enough for it like the old one was.

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