Insight — Dungeons & Dragons (5e), Jonah x Ell

[thecrazyalaskan]

Title: Insight
Author: TheCrazyAlaskan
Fandom / Setting: Dungeons and Dragons (5e)
Characters / Pairings: Jonah Rhee x Eltoris "Ell" Omaric
Rating: T
Word Count: 1037
Warnings / Notes: Written for Round X of the Hurt / Comfort Bingo: Panic Attacks
Summary: Jonah learns something about Ell.

== == == 

The sound of festivities filtered up from the street and through the shuttered windows of Hero's Nest. The whole of the place was quiet, seemingly empty—save for one person. Eltoris sat at a low writing desk, head bent over an illuminated text, Light cantrip glowing faintly. It was almost peaceful, in a way.

The soft whump of a body dropping onto the bed caught his ear, and Eltoris' head snapped up before he stood and turned sharply to look over his shoulder, a panicked yell forming in his throat—and promptly dying there when he saw who it was. "Jonah. What are you doing in here?"

Jonah Rhee—a human Eltoris knew all too well indeed—sat perched in the middle of the bed, hood thrown back, offering Jjik, his ever present mouse companion, a piece of dried fruit. "It's nice to see you too," he quipped.

"I'm not ungrateful to see you," Eltoris said bracingly, feeling his heartbeat continue to pound in his chest, "but… how did you get in?"

"Window," Jonah replied easily. A moment of silence, followed by—"So I notice you're not out among the people."

Eltoris' grip on the back of the chair tightened for a moment. "What of it?"

"Shouldn't you be—" Jonah waved a hand vaguely— "sharing Athena's wisdom and mercy on a night like tonight? Or joining your heroic companions in revelry? Tharivol and Torinn are out enjoying themselves, even—and they're not known for merrymaking."

Eltoris bristled slightly, though he couldn’t quite fathom why. "I chose to stay in."

Jonah quirked an eyebrow. "Cloistered away like a hermit?" He carefully deposited Jjik into the soil of one of the potted plants beside the bed before throwing open the wood shutters, filling the room with a warm, harvest orange glow and the soft crackle of distantly burning bonfires.

"Don’t—!" Eltoris surged forward, almost tripping in his haste to get to the window, and wrenched the shutters closed with trembling hands.

For a moment, the only sound in the room was Eltoris’ heavy breathing; for a moment he swore he could hear his own heart racing as well, but it was only in his own head. Blessed Athena, when had it become so warm in here? He lifted a trembling hand to wipe sweat from his brow before straightening and offering Jonah a thin smile of reassurance.

It didn’t take, and Jonah’s normally stoic face was etched in concern. "What’s wrong?"

"Nothing," Eltoris mumbled, forcing himself to release the shutter latches and step back from the window. "The fires bother me."

"They bother you?" Jonah echoed.

Shit. "My eyes," Eltoris corrected, the words coming a little too quickly to be believable, even to himself. "The flames bother my eyes."

"Ell…" The thief’s voice had grown soft, almost tender, as he reached out and took Eltoris’ hand in his.

The gentle tone, coupled with so intimate and familiar an address… "Did I ever tell you how I came to this temple?" he began slowly, taking back his hand and looking just past Jonah’s head rather than at him. "From Emalon?"

Jonah’s eyes narrowed as he watched Eltoris, seemingly searching for a lie in the question. "There's no temple to Athena in Emalon," he finally ventured.

Eltoris nodded slightly, swallowing hard and shrugging out of his vestments. "Not anymore, there’s not."

The somberness of this tone caught Jonah's ear, and he sat on the edge of the bed as easily as if it were his own. "You served there," he said, the remark more of a statement than a question.

"I grew up there," he corrected, carefully hanging his robes from a peg on the door. "I promised my services to Lady Athena when I was…" He sighed, thinking. "You weren't born then."

Jonah blinked slowly, the way he did when he was taking in information and adding it to the bigger picture in his mind's eye. There was normally something comforting in watching the human's mind working behind his eyes, but now Eltoris could only swallow nervously.

"What brought you from Emalon to Waterdeep then?" Jonah asked at length.

It was a logical question, but how he wished he hadn't asked it. "The lord of Emalon was very well-loved," he began, yielding to his sudden exhaustion and anxiety as he dropped to sit next to Jonah, feeling a decided chill in the air despite his light cotton undertunic and shorts. "He was… Fair minded, compassionate, good. Human. Emalon was less for his passing…" He closed his eyes, revisiting history he preferred to leave alone. "There started to be rumors of assassination and by the time his second—who was an Elf—took the office there was…" He paused, gesturing vaguely. "A lot of tension, a lot of…"

"Racism?" Jonah supplied.

Eltoris nodded slowly. He wouldn't have said it so bluntly, but there was an undeniable truth to the words. "Some time after I joined the temple, I woke up one night and… it was on fire. There was never anyone arrested or an 'official cause' found, but… I think we were targeted."

"Why?" Something about the idea of someone, or a group of someones, specifically picking out a temple and laying waste to it was… disquieting, even to Jonah, whose sole religious tie was sitting beside him.

"Most of the acolytes were Elven." As he spoke, Eltoris nervously tucked some of his hair behind his ear, unintentionally drawing the eye to the slender point.

The motivation made the crime make even less sense, but humans made so little sense—and that was coming from a human. For his part, Jonah simply nodded to show what he'd heard him speak.

"Ever since that night, fire makes me…" He swallowed hard, forcing himself to continue speaking. "I feel the heat around me and I'm afraid of its destructive ways." He glanced over his shoulder, toward the window he'd shuttered. "What happens if one of those fires gets out of control? How many people would be hurt? How many people would die, Byeolbit?"

The intimacy of the address was undermined by the pain in his voice, and that pain made Jonah's heart twist. "Hey hey… It's—it's okay—" Comforting people had never been a strong suit of his, but he loosely wrapped his arms around Eltoris' shoulders all the same.