Ace is still injured, and still needs me, as the sky darkens and my brain burns with everything I've learned. I put out the fire with the dregs of my tea just in case Flamma might approve.

How long did it take for these rituals to become second nature to me?

We retire to tents - me and Ace sharing the medical tent, just in case, because I'll need to treat her more. I set up the lamp, adjust for its flicker, and sit before the bedroll as Ace hobbles to a seat before me.

"Should I undress?" Ace asks, and I hear her voice wavering in a way I never have before.

I want to say 'only if you're comfortable.' 

But I think if I did she'd go along with it even if she wasn't.

"Just the shirt," I say. "Nothing else will be in the way."

"Kay," she sighs, flipping her blouse off over her head.

And idly tossing it at me.

It flops into my arms, over my shoulder, somehow cool to the touch. I run my fingers over the linen as I fold it and put it aside.

I sit, on my ankles, behind Ace, looking over her back: Still bruised, and faintly scarred, and with a knot, a trigger point, in her back not related to battle besides - there are no open wounds, between potions and earlier magic, but she's still going to be tender.

"I'm going to put my hands on your shoulders," I say. "This, uh, this is probably going to suck."

She takes a deep breath, and holds it, before explosively exhaling and nodding. "What else is new," she mutters.

"There is, uh." I press into her shoulders and hear her grunt, first touching with the heels of my hands before I let my fingers curl and fall onto warm skin. "There is admittedly a lot of suck to go round."

She drops her head. "Between that absolute ballet in the Neverglades and telling Shadi to her face that her world began last Tuesday? Yeah. Lot of suck."

"Ah." I really should have expected this, and try to reassuringly squeeze Ace's shoulder before trailing down to either side of her spine. "Tayeb didn't seem too rattled by it."

"Does that matter?" she says, the characteristic growl returning to her voice. "Yes, good for me that I only gave one person I kind of liked being friends with existential nightmares."

"This entire situation is an existential nightmare," I say, looking up at the roof of the tent as I press my thumb into that trigger point below Ace's shoulderblade. "If not you, someone would have let it slip eventually."

Ace groans under the pressure I'm applying. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she asks, and there's a waver there you've not heard before. "'It doesn't matter that you fucked up because someone was gonna?' That's the bright spot here?"

I click my tongue, dipping one hand into healing oil; I'll need to anoint her bruises to effectively use my magical healing talents on them. 

"I mean, the bright spot here is that she's around to worry about starting life as an NPC, because you saved her life," I insist. "And ours."

"I went nuts and risked all of our lives because I thought 'oh, Berzerker's worth a whole five CP and the forums say it'll help me mulch whatever the free trial can throw at me, what's the downside?' like an asshole," she says, slumping, balling up her hands. "Saving her from the danger I put us in doesn't count."

"Ace..."

"What the hell was I thinking?" she says, babbling. "Besides 'haha I can play fucking soccer again.'"

"Ace," I say, making her name my ki-ai, the Breath I pour into healing her though the hand pressing against her bruises.

She grunts and falls silent.

"What you were thinking about the game you were going to stream couldn't have changed anything, and I won't let you blame yourself for it," I say.

Her voice is strangled, near tears. "But I -"

"There was no way for any of us to expect or anticipate..." I gesture to the tent, the air, the night, the Windswept Plains of South Yberia. "...this!  ANY of this!"

"I almost put a maul through your belly!" Ace protested. "Because I went fucking berserk!"

I sigh and put my arms around her, and I swear her response is a squeak.

"Unless you're claiming responsibility for fucking hacking Io, you can't possibly be held responsible for points on a level-up screen mattering," I murmur into her ear. "I never blamed you. Worried about you, yes. Blamed you, no."

“But…” Ace’s voice seems to be getting weaker. Like she’s on the edge of something breaking. “But it’s still… I still almost hurt you, and…”

I don't think she can accept that it's not her fault right now. I don't know what I can say to stop her from panic spiraling.

Words won't help.

So I shift to face her and kiss her instead.

---

The lantern flickers. Something in the oil is sweet; a drop of something to make it less acrid.

Ace's muffled surprise very quickly gives way to her slumping into me, and kissing back. Leaning on me, draping arms loosely around me while I hug her tight with one arm, cradle her face and brush her ear with my thumb with the other.

She rests herself against me, uncharacteristically meek, taps my teeth once with her tongue before passing that initiative onto me. I take what she offers, darting my tongue into her mouth, tasting the honey and herb of the healing potion in her spit, feeling the heat rolling out of her body, from her breathing, from the hammering of her forge-hot heart.

I break off and breathe hard and let Ace nestle her cheek against my bosom and kiss it and nuzzle me. Sneak my hand up under her hair, turn my rubbing her ear into scratching gently behind it.

She makes an undignified little yip before she gasps, and sobs into my chest.

I'd be more worried about her crying after a kiss if I didn't suspect the crying was due anyway. If the kiss wasn't permission to cry in front of me.

Along with everything else it was.

"Is that standard therapy?" Ace asks, muffled by my shoulder.

"I mean, did it work?" I murmur, kissing the spot where her ear meets her jawline.

"Get new material," she purrs, rolling her head along my shoulderblade, slumping against me.

"This is new material. It's been years since I've..."

There's no graceful way to end that sentence, so I settle on clearing my throat.

"Look," Ace sighs. "I don't know why... why even after everything, you still, uh..."

"Love you?" I ask.

She shivers in my arms and looks up at me, frightened, grateful.

Part of me is screaming that it's absolutely too early to use that word. The rest of me unanimously vetoes that clown. I'd still be miserable and trapped in the proverbial eggshell if it wasn't for Ace, and I'd probably be dead if she hadn't thrown herself hammer-first at the Scyllan Horror.

And besides, she needed to hear that from someone. Enough support had been kicked out from under her that she needs someone to prop her up, and hell, I'm a Vigor build, right? Ace had been so busy blaming herself for everything, trying to hold herself up by projecting bravado and sarcasm and bottling up her fear.

I've already seen it explode once. I won’t let her bear it alone again.

Ace slowly lowers her head, and presses it into the crook of my neck, silent. For all the jokes about how large some parts of her were, or how much muscle she had for the hammer, it just now strikes home for me how small she really is. The ears, the enchanted cloth, the giant weapons and armor, everything she wears and does seems like it’s an attempt to seem bigger than she is.

I, and only I, am allowed to see her as small as she really is as I hold her tucked under my chin, and let my embrace speak for me.

"I could," and her voice wavers, and she takes a deep breath to steady herself. Heart still pounding like it's on an anvil. 

She speaks again, voice somewhere near the old levels of sass and brass. "I could just go 'fuck it' and just play soccer again.  Join the Holy Leagues in Vinyedo. See what that's like when our presence doesn't make everything immediately explode."

"I hardly think any of us would blame you," I say, running my fingertips behind her ears, watching them flick and her blush deepen. "You've put up with enough bullshit to plow under every acre there and grow roses besides."

She presses her forehead against my lips, an invitation I take.

"I'd probably hate it," she admits.

"Would you?" I ask. "Having peace and quiet again? You never signed up for dragonslaying - literally, never signed up, this is still the free trial by fire, up to level 60 with the award winning King Under The Mountain DLC -"

She laughs and throws a pillow at me, though without as much humor as normal.  "Some sales pitch," she says.

"Would you buy in after all this if it was?" I growl, suspecting I know the answer.

“Not if I had any other way to see you.” she says into your ear.

I sigh. "I'm not half as cute IR... on Earth," I say.

"Give it two years and about seven-hundred and fifty little blue pills," Ace says, looking you right in the eye.

She goes silent while I think about it, wincing. The thought that I could live like this back home hadn't occurred to me. 

I hadn't let it occur to me until now. 

"You make it sound so easy, Ace," I say, looking down at everything the character creation screen gave me.

Ace looks away. "Could you... Ace is just a stage name, you know? This character, my Castr persona?"

"What's your real name?" I ask her, letting your hand slip down to her hip.

"Morgan," she tells you. "Morgan Zhu. And if, uhm, there's something you'd prefer I'd call you -"

I shake my head and frown. "Haven't thought that far ahead, but definitely not Jake anymore."

Ace - Morgan - giggles. "Fair," she says. "We are going to have to find you," and she boops my nose, "something that doesn't start with a J."

"It'll make rooming with Jules less confusing," I say - and wince. Even if I can return, will Jules want to?

"Hey," Morgan says. "Are you alright?"

I sigh, and turn my head back to her, and stroke her cheek. Leaning in for another kiss.

Morgan Zhu gladly gives it to me, letting me lean into her. Over her.

"We'll make it work," she murmurs in your ear. "I want to make it work. I just feel like there's more I could have done..."

"More you can do, maybe," I say, shifting my weight, looking down and marveling at her and her black bra and the pudge over muscles that I know can lift monsters twice your size. "But mom always told me that it's too much to expect you to fix everything."

She looks up at me, into my eyes, and I see them travel down my body and my heart jumps with a start as I realize she has the same reaction to me as I do to her.

"If it were the beginning," she says, and sighs, touching my face, "if we hadn't been through the Shores and Viacruz and the bandits and the fucking forest glitch sargasso, I would just fuck off to play futbol."

I nod. "But you can't abandon the work now that you've started it," I say.  It's not a question.

"Yeah," she says, looking away.

Then back up, into my eyes.

"Deedee?" she asks, and I hear a crack in her voice.

I nod and grunt.

She hesitates, takes a deep breath, and locks eyes with you again.

"Morgan?" I ask.

She exhales. "Am I... have I been a good girl?"

My breath catches as I look down at her, what it is she's asking for, and offering me.

---

I hold Ace's - Morgan's - head to my bosom with one hand as I hold myself over her with the other, rubbing and stroking each of those fluffy ears in turn as she squeaks into my boob.

"Such a good girl," I murmur in her ear. "So brave and so strong when you shouldn't have had to be either."

I nearly grimace at how trite that sounds to my own ears, but the noise that escapes Ace's throat is a downright musical moan. She nuzzles deeper into my cleavage, my prayer beads touching her forehead as she kisses me.

"Nnn. Hang on," I say, leaning back. Pivoting from my core, and pulling her up with me, so I can free the hand I was leaning on and remove my beads.

Then I lower down to her - it's still surprising how much shorter she is - and kiss her proper.

"Keep doing that and I'm gonna be..." Ace says, before pressing her lips to my neck and breathing in.

"Going to be?" I ask, still stroking her cheek.

Ace looks down and away. "I'm extremely a sub, okay?" she says, a little defensively.

I nod. "That's, uh, not something I'm used to?" I say. "I'd be a lot less confident about taking the lead if it weren't for -"

"- my spontaneously combusting every time you give me scritchies?" Ace says, voice flat. "Damn game making me a fuckin' furry."

"That's AWOo for you," I say, holding her against me, skin to skin.

She sighs heavily. "Another thing I'll bring up when I ask for a refund."

"So you like it when I do this, then?" I ask, casually, as I run my thumb along the edge of her ear.

She shudders and chirps her response.

"Words, please," I say, letting my voice slip down into a register I hoped was husky.

"Feels good," she grunts. "Like being... taken care of."

Oh. She's dropping. I recognize this from when it happens to me. 

"Thatta girl," I croon. "Listen to me and I'll take very good care of you, okay?"

She nods, nuzzling my hand. "Listen to you... be good."

"Good girl," I agree, kissing her forehead. "Pretty little thing."

"Nn," she says, with a nod.

I kiss her on the lips, pressing my hand between her breasts, to feel the steady pounding of her heart.

Her heart runs hot.

When we break off, it takes her a while for her to open her eyes, and when she does, they droop.

"Should I undressss." Ace says, slurring at the end, and there's a dreamlike quality to her voice I've never heard before.

My heart twinges. So does something else.

"Yes, please," I breathe, as I take off her belt and overskirt. "Strip for me, for your healer. That's a good girl," I croon, slipping off the belt, the breeches.

Ace chirps, crouching in the flickering light, sliding her skirt down her hips and past her ankles. I glimpse dark underwear and some kind of sleek stockings over an expanse of thigh.

"That's it... here," I say, as I step out of my own hose and sandals, and gently press Ace back down onto the bedroll. I hook a thumb under a stocking and peel down, letting my fingertips make a long smooth stroke along her spine, as I keep my other hand buried in her hair.

She grunts and squirms under my touch but reaches out to reciprocate, shooting her arms straight up to grab.

I wince a little as she squeezes what she inevitably grabs, then groan loud and embarrassing as she eases up into a gentle tug, gentle stroking. Gods I have so many nerves on these tits and right now all of them are drinking in Ace's touch.

"Didn't hurt you?" Ace mumbles, eyes showing real concern.

I place my own palm over her heart, start kneading her big fluffy boob, and shush her. "Feels good," I tell her. "Feels really good. Just like that, like I'm doing for you, doesn't that feel good?"

She rolls her eyes and neck and squeaks, then nods. "Don' stop," she asks.

"Course not. My brave girl deserves this," I tell her, when I can get my breath and concentration together - it's incredible how sensitive my tits are, and how gentle she is, and when her fingertips reach down into my bra and rub the nipple I go weak in the knees and nearly fall on top of her.

"You liked that," Ace says, smiling, before burying her face into my cleavage again to leave a glistening kiss on my bosom.

"Yes," I grunt. "Don't stop."

"Mmhmm," she assents, squeezing one of my breasts while kissing down the other.

I move one hand from the back of her head and behind her ear down her cheek, then her neck, then down her breast to rest on the furnace she has for a belly.

"Lower?" I breathe.

She nods.

I kiss her ear. "Tell me what you want, Morgan," I demand.

"Nnn please," she groans.

A detached part of me idly wonders where the hell I learned to tease someone like this. Sadly the answer is probably some yuri manga or the other I torrented.

"Please what?" I ask.

Ace grits her teeth before she gasps, "Please, stroke my pussy."

"There we go," I hum, amused, walking your fingers down her belly.

"Want your fingers in my cunt, please," she whimpers.

"Of course I'll fuck you if my obedient little vixen asks me so nicely," I babble, kissing her ear. And then her cheek. And then I'm making out, darting my tongue between her lips as you slip my fingers over fabric and her clit and between her other lips, and I lap up her moans and feel her shudder and squirm under my care.

I don't know how long I spend lip-locked with her but my head bobs away and over her tit, my hair tracing the curve of her breastbone as my lips and tongue find her nipple and my ear is right where it needs to be to hear Ace's melodious appreciation of all that I'm doing for my wonderful brave little pet.

Fuck. Am I wet? Is that what the feeling is? I've never been wet before...

Ace rolls her hips into me, grinding against my hand, getting ever more frantic. Out of the corner of my eye I see her tongue lolling from her mouth, a little vulpine blep, and I'm struck with a need I'm too horny to be ashamed of. But she's been very good and she comes first.

My thumb finds her clit and my middle finger finds a spot right above and under it and I press, and again, and again, and each time her groan is a little louder and her muscles a little tighter, until I do it one last time -

And she immediately drops, juddering, panting and voiceless, flooding my hand and damn near down to the wrist in all the proof I'll ever ask for that I've given her exactly what she needed. Ace needs to catch her breath before she can properly moan my name.

"Deedeeeeee..."

"Morgan, you did so good," I say, stroking sweaty, sodden strands of hair out of her eyes. I bring the soaked hand to my lips and lick - sweet and astringent - before I even realize that's what I'm doing. Then, almost as unconsciously, I put my palm against her mouth and let her taste herself.

"I came so haaaardd n sweet..."

"You did it was wonderful and now I want you to do something for me, okay?" I shudder and shift to straddling her, peeling sticky underwear off your hips.

"Imma good girl, tell me what you wannnt," she babbles.

I kneel, knees on either side of her ears, thumbs along them, fingers on her jaw.

"Make me come," I order. "There's a good girl."

She nods and kisses with an unbelievably hot and nimble tongue. I throw my head back and the stray thought boy, this escalated quickly! passes through my estrogen-soaked skull, and I laugh, once, before I start to moan.

I tilt Ace's head, guide her, grin and roll my hips into her waiting mouth as she closes her eyes and lovingly laps up everything I'm giving her. I have to arch my back and put my hand behind me for support because when this is done I know we're going to collapse in a tangled heap otherwise.

It feels like that searing tongue is getting deeper and deeper in me each time even if I know that's unlikely, but my rocking does mean it hits a wetly sensitive place inside me and I full-body shudder and oh gods I have one of those now too I need her tongue on it more and I start grunting in time as Morgan and I find the rhythm she needs to

obey my orders

like my good girl like my precious pet like my crafty lil vixen

obediently finding the place right there like I knew she would

I stifle the sound as I come, instead channeling the vibration into my limbs, shaking for a moment with a tiny little grunt before I topple over, slamming my hands on the ground, breathing hard.

And she's still going! If I don't stop her now I won't ever want to...

"That's... that's enough, you did so good, did my pet like the taste, nnnf I just -"

Ace stretches out, shimmying under me and up, to kiss my boob.

I laugh and let myself drop and hug her, and roll us both to our sides, and kiss her, and spend time breathing and coming down from the high.

---

I pull the blanket over me and Morgan both - it's getting a lot colder now, after... 

After that happened. 

She cuddles against me, letting me put an arm around her and act as a big spoon, you know, as a practical concession.

"Have fun?" I ask.

"Mmhmm," she says, still getting words back. "You too?"

"If I was mean you'd know how I'd answer that," I say, kissing right behind her ear. It twitches.

She exhales a ragged breath - and I realize it was a laugh under her breath. "'Not confident about taking charge,' says the healer."

"Shut up," I say, blushing. "It was my first time."

She turns to look at me. "Your first time in charge or...?"

"I'm not sure how I managed to get laid before all this happened," I say, voice flat, "but my eggy ass somehow managed."

"Riiight," Morgan says with a smile, nestling against me again.

I sigh. "Everyone else will probably figure out we're... I mean, Hikaru did."

"Like I mind them knowing," she says softly.

"Just checking," I say, kissing her head. "Feeling better?"

"For now," she allows. "Good night, Deedee."

"Sweet dreams, Morgan."

I'm worried for a moment that I'm too wired to sleep, but soon enough I drift off, lulled by her breathing and heartbeat.