In which Tullgrew and Keyla visit an old place after Marshank, and after Martin.

There was no victory celebration.

Rose lay dead on the rocks, freedom was sweet and suffocating and mixed with tears and scarlet, and Martin left them. Felldoh and Hillgorse's voices still haunted everyone. The victory came at the steepest price. Keyla cried on Tullgrew when no one was looking, and Tullgrew didn't sleep for days. Barkjon lived in perpetual grief and happiness. So did Brome, and the weight of it almost crushed him.

There was no victory celebration. Not at first.

Perhaps there should have been, later. The seasons rolled on, Marshank crumbled without chained blood and flesh to feed it, and bare graves became grassy. One inch at a time, everyone picked up their lives and put them together. The gaps left by missing friends grew a tad smaller. Keyla's wanderlust born from discomfort-he didn't know how to live a peaceful, still life again, not at first-faded, and Tullgrew's many lash scars stopped drawing gazes at Noonvale. Barkjon's age bent him lower, but he marched on. Brome learned to enter his sister's room without lingering too long.

The pain faded, mostly. Enough to ache only on certain days. The second anniversary of Marshank's fall approached, and Keyla and Tullgrew, ever confident in their beautiful bad ideas, decided to head back. It was a secret. No one stopped them. Both of them debated on taking Barkjon with them before decided that maybe next year was better. This one would be a mess. They took a small barrel of ale with them. A quarter of it was gone before they even arrived.

"Sure brings back memories, doesn't it?" Keyla said. He forced his gaze away from the remnants of their old quarters. They tried to be happy. They'd been trying to be a lot of things lately.

"It does," Tullgrew said, and she didn't bother. She took in everything.

They sat close together in the rubble and looked at Marshank's ruins. A few old stories bubbled to top, and so did laughter. Regret mingled with old pains and suffering and good memories. The sun rose higher in the sky. Neither of them wanted to be there when dark fell on Marshank, whether it was broken or not. Keyla didn't know how much he drank until Tullgrew took his cup away from him.

"Enough of that," she said. "I can't carry you back. Not without you getting in trouble at Noonvale."

"You drank as much as I did," Keyla said. He wobbled to sit up straighter. He'd taken his long-sleeved shirt off, and it sat crumpled in his bag. It was too hot to wear that under his jerkin.

"I did," Tullgrew said. "But I'm not a twig like you."

Keyla glanced at the little barrel and their cups and prodded it with his foot. He heard a quiet slooshing noise. They'd cleaned it out together. Urran Voh wouldn't be pleased when they got back. Barkjon and Brome probably wouldn't, either.

"...it still hurts, doesn't it?" Keyla leaned on Tullgrew. She didn't move. He felt her scars press into his cheek.

"It does," Tullgrew said. She fiddled with her cup and looked at the dark ale in it. "I thought it wouldn't. Not this much. But every time I look at what's left of a wall, I can see all the backbreaking treks Hillgorse and I had to make, Barkjon lugging a log up and getting his paws sliced open on rope, and all the friends that fell off. I can still feel Hisk's whip cracking over my back, and the heat-it doesn't feel like the fight took away any of that."

"Hey, hey. It's over, Tull. We won," Keyla said, patting her paws, and Tullgrew wiped her eyes. "This place is still awful, whether it's falling apart or not. Feels like someone is draggin' a chain up my spine to see what's left of the barracks. Dark Forest, I hate this place. But we won."

"We did," Tullgrew said.

Marshank surrounded them in all its quiet, broken, half-overgrown sprawl. Flowers threatened to push through the cracked dirt. An empty bird nest or two lined niches in the walls. Nothing echoed the screams and whispers of rebellion that had brewed there seasons ago.

Keyla inhaled. He struggled to stand up and managed it. "I think we should give everybeast else a drink and go home."

"Right," Tullgrew said, still wiping the last of her tears. She accepted Keyla's help up but didn't lean on him.

Keyla frowned, and Tullgrew knuckled his shoulder and lent him a small smile when she saw his face. She was careful not to push him too hard.

"You dandelion-headed dolt," she said. "I'd pull you over while you're like this."

Keyla laughed, half affronted and half amused. He let go of Tullgrew's other paw when he saw she was ready to go. "I'm not that far gone."

They walked past the dilapidated barracks, the emptied vermin stronghold, and the now calm main square. No more punished slaves writhed on the dirt or held their shackled paws over their heads anymore. They saw the no longer glittering pile of weapons leftover from Brome's cry: if you want to come to Noonvale, drop your weapons. The pile was rusty and melded together, now. Keyla and Tullgrew observed Rose's wall from a distance, and insulted and commented on Badrang's broken fortress as they went. They never strayed too close to old ground.

Tullgrew stopped before the forest. She waited to make sure Keyla caught up with her before she did anything. A filled ditch lay before them, looking like a seam cut into the earth and then resewn again afterwards. Keyla and Tullgrew easily could've stood back to back inside of it, if it hadn't been filled. The dirt was dry and crackly. Plants still grew atop the healing wound. The whole ditch snaked around the outskirts of Marshank, and trailed off into the woods, where it dwindled and disappeared. A ramshackle shed still stood nearby. Rusty shovels leaned in it.

Tullgrew and Keyla made eye contact, and Tullgrew tipped the barrel upside down and poured the rest of the ale on the ditch. The white wildflowers nearbly trembled under the patter of red, sticky rain. Everyone who died in the battle was carried home and buried the way Rose was. This was another graveyard.

"I'm sorry the rest of you didn't get to see this," Tullgrew said. "Mom. Dad. Everyone."

"Pasque," Keyla said. "We tried to take care of Barkjon and Felldoh. Really."

"We did enough, Keyla," Tullgrew said.

Keyla took the empty barrel from her grip and threw it into the woods. It crashed into a bush and stopped. The vast scar on the earth stretched out before them. No one had dug into it with a shovel for a long time.

"Let's go home," Keyla said.

He had a vicious crack in his voice when he said home, and Tullgrew didn't comment on it. She linked her arm with his. Keyla's too-big jerkin slumped on his shoulder, and their scars bumped against each other and aligned. A breeze tugged at the sticky wildflowers.

"Let's," Tullgrew said.

They left together.