A tiny, likely OOC piece for wonderful and idtastic manga. Check it out, it's short and totally worth it. Thanks to lovely wordsofastory for handholding, encouragement and timely beta.

It was yet another ambush that Right-Eye treated with all seriousness and the King exploited with laughter, having arranged the bait beforehand and placed the participants to his satisfaction. The goal was accomplished, the injuries minor, and the King quite content with the results of the afternoon, so it was to his astonishment when Right-Eye stormed into his chambers after. Enraged and spluttering would've been an easy matter to settle, but the bodyguard was grave and disappointed instead, and that proved to be harder to deal with.

"Listen. If we're doing this - if you are doing this, you have to tell me your plans. Your clever strategies and your cunning plans that involve you serving as bait, and whatever other tricks you're used to playing. Because otherwise I'm going to get caught up in them one day and die because I couldn't compensate for something I shouldn't have been compensating for.

"And, let's face it - if you were just going to take it and use it, this maybe would've worked out. I'm a mercenary, we pretty much live to die for somebody else's wars, and I've chosen your war of my own volition. But since you're just going to get maudlin and bring flowers to my grave and mope, can you at least not make a mockery out of it?"

"Now that's just - nobody's keeping you here!" the King said in almost real outrage, and Shirogane-kou smirked.

"I did offer to give you my eye, and you chose to take me instead, Your Majesty," Right-Eye said. "I get it, I do - you want to be the King, and you want to reach whatever it is you want to reach, and you're used to doing it alone. But you're not alone anymore. Can you just - trust me to do my job while you're doing yours?"

"Ahh, what a nice little cub you picked up, King," Shirogane-kou said. "What about it? Will you let him speak to you this way?"

"Who says I can trust you to do your job, Right-Eye? Or not to betray me, as others did?"

"You did, Your Majesty. The eye won't betray the body, will it? But I'm ready to kneel and swear to me, if you wish it."

"This - won't be needed. You can have your deal, damn you and your impudence. But rest assured, if you die, it will be thorns and ravens for your grave, and no flowers at all."

"Fine with me," Right-Eye said, and smiled in a way that made him look all of fifteen years old, and the King cursed and swore and couldn't help smiling back.

When Right-Eye fell with an arbalet bolt piercing his lung, the randomness of it - no clever plans inside of plans, no botched schemes, no lying, no secrets, just a determined assassin with lucky timing at the King's back and Right-Eye's goddamned reflexes and reckless sacrificial spirit - should've maybe been a relief.

It wasn't.

The enraged King spared a glance to make sure the guards had gotten the shooter - and oh, how he will pay, later! - and knelt next to Right-Eye, trying to assess the damage. Someone was shouting for a healer, and red blood was bubbling on Right-Eye's lips, and the bastard was smiling.

"Just... like that, yes. Be kind to the next one, Your Majesty? They won't... deserve your temper, and you'll need them," - laughing now, blood and froth and ghostly pallor creeping in, and the King was going to kill him with his own hands as soon as he got better.

"Don't you fucking dare," the King hissed, hands urgent and gentle, belying the voice shaking with rage. "Just you try to bail on me now, Right-Eye, I will brand you a traitor through the kingdom and put your head on a spike over my gates, do you hear me?"

Right-Eye smiled again, gentle and faint and mocking, and said "Nobody in... the whole... kingdom but you... anyway. You go ahead."

Shirogane-kou barked a laugh from behind the King's shoulder, and the King gave up. He leaned his forehead at Right-Eye's, trying to make some of his strength transfer somehow. "Just - please. You promised to stay by me. Please."

Right-Eye looked at him, so serious now, and said "Always - my best - " and then stopped breathing.

Healers descended on them in a swarm, and pushed the King aside. He thought distantly he should get up and salvage some of this mess - give orders, interrogate, investigate - and instead slid down the wall, staring fixedly at the bright red of blood spreading, the outflung limp hand, and did nothing at all.

When Right-Eye woke, it was to a very irate King bringing water to his lips, and Shirogane-kou looking on benevolently from behind his shoulder. He accepted the water and smiled at the rage, feeling ahead of the race for once. The King placed the cup down, then threw his hands up and stalked away in disgust.

"You were supposed to make it easier, damn you, not harder!"

"Just out... of interest: by being unable to do my job, or by being somebody whose life you wouldn't care about?"

Talking was getting easier by the minute: the kingdom's healers really knew their jobs, it seemed. There was still the heavy lassitude of trauma filling his body, the reminder of pain just lying dormant for him to make a wrong move, this tender feeling of his insides rearranged and reassembled carefully. But he was, undoubtedly, alive, and likely to stay so. Not something he expected.

The King, meanwhile, outright sulked, obviously unable to tear into him as much as he wanted due to his current indisposed state, and One-Eye was going to milk it for all it was worth.

It was, he supposed, unworthy of him, but in their eternal dance of thrust and parry he had to use all the advantages he had.

"I could still dismiss you," the King muttered at last, and One-Eye allowed his smile to just remain in lieu of response. Shirogane-kou snorted, expressing his opinion admirably clearly, and the King, outmanned, finally gave up and made his way back to the bed.

"Did you get the shooter?"

"Yes. He sang like a canary after a while and offered some - interesting bits of knowledge."

"Ahh, are heads going to roll, now?"

"Oh, yes, and in abundance. Though possibly fewer now, since you've deigned to wake up."

"I'm truly flattered, my King."

The King tsked at this, and perched at the edge of Right-Eye's bed like an ungainly, lanky bird. He looked gaunt and hollowed, eyes darkened by lack of sleep, and Right-Eye suddenly felt the game to be unworthy of them.

He said, not unkindly: "You know it wasn't your fault, don't you? Even had I not woken."

"Of course I know, what new piece of stupidity is this? Did you lose so much blood your mind is muddled as well?" the King said with a touch of asperity, too quick. His hand, the one that somehow had found its way to lie on Right-Eye's shoulder, twitched.

"Not your fault and not your game," Right-Eye went on, and made his hand raise and cover the King's, clumsily. "I won't begrudge dying for your sake honestly, you know."

The King stared at their hands, linked now, and didn't take his away. "That is what scares me."

"I chose you," Right-Eye said, and there was no laughter in his voice anymore. "I chose you and I will stand by you, and I will watch you rule until the end, if we can make it so far. But if I die - if I fall - you're absolved of any sin, Your Majesty. Here, now, forever, if you want. If you value me so much to care for my safety, won't you trust my forgiveness?"

The King inhaled, exhaled, looked at him with something akin to hunger, to fear. "I shouldn't have taken you."

"You did, anyway."

"I did."

The King laughed, suddenly, and then gave up again. "I accept your forgiveness in advance then, my shadow, and pray I won't need it."

He leaned down and kissed Right-Eye's forehead, then left.

Right-Eye watched him until the door closed softly, and smiled to himself. In minutes, he was asleep, and slept without dreams.