The Lost

Writers: Iluva, Sia
Date Posted: 14th October 2026

Characters: M'thos, A'garyn
Description: A'garyn does not win K'valas' greenflight
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 5, day 21 of Turn 13
Notes: Cursing
Mentioned: K'valas, T'lonas Follows: "DFW: What Isn't Yours"

M'thos

A'garyn

The flight was over and his shouts echoed and leapt off the walls all the way out to the brightness of the weyrbowl. The day that was just starting. A'garyn was aware, somehow, of someone too close to him, the proximity suddenly narrowing, and he was breathless and he was on fire and he shoved them hard and sent them stumbling back into someone else. Then his vision failed in a cold white static.

As the sun climbed slowly in the clear thin air, dragons still lounged on their ledges.

Trees swayed in the breeze.

The hour was early, before breakfast, before half the Weyr was even up. Everything was normal out here and yet he couldn’t breathe, and there was nothing in his stomach to bring up as he leaned against the fence of the feeding pens, beyond dizzy, and that alone told him it was really happening.

K’valas was back there. Someone else touching him. Touching in ways that made his blood sing. A’garyn doubted it could be like that with anyone else.

He pushed away from the fence.

The greyness in his senses gave way to color and sound again and it blared back with everything hitting the center of his hearing at full force. He was somewhere else and he was, infuriatingly, right here. If he thought too much about what was happening behind him, he'd turn back and wrench the brownrider out of the room, roaring more fury. He'd do something worse. And that -- interrupting a flight mid-catch, tearing it apart by force -- could hurt Sazikoth, could hurt Kav, in ways A'garyn wouldn't risk. He had to keep moving.

}:A'garyn.:{ His dragon's voice. It was not faint but he barely heard him.

Then it hit -- this time not Talarcheth's voice, but his entire weight, something dragging through the bond too heavy to carry, and A'garyn's own knees threatened to buckle under an exhaustion that both wasn't his, and was.

Talarcheth was already down, or going down -- wings hanging loose from his back, wrong, unsteady, a half-grown bronze suddenly unfamiliar with his own limbs. He landed hard, shaking, and immediately folded into a glittering heap. For all his usual pride and canny balance, he looked like something newly hatched, loose fibres untethered from their tapestry. }:Mine.:{ He half-snarled, half-crooned. He was unused to the feeling, he didn’t remember not having control. }:Would you stop it? Come here.:{

A’garyn took a half-step toward him, but his attention drifted down to the busted knuckles of his hand. To the odd weight of it. His fingers were curled around the strap of a riding helmet. Not his. One of the other chaser's. He didn’t want to think about them, but it flashed across his eyes all the same. Glimpses of their faces as he’d shouldered down the corridor, that same look of unfathomable heat carved into each of them, blurring together. And worse still, the mangled image of that brownrider, too close. His arm shook and threw the helmet so hard it bounced and spun, a vacant shell whipping across dust. He lurched after it. He wanted to destroy, he wanted to escape, he wanted to hurt. He wanted it to stop hurting. He grabbed the helmet, ready to crush it, and it bounced again and almost hit his dragon.

The bronze barely noticed. He had the mental storm unleashing across the bridge of their minds and there were worse things in his body to contend with than a stone's smack; exhaustion unlike any he had ever known. It poured over him like a dam burst. He let out a single impatient sound.

There was no response from A'garyn. For once, Talarcheth didn’t know what to do, what was happening, for A’garyn’s feelings raged without a singular reason, and that only added to his own rage. His own creeping, ceaseless panic. For the moment, however, he could only pant hard in the dirt.

A'garyn just looked away. Tense and adrift. Everything swirling back and forth between their minds. Talarcheth just watched him with breath so hot it all but smoked out of his nostrils and up into the chilled air.

It wasn’t supposed to go this way. It felt too familiar in the worst way. Slivers of time A'garyn didn't want to think of, times when there had been no warmth, no safety, only more things that wanted to take what was yours. Times when he'd been alone. Chest heaving, he finally wrenched his gaze away from the distant shape of the flightrooms across the field. His eyes narrowed and the red of his dragon’s eyes flickered into white.

“You were supposed to _catch_her_. That was the only thing you had to do,” he growled. “The _only_ fucking thing, Talarcheth.”

Talarcheth’s chin pressed to the ground in alarm and outrage. }:I tried!:{ He snarled. Gingerly he managed to get his wings all the way closed, still held oddly askew across his back. Heat continued to steam off his hide into thin clouds that curled, collided, and died a few feet above him.

A few feet away A'garyn finally sank down into the dirt on his haunches and put his face in his hands.

Talarcheth didn't snarl again. He dragged himself the last few feet on limbs that still refused to hold him right until his head nudged A'garyn's back, into his shoulder.

-----

M'thos had barely poured his klah into his cup when Fianwyth alerted him to the mess that was about to happen. He had a feeling that something would happen, when the seniors were old enough to start rising and the juniors were just old enough to be cleared for intimacy, so Fianwyth kept an eye out for the greens that were starting to show the telltale signs of going up.

He looked stupid, in his fuzzy knitted sweater and slippers that were meant for strictly indoor use, but his half-awake state prioritized getting to the feeding pens over looking proper. His klah mug in one hand was miraculously unspilled thanks to turns of practice. He stood nearby and took a long drink of now lukewarm klah and waited for the rest of him to catch up.

"I was having a quiet morning, A'garyn." M'thos said, "Too quiet. That's when I knew something was going wrong somewhere. We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, but I have to make sure that you and Talarcheth are all right. You both could have really injured yourselves."

Fianwyth nudged Talarcheth with her nose. }: Does anything hurt, little one? :{ Never mind that he had outgrown her size months ago.

A’garyn tensed. Tighter. Tighter. Trying to keep the outside world from invading any further.

Talarcheth was looking directly at M’thos, who did indeed look stupid, and if he could have crouched and flared his wings and bared his teeth he'd have done so, grudgingly settling for just the latter. Any green was unwelcome in that moment, no matter their disposition. But he was too tired to argue and his body protested movement in a way that still lacked sense. His head turned incrementally to look at Fianwyth. }:Wings,:{ he admitted, wearily.

A’garyn reached out and lay a hand on his dragon, the desperate, wordless apology of a fool. Breathing hard, his vision stayed watery and black. But a shard slid between his fingers showing the toes of those woolly slippers and it only added to the madness, the extreme unreality of the day. There was something about that voice that made his skin crawl. Its volume, its timbre. It took both an instant and an eternity to place it as paternal, in a way he did not know and couldn't bear. Cold panic spiked. He was too shaky to get up. His throat worked and released, just enough for the unfamiliar sound that raced up, that he angrily half-smothered, his words staggering through his breath. “Get… away… from me.”

"Normally I would." M'thos said conversationally, "I'd rather be still in bed with my weyrmate. Take some deep breaths, hey? In through the nose and out through the mouth. Coming down from the high is tough." Especially when it's a weyrlingmaster trying to calm them down instead of working it off with an interesting partner.

}: Don't stretch them. :{ Fianwyth instructed. She tucked her feet underneath herself, getting comfortable. }: We'll go to the dragonhealers once you've rested. :{

}:I can go myself.:{ Talarcheth growled back, indignant. Though still unsure of how he might actually get there, there was no way he'd fly properly that day, or the next.

}: You can, but I will come too.:{ Fianwyth agreed.

Grasping his shirtcollar, A'garyn tried to do as told, but he was still on fire; every nerve was screeching. Every corner of the bond ached. “I don’t-- I can't,” he growled. “I can’t.” He was too enraged with himself for forcing Talarcheth into the air. With Sazikoth for rising, with Talarcheth for losing. With M'thos for standing there and talking in that voice, like this was somehow just another day. With the brownrider -- and the way he’d been suddenly there, his hands on K'valas, and how he _knew_ he was still touching him. He let out another roar of pain, finally dragging air in where it didn't want to go.

“I can't. How do I…” Too many thoughts thudded against his skull. Kav was burly, strong as a wher, but-- “Fuck, what if they’re hurting him.”

M'thos slowly crouched down, careful not to spill any klah. "Nobody's hurting him. He's all right. The first flight is intense, even when you know what's coming. I hear that the crash afterwards is the worst. All that pent-up energy with nowhere to go but out. It all won't seem so bad once the adrenaline wears off." He took a long drink from his mug.

"You trust K'valas, right? He knows what he's doing. And whoever won," (Fianwyth supplied the name, nosy girl she is), "knows too. I know that's hard to hear, and harder to wrap your mind around right now. Very few weyrmates end up having flights together. It'll be all right."

A’garyn's head lifted and dark laughter came flooding out, but there was nothing to be done about it. Just the feeling of air as it wound its way through him, drawing a little deeper. A little more. **I'm sorry.** His hand moved more soothingly, purposefully over his dragon. **I'm sorry.**

Talarcheth snorted. }:It's too late for that now, you idiot.:{ Still, he pressed firmly into the touch, more worried and irritated with him now than anything else. }:I don't want Fianwyth to come to the infirmary.:{

**Shh. You’ll survive. You think I want M’thos here?** ‘Weyrmates’. The kindness in the weyrlingmaster's voice had been one thing, but that word kept A'garyn's skin crawling.

Not only that, the notion struck something coiled inside. More than he used to think a person could, he trusted K'valas. But trust in a wider sense wasn't something A'garyn knew, not really.

The feeling of someone else. The few awkward, hurried fumblings with Warelin had been the only times he'd been brave enough to go near someone like that in his youth, with that sort of needing intent, everything over their clothes, too terrified of being discovered to actually do anything. A vague outline of intimacy was all it was. A person he supposed he liked. And that last time had ended abruptly. The next day Drenorik had been found on Search.

Touch only became real when he’d met K’valas. It broke him open -- the quiet terror and exhilaration of _needing_ him.

Comforting.

Demanding.

World-shattering.

His presence curled deep in A'garyn's chest and then never left.

He hadn't thought of anything but that when bullying Talarcheth into the sky.

**You _idiot_.** He echoed to himself. It was still a struggle to pull in air. Talarcheth looked so pitiful now he had to look away. His hand was starting to swell. Briefly, warily, he regarded the man crouched beside him and willed his teeth to stop chattering. Fuck, M'thos was in his sharding pajamas.

And Kav had looked pissed, horrified. He didn’t blame him. Being there that morning had only made it that much worse for him.

A'garyn was still breathing unevenly when he stood and finally looked his bronze in the eye. The one part of him that held the rest together. “I'll take him to the infirmary. When he's ready. I… Sorry I derailed your morning, sir.” In the dim hope of shedding the weyrlingmaster, he added, “I don't need you to escort us, sir.”

"I'm sure you don't." M'thos said, "But I think I'll sit until you're ready to go." He smiled pleasantly at an early morning passer-by and waved them off. Not much foot traffic at this hour, at least, though the few with access to an awake dragon would have alerted him or T'lonas anyway.

Something about M'thos’ reply, the promise of sustained proximity like this, had A’garyn’s eyes shutting and out of that merciless darkness the flightroom slid in again. The heat of it. The raw and enduring headache.

So this was how it was going to be. Probably every time.

A'garyn turned away with his eyes still firmly shut. He felt the urge to shout flare up through his throat again and fought it, and won only because there was nothing it could accomplish or change. He didn't want to make any more of a mess than it was. His dragon was barely steady and Talarcheth needed him. He needed Talarcheth, and all of it warred inside him without relief, without an emptying. After all this time, here he was again. Full of regret alongside the want to do worse.

It had been one thing to know this was coming. A’garyn knew they would have to find a way to suffer through when the time came, and he'd tried not to think too much about it otherwise. It wasn’t real until it was. He groaned. In the chaos of it all now, the passerby's footsteps trailing away in the black, the Weyr slowly yawning awake, his pulse pounded in his ears. Kav. He kept his vision dark, needing to avoid M'thos’ eyes most of all, every one of his senses in vertigo.

Nothing else to do.

Just one hand flat against Talarcheth's warm, trembling side. Nobody moved.

Last updated on the October 28th 2026

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The Lost