Goro: Dreaming Butterfly

A/N: Minor content warning for self-harm. Mostly fluff.

Well… Amari was happy to see *him*, anyway.

The look she gave to Joan could best be described as one of the most harrowing things he'd witnessed in his life. Oops. He was going to have to track Joan down later, and apologize for laughing it off when she said Amari was going to lose her shit. Not that the shit had been lost, yet. Amari had politely and firmly informed Joan that she would like to talk to Goro alone, and Joan took the hint, and now it was just the two of them.

The clerics of Eldath had given her a nice room. Only the basics, but she'd made it into a home anyway. Even fashioned herself a little makeshift kitchen. God, her and Nixie. It reminded him of that time he heard an old woman in a tavern going on about how men always married their mothers.

Not that he was marrying Nixie, or that Amari was his mother. Damn, he was some fool.

"Goro," Amari said as soon as he'd taken a seat at her little round table. "Shoes?"

He glanced down at them, and at the dirt he tracked across her wood floor. "Oh." He pulled the shoes off and carried them over to deposit next to the door. Then he grabbed her broom from the corner and swept up his mess.

Amari watched him too closely while he worked. "You look tired. When was the last time you slept?"

Two days ago, and only if you counted Diva-sleeping, which one could call less than restful. "I'm fine. I'm not going to sleep."

"You are."

"You can't make me."

"I don't have to make you. I'm only saying, that's what's going to happen. You're going to lie down in the bed and you're going to sleep."

"Am not."

She hummed as she walked over to her bed, fluffed the pillow, and pulled the quilts back to reveal a tempting glimpse of the sheets underneath.

"This is mind control," he said as he walked to the bed and climbed in. "What would the other clerics say if they knew you used mind control on your own apprentice?"

She pulled the covers up to his chin and kissed his forehead. "I'll be here. I'm not going anywhere."

"Doesn't matter if you do go anywhere, since I'm not going to sleep."

She continued to hum as she went about stoking a fire in the woodstove and puttering around in the kitchen. He didn't see any of what she was doing, since he'd closed his eyes. He drifted in and out to the sounds of her chopping and peeling and stirring, and felt himself losing track of time as warmth and the aromas of dinner cooking filled the room.

He was jolted suddenly out of a black, dreamless sleep. It was dark outside. Amari was at her table, reading a book in the light of a few stones emitting a cheery yellow glow.

Fuck. He'd slept hard, without meaning to. He almost wanted to get up and yell at her. What—like *how dare you create a comfortable setting for me to finally have a nap in?* Yeah, right.

The more he thought about getting out of bed, the less appealing it became, anyway. She'd need it for herself at some point, so he couldn't keep hogging it, but it was so damn warm and soft, and he felt so heavy and drowsy. In a pleasant way, though. There was a sense of safeness, a certainty deep down that he could stay in this bed all night and sleep as much as he wanted, and Amari would just be happy about it. Crazy lady.

He felt better than he had in ages. Relaxation and comfort, from his head to his toes.

And that… that wasn't good.

That wasn't good at all.

He sat up, shoving the blankets off, breathing heavy and prodding at his broken rib. Nothing. No pain. In a panic he pushed up his sleeve and raked his nails across the skin of his forearm, leaving white lines that turned pink and then red. *Those* hurt. So what the fuck happened to the rib? He twisted around, pressing on it, trying to make it hurt again. He pinched himself. He bit down on his lip.

"Goro. *Goro*. What's wrong?" Amari had come to sit next to him, was attempting to take his hands in hers so she could stop him from clawing at himself. He shook her off and crawled as far as he could to the head of the bed, pressing himself against the wall.

She held her hands out, palms facing him, and said, "Be calm." He heard the magic infused in her voice, and felt the spell edging into his mind like cool water. He threw it off.

"*Don't!*" he screamed.

She pulled her hands back. "Tell me what's wrong."

"It doesn't hurt anymore! Why doesn't it hurt anymore?" He pressed on it again.

"Your rib?" She scooted closer, putting a hand on his knee, which he swatted off. "I healed it. While you were sleeping."

"Why?!"

She frowned, just barely. "I noticed the way you were cradling your side earlier, so I checked on it. I don't know why you didn't heal it yourself. Why did you want it broken?"

Now, if that didn't sound reasonable as fuck. Goro considered the state he was in—curled up and shaking in a corner, gripping his arm that he'd already scratched all to hell, freakishly attached to having his rib stay broken; and Amari, a healer who cared about his wellbeing, explaining that she'd healed him.

The scratches really did hurt. Slowly, he let go of his arm and eased away from the wall.

"Tell me, please," she said. "I'm worried about you."

He hadn't intended to tell her about the hosting. It would only upset her, and there was no reason she needed to know, because it didn't make any difference now that it was over.

Except, it obviously did make a difference. He was different, now.

"That… thing. Diva." He swallowed. "She got in my head, too. Only for a little while. A day. The other Runners, they handled it, they kept me cha—" *Chained* was a strong word, come to think of it. He didn't need to put that image in her head. "Tied up, so I couldn't hurt anyone. So, it was fine. Nothing bad happened."

Amari said nothing, but he saw the hurt that passed over her face. What for? Him not telling her sooner? Him putting himself in danger?

"But, she kind of… messed with me, in my head. She could make me see things and dream things, and I wasn't sure what was real. Pain was the only thing I figured out she couldn't do, pain and hunger. That's why I left one rib broken."

For a second, Amari looked like she might cry, but then she recovered. A steely look entered her eyes, and he felt everything drop out from under him. She was going to send him away, like she did Joan.

It was finally happening. Hell if this weren't worse than some of the nightmares.

She held her arms out to him. "Come here."

"Huh?"

"*Come here*."

He scooted toward her hesitantly. Reached his arms out for her too, and when he was close enough, she grabbed onto him and dragged him onto her lap. She held him tightly, cradling his head against her chest.

"Amari," he said. "Amari, I'm not five years old."

"Shh." She kissed the top of his head and rubbed his back. "It's okay. I'm here. She can't reach you anymore. She'd have to go through me first."

"She absolutely could and would go through you. She had Joan stab you that one time."

"Well, now I know to be on my guard."

He scoffed. "You're fucking nuts." But he stopped protesting. He stayed where he was and let her hold him, rocking him like he was a small child who needed comfort.

Which, well… at one time, he had been. And he hadn't gotten it. Was it the kind of thing that could take effect years and years after the fact? She must have thought so.

*Your mom*, everyone said when they talked to him about her. *My son*, she said whenever she introduced him to people. Every time, he rolled his eyes. But he'd started to wonder—if it wasn't too late—if he should give in. Start thinking of her as his mother, really. It felt like a hat he kept almost trying on, that never quite made it to his ears.

He'd have to call her something. Mom, or Mother, or Mama. Or just Ma. That one seemed like a good place to start. If it didn't go well, he could pretend he'd been saying "Amari" and just missed a couple syllables.

When she let him go, he lay back on the bed again, and she brushed the hair off his forehead. She noticed him pinching the scratched-up skin on his arm. "Is that your plan?" she asked gently. "To always make sure you can feel pain?"

"Maybe." He laid off the pinching, for the time being. "Hey, do you know that… that sage from Shou Leng? You had me read his book once?"

"I'm not sure who you mean."

"The one who dreamed he was a butterfly."

 "Ah. Zhuzhen."

"Yeah, him." It was a book of weird little parables, most of which Goro had proclaimed stupid and pointless at the time. But he had that one stuck in his head now. *I slept, and dreamed I was a butterfly; and when I woke, I did not know if I was Zhuzhen dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming it was Zhuzhen.*

"What about him?" she asked.

It took him a moment to find the right words, and bring himself to say them. "I don't know, if… if this is the dream, or if this is being awake."

Amari thought for a while. "The story is meant to provoke a sense of peace, to stop us from resisting reality by questioning what reality is. But if it's upsetting you, then you shouldn't think too much about it."

"But I *can't* stop thinking about it. Don't you get how fucking horrible that is, not knowing if this is real? What if I made you up?"

"Hmm. Well, you did a good job of it. I feel very real, to me." She patted herself on the head and smiled at him. He didn't smile back. "Alright, let's suppose that's true, for a moment. That this is a dream world. Goro, where do you spend most of your time—here, or awake?"

"Here, I guess."

"And what's awake like?"

"Like… me hiding in an alley by myself, all alone, with no friends or anyone else."

"And how much time do you spend there? Is it this much—" She held her hands a few feet apart. "Or this much?" Fingers an inch apart, pinching the air.

"What's your point?" he asked.

"If you being alone in the alley is this much—" the pinch again— "and you being here, in this dream world, is everything else, then… can't you maybe decide that this is the more important place, anyway? And that's what makes reality, reality?"

He frowned at her. "You're fucking nuts, like I said."

"Well, don't blame me. You're the one dreaming this."

"Aw, shut up," he told her, but he was smiling, finally.

"I think what you most need right now is a very real bowl of soup." She patted his hand and stood. "Come on. Up."

He shuffled over to the table and sat. Amari ladled up a bowl of the soup, still sitting warm on the stove, and placed it in front of him along with a spoon.

This was it. He had to blurt it out fast, before he lost his nerve.

"Thanks, Ma."

Amari took a step back, staring at him wide-eyed.

"A-maaa-ri?" he tried.

More staring.

"'Mari?"

She clapped a hand over her mouth and burst into tears.

"Oh, fuck. Shit. Uh." He scooted back from the table, waving his hands in the air, not sure what to do. "I didn't, uh, shit. Look, I—"

She rushed at him, leaned down, and threw her arms around him. She sobbed in his ear and her tears spilled all over his neck and the collar of his shirt. He patted her on the back. "Listen, if that… if that wasn't okay—"

"Of course it was okay!" she wailed.

"Oh. Uh. Why are you crying?"

"Because—I'm so—" She had to keep pausing to gulp air. "*Happy*."

God, she didn't sound like it. Goro felt tears pricking at his own eyes, even though he kind of felt happy, too.

No, not kind of. Definitely. And it was good.

Dream or no dream—for now, it was enough.