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When the burning stopped he found himself alone. His memory of what happened is hazy -- aren't all his memories hazy? -- but he remembers the light and the fire, the way his hands and mouth were blazing, and even if he didn't remember the scorching on his blue tunic would tell a tale.

He remembers enough.

He can't seem to get warm now, despite the perfectly pleasant climate, and he builds a fire in one of the mansion's many sitting rooms with fireplaces, and then he huddles in front of it, his knees clasped to his chest.

Crowley couldn't make him Galahad again, but he doesn't feel like Damien any more. He remembers enough to know what he had wanted to escape -- whatever purpose it was that made him like this, capable of subsuming into flame or holding a brand-new weapon like a familiar part of his body -- but not enough to know why he's like this, and not enough to be the person Claudius is waiting for. He feels like stone, but a stone that has lost all the earth's heat.

If Crowley, who changed him in the first place, can't change him back, then can he be changed back? It seems to him from what Lan Wangji said that this is all there is now. He's incapable of being loved, incapable of knowing himself, incapable of the lit path that Lan Wangji exhorted him towards.

He stares into the fire, his fixed blue stare that might as well be a stranger's, and wishes he had been rendered in his own bonfire.

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He nods. His own relief is once again palpable; he's more or less incapable of dissembling. His feelings are always writ large on his face.

"I love thee. I understand why thou didst what thou didst. I do not think it-- I cannot say if it was wrong or not. I don't know enough about the world. But I know thee, I know thou wouldst not have done what thou didst not believe in."

Claudius can dissemble, does all the time -- but he breathes out his relief and he smiles. "My heart is thine. I cannot swear to be thine alone, but I am thine as long thou wilt have me." He takes this man's, no longer an untouchable saint's, hand in his own and kisses it. "What shall I call thee? To me, thou art my Galahad. But thy name is thine own to decide."

"What kind of names do men take for themselves?" He laughs. "I have never named myself before. What is a name for someone who has changed for the better?"

"We will search every book and find one thee. But first, thy hand," he says -- and takes the other hand, the bandaged one. "I said my hands are good for more than killing. I can make salves, too if you require them. Will you allow me to take care of you?"

He lets it be taken, gone slightly shy again. His hand has already been tended to twice, but there's some new intimacy in letting Claudius see it. At the same time, he feels as if he ought to prepare Claudius in some way for the extent of the burn, as if Claudius hasn't seen worse hurts.

"It's--" He hesitates. He's not really sure what it is/

"Here, let me at least see what we're dealing with." He unwraps it carefully, careful of the hand and anywhere it might ache, and careful of the bandaging, too.

Nina's bandage is carefully and skillfully wound, the work of someone who knows what she's doing. Under it there's the salve she used, and beneath that the burn itself. Almost all the blisters are broken from a combination of Laertes' efforts to help and his own time spent squeezing or pressing on it, and his hand is swollen and discolored, the skin sloughing away.

Claudius was an abysmal soldier in the army, but he was a decent field medic, and assesses the wound with the same careful eye he used to look at his blood through a microscope. It's the calm he needs not to shudder at what's happening to his lover's skin. "Well, now I must insist," he mutters. "You need someone to take care of this, or it won't heal. How did this happen?"

He wets his lips uncertainly, but he's told Claudius everything else, and nothing has made him turn away. "I put my hand in the fire so I would know how it felt if I hurt someone else."

"Ah." Claudius sighs, and continues to assess. "I suppose that makes some sense. If you thought you were at risk of bursting into flame and had no memories of what flame felt like, you'd want to know how it felt for other people in your path. I can see how that might send you into a state of some panic. And why you were so afraid of hurting me -- you had a fresh memory that was also a discovery, that it's possible to be hurt by fire." It follows, too, why he kept pressing his hand, reminding himself how it hurt so he wouldn't hurt Claudius. To know there was a reason not to come too close. "It won't help if it doesn't heal, though. We'll need to wash this clean before we can rebandage it."

Again, that naked relief, the tension easing in his thin face. "All right," in a tone that suggests he would trust Claudius to do very nearly anything to him.

"I'll fetch a bowl of water, fresh bandages and salve, and a book for you to start looking for a name from. I don't know if you'll want to look at any of the books my room. Most of them are alchemical books."

"Oh-- let me look. I'd like to."

"Then look your fill," Claudius laughs, and rises to return to his desk and fetch a copy of Magia Naturalis. "But I still need the bowl of water and the bandages. You'll wait for me, won't you?"

He nods without looking up, already thumbing through the book.

As promised, Claudius returns with all the tools to cleanse a wound and rebandage it. He's fortunate he already has a healing salve among his potions, from the first time he encountered someone wounded and decided it's something he better have on hand. "I know, it's far from light reading," he says as he enters. "Discover anything yet?"

By then he's stretched across the bed on his stomach, halfway through the book -- not because he read straight there, he's been skipping around -- and he looks up. His face has developed a way of lighting up when he sees Claudius, a subtle flash of pleasure and relief, as if each time he returns is a happy surprise.

"Laurel. I want to be Laurel."

"Laurel," Claudius repeats with a pleased smile. He kneels by the bed, wetting a towel in water, to all appearances entirely at the service of this sweet man who'd previously inspired him to a more ambitious role. It seems some changes are possible. "Many uses for laurel -- most of the ones in that book I haven't tried. Which one inspired you?"

"It says, you may without fear of burning draw oil out of the leaves, berries and other parts with most vehement fire. It is like thee and me, I am the fire and thou hast no fear of burning." He doesn't mention the part about it being called sweet bay, and how much it still holds with him that Tress gave him sweetness to taste for the first time. He puts the book aside and sits up for Claudius, holding out his hand obediently.

"No fear at all of thee." When he washes Laurel's hand, it's exceedingly gentle, mindful of how any touch to the tender skin could pain him -- but it needs to be done, so that the wound can heal properly. That's one thing Claudius has learned. "Thou art my Laurel."

Laurel watches unflinchingly, though there's tension in him now that tells on him. It hurts in a way that seems to go to the bones of his hand, and he reminds himself that he may not hurt Claudius, but he can still hurt everyone else.

"Thine," he echoes softly. "I am thine."

Then Claudius tends to him a while, with hands that can heal as well as kill. He still feels like he killed Galahad, drove an innocent to self-obliteration with his carelessness, and now he knows: that Galahad isn't coming back and couldn't. He's changed too much, and Crowley hasn't the power to restore his memories, and he'd make something different of his memories even if he had them.

But Laurel lives, he's here and healing, and Laurel is a person Claudius wants to protect. Claudius knows himself well enough now to admit¹ that first pang of protectiveness always means he's falling for someone.

¹ Not out loud, but admit there's an answer when he asks himself why he felt so defensive whenever someone seemed to slander Galahad's name.

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