Jorren studied him a long moment, taking in the changes seven months apart had wrought — the new confidence in his stance, the unfamiliar companions at his side, the particular weight in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Then, without further words, the big man pulled him into an embrace that nearly cracked a rib, gruff and fierce and entirely unlike anything Rohan remembered from their months training together.
"You stupid, reckless boy," Jorren said, voice thick. "You could have sent word. You could have —" He stopped himself, pulling back, something like genuine relief breaking across his weathered features. "Never mind. You’re here. That’s what matters. Maerin’s going to want to see this with her own eyes before she believes it."
Word of Rohan’s return spread through Veyrhold’s buried corridors faster than he could have anticipated, faster even than his own steady walk toward the settlement’s common chambers, drawing curious, disbelieving faces from workshops and storage tunnels alike as he passed.
He found Bryan first, in the same cramped records office where they’d spent countless hours preparing petitions and salvage documentation together, the older man looking up from a stack of ledgers with an expression that shifted, in the space of a single heartbeat, from professional distraction to open, stunned astonishment.
"By the Marches," Bryan breathed, rising so quickly his chair nearly toppled behind him. "Rohan. We logged you as missing, presumed lost, nearly four months ago. The consortium records showed no trace of your transport. I searched every manifest I could access through legitimate channels, and some considerably less legitimate ones besides."
"I stowed away," Rohan admitted. "On a merchant vessel called the Gilded Heron. That’s part of why there’s no record — I wasn’t exactly a documented passenger."
Bryan’s expression cycled rapidly through several competing reactions — alarm at the recklessness, admiration at the audacity, and finally, settling into something that looked remarkably like professional respect. "You always did find the least conventional path through any obstacle. I should have expected nothing less, in hindsight." He came around the desk, gripping Rohan’s forearm in the same formal, careful greeting he’d once used before every negotiation they’d prepared together. "Your reserve record. Did it hold up? Did it serve its purpose?"
"It bought me a star chart that changed everything," Rohan said. "It’s part of the reason I’m standing here at all. Thank you, Bryan. For preparing it. For everything."
Brn’s careful composure cracked, just slightly, something warmer bleeding through his usual precise formality. "I’m glad it served you well. I confess I prepared it with considerably less confidence in its eventual use than I let on at the time."
Iri reached him before Maerin did, pushing through the gathering crowd with her medical satchel still slung over one shoulder, her expression a mixture of relief and barely-contained fury that Rohan recognised immediately as the particular flavour of care she’d always shown him.
"You absolute fool," she said, gripping his face in both hands and turning it side to side with brisk, professional efficiency, checking him over for injury with the same thoroughness she’d once applied to every scrape and bruise he’d brought back from his earliest, clumsiest training sessions. "Seven months. Seven months with no word, no confirmation, nothing but Bryan’s increasingly desperate searches through consortium records turning up absolutely nothing. Do you have any idea what that did to the people who cared whether you lived or died out there?"
"I’m sorry," Rohan said, and meant it fully. "I tried to send word. I didn’t have the means until I reached the Halcyon Span, and even then, there was no guarantee it would ever arrive."
"It didn’t," Iri said flatly. "Whatever message you sent, it never reached us. You’re the first confirmation anyone here has had that you survived at all." Her sharp expression softened, just slightly, something rawer bleeding through her professional briskness. "I told you to make the fear worth something, before you left. Looking at you now, I’d say you did exactly that, whatever it cost you to get here."
"It cost plenty," Rohan admitted. "But you were right. It was worth it."
Iri studied him a long moment, something fiercely proud settling into her expression despite the lingering worry still evident beneath it. "Good. Now sit down somewhere and let me actually examine you properly, before Maerin monopolises your entire evening with questions about your combat technique."
Maerin found him in the common chamber a short while later, drawn by the same spreading word that had carried news of his return through every corner of the settlement, and Rohan felt his chest tighten with an entirely different kind of anticipation at the sight of her — the same cold, watchful competence he remembered, unchanged by seven months’ distance, studying him now with an intensity that made him feel, briefly, like the desperate, untrained boy she’d first taken under her instruction all those months ago.
"You look different," she said, without preamble, circling him once with the same assessing focus she’d always brought to evaluating a recruit’s readiness. "Steadier. Your stance has changed. Whatever you’ve faced out there, it’s taught you considerably more than I managed to teach you here."
"I had good teachers to build on," Rohan said. "You gave me the foundation. Everything since just built on top of it."
Maerin’s mouth twitched — not quite a smile, but close enough that Rohan recognised it as genuine warmth beneath her characteristic sternness. "I told you, before you left, that hope has teeth. I meant it as a warning." She studied him a moment longer. "Looking at you now, I think perhaps I should have told you it also has claws sharp enough to carry a person considerably further than caution alone ever could. You look like a man who found what he was searching for."
"I did," Rohan said quietly. "I found the way home."
Something shifted behind Maerin’s watchful eyes — not surprise, exactly, but a kind of grave, immediate understanding of everything that revelation actually meant. "Then you’ve come to say goodbye."
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