I don't think Haar and Jill got together during the war, so I won't use this anywhere. Sometimes ideas come to you, anyway.

You can’t tell anyone, Mist. Promise?

She thought they would look different. Older, more refined, experienced. She never thought they would look nervous, as Jill chewed her bottom lip, sitting back on her heels in the tent she shared with Mr. Haar. Jill was waiting for her to say something, but Mist could only look around that small tent, wondering where it had happened.

Because it wasn’t so long ago that they’d been young girls, sharing their first secrets—how war wasn’t what they’d expected. How they’d feared the laguz, at first. How they didn’t know what to do without their fathers. Those secrets seemed silly now that they were grown up.

Or, at least, Jill was.

“Jill.”

She smiled, a little covertly.

Things were different, after. Things were probably more different for Jill, though they looked the same—she and Haar still supported each other in battle. They still bickered in the makeshift stables. Jill still sat with the girls, and Haar still napped. But things shifted after nightfall, how Haar waited for Jill before leaving. How Jill smiled a different kind of smile, a little shy. How he rested a hand on the small of her back, the part not covered by the armor, when they walked away.

Mist had seen Haar without his armor, the same as she’d seen anyone. He cleaned and oiled it by night with the others, sitting in his underdress by the fire pit. But she noticed now, sitting across the pit with her mending—how he sat with his knees apart like the other men, cleaning blood off the armor; how he was wide across the shoulders, where Boyd was just bulky.

It wasn’t like she’d never seen a boy with his shirt off, in the times Boyd or Rolf needed that one specific shirt from the laundry. It was one thing to roll your eyes at boys being boys, but another to see them, to wonder which of those parts she’d like to touch, if Boyd were—

She shuddered.

Well.

But it was another to know, how Jill knew. Watching this man across the fire, who frowned at the underside of a pauldron, his calloused hands slick with oil. Just going on with life like nothing was different. He massaged a spot with his thumb, working at something she couldn’t see.

The needle pricked her forefinger. She sucked at the blooming spot of blood.

Mist caught their glances, saw those glances in others, and wondered. Wondered at how Queen Nailah watched Prince Rafiel. Wondered at how Lucia watched Queen Elincia. Wondered at how Boyd laughed at her, ruffling her hair, if he watched her when she wasn't looking.

“He loves you, you know,” Jill said, one day.

Mist rolled her eyes. “He has a weird way of showing it.”

Maybe Jill knew these things now, as she cleaned her own armor at night, sharing the same bottle of oil. Maybe she saw things Mist couldn’t, in how Boyd hovered while she mended, blocking the already scant light. But he was nothing like Haar, who never ruffled Jill’s hair or barked about a lost shirt.

“Do you think you’ll get married?” Mist asked, one day.

She’d never seen Jill blush before. “Let’s make it through the war first.”

Mist noticed Haar at every corner, in his favorite places to nap. He used his saddlebag as a pillow, spread out near a fence or a wyvern, feet crossed at the ankles. She hadn’t expected to find him behind Jill’s mount, in the back of the stables.

“Mist.”

She leaped back. He hadn’t opened his eye, but he shifted, stretching back against the bag.

“Why are you hovering?” he asked. “Are we moving out?”

“I’m not hovering!” she huffed.

He smirked. “You two are friends, all right.”

Mist tilted her head, openly staring now, but she couldn’t help it. Staring at that slight smile that said he wasn’t sleeping, at the faint stubble across his square jaw. At the armor that was so similar to Jill’s, and the line of his thighs down to his feet.

“It’s fine that you know,” he said.

She clasped her hands behind her back. “Know what?”

“I know Jill trusts you.”

Mist smoothed her skirt, lowering to the ground. Haar’s one eye drifted open, and she wondered what the other one looked like, if Jill had seen it.

“I hope you’re not looking for advice,” he said.

She sat up straighter. “Why would I do that?”

He shrugged. “A man’s perspective. Something like that.”

“You should be more direct with him,” Haar said. “We can be dense about these things.”

“What...” Mist balled her skirt in both fists. “How do you...?”

He smiled, not one of a hardened soldier. “She talks to me, too, you know.”

The army joked about the one-eyed man who was always napping. Lazy, she’d heard, which didn’t even make sense. Because she sat there with him, who she’d seen in his underdress that showed the muscles in his shoulders and thighs, the only one who used that heavy axe. Tired, yes, but in the same way they were all tired.

“You love her, right?”

Haar frowned. “What kind of man do you think I am?”

“We just need to hear it.”

He studied her, scrutinizing. It wasn’t so different from what she’d done to him, perhaps not as unseen as she’d thought. “Of course I do.”

She’d never considered herself friends with Haar. He was Jill’s friend—Jill’s something, anyway—always on the periphery, even as an enemy soldier.

They weren’t alone anymore—the faint clang of her shinguards gave her away, the familiar bootfalls as Jill approached her wyvern. Maybe she had known, sensed them somehow, as she peered over the beast’s head.

“What are you doing?” Jill asked.

“Threatening me,” Haar replied.

Mist sprang to her feet. “I am not!”

Haar’s laugh was more a rumble as he slowly rose, slinging his saddle bag over a shoulder. “She’s a good one,” he said, jerking his chin toward Mist.

Jill looked between them both, a slight furrow on her brow. “I know that.”

He squeezed Mist’s shoulder as he passed, not looking at her. He looked at Jill instead, a look Mist had never seen on him before, as he ruffled Jill's hair. But it was a lighter touch that pushed it behind her ear, the oil-stained glove on her pauldron as his lips brushed her cheek. Even Mist blushed when Haar whispered something in her ear, something that wasn't for Mist to hear.

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