{{ warning: heavy spoilers for episode 53 }}
"Ugh, my hair is a mess..." Yashee grumbled, trying to pull a knot out with her fingers. It caught, hard, and the way it pulled on her scalp brought tears to her eyes. She stopped, cheeks flushing with frustration, and huffed. What a day for her to have this problem.
"Trying to spruce up for your meetup with Tabitha later?" Yashee didn't need to look at Raz'ul to know the shit-eating face he was making. She could hear it. Eyebrow waggles and all.
"Yeah," she sighed, resigned. "But I misplaced my comb and I need a haircut but it's too late for me to get one and have it look nice so I'm just trying to make it look at least presentable. And my hair. Won't. Cooperate."
After a moment of silence, she heard a soft rhythmic noise. "Sit."
Yashee turned to see what Raz'ul was on about and saw him on their shared couch, legs folded underneath him, patting the space in front of him. He had a sturdy-looking wide-toothed comb to his right and half a dozen hair ties on his left, one already wrapped around his wrist.
"Are you sure?" She hesitated. Raz'ul sighed, heavy, and pat the couch again, more insistently this time.
"Do you want to look nice or do you want to go to your date with a tender scalp and ratty hair?" It wasn't the answer she was looking for so much as it was gentle teasing, but it did get her to shut her mouth and sit down without complaint. Raz'ul snorted softly and started working on her hair with the comb, starting at the ends and carefully sectioning off bits to get to later.
There was a comfort in the silence of ritual, the quiet domesticity of doing something you've done a million and a half times before, and that silence and comfort lent itself to thinking about deep and often emotional things. For Yashee, her mind wandered gently to the past—to her dad. Sitting in his lap as he sectioned her hair off and braided it the way her mom taught him to, careful to work with her hair texture instead of against it. How he would sing little songs to her, happy to have her tap out her energy instead of wiggling too much. How he would tell her about something he saw once or explain a song's origin.
How much she missed him.
What she had said. Why she regretted it immediately.
How comforting it was to have people there for her. People who cared for her.
What Raz'ul and Randy were to her, outside of bandmates.
Her body was still but her mind was buzzing and, for all the comfort there was in losing herself to memory, she needed to drum it out. So she did.
Over, under, over, under. Paradiddle paradiddle paradiddle paradiddle. Muted staccato against her thighs. Her low voice vibrated as she hummed wordlessly, drowning out the loneliness in her head, the soft yearning for her parents.
Good music could always do that.
So could good company.
It was just something to do with his hands. Well, that, and he did actually want Yashee to be happy and look nice on her date with Tabitha. Both things could be true, thankyouverymuch. Regardless of intent, Raz'ul was happy to help and he was pretty eager to show off his braiding skills.
It had been a long time since he had braided someone else's hair.
Admittedly, Yashee’s hair was a different texture than his and his brothers and, admittedly, she was significantly taller than he was, so he had to make an effort to position himself so he could do it properly, but the end result was the same. Someone he cared about looking nice. Plus he could make sure he remembered the traditional patterns right. Like the one his mom used to braid into his beard when he was younger, for formal events. The one that told everyone “I look good and you will acknowledge how hard this was by complimenting me” but in the secret language of Dwarven braids.
Those particular patterns were ones he didn’t get to do very often nowadays. Partially because they were complicated and near impossible to do without a visual, but mostly because he didn’t attend too many formal events anymore.
(Not any where having those braids in wouldn’t get him caught, anyway. Plus they’re hard to do for yourself so he couldn’t have done them up if he had had a chance to. Ah well, G-double flat, F-natural. Same thing.)
He was about halfway done with one of the four thick braids he was doing when Randy tapped the back of his neck, making him startle slightly. The sharp movement caused him to yank on Yashee’s head and, while she didn’t yelp, she did make a confused noise and stopped the drumming she had been doing on her knees.
“Sorry,” Raz’ul muttered, undoing the slightly kinked braid and redoing the plait so it was more even. The back of his ears flushed slightly and he sighed. “What's up?”
“Hey,” Randy stage-whispered, “Making Yashee look nice for later?”
“Mmhmm,” he replied.
“Cool.” There was a brief pause before Randy asked, “Can I join?”
(Three dwarven boys sitting on the ground, doing each other’s hair, learning traditional patterns, grinning gap-toothed smiles at each other. No teasing yet. No resentment. Just bonding.)
“You can braid?” Raz’ul asked around the nostalgia choking him.
“I’m a rogue,” Randy said, as if that was an answer.
It was, but being stubborn wasn't cute.
“Just don’t knot my hair up. I’m done with the comb if you want it.” Raz’ul tried to not let the tension show in his back. Judging by how Randy settled his legs over his shoulders, butt planted firmly on the back of the couch as he hunched over Raz’ul’s head, he must have succeeded. Or Randy opted to be nice and not say anything for once.
Not that he’d look a gift horse in the mouth.
Raz’ul sighed and continued his work on Yashee while Randy worked on combing and sectioning a small chunk of his hair.
Like playing an instrument, braiding was second nature to Raz’ul. This left his mind to wander and, with Randy’s deft thief fingers working at his own hair, back to the past he went.
For all that he didn’t miss certain things about home—the attention that comes with his name, the knowledge that he doesn’t belong there, the lack of agency—he did miss his family. Sure, his father could be strict, and sure, his mom could be stifling and sure, his brothers were a right pain, but that was family. And it’s not like they didn’t love him—
—didn’t they?
But the simple ritual of a braid train was enough to set him thinking about doing this with his brothers, all in a line, each of them teaching the one younger than him more and more complicated patterns. How his brothers taught him how to comb gently, without hurting his head. How his brothers taught him the secrets of Dwarven high society when he asked questions. How his brothers taught him the reward in finishing a complicated task.
How he missed them, even when he said he didn’t.
And as Yashee drummed and hummed, he couldn’t help but join in himself, if only to drown out the memories.
They were far too bittersweet.
Randy wasn’t one to admit his own feelings but…there was something nostalgic about sitting down and braiding Raz’ul’s hair while Raz’ul braided Yashee’s.
Not that he’d had the time in the Nowhere Men to learn how to braid hair.
(Or time with his family to be taught how.)
But there was an air of...hiraeth would be the best word for it. A longing for something Randy himself couldn’t name lingered around the two of them and, for all that their placidity could be read as concentration on the task or anxiety about an upcoming event, Randy knew them well enough to know that wasn’t entirely the case.
Raz’ul had this look on his face he always got when he was trying really hard to wildshape into one specific creature. The look that meant he was thinking really hard about something and also thinking about not thinking about it at the same time. And Yashee was drumming on her knees, something she only did when she had a lot of thoughts buzzing around in her head and needed some of the less important ones to quiet down or be overpowered by something else. Not a complicated pattern either, which meant she was really in her own head.
So what else could Randy do but join in and maybe help alleviate the pressure by giving Raz’ul one more sensation to focus on other than his own thoughts? And, in doing so, maybe his presence would help balance Yashee out. She was always more of a people-person than Randy himself, and she was calmed by the feeling of others being near her.
Braiding was far more difficult than Randy thought it would be. Close enough to making your own rope but the texture was different and you had to be mindful of the person whose hair you were braiding instead of pinning it between your knees and yanking on the cords so they came out as taut as possible. And Raz’ul had a wildly sensitive scalp according to how often Randy had heard him stifle a whimper of pain, which, of course, lanced a sharp spike of emotional discomfort through Randy. Apparently you have to pull tight but not too tight and even then, some of the hair is shorter than the rest and it will be a flyaway and you can’t just coat it in wax because it’s somebody’s hair. That’d hurt.
But his little rogue’s fingers were actually good at braiding, once he got those small details down and, like any mindless repetitive task, it let his mind wander away as it often did.
He’s not good at being good. A professional thief, yes. A halfway decent bard, sure. But a good person Randy Greentrees is not. Case in point: his own family, or lack thereof.
He could have stayed with them. Could have been what they wanted, but he didn’t. Instead he insisted he had bigger things to do in the grand scheme of things and, after making sure they were safe—for his own selfish reasons, as he’s ruined the lives of more than one person with little thought to their safety or well-being—he left.
(There’s a small part of himself that thought back to Raz’ul pressing, asking if he was okay, and how even then his answer had been washed out. He was fine and that was wrong and that felt bad but he didn’t say that. He was fine. Full stop.)
But the Greentrees hadn’t been his family. They might’ve been his family if he hadn’t been taken and groomed to be a Nowhere man for thirty eight years. They might’ve been his family if he hadn’t gotten out the way he had and stolen the one thing they’d protected for generations. They might’ve been his family if the Mons Organum hadn’t been there in the first place. But they weren’t because they weren’t. All those bad things happened and here he was.
Chaos Sauce probably was the closest thing he had to a real family.
For all he couldn’t really qualify what family was to him, he was pretty sure that joining a braid train is something families do. And while he wasn’t one hundred percent sure of that, if it helped Raz’ul and Yashee out, then that might be a step in the right direction.
Them being happy makes him happy. And that has to count for something, doesn’t it?
Family or not.
By: Sandr
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