When the hood slipped back, the figures features finally came into view, though by this point, Soren already knew who he was looking at.
Pale-blonde hair spilt loose in the moonlight.
Long ears cut a clean line through it.
Rose-pink eyes, sharp and beautiful and impossibly familiar, landed on him.
Soren forgot, very briefly, how breathing worked.
She looked slightly worn around the edges, as if the night had already asked too much of her before she had come here.
There were faint shadows beneath her eyes, and when she drew in a breath, it was just a touch deeper than it should have been, the smallest hint of fatigue catching beneath otherwise perfect control.
But she held herself straight all the same, calm and composed, not a single sign of weakness allowed to reach the surface.
Her gaze slid to the three seniors first.
What little softness had been in her face disappeared.
"If any of you can still hear me, stay down," she said, voice cool enough to frost glass.
The one with the arrow in his leg made the mistake of trying to push himself up.
She didn't even raise her voice.
"I did not phrase that unclearly."
He froze.
Only then did she turn back to Soren, and the change in her was so immediate that it caught him off guard all over again.
The cold, cutting distance she had shown the others vanished beneath something gentler, not careless, but careful.
She crossed the remaining distance and crouched in front of him.
Up close, she was even more unfair-looking than he had been prepared for, tall even while kneeling, refined, striking, every line of her face composed in a way that should have felt distant and instead somehow made the softness in her expression hit harder.
Soren became acutely aware of his state all at once.
Skinned hand.
Dust on his clothes.
Hair a mess.
Bruised shoulder.
Possibly bleeding from more places than he wanted to count.
Breathing too fast.
Staring like an idiot.
Her eyes flicked over him with quick, practised efficiency, cataloguing the injuries.
Then, very gently, she raised a gloved hand and brushed a loose strand of hair away from his face.
"It's alright now," she said. "You're safe."
The words were simple.
They still hit him with embarrassing force.
"Ah… I…"
Brilliant.
Excellent start.
His brain, which had spent the past several minutes occupied with survival, seemed completely unwilling to transition cleanly into speaking to a woman he already knew he was going to meet eventually, just not like this, not here, not while looking half-dead in a dead-end alley after being hunted by drunk second-years.
Her expression softened by a degree.
"Can you stand?"
"Yes."
He stood.
His ankle disagreed immediately, nearly buckling beneath him.
She reached forward before he could pretend that had not happened, one hand catching his forearm, the other steadying lightly at his shoulder.
She was careful of the bruise there even without being told.
The touch was firm, controlled, and somehow gentler for how certain it was.
"Try honesty," she said, not unkindly.
Soren flushed.
"I-I can stand. My leg just died for a moment, nothing serious, I swear."
That earned him the smallest hint of amusement.
She kept hold of him just long enough to make sure he was balanced, and Soren hated how aware he was of every point of contact.
Not because it was inappropriate, but because of who it was.
Because she was not supposed to be here yet.
Because his first clear look at her was happening while his heart was trying to climb out through his throat.
"Thank you," he managed, a touch hoarser than he wanted. "Seriously."
"You don't need to thank me for stopping that."
Her eyes flicked toward the three men, and the chill in them returned for a moment.
"What they were doing was vile."
One of the seniors made a pained noise from the ground.
She didn't even look at him when she spoke next.
"You will report yourselves in the morning. All three of you. If you fail to do so, I will make sure the matter reaches the people most capable of ruining your lives."
Her tone stayed perfectly even throughout, which somehow made it worse.
No one argued.
She turned back to Soren again, and the cold vanished as if it had never been there.
"Were you alone?"
The question made him think of Olivia at once.
"There was another first-year," he said. "Olivia. I sent her to get help."
She nodded once, accepting that quickly.
"Ah, her. She is probably safe and sound at the dormitory already."
Probably.
The word should have been reassuring.
Instead, Soren found himself clinging to the fact that Olivia was at least no longer here.
Yvette seemed to read the tension still holding his shoulders.
"She made it out," she said, more firmly this time. "You bought her enough time. You should be proud of yourself."
Something in him eased a fraction.
That, more than anything, was what made the next wave of exhaustion hit.
Now that the immediate threat had gone, his body was starting to remember everything it had been putting off.
The aching ankle.
The raw sting in his palm.
The throb in his shoulder and knee.
The breathlessness.
The crash after too much adrenaline.
She noticed, of course she did.
"You shouldn't stay standing longer than necessary."
Her hand shifted from his forearm to his wrist, careful and warm even through the glove.
"I'll take you back."
Soren looked down at where she held him, then up at her face, and had the distinctly humiliating experience of feeling flustered in a way that would have been easier to manage if he had not already been half in shock.
He had imagined meeting her before.
Not often, not in a deranged way, but enough.
None of those imagined versions had included this.
Not her appearing out of nowhere like a storybook knight after he had cornered himself in an alley.
Not this gentleness.
Not the quiet, steady certainty of her presence.
Not the contrast between the exhausted edges she was carefully hiding and the strength she was still placing in front of him as if that were the most natural thing in the world.
"Senior Yvette," he said, because apparently that was the best his brain could do.
A very faint smile touched her mouth.
"So you know who I am."
That only made him more aware of himself.
"A little."
"I see."
There was no teasing sharpness to it, only a mild warmth that somehow made his face feel hotter.
He tried to straighten, then winced because his body immediately punished the attempt.
Yvette's fingers tightened very slightly around his wrist.
"Please don't do that merely because I am looking at you. There's no reason to act strong now. It's all over."
Soren stared.
Then, against all reason, a dry response rose to the surface anyway.
"That's unfortunately why I feel tempted to."
For a split second he thought he had overstepped.
Then Yvette let out the softest breath of laughter.
It was brief, tired around the edges, and somehow that made it worse for his composure.
"Good," she said. "If you can still make jokes, then you're probably not concussed."
He had no answer to that.
She guided him out of the alley at a pace that did not strain his ankle further, never hurrying him, never making him feel as if the support was pity rather than simple practicality.
Once or twice, when the ground dipped unevenly, her hand shifted to his elbow or the middle of his back to steady him, each touch precise and light, there only as long as needed.
Behind them, the three seniors stayed exactly where they had fallen.
Soren did not look back again.
By the time they neared the dorm path, the night had gone quiet around them.
His pulse had settled somewhat, though every so often he still caught himself glancing sideways just to confirm that Yvette was actually there and that this had not all been some feverish, adrenaline-soaked hallucination produced by a bruised brain and terrible luck.
She noticed that too.
"You're very watchful," she said.
Soren considered lying, then gave up on it.
"I'm checking that you're real."
Yvette looked at him for a moment, and when she answered, her voice had gentled again.
"I'm real."
That shouldn't have done anything to him.
It did anyway.
When they reached the dorm gates, she finally let his wrist go, though she stayed close enough that he suspected she still expected him to wobble.
He probably would have, if she had stepped away too soon.
"Can you manage from here?" she asked.
Soren nodded, then corrected himself before she could call him out on it.
"Yes. Slowly."
"Slowly is acceptable."
He hesitated.
There was a lot he could have said, none of it especially elegant.
Thank you for saving me.
Thank you for helping Olivia, too.
Thank you for showing up exactly when I had run out of options.
Thank you for being kinder than he had been prepared for.
In the end, what came out was still simple.
"Thank you, Senior Yvette."
Something in her expression softened in a way that made her look tired, but warmly so, as if she had set the exhaustion aside until now and only just allowed herself to feel it again.
"It was no trouble."
That was obviously untrue.
Soren had seen the shadows under her eyes, the controlled breath, the effort it took to look untouched by whatever had already drained her tonight.
She was putting on a strong face for him, and the realisation landed strangely heavily in his chest.
Before he could say anything else, Yvette reached out and, with a natural ease that caught him completely off guard, smoothed a hand once over his hair.
The gesture was gentle, almost absent-minded.
It still sent his heartbeat into complete disarray.
"Get some rest," she said. "And have those injuries looked at if they worsen."
"I will."
She gave a small nod, then drew her hood back up.
With the shadows hiding part of her face again, she looked a little more distant, a little more like someone who belonged to the night around her rather than the path in front of him.
But when she turned away, she paused just long enough to glance back over one shoulder.
"You did well," she said quietly.
Then she was gone.
Soren stood by the gate long after her footsteps had faded, jacket shifting lightly in the cold wind, heart still beating far too fast for someone who was no longer in danger.
His ankle hurt.
His shoulder hurt.
His palm stung.
His knee was probably going to be miserable tomorrow.
Yet none of that seemed particularly central at the moment.
Yvette.
Of all the ways he might have met her, it had been this.
Unexpected, overwhelming, absurdly kind, and unfairly memorable.
He stared into the empty path she had disappeared down and let out a slow breath.
Then, because there was no one around to hear him and because honesty felt uselessly unavoidable in the aftermath of everything, he muttered to himself,
"Well… that was bad for my heart."
————「❤︎」————