Days passed. Simon walked. He moved quietly through Red Rock in the hour before the sun would rise, while most of the camp was sleeping and the night watch paid him little mind. Anders was not there.

He was staring into the slowchurning embers of a dying campfire when his heart raced, instinctively reacting to the approach of soft footsteps before his mind could process them. He turned slightly, saw Regis emerged from his tent and walking to him with uncharacteristic sympathy in his eyes. "Hey," he greeted quietly. Simon nodded to him, arms wrapped around himself. "You're here about Anders."

Simon looked at him. At least there was no need for awkward expositions. "Should I expect more people to know?"

Regis shrugged, standing by him and looking in the fire. "Diane only told a few of us the ultimatum. Myself, Jack, Melissa. Jessup, I think, but he didn't particularly care."

"The ultimatum?"

"The one she had given Anders," Regis explained gently. Sympathy registered uncomfortably on his proud face, an unusual breed of sad undertone to his quiet dignity. "It was brutal. For a while there it looked like they were going to settle it in the ring. Then they duked it out privately and she just... won. Neither of them would tell us why, but she won."

Simon looked back at the fire, chest growing oddly tight. "I just... Why? Why is she against us being together?"

"That's not a question I can answer," Regis said simply. He looked at Simon until the courier met his eyes. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Are you serious about this? None of us knew about the whole thing with you and Anders-- I mean, it makes sense when I think about it but... Is this the real deal between you two?"

That was the question that had been on Simon's mind ever since he started this journey. The truth was that none of his postulating and theorizing about what he would do when he found his visitor, discovered his identity and whether he was friend or enemy or real stranger, none of that had prepared him for the moment when he saw the scar on Anders' left hand. He tried to dissect and decontextualize his feelings during these past few days of searching since, tried to intellectualize the whole ordeal. Because he and Anders were friends, of course, friends who had been forged in an experience unmatched by any other in Simon's personal history. They got along famously. They never lacked for companionable connection, even if it was a simple pass of a bottle. But this reasonable approach had no place in the primal surge Simon felt when he realized what they had really been sharing, and the way his soul was immediately set on him. Like some untappable part of him had realized he had been looking for Anders long, long before he'd taken him down from that cross.

"Yes," he distilled his answer for Regis.

Regis was silent, watching the fire beside him, before resting a big hand on his shoulder. "Go talk to her," he said. "To Diane. She's a reasonable woman. She'll be straight with you."

The camp was slowly waking up around them, Khans slowly crawling out of tents and joining them around the freshly-stoked fire by the longhouse, slow buzzes of quiet conversation mixing with the smells of breakfast cooking in the air. None seemed to have the same new trepidation around Simon as Regis had, clapping him on the shoulder with sleep-addled grumbled greetings. Simon sat by the fire as the sun rose, eating thin corn cakes drizzled in sweet syrup and slivers of fried gecko, still next to Regis, the two of them passing one of Jack's breakfast beers back and forth.

"You really think she'll tell me?" Simon asked when the sun was hot on his shoulders.

Regis looked at him. "She's an honest person," he said after a moment of thought. "But she hasn't maintained our position out here by being nice. Keep that in mind." Simon nodded, and made to rise when Regis' low voice momentarily anchored him. "Khans don't love lightly. Never have. We fall in love like a magnum blast to the heart and tend to stay that way for good. You need to remember that."