It was still early in the afternoon as Ethan and David made their way back through Startesgarde. Their abject failure on the twelfth floor, along with the combined admonishments of Sam and David, was weighing heavy on him.

“You should cook tonight,” David’s voice broke his concentration.

“What? Why?”

“We’re broke as shit and you haven’t done it in a while?” David shrugged.

“I don’t know,” Ethan ran his fingers through his hair as he walked. “Do we even have anything?”

“You’re the professional chef, you should be able to figure something out.”

“We’ll see, I just don’t want to be stuck doing dishes all night,” Ethan said as they approached their guild hall.

“Don’t make a giant mess then,” David smiled at him and went inside.

What do I even say to everyone? Ethan paused before following David. “Sorry I’ve been too focused on Alera, I’ll make it up to all of you with a hot meal?” That sounds dumb.

“Are you coming in or are you going to stay outside all afternoon?” Alera peeked her head out of the door and grinned at him.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” He smiled back at her and went through the open door.

He was surprised at how quiet the common area of the guild hall was when he entered. He’d expected to see the guild morose, but present. Instead, it was only him, Alera and David.

“Where is everyone?” He looked at Alera.

“Miguel went straight to the auction house to check his sales and list what we scored today,” she jerked her head towards Sam’s door. “He said he had errands to run and left almost immediately after we got here.” She stressed “he” as if there had been an issue with Sam before he left.

“What about Leah?” Ethan asked.

Alera shook her head.

“She went right into her room and hasn’t come out,” Alera frowned. Ethan noticed a dimple in her cheek that he’d never seen before.

“Was she okay?” David asked from the kitchen.

“I dinnae,” Alera shrugged. “She didn’t say anything the ride back from the Tower.”

“I’ll go check on her,” Ethan made for the door to Leah and Tae-Won’s room but Alera caught him by the hand.

“I get the feeling she wants to be left alone,” she said. “She was really upset about missing with the roots with the yetis.”

“That wasn’t her fault,” Ethan glanced back at her door, “they were resisting all the different spells being cast at them.”

“I told you we weren’t up to the twelfth floor before we left,” David spread some mayonnaise on a piece of bread. “We’re all still wearing gear that we’ve outleveled and we’re still a person short.”

“I thought you wanted me to cook?” Ethan asked as David carefully laid out several slices of salami between the pieces of crusty bread.

“Just the four of us,” David piled the in game equivalent of alfalfa sprouts on his sandwich. “Which means I’d have to wash dishes.” He looked back at Ethan as he cut the sandwich in half. “ Are you just going to ignore what I said about gear?”

“Not ignoring it,” Ethan shook his head and looked at Alera, appraising her gear and considering his own. “There’s just nothing we can do about it at the moment. We’re short on gold and we haven’t had any good drops.”

“Sam could have used that neck piece,” David pointed out.

Three days before, on the tenth floor, an amulet had dropped that would have added a small fireball to every spell cast had dropped. Sam had been positively drooling over it, but their need for gold had forced them to make the decision to list it on the auction house.

“And I could have used the shoulders off Loeg for earlier this week,” Ethan added. “But we need the gold more at the moment. We can focus on gear when we’ve made the ten thousand to pay off the fine.” He’d really wanted the ornate, wolf shaped shoulder guards from the orc floor boss. Passing on them had been extremely hard.

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” David took a large bite of his sandwich. “Just saying, we’ve got to be smarter about what floors we try.” He said through his full mouth before swallowing, “otherwise we end up back early with nothing to show for it.”

Just like today, Ethan didn’t need David to spell out the day’s failure. He was keenly aware of how badly they had just gotten set back.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” he shook his head wearily and headed towards the stairs.

“Hey,” Alera stopped him. “I still haven’t eaten, so don’t take too long.”

Ethan momentarily cut his eyes towards David, their conversation still fresh in his mind.

“Yeah,” he gave her a half smile, hoping she’d take it as a sign of his exhaustion and not hesitation. “We’ll grab dinner.”

Scalding water washed over him as Ethan leaned against the cool tile of the small shower stall. The burning feeling helped relax his muscles, he was still sore and tense from their failure in the Tower.

I’ve got to figure out how to balance all this shit, his mind wandered between Sam and David’s points about his focusing on Alera and their situation with Tae-Won and the Blood Dragon guild. I don’t want to push her away, but they’re right, I can’t lose focus of everything else. After dinner, I need to check in with Miguel and our gold standing, then try to make up with Sam.

He rubbed the sweet smelling soap sand over his raw skin, scrubbing the sweat and grime off his body. The abrasive sand left him feeling clean and refreshed when he finally stepped out of the shower.

Armor or regular clothes? Ethan debated what to wear as he dropped water all over his bedroom floor. Usually, he wouldn’t have thought about wearing his armor out around town. Even in Startesgarde, where most of the players in the game lived, he tried to keep more of a humble and casual appearance than dressing for battle at all times. But with their current need for constant vigilance, he’d been donning his leather and chain mail for every small trip out of the guild hall.

“Fuck, it’s just dinner,” he grabbed a blue cotton tunic and pair of loose fitting leather pants from his closet and quickly dressed.

As he was strapping his seaxes to his belt, someone knocked on his door.

“Come in,” he called out, twisting to get the awkward sheathes positioned correctly on his back.

“You’re taking forever,” Alera complained as she barged into the room and collapsed onto the bed face first. “I’m starving!”

“Sorry?” Ethan tried to sit down next to her, but his seaxes prevented him from sitting comfortably. “I had to shower and get dressed.”

“Ethan,” she pushed herself up on her elbows and turned her head towards him. “You have like four shirts and a set of armor.”

“It was hard to pick between the dark blue and the darker blue,” he smiled and got back to his feet. “Maybe I wanted to look nice to take you out for once. Like a real date, back in the real world.”

“Oh my word,” Alera fluttered her eyes and put her hand over her chest to mock him. “A fancy date at the place we always go with a man wearing swords! How will I ever control my womanly urges!”

“Whatever,” Ethan grumbled, rolling his eyes, as he left the room.

“So where are we eating?” Alera asked giddily as she bounded down the stairs after him.

“Since Greenbriar is out, what are you feeling?”

“Why don’t we just go to the park and see what kind of street vendors we can find?” She slipped her hand into his.

“Sounds like a plan.”

Half an hour later they were seated on the same park bench Ethan had made the decision to follow the path of the Battle Shaman on just over a month prior. They had found a small cart selling greasy kebabs of some sort of meat and vegetables.

When Sam gets back, I need to ask him to go with me to Arianna’s tomorrow, Ethan thought to himself as he tried to pick around some of the more burned pieces of pepper and meat. If he’s got any kind of lead, she might be able to expand on them and give us more direction.

He’d been mostly quiet since they left the guild hall, working out any sort of plan that he could come up with to get through the next couple of weeks.

Selling mount runs of the first floor had not gone well. They’d only managed to sell two so far, and while the gold was good, it just wasn’t regular enough to not have to also raid the tower every day.

“This was surprisingly good,” Alera said as she bit into a chunk of charred meat, interrupting his thoughts.

“Mmhmm,” Ethan nodded as he chewed, still trying to focus on their need for gold.

“What do you think it is?”

“I dunno, lamb maybe?” He bit into a burnt piece of bell pepper and spit it out onto the ground.

Alera looked from the half chewed pepper on the ground and back to Ethan. “You could just say you don’t like it.”

“What?” He looked at her in confusion. “That piece was burnt.”

Alera tossed her empty skewer into a nearby trash can and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re kind of being an ass, you know that, right?”

“What are you talking about?” Ethan lowered his kebab and stared at her.

“Is this about not wanting to go to Greenbriar? Are you that pissy you didn’t get to eat where we always go?”

“What-?“

“You have been distant and quiet since we left the house,” Alera threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “I was just teasing you!”

“Alera,” Ethan turned and grabbed her hands. “I don’t care that we didn’t eat at Greenbriar. It doesn’t bother me that my kebab was burned.”

“Then what is going on, Ethan?” She dropped her hands into her lap.

“I just… David and Sam…” he frowned and shook his head, “I just have a lot on my mind.”

“What could they possibly have said that would ruin our first night of coming home not so completely exhausted that you and I actually get to spend some time together?” Alera jumped to her feet and paced in front of him.

Ethan rubbed his face with both hands and sighed.

“They said I’m too focused on you and not on everything else we have going on.”

“Oh,” she said quietly and sat back down.

“Yeah,” Ethan frowned and looked forward, unable to meet her gaze.

“Do you feel that way?” She asked softly.

“I didn’t,” he admitted. “When Sam first said that, back in the tower lobby, I was furious.” He paused and rubbed his palms against his thighs. “But David said the same thing, only much more reasonably.”

The silence between them seemed to last forever while Ethan waited for her to say something, anything.

“I-I’ll move my stuff downstairs until we can get another room built,” she sounded shocked when she finally spoke.

“What?” Ethan whipped his head around to see her. “No! I don’t want that!”

“Well, what do you want Ethan?”

“You,” he, perhaps too roughly, grabbed her hand. “Tae-Won back safely,” he waved his other hand out, gesturing to the world around them.”To go home.”

“You just said…” a small tear ran down her cheek.

“I said that they aren’t incorrect,” he brushed the tear away. “I just have to balance everything better. Take a more proactive role and not just go to bed with you when we get home.”

“I didn’t realize how much they rely on you,” Alera said quietly next to him. “I’m sorry if I’m interfering.”

“We rely on each other,” he half smiled, trying to comfort her. “It’s how we’ve gotten through the last year.” Ethan sighed as he realized that it had been almost a year since they’d first gotten trapped in the game. “Without them… I don’t know how I’d have survived here.”

“You probably would have gone crazy and just started living somewhere, not engaging with anyone, just hiding,” she frowned at him.

“I wish you’d found us sooner,” Ethan put his arm around her and pulled her close to him. “I-I can’t imagine how it was for you for so long, being alone.”

“I don’t-“ she paused and laid her head on his chest. “I don’t want to be alone anymore, I want to be part of this family you’ve built.”

“You are,” He rubbed her arm, enjoying how close she was to him. “You just came in in a weird time, don’t let Sam’s stress push you away from everyone else