#sequence alex stabbed

‘Verse: Unlikely Salvation, credit as always to @whump-sprite
Timeline: Arc 2
Sequence: Alex Stabbed

[Prev]

It’s cold that drags her back to full wakefulness. Not acute, air-hurts-to-breathe cold, but the slow and steady discomfort of not being quite warm enough to sleep. Alex is still cold against her, despite the close press of their bodies and the layer of insulation over the top. 

Shit, she thinks, she was going to try and get some sugar and hot fluids into him, once he was a little warmer. She shouldn’t have let herself doze. It’s hard to let go of Alex. It feels good, holding him close. But she’s done enough damn damage, making herself feel good at his expense. 

So she peels herself off him, tucking the covers carefully back in close so as to keep in whatever warmth he has, and rolls out of the bed. They’ve made a right mess of it. They’ll need to move again - and soon. She killed a guy and she left the murder weapon at the scene, covered in her prints. They need more distance. But not now. She cranks the thermostat up, shivering, and puts the kettle on. She can find more clothes to pile on top of the covers, too. He deserves more than her faltering efforts, but he’ll have the best she can do.

—

There are no dreams, at first. Just warmth, and relief, and the pleasure of something soft beneath him rather than the cold stone floor. 

But when she leaves, when the cold and the pain set back in, he dreams of her. 

Give me something, anything, and this can all stop, she hisses. She’s on the other side of the room, standing calmly, while the guard slams the metal baton into his abdomen. 

I don’t know, I don’t know any of that, please, please, they, please, interrogator… 

Thud. He wails. She smiles. 

And then he tells her Anders’ address. He tells her the place where they teach the children. Then the safehouse that’s their makeshift hospital, because they can’t trust the real ones. 

It’s not enough. Thud. He keeps talking. He can’t stop. Thud. She smiles, and tells the guard to keep going. 

“Please, interrogator,” he moans out loud into the pillows, while the interrogator herself is making him tea.

—

It ought to cut deeper. But she’s heard it so many times, both when he was hers and she was the government’s, and since then. So often when he sleeps. It’s just familiar, where it ought to be painful with guilt. 

So she twists the knife herself, reminding herself of how tirelessly he spent his magic on her broken bones. How he went above and beyond, dulling the pain for her, cool hands on her inflamed skin. Bought her food, drove her away from danger, paid her way while she found her feet. How he did all that, after everything she did to him. 

He cared for her, knowing what she is, when she broke him without caring enough to wonder if he might be a better person than her. 

There, now it stings like it should. 

“Alex,” she answers softly. “Alex, you’re safe, I’m not going to hurt you." 

Her voice wobbles a little, and she swallows to make it steady. She wasn’t stabbed, she wasn’t tortured. She has no right. 

"Wake up, Alex. I’m not going to hurt you. Are you thirsty? There’s tea here for you - you don’t have to do anything, it’s yours as soon as it’s brewed…”

—-

Alex… Alex, wake up, not going to hurt you…. 

He wakes immediately, and with confused, bloodshot eyes looks at her as he grabs at his abdomen where the guard beat - no, where they stabbed him - shit, shit, shit. 

“What did I — Ariadne, what did I say — while I was sleeping, what —” He tries to sit up, and looks at her in panic, not entirely sure whether she is his friend or his interrogator. Had he said it all? Had he said those secrets, out loud, in his sleep? She can’t know them, still can’t know them — 

—

It’s not exactly a surprise, how he startles awake, but it still makes her jump. She’s on edge. 

“Woah, woah, shh, you’re still injured-!” It comes out a little more forceful than she means - not with anger but just surprise and fear for him. 

—

The pain and exhaustion overtake him, and he falls back, gasping, a bit of blood soaking through his bandages onto his fingers. He can’t heal in front of her, even if he could heal at all — can he? Is that allowed? 

He can’t begin to think about tea.

—

She deliberately drops her voice to answer the question. Indoor voice. Calm as she can keep it. “You didn’t say much.” What does he think he said? It seems urgent. She knows about waking with the dreams still more pressing than reality. “Just ‘please’, and 'please interrogator’.”
She feels as bad as she should, repeating it. How ashamed, he must feel, to still beg in his sleep. How cruel of her, to rub it in. 

But he seems desperate to know. And it’s not as if it’s anything he hasn’t said before. God, what a thought to have. She shouldn’t think such things. He has meant it every time, she knows, and she didn’t care. 

“Nothing else,” she assures him. “Just that, and then you woke up. Please don’t try to move yet…?”

—

Justplease, and please interrogator. Alex falls back on the pillows in relief. “Okay." 

That’s fine. Only a sliver of shame. He’s gone well beyond humiliation with her, a long time ago. He’s sobbed and pleaded and whined and flinched and yet somehow, she doesn’t seem to think he’s pathetic. He is, of course. But he knows that. It’s no revelation. 

If it were Taryn there maybe he’d say it hurts or he’d ask her for another blanket because it’s still cold. But it’s not Taryn, and he doesn’t want to ask her for anything, not knowing what request might be too much. His bones sink into the bed, chilled to the marrow. His abdomen is a spiral of pain, radiating under his ribs and up to his shoulders. If he heals again, the cold will be worse, the cold that has only started to release its grip a few millimeters under three blankets with the heat turned all the way up. The pain or the cold. He’ll take the pain, for now. 

He remembers, suddenly, that he fell asleep with her holding him. 

That he felt safe, warm, like that. 

Because if she’s soft and curled around him, she’s not stern and cruel and in the corner, signaling the guard to keep going with an impassive, brutal face. If she’s holding him to keep him warm, she’s incompatible with that. 

He wants to ask her to come back. But that’s more impossible, more ridiculous, than any other request he might make. 

"Not moving,” he says obediently. “Hurts to move.”

—

She nods, relieved, and turns a fraction of her attention back to mugs and hot water and as much sugar as will dissolve. For a moment she wonders if it’s selfish to be making herself tea too. But she’s cold. Most of her is still listening for any sounds Alex makes, trying to work through what she can say to him. 

“You’re safe here,” she starts. “This is a BnB because we couldn’t stay at the other place, but our stuff’s in the car. We can stay here…” For how long, she’s not sure. “At least for tonight.

"I know it hurts, I can’t fix that, I would if I could. There’s painkillers, if you can swallow them. It’ll help a little. And tea, I hope it’ll warm you up a bit, and you need to get some water in you, you lost a lot of blood…”
She’s rambling, she knows. But she doesn’t know how present he is, whether he’s here or lost in memory and clinging dream. 

She makes herself shut up to offer him the hot drink. Careful, not sure if his hands will have enough grip to take it. Moving cautiously. Wary of spooking him with any sudden motion that might be taken as aggression.

—

“Please,” he murmurs, to all of it. It’s hard, with his magic and thus his soul running on empty, to reconcile her, this attentive creature making him tea and bringing him painkillers, with the cruel interrogator of his dreams. They only look a bit alike. How — he doesn’t know how. 

“Why —” he murmurs first, and he isn’t sure if he knows what he’s asking whyabout. 

He grips the tea with shaky fingers, momentarily afraid that if he drops it, he’ll be hit. A tiny flinch, at the thought. 

The warmth soaks into the frigid little bones of his fingers. He drinks it right away, and savors the burn on his tongue. 

It comes to him. 

“Why are you doing all this for me?”

—

Why? 

The question floors her. How could she not? Alex is everything she has. 

He’s the reason she’s still alive. He saved her from death and worse. He’s her anchor, with every other tie she had in the world cut. He’s the most moral person she has ever known. If she devotes her life to doing everything for him she won’t ever make up for a fraction of what she did to him.

“Because you’re hurt,” her mouth is saying. Hesitant, faltering. “You need it.” And I need you. 

But how can she explain that, if he still doesn’t expect her to reciprocate basic necessities? Living and working together, planning how to make ends meet, she thought they were starting to settle into a routine. It was almost starting to feel comfortable. 

But how could he ever feel comfortable around her? 

She feels hollow, like his words opened up some chasm inside her and her insides just fell away, leaving a brittle shell. She needs him, but she doesn’t deserve him. 

“We’re… in this together, aren’t we?” she is asking anxiously. She curses herself as soon as the words leave her mouth. She can’t ask that of him, as if her newly good intentions entitle her to a comfortable relationship. 

“I just want to help you, if I can…”

—

Another swallow of tea. The throbbing beneath his ribcage makes him dizzy, tilts the bed under him, twists his thoughts into clouds that slip through his fingers. He doesn’t know if he’s thought we’re in this together a good way to describe them. Sure, they’ve behaved as some sort of team, if only for basic necessities, ever since her limbs were able to carry her.

She needed him, at first. Needed him for any hope of a life not spent confined to bed in agony from Taryn’s cruelty.

She doesn’t need him, anymore. So why was there fearin her eyes at the thought of losing him?

“But, I… I mean, y-you’re healed now, int- Ariadne.” His tongue feels dry in his throat. He takes another sip, presses the hot tea to his cheek as if it would ground him. “Why, h-help -”

Speaking is effort. Thinking is worse. He was her prisoner, and then he was her healer, and now — now — 

What am I to you?

How can I be good for you, now?

—

Why help?

Two quiet, hesitant words, but the question is so vast Ariadne has no idea how to wrap words around the answer. She stares dumbly at Alex.

Why help?

It’s so obvious to her, and yet she can’t put together a single reason.

“You saved me,” she fumbles. “You… I owe you. I owe you a lot. It’s… not enough, helping you. But if I can…” You can have everything I can give. It still won’t be enough.

“I want to help you,” she repeats, voice thick with emotion. “That’s all I want.” She can feel the colour in her face, but for once she doesn’t hate it. She should be ashamed. She’s ashamed of everything she is.

“You deserve… so much better.”

—

He’s known it, in the way she’ll bring him food and it’s not a reward for good behavior, remembers his preferences, lets him have the bed when there’s only one. But it’s never fully been said out loud. There’s been a change, not just in which one of them is gazing up at the other with agony-ridden eyes, but in the way she views him.

The way she views warlocks?

The way she views herself?

The lips of the interrogator speak strange words, of help, of deserving better, and he shouldn’t believe her, shouldn’t believe her for a second, not with the way she sat and demanded cruelty be inflicted on his body, unyielding metal on fragile skin. A day at work for her, a new horrifying chapter in his horror-filled life.

But he does. Believe her, and he’s glad of it, because if she feels that way about him, it must mean he’s done well. Made her happy. Been good.

There is part of him attempting to make sense of her words, of what has happened here, fighting its way out from behind the overwhelming desire to please.

And that’s the part that speaks hesitantly and says, part statement, part question: “You want… to help me.” Breath, pause, swallow. “You… wouldn’t want to go back anymore. To the feds. Even… even if they’d welcome you.”

—

It hurts, confronting the truth.

Day to day she – doesn’t quite forget, can’t forget the reality of how she lives now – but she doesn’t feel it like she does now. Shame burns in her face, her eyes, her throat. Deeper, in her core, the hollow weight of horror that makes it almost hard to breathe. All of it sharper for having to put it into words.

“I don’t want to go back,” she repeats. “Even if they’d have me. Welcome me.” A breath in. She has to force the words. “I was… very wrong, to hurt you. I’ve… been wrong about… a lot of things. I want… I don’t want to do that any more.”

Clenching her teeth has not stopped the tears from forming. She hates herself for crying - a sharp flash of fury that she has to try and swallow in case Alex thinks she’s angry with him. She brushes the tears off her cheeks roughly with the back of a hand. There are more.

She takes a deep breath, and tries to ignore the tears. “If you’d rather I just left, it’s still on the table. Once you’re well, I mean. You only ever need to say. We can split the money and you’ll never see me again. I won’t go back to the feds.”

Alex is quiet. He finishes his tea, and wordlessly Ariadne holds out her hands for the mug. The kettle is still hot, and starts to hiss and rattle almost as soon as she switches it on.

“I don’t want you to go,” he says, sounding uncertain.
“Then I’ll stay,” she says. “As long as you want me to, I’ll stay.”

I’ll do better, she wants to promise. I’ll make things better for you, better than they are.

But she doesn’t know what she can promise to do, when it’s her fault that everything is fucked in the first place.

‘Verse: Unlikely Salvation, credit as always to @whump-sprite
Timeline: Arc 2
Sequence: Alex Stabbed

[Prev|Next]

Pain and dizziness and cold, terrible cold, and she’s moving him. 

Then a bed. Mercy. No, not mercy, she doesn’t, she doesn’t hurt him anymore — he was good, he told her about the safehouse, she won’t hurt him now, no, that’s, no, no — 

His limbs sink into the bed, and he’s sure, absolutely sure, that now that he’s been placed there he’ll never get up again. His stomach and his ribs feel like they have icicles thrust into the wounds, his hands are going numb, he shivers violently, exacerbating the pain. His body shudders with coughs, blood spilling from his lips onto the pillow. He’s patched the lung. He won’t die. Now it’s just bleeding from the trauma of using that last bit of magic, the bit that keeps his soul together. 

— “c-cold,” he mumbles, desperate to let her know this, because he thinks maybe, perhaps, she doesn’t want to torture him anymore, she said no torture, and if she didn’t want to torture him she wouldn’t let him be this cold another instant— 

At the sight of the scissors a pitiful whimper rises from his throat, followed by another weak, bloody cough, and then he falls back, awaiting whatever might come.

—

Cold. Yes, worryingly cold, he’s shaking - that’s a good sign? 

Worse to have stopped… 

“Alright,” she agrees, “Hang in there, don’t pass out…" 

Cold first, or wounds first? Wounds. She thinks. She bundles the covers awkwardly around his legs and shoulders, but she knows it won’t help much if he’s not making any heat. And she doesn’t want to cover his torso while she still needs access to the wounds. They don’t own a hot water bottle - should she put him under a shower to warm him up, or would that make him worse? 

"I’m going to dress these real quick,” she explains as she cuts his clothes away from the injuries. “Then I’ll – try and get you warmed up, just hang in there." 

She can only pray that he’s done enough for the internal injuries as she works as fast as she can to clean the open wounds and stick them shut. It’ll sting, so she repeats herself as she goes. "Just cleaning these, you’re good, you’ve done nothing wrong, it’ll fade in a minute." 

—

"T-thank y-you,” he says through chattering teeth, because if there’s one thing that she’s trained into him, it’s politeness. It costs lives, to give her a safehouse; costs nothing, to give her a thank you. 

Why is he with her? 

Because everything is wrong. 

He flinches, winces but doesn’t make a peep other than thank you while she dresses his wounds and he shivers violently, then weaker, losing the energy to shiver. C-cold. He already told her that, he can’t tell her that again, if he’s still cold it’s because she wants him that way, or does she — between blood loss, magical exhaustion and its close companion, hypothermia, his thoughts are muddled, thudding off the frozen corners of his skull and making no sense. 

—

Still moving mostly on autopilot, Ariadne scours the room for anything she can use to warm Alex up, shoving their possessions into bags as she goes. She tosses every blanket they own on top of him, but she knows it won’t make much difference. He needs a heat source, and she can’t think of anything.

There isn’t time to figure it out. She takes the bags to the car – jittery with nerves the whole while Alex is out of her sight – turns the engine on and cranks the heat up as far as it will go before she goes back for Alex.

They don’t need to go far, not tonight. They only need to not be here, not be in the building where any initial search will be focused. Thank god no one found the body yet, she thinks as she pulls away. 

She has to leave Alex again while she checks them both into a nice little bed-and-breakfast place. Fear slides uncomfortably round the inside of her ribcage even though she knowshe’s as safe in a locked car as he could be anywhere. She hurries back for him.

He only protests weakly when she picks him up. And he tucks his head against her neck in a way that helps both to hide how sick he looks and to sell the illusion of a normal couple just being sweet together as she carries him into the building. 

Still, she’s relying on the inherent indifference of strangers, just like Alex did when he was the one looking after her. All it’d take is one busybody looking too closely, calling the police to report something suspicious…

She sets Alex down on the bed, and unfolds the blankets from round him just long enough to check that he hasn’t bled through the dressings.
“C-c-cold, ‘nterrogator,” he whimpers.
“I know,” she tells him softly. His skin is still freezing to the touch. “I know, I’m sorry.”

She finds the room’s thermostat and she turns it to max. She searches the drawers and the closet, hoping for a hot water bottle, but all she finds is more blankets. She’s still not sure if putting him in a shower would be good or bad.

All she knows she has for sure is body heat. 

So she shrugs off her jacket and her boots, eases the covers carefully out from under Alex, and lays herself down alongside him before pulling the covers back over them both to keep out the air.

—

Alex registers that something is warm, that there is some source of warmth for his body, and losing all other thought, he whines, presses towards the warmth.

And then he realizes it’s her and she’s holding him, and his body stiffens. He doesn’t dare pull away, doesn’t dare press closer, even though he wants both of those things simultaneously, wants to get away from the person who hurts him and surround himself with her all at once. 

So he’s still.

“Th-thank you,” he mumbles again into the pillow, because never once have those words failed him.

—

It’s no surprise that he goes rigid. She’s the last person he’d want touching him. But it can’t be helped, he’s so fucking cold in her arms and he’s barely shivering any more. She’s scared. She doesn’t really understand what is wrong with him - whether it’s the effects of using up his magic, or the blood loss, or some other condition she doesn’t know enough to recognise. 

But he’s far too cold, and he could still be dying. 

“You’re safe,” she tells him anxiously. “No more hurting, I’m done treating those wounds. I’m not going to hurt you, you’re safe." 

She lines her body up with his, pushing her warmth against his coldness all along the length of their legs, torso close against his, head against his shoulder. The practical math of maximising contact. 

Only when she stops moving, satisfied with the position, does it really sink in how uncomfortable this is. Intimate, in a very different way from the familiar, guilty intimacy of watching him break down with pain and fear. He’s not just a cold bundle of limbs that she needs to warm up. He is a living, breathing, feeling person. Afraid of her touch. Guilt is a stab in the heart. She can only hope that as they lie still and nothing worse happens, the fear will slowly ease. 

So she is still, breathing in the smell of him, listening to his breath and praying that it doesn’t stop. Acutely aware of the contact between their bodies, feeling the chill slowly diminish. Or at least, the perception of chill. Is he warming up, or is she just getting colder where they’re touching? But he’s not quite so stiff and his breath sounds a little better, and she starts to relax. It’s… nice, almost. Holding him close. He’s fragile. Helpless. She’s not sure if it’s a protective feeling or a possessive one, and the uncertainty makes her sick with herself. She has not done a good job of defending him, if that is what she wants.

—

The cold is — less, or as less as it’s going to get, when his very soul is cold, the blood running through his veins freezes his heart as it goes through, this cold goes deeper than the chill of being out too long on a winter’s day. The pain is less, too. Nothing he hasn’t dealt with. 

In captivity, he’d fallen asleep with broken ribs, gasping shallow breaths, hoping the way his breathing made him dizzy would lure him into unconsciousness. He’d always fallen asleep knowing she could come in with a whip or a pair of brass knuckles at any time. After enough nights not sleeping, that doesn’t matter. After gutting out his magic to stop himself from bleeding all the blood in his body into his chest, that doesn’t matter either. 

He’ll just sleep, while she’s letting him. If he wakes to pain — so be it. 

And today she says I’m not going to hurt you, and that usually means she won’t, for at least a few hours. Perhaps after a while she’ll get bored, and see that stab wound, and wonder if she can press her fingers in and make him scream. But for now, the exhaustion goes almost as deep as the cold.

The way her arm curves over his shoulder is comforting, the way he can feel her breathe against his scarred back. Comforting. How? Because he can pretend she’s someone else. That must be it. 

He whispers thank you again, for good measure, for the promise of not going to hurt you, and his eyes flutter closed.

—

Is he sleeping? Should she wake him, is it bad to fall asleep while he’s so cold? Or does he need sleep, to help him heal? She can’t bring herself to wake him, not with the certain knowledge of how his breath will catch and his eyes widen as he wonders what new pain is in store today. He deserves a little peace. He deserves more than that, so much more… but a little bit of peace is all she can offer. 

She dozes too, eventually, when his breathing has been steady long enough that the terror of losing him eases its grip on her ribcage. Too shallow, thankfully, to dream. She knows how bad it will be, after this.

[Next]

‘Verse:Unlikely Salvation, credit as always to @whump-sprite
Timeline: Arc 2
Sequence:Alex Stabbed

[Next]

Alex has been thinking of survival. Of how they’ll earn the money to make sure Ariadne has a hot meal, a place to sleep. Easier, that. Easier than the way he feels like a shadow, ripped from its attached human, when he thinks of how he won’t see Taryn again. Easier than thinking about the Resistance. The government. Two evils ripping humanity apart at the seams. 

If the Resistance is evil, if they’re torturers, too, then it’s not too bad, is it, that he gave up a safehouse? 

Maybe he’s thinking about Taryn when he’s assaulted. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t pay enough attention to the drunk-looking stranger who shouts insults at the pair as they pick their way through the parking garage. Not until the man is already up in his face, yelling “fucking warlock,” because they can always see it, always smell it on him, like blood he can’t scrub clean. 

—

It’s over in seconds. 

Ariadneknewshe should have put herself between Alex and the stranger, but somehow she doesn’t move until she sees the flash of the knife and the drunk man is suddenly classified hostile. She’s not close enough, not quick enough to intervene. 

He has a hand on Alex’s shoulder by the time she closes, bodies so close together that she’s almost certain the knife must have gone in. Her left arm goes round the man’s throat, jerking backwards and down, while her right goes for his knife arm, trying to pin it to his side. Her leading foot scrapes down the inside of his calf as she slams into his back. 

Maybe he’s been in a fight or two before, because he doesn’t lose his cool. He twists towards her, using his body weight to break her hold. As he shoves her weight onto her back foot, she brings the other knee up between his legs. It’s enough to weaken his grip on the knife and she wrenches it out of his fingers and slams it into his gut – barely aiming, just the closest target. As he doubles forwards, she yanks the weapon back. Her left hand grabs his hair, shoving his head further down. The knife spins in her hand, and she aims for the back of the neck. 

She steps back as he goes down, adrenaline crawling across her skin. Just in time to half-catch a pale-faced, wide-eyed Alex as his legs give out and he crumples. He falls against her and she lets her own legs fold, sitting down hard so that he lands on her instead of on the concrete. 

Oh shit that’s a lot of blood. 

“Shit. Where did he get you?” She’s manhandling the warlock, dragging him further into her lap so she can reach the wounds. Training provides pattern without needing thought. One hand over each wound, and she pushes down hard.

—

There’s blood before there’s pain. 

Suffocation, too, before the pain. Feels like drowning. Alex is intimately familiar with the sensation of drowning in his own blood, filling his lungs, but this time he hasn’t used any magic. It’s the knife, in his lung, and another in his gut, and she’s asking him about it, isn’t she, his torturer, his goddess, the one he might still redeem — 

— she is merely a blurry light in front of him. Her lips move in slow motion, her words echo against his skull. 

Is she the light he sees as he dies? 

He tries to gasp out the word lung but his voice, too, is drowned in blood. 

The pain comes, then, arcing through his body as a warning far too late, the pain is from her hands, she’s causing it, isn’t she, her hands are twin pillars of fire into his body, and with the pain comes the awareness that he’s on her lap, and it’s the first time anyone’s held him, isn’t it? since he left the Resistance. 

His eyes flutter. 

He’s so terribly tired.

—

She hopes desperately that there aren’t any more holes she hasn’t spotted, more than she has hands to cover. It was so quick, surely the knife can’t have gone in more than twice, please. She can stop the blood leaving the body but she can’t stop it flooding his lungs and for a moment there is panic as she is certain that he’s going to die because she wasn’t fast enough, didn’t lash out soon enough, wasn’t careful enough and there’s nothing she can do. 

But she’s still moving. Even as she watches herself from behind her eyes and thinks she has no idea what to do, she is doing. 

“Stay awake,” she orders urgently. “Focus on me, don’t you dare pass out! Heal yourself. Use your magic.” He’s floppy in her arms, not moving, so she risks taking her hand off his chest long enough to grab his wrist and slap his limp hand over the wound. Her own goes straight back over the top, applying the pressure that he’s too absent to exert. “Right there,” she’s still talking, “Heal yourself. Stay awake and heal!” She doesn’t know if he can. But he is his own best hope of survival. Her best hope of not losinghim. 

Her other hand repeats the manoeuvre, though she winces at how much blood spills from his body in the seconds it takes her to find his other wrist and put his hand in place. A person can survive a lot of blood loss, she reminds herself frantically. This is survivable. It has to be. “Alex! Don’t fucking die on me!”

—

Stay awake…. 

…He doesn’t want to. The pain is gone. 

Stay awake and heal… 

…heal… 

…don’t you dare… 

Tare. They’ll hurt Tare. 

He has to bring the magic back. He can’t sleep, not yet. 

A blue light flickers into his hands as his eyes flutter closed, his mouth opens, lips red with his blood. His magic can feel it even when he can’t see it, even when his brain is threatening to shut down. The wounds his hands cover, they’re deep, they’re serious, they’re life-threatening. A pierce through a collapsed lung, re-inflated. A major vessel punctured, life force flooding out with every thud-thud-thud of his heart. Sewn back together with a press of magic out through hands that tingle. 

The tingling is the only thing he feels, at first, and then he starts to feel more. Starts to feel pain. Unsure why. 

He takes a breath, thick with blood, but he can breathe. Perhaps he has more to give this person. He forces more magic out. Another vessel, closed shut. 

He’s cold. So cold. He can’t. Not anymore. He’s so tired. 

He wonders if he healed enough. He wonders if she’ll whip him, if they’ll whip him, it doesn’t matter the antagonist, all he knows is heal or else whip. 

“P-please,” he moans into her lap, and his best guess as to what he’s begging for is to not be whipped, but truly he’s just begging, for some sort of mercy, into the abyss.

—

He’s going cold. Going cold in her arms as he bleeds out his life and heat and she’s sticky with his blood and he’s dying, dying, like Cae’s ghost got inside him and dragged him down to the same death and she is breaking inside. She wants to scream but her chest is so tight that she can’t even breathe. 

It’s the dream, she tells herself desperately. Don’t panic, it’s just the dream, it’s not real. Just have to wake up…! 

This is always what happens in the dream. He dies, because she isn’t fast enough, isn’t strong enough, isn’t bold enough. Alex, or Cae, or whoever it is tonight. He will always die, because she will never be good enough. She only needs to wake up, but the grief feels real. 

He’s cold in her arms. See, it can’t be real, real bodies don’t cool that fast. Cae was still warm when she got to him. He’s only cold in her dreams. 

“P-please…” 

For a moment, the world stands still. Nothing makes sense. The pieces don’t fit together. What new nightmare…? 

Dead people don’t cool that fast. But maybe spent warlocks do? She barely knows anything about magical exhaustion, only that it makes them weak, that it makes Alex cough and feel terrible, that it’s an opening to be exploited. But she remembers shockingly cold hands pressed against her fevered skin. Remembers skinny bodies shivering - how much Alex shivers, sometimes… 

He’s… not dead? 

She doesn’t know how to process that either. 

But thankfully, some better part of herself is still ready to take the wheel while higher thought stumbles and stalls. 

“Good,” she tells him on autopilot, like she has so many times before. Has he healed himself? Has he done enough to save himself? She can’t tell, but panicking won’t help either way, and if he has, he has a chance. “Well done. You’re doing great. Heal yourself, Alex. No dying on me.”

Hospital. He needs an ambulance. No, he’s a warlock. Will they know? Can she risk it? She can’t move him until the blood will stay inside his body without constant pressure. “Are you awake? Are you with me, Alex?" 

When the magic gutters out a final time and doesn’t return, she dares to ease the pressure off and check. Blood doesn’t gush at the rate she fears, but she still presses down again quickly, scared to stop. 

"Alex, I need to move you. I’m going to pick you up and carry you back to our room. It’s going to hurt, I’m sorry, but you’re doing just great.”

—

The pain rushes in as he claws his way back into the light, and he almost wishes he didn’t. He’s losing the will to moan please. He’ll, he’ll tell her, he’ll tell her what she wants to know, if the pain doesn’t stop, if she whips him again now. No, he has told her, he’s already told her, he’s already lost… 

"P-hhhnnn, please…”

—

“Can you apply pressure for me? Can you push down, like this?“ Her hands still over his, over the wounds. "Focus, Alex. Can you apply pressure, if I let go?”

She knows what she’s doing. A terrible thing. She told herself she never would again, back when she started to see the way he still freezes when she speaks too firmly. She told herself she never would, but she needs that absolute obedience now, in the face of shock and pain. She needs his everything, lest she lose everything. 

—

She’s instructing him. Orders. Push down. He’s too cold, too weak. He’ll try, he does try, but his hands fall off the wounds, limp and cold, a carved-ice statue of Alex covered in blood. “Sorry – can’t — please — please don’t hurt me, I — I don’t know —" 

—

"Okay,” she tells him firmly, “That’s okay. I believe you. You’re doing well.” I’m not going to hurt you, she wants to say. But it’s a lie. This is going to hurt. She is hurting him, and she feels sick with the knowledge of it. 

She expected worse, when his hands wouldn’t stay in place, but there isn’t so very much blood this time. No longer pumping. Please, please let that be from healing, and not because he has run out… Is it safe to move him yet? She doesn’t want to let him bleed even a little more. But they can’t stay here. 

For a moment she feels paralysed, helpless. 

But she makes the decision before she really knows it. She gathers Alex into her arms. He gasps his distress into her shoulder as he’s moved. She ignores the little, desperately familiar sound. “You’re doing great. I’m just moving you. Just moving you, no torture." 

Minutes ago their room was close. Now the distance feels interminable, with Alex corpse-cold and whimpering in her arms. She jogs, knowing that it will make the pain worse. "Not long,” she tells him. “This won’t take long. You’re good. You don’t have to do anything, shh." 

Please let no one see them, stop them, call the police. Please let Alex survive the trip. Please let the supplies she has be enough. Please let the door not stick today, not while she has to half drop Alex, leaning both their weights against the wall while she fumbles with the key.

Even when she’s finally able to lay him down on the bed, she can’t stop. She’s fervently glad she bought the first aid kit despite living with a magic fucking healer. Scissors. Iodine. Steri-strips. Chest seal. What the hell does she do about the blood in his lung? It’s been a while since she’s needed these skills…

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