heorte | when i go towards you it is with my whole life.

"I know," Ellis answers. "We'll come back for it."

There is a note of real strain in his voice. But Ellis knows very well how to use adrenaline and practicality as a wall between himself and the gathering storm of pain. Panting, he sets his hands over hers and between them, the door is slammed shut.

It does not dampen the yowling shriek of fury that emanates from behind wood and stone and magic.

"But we need to go," is urgent in spite of himself; he'd wanted not to panic her. "It's not safe to do anything here."

The horses have startled, but gone no farther than the grassy stretch just beyond the door. Ellis draws his attention back to her, asking suddenly, "Can you ride?"

She is paler than Ellis ever recalls seeing her.

"Can you?"

As a reply, it could easily be an indictment—some defensive reflex along the lines of Yes, of course she can ride. But there is some anxious, high thing in it, the outline of a shape preparing to crumple in on itself: worry, the brief flash fire flicker of guilt. If she hadn't been so stupid as to insisted on being so very clever—

Beyond the door, the sounds of that terrible thing have yet to abate.

In a different context, she might have been offering something impatient and snappish, as is sometimes the case when he asks after her one time too many. But Ellis recognizes the look on her face, and shakes his head to dismiss it.

"I'm alright," is true so long as no questions are asked. He can be less than alright when they're in a more secure position and not at any point before that.

His hand comes back up to her elbow.

"Let's go," Ellis entreats, quieter, some labored edge in the words. "It's not safe here."

And won't that be an interesting fact to impart to Tony, whenever one of them is in a position to report in over the crystals.

If there is some line of questioning she might pursue—the wretched shape that his plate is in, perhaps, or how exactly he plans to get his leg high enough to get his foot in the stirrup—, then it is reserved in favor of drawing away from the shuddering door. From the veranda. From the overgrown drive, choked thigh with sapling trees and thick underbrush. He is upright. He is well enough. It seems mad to insist on lingering here any longer than necessary.

It's fully dark by the time they have wind their way back toward the fringe of the little village in the valley. They are drawn in by the first light glowing in a window, and though Wysteria has mentally prepared some thing to say it turns out to be unnecessary. Evidently they look dreadful enough to inspire immediate hospitality from the carpenter they find in the little house here at the very edge of the wood, or Ellis' armor warrants just enough respect, or, or, or—

What does it matter?

The floor of the workshop is sawdust. They're given two blankets and a lantern. Is it better than camping in the cold? She doesn't know. But it feels more secure to have four proper walls and a roof overhead, to have a little flame burning very low in the wood fire stove, and to have a door which may be neatly barricaded with a bench drawn out from under one the work tables.

"I think I'll have to cut this one," is frustrated, something bristling at the edge of her voice like temper or the threat of tears or both. The first two buckles on this side of his armor had come undone easily enough. This one is being pulled taut enough by the dent of the plate that there's little to no give. No flexibility whatsoever to uncinch it with.

One saving grace of plate armor: it is near impossible to bend in certain ways while wearing it. Especially not when certain parts of the armor have been crushed to a point where they compress the chest and dig gouges into a man's back.

Ellis' quiet should be unremarkable. In any other circumstances, going some time in near silence would not be noteworthy. But there's a specific quality to this lapse into quiet that marks it out as something different. Quiet should not feel so labored.

Yes, he has traveled in worse condition. Yes, he knows how to shoulder pain like a burden and press onward, all attention turned forward and the rest walled off somewhere distant. But it's more complicated in some respects, to put himself to that task in front of Wysteria. There just isn't very much of him to spare in the moment; propelling himself onward had taken precedence over everything else.

The moment they'd heaved that bench across the door and Ellis had leaned back against the worktable, some of that taut, braced quality leeched away. If he hadn't been wearing a piece of metal wrapped around his body, he might have slumped, then listed to one side until he was simply laid out in the sawdust.

Still, his head lifts at Wysteria's assertion. It isn't a question, though Ellis momentarily, uselessly, considers her with a slight furrow to his brow, as if there are alternate options they might discuss, before—

"Alright."

He'd put a hand onto her hip and kept it there from the moment she'd drawn up beside him. That grip flexes now in silent encouragement, thumb pressing hard against the sturdy fabric of her dress. The armor will mend. He can't keep it on in this condition. Wysteria's summation is correct.

There is a little working knife in her belt which her hand moves directly to, and then she decides that's absurd. That the last thing they need is for her hand to slip on some toughened leather and so stab him between the woods. So—

"Very well," she snaps, batting his hands away with the impatient cruelty of the distressed so that she can remove herself to go clattering through the various pins and hooks of the dimly lit carpentry shop until she at last produces a remarkably heavy pair of shears from some sticky drawer.

"You must release all your breath," she informs him strictly once she has returned to pull this way and that on the dented plate in an effort to work the shears' blade between the drawn taut leather and his side. "And then hold it that way until I can—Raise your elbow higher—Yes, there—just—cut this—"

It requires both her hands to induce the shears to creak closed through the strap.

It's all very efficient, and Ellis understands the necessity of it, but the rearrangement of the plate is a painful business. (Raising his arm is only a painful business because he is exhausted, having spent his strength elsewhere today.) The only sign of it is a sharply drawn breath, inhaled and held, teeth gritted, until the shears sever the leather.

The grinding shift of plate almost obscures the sound of Ellis' reaction, how hard he breathes out, what that expression of relief sounds like and what it says about the discomfort that had been eased. There is some punched out breath, skewing towards good but the word not quite forming. His skin is clammy with sweat, jaw working around some further sound as one hand immediately, absently moves as if to pull the entire thing off, except—

"Just cut the rest," he tells her. His hand drifts back to her waist, heedless of further admonishment; it's as much of an instinctive movement as the urge to yank at his armor had been. "The other side, just—it won't matter now, if they replace one strap or four now."

Urgency creeps in along the underside of those words, the sound of something caught in a trap, stopping just short of thrashing from it.

There is something in the shape of it that she can barely hear but can clearly detect that catches her short. It prompts a flickering look up into his face.

"Yes, all right." She quickly shifts over to inspect the other side of the cuirass. "Once more. Just—yes, breathe out if you please."

It shouldn't feel so much like a desperate thing, but it seems so very important to pry him free of the armor shell quickly that she is a little clumsy with the shears. What if he's broken something? What if a rib has punched through something? What if the armor is what's keeping everything tentatively in order now, and stripping it from him is going to— Snip, goes leather. Snip, goes an errant triangle of the gambeson's topmost layer of fabric.

"There. There, it's finished."

"Good," manages to be a proper word this time, fraught and frayed, punctuated by the crunching creak of the plate. "Wysteria, help me."

And between them, the wreckage of the plate is lifted from his shoulders.

Ellis' penchant for dark-colored gambesons masks any immediate signs of injury. And even newly freed, Ellis seems less interested in ascertaining exactly what sort of damage managed to bypass his armor than he is in drawing in a slow, deep breath as his shoulder slump and he bows forward by degrees. His eyes close as he exhales again, a hand returning to catch at her, find wrist, then hand, attempt to lace their fingers together to hold on to her.

"Alright."

An assessment of the moment: alive, still upright, armor ruined.

It could have been worse.

Alright, he says, but she as opinions on the subject even as he sags gently forward and makes to catch his breath. One hand, he is permitted. The other Wysteria immediately puts to work fussing at the neck and shoulder of Ellis' gambeson—not undoing anything (for she would need two hands for that), but fleeting after the idea of doing so while she says, "I should have said something before we road all this way. We might have stopped anywhere in the wood and seen this done earlier. You will have to take this off so we can be sure nothing is too poorly off. Oh, there is blood here."

Here is somewhere in the dark curls of his hair behind his ear. Some incidental graze of splinters, or from when he'd been knocked from his feet perhaps? It's dry now and crunches under the probe of her fingertips.

She draws back. It's not by much. Only the narrowest little thing so she might look him in the face.

"I would strongly suggest that you sit down now."

"Aye," comes quietly, though agreement doesn't spur Ellis into movement right away. His eyes open, solely to look her over once more. Unharmed. Color in her face again. Safe, and whole. That's a different kind of relief, easier to absorb.

Satisfied, the hand is ceded back to her. It is a mercifully short distance from the worktable to the floor, where Ellis slowly, wincingly bends forward to work the laces of one boot free against his better judgement. If the ankle is swelling, he might as well leave it as it is.

"I wouldn't have stopped on the road," he tells her, a minor bid to ease her mind that perhaps discounts how persuasive Wysteria can be when she puts her mind to it. "Are you alright?"

The most words he's strung together since they rode away from that manor.

It was that silence which had been so terrible as they'd made their way through the overgrown wood. And the dread which has lived in its wake—a palpable fear that if she induced him to break it, what she would find would be some awful thing to legitimize the hand of guilt currently around her heart and threatening to crush it. He might be injured. Worse, he might feel the impulse to agree with her: that this is all her doing.

Standing still, above him now as Ellis has sloughed to sit in the sawdust, she first nods wordlessly and then—realizing how ridiculous it is to give a man who isn't looking at her a silent reply—clears her throat and says, "Yes. Perfectly well."

She needn't cling to anything to remain upright any longer anyway.

"Here. Let me fetch you some water from what was left with the horses." Meaning, the tiny assembly of saddle bags and the single waterskin which had stayed with the animals while they'd ventured into that seemingly benign place. She is quick to fetch it, and careful about kneeling down beside him in the sawdust so that he needn't raise his arm too high to have the skin passed to him.

Boot discarded, Ellis has a few moments to consider the swollen state of his ankle before Wysteria returns. It stands to reason that if the ankle is in such a state, he's lucky that creature didn't have time to firm up it's hold on his arm. In the midst of all the other injuries, the raw scorch-mark that ring had left on his palm has been more or less forgotten.

The waterskin is accepted. Again, he considers what they'd left behind with some regret. There'd been no sign that they would meet with such a thing, but still—

Casting about for something to say, Ellis settles on, "Thank you."

And then, lest he be mistaken for referring to the water bottle, "I was only able to get out of that room because of you."

"Nonsense," she snips back, her hands lacing together in her lap. And then unlacing to fidget with her skirts. "If we are to thank one another over every little thing the other person does which results on them not being grievously injured, we would be here for hours and furthermore I would owe you a great deal of gratitude."

It is because of her that there was any real danger in the first place.

His ankle looks ghastly.

A slight hesitation, then Ellis reaches to cover her hands with his own.

It is a small thing. He is grateful. (It is a very strange sensation, feeling some kind of relief at being alive.) And he knows what it is difficult to use her shard in such a way. It feels like she's risked something.

He doesn't repeat himself, but the sentiment hangs in the air regardless.

He wants to lay down with her, and ignore the pain radiating in his body. All manner of ministrations can wait. All these injuries will still be there in the morning and he is very tired.

She ought to apologize. The shape of it is there behind her teeth. Right there on the tip of her tongue. But for some reason, she can't force it to manifest. Can't make it pass through into the air.

His hands have been over hers for a long moment. She has been blankly absorbing the shape of them. When she realizes she's looking, she stops. Wysteria glances to the little fire crackling on the stove, visibly orders her thoughts and herself. When she looks back, she slips one hand from under his and pats his knuckles.

"Now then. You will let me take this off you." The gambeson. "You may use it as a pillow if you like."

Surely she is adept enough to see the objection move across his face.

But in this instance, Ellis perhaps thinks better of it. The momentary hesitation passes, some balking line in his expression resolving into a sigh. His hand tightens briefly over hers, then lifts to free her hand.

"Alright," comes with some flicker of humor. This is not how he'd envisioned—

Well. The moment is what it is. He can't make this moment anything other than this: him injured, Wysteria worried and all the more efficient for it.

"Here."

As he sits up just slightly straighter, making some small adjustment to turn his body further towards her to allow her easy access to the fastenings. He puts his hand onto her lap, fingers fitting to the bend of her knee; it's as much for the comfort of contact as it is to steady himself against the possibility of leaning too far one way or the other.

His relenting earns a curt nod of approval. Good, she thinks, and thinks nothing at all about why he might have cause to object. It is the rational thing to do, and so her hands shift to the gambeson's fastenings without any further preamble or hesitation.

"My little wound kit was among the things left behind, but if anything has gone too terribly wrong I will trouble our host for the right things directly," she briskly informs him. Ties or buckles are picked free. "And if necessary, Maud is usually quite prompt to answer by crystal. I'm certain she will have good advice for what to give you."

With the last fastening made loose, she moves to shift the opened gambeson from his shoulder. Presumably his tunic under it woll have to come away as well if her inspection is to be satisfied.

The process of shedding the gambeson dislodges his hand from where it had been gripping her knee. Ellis holds his breath for the process, jaw tight while the fabric is discarded.

But rather than reclaim his hold on her knee, Ellis catches up her hands in his own. He brings them up to his mouth, keeps them held there while he breathes. It's a little bit of a stall against the inevitable. He's not entirely sure what the state of his torso is, though without the gambeson, Ellis is aware the tunic is damp, stuck to the skin, considers the likelihood of blood and what kind of injury it would herald.

"Lift it from the hem," Ellis tells her, grip on her hands loosening. "And go slowly."

The assortment of low, and she is certain that they are at least partially unconscious, small sounds which accompany this—his panting hitch of breath against her hands when he holds them so near to his mouth—makes something behind her ribs clench. It's such a dreadful collection of things, and so she is in accordance dreadfully strict when she says, "Yes of course. I'm hardly going to wrench you free of the thing."

It seems like the only option other than to be wildly upset, and the latter stands to accomplish remarkably little. So.

Wysteria slips her hands from Ellis' hold. She is careful—nigh surgical—about plucking free his hem, and equally patient about peeling it carefully from where it has stuck and then up and off him. She takes her time, regardless of how long it may or may not take for his arms to go in the proper directions or how clumsy it may be to do so.

It's a laborious process. Or it feels like a laborious process to Ellis, who grits his teeth against any kind of vocal complaint. It doesn't, however, stifle the way his breath goes shallow. The near-physical struggle to steady his breath alternates by turns, rapid pants to held breathes to rapid pants again as Wysteria lifts the tunic higher and higher. His arms lift with a grimace, hands opening and closing and opening again as the tunic pulls free. Patchy spots of blood mark the fabric.

One knee draws up, Ellis leaning an elbow onto it as he curls slowly forward with a quiet groan. This movement hurts too, drawing bruised and gouged skin taut across his back. His hand lifts out sideways, instinctively seeking hold of her.

There's a beat of quiet, only marked by Ellis' strained breathing as he waits for the pain to recede.

"Wysteria," he says, voice schooled into steadiness. "Tear the tunic in half, along the seams. You can use the front of it to wash the blood off with what's left in the waterskin."

Is this a help, advising her? He doesn't know. Wysteria has been kidnapped twice and emerged from a battlefield in Ghislain and done so many things Ellis doesn't know about, but is any of that useful to her now?

She is not precisely ready to catch his questing hand, but she answers quickly enough to the shape of it: clapping gently on to his wrist so that he might do the same in return. With her other hand, Wysteria carefully collects the shape of the tunic. The blood on it is relatively dry; she thinks nothing of tucking it into her lap to avoid letting it fall into the sawdust where it might collect a thick coating of wood shavings.

"Tear it in half. Nonsense. What use is this knife otherwise? Really now, Ellis," is so mild a point of contention that it hardly qualifies. Yes, all right. Those are fine enough directions, though she hesitates to follow them under his grip on her has softened by enough degrees to indicate that her support has once more become optional rather than a requirement.

She makes quick work of deconstructing the tunic, and of fetching the water skin to wet it with. When she returns to Ellis and gets her first proper look at the damage done to him—

She sets her hand briefly in his hair. She kisses the crown of his bowed head. And then she carefully begins the attempt to salvage what she finds there.

In the course of her ministrations, Ellis' hand finds her hip again, briefly, before leaving her to her work.

Pulling the fabric free had reopened the gouges, fresh blood leaking to join what had dried in splotched imprints. Three misshapen punctures, ugly, already swelling; they're the kind of wounds that draw the eye. But there are bruises too, rapidly darkening to deeper, livid shades of red and tender to the touch. There's a kind of clever pattern to the injuries: evidence of something seeking vital organs, to disable and maim. It's only luck that the armor had kept him from a broken spine.

And then there is the old scarring, present alongside the new.

Ellis doesn't flinch, but the rhythm of his breathing becomes a kind of exertion, forcibly steady as Wysteria sweeps the sodden remainder of his tunic across his skin.

"Say something," he says. His knee has come up higher, shoulders bowing, some useless urge to curl in, away from the sensation. "Please."

What is there to say?

"I shouldn't have allowed you to climb onto that horse," is the first thing, prim and pointed as if the arrangement had been entirely her choosing. She continues with, "The next time I have cause to rescue you—and I have no doubt that there will be a next time—, I won't permit it. If you can't walk, then it is entirely cruelty to make you ride and from the looks of your ankle we are likely to be an inconvenience to our host for at least another evening. You might have said something, you know."

The scoffing sound she makes is complicated and frustrated. Not with him, but with the state of him. With how long it had taken to arrive at this point. With the wretched marks all over him and how those gouges ooze blood even after being gingerly mopped at and how black and blue and red and swollen he is. To say nothing of the evidence of prior injury which lurks there along with the new.

"It is very inconsiderate of you. To be so accommodating when you ought to be furious. Were our positions in this moment reversed I would be well sharp with you."

His head shakes over these things, this brisk list of things she offers to him in answer to his request.

"Wysteria," he says, and pauses after. As if that might be all there is to say.

There are objections he might make. But it would be so easy to get mired in the wrong thing, should he try to address all at once.

"I've no reason to be furious," is what he chooses. With her behind him, whatever expression she wears is hidden from him, and he can't touch her. It's not ideal. "This all looks worse than it is."

Which is true, in some respects. Bruises generally look terrible for days and days. And there is the technicality he is relying upon: Ellis can't speak to whether or not there is something fractured in his chest, only that he hasn't coughed up any blood in hours and is therefore unlikely to do so now.

"And you did rescue me," he reminds her. It's said with such tenderness, a kind of quiet pride mingling with exhaustion. She'd done something impressive. Ellis knows it's no small feat for her to use her shard that way. They both must remember that day on the road, when he'd thought her capable of it in the face of a far less dangerous situation than the one they managed to escape today.

notifs return when danger is passed, coincidence??????

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