"this is for your own good" with estinien saying it?
The Warrior of Light shudders under him. Had Estinien enough patience to allow them his kindness, it would be freely given. The situation at hand, however, does not care.
He shifts his weight and hears them sob for breath, his legs locking their body to the ground from shoulder to thigh, and whispers an apology. Pouring alcohol over the wound, he thanks the Fury for silencing potions. He could not bear to hear them scream themself hoarse.
He lifts a blade from the fire (one of many that they carry, repurposed for the emergency) and hisses when the hilt heats his armor to scalding. He cannot imagine how it will feel for them when he seals the wound. He grabs a strap of leather and forces it between their teeth like an afterthought.
He has nearly forgotten everything in the face of their agony and slowly draining life.
He’d tried potions, elixirs, infusions of all sorts, pouring the solutions over where they continued to bleed out. They would fizz and sizzle. Slow the bleeding.
He is left to his last resort.
The Warrior does not glare, instead choosing to grind their teeth on the leather and steel their resolve. They know before he says it.
“This is for your own good.”
And it is, though they black out when he is barely halfway through. Estinien does not wish this on any enemy of his, much less an ally. To be scorched by fire and their own blade in an act of desperation.
He finishes cauterizing the wound, pours more alcohol over it, dries it, bandages it, and allows himself to weep. Sitting beside them, carding a hand though their sweat-damp hair, he wonders if it would prove true.
Would it have been for their own good? Had he managed to keep them alive? Would they hate him for this, or allow him their company once more?
He is answered by their waking, bells later in a chirurgeon’s bed, and broken call of his name. They wrap trembling hands around his and say, “That must have been hard. You have my apologies.”
“Never more than what you have been through,” he replies.
Their hands do not move from his, nor do their eyes from his face. “May I request one last liberty of you?”
They smile and it is a hollow and bitter thing. “Do not cry for me. There are a thousand thousand others guided by the selfsame light as I. You are too good to mourn a false hero.”
But he does, years later, when Black Rose steals all from him. He stands at their pyre and cries.
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