He was grateful, so very, very grateful, that she was blinded by the pain coursing violent through ruined bones, shooting sharp upon nerves bound in an iron resolve, for she could not see the tears collecting muted upon a pale, trembling gaze. He knew the only defense keeping the stoic woman from the edge of darkness was the stubborn, practiced breath falling quaking from gasping lips. Perhaps it would be best, safest, if she were to tumble into unconsciousness, if she were to garner some relief.
But then what guarantee did he have that those glazed eyes would open again?
The thought caused already tensed breaths to hitch, a throat chocked with the thought that he had not allowed to bloom with sickly implication. Fingers threatened to tighten, the hold upon a slumped shoulder and the post upon a bloodied waist steadfast in their gentle embrace only through the strongest of wills. He wouldn’t add to her suffering, there would be more than enough born of necessity.
"I think you know what is next, love." The words were soft, an attempt to grant her the power to which she was so accustomed, to instill an illusion of stability within a mind he feared would be fogged with the cruelty of a crazed shock, “It’s an easy thing really, just a quick trip back home." A breath, eyes closed as to avoid the spasm of fear he thought would play across contorted features, “I’m going to need to pick you up now, and you’re going to need to remain very still and very quiet."
She had been hoping, praying, with every quake of her form, that he would have said anything other than that. The fall, the painful, bone breaking landing, was all bad enough, but to add in the loss of her ability to move on her own, feet off the floor, suspended in the air at the mercy of another person.
A tremor more violent than the others before shook her so violently that she could have thrown up from the searing pain in her side. That same flash of memories began to play in her head again, the sensation of suddenly being grabbed and thrown. A groan, a plea to her own subconscious mind, issued from her tightly closed lips, hands on the wooden floor curling into fists, her fingernails clawing into the decayed wood.
She didn’t know if she could do that, to put such trust into another person with that memory flying freely in her thoughts. Not even Magnus, not even him. On the rare occasion that she could remember him ever picking her up- and she knew there to be several times she did not remember, for she was not a sleepwalker, and she could always remember passing out on the floor only to find herself waking under the thin blankets of her cot- The rare occasions where she was awake to the change in gravity had made her stomach spin just in the slightest.
This, this was something she didn’t know if she had the strength to do, but she knew she couldn’t follow him out of here, not under her own willpower. Whatever strength of resolve she had maintained had cracked along with her bones, that hard exterior broken away as if a bomb had gone through it. She knew her own weaknesses too well, and she knew her legs would not support her weight for a long while.
"O-okay," she said, voice high pitched with the fear, “J-just don’t…" She took a deep breath and had to fight off another wave of nausea. “Carry me on your back. Please, I ca-can’t, Magnus, I’m not going to be okay if you carry me out of here like s-some… some damsel in distress."
There. Okay… she’d made a joke, some part of her was already working on stopping up the dam of vulnerability. It would hurt more, to be carried that way, but it would be far better to merely bury her face into his shoulder and let it muffle the faint screams of pain than to be thrown into a full-blown panic attack. They couldn’t afford that.
