@reastless / consequences of this thread
years of experience have not taught him proficiency : the bandages that charles ties around luke's wound will keep the blood in his body, but they are, by no means, beautiful or elegant. the sheets are ruined, even so, and the old bandages have stained charles' hands with red and the scent of iron. he cannot help but choke on that bitter truth as he lays luke's unconscious and tended body in the woolen blanket that will have to do for sheets until they can wash them down at the river.
and then charles sits, not in bed, but beside, as one does with the ailing. he has been instructed to think, and so he thinks. he thinks about how much it would hurt to lose luke. he thinks about the hole he would tear in the world as revenge for that loss. he thinks about how stained and red his body is with blood, with luke's and others, and how he could bear to stain it again and again, to save someone he love, or to protect those who couldn't do it themselves. he knows this is not what luke wants, and he knows that the violence he chooses is, on its face, an evil. but what makes an action good or evil beyond its outcome? hasn't that always guided him : strife, his mother, is evil because the violence she does is for no one and nothing but the sating of chaos. charles has tried to be good, and do good, with the instinct that his blood had given him.
he knows luke will never agree with his methods, but never before has he been forced to make a choice between what he knows and what he loves. it is not worth losing luke to another's violence . . . but it is also not worth losing luke to his own.
when the morning comes, charles remains in turmoil. even so, the days must pass. as the the sun rises, charles goes to pump water from the well, and the activity makes his head feel less foggy. having brought the full jugs of water into their hovel, he pours some of the water in the kettle and sets it to boil over the fire he'd maintained in the hearth, before going back to the bed and nudging at luke's shoulder.
" luke? " he murmurs. he'd checked time and time over throughout the course of the night to make sure his love still breathed, but until now, hadn't tried to rouse him. " you have to wake up now. "
