cut me sharp
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom: Baldur's Gate 3 Ship: Gen (Cal & Lia & Rolan) Additional Tags: Hiding Injuries, Hurt Lia (Baldur's Gate), Act 2 (Baldur's Gate 3), Sibling Love, Hurt/Comfort Wordcount: 2,336 Summary:
No one escaped Moonrise Towers unscathed, but Lia is fine. She can take care of herself.
Lia's wounds must have reopened in the escape. She doesn't know when it happened—or, maybe she did, but she assumed it was the same stitch in her side that she always earns running for her life. Maybe it was the wall coming down, or the sprint, or one of those guards got a lucky shot at her before she was out of range. All she knows is that as the rest of them break the boat's tethers, she touches her side and feels sharp pain radiate from that spot, a wave of nausea accompanying it.
Damn cultists. They'd put in the minimum amount of effort needed to keep them alive after torturing them. None of them had been spared even a weak potion or a touch of healing magic, though Lia might have bitten any hand that offered it. They'd torn her open and taken some pleasure in stitching her back together just as painfully while she tried not to run out of curses or to pass out. Her bandages were dirty when they'd wrapped her up, dried dark red by the time they'd dragged her back to the cell and shoved her to the ground. The first thing she remembered after the pain stopped blinding her was Cal crouched around her, between her and the cultists who were already wandering back to their duties.
(The fact that she hadn't been able to stand again without Cal supporting her weight still flushes her body with shame. She should've walked it off, like she is now.)
The bandages are damp with her blood. She reaches under her shirt to check and grimaces. They don't have time to stop; it's a one-way boat out or nothing. She takes a breath and readjusts her corset belt to hide the way her shirt is starting to stain. Later.
Cal grabs her hand. She's been lingering too long, and she only has just enough time to hope that her hand isn't slick with her own blood. "Come on," he calls her, breathless from the excitement and the taste of freedom. She lets him tug her down into the boat. It rocks under her unsteady feet, but Cal draws her to his side as they push off. Not a moment too soon. Lia watches their saviors, the same people who'd come to their aid at the Grove, stay behind to buy them time. That's two she owes them, now. It's getting to be a pattern, but not one she regrets, not when they're finally out of that cell. Cal sighs with relief and slumps against her. She bears her teeth against a grimace as he jostles her wound.
The dank smell of the water should cover up the scent of blood, or if it doesn't, they're all covered in enough of it—old and dried; the cultists didn't leave anyone out of their torture, and they didn't provide anything to wash with—that no one should be able to tell. She'll fix herself up when they get to safety, without Cal finding out. She won't have him guilty about this.
(The cultists had hurt Cal enough, and she could handle the pain in his place. Rolan would have understood.)
She takes labored breaths under the guise of exhaustion. Each one leaves her side throbbing. Her shirt's fabric is growing heavier, damp, clinging at her skin. She elbows Cal to get her arm free.
She undoes the knot of her corset belt with clumsy fingers and tightens the lacing up. The pressure will hold the wound until they're safe.
"Are you sure you should lace it that tight?" Cal asks. She flicks her ears twice like that'll clear up how far away his voice sounds, like she's hearing him through a poorly enchanted sending stone. "You're breathing pretty hard." She elbows him again. Her side spasms.
"Shut up, Cal." She's fine. She'll breathe through it. Every rock of the boat sends new splinters of pain through her body, but the pressure is helping somewhat. She should be bleeding slower. She's got a lot of it to lose, if being tortured by those cultists taught her anything.
She's had worse. She got jumped during their stint in Avernus. Clawed up. Bitten. Anything that could go wrong, did. Her head swims as she remembers Rolan throwing an imp meters away with one overwhelming shockwave of power, just because it had torn out some of her hair. She chuckles. That clump still hasn't grown back all the way. Cal puts his arm around her, and she lets her mind wander—strung between painful rhythm of the boat, rising, falling, rising again, and her brother rubbing her arm like he's afraid she'll disappear if he stops.
Landfall jolts her to vicious awareness. Her head rings so loudly that she can't hear what anyone's saying. It's like the knives are back, freshly tearing her open, and Lia gulps down air-
"I told you not to lace it that tight," Cal says. He tries to undo it, and she slaps his hand.
His flinch stings. Sorry, she wants to say, but the word is stuck somewhere in her lungs, tossed about by every difficult inhale she manages.
"Let's- Let's just find Rolan, okay?" Cal says, carefully, and it's hard to tell if he's acting like she's fragile or volatile. Both, maybe. She often feels like both; anger's just more useful than fear, she's always known that. Elturel made it clearer, and she wouldn't let the Absolute's bastards drag anything out of her but rage.
She needs to snap at him to leave her alone so she can patch herself up, but the shock in his eyes when she slapped him, the confusion that gasped out of him, and Lia can't tell her brother no when he looks at her like that.
A few more minutes. They'll find Rolan. Deal with Rolan. She won't let Rolan find out she's hurt either. He'd make a scene about it. She can do all of that, so long as she can stand up. She tests her legs, and they're weak enough that she trips getting out of the boat. She falls into Cal, and the world keeps tumbling for a few moments longer.
"Never got my sea legs," she manages to joke. Cal steadies her. He looks… worried. That's not part of the plan. She has to be fine. She can show him, straightening her back and carefully watching her steps. One foot after another, that's it. She doesn't have room to think about anything more than that, so she's glad Cal takes the lead.
And her hand. He didn't let go after she stumbled. If he needs it, she'll let him hold on. She wraps her other arm around herself, pinning it close over her wound to keep more pressure on it.
She's freezing. She expected the inside of the inn to be warm, but the hearth must not have been fed enough.
Rolan yells.
That's familiar. That's almost comfortable. It's easy to meet him there, to be angry at him for playing the fool and running off into the shadows to save them like she was told he tried to while he's angry they were captured in the first place. She can't feel the pain as sharply when they're going at each other.
"Lia," Cal tries to interrupt.
Lia ignores him, leaning towards Rolan with her teeth bared. He's giving in, the argument's over barely after it's started, but she needs the fight. It's keeping her grounded. It explains why she's shaking so much, if she's furious. Gods, why is it so fucking cold! Couldn't this place be any warmer than a dungeon? And dim, too; she thought this place was safe from the shadow curse, so why is it getting so dark?
Does she say that all out loud? She's not sure. Words fill her mouth up like bile.
Rolan's making a stupid face at her.
And then, all of a sudden, she's not looking at Rolan's face. She's pressed facefirst against Rolan's shoulder with his arms around her.
"Lia!" Cal shouts as she tries to get her bearings. She grabs at Rolan's robes haphazardly in an attempt to haul herself back up, but her arms are numb and weak, her fingers barely able to cling to anything she reaches for. Rolan readjusts his grip.
"What happened?" she hears him say. "Why is she-"
"She's bleeding." One of them pulls her corset belt away from her wounded side. Lia hisses out a warning, but whoever it is lets go because of the burble of blood that follows the pressure being let up. Her shirt is too soaked to take it. It spills warm down her waist as her she struggles to think. It's almost like she's falling asleep, little by little; first her limbs, then her mind shutting off thought by thought, until her eyelids are too heavy to keep open.
"Get help," Rolan says, "now!"
Her legs give after that. Rolan can't hold her up.
They've tried before. Cal can carry her or Rolan, if he has to, but when she'd picked Rolan up once, she'd dropped him on his arse, and Rolan hadn't even attempted lifting her.
He tries very hard to this time. She doesn't hit the ground. She just meets it, slowly.
She groans into Rolan's shoulder as her side burns with pain. It's the only heat left in her entire body.
"You knew, didn't you?" Rolan says. She can hear him, and she can feel the words rumbling from his chest. Her eyelids droop. "Damn you, Lia." There's a dull pressure against one of her horns that she can't place, and then Rolan's hand slides over her side to the source of her pain. "Hold still."
Rolan's magic patters over her skin like rain, and it sneaks into her mouth, warm and sweet like cinnamon, even though Rolan always flushes and insists his magic isn't something she can taste. He's wrong, though. It's home, wherever they go. Rolan is murmuring at her, and she can't catch the words, just the strain in his voice as he focuses through them.
The pain lightens. Lia exhales and lets her eyes slide shut all the way.
Rolan jostles her rudely. "No, that was just to make it stop hurting. You need to stay awake until Cal gets someone who can heal you." Lia grumbles. "Stay awake," Rolan orders.
"Piss off," she says into his robes. His magic is sweet, but he smells awful, like he's been drinking and hasn't cleaned himself up with that cantrip he always uses to get out of doing real work.
That's not like him. Lia frowns.
"Lia, don't you dare ignore me," he says, voice growing tighter.
"You're scared," she slurs to tease him, struggling to get the words out. "Thought great wizards don't get scared."
"Most wizards don't have you for a sister." Lia fists his robes. She tries to hold on as tight as she can, like it'll keep her conscious so long as she doesn't let him go. He might smell like he's been drunk, but she smells like blood, and dirt, and piss. It was a small cell. Not a lot of privacy.
"I want a bath," Lia says. "Warm bath. Rolan."
"I'll heat a bath for you, if you promise not to fall asleep." She nods. She can do that. "What happened to you?"
"Me or Cal." Words roll around in her mouth like wads of cotton, leaving her tongue dry and thick in their wake. "Pissed them off, so it'd be me." She blinks with great effort to keep her eyes open. Rolan needs her awake. Rolan's an arse. She's so tired, she can't feel her legs.
"Of course you did." Rolan sighs.
So would I, is what she chooses to hear, and she smirks.
Slowly, so slowly, her eyes slide shut again. Some part of her remembers she's not supposed to let that happen, Rolan needs her to- To do something, for some reason, for- A little rest won't hurt. He won't even notice if she curls up so that he can't see her face.
"Lia," she hears, too far away to care.
"Lia!" She fights. Rolan needs her. She can't pry her eyes open, no matter how much she struggles. The shadows are reaching for her, hungry for-
"Thank the Gods," Rolan breathes. She can only hear him. The other voices are nothing but meaningless sound. A hand curls around her as if to tug her away from Rolan.
"No," Lia whines into the dark behind her closed eyelids, "no, let go. Rolan!"
"Let her see your wound." She relaxes. He's still there. "It's scarier when you're listening to me. Will she be alright?"
He must get an answer. There's a gentle coolness against the injury, nothing like the cold that's been creeping into Lia's body. It soothes her like Rolan's magic did, even if it's nowhere near as familiar.
"He's better at magic than you," Lia tells… someone, proudly. She's pretty sure they start laughing. Or maybe Rolan starts laughing.
"She's alright." Cal. Everyone's safe, then. "She'll love being reminded that she said that."
Distantly, she remembers that she was trying not to make them worry about her. She'll probably care about that later. Right now, it's nice that Cal's holding her hand again, and Rolan's letting her lay on him. It can't be comfortable. She's almost certain her horns are digging into him somewhere.
"Thank you," Cal tells someone. Her healer, she assumes. It's nice to not be bleeding out anymore, even if her whole body still feels weighted with lead.
"Now you can go to sleep," Rolan says. She's almost certain it's his fingers in her hair, combing through the dirty tangles. Lia nods as best she can. There's only warmth to fall back into now—no shadows, no numbness, no fear. She lets it embrace her, and into her dreams, she only brings the fuzzy echo of her brothers' voices.
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