#4uts

[jojadoja1]

[mosvani]

if he expected some display of white-knuckled stoicism,   chin stubbornly lifted as she grit her teeth through ribbons of pain,   alanna gave him none.   @4uts dabs what she dimly identified as some kind of poultice along the slash that’d unlaced the blade of her shoulder into agony and alanna finds herself more and more grateful for the iron anchor of his grip as her body reeled in jags away from this blistering contact.   childish was the common refrain for a warrior with no love,   nor tolerance,   for suffering.   but if he echoed it,   she cared little,   regretting only that she wasn’t more help in this endeavor.  

she is better,   but not completely still,   for the bandage he secures with methodical precision.   her startled cry at contact muffled in the turn of her head, teeth clasping her bottom lip as she balled her hands into tight fists at her thighs.

“this has been a far more exciting reunion than I would have preferred,”   she manages in a threadbare voice.   too mangled for her meager attempt at levity to take any recognizable shape.   her debt to the warrior’s deadpan honor ever steeper.

"I thought you were long gone by now."

[mosvani]

such a companionable quiet comes to lie between them—nightsong in gentle chorus with the murmur of his blade, interjected only by the indignant pop of the fire as pockets of moisture burst free—that she is almost hesitant to break it.   alanna sits atop the spread of her cloak,   her legs neatly folded,   and leans back on either palm to watch the dense smoke of their fire tumble upward into the star-drowned sky.   she speaks skyward,   her voice weightless. his remained firmly on the ground: deflective, to little affect. she heeds his insistence no more than if he'd denied the sun. she laughs. a quizzical frown pinching her features.

were she still just a girl, it might have been insulting—so personally had she taken each and every turn of the world around her—to be so swiftly dismissed. as it was, it struck her only as odd.

"you are too modest," alanna says, regarding him with a renewed interest. but not wholly incorrect; she could hold her own fine enough, but calling any kind of magic in a land that deemed it heresy courted its own dangers. more than her life, he'd spared her considerable risk. alanna rolls her shoulders, a gesture almost indolent, and relieves him of her eye.

"nevertheless, I am grateful, @4uts" she says. and desired or not, she'd repay it.

cont.

[apolytia]

previously on berserk, featuring @4uts

Shoulders huff and fall, drawing the furs tighter; holding the breeze, that malicious thing, at bay.

Ever since her arrival in this world the corruption of the natural order had been [ ... ] insistent in her ears. Hard to ignore. Hard to reckon with unless she was well-armed. And she'd yet no passing opportunity to lay her divine arms down. Her heart bled to even consider the life of one born, raised, and meant to die here.

Monstrous? She'd come across a man battling monsters. What choice had he but to take on the traits of his enemies?

❝ I've known many women in my time here. If I am to help - ❞ And she would help. Whether she was wanted for her aid or not. ❝ - I would need further details. ❞

Arms fold about her chest. The azure of her eyes, soft and carefully free of the sorrow she felt for him, finds his own sleep-denied gaze. She smiled. A mote of light among a dark, and drawn-out vision.

❝ Has she the panacea for the curse you suffer? ❞