#amberaxe

[dandelion-bride]

26 :)

From Intimancy prompts. This went... somewhere 😅 there's a part 2 in the future I think.

Same Amberaxe AU as Ash's wound cleaning fic. Now with a side of Fangs.

26. Play Fighting

Zefira knows she's seen what she shouldn't have.

The night after Alfira’s gruesome murder, unable to sleep with the void tearing at her insides, she clambers up the walls of the old stone ruin near camp. The half-full jam jar is gone, taken either by her Lord as a stolen Tithe, or by a hungry animal; still, it gives her some hope as she watches the sky.

Then Labrys stumbles in, and an imp appears, and Zefira watches an unholy confession with slow-growing horror. Maybe the amnesiac doesn't recall, but she knows who blesses murder as an act of devotion. She stays silent during their meeting, watching Labrys act just as standoffish as usual, at first, then escalating and threatening the so-called butler for refusing to disclose the truth. She waits long moments after the devil disapparates and Labrys skulks away before she too returns to her bedroll.

Zefira sits with the knowledge, as they wake the next morning. She holds it close that night, when she drops with sweat and has to talk Lae’zel out of slitting her throat. She watches Labrys fight, and when they take Shadowheart, Wyll, and Gale to clear out a spider den, the halfling checks in with her fellow cleric on their progress, veiled as concern for their healing. The imp’s gift, their new cloak, slides around their body as they walk like swiftly spilling blood.

In short, Zefira leads, and worries. Astarion goes for her throat one night, and she uses her tadpole abilities once to see his past, before allowing him a sip (and wasting a spell in the morning.) That means she has to keep up with a badly-disguised Sharran, a depressed wizard, a violent alien, a suspiciously-empowered spellsword, and a vampire spawn. She adds another reminder to Brandobaris in her prayers that she could really use some more help, and keeps on looking for a cure.

That night, they camp in the same spot, and Zefira goes to practice with a shield. It's too big for her, but that's how it goes with adventuring: you get the gear you get not the gear sized for you, Cardin would say.

Hold the shining disc of steel. Get into a stance. Chin up, eyes forward. 

She steps forward, shield up and ready. Tries to quickstep back. Trips on her heels and tumbles into the sand.

A high titter of laughter echoes in her ears. Damn it. She should have gone further down the stream. 

“You might be able to use it as a turtle shell, darling, but that is definitely too big for you.”

Zefira pulls herself back up without even looking to see if help was offered. (It wasn't.) “I’ve used bigger ones before,” she insists. “Just have to get the feel of it down.”

Astarion watches her wobble through one set of movement drills. He steps over when she leans down to breathe, and when he sees the straps on the weapon he pulls back up with a smirk. “Well, of course you're having trouble,” he says. “Those straps are made for arms like our bloodscented friend, not you.”

Zefira speaks through her teeth. “Can you fix it?”

“I'm not an armorer,” he pushes back, but he does pause. “I could probably stitch these two sections together. If only to keep our delightful priestling safe,” he finishes off with a smirk.

Zefira dumps the shield into his hands with an exhausted “thank you,” then picks up the second shield she brought, one of the goblins’ and just about her size. As Astarion rolls his eyes and goes to get a needle, she starts up the drills again.

“What are you doing.”

Zefira turns her head, catching the half-orc in the edge of her sight both sideways and up. “Staying alive to keep you alive,” she says. Labrys lets the conversation path off into silence, so she starts up her drills again. If she can just get into her body instead of letting her mind run ragged with thoughts of blood drop circles and the skull looking down and – if she can just get into her body, this won't be any issue at all.

“Your shield arm is too loose,” they call out.

“Oh dear.” The pointy-eared and -toothed companion returns, with a leather wrapped set of tailor's tools. His eyes flicker between the two, and Zefira sees a hint of discomfort that he quickly smothers. “Even our dagger-happy friend thinks you need help.”

“I am –” Zefira swallows down her reaction, and takes a breath to calm. She points to Labrys. “If you want to help, get a stick or summat and spar with me. If you,” she says, pointing at Astarion, “want to watch, come along, because I’m going a bit further downstream before I get any more of an audience.” And with that, she matches down the shore.

Somehow, it doesn't occur to her that isolating herself with two predators might be a problem.

Labrys brings a stave and a club, loot from the dead. They tower over her without effort, and Zefira briefly questions her sanity before she stiffens her spine, tucks in her elbow, and gets her guard up for the first hit.

It hurts. Labrys swings a basic overhand, and the impact shakes her like a twig. But she only gets pushed back an inch on the sand, and she keeps her shield up, so that's the important thing. “Again.”

The totally-not-a-Bhaalist-killer tests her guard, aiming at different spots. She guards off most hits, although she deflects one off her hipbone, and from the deep throbbing pain she knows she'll have a bruise there. Astarion works on the larger shield, providing some mild color commentary she ignores. Labrys moves with preternatural grace.

When they move to switch to the stave, Zefira holds her empty hand up. “A moment, please,” she insists, setting down the shield. Her curls stick to her forehead, and she breathes heavy. 

Labrys curls their lip up at her, but they stand and wait for her. She cups her small hands, aching from impact, and splashes herself in the face. She needs to cool down, to be in her body. If only she could calm down as well, to snuff the twist in her belly when she looks at them. If she wants to survive this misadventure, she needs to keep her incredibly foolish libido in check. 

When she comes back, Astarion holds up the bigger shield. From the smirk on his face, he thinks there's more than exertion painting her cheeks red. “Let's see you try this on,” he suggests, and then purrs, “I see you’re used to your toys on the larger side.”

If looks could kill, Astarion would be a smoking pile of ashes. Thanks to all the gods that the half-orc doesn't seem to catch the implications. Or they're better at hiding it.

Zefira holds up the new shield, glinting steel and with much better balance. Labrys stands to oppose her with the longer reach of the quarterstaff. Astarion, seated on a bleached log, crosses his legs and watches the show.

[lamortwrites]

Intimancy prompt 50. And maybe 59?

answering these intimacy prompts, ty!

50: patching up a wound / 59: a height difference

She finds them shortly after they have set up camp for the evening.

There is an itch that grows beneath the surface of their skin when surrounded by too many people; it worsens, when the evening is too quiet, when they have nothing to focus on, no target onto which to project their restlessness. On her second night in their camp, Karlach had snuck up on them from behind and they had near gutted her for it -- had it not been for Zefira's intervention (and the leather straps of her clothing deflecting their shaking blade to twist harmlessly against her stomach) they would have felt blood hot as hellfire coat their hands.

Now, when they are not given a job to do, Labrys spends their time with something solid at their back. This evening they have found themselves in the ruins of an old stone structure not too far from their camp -- once a temple, going by the altar at the far end, although no trace remains of what god may once have been worshipped here -- leaning in the corner where two of the walls are still taller than they are. One hand holds a discarded piece of firewood, the other a makeshift knife they had liberated from a goblin a few days prior, and by the time the halfling priest seeks them out, they are halfway through attempting to carve a runic design into the surface of the wood.

"Come to pray?" she asks, tapping the back of her right hand.

Labrys frowns, gaze flitting to the symbol of bound hands clasped in prayer that adorns the back of their own hand, an image which still means nothing to them. They shake their head.

Zefira says nothing further, haloed in the golden light of the setting sun, bright enough to hurt their head. Seconds stretch out into minutes before they think to ask, "Have you?"

"Oh, no," she laughs, "I don't need a temple for my devotions. I'm here for you."

They narrow their eyes. Their blade sinks too deep into the wood -- too soft of a material, they think, irritated, wiggling the knife back and forth to work it free.

"Why."

Their voice is too flat to rightfully call it a question. A demand, perhaps, one to which the priest only smiles at their display of what Astarion describes as bad manners.

"I didn't get a chance to patch you up earlier," she says, "and I know you didn't ask Shadowheart when we stopped to camp. It must be hurting pretty bad by now. Let me take a look?"

To her credit, she does not try to approach them. She taps her fingers against the space just below her collarbone instead and they feel the pain they had been ignoring so successfully worm its way back to the front of their mind. The wood snaps in their hand and they hiss out a curse between their teeth, letting the two pieces fall uselessly to the stone floor.

"That is unnecessary," they grit out.

Zefira tuts, unimpressed. "Yes, alright, you're tough, you don't need anyone's help. Understood. Now that's out of the way, let me look at it, at least." When they open their mouth to tell her to leave them be she fixes them with a look and holds up a finger. "No, I'm not done, let me finish. I know you didn't pull that arrow out clean. I don't care if the pain is bearable, or whatever bullshit you were about to come out with -- if that wound gets infected, or if there's a fragment of that arrowhead still lodged in there, it'll impact your ability to swing a blade. Have you even washed it yet?"

They clench their hand tight around the handle of their knife, imagine burying the short blade in the hollow of her throat, holding her close as the lifeblood ebbs from her body. A twinge of pain lances down their arm. Their fingers twitch.

"Fine," they snap, stowing their knife. "Make it quick."

"I will take as long as I need to," she chides, and Labrys rolls their eyes. "Now, come over here, into the light. And sit down, how in the hells am I supposed to reach you up there?"

She leads them to the stone altar, the only remotely worthy place to sit amongst the debris, and clambers atop it, frowning up at them when they take too long to sit down. With them sat and her stood on the altar, Zefira is almost eye level with them -- their wound is easily accessible, from her position, but still she does not move to touch them.

"May I?" she asks instead, and Labrys frowns, unsure what her trick is here. She waits them out as the silence between them stretches out long enough to become what Wyll terms awkward and their frown only deepens.

"And if I say no?"

"Then I'll head back to camp and leave you to deal with it yourself, or ask myself or Shadowheart later. Now, I'd hope you're not foolish or stubborn enough to pick that option, but it's your choice."

They think about calling her bluff, telling her to go back and join the others and leave them be. But the wound is only small, and she would not have to touch them overmuch, and should she try anything all they would have to do is stand up to render her powerless.

"Fine," they say, voice clipped. "Do it."

She still does not touch them even as she peels the fabric of their tattered shirt back from where dried blood and sweat have stuck it to their skin, but Labrys watches her closely anyway as she inspects the wound. It is small and shallow, jagged only where they had been careless in ripping the arrowhead from their flesh amidst the red haze of battle, but it had not cut deep enough for them to consider it a problem beyond the odd pulse of pain that had troubled them throughout the course of the afternoon, easy enough to ignore in favour of their party's focus on exploration.

Zefira clucks her tongue and mutters something under her breath. When she lifts her other hand to hover over the wound a soft glow spills from the tip of her index finger that grows brighter as she moves it around the scabbing edges of the lesion.

"Right," she says. "I'm going to touch you now, and it's probably going to hurt. A little bit of that arrow broke off in your shoulder when you pulled it out, and we're gonna have to get that out of you before we can heal you up. Okay?"

We, she says, as if they have any say in what she does to them. But she does not move, not until they nod, not until they echo her okay and voice their consent.

It does not hurt so much as they thought it would. Her fingers are small and nimble and the shrapnel is not lodged too deep; beyond the initial instinctive tensing of their muscles when she braces her other hand on their shoulder to keep them steady, Labrys does not react as she digs into the wound to retrieve the last of the arrowhead from where it cuts into the fibres of their muscles.

"There," she says finally, dropping the tiny piece of metal into their palm. "Can't very well heal a wound while there's still something in there hurting you, can we? I thought I might have to patch you up the old fashioned way, but it's not as bad as I thought it was: I can heal it up for you now, whenever you're ready."

Labrys closes their fist around what is left of the arrowhead, small enough that they would have considered it insignificant. They nod once, and are grateful she does not make them voice it again -- she presses one hand to their bloody shoulder and clasps the coin around her neck with the other and they grit their teeth against the searing itch of regrowing skin, flesh knitting itself back together beneath the power of her touch.

There is an odd urge in the back of their mind to thank her as she sits down heavily on the altar beside them, but they squash it before it can take root, tightening their grip on the fragment of arrowhead until it cuts into their palm.

"Well," she says finally, when the silence has grown up around them like thick foliage to shade them from the last light of the setting sun, "I am starving. Shall we head back and see what delights Gale has managed to whip up for us tonight?"

They nod, slowly pushing themselves to their feet as Zefira drops to the floor from her perch on the edge of the altar and begins to head back towards the others. Her hands are still stained crimson: her fault, for following them out here, for insisting on helping them as if they are not already indebted to her enough. But it is still their blood doing the staining.

"There is a stream," they offer, hesitant, "a little way to the north. Not too far out of the way. For your hands."

She pauses long enough for them to catch up and smiles up at them. "I'll follow you, then," she says, and this evening, at least, it does not feel so much like a threat to have someone at their back.