14. Affection
When Devdan dies, you wrench aer back into life with everything you have. Rage and fear and power combine somewhere deep inside you, swirling tighter and tighter, almost nausea-inducing.
There is no finesse to it, none of the energy diverts to healing any of aer wounds, or replenishing the blood lost. Everything goes into getting aer heart beating again, putting breath back in aer lungs, making sure ae will open aer eyes once more.
If it weren’t for Sanev . . . all of your effort might have been wasted.
You can’t stay on your feet, after, all of your energy went into the working. Sanev catches you, helps you sit down on the ground when your legs give out, and leaves you gasping for breath to work on stitching aer up.
You let him do it, curling into yourself there on the ground. You can feel wetness on your face, but you don’t feel like you’re crying. It feels like you’re catching your breath, like there wasn’t enough air around until all three of you were breathing it again.
You’re not sure how long it takes - it could be hours, it could be minutes, all of it is meaningless to you - but eventually you feel a hand on your back, between your shoulder blades. A familiar hand.
Not Sanev’s hand.
You want to whip around and throw yourself into aer arms, maybe cry into aer shoulder a little, but you know yourself.
You know the extent of your own abilities.
You can’t keep yourself from turning quickly, but you’re more careful about it than you would be any other time.
You stare at aer, at the new line of stitches along the side of aer head, across aer throat. You raise your hand, trace the former lightly with the tips of your fingers.
“They’re going to scar,” you say softly, and you don’t acknowledge the tearful rasp to your voice. “I’m sorry.”
Devdan shakes aer head, cups your face in aer hands, just as gentle as you’re trying to be. “No apologies. Not for this.” Ae leans aer head into your touch, wincing a little with it, but smiling. “I’m alive. You brought me back. I can live with a couple new scars.”
You disagree, generally - you’re old enough that you should have been able to direct more energy to healing at least some of the damage, if not all of it - but for once you don’t want to argue. Later, when the shock of sudden death-then-not has worn off, when just the sight of this person up and walking and talking doesn’t make you look on in wonder, you can make all the counterpoints you want.
For now, you let yourself dip your chin in something like a nod, angling your head to press your lips against the edge of aer palm.