a still-glowing ember (3)
warnings: panic, guilt, injury mention, mentions of assumed character death (mistaken), arguing, lmk if i missed any
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Virgil had spent nearly half the night attempting to coax the sprite’s spark back into something resembling a healthy state, feeling his stress levels spike unbearably with every pained twitch his unconscious patient had made. Working to heal someone that small, even with the assistance of magic, was no simple feat. It had been hours of exacting, meticulous work that had left him exhausted.
So, naturally, mere moments after Virgil finally called the job done, crawled into bed, and managed to fall asleep, the little idiot woke up and started shrieking loud enough to wake the dead.
Virgil had left the sprite on an extra pillow next to him, one of his hands cupped over the tiny figure to monitor any sudden changes in temperature, which basically meant that he’d gotten an unwanted earful at close range.
For someone who’d barely been able to string two words together before, the sprite certainly had a set of lungs on him. Stars almighty, that was loud.
“Will you cut that out?” he groaned with his face still half-mushed into his pillow, only earning himself an alarmed, shrill whistle-chirp and frantic scrabbling under his hand in response. Ugh. Sprites.
Did the guy not remember Virgil literally going to embarrassing lengths to save his life a handful of hours ago, or something?
Well. Actually, thinking back, he was pretty sure the sprite had been more-or-less unconscious at that point, only latching onto Virgil’s proffered magic after much nudging and coaxing of that terrifyingly unresponsive form. Maybe he actually didn’t recall any of that.
In that case, he had a little more sympathy. Not enough to keep him from pushing up onto his elbows and sending the noisy creature a nasty glare, but enough that he didn’t jump directly to mostly-facetious threats on the sprite’s life. See? Forget what everyone who’d ever met him had said, he was a master of restraint and compassion.
“Seriously, pipe down. I’m trying to sleep over here.” Okay, so not that much compassion.
The sprite’s wings were aggressively fluffed up behind him, meaning they hadn’t turned into frostbitten hunks of flesh and fallen off in the night, which was good. Virgil knew elemental beings were far more resistant to physical damage than most mortal types were, but feeling someone so iced-over always brought around that old panic anyhow.
Mostly assured that the sprite wasn’t going to keel over the moment he wasn’t in contact with him, Virgil retracted his hand entirely, leaving the sprite sprawled out on the pillow, breathing hard as his bedraggled feathers puffed up further. Virgil shifted into his fluffier form, as though his fur coat would chase away even the memory of the chill, and curled up more firmly, wrapping his tail around his paws. If he could just get a few more minutes of rest…
“I’ve been abducted,” the sprite said to himself, the words starting as a near whisper and slowly growing to a near wail. “I was nearly frozen, hunted for sport, and now I’ve been kidnapped away for my transgressions!”
Uggghh. He shifted back, mostly for ease of speech, and rolled his eyes when the sprite tried to scramble back and mostly just tripped over himself.
“I didn’t kidnap you,” he grumbled, turning his head to stare with one half-lidded eye. “I basically saved your life, actually, so maybe you should be a little more gracious.”
“Gracious?!” the sprite echoed in a shriek that was far too high-pitched for Virgil’s sleep deprivation-fried brain. “I’m fairly certain you threatened to end my life, not preserve it!”
Now, that much was probably true. Even if he hadn’t meant it, he certainly might have said something along those lines. He tended to get a little snappish when he was irritated, and also when it was cold out, and also when people bothered him in his own damn territory.
In short, the sprite had been dealt an extremely unlucky hand last night, in regards to Virgil specifically. And… intentional or not, he had almost gotten the tiny idiot killed.
He still remembered how his spiteful satisfaction at scaring the living daylights out of a rude intruder had slowly begun to shift into a creeping feeling of dread as the sprite utterly failed to do anything resembling normal flying, let alone escaping. The moment his fingers had wrapped around that ice-cold frame, the apprehension had abruptly firmed into the certainty that something was terribly wrong.
No creature of fire should ever feel so still and icy, especially not a lively, quick-burning sprite.
Virgil’s ears pressed flat against his skull, his guilt swamping him again. He supposed he probably at least owed the guy an explanation. Uuuuggghhhh.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told the sprite, tucking his hands under himself in an act of goodwill. “I know we got off on the wrong foot—,”
“The wrong foot?! An upside-down centipede has less wrong feet than our meeting!” the sprite screeched, continuing to be far more verbose when he wasn’t in the middle of freezing to death. Funny how that worked.
“Okay, fine,” Virgil cut in. “I heavily implied that I was going to murder you, but in my defense, I had no idea you were actually in a prime state to be murdered at the time, and also I’d been having a really bad night.”
The sprite stared at him like he was insane, and Virgil felt his shoulders rise to hunch up around his ears. This was why he didn’t talk to people.
“You had a bad night?!” the sprite asked in a near-shout, his tone incredulous.
The indignant question was accompanied by a twitch of movement, like the sprite had attempted to throw his arms up in an exasperated gesture only to find one limb restrained. He looked down at the sling around his injured arm, blinking in bewilderment.
“Okay, that one wasn’t my fault,” Virgil protested preemptively. “You were already like that when I— hey, hey! Don’t jostle it, jeez!”
He reached forward despite himself, gently batting the sprite’s hand away from the sling. Naturally, he earned himself a buffeting slap from one of those tiny wings for his good deed, but going by the horrified stare the sprite sent his own appendage, Virgil was fairly sure the motion had been entirely instinctual.
“Seriously, don’t mess with that,” he instructed, slowly withdrawing once it became clear that the sprite had gone stock-still with fear. “It took me ages to put together a sling that tiny, let alone tie it. Just leave it be.”
The sprite’s face pinched with uncertainty. “You made this? Why?”
There it was, the exact question he’d been trying to avoid. Great, just great.
He shrugged, faux-casual. “Maybe I just didn’t want some random pesky sprite dropping dead in my stretch of woods. Bad for the decor or whatever.”
The sprite narrowed his eyes at him, clearly not buying it.
“Look,” Virgil said, trying to head off the accusations of nefarious plots that he could practically see on the tip of the sprite’s tongue, “I clearly could have murdered you, and I didn’t, so can we just agree to not ask any more questions and part ways as unfriendly strangers?”
“What did you mean, you were having a bad night?” the sprite asked, apparently deciding to completely ignore Virgil’s very reasonable suggestion.
“I mean, I was having a bad night,” Virgil repeated with the slightest growl to the words. “I got robbed by annoying pixies twice, and now I’m going to have to go repair those boundary markers and make sure that nothing snuck in while they were down, which means I’ll have to waste a whole day just scouring the forest when I have winter supplies to be storing—,”
“Twice?” the sprite echoed, face pinching even further into a confused frown. “I only stole one boundary marker— and under severe duress, with all intention of returning the pilfered power once I had recovered at home!”
Virgil rolled his eyes, ignoring the tacked-on excuses. “Yeah, but you were the second sprite to do that. Like, my bad for thinking both times were you, but in my defense, the other sprite looked pretty damn similar—,”
“There was another sprite?” the sprite interrupted again, and this time he didn’t even seem to notice Virgil’s annoyed growl, his entire body gone tense with a sudden sharp focus. “You’re sure?”
Virgil frowned, a foreboding feeling creeping up on him. “Yeah, especially with what you just said. In hindsight, there were signs that the two of you were different. You were tripping over your words, while the first guy nearly woke the whole forest with all the maniacal shrieking laughter.”
“Remus,” the sprite whispered with wide eyes, his hands fisting in the loose fabric of the pillow. “Did you see which way he went?”
For the first time, he was leaning toward Virgil, practically hanging on his every word as he sought the answer.
“I dunno, north-ish?” Virgil replied, ears flicking back in slight bewilderment. “I wasn’t exactly close enough to catch him. What, do you know the guy or— woah! What are you doing?”
The sprite had pushed himself to his feet in one determined motion, and now pinwheeled, trying to keep his balance atop the soft surface of the pillow. His wings were lifting sluggishly into position, like he actually thought the ragged limbs would carry him anywhere in his current state.
Virgil hovered a hand nearby, prepared to catch the idiot when he want toppling down, but the sprite ducked away.
“I’m going to go find my brother,” the sprite spat, looking as though he’d like nothing better than for Virgil to try and stop him. “He’s out there, alone!”
The sense of foreboding doubled. The odds of a fire sprite, even one ballsy enough to steal three territory markers, surviving a winter storm all through the night were extremely low.
“If you go out there in this state, the only thing you’ll accomplish is crashing and dislocating your other shoulder,” he warned, trying to soften the bite in his voice as much as possible. “The forest is huge. There’s no way you’ll find him, wherever he is.”
Whatever condition he’s in, Virgil didn’t add, because even he had some tact.
“I don’t care,” the sprite said, chin lifted stubbornly as he started taking wobbly steps down the side of the pillow, heading for the edge of the bed. “He’s my brother. I’m not going to just abandon him!”
Virgil groaned. There was virtually no way the other sprite was alive, but there was no point telling his guest that, not when the tremble to his chin showed that he was already well aware, and determined to see this through anyhow.
…At the very least, anyone who’d lost family deserved the closure of finding their body.
The sprite reached the edge of the bed and surveyed the drop, lifting his shaking wings into position to catch the den’s still air the best they could.
With a sigh, Virgil reached out and wrapped his hand around the sprite before he could jump, lifting him up into the air despite his furious protests.
“What’s your name?” he asked, and the non-sequitur was enough to grab the sprite’s attention for at least a moment.
“It’s Roman,” he snapped, and the way his wings were smacking at Virgil’s hand in protest were entirely purposeful, this time. “Now, let me go—!”
“Okay, Roman, look. You’re going to get yourself killed if you go alone,” Virgil informed him. “And seeing as I just spent a ridiculous amount of time preventing your untimely demise, I’ll be really irritated if you kick the bucket now.”
Roman’s face screwed up with clear anger, but before he could start shouting, Virgil set him down solidly on his shoulder, making sure that he was well balanced before releasing him.
“So,” he continued, swinging his legs around to stand himself, “if you promise not to yell directly in my ear, I guess I can keep all that hard work from going to waste by going with you.”
He could practically hear the way Roman’s brain ground to a halt, struggling to shift gears. “You’re going to help me?”
Virgil shrugged his unoccupied shoulder, heading for his den’s entryway. “Might as well. It’s not like it’ll be too difficult to track down the scent, if he smells anywhere near as strong as you.”
Roman laughed, a short, surprised bark. “He— Trust me, he’s much worse.”
“Ugh, great,” Virgil replied with a wrinkle of his nose, and tried not to think about what they’d do whenever they did find whatever was left of Roman’s brother.
