@ennobledsinner: cont from [here]
The moment John had heard news about a church convoy ambushing the Velvet Dagger he’d left his ranch to visit the main church compound. While John hadn’t coordinated the raid he’d made it explicitly clear to his men not to kill the owner of the bar and where they are to take her if she’s injured.
He pulls the green tent fold back and ducks inside. There Mairwen is, laying in one of the many cots that stretch down the length of the medical tent. He bites back his witticism as he approaches her bed, finding a seat on the empty cot adjacent hers.
“Those look painful.” John says, nodding towards the red grazes across her forehead. She has bits and pieces of broken glass in her hair. Dirt. He brings a hand up to stroke his beard in thought. At least she wasn’t killed. “Did they burn the bar? For the record, I didn’t send them. But I did warn you.”
She counted off notes in her head, arms crossed as she tapped her fingers in time to their placement on the strings. Small, familiar movements. The same song she’d been learning the first time she’d found herself in a hospital bed. She wouldn’t call it comforting.
But it was something.
She wasn’t surprised when John ended up there, perched on the cot beside her. She didn’t bother looking at him, barely even listening to his words. For a long moment, she barely even acknowledged him. Not until she finished the song she was keeping time to. Eventually, she sighed, pushing herself up into a sitting position and looking at him, her expression blank. Dead-eyed.
❝Explosion, actually.❞ She corrected. Whether it had meant to simply be burning it down or... Something like this, she didn’t know. And didn’t care. She’d still been on the edge of the blast radius when they did it and before they dragged her away. ❝In the kitchen. Rick wasn’t in, luckily. Just me. Closing up for the night.❞
❝And no, they don’t hurt.❞ She answered, addressing his first comment last. It wasn’t quite a lie, either.
