43
Scott/Malia/Kira
43. "YOU DID WHAT?!"
Kira wakes up on her back. It's not the pain in her body that wakes her despite how it claims her now. Like her muscles are Kevlar, being stretched and twisted beneath her nerves.
It's not the hushed sounds of people speaking. She can hear Malia's voice, all hot breath and sharp teeth. She can hear a response, methodical with tempered patience - they've taken her to Deaton.
There's another voice too, one that's not coming from the room. She doesn't understand its words but she can feel its rage. Seething with contempt, intent. She knows this isn't what's woken her because it hasn't stopped for as long as she's been out.
She's strapped down to a table, wicked bindings at her wrists and ankles that burn like something's eroding her.
Burning, binding restraints, and what's woken her is the hesitant placement of Scott's hand atop her fingers.
It's lacking the warmth he used to touch her with. Lacking the certainty, the weight, the trust. Her wrists aches and they itch, and the storm beneath her skin wants his hand off from her.
She realises when Scott does release her, soft pressure like bird's wings brushing the ground in takeoff, that he wasn't taking her pain. She was eating his.
Malia's on her next. Her hand invades the Hoel that Scott's has left behind. No hesitance in her touch, but a ferocity that Kira thinks could break bones. She wonders if she'd even notice amid the pressure wracking her now.
Malia snarls, gripping her fingers a little tighter.
Mountain ash, some unburnt part of Kira's mind supplies then. They can't touch me without it hurting them too. Scott is murmuring something. To her, to Malia, she can't tell, can barely hear him.
But then it is to her, just to her; "Kira, where's the fox?" and everything comes back to her. The flame, the sword. The shine in Malia's eyes, the taste of Scott's mouth before the ritual.
The attempt. The separation.
"I'm sorry, Scott," she says. Her voice is fading, falling fast. "I lost."
She understands the feeling all throughout her body now. The path that lightning takes. Fanning out from top to bottom.
Stubbornly, Malia's snapping words between her teeth. Words like something else we can do, a fast chase of hot denial. Behind her fervour Scott's expression is stricken, devastated, and Kira sees him mouth the words, her hearing fully lost now.
"You did what?"
Kira tries to speak again - she thinks she's primed to say a name but she's not sure which of them she needs more. The voice that leaves her throat isn't hers. She doesn't understand its words.
pairing prompts
