War Between Four Walls - Parts Nine and Ten
Nine
Blue-in-blue eyes.
A voice calling his name.
He remembers the last time he’d fallen; the last time he’d needed to be saved.
Memory and now, past and present, as he opens his eyes.
Serpentine blade / a sword he and I made
Bare hands, pride / a scar and a silver cuff
She would never yield / he’s been beaten down all his life
The look in her eyes / the way he looks at me
There is a hand closing around Erik’s wrist. There is a voice murmuring to him.
“Get up, please.
“Trust me.”
I will, Erik thinks. I do.
A quiet laugh. “I just wanted to hear you say it again.”
Erik reaches out, and there is a hand closing around his wrist.
He opens his eyes.
Flames and thick, choking smoke.
For some reason he thinks he can hear people shouting encouragement.
And Charles is standing over him. “Don’t mind the flames. Come with me.”
“I’m not looking at them,” Erik says, and he staggers as he tries to rise to his feet. “I’m hurt.”
“I know. I’m here to get you out. I’m here to take you home.”
“Through - ” Erik waves his free hand. “Through this?”
The courtyard is wreathed in fire, and the flames are licking at the bulk of the fallen dragon.
“Through this,” Charles says.
Erik blinks. “All right.”
He gets a smile.
Up, and out.
The fire is as nothing to him.
His hand around Charles’s; Charles’s hand in his. All the long way down.
///
Ten
There is a quiet knock on the door to the smithy. Erik braces himself on his good arm and attempts to push up from his chair - but there’s a hand on his shoulder, and Charles is smiling and leaning over him. “You’re not to move around too much, remember? I don’t want your stitches to come undone. You know how everyone’s worried about you.”
“I’ve taken worse wounds, Charles,” Erik says, laughing ruefully, “and when I did, often I was left in the hands of healers who didn’t know one end of a needle from another.”
“Well, let me tell you that I almost felt sick, while Jean and Kazuko were sewing you up. You are not supposed to be torn to rags, Erik; you are not your shirts to be so easily mended.”
Erik nods, accepting the admonition. “I did not mean to insult your friend.”
“I hope that you do not. Kazuko is Kazuko, and no one is her equal at needle and thread.”
“I’m glad she’s come to join us here.”
He flinches, but only a little, as Charles’s fingers touch the wrist of his injured arm.
“I’m sorry,” he says, in the end, and he covers Charles’s hand with his own. “Are you still having problems using your hands?”
“I am fine, Erik. The pain went away quickly. More importantly - I wanted to be there,” Charles says. “You needed me to be there.”
Erik nods. He remembers seizing Charles’s hands, the hot shock of the needle as it bit into his skin, again and again. He remembers being pushed upright, blinding pain as he was moved to another bed, and he remembers looking back, at the sheets stained with his own blood. He remembers Charles biting his lips in his own pain, because Erik was crushing his hands. “You could have had them put me to sleep, saved your hands.”
“I would never,” Charles says, and puts his nose in the air, sniffing contemptuously.
Erik almost laughs and almost shrugs - until the movement pulls at his wound and he winces, grits his teeth to prevent a pained moan from escaping. When he’s sure he can speak again normally, he says, “I’m not used to being laid up like this.”
“Well, you are a skilled soldier; you walked away from a fight with a dragon, didn’t you?”
He watches as Charles’s eyes darken - briefly - with the memory.
It’s been ten days, at least, and yet Erik still wakes up with the stench of blood and ash and burning stone in his nose. He wakes up, hands on Charles’s arms or shoulders or wrists or hips, urgency and fear in every line of him.
And always the understanding and the easy silence of Charles’s acceptance.
And he does the same now. Charles is covering it up, and saying, gently, “Let me wait on you for a change. How many times have you had to look after me, after all? All those nights when I woke up from my bad dreams; all the times I made you worry.”
Erik looks away, tries to hide the fondness in his smile. “I’ve lost count.”
A quiet laugh. A kiss to his brow. And he watches Charles walk away, heading for the door. A shriek of laughter, a cool breeze that blows snow across the threshold.
Erik smiles again, and this time when he attempts to get to his feet, it’s a little easier. He succeeds, and he takes a small branch from the pile of kindling nearby, sets it alight in the blazing fire.
His hands are no longer shaking as he limps around the smithy, lighting the candles scattered here and there in their wooden holders. A constellation of flames. He absently moves one candle closer to the head of the table, and then throws the smoldering branch into the fireplace.
When he looks up from his task, it’s Charles’s turn to wear a fond smile. He may be shaking his head a little, but there is no worry clouding his blue-in-blue eyes - only exasperation, and perhaps a certain affection.
“Erik,” someone calls, and he smiles when there’s a flash of blonde hair out of the corner of his eye.
Emma steps carefully around him, hands held behind her back. “How are you feeling?”
“I am not in much pain today, thank you,” he says, and he lets her wrap her arms around his waist. He lays his good hand atop her head. “I have never had such vigilant nurses - even if they pinch me from time to time.”
“You were supposed to stay still,” Emma says, muffled in his shirt and the bandages still wrapped around his midsection. “It was pinch you or force a cup of Jean’s tea down your throat.”
“Charles would never let you do that,” Erik says, chuckling softly. “If only because then he would have to deal with the rash.”
Emma chokes out a watery laugh. “You may keep telling yourself that.”
“You promised you wouldn’t tell him, Emma,” Charles says. He comes to join them, and he’s leaning down to Emma’s eye-level and he’s making a terrible face at her, pulling at his cheeks and sticking his tongue out. “Traitor.”
Erik only laughs the harder - even if it is starting to hurt him - and he allows Emma and Charles to help him back into his chair.
Summers and Jean are already at the table. Rachel is wide awake in her basket between them, clutching a small cloth flower in her fist. “You’re looking better,” Summers says.
“Next time I decide to fight a dragon mostly by myself,” Erik drawls, “please have someone knock me out and sit on me, then call in the soldiers and all the mages you can find.”
“I’ll do better. I’ll knock you out before we leave. And deal with Charles’s wrath after leading the army back home. If we get home.”
Charles laughs and settles into the seat at Erik’s right hand. “If there was a chance that I could actually hold you to that promise, Summers....”
“Are you all really supposed to make fun of a sick man,” Erik says, mildly.
“You started it,” Summers counters.
It’s Jean who laughs first, turning away and clapping her hands over her mouth - and the others soon follow suit.
Erik catches Charles’s eye and grins at him, looks down briefly as Charles’s hands slide over his.
He is warm, and he is here. They are both here.
“Being entirely untruthful,” Sean says, suddenly, from the end of the table. “You’d lead that army yourself, firestarter.”
“I would not,” Charles says promptly. “But if you asked Emma....”
Emma grins and points to herself.
Sean laughs: dusty and cracked and actually amused.
The door crashes open and someone is humming, enthusiastic and off-key. The song identifies the singer - and Azzel laughs and silences Raven with a kiss, and then he’s putting a basket of food on the table. “We are sorry to be late.”
“It’s not my fault they wanted to play a game of tag in the kitchen,” Raven says, still half a sing-song, laughing as she sails around the table and wraps her arms around Charles.
Without moving his hands away from Erik’s, Charles leans back into his sister’s embrace, and cranes up to accept the kiss she bestows on his forehead.
Erik watches as Azzel rounds the table to salute him and Jean and Summers. “How are you doing, sir?”
“Better, thank you. And you and your wife?”
Azzel laughs. “We are well.”
“Be seated, please,” Jean says, smiling.
Erik looks down the table as the others move around and hand out the food. Emma is trying to make Sean sit next to her, playful pleading in her voice. “Leaving with you,” the red-haired man mock-grumbles, but he is smiling all the same.
Emma talks about the places they might see when they ride away with Logan’s army.
Azzel is rocking Rachel back and forth, and Raven is watching him with a fond look in her eyes.
Summers is writing out names on a piece of paper from his pocket: Alex’s name at the head. The soldiers and mages they’d left behind at the tower, helping the remnants of its armies and its inmates to guard the undercroft and its horrors.
Charles and Jean are speaking in low voices about the mages who have come back with them to the village, among them his friend Kazuko and the small group of healers who had followed her.
He lets the byplay wash over him, soothing if strange. The faces of people he’s known for years and the faces of people who have just come into his life. Comrades and companions and Charles.
Family.
Home at last.
In his mind, there is an image of a woman nodding and saying a silent, loving goodbye.
He smiles, and closes his eyes briefly - Goodbye - and she’s gone.
He knows he’ll never see her again.
And now for some reason he is watching as Charles nods and finishes his conversation with Jean, as she turns back to the rest of the table. He passes his hands over two of the nearest candles, and the two flames gutter and die out with a quiet hiss.
“Charles,” he says.
“Erik,” is the response. “Let the others be for a moment. Just look at me. Will you give me your hands?”
Erik moves his injured arm, and he places both hands atop the table, though he winces as he does so.
The pain falls away when Charles places one of his hands over both of Erik’s. With the other hand, he moves the two candles, still smoking, next to their wrists.
Erik watches as Charles closes his eyes and leans forward, as he presses a kiss to his forehead. Erik smiles, and murmurs, “Are you doing what I think you’re doing? My bandages would not serve you well for ribbons, I’m afraid. A bad omen.”
“One we can turn to the good,” Charles says, and shifts his hands.
Erik smiles and turns his hands palms up, watches as Charles grips his wrists gently.
“I’d be with you no matter what happens to us,” Charles continues. “Through war and storm and pain and sorrow, through our best and our worst. I’d not leave you, though the world should come to an end.”
“It feels as though we have already lived through one of those.”
A small, amused smile. “And who led me out of darkness?”
Erik smiles back. “The one you led out of the flames.”
The candles next to their joined hands burst into a bright blue flame.
fin
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