Chapter Text
She hears the birds, first.
Vaguely. Just barely. Like in the first few minutes of morn when one’s mind is between dream and real.
And then there is the rustling of the wind in the trees. She knows that sound, has heard it her entire life, it could be so easily conjured by her memory—
Breathe.
It’s as vague as the birds at first.
Then — louder. More insistent.
“Breathe!”
Nimue tries. She ends up choking, before her body lurches, and a mixture of blood and water falls from her lips onto the pebbled bank. She’s never felt pain like this before, never in her life. Like her veins are filled with hot lead, heavy and scalding, burning her from the inside—
She vomits more water and blood, shaking violently and just barely opening her eyes to see the red before her.
“There we go, that’s it…”
There are hands on her shoulders, keeping her from rolling back and returning to the darkness. Gentle hands, careful around whatever is tugging at her skin, at her core. She tries to breathe, but it’s difficult. So difficult, every attempt agonizing before those hands guide her up. Her feet catch on the bank, they both stumble.
“Come on…”
Nimue!
For a moment, she hears her mother. Her hands were always a little rough, from the daily work required to maintain the temple. Rough, but warm. Always warm—
The darkness she slips back into feels like a warm bath, comforting and safe.
♔
The birds wake her again.
They’re not so distant now. They’re much louder, squawking incessantly, and she makes to turn, to roll over and away from the sound, but there’s fire in her chest, and Nimue gasps awake.
Something clatters nearby, and then there are hands in her hair, on her cheeks, gently guiding her back down to the bed. “Sh, sh, you’re safe. It’s all right, you’re safe.”
Safe, yes. In pain, also yes. But it’s not so bad as it was before, and she’s on her back, she can realize that. Which means—
No more arrows.
Arrows. Iris. Merlin. Morgana. She—
Her attempt to sit up results in that same agony she felt by the riverbank, and Nimue cries out. She jerks, body reacting to the pain in her shoulder, her stomach, her back and trying to find a way where it doesn’t hurt. It becomes evident quickly that such a thing isn’t possible, and instead she falls back to the bed with a small whimper and her eyes scrunched tight.
“Here.” A cup to her lips. “Lavender tea with honey and pepper. You’re all right…”
She’s not sure how much she believes it, but when she opens her lips, the taste of childhood and being cared for reaches her tongue. A sob hitches in her chest, and she drinks as best as she can, some slipping down her chin, her cheeks, her throat.
It’s bright. So, so bright when she opens her eyes to see her savior, even though the sky is still deep purple with what she guesses is early morning, and the light of day hasn’t quite reached inside. Still, compared to the darkness she just emerged from, it’s damn near blinding, and she winces.
“You’re safe here. It’s all right, you’re all right.”
A woman. She … she thinks she knew that, but then there is a hand in her hair again, stroking it back from her damp brow. Blinking, Nimue turns her head slightly.
The woman is not Fey. At the very least, not obviously. No horns, no tusks, no scales. The lavender tea with honey and pepper, though—
“You’re safe…”
Her voice is as soft as her grey eyes, and the few wrinkles around them. Nimue opens her lips, but when she tries to speak, her body simply refuses to, too worn and weary for the attempt.
“Friend,” the woman insists. Promises, really, her hand reaching for Nimue’s and squeezing gently. “Not Fey, but friend. Rest, you’re safe here.”
She’s being treated like a child, Nimue realizes, in that the woman keeps on repeating the same thing over and over in hopes of getting through, of reaching some sort of clarity. In hopes of convincing someone who is not so easily convinced, either by stubbornness or by fear.
It works, though. Between the woman’s soft voice and the gentle hand in her hair, she closes her eyes once more and lets herself breathe.
♔
There are no birds, this time. Instead, there are crickets.
Still, the pain is less, and she opens her eyes sooner. The darkness around her is a comfort, and she sighs, when there is another cup pressed to her lips.
This one is more bitter, but she recognizes the taste. The taste of the honey trying to disguise the sour herbs, the almost charred taste of the stalks. She shudders, but drinks, a hand coming beneath her head to help her.
A drink to help stop bleeding, to help stitch the skin back together on the inside. She’s only tasted it once or twice before, thankfully, but it’s still familiar as she drinks as much as she can.
“No more…” she tries, grimacing and turning her head away from the cup.
“You heal well.”
“Do I?” It’s hoarse and raspy, from disuse or injury it’s hard to say. Nimue blinks in the darkness, her eyes following the shadow of the woman as she moves to rinse the cup.
“You do,” she replies. “You had me worried, but it seems that Death will not come for you today. And, one can hope, not for a very long time.”
Nimue stares, her vision not quite clear, but at the very least she can see the way the fire makes the shadows dance on the woman’s form. She’s tall, and fair, light hair pulled back and up into a bun, held by two carved combs. Nimue can see the fire glinting off of the polished wood, and she blinks slowly, resisting the urge to slip back into rest.
“You’re not Fey.”
“No, I’m not, but I’m a friend,” the woman promises. “Elene.”
“Nimue.”
“I know. The Fey Queen. The Wolf Blood Witch. Are there any titles I’m missing?” Elene’s voice is warm with humor. “Word travels, even in the woods.”
Nimue tries to smile. It’s weak, her body not quite returned from its rest quite yet. But it’s an attempt all the same, and she turns her head to look at the bandages pressed to her skin. They’re clean, diligently tended to, and she looks back up at Elene. “Thank you.”
“Rest,” The older woman insists. “You’ll need your strength.”
The darkness doesn’t lure her like it did before. She closes her eyes, but she can still hear Elene moving around the small home.
They’re familiar sounds. A mortar and pestle, grinding herbs and leaves and flowers. The grinding of stone against stone with the occasional crunch of dried greens breaking beneath the weight and pressure. Water boiling in a kettle, bubbling happily before being poured into a cup. The crisp sound of bundles of dried things being taken, the slip of twine as it’s untied.
Sounds her mother used to make.
They’re comforting, the repetitive sounds distracting her from the pulsing pain enough to lull her back to sleep.
♔
The most difficult thing is breathing.
Sometimes her body forgets. It forgets that she’s safe, that the arrows have been removed, that she coughed up the water. Sometimes she’ll try to inhale and find that she just can’t, and then her eyes will widen and her heart will race and there is fear and panic.
And then Elene is there, rubbing her back, massaging her jaw, her throat, saying, “Breathe,” in that soft, sweet voice, and it’s like she remembers how to once more.
And then she breathes.
The cycle continues for a few days. She’s awake for a few moments, just enough to drink whatever familiar concoction Elene pours down her throat, and then she listens to the sounds around her before she rests again. Time is fluid and ever-changing, and sometimes she’ll open her eyes after twenty minutes, sometimes after half a day.
By the time she has the strength to sit up, it’s been five days, and Elene has to guide her up to rest against pillows. The bone broth is weak, but at the very least it’s something that doesn’t taste bitterly of healing herbs or sickeningly sweet of honey.
“Did anyone else float downstream?” Nimue asks when she’s had her fill.
“Upstream,” Elene corrects gently. “And no, I’m sorry.”
If they weren’t upstream, then there’s a chance...
She wants to believe that she would know, that she would have felt it if her father and her friend had passed, but it’s difficult to know for certain. So instead she drinks her tea and lets Elene change the bandages, listens to the woman’s muttering of how the healing is improving.
Walking is difficult. Everything aches. But she turns her face to the rising sun and it’s warmth, and for just a moment, there is no pain.
“How does it feel?”
The Fey Queen turns, seeing Elene standing in the doorway of the small stone home. Nimue’s familiar with the woman’s face now, her grey eyes and her kind smile and the weariness that tugs on her seemingly every moment. But there is satisfaction, too. She knows what her purpose in this life is.
Nimue wishes she knew her own. It had seemed so clear, but now…
“Wonderful,” she admits. “It’s nice to be up.”
“You didn’t want to,” Elene says, laughing a little. “Every time I would try, you would slip right back.” She walks forward, her arms wrapped around herself as a cool breeze slips through the trees, embracing them both. “I don’t blame you. The in between of rest and wake is often easier than both.”
Nimue smiles in return, turning her face back to the sun. It seems so easy to just stand here and bask in it for a moment, before the danger and fear come rushing back like high tide.
She’s being hunted. The paladins, King Uther’s men, they’re all searching for her. Her father, too, if he’s alive—
“I know you have to go,” Elene says. “But not until I know you won’t collapse halfway to wherever you need to be.”
“I don’t even know where that is,” Nimue says. Her voice is still weak, breathing still difficult sometimes.
“I wish I could tell you.”
“I have the feeling no one can.”
She had advisors once, for a brief, fleeting second. What she wouldn’t give to have them both now, as advisors, as friends, companions…
One a love.
It hard to breathe with her wounds. It’s even more difficult to cry, her chest aching both with heartbreak and where the damn arrows pierced her.
♔
She’s gathering lavender in the garden when she sees the stones. One big, one small. Runes painstakingly carved into them, bundles of both dried and fresh flowers gathered around and upon them.
“My husband, a Faun,” Elene says as explanation. “And my child.”
“How long?”
“Longer than you’ve been alive. It was not your doing,” Elene assures her, and it’s terrible, the relief that floods her veins like cool, fresh water through the heat of a summer morning. In the quiet of recovery, without the influence of a certain sword, it’s been difficult to reflect. To realize just how much blood has soaked her hands, her clothes. Her soul and conscious. The red blood of the Red Paladins is not so heavy on her heart. Those of the Fey who have been lost, the innocents…
The knowledge is a bone-deep ache as she helps when she can, having little strength to grind herbs or lift buckets of water, but she can pluck leaves and flowers, knows which ones are ready.
And that’s what she’s doing, returning from the forest with a basket full of foraged goods for brews and poultices and salves when she hears a voice she never thought she’d hear again, not after what happened at the paladin’s camp.
“Please, you need to save him!”
Her heart lurches, and the basket goes tumbling from her hands, her eyes wide as she stares at the wooden door of the home.
“I’ll do what I can, little one. I’ll do what I can. Could you go out to the garden for me? See these yellow flowers? I need you to collect as many as you can for me.” Elene’s voice is soft but commanding, shaking slightly before the door to the cottage creaks open.
Squirrel comes rushing out, eyes wide with fear and then widening further when he sees her. “Nimue!”
She doesn’t even care about her wounds still being tender. She doesn’t care how painful it is to sob as he launches himself into her arms. She rests her cheek against his hair, dirty but soft. He smells of burning, of sweat and the forest and… blood?
“Are you hurt?” she demands, pulling back, cupping his cheeks, inspecting him as he shakes his head.
“Not me, Lancelot.”
“Lancelot?” She frowns, the name unfamiliar to her.
“She told me to collect yellow flowers,” Squirrel insists, pulling away from her and looking about the garden.
“You do that,” Nimue breathes before she’s grabbing the basket and stepping inside.
The smell of blood and infection is a nasty combination. Both sour and metallic, she lifts her arm to her nose, watching as Elene cuts through the dark fabric and thin leathers of a man sprawled out on the bed she was once on. “Boil water, now,” Elene orders.
“I know him,” Nimue says, grabbing the kettle and rushing to put it on. The strain of it pulls at her healing wounds, but she pays the pain no mind. “The boy.”
“He brought him in,” Elene explains. “This won’t be pretty, I sent him to collect some buttercups. At the very least we can make tea out of them, at most it is a distraction as I tend to his friend. I need you to add honey, pepper, and mint to the water once it starts to boil.”
“How bad is it?”
“Bad. A lot of these are old, but didn’t heal well. The fresh ones have been cleaned, but poorly, and untended to otherwise. It’s not the worst I’ve healed, but it won’t be enjoyable for any of us.”
Nimue turns from the fire, moving across the small cottage to kneel beside the blonde woman as she continues to cut through leather and linen. The man’s back is a mess of criss-crossing lashes, and Nimue resists the urge to be sick.
“Self-inflicted, from the angle,” Elene whispers. “More than just his wounds are hurting.”
The door to the cottage creaks, and Nimue looks up to see Squirrel’s face peering in through the crack. She stands so quickly her wounds protest, and she bites her cheek as she rushes around Elene to push Squirrel back out to the garden. She quickly closes the door behind her before Squirrel can see the damage that’s been done, but the boy’s always been wiser than she’s given him credit for.
“We need to save him,” he insists. “He saved me.”
“From the paladins,” Nimue guesses, and she receives a nod in response. She looks him over once more, seeing the dark circles of exhaustion and worry that should never appear on a child, the dirt in his hair and the scrapes on his skin. She reaches for him, cupping his cheeks again, and is genuinely surprised he lets her. She remembers the days he turned his face away from such affection. He’s truly tired, then, if he’s letting her stroke his skin like this. “Lancelot, you said?”
Another nod. “The monk.”
She doesn’t get the chance to react, because the kettle is whistling and she can hear it even outside the cottage. She can hear Elene calling her name, and she turns, rushing back in so that she can add the herbs and honey.
Her hands shake as she plucks the leaves from the stems.
The monk.
It becomes almost a mantra, repeated in Squirrel’s high voice, his eager and childish eyes wide and scared in her mind’s eye as she carries the water over to Elene, all too aware of those same eyes peeking through the window to watch the care of his savior.
He saved me.
“Squirrel,” she says, trying to keep her voice from trembling as she looks to the boy and his pursed lips, his determined brow… “Come. Come help us.”
There’s significant danger in a child who tries to accept the dangers of the world too quickly, she thinks, but she’s glad for his help, and she can tell Elene is too as they ask him to gather rags for cleaning, herbs for cleansing and disinfecting…
“If you need to go outside, you can go outside,” Nimue says, perhaps one too many times than necessary.
“No,” Squirrel insists. “What do you need me to do?”
Exhausted, worn, dirty, and hurt himself in some places, and still he stays by the monk’s side as they clean, as they rinse, as they disinfect and stitch back together as best as they can.