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Post by orby on Apr 20, 2019 5:53:48 GMT
Caim was in rather desperate need of a new cloak after that fire the other night. He'd at least thought to pack a spare set of clothes so one could be worn while the other was washed, so he had something to wear that wasn't singed in places and stained with soot and blood. The cloak, however, he'd only had the one of, and it had definitely fared the worst in the fire. There were burns in the fabric along the hem and at the shoulder that had taken the brunt of an explosion. A section near the bottom was littered with punctures and shredded rips from the dog's teeth. The whole thing smelled intensely of smoke. The smell didn't bother him so much, but he'd caught the innkeeper at the Sailor's Corner wrinkling his nose on the way out.
He'd almost left it behind. It certainly wasn't in a very fit state, and just looking at it had sparked a heavy surge of guilt, a reminder that it wasn't even his to begin with and he'd had vague intentions of giving it back someday, somehow. But the idea of being outside without any hood to hide under was worse than the guilt or the stares it might draw. It only needed to last him until he could find somewhere to buy a new one.
So the poor, deeply abused cloak was thrown over his shoulders like normal as he made his way through streets that were slowly becoming familiar. If nothing else, he could try to convince himself that any odd looks passerby gave him were because of that and not because of everything else about him that stood out. That'd be nice.
Caim almost bypassed the building entirely, distracted from his usual gawking by a rare actual goal in his wanderings. The inn certainly didn't stand out for much more than its intensely shabby quality. But the name caught his gaze as it skimmed past, a familiar phrase that pinged him enough to give it a second glance -- The Bird's Nest. He paused, taking a moment to remember where he'd heard that before, and his eyebrows arched up in recognition as it occurred to him.
Kara. Right. She'd said she was staying here, didn't she? Or at least, at a place with this name. Taking in the coating of bird droppings that nearly painted parts of the outside, he quietly hoped that maybe there was some other Bird's Nest inn elsewhere in the city. One that wasn't quite so filthy.
He lingered a few moments longer, weight shifting from one foot to the other as he bit at his lip. Would it be strange to stop in and say hello...? That was normal among friends, and she'd been to visit him.
Except there'd been a purpose to that visit, and the following attempt at being friendly and social had been awkward at best. She didn't really seem the social type at all, really. Would him showing up at her doorstep just be an annoyance...?
Just as he was convincing himself that it'd be kinder to leave him be, there was a groan loud enough to be heard several feet from the entrance, front doors propped open in the pleasant weather, and an arm dropped bonelessly over the threshold. Caim's social stressing was quickly forgotten as he blinked and hurried over, leaning in the doorway to find a slovenly man slumped against the interior wall.
"Are you...?" he began automatically, overwhelmed by concern and crouching to get a better look at the man. But getting closer just gave him a solid whiff of the boozey smell that clung to the man like a second shadow, thick and sour and unmistakeable even to Caim's less experienced senses. His nose scrunched up and he leaned back where he crouched on his heels. As if to establish beyond a doubt that there were no health issues here beyond extreme alcoholism, he man suddenly snorted a great snore and shifted slightly in his slump.
Right. Intense concern fading. Just a drunk. Caim frowned, biting back a sigh, and glanced around for anyone else inside the building. Even if this wasn't something he could help, it still didn't feel right to just leave the man there...
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Post by moralhazard on Apr 20, 2019 13:01:16 GMT
Kara hurt.
The day before, she had found herself in an inn when a... creature - she hesitated to call it a man - had come in to shake down the owner and her girls. His persuasion methods involved a lot of violence and very little actual persuasion, and after he’d left one waitress nearly toothless, Kara had gotten involved.
He had promptly opened her from collarbone to hip with a massive cleaver, and proceeded from there to make things worse; the fight had ended when he picked her up and slammed her headfirst into the bar.
Kara regretted nothing.
There was a purity in knowing you had done the right thing. Even when it didn’t work out the way you had hoped, even when every inch of your body hurt and throbbed, even when your wounds were being stitched up without anesthetic - it was a deeper comfort than any such surface pains. Kara could live with aches and pains. She had even accepted that she could die doing what she knew to be right. But to live wrong, a coward who turned away from evil because she was afraid or because it wasn’t ‘her place’ to get involved? That would be a death of a far worse kind.
After the healer had left her stitched up and not in imminent danger of death, Kara had slept a long time. The innkeeper had left a bowl of broth for her, and she’d drank it greedily upon waking. Luckily she and her assistant had gone, and there had been no one to prevent Kara from leaving. She was weak, yes, but she wanted - needed - her own privacy.
That had been the night before. Kara had been pale and shaking and sweaty by the time she made it home, but she had made it, with no new blood sleeping between the stitches on her side, and she had collapsed in her room to sleep some more.
This morning she had woken stiff and aching from head to toe. Her side throbbed and pulled where it had been seen together - her bandaged shoulder hurt - her bruised head ached - the place between her legs hurt too, where the creature had kicked her with his steel boots. None the less, Kara had gotten up. She had pulled on her badly ripped black tunic, and walked slowly down the narrow, half-broken stairs at the back of the inn. Her eye itself was fine, but her face so swollen that it was hard to see from it. That was fine; she knew the way.
Out back Kara pumped cold water up into the sluice, and washed her hair until the last of the blood ran from it, and the water that flowed through was clean, relying heavily on her good arm for the task. She kept the water away from the rest of her hurts - she wasn’t bloody, the innkeeper must have cleaned her - and she couldn’t quite face the thought of re-bandaging her side or shoulder.
Once satisfied, Kara made her way back inside. Her legs were only sore, not damaged, and the pain lessened with movement, which was a relief. Back up the stairs to her room. She was hungry; that was a relief too. There was no infection, and if she’d had a concussion, at least it hadn’t been too serious.
Kara forced herself to braid her wet hair, changing into her blue tunic. Putting a shirt on beneath over the bandages was more than she could manage, but with the help of a careful perch on the lumpy, uncomfortable bed she never used, she managed to get her leggings on. She grasped her glaive - the only chore she had done the night before was to clean and oil it - and used it as a walking stick, making her way back down the stairs. Food first, then maybe some more rest and then she would patch up the black tunic, because it was too much tempting fate to only have one.
Kara smelled the smoke long before she reached the entrance of the building. She didn’t think it was a new fire, but it was still a relief to enter and see that it seemed to be coming from a cloak, a cloak wrapped around a familiar looking figure crouched on the ground -
“Caim?” Kara hadn’t spoken in the better part of a day and it showed; her voice was hoarse and rasping still, and it somehow tasted like blood.
Kara looked much worse than she knew. She was wearing the same blue tunic and black leggings he had seen before, with bare arms beneath. One shoulder had a heavy, crisp white bandage beneath it, and there was a bulky shadow beneath the tunic that suggested a second one wrapped around her torso; it peeked out at the bottom of both armholes. Her knuckles and arms were bruised, skinned in some places, although not badly. The worst was her face. Half of it no longer resembled, well, Kara. A bruise started from somewhere on her forehead - there was a little bandage wrapped over that too - and seemed to have blossomed halfway down her cheek and over her scalp. The whole thing was not only swollen, so swollen that her eye was near invisible, but a brilliant deep blue-purple, a bruise so painful that to look at it was to wince.
Kara’s gaze went from Caim to the drunk, sleeping doorman. She had never yet seen him actually awake. Presumably he was sometimes; it seemed it would be hard to get that drunk while sleeping. She had also never seen him actually fall off that chair, something of a minor miracle. She looked back at Caim, curious about what he was doing there. She didn’t, of course, actually ask.
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Post by orby on Apr 22, 2019 3:53:52 GMT
The creaking of wood heralded the approach of someone from further inside, and Caim looked up with a rush of relief and sagging shoulders. Good, someone to look to for help or answers--
The heavily bruised face gave him pause, however. And his concerned look slipped into undisguised shock as he belatedly recognized said face, more by the now familiar way she braided her hair that the face itself. At the moment, it wasn't too recognizable under a layer of deep bruising and swollen skin.
"Kara!" he said, surprised by the state of her into more of an exclamation than he'd intended. He hurried to his feet and over to her, going pale as he took in the extent of the damage. Not just her face -- though gods, that sure was a mess -- but the bandages where he could see them, the bruises down her arms and the skinned knuckles. He fumbled for words. "What even...? Are you alright? Gods, I--"
His hands lifted automatically towards her until he remembered himself, pausing with a grimace like it physically pained him to hold back. "I... Can I help?" Please? He nearly added the pleading out loud, overwhelmed by the instinct to do something to make this better, the only thing he was confident he could do to help in any situation. What had happened? She'd just been so badly hurt the other day too, so how already again...?
Flustered as he was, it didn't even occur to him to explain his presence there.
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Post by moralhazard on Apr 22, 2019 4:31:37 GMT
Caim looked – shocked. Kara wasn’t sure if she was identifying the emotion correctly. He had looked up at her – he had recognized her, she could tell because he’d said her name, and then – he’d rushed over so quickly that Kara had taken a reflexive step back, almost unsure if he’d stop in time. He looked pale and almost panicky, reaching for her. Kara shifted back a little further, although he remembered himself and stopped well in time.
Did she look – that bad?
Kara didn’t like mirrors. She didn’t see much point in them; she could shave the parts of her head that needed shaving by feel easily enough. There wasn’t anything about herself that she particularly wanted to see, in any case. If she didn’t try to seek them out, if she didn’t check for her reflection – it was easy enough to go a long time without really looking at herself. Certainly, she hadn’t had any attention to spare to look at herself while walking home yesterday, and she hadn’t bothered to try and check her reflection in the water she’d pumped for her shower outside. It wasn’t like she had a mirror in her things; why would she?
Hesitantly, Kara reached up to touch her face. She knew it was swollen and bruised; she could feel it, and, of course, she couldn’t really see out of one eye. That meant, of course, that it was hard to tell anything about the extent of the bruising beyond that. Only now, gently running her fingers over her cheek and up to her scalp, did Kara realize just how bad it – clearly – was. A little bit of red hot pain rushed through her where she’d pressed too hard, and Kara lowered her hand, slowly. Caim looked so frantic and concerned, and it made Kara feel oddly on edge, almost upset, as if she’d done something wrong.
“I’m alright,” Kara dropped her gaze to the floor, not wanting to look directly at him. “It’s – fine,” she meant it too; she didn’t need healing. The healer the day before had stitched her up, the wounds were clean and not more painful than expected, with no worrying heat or pressure. As far as she could tell, her side was healing well, and – well – if there was some pain and blood involved in relieving herself, it wasn’t too serious and the healer had said to expect it, and that she would be all right in time. She didn’t look up either, though, not bothering to try and meet his gaze.
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Post by orby on Apr 22, 2019 6:13:22 GMT
The way she refused to look at him was worrying. Avoidant, like he'd stumbled upon something she didn't want him seeing. But why? She'd been alright with his involvement the last time. She'd sought him out directly, even. Caim frowned, leaning down a bit in an attempt to catch her eye, but the height difference thwarted his efforts. She was just so short, goddamn.
"It doesn't look fine," he tried instead. "At all." And really, it didn't take a healer to make that judgement call. Her face, where it wasn't mottled with bruising, was angrily red and tender-looking. The bandages suggested she'd gotten some kind of treatment, but definitely nothing magical. She wouldn't die, presumably, but that reassurance didn't preclude pain.
He bit at his lip, a canine just a bit sharper than normal peeking out bright white against richly colored skin, and tried to calm himself. Him panicking wouldn't do anything but make her more anxious about the whole situation.
"...I would feel much better about it if you let me help." There was an attempt at ease in his tone. Not a terribly successful one, and he couldn't really dredge up a smile, but if nothing else the sentiment seemed genuine. His fingers twisted into the fabric of his tattered cloak like the anxious energy still had to escape him somehow while he was trying to keep a lid on it. "At least a little? It looks painful. I just... If I can help, then it feels wrong not to..."
How could he leave someone suffering if he could do something about it? Something that cost him nothing? Gods knew where his magic actually came from, Lathander himself or otherwise, and gods knew why he had it, but he had it all the same. What was the point of that magic if he didn't use it?
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Post by moralhazard on Apr 22, 2019 14:05:43 GMT
Kara shifted a little, gaze fixed firmly on the floor, one hand tightening on the shaft of her glaive.
Caim wasn’t letting it go. Of course not. And a healing sounded - even if he could just heal her face, and make the painful, throbbing headache stop, Kara would - everything would be so much easier if her head just didn’t hurt so badly.
But last time she had really needed a healer; infection had been setting in. Magic was good for that, no need to treat and wait and treat and wait and treat and wait, all the while worried about whether your hand would need to be taken off, no one knowing whether - how - when to make that choice. Kara was not aware that she was trembling.
But this time she didn’t need it. She had had a healer, she would be fine in time. Kara squeezed her good eye shut for a moment. It was only her own weakness that made her want to accept Caim’a offer - want, not need. And she did want to accept it, she wanted to accept it so badly, because it hurt, everything hurt, and she was so tired of hurting. But hurt she could bear. Physical pain, of the body, was temporary and painful but not lasting, not this sort. She had had worse and would again; it would not defeat her.
Thus resolved, eye open again, Kara lifted her head to look at Caim. She opened her mouth to refuse and the words stuck in her throat. Her head hurt so much. Did she always have to do the right thing?
Kara would have been deeply ashamed to know that tears were welling along the bottom of her open eye, leaving it soft and wet for a moment. She blinked and they were gone, as quickly as they had arrived. Her head hurt so much.
“You should save it,” Kara mumbled, looking down again. It wasn’t exactly a refusal, but it was as close as she was able to bring herself. She gripped her glaive so tightly that it might well have looked like the weapon was propping her up.
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Post by orby on Apr 24, 2019 10:57:49 GMT
He didn't miss her faint trembling, or the wet sheen over her eyes before she blinked it away. It was worrying, but far from helpful or insightful. What was he supposed to make of that? This was all uncharted territory for him to begin with. He'd never had to really offer his abilities to anyone before, let alone press the subject like this. People had always been brought to him. They came because they already wanted it, or at least because a loved one had already done the job of convincing them. And even if they hadn't, it wasn't like he could have said anything to change any minds; speaking during services had been forbidden to him. It eased people's mind's more if they were free to imagine what they wished of the person under the veil, or something like that. The explanations had always been vague.
Gods. Emotionally, he was out of his depth here. He settled for reason instead.
"Save it for what?" Caim frowned, trying to keep the frustration from his voice. He didn't want her thinking he was upset with her. "Most days here I've gone without using any magic at all."
Y'know, save for the previous night with the fire. That had nearly left him completely tapped. But that was an odd exception to the rule of quiet, purposeless days. he could hardly plan his entire life around the possibility of unusual incidents like that. Who was even to judge who or what situations were most "deserving"? If he let himself stress over that sort of thing, he'd lose his mind.
He let out a slow breath, a steadying gesture while he felt so perilously on edge. He tried to soften his tone even more, leaning down even further to try to meet her lowered gaze. "There's nothing I need it for, and a few healing spells aren't going to drain me terribly. I won't force anything on you, but... It costs me nothing, and it helps you, so why not?"
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Post by moralhazard on Apr 24, 2019 14:14:54 GMT
Caim didn’t need to lean down as much as he had; when he said there wasn’t anything he needed the magic for, Kara looked up at him, good eye wide and confused.
Her mouth opened - her throat worked - no words emerged. Her head hurt so badly. For a moment Kara didn’t know where she was; for a moment she was back in Sundabar, lying half dead underground, listening to Hana beg the healer for one spell, just one, Kara was so badly injured and hearing the healer reply, in a flat dead voice, that she couldn’t - that a spell for Kara, who was likely to live in any case, might mean someone else dying later. The strange flatness in the healer’s voice had stuck with Kara much more than her own pain; Hana had ignored the woman with a vicious coldness after that but Kara never had. She didn’t blame her.
Kara gripped her mind and forced herself back to the present. The slightly distant look in her eyes cleared. It wasn’t a walking dream, only a memory. She was here, she was in Waterdeep. Sundabar was behind her. Her head hurt and Caim was offering to heal it, and promising that the magic wouldn’t drain him much. She didn’t need it, but it wasn’t her duty to suffer either. Helm didn’t demand pain of her; duty didn’t have to hurt. Maybe it wasn’t so wrong to accept. If Caim really meant it, that it wouldn’t drain him - this wasn’t a war. Waterdeep had many healers. It was her fortune to know one with magic.
She would accept, Kara decided. A faint tinge of guilt warred with an overwhelming wave of relief at the thought of the pain easing, and lost. She need not suffer pain just for its own sake. Not this time.
“I’m sorry,” Kara looked down again, then back up, meeting Caim’s gaze once more. “You’re right - I - please?” One hand lifted, this time hovering over her head rather than probing at the bruise, but nonetheless very much indicating where she wanted his attention. Her side was stitched, her shoulder wasn’t too bad, and the - other place would heal soon enough.
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Post by orby on May 7, 2019 3:57:05 GMT
He frankly expected her stubbornness to hold out even in the face of the most solid logic he could muster. So it was a surprise when she actually acceded. Definitely a good surprise, though, if the relieved slump of his shoulders was anything to judge by.
"Good. Thank you." There was real gratitude in his voice, like being allowed to do something was the greatest gift she could have given him in that moment. "One second, just...sit down, maybe?"
Casting about for a seat, his eyes landed on the one beside the door -- and the drunk still sprawled next to it. Whoops. Forgot about that guy. Grimacing, Caim moved to crouch beside him and tug the man more upright to lean against the wall before gesturing vaguely at the empty chair. At least someone would make proper use of it.
"He's fine, I think," Caim said almost absently, frowning at the drunk before turning his attention back to Kara. A hand hovered half outstretched, not touching but ready in case it was needed if she seemed unsteady at all.
Glancing over the assortment of injuries again, he quietly worked through triage. It was hard not to wonder and marvel over the sheer severity of it all, though. Especially after what he'd just patched up on her not too long ago.
"...How did you get so badly hurt again already?" he asked after a moment, something faintly apologetic in his tone like he felt bad for asking at all. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but...well. I mean... You just seem unusually prone to this sort of thing."
He hadn't once come upon her and found her in good shape. Even with only a handful of interactions total, that seemed far too frequent.
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Post by moralhazard on May 7, 2019 10:50:41 GMT
Kara thought dazedly that she should help Caim move the drunk guard. Instead she found herself standing and watching as he wrestled him off the seat, and then half-sitting, half-falling onto the chair, holding herself in place with the glaive.
Her head was by far the most in need of medical attention. The scrapes and bruises on her arms and hands were superficial; hardly worth treating. If Caim wanted to examine her more fully, he would find Kara willing enough to lift up her tunic and bandages and let him look at the wound on her shoulder. It wasn’t infected, but it was painful looking, as if something like a cleaver had come down hard on her. There was no blood on the bandages on her side either, and similarly Kara wouldn’t protest if Caim eased them out of the way. Beneath there was a row of stitches down her side, pulling the flaps of split skin tightly together. In the end she didn’t mention the pain between her legs. It would pass in time, and she didn’t think another examination would help. That, at least, Kara wasn’t willing to submit to here.
The first noise Kara made since her ‘please’ was a soft sigh of relief when the first of the healing magic coursed through her. One hand was on her glaive, the other gripping her tights; both relaxed as the ache in her head eased, and the spreading bruise and swelling slowly shrank back down to the actual point of impact, a tender looking bump on her forehead. The swelling around her eye socket abated with the rest, revealing that the eye, at least, was undamaged.
Caim was talking, Kara realized, belatedly.
“Rather be hurt than -“ Kara’s throat ached, and she cleared it, voice rasping. “Than do nothing.” Her eyes were closed - a sign of trust, one that might or might not mean anything to Caim. There was an odd, almost hazy quality to her voice. In that moment, it hadn’t occurred to her to do anything but answer, and that honestly.
“He was a bully,” Kara added, as simply as if that explained it all. For her, perhaps it did.
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Post by orby on May 7, 2019 12:36:43 GMT
He kept his focus on her head injury for the moment, careful not to let the magic wander elsewhere where it might begin patching up other wounds. The bandages implied someone had fixed her up already, and it wouldn't be the first time he'd treated someone who'd already received more traditional care beforehand. If anything was stitched up or hadn't been cleaned out properly, then healing might complicate things. Gods forbid an injury seal shut around a pebble still lodged in it. If he had the luxury of time, he'd make sure things were done with as much care as possible.
At least this damage seemed less severe than the gashes from the other day, if only because of the treatment they'd already gotten. It was encouraging to see the bruises and swelling fade. And it was even more encouraging to see the tension leaking slowly out of Kara's stiff frame along with them.
"You could try to find a middleground. Something between doing nothing and getting horribly injured." There was a hint of levity in his voice and the slight curl at the corner of his lips that might have made it a joke, if Kara had seemed like the sort to appreciating joking. The warmth remained, but that hint of a smile waned after a few moments as he wiped away the last hints of damage on her face, eyes scanning for anything he might have missed before dropping to everything that still remained -- scrapes, soreness, whatever was under those bandages that had had her limping like that. It wasn't anything he couldn't handle, but it was just...a lot. Too much for someone he'd just been healing only days before.
"...You should be more careful," he said after a moment, a touch more seriously. "I'm not... I wouldn't tell you not to help someone who needs it. But this seems reckless."
Beyond reckless. There were drunks in the Sailor's Corner who seemed to get into scuffles every night and still never got this bad. It was like Kara made no effort to protect herself even while she kept leaping to the defense of others.
Caim frowned, gaze dropping as his hands drifted down to smooth away the line of cuts of bruises down one arm as tidily as wiping away stray crumbs. Such things were quick and easy. But not everything was. "You could die. I wouldn't be able to fix that."
Maybe someday. He'd heard of powerful clerics who could pull someone back from over the brink, fix what would normally be considered beyond repair. It was nice to dream that he could perhaps manage such a feat someday, but it was certainly beyond him now, and even he could be realistic sometimes.
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Post by moralhazard on May 7, 2019 13:22:13 GMT
A... middle ground? Kara wasn’t sure such a thing existed. She gave Caim his due, though, and contemplated it for a moment, seriously. Her body was still relaxed, but a little frown wrinkled her face.
A middle ground. Kara didn’t know how to do what mattered to her without giving it everything she had. Some bullies could be talked down or scared away. Some couldn’t. Kara did try to scare them away when she could.
A middle ground. Could she ignore those like the creature from the day before, the ones whose strength she couldn’t gauge, who might well be too much for her? Could she wait and find them out later? Everything in her rebelled at the idea. To do nothing, when someone like that was in front of her - it was more than she could bear. She had lost, but at least she was tried. Not trying would have been a worse failure.
Kara’s eyes opened, and she admired Caim’s work as he vanished bruises and cuts as cleanly as if they had never existed, leaving behind a scarred arm. Reckless was something she didn’t mean to be. It wasn’t worthy of Helm. That, she would need to think more on as well.
“I know.” Kara said quietly, when Caim told her she might die. She looked at him, calmly and evenly. Dying wouldn’t be the hard part. Kara had seen so many die; she knew full well how easy it was. She had escaped it more than once. Kara had every confidence that death would catch her belong long. The trick, she thought, was doing what she could before then.
Caim seemed upset by it, and Kara didn’t want him to be. Her head was easing; the pain was gone, and the cloudy headache was clearing. She tried to think of how to reassure him.
“I don’t mind,” Kara added, finally. There. Was that enough?
It was harder to stay still now. Kara’s gaze dropped to her arms, and she ran her fingers over the thin chafed scars on her wrists. No - it wasn’t right. She hadn’t said the right thing.
“I don’t want to die,” Kara explained. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was true. Certainly she wouldn’t ever kill herself. Some had, after the war, those for whom the memories of what they had lost were too hard. Kara had had the Stone Shields, then. It was only after leaving that, however briefly, she had considered it. In the end she had refused to waste her life so.
“But...” Kara ran out of words to explain, and so she just shrugged, then winced as the careless motion sent a rush of pain through her shoulder. Death would come for her, as it had for the rest. What mattered to Kara was that she meet it on her terms.
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Post by orby on May 8, 2019 4:48:04 GMT
Hey Kara? That right there? That was definitely not the way to make him less upset. Holy shit.
The warm glow under his hand faded abruptly at that response. That...explanation? Fuck, he didn't even know what to call it. Caim just gaped at her for a moment, stunned beyond his capability to actually answer. Just...what?
"I mind." That insistent, forceful rebuttal was the first the he managed to blurt out once he could get his mouth to form words again. "You can't just..." No, gods, that didn't sound right even as he started saying it. He cut himself off, frowning and shaking his head. For a moment, his hand dropped atop Kara's to squeeze her palm before he remembered himself and her dislike of such things and pulled away again. Shit, right, just...
His frown deepened, and as the shock dissipated a little the sadness set in in its place. How could she not mind? His now empty hand grasped uselessly at the air before he clenched it shut, trying to summon up a sense of calm and some more effective words.
"...I don't want you to die either," he managed eventually. Glancing up, he met her gaze with his own, solid bottomless gold that somehow conveyed sorrow. It was all in the eyebrows, maybe. They were pretty damn expressive. "You shouldn't be so flippant about it. There's no coming back after a certain point."
He fell silent for a moment, distractedly watching her fingers as they trailed over old scars around her wrists. Not battle scars, from the look of them -- too neat, too specific in their placement -- but nothing he was familiar enough with to identify. And nothing he could fix at this point. Scar tissue was the body's own way of repairing itself, not damage that healing could smooth away.
Knowing that didn't make it feel any better.
Biting back a sigh, he went back to work. He quietly worked over the rest of the hurt, mending what he could see and carefully checking on what was already bandaged up before speeding the healing along to the point where the bandages wouldn't even be necessary anymore. Flesh knitted back together with a satisfying neatness. There was a thought, something brief and vague about how straightforward healing was compared to every other aspect of interacting with people, but he shooed that away without further musing. He'd take a thousand fumbling attempts to communicate before he wished hurt on anyone for his own comfort.
Distracting himself with what he could do, erasing bruises and undoing damage, he tried to inject a bit of lightness back into his tone. "You could wear armor or something." Or learn to dodge, maybe. "Just...do something to look after yourself as well. There has to be a way to help that doesn't always get you hurt."
See? Middlegrounds.
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Post by moralhazard on May 8, 2019 5:05:52 GMT
Kara could tell she hadn’t managed any better the second time. Caim was staring at her - he’d stopped healing. Abruptly his hand dropped to hers and squeezed; Kara held very still beneath him, not pulling away this time, but not encouraging the gesture in any way, however slight.
Caim looked up at her again. Kara’s heart sank. She didn’t know what it was, exactly, but there was something about Caim’s eyes that made her feel like she had just kicked a puppy. Again. Kara dropped her gaze from his and mumbled something incoherent.
For a moment, she felt - angry. Did he think she didn’t know there was no coming back? Flippant was a harsh, cruel word. Kara didn’t look up at him. He didn’t understand and she wouldn’t try to explain again; it was clear to her that she wasn’t up to the task. She couldn’t imagine how he could look any more hurt, but Kara thought she would see it soon enough if she kept trying to make her meaning clear. The anger fizzled out, leaving behind a feeling of emptiness.
Caim didn’t speak any more as he went back to work. That only made Kara feel, somehow, worse. She hadn’t meant to - the throbbing pain of the head injury the day before had faded, but it left behind a faint nauseous feeling. After a moment Kara recognized it as guilt. After another moment, she realized it was hunger as well.
Caim spoke again and Kara looked up at him. She missed wearing half-plate; Kara fully intended to buy some when she had the money again. Perhaps someone like Caim had ways to help without fighting; Kara wasn’t like him. But she felt like any attempts to explain these things would only make things worse again. Unfortunately, Caim didn’t seem to like it when she was quiet either.
Kara felt at an utter loss. She tried a new strategy: changing the subject. “Do you want - breakfast?” She asked, holding it out to Caim like a peace offering. She felt good, much better than she had any right to given what she’d been through the day before. Well enough to get up and even to eat. Her stomach grumbled noisily at the thought.
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Post by orby on May 15, 2019 13:02:20 GMT
Caim finished his work in contemplative silence for the most part. It was only as he was wrapping up, vanishing the last traces of bruises and and tidying up discarded bandages, that Kara unexpectedly broke the silence herself. His eyebrows arched up, his surprise clear and unguarded.
It wasn't really what he wanted to hear. He'd have liked it better if he could feel like he'd gotten through to her at all, if she'd just agreed that that she shouldn't think like that and set his mind at ease. It wasn't something he was likely to forget anytime soon just because she'd changed the subject.
But it was better than an argument, at least. And better than silence. Caim frowned slightly, but a beat passed and he just exhaled a soft breath to resist a full-on sigh.
"...Breakfast would be nice," he said after a moment. He did mean it, despite the lingering tinge of frustration in him. He wanted to think he could manage a meal less awkward than their last attempt with her drow friend. And the fact that she brought it up at all suggested she thought the same.
He got to his feet, wiping his hands on his cloak to brush away the flakes of dried blood from dealing with Kara's injuries. It wasn't as if the cloak could get much more ruined, after all. At least he had the gold now to replace it. A guard that'd come to help deal with the fire last night had mustered up a reward from somewhere and been quite insistent that they accept it for their aid in getting the little girl out.
At the thought, he relaxed slightly, the corners of his mouth curving upward.
"I could treat you, actually," he offered, stepping back to give her some space. That would probably make her more comfortable, right? "I made some money yesterday."
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