[OPEN] I have never known peace

[ragweed]

WHO: Kit + you??
WHAT: Kit does what he can to help out the Inquisition during blue flu season, and reconnects with some friends (and lovers) along the way.
WHEN: Throughout February.
WHERE: Gallows + Kirkwall
NOTES:This will be Kit's last log before he goes out in a blaze of glory at the end of the month, so if you'd like one last thread with him, ping me @ ragweed on plurk or on discord and we can make it happen. Starters will be in the comments as I write them up. CW for death and violence in Kit's thread w/ the Medicine Seller.

I have never known hunger
Like these insects that feast on me

Comments

[meds4sale]

These attacks were tiresome - to the point they had become almost routine. It's not as though he and Kit went looking for trouble - at least not with the Carta or Coterie. But it always seemed to find them.

He was busy fending off one particularly annoyed thug, either dancing around him or warding off blows with his sheathed sword that he never seemed to draw. He didn't pay Kit too much mind - the dwarf was a skilled fighter and had, more often than not, been perfectly fine defending himself.


He smelled the blood before he saw it.


When he turned, he saw the arc of red as the knife was pulled out of Kits stomach and the noise that ripped from his throat couldn't even begin to be called human. The accompanying blow of pure energy knocked their assailants off their feet and onto the floor as the Medicine Seller quickly closed the distance between him and Kit, hauling him to his feet.

"The clinic," he said, voice hoarse, expression strained, "There's still time."

He left in his wake a small lantern which, by the time their attackers got up, would start emitting thick clouds of smoke and blinding flashes of light.

[ragweed]

The energy would knock Kit to his knees if he weren't already there, blinking dazedly and with growing confusion as the front of his tunic blossoms red and wet under his hand. He has enough presence of mind to press his palm against the injury, but it's deep and ragged, and already his fingers are wet with something other than blood.

Sod it all, the fucker had near disemboweled him--

"Fuck--!" he groans roughly, unable to keep the sound in when the Medicine Seller tries to haul him upright. Instinct has him rip his hands away from his injury to seize hold of his friend's shoulders, leaving smears of blood across the fine fabric, such a shame to do that, it looked so nice--

"No, no magic," he blurts out, and it's getting harder to think clearly all of a sudden. "Kusuriuri," but he remembers that name, "no, just--" Just let me go, he could say. Maybe it would be true.

(The blood loss probably has something to do with that.)

[meds4sale]

"You may hate me for it later," he said bunching his sleeve and pressing it against the wound in hopes to stem the inevitable. He knew a dying man when he saw one, knew there was nothing in his box of tricks that could stop a wound like this.

But Anders' clinic wasn't far - not far at all - he could see it as they rounded the corner. There was still time - just a little further...

He didn't see the lantern lit out front - didn't know Anders well enough to realize what that meant - and so he pressed on. Even if the healer couldn't do anything, at least Kit could have some have some dignity in death rather than bleeding out in a dingy alley.

[ragweed]

Kit's reaction to having the bunched fabric thrust against his insides is about what you'd expect it to be. He lets out a strained yell and bares teeth that are already stained read from blood. There is some part of his mind that, as clarity and coherence begin to fade away, has to admire the Medicine Seller's unexpected strength and tenacity--because Kit's not a light guy even when he can get his muscles and limbs to cooperate, and hauling what is soon to be his dead weight through the streets of Darktown can't be easy. His own grip on his friend's shoulder only loosens with each lurching step towards Anders' clinic they take.

Then they round the corner, and the unlit lantern comes into view--

Hope was a thing for other people, anyway. Somehow, that makes it a little easier to just let go.

He tries to say "stop" but the word just comes out as an incoherent grunt, timed well as his fingers completely lose their grip on the Medicine Seller's shoulder. He slumps into the dirt and stares with glassily blinking eyes straight up, then, with difficulty, to his friend's face. He can't speak, but grabs weakly for his sleeve, as if to say no, don't leave, don't go to the door--he'll be dead before you make it back.

[meds4sale]

He knows before Kit hits the ground that it's too late; he knows he just wasn't fast enough, that luck just wasn't on their side today. There are countless ways death comes and no one ever expects it and he has long since accepted this as just another part of life.

It doesn't hurt any less when he kneels beside Kit, gathering what's left of the rapidly fading man into his arms, pressing their foreheads together. He wants to see the last bit of light in Kit's eyes before the inevitable. He doesn't want him to be alone.

"I am here," he whispers, the slightest hitch in his voice as he cups Kit's cheek.

He steels himself for what's to come. It's not the first time he's watched a person die, and it will be far from the last.

[ragweed]

Dying is a lot more straight forward than watching someone else die, Kit is realizing. He doesn't have to grieve, or to fight against it, or wonder over what to do next. His body has taken the reins away from him, which could be a kindness; death is coming, and he's just along for the remainder of this shitty, painful ride--but at least at the end of it, there will be a stillness, a quiet. An end.

It's what he wanted, wasn't it? ...Wasn't it? Ancestors, this was what Vandelin was always afraid of. He was right.

Then he's taken into the Medicine Seller's arms, feels the press of their foreheads together, sees the dark, bottomless blue of his friend's eyes so close--he's seen them like this before, spent long nights held in these arms, yet the cadence of that voice, "I am here," sounds so different suddenly, so foreign on his good ear. A hand, gentle on his cheek, warm against his clammy skin.

There's a wet rattle in the shallow breath he sucks in, and, "Sorry," comes out of him, slurred and unclear. He struggles to lift his bloodied hand from where it's fallen in the dirt, to touch the Medicine Seller, to give back some small measure of the comfort, the compassion, being given to him. But the strength in his arms, which had once wielded war axes and flung an ogre's head clear through an oncoming line of genlock raiders, is gone now. It's gone, and now the world is going too.

It's profoundly unfair, to die with so much left unsaid.

Kit stares up into his friend's eyes, watching him until the darkness enfolds him. Then it is only his eyes that stare, glassy and vacant, and he's gone.