[closed] it's not the long walk home that will change this heart

[onlyhymns]

WHO: Cade, Nari, a healer at the end (Sam?)
WHAT: a camping trip turned awkward family reunion
WHEN: sometime in Guardian w/e
WHERE: the easternmost edge of the Planasene forest
NOTES: warning for violence, discussion of self-harm and sexual abuse of a child

Between the flu, the fire, and Kit's passing, things have been rough lately. One of the few boons of Cade's excommunication from the Templars has been an abundance of freedom, with which, until recently, he had no idea what to do.
But sometimes one just needs to get out of the city. Not on a special mission or anything serious, just a little hunting trip, a pocket of time spent in the quiet isolation of nature. It's the one thing he missed from his time in the Hinterlands, and perhaps it's time to do it again.

Nari is invited, for her particular losses, and for her help throughout the flu. She looked out for him, and he's worried what she might do if left alone in the wake of her grief. Perhaps it's best if they both remove themselves for a while.

In separate tents, of course.

It's on the edge of the Planasene where they finally make a less temporary camp, setting up to stay for a few days by a small creek in a grove well-insulated from the still sharp winter winds. It's early morning, and the horses are lazing tethered to a tree, content to spend the day eating grass and rolling in whatever dust is nearby.
Cade is preparing for the day, sitting by the fire and sharpening his arrows, waiting for Nari to join him so they can cast out.

Comments

[nadasharillen]

It moves, and a moment later there's Nari's head. It's followed by her hand, holding up a roll of white linen. Ah--he's awake. And his eyes look clear, that's good. His hair's certainly not soaked with fever-sweat, although...

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, followed by immediate mortification when her free hand (thankfully not yet visible) twitches briefly outward of its own accord to put the unruly locks back in order. Nari covers her swift change of expression with a cough, and lets herself the rest of the way in.

"I didn't wake you, did I?"

[onlyhymns]

"Mm-mn," Cade grunts, in lieu of a no, even though she probably did. He looks around slowly, tries to sit up, thinks better of it, and lets his head rest back down with a sigh. Five more minutes.

[nadasharillen]

"I won't bother you too long--you can sleep again when I'm done," says Nari, making it back to businesslike as she walks over and settles crosslegged to the ground next to Cade, laying a cloth out from the basket of things she'd brought to keep the new roll of bandage as clean as may be. There's a nip of cool air as she reaches to fold back the furs to get at his injured shoulder.

[onlyhymns]

That in itself is enough to wake him up more fully, and Cade gives a little gasp at the rush of cold against the wound's soreness. He starts, but doesn't struggle, coming back to himself and finding his awareness of where he is, with whom, and why. He blushes.
"You don't have t-- ah," he whimpers, his whole body stiffening with every touch on or near his shoulder.

[nadasharillen]

Nari makes a shushing noise, although there's sympathy in her eyes as he flinches, and deftly searches out where the end of the bandage had been tucked in to loose it and begin to unwrap.

"Planning on doing this yourself, then?" she asks lightly as she works. Remembering precisely why they had to, her voice deepens, tinged with apology, "Sedi's good, Cade. Very good. You'll never get the bandages tight enough one-handed. I do have to."

[onlyhymns]

He hadn't really planned on handling it at all, if they're being honest: maybe getting a healer to deal with it eventually, but he's at a certain level of okayness with letting his body be in pain and falling apart. It's probably not good.
Cade's response is another grunt of discomfort, but he doesn't protest, allowing Nari to do her thing.

[nadasharillen]

The thing is done. Dried blood washed away, the few neat stitches checked, the light pressure of her fingers at the edges to make sure it wasn't hot, hadn't taken sick. Satisfied, Nari wraps it again the same as it'd been before. "It'll heal clean," she says, glad of it. "Or at least, that one will. Turn over?" It's not actually a question.

[onlyhymns]

This isn't the first time within the last year that Cade has had injuries, and likely won't be his last in the near future, but there's something different about this for a reason he can't put his finger on. It's never a dignified position, but at least with an official healer, it makes a certain detached kind of sense; at the moment, in the presence of a friend, a friend with whom he's not even all that familiar yet, there's an additional awkwardness to the motions.
It's bad enough being half-naked for medical reasons, turning over and allowing touch that can prove as humiliating as it is painful, but he recognizes the necessity. He's just never...
...felt about it quite like he does now. It's rare that Cade ever feels truly cared for, but Nari's frank, confident ministrations are reassuring and, in an unfamiliar way, intriguing.

He catches her eyes for the briefest of moments as he turns over, and immediately starts to blush. Propping himself up on his good arm, he angles his head slightly away so it will be less obvious, not that that's possible when one's skin is as pearlescent as his.

[nadasharillen]

There was something... different in his eyes in that brief moment. Something Nari hardly caught, or perhaps imagined, but either way her gaze immediately drops to the floor and searches back and forth as if it could be found there instead, her cheeks heating as well. Frank confidence lost.

Breathe, idiot.

She struggles her way past her sudden hyperawareness of where their skin touches back to efficiency, performing the same task she had previously. Unwind, carefully wash, check stitches, check for too much warmth, too much sensitivity, rebandage, pull the furs back over the leg. Distracted as she is, she's unable to clamp down on the impulse to gently tuck the edge of the blankets in around him after pulling them over, smoothing them afterwards with the palm of her hand.

Catching up, she stares at the rogue appendage with obvious shock, and her eyes flick up like she'd been caught swiping pastries to see if he'd noticed.

tw tw tw

[onlyhymns]

He's almost in the clear, when the pain and its associated trauma briefly grabs hold of Cade's attention; but when Nari begins to administer to the wound in his thigh, he feels a rushing in his ears and is certain someone could fry an egg on his face. Being of the sort to blush all over, he can't even hide it by keeping his face turned.

There's something else too, a dangerous warmth forming in the pit of his stomach and spreading downward, his pulse beginning to run a little too fast and his thoughts muddying-- when she pats him on the leg, the nameless emotion spikes, and suddenly something is broken.
Cade's breath hitches and the world around him seems to stop, his heart beating frenzied and sloppy with terror. All at once he's a prisoner, completely at the mercy of a much larger and overpowering presence that closes in on him from all sides. His shoulders hunch and his legs curl inward with an involuntary shudder, the warm feeling still there but poisoned, sick, repulsive.
He wants to vomit, but he can't move.

[nadasharillen]

Suddenly, Cade looks feverish, flushed, every line tensed and shuddering, breath erratic, and Nari tastes the metallic tang of terror. Terror that despite everything seeming to be healing well, they'd missed something. She'd seen some of Sedi's gruesome poison work before, but it had been immediate, nearly right after the shot. Maybe the hunter had made something new, something they didn't know about, something that had hidden itself until now.

A flash of memory: there had been a froth then. Thick, white, flecked with pink. Check for it.

Nothing. But he wasn't there, either. What else. What else.

Nari combs through her memory feverishly, finding blank after blank, and ending with... nothing. A numb, blank, clear nothing. It will pass or it won't. It's the end-stage of one of Sedi's concoctions or it isn't. At a loss, she finally reaches out a slow and surprisingly steady hand to cover one of his. If he was dying, he wouldn't do it alone.

[onlyhymns]

He's still until Nari touches his hand, and that yields a shiver of revulsion. He looks at her, seems to realize something isn't right, and has to blink back tears. It's not unlike when he was sick before, disoriented and living in fractured memories, but at the moment Cade recognizes where he is and who's here with him, he just can't match it to the awfulness he feels. The fear.
"Sorry," he says quickly, because he has no explanation, and can tell Nari is frightened.

cw: sexual assault

[nadasharillen]

Cade looks briefly like her gesture of comfort repulses him, and a tiny lance of hurt and confusion runs through Nari. And then she does remember something, with sudden clarity. A tent, a curled rigid form, that same feeling. Ilriane. Not too long after the raid, she'd gone to her eldest sister's tent to wake her for breakfast and found Ilriane curled tight and vibrating with tension. Worried that her sister was upset—they had all been shaken and numb—she'd gone to put her arms around the older girl to comfort her and Ilriane had pulled violently out of her embrace, her head snapping to fix her with this look, like she didn't know her, like Nari's simple touch was poison. Shocked, Nari had run to her parents to tell them something was wrong with her sister, told them what had happened, and they'd looked at each other for a long moment and then sat, her father leaning down to look into her eyes like he would another adult.

Nahariel, he'd said with gravity, your sister got hurt during the attack. Not by fire, or blade, but by a man who made his body a weapon. He took something from her with force and hatred that is meant to be given with joy and love, and he took away her choice to give it. It was a terrible thing that left a wound on her spirit where it cannot be seen, and sometimes, when she is touched, her body will remember that wound. It may be that it will scar, and that someday it will not hurt this way, but it may be that her body will always remember.

She'd hugged him then, fierce and angry and tearful, only half understanding what had been done, but understanding now that like so many of the others, like Shora and her leg, like Leanos and his voice, Ilriane would be forever changed.

When she was older, she understood it all.

And now... this. Him. The too-tense shudder of his body, his reaction to her hand on his, his return from wherever it was he'd been made a horrible sense.

He apologizes—for scaring her, presumably—but it isn't fear in her eyes anymore. “Oh,” Nari breathes, hand rising to cover her mouth, “Cade.”

[onlyhymns]

The subject is coming too close, Cade can feel it, can see by the look in Nari's eyes that she'll have questions that he won't want to answer. His small positive reaction to her attempts to comfort him is drowned out by the desire to be alone, to start this moment over, to feel less like his skin is trying to crawl off his bones.
He hates that she's looking at him like that, and feels a surge of irrational anger that has nowhere to go. He stares at the ground instead, folding his arms tightly over his chest and willing Nari to go away.
Even if he... doesn't really want her to.

[nadasharillen]

He closes, pulling into himself, and Nari’s entire being is suddenly at war with itself. Let him be alone. Don’t. Reach out and hold him. Don’t. What does he want. What does he need. Are they the same? And who is she; who is she to make that choice—make any choice. Who is she to be so close, to know anything, to say anything.

The only thing that doesn’t have chaotic echoes that make her muscles tense and hard is knowing that it’s her turn to say it now; and she does, trying to force the battle out of her eyes and leave only some kind of reassurance.

“You don’t have to.”

[onlyhymns]

"Sorry," Cade says again, quickly, his mouth dry and his heart still beating out of his chest. He glances at her, then away, then back, part of him wanting to shut her up before she can pry, the other part meekly lured forward by the reassurance.
He lowers his head, pushing his hair up out of his face and sitting there curled, ignoring the pain in his arrow wounds. He can't exactly get up and leave; paralyzed by the moment, he just prays for it to end.

[nadasharillen]

Part of Nahariel recognizes that she has him trapped. He couldn’t leave this if he wanted to, and that thought cuts through the rest. When he stops looking at her, she reaches for her basket, fills it with the pile of bandages to boil, the fresh she hadn’t used, and the rest. She hoists it to her hip and heads to the flap, pulling it aside and turning a last time.

“Try to get some more sleep, if you can,” she says, and is gone.