Chapter Text
Vil didn’t exactly rest well—he’d slept at an awkward angle against Rook, with his hip pressed into the hard ground, but any discomfort out in the wilds was necessarily an improvement on waiting for others to decide how he should die. The chill still bit at his borrowed clothes, even through the wool cloak and the shock blanket wrapped around them, but Rook’s warm, dry heat, his arms around Vil, represented more comfort than Vil thought could even be left in the world.
The camp roused easily with first light, as if none of them had really fallen asleep. Epel and Lilia made quick work of picking up their supplies—nothing could be left behind—while Malleus and the prefect stood over a heavy, portable console and screen, Malleus clearly confused by the advanced magitek and user interface. Rook went off, bow in hand, to patrol the perimeter while they figured it out, and Vil found himself aching for Rook as if he wasn’t just a hundred yards away.
If possible, his injured fingers felt even worse on the third day. The thumbs and forefingers of his right hand had stiffened up completely, the raw beds where the same nails used to be caked with blood or black dirt, and he instinctively held his hands close together to hide it. The joints on his left hand weren’t faring much better. He sat in one place while everyone orbited around him, finishing their work and trying not to stare at him.
When all preparations had been made and Rook returned, Lilia asked, “All right, is everyone ready to go back to school?”
Vil barked out a laugh, a horrible, mad thing that he stifled against his palm.
“Wait—” he said. “Wait, I’m sorry, I…” He broke off again, a sound like a bark escaping his throat, because a sob was unacceptable. Even he understood the absurdity of this. “I need to do my makeup.” He sniffed. “Someone bring me a mirror.”
To his surprise, no one criticised him for it. Rook produced a kit from the ether with a quick flourish at the same time Epel held up a little compact.
Vil didn’t even recognize himself.
Eyes so sunken in and dark they looked bruised, overshadowed only by the actual bruises—on his nose, his cheek, his temple. His lips were split in several places, either from violence or dehydration, and his skin had broken out in red, scaly patches around his jaw and hairline. The raw skin in a ring around his throat had scabbed over and cracked like a burn, looking alternately dark and cherry red, vivid against the skin that hadn’t been rubbed off. It hurt and itched at the same time.
First, he tried to reach for his magic—he preferred to do his own makeup by hand, but was perfectly capable of using magic on busy days. But with his unprecedented levels of exhaustion, even a tentative reach for the smallest thread of violet power felt like stepping on a broken ankle, blot ready to flood his body.
Next, he tried for the liquid foundation—only to remember his fingers.
Vil stopped, pressed the heel of one hand into his eyes, and refrained from crying.
“Please,” Rook said, “allow us, Roi du Poison.”
Humiliated as he was, Vil stayed quiet while they worked. Epel took a brush to Vil’s greasy, knotted hair at the same time Rook made quick work of his face. Vil’s nose flooded with the familiar, comforting scent of petrochemicals, oils, and scents at the same time Rook quickly caked his face with paint and powder. There’d be no fully hiding the ring around his throat or the bruising on his fingers, but Rook provided a quick coating in both places while Epel slowly but capably braided his hair along the sides.
Vil took another quick glance in the mirror. Not good—he still looked as though he’d been in a blastcycle accident with black-bag injuries, Rook and Epel’s quick work little more than a mortician’s speedy attempt to make it right—but better than the alternative.
They all gathered around the console—shoulder to shoulder and close enough to be uncomfortable—as Malleus extended a hand over it. The power he charged it with made the fine hairs on Vil’s arms stand on end, and static jumped between his hand, Rook’s, and Epel’s in angry pops.
A wash of light fell over them, like the moment of disorientation, of unbeing, on the edge of sleep, before they were on solid ground again.
Vil opened his eyes. Like in sleep, any amount of time could have passed and any distance travelled in the interim.
They were back on campus. Specifically, they’d arrived in the commons. The school still had the telltale marks of damage from the battle following Malleus’s overblot, the debris of dry and dying thorns still to be found everywhere, but the sun shone overhead and things were blissfully quiet.
“Schoenheit.” Lilia appeared next to him. “We should get you to the infirmary.” He winced. “They’re a little overloaded right now, but STYX is running a transport to Sage’s Island General for anything Crewel and the nurses can’t handle.”
Vil nodded tightly in assent, even as confusion needled him. How many students other than him were injured?
Being lost in time turned out to be categorically unforgiving.
Cots and mattresses placed directly onto the floor bled all the way out into the hallway like white gauze on the stonework, clearly indicating that every proper bed had been filled up since well before Vil and Epel arrived—it was so crowded that Rook had been turned away by a nurse at the entryway, and Vil had needed to tell him that he’d be okay and would see him again later. After some reassurance, Rook assented and left to go see to Pomefiore proper.
Partitions were set up to create exam areas, and the school's frantic nursing staff mingled with slate-dressed STYX medical officers. Every student Vil saw was doubled over a pale or coughing violently into a mask, and every other student had bandages wrapped around foreheads, splints, or slings.
Vil walked aimlessly among the sick and the injured like a ghost, hollowly searching for anything resembling a line or a place to sit.
As he walked, he sighted two other housewardens—Azul and Idia, who were both seated near a supply table whispering about logistics, and both appeared relatively unhurt.
As Vil approached, Azul trailed off on whatever he’d been saying to Idia and stared, horrified enough to forget his usual smarmy diplomacy.
“Vil!” Azul gasped. “What on earth happened to you?!”
Vil winced, trying to reach for any response—an angry one, a clever one, anything—but none came. Makeup could only hide so much.
Idia uncomfortably glanced up at Vil, only to quickly look away.
“Azul, I wish I knew if you were like this on purpose or you just can’t help it.” To Vil, he said, “Uh, welcome back. Everything’s mega-bad. The school might get shut down, BTW. If you’re dying, we can get you to the hospital, but if not you have to wait for Crewel to take a look. But please don’t be dying, because everything is super overloaded right now…”
“It’s fine,” Vil said. “I’ll wait.”
He shuffled off. Glancing behind him, he realized he’d lost track of Epel, who had peeled away to help lift something heavy at the far end of the infirmary.
Vil spied Jamil hiding in a corner, seated at the footed base of the wall. His arm was in a bright blue sling, and he was staring off into the distance when Vil approached the empty spot next to him.
“Mind if I sit here?”
Jamil shrugged. “Can’t stop you.”
He shuffled slightly to the side to make more room as Vil pressed his back to the wall and slid down the marble face. He shuddered, both from relief and the pressure on his back. Though the hard stone didn’t make the best seat, walking across campus took the last of his meagre strength out of him.
Jamil watched him out of the corner of his eye, too conscientious to ask but obviously curious.
“1600s Shaftlands,” Vil provided, trying to make it sound like a trip abroad. “You?”
“Scalding Sands. 800s I think, but it beats me.”
“Where’s Asim?”
A distant, haunted look flitted across Jamil’s carefully schooled features, and Vil regretted asking.
“Sage’s Island ICU,” Jamil replied. “After I get looked at, I need to head over there.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not exactly.” Jamil stared at the floor, faintly disappointed. “Let’s just say I could go the rest of my life without meeting any more of my heroes. You?”
“Not even a little bit,” Vil said, relieved knowing that Jamil wouldn’t share more than he had and wouldn’t pry. It was nice, in a way, sitting next to someone he knew he could just be miserable next to.
“I know we aren’t supposed to say this,” Jamil said, unprompted, “but the past is terrible.”
“Sure is.” Vil huffed out something resembling a laugh, and let his head fall back against the wall, deciding a crack in the ceiling needed his complete attention.
Other than that, he and Jamil sat in silence.
Vil stayed in his room for five days. He left the lights off, the door shut, and drifted into and out of sleep. He showered every morning and took a bath every night. Occasionally he ate something, but his entire system was still rejecting whatever he’d eaten in the past, making any meal a chancey endeavor. Besides, he just didn’t feel like it. Not enough. Rook knew it wasn’t enough but hadn’t said anything yet.
Eventually he’d have to come out, face the school and face the world again. Classes were restarting—most of the debris from Malleus’s overblot had finally been cleared, but the mirror room remained in pieces following their foolish attempt to send the prefect back. Who was to say when, or if, it could be repaired?
He could tell it was morning by the way the light shone through a split in the curtain, left open from how he’d checked it late the previous night after thinking he heard a sound down in the courtyard, but it was just the rain.
Vil laid under his clean covers, wrapped around a lilac pillow, and stared vacantly at the wall. He should get up. He had to get up. He couldn’t move.
A mess of amber pill bottles stood sentinel on his nightstand. His alarm hadn’t gone off yet, so he didn’t need to take anything. Antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, more antibiotics. The medical mages at Sage’s Island General had glanced at his injuries, and had probably kept his fingers from healing with permanently shredded ligaments and cracked bones. But healing magic came with its own risks, so repairing them immediately wasn’t an option. Black-and-blue splints braced his thumb and forefinger on each hand, and a pair of gauzy bandages covered his exposed nail beds, just starting to heal from a burgeoning infection.
He’d never forget the expression on Professor Crewel’s face when, half-describing what had happened, he’d looked away and quietly asked if Vil thought he might need a syphilis prophylactic, then before he could answer, given him the name of a medical mage who he said wouldn’t ask questions.
He’d been trying to be delicate. Supportive. It had made Vil want to disappear. Just thinking about the way Crewel had asked him made him want to dig a hole into his bed and never come out.
Vil almost missed the soft knock at his door, a coded rhythm.
“Come in,” Vil said, voice hoarse from sleep.
A column of light fell across the bed from the hallway, and Rook padded inside, careful to make noise with everything he did—like shutting the door audibly behind him and coming down hard on his heels as he walked forward. Ceramic clattered on a tray, promptly set down on Vil’s desk, and his stomach turned without even looking at what it was.
“You were not at breakfast,” Rook said. “I assumed you needed yet more sleep, so I brought you this, but if you don’t want it now, I’ll put it in the refrigerator.”
“Thank you,” Vil said. He wanted to have the energy to at least greet Rook, but it was like he had a thread on his chest pinning him to the bed, pinning his gaze to the far wall.
“Classes are starting back up tomorrow,” Rook tried, and paranoia told Vil to read doubt into his voice. Doubt that Vil could do it, that he was ready—
“Roi du…Vil, may I sit with you? Please?”
Vil nodded, maybe muttered some kind of assent. Rook padded around front and took a seat on the bed, one knee folded.
“I know you…have been through something I can scarcely imagine,” he said, “and that it is very difficult right now. But, Vil, you must eat something.”
Vil squeezed his eyes shut, mouth filling with a memory of moldy bread. “I’m not hungry.”
“You only ate one thing yesterday, and the day before.” Rook listed them off as if Vil didn’t know.
Rook had always been a little too involved with Vil, at least as it appeared to outsiders, who in retrospect probably assumed they’d been together for years. Less a secretary, more of a mirror, but even more brutally honest. Now that busyness had morphed into concern, that surety into coaxing, like he thought Vil would fall apart if he said the wrong thing.
Not that it would be the first time.
“Thank you,” Vil said. “I’m just waking up, but I need to take my pills in an hour. I should have food with them.”
“Vil…” Rook sighed and reached down—a familiar motion, his hand grazing Vil’s cheek with a soft stroke before gliding up to tuck his hair behind an ear—
But this time, Vil jolted involuntarily, clutching the violet pillow in his arms, and Rook pulled his hand back suddenly, like he would from a static shock.
“I am sorry,” Rook stammered out quickly, and Vil couldn’t tell if he sounded hurt or he was just imagining it. “I should have asked.”
“No…it’s fine.” It should have been. Vil smashed a palm into the bridge of his nose, angry with himself. There was no one else he wanted near him, no one else he could imagine letting touch him right then, but his body still screamed at him that he was in danger.
“Right…” Rook said. “I—do you desire me to leave for now?”
Please stay. “That may be for the best.” He swallowed. “I just need a little time to collect myself. If you want to come back in an hour, when I take my pills, you can.”
Rook’s green eyes studied him the way he studied an animal he thought might slip from view—pausing, evaluating the danger of any request, no matter how benign. “As you wish. I shall return when the clock strikes eight.”
He tilted forward and froze. On a normal, lazier, happier morning, he might pluck off his hat with a flourish and lean down to kiss Vil, and Vil would answer, excited to have this in the one place no one could see them, no matter what suspicions they might have. He might even grab Rook’s tie, pulling him down towards the tangle of sheets.
But neither of them were fully back yet, it seemed, so Rook just climbed off the bed and smoothly left to make his exit.
“Rook,” Vil said, before he could stop himself.
The footsteps behind him ceased. “What is it? Is there something you need?”
“I—” was this the right place or the right time? Was he ruining things? “—I love you.”
He threw the phrase out into the room, wondering if this was how it felt when Rook let an arrow fly.
Vil waited for a reply, his heart in his throat.
His answer came in the form of a few quick footsteps, and Rook reappearing in his vision and throwing himself on his knees in front of Vil, his bright eyes shining. No matter that he’d said it a hundred times, and Vil had only said it once.
“And I, you,” he let a hand fall to the bed, near one of Vil’s.
Vil huffed out a laugh, born of the fragment of him left that wasn’t afraid, and laid one of his broken hands over Rook’s.
“Maybe,” he started, “maybe we can go for a walk in the woods, later.”
Rook’s face cracked in a smile. Slowly, giving Vil enough time to pull away if he wanted, he clutched Vil’s hand and brought the outside of it to his cheek, where he turned his head to kiss a spot of unbruised skin. “I would like that very much.”
A setback.
Vil had had a setback.
But tomorrow would be better.
It couldn’t be worse.