Chapter Text
Jane had always trusted horses more than cars.
It sounded dramatic if she said it out loud, so she usually did not. People who did not ride tended to get a certain look when you said things like that. Patient, amused, faintly smug, as if they were about to explain that animals were unpredictable and machines were reliable, which was the sort of sentence that made Jane want to leave a room through a closed window.
Horses were unpredictable. That was half the point. Horses had opinions and moods. They could take one look at a plastic bag trapped in a hedge and decide, with complete religious conviction, that death had arrived in crinkly white form. They could be petty, nervous, clever, lazy, generous, and occasionally so breathtakingly stupid that Jane had stood in stable doors and asked, very calmly, how an animal with four legs and prey instincts had managed to make that specific decision.
But horses told you things.
Not always early enough. Not always helpfully. But if you listened, really listened, there was usually a moment before everything went wrong. One ear turning before the head followed. Weight shifting half an inch under the saddle. A hesitation that said I am about to make this your problem.
Cars were different. Cars gave you nothing until something had already happened.
Jane knew that was unfair. Her father would said cars had systems. Warning lights, sensors, tyres that could be checked, brakes that could be serviced, maintenance schedules that existed specifically because human beings were terrible at guessing when machines were about to fail. He would have said that if she mistrusted engines so deeply she was welcome to cycle everywhere and see how noble she felt in February.
He would have been right.
Still, she preferred a living thing underneath her.
At least a horse wanted to stay upright.
The Autobahn was fine at first.
Fine in the ordinary winter way, which meant grey, wet in patches, and full of drivers who behaved as if using indicators meant admitting weakness in front of their ancestors. Jane kept to the right, both hands on the wheel, shoulders slightly hunched in that unconscious posture people adopted when they were trying to make a car behave through sheer moral pressure. The heater blew lukewarm air at her knees. The late afternoon light had gone flat and tired, not yet dark but already done trying.
On the passenger seat, secured with a seatbelt because her father had insisted, sat the medical bag.
It had been annoying her since she left the hospital. Her father had given it to her less than an hour ago.
She had only gone to his office to pick up her phone charger. That was all. She had left it there two days earlier, which he had taken as further evidence that she owned too many devices and not enough discipline. He had been at his desk when she came in, one hand on the mouse, eyes narrowed at a scan on his screen. His coffee sat beside the keyboard, untouched and almost certainly cold. One sleeve was rolled up higher than the other. His tie had been loosened, which meant the day had either been bad or full of administrators.
"Can you take this to Keller?" he had asked, without looking away from the screen.
Jane stopped in the doorway. "Hello to you too."
"Hello. Can you?"
She looked at the black bag on the chair. "Today?"
"If possible."
Jane crossed the room and picked up the bag. It pulled at her shoulder immediately. She set it down again.
"Papa."
"Hm?"
"What is in this?"
"Training equipment."
"For what, battlefield surgery?"
He turned halfway, one hand still on the mouse. "Please don't mess with it."
"I wasn't going to until you said that."
"Jane."
"Fine. Where am I taking the suspicious war bag?"
"Keller's clinic. I sent you the address."
She checked her phone. "That is not exactly close."
"It should be just over an hour."
"In the magical version of Germany where nobody else owns a car."
"Then leave soon."
She looked at him over the top of her phone. He looked tired. Not theatrically tired, not in the way people looked when they wanted credit for having had a day. Just tired. The skin under his eyes had gone grey, and there was a red mark on the bridge of his nose from his glasses.
"Passenger seat," he said. "Not the boot. And don't leave it in the cold."
"Anything else? Blanket? Music preference? Little snack?"
"Seatbelt."
She paused. "You're serious."
"Yes."
"For the bag."
"Yes."
Jane looked at him. "I don't know if this is medicine or kidnapping."
"Seatbelt, Jane."
"Fine."
She lifted the bag again, better prepared this time. It was still too heavy, but pride got involved, which was always inconvenient.
"You could ask one of the interns," she said.
"I could."
"But?"
He looked at her properly then. "But I know you'll actually do it."
It was not a big emotional sentence. He said it like a practical fact, the way he might say she would check a girth before getting on a horse or slow down if the road looked icy. That somehow made it harder to joke about.
Jane looked down at the strap in her hand. "Fine."
"Drive safe, please." He said and turned his attention back to the screen.
Now the bag sat beside her, buckled in like an anxious child.
Jane glanced at it while traffic slowed near an exit. "You better be important."
Her phone buzzed once in the holder. Jane did not look. The exit was coming up, and the navigation had already started giving instructions in its calm little voice. She was leaving the Autobahn soon, which she disliked. At least on the Autobahn people were predictable in a large, aggressive way. Smaller roads had tractors, deer, cyclists in black clothing, and drivers who knew every bend and resented anyone who did not.
She took the exit, followed the slip road down, and turned onto a smaller road that cut through fields and patches of dark woodland.
Then, as they often did when she was tired and left too long with her own head, her thoughts drifted to the book she had left on her bedside table.
Tolkien again.
She had only meant to check something the night before. A name, a place, some detail she had half-remembered and then refused to google because that felt like giving up. One page became six. Six became a chapter. Suddenly it was past midnight and she was reading with one cold foot outside the blanket, unable to stop even though she knew exactly what happened.
It embarrassed her a bit, how much she still loved it.
Not enough to stop, obviously. Just enough to keep it mostly private. She liked the old sadness of it. The loyalty. The people who did not say everything but rode out anyway, stood guard anyway, came back for each other anyway. She liked that love in those stories was often practical before it was pretty. Food, fire, a cloak around someone's shoulders, a hand reaching before a speech could be made.
Maybe that said something about her.
She decided not to investigate.
The road narrowed again.
Jane slowed before a bend. There were no streetlights here. Just her headlights, the dark hedge on one side, trees on the other, and the white line vanishing around the corner. The temperature on the dashboard had dropped to one degree.
"Great," she muttered.
Halfway through, the car twitched.
Not by much. A small wrongness under the tyres, the kind of movement that might have meant nothing on a better road. Jane's hands corrected at once.
Then the steering went light.
Her stomach tightened. "No. No, no."
The front wheels lost grip.
For one second, the car did not turn with the road.
It slid.
Jane eased off the accelerator, careful not to stamp the brake. Her hands moved, correcting, then correcting less because she knew overcorrection would make it worse. The headlights swung toward the hedge, then across the road. An icy patch. That was what it was. A dark little curve of road where the trees had kept the damp from drying, and now the temperature had done the rest.
The front wheel hit the verge, and the car lurched. There was a horrible scraping sound. Then impact, not with a guardrail, but with something solid and hidden in the dark. A tree, a post, a low stone wall. Jane never saw it clearly. The seatbelt locked. Her shoulder snapped forward and back. Her head struck the side hard enough that white flashed through her vision.
The airbag hit her in the face.
For a moment everything was noise and dust and the bitter chemical taste of it. The car turned or dropped, maybe into a ditch. Glass broke somewhere. Something heavy shifted beside her, but the seatbelt held the bag in place.
Then it stopped.
Jane sat still with both hands clenched on the wheel.
The engine ticked. Something hissed. Her own breathing sounded wrong, high and thin, like it belonged to someone much younger and much less impressive.
She blinked, and the world returned in pieces.
"Fuck," she said, because nothing else presented itself.
She tried to inhale properly and coughed instead. The cough hurt. Her ribs were not happy. Her forehead stung. She touched it and brought her fingers away wet.
Blood, but at least it was not pouring.
She looked at the passenger seat.
The bag was still there.
For reasons that made no sense, that was what almost made her laugh.
"Fantastic," she said, voice shaking. "Very glad you're safe."
Her phone was still in its holder, screen cracked but lit. No signal.
Of course it had no signal.
She tried emergency call anyway. Nothing happened. She held the phone higher, closer to the cracked side window, as if signal might be lurking outside like a shy animal.
"Okay," she whispered. "Get out."
The seatbelt clicked open. The sudden release made her sway forward. Pain ran under her ribs, sharp enough that she had to stop and breathe through it. She reached across, unbuckled the medical bag, and pulled it into her lap. The movement hurt. Everything hurt enough to be taken seriously, but not enough to stop.
The driver's door resisted.
"No. Come on."
She shoved it with her shoulder and immediately regretted choosing that shoulder. The door opened a little, then more. Cold air rushed in.
One boot sank deep into wet grass. The ground gave beneath her in a way that made no sense, soft and steep and sliding, and she grabbed the open door with both hands before she went down on her knees. Pain flashed under her ribs. The medical bag knocked against her hip, heavy enough to make her swear through her teeth.
The car sat crooked in a ditch, nose angled down, one headlight buried in undergrowth. The other flickered weakly over wet leaves and the black, reaching shapes of tree roots. Steam rose from under the hood in pale, nervous breaths.
For a moment Jane only stood there, one hand on the door, breathing too fast.
Then she looked up.
The road was gone.
Not gone, she told herself at once, because that was stupid. It had to be there. She had come off the road, so the road was above her. Obviously. She was in a ditch. Ditches belonged beside roads. That was almost the entire point of them.
But when she turned, there was no strip of tarmac above her. No white line, no barrier, no wet bend reflecting the last of the evening light. There was only a steep bank rising into trees, too sharp and slick to climb easily, the earth dark with rain and tangled with roots. Beyond it, more trees pressed close together, their trunks tall and black and unfamiliar.
Jane stared at the bank.
"No."
She said it once, flatly, because anything more would have sounded like panic.
She took a step toward it anyway. Mud slipped under her boot. She caught herself on a branch, then tried again, digging the edge of her sole into the slope. The earth gave at once. Wet leaves slid down with her. Her injured ribs pulled tight, and she had to stop, bent forward, one hand braced against the cold mud.
"Okay," she breathed. "Fine. Not that way."
She turned back toward the car.
The second headlight died.
The dark came in too quickly, not total, but enough to make her breath catch. The dashboard still glowed faintly through the cracked windscreen. Her phone lit her hand. But the sound of the road, the low distant hiss of tyres, the occasional rush of passing cars, the ordinary ugly comfort of traffic, was gone.
Completely gone.
Now there was only trees.
Tall, close trees, their trunks dark with rain. Moss over roots. Ferns in wet clumps. A grey light between branches, though it had been almost dark a moment ago. The air smelled of soil, old leaves, and woodsmoke.
For a moment she wanted to scream. Not because it would help. Because anger seemed safer than understanding.
She turned in a slow circle.
The car was real. The mud was real. Her ribs hurt too much for this to be a dream. Her head throbbed at the hairline, and when she touched it, her fingers came away sticky with blood. She wiped them on her jeans and only managed to smear mud over mud.
"Okay," she said. "Okay, no. Think."
Her father would say start with what you know. He would not say it comfortingly. He would say it because information mattered more than drama.
What did she know?
She had crashed. She had hit her head. She might be concussed. The car was in a ditch. The road should be above her, but the bank was too steep and there was no sound of traffic. The medical bag was here. Her phone had no signal. Her ribs hurt. Her knees were wet. She was cold.
That was not enough information to explain anything.
She tried the slope once more because some stubborn, stupid part of her needed proof. She got three steps up before her boot slid sideways. Her hand plunged into cold mud. A root caught her shin, and she almost went down hard enough to crack her knee against stone.
"Nope," she gasped, half angry, half terrified. "No, absolutely not."
She slid back down, less climbed than surrendered, and landed beside the car with a jolt that made her eyes water.
For one second she leaned against the door and let herself breathe.
Then she heard water. Somewhere beneath the trees.
Jane closed her eyes briefly.
Water meant direction. People followed water. Roads did too, sometimes. It was not a plan exactly, but standing beside a smoking car at the bottom of a ditch with no signal and no reachable road was not a plan either.
She looked once more at the bank above her.
Nothing moved there. No headlights passed between the trees. No one shouted from the road. No car slowed. No human sound came at all.
"Fine," she whispered. "Downhill."
She tightened the strap of the medical bag across her body and started toward the sound.
The forest made every step awkward. Wet leaves slid under her boots. Roots hid beneath moss. Branches caught her coat and hair. Once she stumbled and put out a hand to steady herself, only to sink her fingers into cold mud. Her breathing kept getting too fast, so she counted steps under her breath, lost count almost at once, and started again because the counting mattered less than the attempt.
The smell of smoke grew stronger as she walked.
At first it made her hopeful. Smoke meant fire. Fire meant people.
Then the smell thickened.
It was not fireplace smoke. It was bitter and dirty, mixed with wet earth and something metallic that sat at the back of her throat.
She took another step and came out onto the edge of a muddy slope.
Below her was a river.
It ran dark and fast through flattened reeds, swollen by rain or winter or both. The sky above it was low and grey. The far bank had been torn up badly. Broken posts stood in the mud. Some kind of rough structure had burned or collapsed. Smoke rose in thin places from the ground.
For several seconds Jane did not understand what the shapes were.
Then she did.
Bodies.
Some lay half in the reeds. Some in the mud. Some were clearly men. Some were not. The not men were too broad, too bent, their shapes wrong in a way Jane's mind tried once to fix and then gave up.
The wind shifted.
Blood.
The smell came at her full and heavy, mixed with mud, wet leather, smoke, and something sour beneath it. Jane stepped back too quickly, her heel slipping on the slope. She threw one hand out and caught herself on what she thought was a root.
It moved.
Not much. Just enough.
Jane looked down.
For one slow, stupid second, her mind refused to understand what she was seeing. Fingers. Grey with mud. Nails packed black. A wrist ending where no wrist should end.
A severed hand stuck out of the bank beneath her palm.
Jane made a sound she had never heard herself make before and scrambled back so fast she nearly went down on her hip.i
"Okay. No. No, no, no." Her voice came out thin and bright and completely wrong. "I am not doing this. I am hallucinating. This is a terrible joke."
She needed to leave. Now.
Jane turned toward the forest.
Something moved on the near bank which made her stop in her tracks.
At first it was only reeds shifting in the wind. That was all. Reeds, water, mud. Her brain, being extremely unhelpful, was trying to give everything a shape now.
Then an arm dragged weakly through the mud.
Jane went still.
A man lay close to the water, half hidden by reeds and a soaked cloak. One arm was stretched out, fingers sunk into the bank as if he had tried to pull himself away from the river and failed. His hair was dark, wet with river water and blood, the ends clinging to his jaw. His body was too still, except for one broken breath that shook through him and then stopped.
Jane closed her eyes.
"No."
Not again. Not another thing. Not another impossible decision.
She could leave the dead. She could. She would have to, because there was nothing she could do for them, and she was not going to survive by standing in a riverbank graveyard apologising to corpses.
But he was not dead.
She had seen him breathe.
And no matter what had happened to her, no matter where she was or how badly her mind was trying to split the world into before and after, she could not walk away from someone who was still trying to stay alive.
"Damn it," she whispered.
It was not brave. It was not noble. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision made by a terrified woman who knew she would hate herself forever if she turned around now.
Jane gripped the strap of the medical bag with one shaking hand and went down the slope.
It was not brave. It did not feel like choosing. It felt like being unable to walk away now that she had seen him breathe. Mud slid under her boots. She grabbed at branches and roots, once missing and nearly going down hard enough to hurt her ribs again. The bag bounced against her side.
By the time she reached him, the smell was bad enough that she had to breathe through her mouth. That did not help much.
The man had blood at his temple and at the corner of his mouth. Mud clung along his jaw. One cheekbone was already swelling. His cloak, or whatever it was, lay soaked and torn around him, and beneath it she saw leather, metal, dark cloth cut open in places.
Jane stared.
Armour.
For a stupid second, that was the thing her mind chose. Not the blood. Not the fact that he was lying half in the reeds. The armour.
Because why the hell was he wearing armour?
She looked around too quickly, almost expecting the rest of the explanation to be nearby. Lights. A camera. People in padded jackets standing behind a monitor. Someone with a clipboard. A director yelling because she had walked into the shot covered in mud with a medical bag.
There was nothing.
Only the river, the reeds, the broken bank. Smoke somewhere farther off. Shapes on the other side of the river that she was not looking at properly yet.
A reenactment, maybe. Some LARP thing. Some private event in the middle of nowhere that had gone badly wrong.
But where were the cars? Where were the tents? Where were the plastic barriers, the first aid station, the people shouting for help? There should have been someone. Even if everyone was panicking, there should have been noise. Running. Phones. Sirens somewhere in the distance.
Jane looked back at him.
He breathed. Barely, but he breathed.
"Okay," she said, thinly. "Okay. I don't know what this is."
The man did not move. He was large. That was the next thing her brain grabbed because it was easier than looking at the wound. Broad shoulders, heavy limbs, the kind of body that would be a problem if she had to move him. Which she probably would. Which was insane, because she was hurt herself and there was no one here and he was wearing armour like a person who had fallen out of a museum display and started bleeding.
Jane crouched beside him, then stopped with one hand hovering uselessly over his shoulder.
What did you even say to someone like this?
Can you hear me sounded ridiculous if he was unconscious. Please don't die was not medical care. Why are you dressed like that felt unhelpful.
"I'm going to help," she said finally, voice rough. "I don't know if you can understand me, but I'm going to help."
No reaction. Then his breath caught, shallow and ugly.
Jane flinched as if he had answered.
"Right. Good. Breathing. That's good. We like breathing."
She pulled the medical bag closer and opened it. The zipper sounded far too loud in the open air. Inside, everything was packed neatly because her father had packed it, and for one second the sight of it made her want to sit down and cry. Gloves. Gauze. Pressure bandages. Antiseptic wipes. Saline. Cannula kit. Tape. A small monitor. Pulse oximeter. Blood pressure cuff. Tablets and ampoules in a side compartment with labels in her father's neat handwriting, because of course even in hell his handwriting would be calm.
The man made a rough sound in his throat.
Jane moved.
The first glove caught on her damp hand and tore at the thumb.
"Of course."
She pulled it off, dropped it, then had the absurd thought that she should pick it up because leaving medical waste in the mud was bad, as if that was the main problem. Her fingers were cold and stupid. The second glove stuck halfway over her knuckles. She tugged it down too hard and nearly tore that one too.
"Okay. Fine. Good enough."
Her hands were shaking and no matter how hard she tried, she could not make them stop.
She checked his breathing first.
His breath touched her cheek, faint and uneven. There was blood at his lips, but not enough to block his airway. She wiped what she could with gauze, too carefully at first, then firmer when she realised careful was not helping.
"Sorry," she whispered, though he had not reacted. "I'm sorry."
Pulse next.
She put two fingers at his neck and found nothing.
For one horrible second, there was nothing.
Her own pulse slammed in her ears.
"No. No, no, no."
She shifted her fingers, pressed too hard, forced herself to ease up, and found it.
Fast. Weak. Present.
Jane shut her eyes for half a beat. "Okay. You're there."
His cloak was soaked near his side. She did not want to move it. That was the truth. She did not want to see what was underneath. She wanted someone else to arrive, someone qualified and calm and preferably from somewhere nearby with a working phone and a car and an explanation.
No one came.
She lifted the fabric.
The wound sat low along his left ribs, ragged and dark where something had torn through leather and cloth and flesh. Blood seeped steadily from it, warm against the cold mud.
Her stomach rolled so sharply she had to turn her head and swallow.
"Right," she whispered.
She grabbed gauze and pressed it down too lightly. Blood spread through almost at once.
"Nope, harder."
She pressed properly, and the man's body jerked under her hand. His eyes shifted toward her, and for the first time he seemed to see her. His gaze moved over her face, her coat, the gloves, the open bag beside him. Confusion came first.
"I know," Jane said, half to him, half to herself. "I look insane. This also looks insane. We are not discussing that right now."
He spoke.
Or tried to.
The words were broken and low, and the language stopped her. It was not German. Not English. Not anything she could place. The sounds sat differently in the mouth, rougher, older.
"I don't know what that means."
His brows pulled together.
Even half conscious, he looked annoyed by this.
"All right," she muttered, reaching for the pressure bandage. "We're both having a bad time."
He tried to move his hand toward the wound. Jane caught his wrist too quickly, and his eyes flashed. She realised at once that she had scared him, or insulted him, or both. She loosened her grip but kept his hand from the wound.
"No. Sorry. Don't touch it. You'll make it worse."
The words did nothing. He stopped fighting her, though his eyes remained hard.
The pressure bandage was difficult. His clothes were wet, the armour awkward, the angle bad. Jane wrapped once, realised she had placed it wrong, and had to pull part of it loose. Blood did not wait politely while she fixed it.
"Damn it. Wait. Just wait a second."
He made a sound through his teeth.
"I know. I know, and I'm not enjoying it either."
The second attempt held better. She tightened it. His breath caught, and his jaw clenched hard, but he did not cry out. Pain was not in charge of him. That was clear already. He was frightened, surely, and badly hurt, but something in him kept trying to assess, resist, decide.
Jane checked the bleeding. Slower. Not stopped. Better than nothing.
His skin was cold. A little too cold for her taste.
He was wet through, lying in mud beside a river, losing blood. The wind coming off the water got under her coat. Hypothermia would not care that she had managed the wound.
She looked around.
The bank was exposed. Across the river were bodies, smoke, broken posts. If whoever had done this came back, they would be visible. A few metres away, under a tree where roots had lifted from the bank, there was a shallow hollow. It was not shelter. It was not even good cover. But it was lower, darker, partly hidden by reeds.
Jane looked down at him.
He was far too big.
"Of course," she said under her breath. "Couldn't be someone portable."
His eyes were closed, but his brow tightened faintly.
"Jesus, it was not an insult."
She tore open the emergency blanket. The silver foil cracked loudly.
His eyes opened at once.
Fear flashed there, sharp and immediate.
"It's for warmth," she said, uselessly.
She rubbed both hands over her own arms, then pointed to him. "Warm."
He stared at her not convinced.
"Fine," she muttered. "I also wouldn't trust me."
She wrapped it around his shoulders and torso as best she could, leaving the bandage accessible. The foil folded wrong, stuck to wet fabric, and tried to slide away. Her gloves were slick. She had to redo one side twice.
"Sorry. This is very undignified."
His eyes drifted shut again.
"No. Stay awake."
She tapped his cheek. Too lightly. Then firmer. His eyes opened a little.
"Good. Stay like this, please."
She slid her arms under his shoulders.
"This is going to hurt," she told him. "I'm sorry."
She pulled.
He did not move.
Jane stopped, breathing hard already. "You're joking."
He was not.
She adjusted, braced one boot in the mud, and pulled again. This time his shoulders shifted a few inches. Mud sucked at his cloak. A rough sound came from him.
"I know. Sorry. Sorry."
She dragged him badly.
There was no nicer way to put it. She tried to keep him straight and failed. His cloak caught in the reeds. Her ribs hurt so sharply once that she had to stop with one hand pressed to her side, breathing through her teeth. His head shifted against the mud when her boot slipped, and she immediately wanted to cry.
"Oh God. Sorry."
His eyes opened a fraction, and he looked at her with what might have been outrage if he had more strength.
"Yes," she whispered. "I know. Terrible service."
His hand caught her sleeve.
Weakly, but on purpose.
Jane looked down. His fingers were cold, muddy, shaking. He was not grabbing wildly. He was holding on.
Her voice softened without permission. "I've got you."
His grip slipped a moment later.
By the time she got him into the hollow, her arms shook from effort and cold. She lowered him as carefully as she could and sat back on her heels, breathing hard.
The hollow broke some of the wind. Not enough. But it hid them better from the river.
Jane checked the bandage. Blood had seeped through one edge.
"Damn it."
She reached for more gauze, dropped the first packet in the mud, and stared at it for one stupid second as if it had betrayed her. Then she grabbed another.
He needed fluids.
The IV kit sat in the bag.
Jane looked at it and did not move.
She had practised. More than once. Her father had shown her because she asked too many questions and because riding accidents had made her interested in what happened before an ambulance arrived. But knowing the steps was different from doing it in mud with cold fingers on a man who did not understand her and might think she was poisoning him.
The man opened his eyes.
He watched her.
Not pleading. He did not look like a man who would plead easily. He looked like he was trying to judge whether she knew what she was doing.
Jane let out a shaky breath. "That makes two of us."
The antiseptic wipe tore badly and nearly fell into the mud. She caught it against her wrist. The smell cut through blood and smoke, sharp and clean enough to make her feel briefly, stupidly relieved.
She found a vein in his arm by touch more than sight. His skin was still cold. She adjusted his arm, realised the angle was wrong, adjusted again. Her first attempt did not even break skin because her hand shook too much.
"No. Wait."
She closed her eyes for one breath.
Opened them.
"Don't move," she said.
The words meant nothing. The tone did something. His body had tensed. His eyes moved from the needle to her face, angry and wary.
Then, slowly, he held still.
Jane inserted the cannula.
Clean.
For a second the relief made her almost useless. She forced herself to tape it down. The tape folded onto her glove. She swore, peeled it back, taped again. It looked ugly, but it held.
She attached the saline, opened the flow, and watched the first drops move.
"There," she whispered. "Good. That's good."
The man stared at the tube.
Fear came into his face again, clearer this time. Not panic, but real fear. He looked at the clear line, the bag of fluid, her gloved hands. A strange woman putting something into his blood.
Jane touched the saline bag, then tapped the inside of her wrist where his pulse would be, then pointed to him. "Help. It helps."
His eyes followed the gesture.
After a moment, he gave the smallest nod. Or perhaps it was only exhaustion.
She took it.
Jane pulled off her coat and laid it over him, covering the foil as much as she could. The cold went straight through her sweater. She shivered once and tried to hide it badly.
He noticed.
His gaze moved from the coat to her face.
"What?" she whispered. "You're colder."
He said something low.
Question. Objection. Order. She could not tell.
"I don't understand," she said.
His mouth tightened.
She wiped blood from his mouth with a sterile cloth. He turned his head a little away, refusing in the only way he could manage.
"No," she said, then caught herself and softened her voice. "No, let me."
His eyes cut to hers.
Even half dead, he managed to look like a man unused to being handled by strangers.
"You can be upset about it later."
He did not understand the words. He understood that she was not moving. After a moment, he allowed it.
Allowed was the right word. Not accepted, and certainly not trusted. He lay still because he had no better choice, because some part of him seemed to understand that fighting her used strength he did not have. Jane wiped the blood from his mouth, then from the line of his jaw where it had mixed with mud, trying not to think too much about how intimate it was to clean a stranger's face while he watched her as if he might still decide she was dangerous.
"There," she said, because she had to say something. "Less terrible."
He stared at her.
"Fine. Still terrible."
The corner of his mouth moved, but not enough for her to know whether it was pain or irritation. Probably pain. She was not going to start inventing personality traits because a half conscious man had twitched.
That was how people got attached to wounded things.
She knew this. She had done it with horses. One limped across the yard with sad eyes and suddenly you were emotionally invested in an animal that would bite your sleeve the next day because you were too slow with hay.
She checked the bandage without lifting it too much. The bleeding had slowed, not stopped, but slowed enough that her own breathing steadied by one small degree. The IV line still ran. The tape still held.
Jane sat back against the root behind her and immediately regretted the movement. Her left shoulder throbbed from the crash and from dragging him. Her ribs ached where the seatbelt had caught her, and the ache deepened when she breathed too far in. The cut at her temple had begun to pull where blood had dried. Her knees were wet through her jeans. The cold had got into her sweater, and without the coat she had laid over him, it seemed to find every seam and opening.
Her stomach made a small, humiliating sound.
Jane looked down at herself. "Oh, wonderful. Really?"
The man's eyes shifted toward her.
"Not you," she muttered. "My body has decided now is the time to remember lunch."
He did not understand, obviously. His gaze moved over her face, then to the medical bag, then beyond her toward the river. He was still trying to assess. She could see that. Even nearly emptied out, even with his skin too cold and the line of his mouth tight with pain, he kept gathering pieces of the situation and putting them somewhere.
It made her wonder, unwillingly, what kind of man he was when he could stand.
Probably annoying, she decided.
Annoying and in charge.
She reached for her phone again because she could not help it. The screen lit weakly. No signal. No emergency call. No sudden miracle of service because she was now emotionally prepared to appreciate it. The battery had dropped to seventeen percent.
"Come on," she whispered, turning it toward the trees. "One bar. I am not asking for too much."
Nothing.
She tried moving a few inches left, which was ridiculous, then a little higher, which was also ridiculous. The phone stayed useless in her hand.
The wounded man watched this with visible suspicion.
"What?" she said. "Never seen a phone before?"
He looked at the phone.
Then at her.
Then, with the careful seriousness of someone rationing every movement, he gave the screen a look so deeply unimpressed that Jane nearly laughed.
"Correct," she said. "It is useless. Thank you for your contribution."
Her eyes had begun to burn, so she put the phone screen down beside the bag and pretended she had only done it because it was practical. The time had no meaning anymore. Or it did, and she could not bear the meaning. Her father would expect a text soon. Maybe he already did. Maybe he had already called once, then frowned at the unanswered ring. He would not panic at first. That was not his style. He would become calm in that awful way doctors became calm when something was beginning to go wrong.
Jane pressed the heel of her muddy glove against her mouth and breathed through it.
The man made a sound.
Jane looked at him quickly. His eyes had gone past her again, toward the river. His right hand shifted beneath the cloak.
"No."
The word came out sharper than she meant. He looked at her at once, and there it was again, that flash of anger. He was trying to reach for something, she realised. A weapon, probably. Of course he had one. Men did not wear armour and lie in battlefield mud without having owned something sharp five minutes earlier.
Or whatever this was.
Battlefield.
She hated that her mind had supplied the word.
"No," she said again, quieter. She moved her hand between his and the place he was trying to reach, careful not to grab him this time. "You can't. You'll open it again."
He stared at her, breathing through pain. He did not understand the words, but he understood obstruction. He did not like it.
"I know," she said. "Believe me, if I had a sword, I would also be making bad choices with it right now."
That was not entirely true. If she had a sword, she would probably drop it on her own foot. But the principle stood.
A sound carried over the river.
Jane stopped breathing before she meant to.
Not water. Not wind.
Voices.
They were far enough away that, for one hopeful moment, she thought she could pretend she had imagined them. Then one rose again, harsh and uneven, followed by a clink of metal. It came from the far bank. From the smoke. From somewhere among the shapes she had been trying not to look at.
The man beside her heard it too.
The change in him was immediate, and it frightened her because there was no confusion in it. Pain, yes. Weakness. But also recognition. His eyes sharpened. His jaw set. Whatever those voices were, he knew enough about them to hate them.
He spoke in a low rush, several words that broke against his breath.
Jane did not understand them. She did not need to understand all of them. The intent was clear in the way his eyes moved from her to the trees.
Go.
Her skin went cold.
"No."
His eyes came back to hers.
"No," she repeated, softer, because sound suddenly mattered. "I am not leaving you here."
He tried again, more forcefully, but the effort cut through him. His face tightened, and the words broke into a rough breath that sounded too loud in the hollow.
Jane reached toward his mouth on instinct and stopped herself just in time.
She had seen what happened when she grabbed too fast. She had seen the humiliation in his face. It mattered, even now. Especially now, maybe. He was hurt, not less a person because of it.
She held her hand where he could see it, palm open, then touched two fingers to her own lips and pointed toward the river.
Quiet.
The gesture felt stupidly small. Quiet, because I don't know what they are. Quiet, because I cannot drag you again. Quiet, because if we are found, I am fairly certain neither of us gets a second attempt at this evening.
For several seconds he only stared at her. His eyes were bright with pain and fury and something like calculation. Then, slowly, his body went still.
Jane turned and eased herself toward the edge of the hollow, keeping low behind the roots. The mud was cold under her palm. A root dug into her thigh. She looked through a gap.
Torchlight moved on the far bank.
At first the figures were only shapes. Men, she told herself, because men were bad enough and because her brain clearly wanted one last attempt at normal. Men in costume, maybe. Men from whatever mad reenactment group had left half their members bleeding in a river. Men who had done something terrible and were now looking for survivors.
Then one of them came closer to the water, and the torch caught the line of its shoulders, the low thrust of its head, the way it moved.
Jane's body rejected it before her mind could find a word.
She ducked back, heart thudding so hard it made her feel sick.
No.
No name.
If she named it, she would have to choose from a list of impossible explanations, and she did not have the strength for that. It was enough to know she did not want it near them.
The man watched her face.
He knew. Whether he knew the thing itself or only the danger, she could not tell, but he knew. His hand twitched again under the cloak.
Jane shook her head once.
He glared at her.
"Don't look at me like that," she whispered. "I am very aware this is a poor military strategy."
A terrible sound came from across the river, something between a laugh and a cough. Jane pressed herself lower. The torchlight shifted, came nearer, then stopped. She heard mud sucking at a boot. Something was kicked or dragged. A pale hand rolled free of the reeds on the far side.
Jane looked away too late.
Her stomach heaved.
For a few seconds, the entire world narrowed to not vomiting. Not here. Not over him. Not loudly. She swallowed until her throat hurt, kept her eyes on the mud beside her knee, and breathed through her nose even though the air smelled of blood and wet earth and made it worse.
The man's breathing hitched.
She looked down at him at once. His eyes were open, but not focused properly. His mouth had gone slack. He was slipping away again, moving farther from her while she sat there trying not to be sick.
"No. Hey."
She touched his cheek. His skin was cold and damp beneath her glove.
"Look at me."
No response.
Panic came hot and fast, and for a second her hands did not know what to do. Then she found his neck, searched too high, corrected, found the pulse.
Weak.
Still there.
"Come on," she whispered. "Don't do that. I cannot handle that and whatever is over there at the same time."
His eyelids moved.
"Please."
Begging was not medicine, but it was what came out. She tapped his cheek again, a little firmer. His gaze dragged back to her slowly, irritated even through the fog of pain.
"There," she breathed. "Good."
His eyes narrowed faintly.
"Yes, be offended. Excellent. Stay offended."
The torchlight paused.
Jane went still, bent half over him, one hand at his neck and the other hovering near the bandage. Across the river, the figure turned its head. She could not see its face from here, only the suggestion of it through reeds and dim flame, and that was more than enough.
The river moved between them.
The man beneath her seemed to hold his breath, or tried. She could feel the effort of silence in him, the tremor of it under her hand. If he coughed, if he groaned, if she breathed too loudly, if the silver blanket slipped and caught the torchlight, if anything went wrong now, there would be nothing she could do.
The figure spat into the water.
Then it turned away.
Jane stayed frozen long after the torch moved farther downstream. Only when the voices became part of the river noise again did she let herself breathe properly, and even then it came out unsteady.
Her shoulder hurt properly now, deep and pulsing, from the seatbelt and the impact and the dragging. Her ribs had gone from sharp to bruised and heavy, which was almost worse because it was everywhere. The cut at her head had dried, and when she frowned, it tugged. Her hands were stiff, the gloves filthy. Her stomach still felt sour from blood-smell and fear, but beneath that she was hungry enough that it made her light headed.
She wanted to lie down.
She looked at the man and hated him for one second.
Not really him. Not fairly. But he was the reason she could not lie down. He was the thing breathing beside her, the task that would not let her collapse. If she had been alone, she might have curled under the roots and given herself permission to break apart for a few minutes. She might have cried. She might have slept. She might have screamed for her father until her voice gave out.
Instead, she checked his pulse again.
Still there.
Weak.
Jane leaned back against the root and let her head rest for one moment. The bark was wet and cold against her hair.
"This is not happening," she said quietly.
The man did not answer.
His eyes were closed. His breathing rasped faintly in his throat, less awful than before, but not good. Nothing about him was good. The bandage looked like something done by a person who had watched medical training and then been attacked by the environment. The IV tape was wrinkled. The emergency blanket crackled whenever he shivered. Her coat over him was already damp at the hem.
But he was alive.
That had to count for something.
She rummaged through the side compartment again, more to check what she had than because she had a plan. Bandages. Tape. Small scissors. A little packet of glucose gel. A blister pack labelled Tramadol, which made her pause.
"Oh," she said at once.
The man opened his eyes.
"Not you. This."
She held up the blister pack as if he might appreciate the debate. "Do you know what this is?" She asked him. Of course she didn't receive an answer. "Painkillers. And strong ones at that."
He watched her hand.
"Exactly," Jane said. "Suspicious. Good instinct."
She put it back, unsure if he was stable enough to receive them.
Ten minutes later, or thirty, or whatever time meant under a tree beside a river full of bodies, he shifted and made a sound that was not loud but went straight through her.
Not fear this time.
Pain.
Jane froze.
"No," she said to the bag. "Don't make me regret being responsible."
He pressed his eyes shut, jaw clenched hard enough to make the muscle jump near his cheek. His hand had curled in the mud. He was trying not to move, trying not to make noise, trying to do all the useful things, and the effort was costing him.
Jane looked back at the bag.
Then at him.
Then at the bag again.
"This is how people in films make terrible decisions," she muttered.
She checked his breathing, his pulse, the bandage. As if any of that gave her permission. It did not. It only told her he was alive and in pain and not likely to swallow well if she did this carelessly. She waited until his eyes opened enough to focus on her, then took the smallest dose she could justify without being completely useless and held it up.
"Pain," she said, pointing to his side. Then she pointed to the tablet, then made an awful little expression that was meant to mean less pain and probably looked like indigestion.
He stared at her.
"Yes, I know. Very reassuring."
She mimed swallowing.
He looked at her as if she had suggested he eat a beetle.
"Honestly? Fair."
For a second she almost laughed, and then he breathed in too sharply and the laugh died. She held his head carefully, gave him just enough water from a small sterile bottle in the kit to swallow, and spent the next several minutes watching him like a criminal waiting for evidence.
Nothing happened.
Then, slowly, something did.
The tightness around his mouth eased first. Not gone, not relaxed, but less knife edged. His breathing remained shallow but no longer fought every inhale. His eyelids grew heavier. Jane watched him closely, prepared to panic at any sign of trouble, because apparently she had decided to become both doctor and judge of her own bad choices.
Then he opened his eyes and looked at the emergency blanket.
Really looked at it.
He lifted one hand with immense effort, touched the silver foil, and said something in a low, wondering voice.
Jane stared at him.
"Oh no."
He turned his head very slightly toward her. His pupils looked all right, probably. His expression, however, had changed from suspicious dying warrior to suspicious dying warrior who had discovered aluminium foil and was not entirely opposed to it.
"Oh no, no, no."
He touched the blanket again.
It crackled.
His brows rose.
Jane covered her mouth.
"Please don't be high," she whispered. "Please."
The man spoke again. This time the words were slower and strangely solemn. He looked at the trees while he said them, as if delivering an important observation.
Jane lost the fight and laughed once, very quietly. It hurt her ribs immediately, which was probably fair.
"I'm glad you're having a spiritual experience," she whispered. "I am still in mud."
He turned his eyes back to her. For the first time, the suspicion in them had blurred around the edges. Not trust. Tramadol was not trust. But he seemed less inclined to murder the blanket.
He said something else, softer.
She pointed at herself. "Jane."
He blinked.
"Jane," she repeated, because apparently this was now their social hour.
His mouth moved. The first attempt was breath. The second scraped out, wrong but close.
"Jeyn."
"Yes," she said, and something in her softened despite herself. "That's me."
He spoke in return.
A name, maybe.
It had two parts, or perhaps she only heard it that way because pain broke it in the middle. She tried to repeat it and failed so badly that his brow furrowed with genuine offence.
"Fine," she said. "We'll come back to it when we're both less dead."
His eyes drifted to the blanket again, and Jane had to bite her lip.
"No more discoveries for you."
The night folded in around them after that.
It did not become fully dark in one clean movement. It gathered under the trees, deepening by degrees until the river was more sound than sight and the far bank became a suggestion she was grateful not to see clearly. The cold came with it. Not snowstorm cold. Worse in some ways. A wet, patient cold that found the thin places in her clothes and stayed there.
She wedged the saline bag higher - his second one - on a branch, though the first attempt slipped and nearly yanked the line. She caught it with a curse so sharp the man's eyes opened.
"Sorry," she whispered.
She tucked her scarf around his arm to stop the IV line from pulling when he moved. She had forgotten she was wearing it until she reached for something to pad the tubing. The scarf smelled faintly of her perfume, which was bizarre and upsetting in a way she had not expected. Perfume belonged to bathrooms, handbags, her coat rack at home. Not here, under a tree beside a man in armour who might die before morning.
She tucked it in place anyway.
"There. Try not to bleed on that. I like that one."
Once, while the painkiller had him loose at the edges, he murmured something at the tree roots with a seriousness that made Jane look over her shoulder despite herself.
"If you are seeing people I can't see, please don't tell me," she whispered. "I'm at capacity."
He looked at her, then at the roots, and then closed his eyes as if this exchange had disappointed him.
"Good talk."
The phone died later.
She had checked it too often, though she told herself she was spacing it out. The screen lit dimmer each time. No signal. No service. Nothing. Then, at some point in the coldest part of the night, it showed her the empty battery symbol and went black.
Jane pressed the side button.
Nothing.
The cold worsened after that.
His shivering started in small tremors and then became stronger, moving through him in hard waves that made the blanket crackle and the bandage shift. Jane rearranged the coat around him, then the emergency blanket, then the coat again. It did almost nothing. He was wet, bleeding, lying on cold ground, and the night had no interest in her efforts.
At some point she caught herself adjusting the same corner of the coat for the fourth time.
"Stop," she whispered.
She sat back, arms wrapped around herself, and looked at him.
There was a thing she could do. She knew there was. She had been avoiding thinking about it because it felt strange, and because strange things had rather exceeded their quota for the day.
Body heat was not romantic. It was not intimate in any meaningful way. It was survival. People knew that. People did it in rescue situations. She had read it somewhere, probably. Or her father had said it. Or she had invented that because she wanted permission.
The man shivered again.
Hard.
"Oh, for God's sake," she muttered, mostly at herself.
She moved slowly this time, making sure he could see her hands. His eyes were half closed, but they opened when she shifted closer. His body tensed at once.
"I know," she said. "I know. This is weird. I agree."
She pointed at him, rubbed her hands over her arms, then pointed at the blanket, then herself. It was an absurd little performance, and if anyone ever saw it, she would deny it. He watched with a look that, even through pain and exhaustion, managed to suggest she was making very little sense.
"Yes, well, I'm doing my best."
She settled along his uninjured side as carefully as possible, angled so she did not press the wound or disturb the line. Her shoulder protested. Her ribs objected. The ground was lumpy, cold, and actively hostile. For several seconds, both of them lay rigid.
This was ridiculous.
She was lying in the mud beside a half conscious man in armour because hypothermia had poor boundaries.
"I'm not trying anything," she murmured, then almost laughed at herself. "Obviously. Terrible timing."
He did not understand.
Maybe that was a mercy.
After a while, the tension in him eased by a fraction.
It was warmer.
Not warm, but warmer.
For a long time, she listened to him breathe.
That became the night. His breathing. The river. The occasional distant noise from the far bank that made her go still. Her own body trying, again and again, to pull her into sleep. She dozed once and woke with such a violent jerk that she nearly knocked the saline line loose.
"Shit."
His eyes opened, startled.
"Sorry. No. Not sorry. I mean yes, sorry, but I'm fine."
She was not fine. He looked at her as if he knew that, which was unfair from a man who could not even sit up.
She found his pulse again, mostly to calm herself.
Still weak.
Still there.
With that thought she drifted back to sleep.
When her eyes opened, the world was grey instead of black.
Morning, or something close to it.
The river had turned dull in the weak light. Mist sat low over the bank, hiding the worst of what lay on the far side. The trees around them were wet and bare and ordinary looking in a way that felt cruel. As if there should be birdsong and a road nearby and some farmer annoyed about a broken fence.
There was the man beside her, breathing shallowly under her coat and the silver blanket, and the medical bag open in the mud.
Jane looked at him for a long moment.
She still did not know his name. She did not know where she was. She did not know whether the things she had seen across the river had truly moved like that or whether a concussed, freezing mind could invent shapes from fear. She did not know if anyone was looking for her, or if there was even a way to be found.
But he was alive.
That was the only fact that had survived the night.
His eyes opened as the first dull light reached the hollow. Slowly, as if even that cost him. He looked at her, and for once there was no immediate suspicion in his face. Not trust, either. Nothing so clean. Just recognition, perhaps, of the fact that she was still there.
Jane gave him a tired look.
"Don't make it meaningful," she whispered. Her voice sounded awful. "I only stayed because you were too heavy to move twice."
He watched her.
Then, very faintly, his fingers shifted against the edge of her sleeve.
Not gripping. Not asking.
Just there.
Jane looked down at his hand, then back toward the river, where the mist was beginning to thin.
Somewhere far off, beyond the trees and the water and the grey morning, a horse called once.
Jane went still.
The man heard it too. His eyes changed, sharpening through exhaustion.
Jane did not move. She did not call out. She did not know yet whether the sound meant help or something worse.
She only closed her hand, very carefully, over the edge of his sleeve where his fingers had touched hers, and listened.
End of Chapter One