Chapter Text
Deep breaths. She had to take deep breaths. Hurley curled up with her knees to her chest, peering out from under her ram skull mask at the mattress on the floor across the room from her. She had to keep calm for Sloane's sake.
The cleric at Sloane’s side stood up, brushing off his knees. “She will be just fine,” he assured Hurley with a smile. “A little rest and salve on the stomach wound every morning and she will be up and racing before you know it.”
Hurley stood, swaying on her feet. Her own wounds were acting up a little, but she had to check on Sloane and she could heal herself later. She stumbled over to where Sloane was, sitting down and looking over her. She trusted the cleric, yes, but something in her was telling her over and over to check herself and make sure. Watch over her until she was okay again (she felt like she should have been questioning it, but disregarded the thought). She took Sloane’s hand in her own; it was just slightly too cold, even for her.
The cleric frowned as he watched Hurley try to adjust her sitting position to be comfortable. “You need medical attention as well,” he said.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Hurley insisted, not looking up at him. “I don’t have the money to pay you for both of us. I’ll do it.”
“Nonsense. I will not charge extra,” the cleric said. “I am not short on gold after races, I have no need to ask of you more than you can give.”
He put a hand on Hurley’s head before she could protest; divine magic poured over her and eased the pain that had been gathering behind her eyes and at the base of her spine. She slumped with a sigh of relief. “I put the gold for Sloane in a pouch over by the door,” she said, still holding Sloane’s hand.
“Thank you. I wish her a quick recovery.”
The sound of the coin pouch jingle and the click of the side door to the garage signaled his departure. The lights weren’t on, so Hurley found them blanketed in the shadow of early evening, the setting sun casting a glow over the floor on the opposite side of the room. She wished there was silence, but she could hear her own struggling breaths and Sloane’s mellowed ones as clear as the roar of a battlewagon. Sloane rolled onto her side and curled into a ball with a soft sigh, not dislodging her hand from Hurley’s.
Hurley couldn’t shake the feeling that this was her fault. It had only been her fourth race, but winning the previous two had left her cocky. She remembered Sloane warning her not to get too excited through a teasing grin and hip check. Her taunting screams at another wagon. The glint of a spear sailing through the air and her stupid, stupid attempt to dodge. Sloane swearing at the top of her lungs as the spear tore across her and sliced a thick line into her stomach. Hurley’s weak attempts to heal that hardly did fucking anything.
Hurley bit back the feelings. She couldn’t get overwhelmed when Sloane needed her. She had to get her somewhere to rest, somewhere better than the mattress they used to take quick naps while staying in the garage for extended periods of time. She needed to get Sloane to an actual bed.
She didn’t know where Sloane’s apartment was. Or if she even lived in her own place at all. Shit.
Take her in, whispered the dying officer-voice in her head. She won’t even know. She'll be safe and this will all be over.
“No,” Hurley snapped to herself, shaking her head. “I can't do that to her.”
She stood before the voice could come back and pulled off her mask. It landed with a soft clunk in her box of spares; Sloane’s mask was off shortly after, set more gently atop her own pile. Standing in the middle of the garage, Hurley looked out the window and tried to figure out the best way to get Sloane to her own apartment.
It was her only choice, really. Sloane needed rest, Hurley couldn’t leave her alone in the garage, and Hurley needed to get home. She couldn’t carry Sloane the whole way, but… the rolling cart for transporting larger parts for the battlewagons could probably fit a sleeping half-elf. It’d fit the mattress before -- that was how they’d got it into the garage in the first place. Hurley pulled it out from under the wagon and pushed it to Sloane’s side.
Maneuvering the mattress onto the cart took longer and involved more moving Sloane than Hurley would’ve liked, but she got it done and nudged it out the door before locking everything up. She threw a tarp over the cart, tucking it under the edges for security as best as she could without revealing the outline of Sloane (that would look very, very bad). They rolled through the backroads to Hurley’s apartment, sandy footsteps and the creak of the cart slowly blending into the never-quite-ending buzz of the city proper. A few times Hurley stopped when Sloane seemed to stir, but whatever magic the cleric had used kept her fast asleep.
Hurley parked the cart in the bushes behind the building and used the tarp to wrap Sloane in a more easily carried bundle. A rope hung out the back of the building, trailing up to Hurley’s window, just as she’d left it. No one else came around to this side; she lived just close enough to the rich sector that her neighbors didn’t like to come back and mess around in the earthy garden that had sprung up behind the building in fear of getting wet or dirty.
Perfect for someone regularly slipping out to go work on a pretty illegal battlewagon.
Once she’d secured Sloane to her back as best as she could, Hurley scaled the wall with practiced ease. The window creaked open just enough to pull both of them inside her living room. Hurley made a beeline for the bedroom; she untied Sloane and set her on the bed with a blanket and a few of her pillows, suddenly painfully aware of how much smaller she was compared to Sloane, which normally she spared little thought to. Her full-sized bed always felt too far, far big to her (especially in comparison to the rest of the apartment, which was more of a tight squeeze for a human), but Sloane fit on it with just enough room that someone Hurley’s size could curl up right next to her and sleep comfortably.
...which was a strange way to think about that, but Hurley pretended the thought hadn’t come and left the room.
She wrote a note to Sloane explaining what happened and set it on the bedside table in her line of sight to make sure she didn’t freak out. She could sleep on the couch, she figured as the exhaustion started to set in. Wouldn’t be the first time. Her footsteps grew slower as she trekked across the apartment and never made it to the couch, and instead fell to her knees and passed out in the middle of the living room.
She woke up to someone’s hand on her shoulder and a voice asking, “Hurley?”
It made her heart do a little flip but Hurley’s sleep-addled brain couldn’t place it until she turned and opened her eyes. The glow of faerie fire outside cast a glow over Sloane’s face, wrinkled in concern and red-ringed eyes highlighted in the golden glow. Her ears were turned down toward her shoulders, stuck straight back. The glow surrounded her head and made her look otherworldly. She was half-drow, Hurley faintly remembered. Absolutely beautiful.
(Wait, what?)
“Hurley, what are you doing on the floor?” Sloane asked.
“Fell asleep?” Hurley mumbled.
“On the floor? You have a couch.”
“‘m really tired.”
Sloane sighed, brushing her hair behind her ear. “C’mon, you need to get in a bed.”
“Noo, no, it’s fine --”
Hurley was interrupted by Sloane scooping her up bridal style and walking toward the bedroom. She set Hurley on the bed, Hurley righted herself so she was sitting up, and for a moment they just stared at each other. Sloane crossed her arms, face stern. “Go to sleep,” she said. “Or I’ll… I don’t know, just go to sleep.”
Still dazed, even sitting up Hurley was swaying on the bed, struggling to find any words to counter. Sloane’s arms dropped, her face losing its anger. She sat on the bed across from Hurley, legs crossed. “I’ll wait here until you do,” she said.
They sat in silence. Hurley’s brain started to fall back asleep, eyes fluttering.
She lurched forward. Her last snatch of consciousness let her feel herself fall onto something warm and get moved to her side, and then she was gone.