Work Text:
Damn shrieks.
They were on her like lightning, rending flesh down to the bone in moments.
They never even saw them coming. At first, Alistair didn’t think it would be so bad – some claw marks in her heavy velvet and across the skin of her chest and torso where the shriek had landed, but as they ran to close the gap after the darkspawn had been slain, he could see the blood running and sputtering from her mouth.
It had cleaved her face and neck when it crawled up her body, leaving scarlet gashes across her mouth and throat.
Leliana was the first to her, a rag proffered from some unknown pocket, ready to staunch the bleeding as Aeres gasped for air through the thickness of the blood in her mouth.
Alistair and Oghren were there last, knocking the remaining darkspawn off the land-bridge that connected the thaigs. Alistair wrested her from the ground as Leliana held the cloth to Aeres’ face, and carried her over the land-bridge until they were safely across.
The ooze of blood was caught in her airways and Alistair could see the panic in Aeres’ eyes, wide, dimly-grey things that were usually as still as winter. She was choking on her own blood – suffocating as he held her in his arms.
“Leliana, she can’t breathe!”
“If I let go, she could bleed out, Alistair,” Leliana hissed, pressing harder as they shifted in tandem to lay Aeres on the ground.
Oghren pushed past them, opening a flask and he knelt beside Aeres.
“Move it, you two. This’ll keep the wounds closed until you can stitch'er up,” he barked gruffly.
He jerked the rag away from Aeres’ face and Alistair could feel the bile rise in his throat. The lower half of her face was completely flayed open, the flesh cut down to the quick. Oghren scooped the blood away with his hand and began pouring the thick liquid over Aeres’ chin and neck. The consistency of the concoction was as sap, but it did as promised – as Oghren pressed against both sides of each wound, they held together and the bleeding slowed to a halt.
“Old dwarven medicine. Can’t go wrong,” he murmured, smoothing the goop down tight against her skin.
That was two days ago, and they were still camped in the same spot.
Aeres, at present, was too frail to move – too much blood was lost and her face was being held together with catgut, prayer, and paragon’s ichor, as Oghren called it. Leliana had done the stitching, her nimble fingers far more deft than Alistair or Oghren’s, but she was no surgeon, and the job was rough at best.
It was Alistair’s turn to clean her wounds, and he could already feel the dread circling his belly. He knelt down to climb into the depths of the tent where they had her wrapped up, trying to keep her body warm from the bloodloss.
It appeared she was sleeping – a miracle really, considering they had no anesthetic to soothe her. Alistair settled down by her side and opened his pack, pulling out a small phial of astringent liquid that fought infection, and slowly her brought a hand up to her forehead, checking for fever.
Her eyes fluttered open at that, but she could say nothing, whether she meant to or not. Alistair watched her watch him with those dim-grey eyes. She followed every gesture sharply: removing his gauntlets, lifting up the phial, raising a hand to barely graze her cheek.
“This ah… this will sting, but it’ll keep the infection away,” he told her softly. She nodded at him, lips almost pursing.
He unstopped the phial, dabbed it against some clean cotton, and took to her face as gently as he could.
Aeres grimaced, the gesture pulling at the strings holding her face together, and a small sound escaped her parted lips. Alistair hated this. He was her senior and he forced her to lead. He had a year’s experience under his belt and he allowed an elf that hadn’t set foot on free land lead them because he was too afraid? Pitiful. And now look at her, he thought. Knocking at death’s door and for what? A great big coward.
“I’m so sorry,” he blurted out suddenly and this time Aeres did not look pained, but confused. He watched as her eyebrows knitted upward, dark eyes searching his plaintively.
“This is all my fault. I never should’ve put you at the fore–” he began, fingers dancing away from her face.
Aeres grunted then, slowly, carefully pushing herself up on her elbows as tears sprung to the corners of her eyes.
“No,” she rasped, and it wasn’t clear if it was from thirst or from the damage done to her throat.
“I,” Aeres wheezed,“ wanted it.”
Watching her lips and jaw try and work was a horrorshow of flesh and string, but he let her speak, determined as she was to do it, and moments later, she dropped back onto her back and her eyes fluttered closed, tears slipping down her skin and away into the darkness.