Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Asta awoke abruptly, bewildered, and in considerable pain. He blinked rapidly to correct his swimming vision and tried to take in his surroundings. They were rural. Unfamiliar. Asta let his head fall back onto the ground, gazing at the canopy of tree branches above him, trying to remember how he ended up here.

He could recall being summoned to the capital by the wizard king, in all his pre-teen glory, along with a few of his teammates and members from most of the other magic knights’ squads. Most were still absorbed in rebuilding projects throughout the city. There, they had been briefed on a growing threat to the Clover Kingdom originating in the forest mountains of the borderlands. Several diamond mages, not unmeasurably powerful, but cocky and wielding an unknown magical item with reckless abandon, had been spotted making trouble and inciting panic in the nearby villages. God knew where Mars was in all this mess, but these insurgents had slipped through his net and were causing chaos within their neighbouring kingdom.

Asta had been brimming with enthusiasm for what he had initially regarded as a pleasant break from their ongoing battle against devils, forces of darkness, and other things that Asta quietly regarded from time to time as way above his pay grade. As predicted, the diamond mages were skilled enough to put up a good fight, but after the many confrontations Asta had had with the Eye of the Midnight Sun and apostles of the nether realm, it was nothing too impressive.

Their numbers, however, had been a little more alarming.

With the Clover Kingdom's forces greatly reduced —whether through recovery or maintaining peace at home —the magic knights were largely outnumbered by the less skilled, but more numerous, diamond mages. The magic knights had been sent scattering mere moments into the ensuing battle. The last thing Asta could remember with any clarity, through the haze of pain encompassing him now, was fighting (fairly successfully) on one of the mountain paths with Gauche and Zora, before being struck from behind. He had been distracted, Gauche had taken a glancing blow, and in that moment of concern for his teammate, he had twisted his body around, leaving his stance precarious and unsteady. That, combined with his less-than-prime position near the edge of the pass, overlooking a sheer drop into forestry, had amounted to a devastating lucky strike on the part of the enemy.

His head had struck something on the way down. Asta remembered the heavy thunk against his skull amongst his blinding panic and vengeful screams from his teammates before everything went black. From the tremendous amount of pain he was in now, Asta reckoned that was probably a good thing.

Trying to sit up made him immediately made him wish he hadn't, pain ignited through his torso like acid, and his arms wouldn't take his weight. Only one of them responded to his command to move. His fingers seemed okay, but his shoulder was probably dislocated, a sadly familiar agony. Asta had managed to reset it before in his reckless youth, but last time he’d had three other functional limbs to help. He gave them an experimental wiggle and immediately regretted it. The good news was that he could still feel his legs. Bad news, they hurt. A lot.

Yami was going to kill him.

The gruff captain got more irate every time Asta came back from a mission with some part of him bloodied or bandaged, and from the feel of things, Asta would be lucky to escape from this fiasco with anything less than a full-body cast. Asta did not want to be fed to the dogs again.

Cautiously, he did his best to look down at his lower body and immediately regretted it. He may have passed out for a moment because was that bone? Asta thought he had just seen bone. 

Miserable, dizzy, and bleeding, Asta blacked out once again.

xXx

"Oh god... Yami-"

"Yeah, I see it."

Wait. Asta recognised those voices.

Panicked footsteps, a startled yelp as someone tried and failed to navigate the tangled mess of tree roots that make up the forest floor. A hand lightly slapped Asta’s face, gentle enough that it barely agitated his swollen jaw.

“Asta? Oh god, please be alive, please be alive. Wake up if you can hear me!” 

In the face of the newcomer’s distress, Asta reluctantly opened his one good eye to squint at the new arrivals. Sure enough, he is greeted by the (albeit blurry) visages of his Captain and Finral crouched beside him. They both look a little worse for wear. Finral's face is bloody as if someone had gotten a lucky hit to the face. Nevertheless, he let out an audible sigh of relief and practically beamed at Asta.

“Oh, sweet merciful lord. Asta, don’t do that to me! Christ almighty, we thought you were dead!”

“I never thought he was dead.” Yami chimed, from where he was hovering over Finral’s shoulder. “Brat’s taken on literal abominations from the pit of despair. Some puny mountain ain’t going to do shit. You should have more faith in your subordinates, Finral.”

At first glance, Yami looks as impassive and unharmed as ever, a veritable brick wall against any adversary, thanks to his steadfast determination and hard-earned skill that Asta so admired. But his eyes keep flickering, from Asta's ruined leg to his face, back to his leg again. It might have been Asta's imagination, but he fancied that Captain Yami might look worried. 

The first stirrings of fear awaken deep within Asta's belly. He has seen the Captain face innumerable foes, ranging from a rage monster that had systematically beaten the living daylights out of every member of his squad to a literal demon. Asta couldn't remember anything on the field of combat, garnering a response more emotive than a raised eyebrow.

This is concerning.

Asta tried to croak out a greeting, but moving his jaw proved agonising, and he quickly decided against it. A low moan escaped instead.

“Oooh, no, you don't want to do that,” he was hastily assured by Finral, who knelt next to him, offering him a sympathetic grimace. “Your jaw is definitely out of alignment. I did something similar when I was about your age. My portal went wrong, and I fell down two flights of stairs.”

Finral bit his already torn lip, and looked anguished for a moment before he said quietly, “It must hurt a lot. I'm so sorry, Asta.”

He looked up at the trees surrounding them. Asta took a moment to do the same. He appeared to have ended up in a clearing of some kind, although this had been at the end of a long and arduous tumble through the wildlife. From the height he had fallen, Asta supposed bleakly that he was lucky the trees had stopped him from reaching terminal velocity.

Less fortunate was the fact that said trees had beaten him half to death.

Finral had clearly been thinking in the same vein. He leaned over Asta and held up a finger, moving it from left to right in Asta's field of vision. Without prompting, Asta did his best to follow it, despite the issue of his inability to consolidate the blurry mirages of the finger into a single finger.

Most likely concussed then. Final appeared to agree, judging by the grim line of his lips as they pressed together.

In an undertone that Asta probably wasn't meant to overhear, he said to Yami, “He must have fallen from those ledges we saw earlier. More likely pushed. God, it's a wonder he's alive at all.”

Yami grunted his agreement. 

“No shortage of luck for this kid, seems like. Doesn't get done in by the fall, leaves a trail for us to follow, lands in a clearing perfect to set up camp for the night.”

“Yes, well. Arguably, he would have to be pretty unlucky to fall off a mountain in the first place, wouldn't he?”

Asta silently agreed. He'd had the good fortune of earning his grimoire, of growing up loved despite being poor, and of having such an amazing rival like Yuno to push him on. For finding the Black Bulls. But none of it, he reasoned, could have come to him if he’d stayed playing it safe in Hage. 

Sometimes, you’ve got to throw yourself into unbelievable peril to find the best family you’d never had, Asta thought, a little delirious.

Captain Yami stared at Finral for a moment, seemingly chewing over his answer. He settled on, “Another guy got luckier. Would have to be, to get the drop on our Asta like that.”

Asta took a moment to feel the warm feelings of a Black Bull who has earned the praise of their hard-to-please Captain. It was swiftly dispersed by a cautious, but unpleasant prod to his shoulder. Asta squeezed his eyes shut in displeasure, and the hand withdrew quickly, frowning in apology.

“Dislocated shoulder, too. Damn, Asta, your body is a mess right now.”

Asta sensed, rather than heard, Yami's scoff. The man even emoted with quiet broodiness. 

“Is this kid capable of making it out of one fight without getting beaten up?”

“Yami, you hypocrite, I've patched you up more times than I have the entire squad!”

Captain Yami sniffed. “Those are scrapes; they don't count.”

“You're unbelievable!”

“Oi, Finral. Do you think you can get us out of this damn forest? Asta would be better seeing Owen sooner than not.”

Finral seemed to swell in his indignation. Spluttering, arms were thrown out akimbo with the passion of his gesturing, he cried, “Get us out of- I have been playing portal tag with half the magic knights here the whole damn day, including you and your frankly ludicrous battle tactics, Yami! Do you have any idea how tiring that is? I was so focused on keeping your arse out of danger that I managed not to notice one of those diamond mages until he got close enough to punch me in the face! So, no, no, I do not have enough juice. I am this close,” he held up his forefinger and thumb, pinched a fraction away touching each other up to Captain Yami's face for close inspection, “to complete magical exhaustion!”

His fire faded, and Finral sank back to his knees by Asta's side. He suddenly seemed smaller.

“To be honest, I don't think I have enough mana to get you from one end of this clearing to the other.”

He sounded so sad that at that moment, Asta felt compelled to comfort him in some way. Finral was a great mage; he had fought incredibly hard for their comrades, and he shouldn't put himself down. Finral was a great magic knight!

Asta was unable to tell him so with his voice right now, and so reached out with his still-functioning hand and grasped, half-blind, for Finral's forearm, which he squeezed in what he hoped came off as a supportive fashion. He must have succeeded, because Finral let out a small, huffing laugh and patted Asta's hand gently in thanks, before cautiously glancing up at their Captain out of the corner of their eye.

He was regarding Finral with the corners of his mouth twisted slightly, either in guilt or humour, Asta couldn't be sure.

“Hm. Yeah, thought that might be the case.”

Finral's jaw dropped. “Y-you…”

Yami shrugged nonchalantly. “Had to be sure. You pushed your limits out there today. Not surprised that you gave it all you could.”

His mouth turned up in a definite smirk. “Even laid out that one punk that got the drop on you. Knew that teaching you how to throw a decent punch would work out one day.”

Finral ducked his head, but Asta could see how he flushed pink in the face of Captain Yami's approval.

“Er... We're probably going to have to patch up Asta ourselves, then. Until my mana restores or the knights find us, whichever happens first.” Finral nodded grimly down towards Asta's lower half. “We're probably going to have to start with that leg. It's an open wound and still bleeding so-”

“Hey, wait a minute!”

The Captain blinked at Finral in what Asta assumed was disbelief.

“Where the hell did you pick up the know-how to set limbs out in the wilderness?”

Finral blinked back up at him, non-comprehending.

“Well, if anything, I want to avoid any limb-setting. Aside from being quite painful, the risks it poses are quite substantial.” He cocked his head. “Why so surprised? I've patched you guys up before.”

“Yeah, on occasion. But I think that's more than a little cut.”

His gesture encompassed Asta's... Well, everything.

Finral scratched at his ear sheepishly. “Well... I may have done a little reading. Just in case, I swear! I didn't think we would need it so soon! But I may have asked Owen to borrow a couple of books on manual first aid?”

“We barely use manual first aid. Hell, up until recently, the Bulls went out drinking more than they did on missions!”

“Yeah, well, it didn't take me long after Asta showed up to figure out that he was probably going to break a bone or two on his quest 'to become the wizard king'. I figured it was better to be prepared, so I looked up a couple of things.”

The Captain didn't seem impressed by this. “So, you just ‘looked up' how to reduce compound fractures?!”

“Well, no one else was going to!”

Finral seemed to be pretty fed up with the turn this conversation had taken. He was glaring at their captain with pursed lips and his arms crossed. 

“No matter what you think of my skills in this area, Yami, my background reading is pretty much the only thing that can get us through this mess with Asta's leg still attached!”

Asta moaned in fright. He did not want to lose his leg. He had no idea what a compound fracture was, but it sounded horrid, and it felt worse. Like it was on fire. Still, he had never heard of any one-legged wizard kings. He may not have had any magic, but he still had his dream.

How would he ever beat Yuno with only one leg?

Finral immediately looked down at him guiltily and said, “Oh no, Asta, I'm so sorry-,” while a new voice snapped, 

“Stop it, both of you!”

Asta made to crane his neck to look at the newcomer (his voice was so familiar, but they were out of his field of vision), but cool hands were suddenly at his temples, holding him gently, so he couldn't.

“Steady on, Asta,” Finral said kindly, “keep your head still for me. Don't want to agitate that concussion.” He smiled apologetically. “Don't worry, he's friendly. You remember Yuno, right? You guys grew up together!”

Asta's eyes (eye) widened. The Golden Dawn was here, too? He hoped Mimosa and Klaus were okay. Then he scolded himself. His Golden Dawn friends were more than capable of looking after themselves. Their magic power was awesome!

The Captain was yelling at Yuno now.

“-should know better by now that to pop up out of nowhere like that,” he was growling, “You looking to get stabbed, kid?”

Yuno did not seem very intimidated, from what Asta could tell. He spat something back about how at least Yuno knew better than to start shouting in enemy territory, and what the hell had happened to Asta anyway? Were they so incompetent that they couldn’t protect one measly guy without magic?

Except at that point, probing hands had found the bloody knot on the side of his head, and Asta gasped in displeasure and stopped listening for a moment as Finral hissed in sympathy and smoothed his hair back from his bloodied forehead in apology.

What Yuno was saying sounded a little mean anyway. The captain was a little rough around the edges, but he'd never dish out more than he thought you could handle. Often this was more than you thought you could handle, but still. Captain Yami certainly wasn't responsible for the trouble Asta usually and inevitably found himself embroiled in. Asta had been getting himself beaten up by bigger and stronger opponents since way before joining the Magic Knights, and as the voice of reason that tried and failed to talk him out of most of them, Yuno should know better.

He tried to move his head again to see -the better to try and point this out to Yuno- despite Finral's warnings, but despite his gentleness, the mage's grip was surprisingly strong and he could not budge it. Asta keened in disappointment. Where was Yuno? Was he injured like Asta was?

Finral seemed to pick up on the cause of Asta's distress because he looked where Asta couldn't, toward the bickering knights, pressed his mouth together grimly, and removed one of his hands from Asta's temples to his mouth and whistled loudly. Shrill enough that the bickering tapered off so that he could speak and be heard.

“Right. Yami,” Asta couldn't see, but he was pretty sure Finral was glaring at the leader of the Black Bulls right now. He felt a stab of admiration for his superior. Not brave, huh? Yeah right!

“Stop with the shouting. Yuno is very sorry he nearly got himself stabbed, I'm sure, but Asta is very hurt and probably very scared right now, and we should at least try and act like the magic knights he thinks we are,” he hissed.

Yes, Asta agreed mentally, Much pain. My head's splitting, my ribs feel twisted, I can't move one arm... Or my leg. Not that I want to. Owowowowowow... 

“You little toe-rag," Yami grumbled crossly, "What have I said about you telling your captain what to do?”

Finral didn't seem overly concerned by this. Asta was pretty sure that he'd rolled his eyes and proceeded to address Yuno instead. 

“Yuno, Asta seems to be pretty worried about you, so if you would be so kind as to come over here and let him know that you're still in one piece, I think we would all appreciate it.”

Footsteps crunched against dry leaves as Yuno approached. Asta squinted eagerly through his unswollen eye, curious to see what shape Yuno was in. He looked alright, hair windswept, and his fancy magic knights uniform dusty. Still, Asta relaxed slightly at the apparent absence of any life-threatening wounds. Wordlessly, Yuno came to kneel at Asta's side-eyes roving his battered body. Asta had no idea how bad he looked, but for a terrible moment, it looked like he might cry, and Asta couldn't make Yuno cry .

Unacceptable.

He tried to smile reassuringly, but it probably only came out as a pained grimace, considering how much it hurt. Yuno's brow furrowed, seemingly assessing what part of him was safe to touch before clutching at the hand that Asta could still feel and squeezing. Asta squeezed back. His entire body still hurt, but he had his teammates and Yuno by his side. Everything would be fine. He was certain of it.

Chapter Text

When Finral had first seen Asta, he had honestly thought that he must have been dead.

He and Yami had followed the trail of carnage in solemn silence, almost as if it were already a wake for whoever it was at the other end. Of anyone they could have found, it had honestly never crossed Finral's mind to worry about Asta, of all people. True, Asta had been beaten and bruised more often than not, but Finral had always likened him to a rubber ball. Beat it about all you like, it always bounced up again.

This time though...

This time, Asta wasn't bouncing anywhere. He wasn't going to do so much as crawl anywhere. He had been a bloody, bruised lump of flesh, crumpled at the foot of a large oak tree, limbs sticking out at torturous angles and unable to do so much as speak. Finral wasn't sure he was even staying conscious; his eyes kept rolling back into his head, and he had moments where he didn't respond to frantic repetitions of his name, which was quite frankly terrifying. The worst thing was the silence.

Asta was never silent.

It gave Finral a darkly irresistible urge to check his pulse every two minutes.

“Why isn't he talking?” Yuno asked, lowly, still holding Asta's hand, and Finral was honestly trying not to stare, but really, these kids were just too adorable.

“Jaw's dislocated,” Yami said darkly, from where he was making another unnecessary perimeter check, the better to avoid Finral, who he was still irritated with for his earlier bout of brazenness. He glowered at Finral.

Finral tried not to roll his eyes too hard.

In the five years he'd known Yami, the man had threatened to kill him several dozen times. Seeing how Finral was still breathing after death threat number 20, he'd learned not to take his captain or his black temper too seriously.

“Seriously? And you just left it like that?”

Finral sighed exasperatedly at Yuno's indignation, and stood, dusting off his trousers briskly. He knew the kid didn't exactly mean it like that, but he could hear Yami bristling from here. Yuno, it seemed, generally didn't seem to care if Yami's death threats were posturing or not and was tempting the fates with his impudence.

Finral spoke before Yami could do something violent. Once the sword was drawn, all bets were off. Yami would punt the kid through the forest without a second's rational thought. 

“Honestly, we were more worried about his leg.”

Yuno turned his head sharply to see the twisted limb, but immediately blanched and looked away just as quickly.

Finral made a face.

If we have to do what I think we have to do, I don't think I can rely on this one as an extra set of hands , he thought, dismayed.

Yami would have to be the one to hold Asta down in the event they had to reset the leg, the only one capable of it. What Asta lacked in height, he made up for in muscle, so someone as scrawny as Finral would likely find himself getting kicked through a tree if he tried. Which meant that Finral would be left as the one who would have to- nope .

Finral snapped himself out of it. It may not even be necessary. They had to examine the injury first. Aside from it being very obviously broken, he and Yami hadn't managed to get a close look. Amateur bone-setting would be a very last-ditch measure. Although...

Finral glanced around the copse of trees surrounding them and worried at the inside of his lip. They were in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the rest of the knights, and had no idea what had become of the Diamond mages they had been pursuing. Asta's leg aside, he was a bloody mess. From painful experience Finral thought that one arm looked as though it might be dislocated, his wrist was puffy and swollen and Finral had felt one hell of a welt on the side of his head when he'd investigated earlier, accounting for his confusion. Finral felt his mouth twist slightly, looking at how Yuno fussed over Asta and how Asta seemed to be doing his best to do the same, despite his dire circumstances. It was so wrong to see the usually boisterous Asta unable to make a sound aside from strangled whimpers or indiscriminate groans.

At the same time, it was very typical of Asta to be worried about the welfare of someone else, even as he lay beaten and unable to move.

Finral beckoned to Yami, who growled at being summoned by his subordinate but crossed the clearing in a few long strides. Finral smiled at Yuno sheepishly. 

“If you could let his hand go for just a minute and sit where I was? He's not going to like this very much, and he should try and keep his head still.”

Yuno glared but did as he was bidden, a faint blush rising in his cheeks as he sat by Asta's head, holding it steady. Asta seemed happy enough with this, blinking slowly up at Yuno trustingly. Were it not for his swollen, painful jaw, Finral was sure that he'd be smiling, content. Finral felt his stomach clench. That contentment? It wasn't going to last long.

“Yami, I need you to cut these off for me?” he asked, pointing at Asta's ruined pant leg and scuffed boot. He tried to ignore how said boot was pointing in the wrong direction, but didn't have too much success.

Grousing, Yami unsheathed his word and made to do so. 

“You're lucky I like you, punk,” Finral heard him mutter, as he deftly cut the ragged pant leg free. “Wouldn't take this kind of bossiness from just anyone, you know.”

A moment later, he slit down the side of the boot's leather and Finral, whispering his apologies to Asta all the while, steeled himself. As gently as possible, he pulled the foot free from its trappings, prompting a garbled whine of pain from Asta, quietly, if awkwardly, soothed by Yuno. Finral gently patted Asta's un-twisted foot in apology and then sat back to take in the state of his friend's leg.

It could be summed up pretty concisely by Yami's matter-of-fact, “Fuck.”

Crude, but sadly, accurate. Asta's leg was fucked. 

Impressively, the shaft of Asta's femur had snapped cleanly in half with one bloodied bone poking out grotesquely, still bleeding sluggishly. The lower half of his leg remained miraculously unbloodied but was still swollen, and bruised, and Finral could see how the leg was a disconcertingly twisted shape.

Fibula, tibia, and femur, huh, Finral thought grimly. Well, shit.

Unfortunately, the damage didn't even end there. Asta's boot had concealed the gruesome wound caused by how something had forced Asta's foot to move in a way that very much went against the nature of the human body. It was another compound fracture, this one more gruesome than the last. It looked like something had gored him. The bone hadn't just broken through the skin; it had ripped , and Finral could see more muscle, bone and bubbling yellow fat than he had ever wanted or needed to. Ever.

He breathed deeply to suppress his nausea and glanced around to see Yami looking composed, but wan. Unsurprising.

Gingerly, he went to press his thumb against the underside of Asta's bloody foot, trying to ignore how Asta gasped in pain. If he couldn't feel a distal pulse, then things were going to get a whole lot worse very quickly. He concentrated furiously for ten seconds, twenty. After thirty seconds of nothing, he made to stand and tried his best to smile assuredly at the two teenagers (tremulous at best and not at all convincing) before clutching at Yami's bicep and steering him to the other end of the clearing.

Yami, who was ordinarily about as movable as a mountain, humoured him.

“Yeah, so, you know how earlier we were arguing about how you can't learn to set a compound fracture from reading about it? Well, I'm going to have to.” Finral hissed when he was relatively sure they were out of earshot.

Yami's eyes widened. “Shit.”

“Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking.” Finral ran a hand through his hair and bit his lower lip, quickly regretting it as it widened the cut already there.

“There's no distal pulse, which means that until we can get circulation in the leg again, it is about as useful as a wooden one. Which is what Asta is going to have if I can't realign the bones so-”

Finral pulled at his fringe in frustration and grimaced. “Okay, so, w-we're gonna need two forked branches, to make a splint. One roughly the length of Asta's body from his armpit downwards, the other the length of his inner leg. But first... to restore blood flow I'm-,”

He trailed off and let his hand drop heavily to his side, looking at Yami helplessly.

“I'm going to have to yank his leg straight, Yami.”

Yami sighed heavily and thumbed at his pockets, probably for a cigarette. Sadly, he seemed to be out. His usual impassive mask had given way to apprehension. 

“Looks that way, yeah.”

“It's gonna hurt him, Yami. I'm gonna hurt him!”

Yami looked at him levelly. “You have a choice about that?”

And this. This was why Finral really, really , disliked Yami sometimes because he only ever seemed to ask questions that you knew the answer to. Which sounded great, in theory, except that they were never easy questions, and they never had an easy answer.

Did he have a choice?

Technically, yes, Finral did have a choice. He could leave Asta's leg as it was and await their rescue for god knew how long, leave the limb to leak blood and gather bacteria, all wonky and broken and without a distal pulse until it was numb and useless, and some competent doctor finally made the decision to just lop it off.

That was if they found them in time for that. If Asta didn't die of shock, blood loss, or despair once he woke up with only one leg (unlikely, sure, but Finral knew that everyone had their breaking point, and loss of a limb might be Asta's limit). He could risk his friend's life, his limb, and his future.

Yeah, and while he was at it, he could hand Yami his mantle and go jump off a cliff because door number one was not an option.

The alternative was that he could march back over there, shove something in Asta's poor, broken mouth to muffle the screaming, and still risk Asta's life but potentially save his leg and preserve his dream. He could do what he had to do and hate himself about it later.

Finral squeezed his eyes shut and tried to ignore how they burned. “No,” he whispered, “No, Yami, I don't.”

Yami's large hand clasped onto his shoulder, causing Finral to open his eyes with a start. Yami didn't speak; his face was still flat, but the sureness of his grip said, I'm here, I'm with you, you won't be alone. We do this together.

Finral revelled in the weight of his captain's hand, in the warmth that he could feel even beneath his tunic and cape. Then he gently shrugged his shoulders until Yami withdrew his hand. 

“Okay,” he said, briskly with a confidence he didn't feel. “I vote that we send Yuno to get the wood for the splint. He still has some mana left for self-defence, and he- he doesn't need to see this.”

Finral clenched his fists, glad for the bangs that obscured his face so he didn't have to look his captain in the face for what he had to ask next. “Yami,- you-you're going to have to hold Asta still. He's not going to want to, and you are the only one here strong enough to make him.” 

He chanced a guilty look up at his captain but didn't see any hint of disgust or coldness in the captain's expression. Merely grim determination as he nodded his assent.

“You need anything else?”

“Er. A stiff drink?” Finral asked, only half-joking. Yami eyed him for a moment before reaching into one of his boots and pulling out a large silver hip-flask.

Finral gaped.

“You bring booze on missions?” Honestly, he didn't know why he was surprised.

Yami shrugged. 

“Came in handy, didn't it? Go on. Drink up," and he handed it to Finral with a tantalising shake that made the liquid inside slosh about merrily. It was more than tempting to knock some back, but another thought occurred to him that stayed his hand.

“I think Asta needs it more than I do. And it would do nicely to try and disinfect the areas that need reducing. I'll have some if there's enough left after.”

Yami shrugged but let Finral take the proffered flask and tuck it into his belt. Finral heaved a shaky breath and went to tell Yuno and Asta the bad news.

Right then. Here they went.

XxX

Yuno had reacted with about as much obedience as Finral had expected him to. Which was to say, none. He point-blank refused.

Finral valiantly resisted the urge to strangle him, and mentally lauded Klaus for his resolve in handling this one; he had all of Asta's stubbornness and an ego besides.

“Look, Yuno,” he tried to explain, again, “Asta's leg needs to be reset. It's not going to be pretty; there is going to be a lot of screaming and blood and other icky stuff, so you don't want to see him like that. This can't wait, me and Yami are going to have our hands full, and you are our only backup!'

Yuno's obstinate set of his jaw indicated that he wasn't budging. Finral had half a mind to let Yami throw him bodily from the clearing if he wasn't sure that Yuno wouldn't just summon a hurricane and toss them around back.

He tried one last time, pouring all of his thinly veiled desperation into one final plea. 

“Yuno. Please. You can't do anything for him here. He needs you to do this thing if you want your rival to stay in one piece, both legs attached!”

He'd gotten him with the 'rival' comment, Finral could tell by that nervous twitch that even Yuno's composure couldn't conceal. Then again, he'd meant to. Finral waited, almost vibrating with nervous tension, whilst Yuno seemed to be weighing up leaving Asta behind to the tender mercies of Finral and Yami, with the futility of competing with a one-legged man. It didn't take him long to reluctantly agree.

“Alright, fine. I'll do it. What do you need.”

Relieved, Finral told him roughly the measurements of the wood they needed for the splint. As Yuno made to leave, Finral called after him with one last warning. 

“Hey, Yuno!”

Yuno paused on the edge of the clearing, poised to listen. 

“Just. No matter what you hear? Don't come back. Not before you've got what we need.” 

Yuno stood, rigid, and still for a moment. Then he stepped out and away into the woods.

That left Yami and Finral alone with Asta, who made an odd gasping noise that was probably meant to be enquiring. He looked worse now than when they'd found him. Shock and blood loss were taking their toll. They had to hurry. Finral made to kneel next to him again.

“Asta,” Finral swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “Asta, we need to set your leg.”

The response was immediate. Asta's one good eye widened, and he tried his best to shake his head to make his displeasure known. Finral hastily made to cup his face with his hands and did his best to keep him still.

“I know, I know , Asta listen!” 

Big green eyes looked pleadingly up at him. His good hand was batting weakly at the spacial mage's tunic, and Finral let him cling when his fingers were able to grip the flared sleeve. Carefully, he tried to speak softly enough that Asta wouldn't look so damn scared, despite the harsh reality of his words.

“I know, okay? It hurts, it hurts a lot, and I want to make it hurt more, and it's not fair. But Asta, we don't even know if anyone's looking for us or when they'll find us, and your leg has lost its circulation. That means that if I can't re-establish blood flow, the tissue will start to die, and once that happens, it can't be reversed; it can only spread.”

Finral moistened his lips, which suddenly felt dry to the point of cracking. 

“I'm going to give you something to bite down on, okay? Yami is going to make sure you don't move too much, and I'm going to try to be as quick as I can, but. I'm sorry. This is going to hurt. A lot.”

Gently, he eased the headband emblazoned with the squad's emblem off Asta's head and folded it into a swatch of black fabric. He nudged it between Asta's slack lips, and as he'd hoped, the wad was thick enough that it filled the gap between Asta's misaligned teeth. He'd have had a job of it, but Finral wouldn't have put it past Asta to manage to bite through his tongue, even with a dislocated jaw.

“Just bite down on that, Asta,” he whispered, blinking hotly, “just bite down on that when it gets too bad, and for god's sake, don't try and surpass your limits this time? Just... let yourself pass out.”

Asta gazed back at him with grim determination, and Finral knew suddenly that he wouldn't. Always something to prove with this guy.

Finral heaved himself to his feet. Cleared his throat and said hoarsely, “Yami, could you-”

But Yami was already there, kneeling where Finral had just moments before, then moving to straddle the much smaller body, bracketing Asta with his thighs, hooking one ankle over Asta's good leg so he was effectively immobilised.

That left Finral, with nothing but a half-drunk flask of whiskey and his own two hands, to do the rest.

“Oi.” 

Finral looked up to see Yami looking back at him, impassive yet stern. 

“There's enough left for you to have a swig, Finral. Take it.”

Reluctant, Finral tried to argue, “But the leg-”

“There's enough . Finral, come on. You look like you're about to pass out, and we both know you can't do this when your hands are shaking like that.”

Finral looked and was somehow surprised to see that his hands were, in fact, shaking.

“Don't make this harder on yourself than it needs to be, Finral,” Yami said quietly, “It's plenty hard enough as it is.”

Finral nodded absently and took a hopefully-not-too-generous swig from the flask. He revelled in the searing burn in his throat (he was weirdly cold all of a sudden- how about that) and coughed slightly to dispel it. He took a steadying breath and waited until his chest loosened and breathing came easier. 

Then he warned Yami to “Hold him” before pouring the flask, first over his own hands, and then over Asta's open wounds. He saved a little for soaking the dressings he'd make apply later.

Good thing that Yami was ready because Asta's body jack-knifed in response to the whiskey coming in contact with his ravaged leg.

It may as well have been acid, Asta's howls, for all that they were muffled by the makeshift gag shoved between his teeth, cut Finral to his core. Without pause, Finral placed one hand below the break in Asta's thigh, took hold of the protruding bone with the other, and pushed and pulled until the bone retracted with a wet thwup noise, and Asta shrieked .

He was doing his best to writhe away from Finral and Yami both, but wasn't able to go anywhere; Yami's bulk held him steadfast. Panting harshly, Finral could hear garbled pleas slipping from Asta's bruised lips and made himself focus on Asta's leg instead. He hadn't heard Asta scream like that since Vetto had crushed his arms irreparably in the underwater temple, not so long ago. Swallowing hard, Finral reached for the belt of his tunic and unfastened it, shrugging out of the outer garment. He then methodically ripped it to shreds, the worn fabric shearing easily, and began to wind the cloth around Asta's thigh as best he could, creating a makeshift bandage.

One down , he thought automatically, and immediately wished he hadn't because the idea of doing all that again made Finral want to cry.

“Do-do I give him a break,” he asked Yami, weakly, “Or do I- um. Keep going?”

He recoiled at how Asta had apparently run out of energy to scream or shout and was just moaning, utterly exhausted.

Yami exhaled sharply. 

“I don't think all the breaks in the world are gonna make this easier for him, Finral.” He craned his head around to give Finral a flat look. “Best to keep going.”

Finral nodded, breathed out the softest “Yes, sir,” he had given Yami in a while, and got back to work.

The second break was worse than the first.

Finral was forced to grip Asta's swollen lower limb for leverage and inserted his whiskey-soaked fingers into the gaping wound to fish for the corresponding splintered bone that had broken off inside the leg. He cringed at the distant sound of Asta sobbing in anguish and wished desperately for the ability to disassociate from this horrible task entirely.

Even Yami seemed to be moved by Asta's whimpers enough that Finral thought he heard a softly uttered, “Fucking hell, kid.” He may have even tried to hush the boy, in a clumsy attempt to console, but Finral might have been projecting a little there. He could feel sweat begin to trail down his face and sting the small scrapes along his cheekbones and into his split lip as he gasped and strained, cursing Asta's stupidly high pain tolerance because anyone else would have just passed out by now.

Yuno chose that moment to arrive back at the edge of the clearing nearest to the trio with his arms laden with wood.

Unfortunately, it was also at this moment that Finral succeeded in wrestling with Asta's foot. It snapped back into alignment with a nasty, audible crack as Asta let out an audible wail that Yami moved to swiftly stifle. Finral pulled his fingers out of Asta's ankle with a sickening squelch, and Yuno, already the colour of gruel and swaying on the spot, passed out.

Finral gazed dispassionately at him for a moment (because geez, here he was, hands deep in someone's leg, and you don't see him passing out, do you?) before reaching out as far as he could to snag the wood that Yuno had found to splint Asta's leg.

“Hey. Yami.”

“Yeah?”

“Asta passed out yet?”

“Near enough. His eyes are open, just about, but I think he's in enough pain that he's checked himself out.”

“Good. Come help me.” 

Finral could barely recognise his voice, it was so unusually terse and clipped. Yami didn't comment on his abruptness, just carefully lifted himself off of Asta's torso, and moved to kneel by Finral.

“I need you to make sure that the fractures don't become displaced again whilst I make the splint. Be gentle, it doesn't need too much torsion after. After what I just put him through.”

Yami didn't say anything in response to this, just did as Finral had directed him, first for Asta's thigh, then for his ankle. Finral sacrificed his tunic to the cause and soaked hastily ripped strips in leftover whiskey and did his best to make it stretch as far as possible. When that was done, he shredded what was left of his poor tunic and used it to lash Asta's leg to the makeshift splint. It was slipshod and unrefined, but it did the trick of immobilising the injury entirely. Until the cavalry arrived, or Finral was able to portal them out of here (unlikely, he still felt exhausted), and a healer could see to the injury properly, this would do the job.

Wiping the sweat off his forehead with the underside of his wrist, he found Yami looking at him strangely.

“...what?”

“Nothing. What's next?”

“We wait.” Finral slumped to the ground and looked at his handiwork critically, then, as an afterthought, went to check on Yuno, who was still unconscious. Airways clear, no bumps to the head... He'd be fine.

“We need water; those open fractures need to be kept clean. Ideally, we'd boil it, but we didn't exactly come equipped with a bowl or saucepan. We only have a water skin.” 

Finral frowned and paused from where he was positioning Yuno onto his side to think.

“Besides, it probably isn't a great idea to start a fire with the possibility of soldiers from Diamond crawling all over the place. How we're gonna find water here out here though…”

“I can find water.” Yami interrupted, self-assured as anything. Finral felt his jaw become slack.

“You. What? How?” The corners of Yami's mouth twitched.

“Heard running water on our way up here. There's a river, a couple of miles back the way we came, at the base of the mountain. Shouldn't take too long.”

Finral must've looked a bit disappointed because Yami's upper lip twisted in what may be considered amusement. 

“Not everything I do is down to Ki or mana sense, Finral. This was good old-fashioned observation skills and good luck, that's all.”

Finral harrumphed under his breath and muttered crossly.

“Should've been you that got the four-leaved clover grimoire, sir.” He was cheered slightly when Yami chuckled at that and huffed a quiet laugh himself.

“Couple of miles, huh?”

“Yup.”

There was a moment of strained silence where Finral tried to think of a way to say 'If you want me to go, then you're going to have to either drag me or carry me,' without sounding either belligerent or pathetic. Yami let him off the hook.

“Don't worry, Finral, I won't force you to get up when you've made yourself so comfy over there.”

“Oh, good,” Finral said faintly, “because I honestly don't think I could walk if I tried.”

Chapter Text

Yami could believe it, the way the younger mage's knees were knocking together right now. He hadn't even bothered to stand, just scooted to lean against the base of a nearby tree, where he slumped, chest heaving.

Yami didn't ask if he was okay. He already knew the answer. Finral hadn't seemed to notice, but his eyes kept flickering back at the bit of blood-stained earth where they had practically performed surgery on Asta, who was still lying limp on the forest floor with his mind thoroughly checked out.

“Better stay that way, kid,”  Yami advised under his breath, gathering him in his arms whilst making sure to mind the cumbersome splint that kept his leg straight, “You're in for a world of hurt when you wake up.”

Yami deposited the kid in front of Finral, as gently as a man as unaccustomed to gentleness as Yami could. He made sure that Asta's head was properly cushioned by Finral's crossed legs and shot him a stern look.

“You gonna puke?” he asked, because now, in the absence of any adrenaline, Finral was beginning to turn the same colour around the gills as his stupid hair. Finral smiled weakly and shook his head.

“Nah, Yami. I'll be okay. I just.” he choked a little here and placed a quivering hand on Asta's forehead, still sticky with sweat and marred with dried blood. “I just never want to do anything like that ever again.”

Yami hummed his agreement with the sentiment. It was a nasty business resetting a limb, especially a break that broke the skin like that. Owen could fix it up as good as new, and he knew that Asta would much prefer to keep the leg and go through the pain, as previous experience in the underwater temple had demonstrated.  He wouldn't hold it against Finral, that's for sure. Still, it was easy for Yami to think practically about these things. He hadn't been the one to rub metaphorical salt and vinegar in the kid's wounds.

No , his subconscious whispered, You just held him still for it .

Yami, with all the bull-headedness of the animal he'd named his squad for, ignored it. The two things couldn't be compared. Yami had been built for this life, for hardship and pain, and he was adept at dealing it out as he was taking it on. Finral though.

They all teased Finral for being a bit of a coward, but the truth of it was that Finral was one of the kindest, loyal people Yami knew. He'd endured years of casual debasement rather than learn offensive spatial magic. Had accepted and become resigned to it, but had never wavered in his resolve to never use his power to harm anyone.

Yet he'd just caused his friend unspeakable agony, with more grit and steely determination than Yami had previously thought him capable of. If the circumstances weren't so grim, Yami would practically be beaming with pride right now; Finral had surpassed every moral quandary he'd ever had, let alone his limits, in one small swoop.

That, more than anything, gave Yami pause. He'd have to be vigilant from this point forward. There would doubtless be fallout from this later; the aftermath of this kind of trauma was not always immediate, but the more it was delayed, the nastier it could be. Causing pain, no matter how well-intentioned, changed a man, and Finral was sometimes too soft-hearted for his own good.

Yami was big enough to admit that he was concerned.

Yami lifted one hand and ran it through his already mussed hair, uncharacteristically conflicted. They were in a vulnerable position, that was certain. Until Finral's mana recharged, they had no means of easy escape, and with Asta's condition being what it was, it wouldn't be advisable to move him anyway. God knew what else was wrong with the kid that they couldn't see. Not to mention that the Yuno kid was still drooling into the leaves over there. In the event of an ambush, he'd be able to trip some of them up with his unconscious, pretty-boy body, but aside from that, Yami was all they had. Even then, his mana levels felt strangely depleted.

“How bad do we need this water?” he asked Finral, who looked up from where he was trying to distinguish dirt from bruising on Asta's face by carefully sponging at it with the corner of his cape.

“Er, pretty urgently? I guess? I mean,” Finral bit his already abused lip, winced, and used the back of his wrist to stem the renewed bleeding. 

Yami took a moment to be glad that Finral appeared to have disassociated enough that he wasn't minding the frightful state his hands and shirt looked like right now.

“Asta is still pretty open to infection; we're not exactly in the most sanitary environment right now. If we don't keep the wound clean from bacteria...' Finral shuddered. “It's not exactly gonna be pretty, Captain.”

“How ugly we talking, Finral?” Yami growled, frustration and helplessness shaving his already limited patience down to splinters, “I'm going to just march out of here if this is just about protecting your delicate sensibilities-”

“It's not!” Finral burst out, looking hurt. “If bacteria get into Asta's leg, it'll most likely become infected, if it goes without treatment, which it will because we're in the middle of nowhere, then it'll become necrotic! It'll start to rot, Yami, and you'll have to hold him down again, and I'll have to I-I'll have to make a fire to cauterise the blade, probably your sword, a-and hope it's sharp enough to cut through bone because otherwise, I'll have to saw ,'

“Alright,” Yami interjected quickly, partly disturbed by Finral's pretty graphic description of how Asta could still lose his leg even after all of that shit and more than a little guilty that his admittedly unfair (untrue) accusation had caused Finral such obvious distress. The guy's eyes were red-rimmed, he was holding onto his composure by a thread, and he was looking at Asta's roughly splinted leg like it might disappear if he so much as blinked.

Damn.

All that musing he'd done over Finral's emotional well-being, and he goes and takes a sledgehammer to what's left. What an asshole he was.

“Ah, Finral,” Yami groaned, moving to crouch in front of him, “I shouldn't have said that. That was. That was pretty shitty of me.”

“Tcht. What else is new?” Finral retorted, after only a moment's hesitation. Watery and not up to his usual ire, sure, but he didn't seem to be on the edge of a breakdown anymore. Yami had drawn him back from the edge- for now.

Before he could overthink it and change his mind, Yami reached out and placed a broad palm on Finral's head, threading fingers through his curls in an affectionate hair ruffle, and was rewarded when he felt the younger man relax a little more with the touch. If he tended to let his hand linger longer than he would the other braggarts under his charge… Well, no one was complaining, least of all Finral. He'd figured out years ago that physical contact was the quickest and easiest way to steady and calm a wound-up portal mage.

His one, anyway. Who the fuck knew about Langris?

Yami sighed and looked around the clearing. What a sorry bunch they were. “We need the water, huh.”

Finral inclined his head. “We do.”

“Too bad Noelle isn't here.”

Finral huffed slightly, amused. “You think she'd have fared any better than him?” He nodded to the still unmoving Yuno.

“Ah, fair point. Delicate constitution, our princess.” 

Not to mention her magic, although notably more well-controlled recently, tended to flare up around Asta. There was an equal chance she'd blow them off the mountain in a fit of upset, as there was of her being helpful.

“Well, if this is our situation, I'm gonna have to leave you this whilst I go play pack mule for once.”

Finral looked confused as his captain fished inside one of his boots for a moment, before pulling out a respectfully sized dagger (from his opposite boot that the flask had come from - never mix booze and weaponry, that was Yami's philosophy) still in its sheath. 

Finral's confusion turned to reluctance as Yami leaned forward, still on his haunches, and pressed the weapon firmly into the smaller man's fidgeting hands. He kept his hands clasped around Finral's until he felt cold fingers reluctantly tighten around the hilt of the blade, but kept them there a beat longer. Violet eyes met his own.

“You look after them,” Yami said, seriously.

Finral's eyes widened with surprise, but his reply came out entirely earnest. “Don't I always?”

“You do.” Yami squeezed his wrist firmly and stood. “You always have done.”

He turned to go, completely missing Finral's gobsmacked expression. It was wiped away by the time Yami had gathered his sword and slung his water skin over his shoulder.

“I should be back in an hour at most. If the patrols come too close, are you sure you can handle that knife?”

He was rewarded by Finral scowling darkly at him and tried not to let the pride at how far Finral had come show too starkly on his face. Couldn’t let him think he’s going soft on him now, or he’d never hear the end of it.

“I'm no Captain Jack or Asta for that matter, but I think I can cause enough damage to buy some time.” 

Finral grimaced with false bravado and immediately spoiled the façade by looking pleadingly in Yami's direction.

“Just. Don't take your time charging to my rescue, all right?”

Yami nodded, and as he made to leave the clearing, slipping silently between the trees down toward the riverbank, he prayed to every god he knew that the patrols would stay away from that copse of trees for a few more hours. His distaste for violence aside, Yami didn't think that Finral would hesitate too long to slash a few ankles or even throats if it came down to the lives of a couple of random mages or his friends. He was principled that way.

Regardless, Yami hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Finral's hands had been bloodied enough today. 

Chapter Text

Regaining consciousness, Yuno found, felt a little like when he used too much magic. His mouth was dry and his head was thumping, and he was having difficulty knowing which way was up. Awareness is hard to grasp, and he feels like he is half-dreaming.

Only it must be a nightmare because in no dream has he ever been stuck in the wilderness with only Black Bulls for company, even if one of them is his rival.

“About time you woke up,” was the blunt greeting he received. 

Yuno sent a bleary glare in the captain's general direction and then recoiled as something was immediately chucked at his head. Reflexes only somewhat dulled by his brief stint in oblivion, Yuno still manages (barely) to snatch the unknown projectile out of the air. The sudden rush of blood to his head made him feel unbalanced, and his head gave a renewed throb.

Groggily, Yuno sat up and then squinted at the -mostly empty by the feel of it-water skin he found in his grasp, uncomprehending.

“What are you waiting for? To pass out-again-from dehydration?” Captain Yami snorted, amused, presumably at the thought of Yuno swooning once more like a noblewoman in a too-tight corset.

Yuno supposed, rather petulantly, that this was exactly the type of humour he could come to expect from a man who thought the height of entertainment was watching people pound the crap out of each other either in a bar, back at the base, or on the battlefield. Captain Yami was reputed to not care all that much. If fists were flying, his were usually there too, the man attached to them crowing in absolute delight.

Brute.

Annoyingly, he was in no position to argue. He felt dreadful, and he knew that dehydration would only make him feel worse.

Scowling Yuno yanked the cork from the skin, being careful not to spill. His upbringing had made him more aware of the preciousness of commodities like plentiful food and drink than most of his comrades; these things were taken for granted the closer you got to life in the capital. Yuno supposed that was just what happened when you had never experienced a drought, had never missed a meal to spare your younger siblings' hunger pains. Not that Asta had let him, except when there were especially severe circumstances. He'd kick up such a racket if Yuno didn't take his share that it was never worth trying to put up a fight against his foster brother's indomitable will. Which, of course, was what Asta always counted on. Simultaneously so dim and yet could read Yuno well enough to the point of willful manipulation.

Yuno drank deeply and immediately was glad he hadn't pitched the thing back at Captain Yami's fat head. It was petulant and childish, but Captain Yami didn't deserve water this crisp and clean. Refreshed, Yuno was better able to take in his surroundings.

It had been several hours since he'd returned with the wood; the sky was pink with the newly risen sun. Finral appeared to have nodded off at some point, with his head dropping to rest on Captain Yami's shoulder. Bewilderingly, this didn't seem to beguile the larger man in the slightest; he was just sitting at the base of the tree, sharpening his sword in a way that suggested he was doing his best not to disturb the younger man snuffling into his cape. It was the strangest display of not-affection that Yuno had ever seen, and he looked away quickly before the captain could accuse him of staring.

He has seen the man's temper in action and has no wish to be thrown bodily from the relative safety of the clearing, the way Asta was once launched onto a stage during an awards ceremony months ago. Besides. Finral could probably use the rest.

Despite that, Yuno thinks that Finral looks awful. Even out of the corner of his eye, the bags beneath Finral's stand out starkly from the rest of his face, which is devoid of colour. Even his lips seem bloodless except for his bottom lip, which, aside from the impressive slit, has been chewed raw in his anxiety. His curls are matted with sweat and dried blood, and that's not the only part of him that is. Yuno tries to ignore the rusty stains adorning Finral's front like paint. He is not fainting again.

He won't give Captain Yami the satisfaction.

With reluctance (the last time he'd paid sustained attention, he'd ended up kissing the dirt), Yuno approached the limp bundle that was Asta. He. Well. He didn't look better, exactly. There was no more blood to be seen- most likely a good thing because in daylight he looked as ashen as his hair- but Yuno was pleased to see that he could see his chest rise and fall steadily. He was still breathing then.

Yuno huffed, a disbelieving exhale. Truly, nothing could keep this guy down. His leg had been in splinters, and he'd grit his misaligned jaw together and bore it. Unbelievable.

“He'll be okay, kid. As soon as Owen gets his hands on him anyway.”

Yuno looked up at Captain Yami's impassive features and wordlessly removed the Golden Dawn robe from his shoulders and spread it clumsily over Asta's prone form. He looked cold. 

“Where are we with that? You've still heard nothing? From no one?”

Yami's disheartened sigh was an answer in itself. “We've had zilch on that front. Finral's mana is all but gone for the moment, and I'd rather not have him use up what he doesn't have to get us off this mountain. Seems like the diamond mages have kept the rest of the knights busy enough that they're far from charging in to save our asses, so we're stuck.”

Yuno shook his head in disbelief. “No explosions? Mana-sense? Nothing?”

Yami shrugged, as best he could with his comrade dozing on one. 

“Whoever was fighting with Asta was probably a little busy making sure they didn't get blasted off a mountain to notice whereabouts he did. Me and Finral? Happened to be in the right place at the right time, but I don't exactly have a good sense of direction.”

Yuno suddenly vividly recalled a tale Asta had spun to him about how the Captain of the Black Bulls had once picked a fight with the Witch Queen after accidentally trespassing into the Witches' Forest. The way he dragged Finral around in his wake was beginning to make sense. The man not only couldn't be arsed walking anywhere but probably got turned around any time he tried.

“We got lucky, kid. That's it. This is a cosy little nook we've found ourselves in, and Asta would've probably choked to death on his own blood by now if we all hadn't stumbled across each other, so don't think about it too hard. Okay?”

No. Not Okay. Yuno was Not Okay with the only silver lining being, 'Asta's not dead yet.'

“They had to have noticed we're gone by now,” he insisted, feeling something cold beginning to seep into his fingers and spread upwards. He tried to ignore it.

Yami shrugged again. This one felt more irritated. “It doesn't matter if they have. If they can't find us, they can't find us. No amount of whining is going to change that.”

“Then what. Do we do ?” Yuno said through gnashing teeth, not feeling like his patience was being appreciated.  His chest felt tight, he felt jittery despite only having recently woken up, and he could hear his blood pounding in his ears. It was all very unsettling, and Yuno wanted out of here now. The Captain's eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth, probably to give Yuno a verbal tongue thrashing the likes of which he hadn't had since he left Hage Village.

He never got the chance.

A bright flash of light and an enthusiastic, “Captain Yami!” had Yuno whirling around, one hand on his grimoire, and Yami reaching for his katana, ready to attack. Finral's reaction, though, was the most vehement.

The young man had jerked from slumber and immediately scrambled to hunch protectively over Asta, wide-eyed and panicked. All quite worrisome, but what concerned Yuno most was that he hadn't gone for his grimoire. Instead, he was brandishing a sizeable knife in a white-knuckled grip.

Yuno stared in disbelief. He'd never seen such an abrupt awakening before.

Yami cursed. “Marx, for fucks sake!” he barked, “Give a man some warning, won't you?” He turned to Finral, who was looking at him, half dazed.

“Captain? Wha's goin' on?”

“Looks like the good guys finally found us,” 

Yami slowly reached out a hand towards his teammate, fingers outstretched. He was treating Finral like a skittish deer, eyeing the knife clutched in his grip cautiously.

So did Yuno. That knife looked very sharp. Where on earth did he get it anyway? Wasn't the Vice-Captain always ranting about how his brother was a complete pacifist?

He didn't look very pacifist right now. He looked pretty fucking intimidating, actually, caked in Asta's blood with his teeth bared.

“We're safe,” Captain Yami was insisting, voice level. “You can give me my knife back now. It was only a loan, remember?”

Finral looked confused, which disrupted his feral visage. Then looked at the weapon clenched in his hand. He let out a strangled gasp and relinquished it abruptly. 

“Oh god, Yami, I'm so sorry! Did- did I?”

Yami snorted and clapped Finral on the back, less severely than usual, Yuno noted. It didn't send the smaller man half flying the way they usually did.

“Like you could land a hit on me.”

Finral gave him a weary smile, apparently settled by the reassurance that had he tried to stab his captain, even by accident, the man would have probably broken his wrist or something equally extreme. Yuno shook his head. These people were crazy. No wonder Asta had made such fast friends with them all.

“Gentlemen.” Marx peered down at them disapprovingly from where his head was floating some three feet above them. “I am very glad to see you all in one piece, but we have exhausted considerable manpower for the past several hours looking for you. Would you be so kind as to give us a modicum of direction?”

“Sorry, Mushroom-Head,” The captain rubbed at one stubbled cheek sheepishly. “Nice of you to call like this, but I've not got a damned clue where the fuck we are.”

Marx gave him a very dirty look. Yuno felt ashamed by mere association.

“Er. I may know our exact location?”

All eyes turned to Finral, who rubbed the back of his neck uneasily, self-conscious under all the attention.

“You've known this whole time?” growled Yuno, unthinkingly making to step towards him. 

He thought better of it when, glowering darkly in his direction, the dark mage shifted so that Finral was more behind him than not. Yuno had courage aplenty, but he wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to tangle with a magic knight's captain on less than adequate sleep and practically no mana.

Finral gave him an exasperatedly patient glance. 

“Knowing point A doesn't do us any good unless I have the power to get us to point B,” he explained, tiredly. To demonstrate, Finral held out a hand. A small portal opened up but was immediately snuffed out. The effort left him pale and sweaty. “I wasn't going to portal us anywhere.”

Looking a little shamefaced (for no real reason, Yuno thought, at least he hadn't passed out), he rattled off coordinates that Marx quickly passed onto a minion to relay back to Cob.

“That would be the mana suppression device,” Marx mused, scrutinising the bedraggled appearance of the missing knights. “It's caused our side a fair bit of difficulty. Julius thinks that the Diamond kingdom was experimenting with devices like the one used to bind the elves' powers before the massacre.”

Captain Yami made a sound representative of his dawning comprehension. “Ah, so that's why my mana levels have been so low. Didn't think I'd gone all out during that fight.”

Marx nodded grimly. “They only activated it as a last resort. Our magic knights were overpowering them, and they sought to evade capture by dampening our magic, even if it meant suppressing their own also.

Yuno smirked. “I take it that things didn't work out their way?” 

Marx shook his head.

“The battle was basically won, but we only managed to source and destroy the device an hour ago. It cost us a lot of time. However, most of the knights were able to take them with brute force alone.” He levelled the captain with a half-accusing, half reluctantly admiring look. 'Your squad did particularly well in that regard, Yami, you'll probably be pleased to hear.'

Yami did, indeed, look pleased. More surprisingly, so did Finral. His smirk of satisfaction turned dangerous when he glanced down at Asta.

“Hey, Marx? Did any of our squad mention anything about the thugs that got the drop on Asta?”

Marx seemed to spot Asta for the first time, and he pressed his lips together so hard that they became a thin, white line. 

“They did, as it happens. I do believe their exact words were 'they deserved it.' They didn't bother to elaborate beyond that. They were, however, very adamant that Asta was still alive.”

“He nearly wasn't.” 

Yuno clenched his fists, remembering the muffled yells that had reached him well into the surrounding forest. The blood. Finral's grim expression. The crack of splintered bone being wrenched back into place. He couldn't bring himself to feel very sorry for the mages that ran afoul of Asta's teammates, who were as ruthless as they were unruly. Those mages should rest easy.

They hadn't met Yuno on the battlefield, after all.

Finral nodded, mouth set. “Good. They did deserve it.” Captain Yami grunted his agreement. Marx didn't argue with them.

Just then, two ornate gilded doors appeared out of nowhere. Marx must have mentioned the extent of Asta's injuries because not just Cob (the spatial magic-user, Yuno recalled from the royal knight's tournament) but Owen and, surprisingly, the younger visage of the wizard king himself all stepped out. The latter immediately made a beeline for Asta, tiny hands anxiously skimming the outline of the splint under Yuno's cape.

“Oh dear,” Yuno heard him mutter lowly, “What a disaster. What on earth happened to you this time, Asta?”

Owen bustled up behind him, healing jellyfish spells at the ready, and they were already prodding gently at his patient. Whatever his spells sense must alarm him because he snaps out, “Julius. Stasis spell, if you would,” with uncharacteristic sharpness.

The wizard king immediately encapsulated Asta within his signature chrono-stasis sphere.

“It's a little unorthodox,” he explains to a visibly fretting Finral and an impassive Yami and Yuno, “but this will keep him in a stable enough condition for transporting him back to the capital.” 

He tilted his head and regarded the trio sternly. “Which of you reset the leg?”

“Um. M-me, sir.” 

Finral's voice came out as a hoarse croak. He was gazing right past the monarch to Asta, suspended within the stasis spell. The wizard king regarded him kindly. It was pretty disconcerting to see such a paternal look coming from a man with the face of a thirteen-year-old.

“Looks like you did a good job. Excellent work, everyone!”

Rather than putting him at ease, Finral flinched as if struck. The wizard king's forehead furrowed slightly, apparently as taken aback as Yuno at the adverse reaction. If Yuno had received a direct compliment from the wizard king himself, he'd be dancing a jig of absolute joy. Or maybe not. That was more Asta's gig. But he would be pleased.

Finral just looked ill.

The wizard king's gaze flickered from Finral, face still creased with concern, to Captain Yami, who met his eyes unflinching, face impassive. Something passed between them, an exchange born from familiarity that Yuno couldn't hope to grasp, much to his frustration. Whatever it had been had the wizard king breaking eye contact with a tilt of his head and a hint of a nod, brushing past them with renewed vigour, clapping his hands together abruptly.

“Come along then,” the wizard king called, motioning with one hand for them to follow him back through the portal that Cob had reopened. He was a lot. Bouncier in this form, and could probably give Asta a run for his money. Yuno's eyes hurt trying to track his hyperactive movements as he followed him to the portal; the time bubble containing Asta bobbed along beside him. Owen had already leapt ahead, presumably to summon the rest of the healing mages under his tutelage.

“I'm sure you're all quite sick of this place by now.”

Finral didn't hesitate any longer, climbing to his feet and staggering through on shaky legs. Captain Yami was close behind him, scrutinising his comrade with dubious eyes. Yuno gave the clearing where his brother had nearly died one last glance. Then he left.

Hopefully, never to return.

xXx

The royal knight headquarters were a mess.

They had taken very few casualties, but most knights hadn't escaped unscathed. The lucky ones had gotten out with a couple of scrapes. Those less fortunate (or just more scrappy, it depended on your perspective) were laid up in the beds lining the walls of the primary care halls. Yuno could spot a conspicuous number of black capes that stood out a mile in a crowd of bright colours.

Yuno thought he saw Luck, still grinning eerily through a bloody nose with half his face inflamed almost beyond recognition from where someone had almost certainly backhanded him viciously. Never far from his rival's side, Magna was curled up miserably on the bed beside him, nursing what looked to be a concussion, if the bloody bandage wrapped around his temple and crossed eyes was any indication.

Zora and Gauche were standing guard over both of them, looking very dangerous and glowering at anyone who came too close. For once, Gauche didn't have a picture of his sister Marie clutched in one hand, and his face was unbloodied. Yuno noticed that they were amongst the few who had emerged from the skirmish virtually unscathed,d but on closer inspection, this wasn't quite true. They were both nursing swollen and bloodied knuckles. As was, Yuno realised, the rest of the Black Bulls squad to a variety of degrees. A couple of Zora's fingers looked like they had been splinted, while Gauche's entire fist and wrist were bandaged. Yuno remembered what Marx had said about the bastards who had gotten Asta hurt so badly.

Gauche and Zora must have been the ones with him when Asta went over the edge.

The medical staff was giving the two men a very wide berth.

Yuno also saw the girl, Noelle. She was sitting with her ankle elevated, encapsulated in a healing bubble, and her face was lined with discomfort. She was the only one to look up at the exact moment Yuno and the others passed the entranceway. Their eyes met, and hers widened as she took in the appearance of their bedraggled party, eyes lingering over the dishevelled state of her squad-mates and her captain. When she saw Asta being chivvied along amidst a sea of medics, her shock morphed to horror, and she made to rise automatically.

Unfortunately, whatever injury she'd made to her ankle apparently hadn't been given the requisite time to heal because it crumpled under her weight. Yuno glimpsed Captain Nozel (who'd been sitting alongside her, face pinched with concern when he didn't think anyone was looking) swiftly reach out to catch her before she could do herself more damage by falling to the ground.

Forcefully, but with some degree of tenderness, he pressed her back down onto the bed. He placed a restraining hand on her shoulder when it looked as though she might try again, unmoved by her pleas to check on her friends. Yuno could still hear them rising in urgency and volume as he and the others made their way to the intensive care rooms and out of her reach.

The intensive care rooms, not far from the general care wards reserved for the most severely injured of the magic knights, were a set of smaller quarters. Captain Yami didn't seem to be paying attention to where they were going and kept sending intermittent glances over towards his second at regular intervals. He appeared to know the way, and Yuno remembered with a start that Finral had been seconded to these rooms for several days before the elf invasion, thanks to the actions of his brother. Yami had obviously visited, more than once, to know the way as he did now. Yuno didn't know what to make of that.

As suddenly as they'd arrived in the capital, they arrived in a room already bustling with mages. Just as soon, Yuno, Finral, and Yami found themselves being hustled out by several figures, clothed in white and severe expressions.

“Oi, Owen.” The captain's tone brooked no argument. “He's a Black Bull. He's one of mine. I've seen him through this far, and I won't leave him now.”

Yuno saw the dark magic mage ready his stance and sensed his mana spike in anticipation of a fight.

“You want me to leave? You're gonna have to make me.”

From the nervous looks, the healing mages were shooting each other no-one was willing to tangle with an overtired squad captain of ill repute over something as inconsequential as a visitor's policy. Reluctantly, they parted, allowing Yami to stand unaccosted.

Owen waved his hand dismissively, still absorbed in diagnosing Asta's various hurts. 

“Stay out of the way, stay quiet, don't bother me, and you can do what you like.”

He looked up briefly, squinting. “The other lads should leave, though. They look dead on their feet and could probably use a check-up themselves. It's getting a little crowded in here.”

Owen made an absent-minded shoo-shoo motion whilst palpating Asta's swollen jawline, Yami standing behind his shoulder looking on grimly.

“Come on, Yuno. You've seen enough.”

Slightly shell-shocked, Yuno allowed himself to be steered toward the door and out of the way. He narrowly avoided colliding with a frantic young woman carrying a stack of towels, but Finral's arm shot out fast as lightning and yanked him out of the way. She gave Yuno a dirty look and, suddenly enraged for no good reason at all, Yuno made to step forward, spoiling for a fight.

Finral rolled his eyes and intercepted. Yuno suddenly found himself yanked unceremoniously away by the nape of his neck, thrown off balance, and forced to get his legs under him promptly to follow or else be dragged along like an unruly child. Once they left the healing wing with the doors sealed behind them, Finral abruptly let him go.

Sent staggering, breathing harshly, face flushed in humiliation, he spun, ready to give Finral a piece of his mind. But instead of verbally eviscerating the other mage(who had half an eyebrow cocked in a silent challenge), something entirely different happened instead.

His chest, which has been growing tighter and tighter ever since tripping into the clearing and has begun to interfere with his breathing. Panicked, Yuno hunched double, ripping at his collar, which suddenly seemed too tight, breaths escaping him in ragged gasps. Gasps turned to coughs, turned to retching, and suddenly, Yuno was dry heaving onto the polished floor.

Finral, however, must have seen the warning signs on his face or something because he caught Yuno around the waist as he crumpled and waved a swiftly summoned bowl under his chin for him to heave into. Yuno became peripherally aware of Finral babbling anxiously and holding back his bangs as he gags.

“-ere we go, Yuno, get it all up,” Finral demurred softly, “You'll feel better with it out of your system, shh, it's alright now, Asta's gonna be fine. You did good, Yuno. It's okay, shh, it's okay now-”

At some point, Yuno stopped being sick (he didn't have that much to throw up, honestly), but he was still shaking, and it wouldn't stop, and Asta's screaming was echoing in his ears. Before he knew what was happening, he had collapsed entirely, face buried in the crook of Finral's neck, and burst into tears.

He felt Finral startle before one arm hesitantly closed around his shoulders, the other wound around his back. It faintly occurs to Yuno that they are kneeling on the floor, in the middle of the hallway, where anyone could just walk in on him crying all over a member of the Black Bulls. It's as if his body has decided to make up for lost time; this barrage is endless.

Yuno had forgotten how horrible crying felt; it was no wonder he'd decided to stop. Yuno sucked in massive gulps of air to fuel massive, wet-sounding sobs that are barely muffled by Finral's undershirt, but he still couldn't breathe properly, and it struck him suddenly how utterly humiliating this all is.

Asta was lying in the next room with his leg snapped into three pieces and beaten to hell. Captain Yami had been the one to hold him down through the whole stomach-churning process of resetting the thing, and Finral had been the one forced to hurt his friend to save his leg. Yuno- Yuno hadn't even been there for the whole thing! He'd come back from collecting wood (that still grated) and seen a bit of blood (coating Finral's fingers like some macabre glove) before fainting like some feeble maiden. This was pathetic. He was pathetic. Asta would be laughing at him if he weren't in a deeply medicated sleep right now, with significant blunt force trauma injuries.

Yuno's sobbing, if anything, increased in its dissonance at recalling the severity of Asta's condition. He can't help but beg mindlessly through his tears, “Don't tell Asta I cried, please, he can't know I lost it like this, you've got to promise!”

Finral just kept on hugging him as if Yuno was the one who needed it right now and whispered right back, “I won't, I promise, shh, you're alright, Yuno. This is just like being sick; you'll feel better when you're done. Just let it all out.”

Yuno is feeling mildly hysterical and more than a little silly, but the tears just. Keep. On. Coming. His only saving grace is that Finral didn't seem to mind Yuno breaking down on him at all. He continued to pet Yuno's hair and swayed slightly, and the overall sensation is so soothing that Yuno abruptly remembers that Finral is a big brother. That, despite Langris' obvious resentment, he has probably been exactly where Yuno is now, although not for many years. Huh.

His body drained of its reserves, physically, mentally, and emotionally, Yuno is barely aware of his eyelids growing heavy before he slumps forward and once again passes out.

Chapter Text

Yami was more than ready for this nightmare to end.

For two hours, as Owen and his team had swabbed, wrapped, and healed to the best of their ability, Yami could do nothing but brood.

Yami hadn't had a foe to fight, a battle to win, no overall goal other than to stand by and watch one of his youngest squad members get put back together again. Like one of the king's men from that damn nursery rhyme.

Owen and his minion had done the best they could, but bodies could only take so much mana infusion before it started to become more of a hindrance than a help. Asta's complete lack of mana only complicated this. After some debate, the recovery mages had settled on reducing the dislocations, healing the open wounds, and removing the worst of the swelling from his plentiful bruises. It was two hours before Owen had shakily wiped the sweat beading on his forehead and called an end to the healing session.

The helplessness of the whole scenario made him furious.

Yami stormed from the room, with a vague idea to check up on the members of his squad he had glimpsed downstairs or to simply find Finral and drag him back to base for some well-earned rest. Turned out he didn't have to; he practically tripped over him in the corridor outside.

All of Yami's anger abruptly drained away. Finral was slumped against the wall, bleary-eyed, long legs stretched out across the floor. A familiar unconscious silhouette was curled up next to him, unruly bedhead pillowed on Finral's thigh. Finral tilted his head up with a dull thunk as it made contact with the stone wall behind it, the better to meet Yami's raised eyebrow.

“Don't, Yami.”

“Wasn't going to say anything.”

Finral gave him a sceptical, exhausted look. “Yeah. Sure, you weren't.”

“No, seriously. I wasn't.”

Yami leaned casually against the wall and peered down at him. “Hey, pretty sure I heard Asta say something about how he hasn't cried since he was eight. The kid was long overdue for a crying jag. I'm not going to judge. Does no one any good to bottle shit up like that.'

He shot Finral a pointed look. “Would almost expect it, seeing what he went through.”

Finral remained blissfully oblivious as to his captain's generous concern. “Don't suppose you could give me a hand? He's surprisingly heavy for someone so skinny.”

“Oh, I was thinking that maybe you would just camp out in the hallway for the rest of the night.”

“Don't be an asshole.”

Grinning, Yami bent down and, in one swift motion, scooped the deadweight onto one shoulder and carted him back into the private healing room they had put aside for Asta. Finral followed one hand on the wall to steady himself.

“What did Owen say?”

Yami ducked his head, solemnity returning. “That he got lucky. That you did a good job, all things considered. No damage to the nerves or blood vessels that he could pick up. Fever's not an infection, he reckons it's probably stress. He fixed up the shoulder, but the kid isn't gonna be motor-mouthing for a couple of days, what with his jaw being wired shut.”

“Oh, shit .”

“Yeah.”

Yami rubbed a rough hand over his face as if to rub some of the weariness.

“He's in for a long recovery, no weight bearing on that leg until the doctor gives him the all-clear. He'll need several more healing sessions; there was too much to sort out in the one. Owen and his goons are pretty powerful, but there was a lot to sort out. He's more bandage than human right now.”

“He'll be grouchy, uncomfortable, and in pain for a while, but he'll walk again.”

With precious little ceremony, Yami let Yuno flop ungracefully from his shoulders onto the cot someone had helpfully drug in on Yami's suggestion. It had been met with some reluctance until Yami had pointed out there was a significant chance they would find the stubborn turd setting up camp in the corridor in protest if they didn't just make it easy for him from the outset.

Finral, the bleeding heart that he was, arranged Yuno's limbs so he less resembled an abandoned sack of potatoes and pulled up the blankets to cover his shoulders. He glared at Yami's snort of amusement at his fussing. Yami tried not to be concerned with how much of a pale imitation it was of the usual thing.

He mostly failed.

Especially when Finral sat on the edge of the bed and leaned forward far enough that his head was between his knees like he was trying to stave off an oncoming panic attack. When he looked back up at Yami again, there was suddenly a distance to his expression that made Yami uneasy.

“They're just kids, Yami. Dammit, why did this have to happen to kids? Especially that kid.”

Yami opened his mouth, halfway to telling Finral that yeah, life pretty much sucked and did shitty things to good people (Asta and Finral both) until you died, hopefully in a way glorious enough to be remembered by your nearest and dearest. But also that if you were lucky, the people you met made all the bullshit worth it and suck a little less (meaning, under these circumstances, that Asta would certainly forgive Finral the moment he saw the shroud of guilt the man wore like a widow's veil).

Unfortunately, he never got the chance.

Because, of course, that was the moment Langris made his entrance.

With his hair more dishevelled than he usually ever allowed it to be in public and wearing a simple shirt and pants rather than his formal uniform, Yami was forced to acknowledge reluctantly that the familial resemblance had never been stronger. 

Langris's eyes widened, and he looked about a hair's breadth from throwing themselves bodily at his brother. Thankfully, he seemed to restrain himself, screeching to a halt a respectable distance from the pair.

Good thing too. Finral would likely be cross with Yami if he bloodied the punk's nose for jumping his brother in this condition.

Instead of any such theatrics, Langris seemed to limit himself to gaping openly at the bloodstains decorating Finral's white shirt and the gory smears still coating Finral's hands. His face was pale. 

“Wha- Finral, your hands! Is that blood?”

“It's not mine,” Finral said absently, standing to greet his brother and stumbling slightly as he did so. He blinked bemusedly down at Langris. “Hello, little brother. Are you all right? You're looking rather. Harried.”

“Not- Am I- Are you alright? You look like you're about to fall over!” Langris exclaimed. 

"Klaus was nigh inconsolable, and you're here looking like. Wait. Whose blood is it then, if not yours?”

“Asta,” Finral replied simply, waving vaguely over his shoulder. 

For the first time, Langris seemed to notice the two prone figures occupying the beds beside him and looked appropriately taken aback by the extent of the dressings visible above the pale blue blanket. Even after the doctors were done with him, the kid looked like a tenderised side of meat. Anyone who hadn't seen him before Owen cleaned him up would have probably wondered if he'd been treated at all.

“That still- why are you covered in blood?” Langris asked, agitated, “What happened ?”

Finral blinked and then let out a hastily muffled giggle. Then another. With a rapidly sinking heart, Yami witnessed his subordinate break down in helpless, riotous giggles.

He's beginning to crack , Yami thought grimly. About time .

“I-” Finral snickered, high-pitched and wrong, “-I had my hand inside his leg, Langris!”

Langris stared at him, aghast.

Finral cackled and brandished his hand in front of his brother's face. “My hand! In his leg!”

Finral's face abruptly fell as he turned his hands this way and that, taking in for the first time how Asta's blood had marked every crease, every callous. 

Seemingly done with trying to get a straight answer out of his brother, who was regarding his hand as if he'd never seen it before, Langris turned to Yami.

“Did he hit his head !” he demanded, his tone taking on a matching, half-hysterical note.

“Nah,” Yami drawled, winding an arm around his portal mage who had begun to cackle and sway listlessly. ''He's just in shock. Probably a little hysterical. It's been one really shitty day.”

In response to Yami reaching out to steady him, Finral turned his face into Yami's shoulder, one hand coming up to grab at his shirt weakly. Yami let him anchor himself, seeing as how his shoulders were still shaking with helpless guffaws. Or.

Nah. It was probably laughter.

Langris was looking at him with an expression that took Yami a moment to place as concern.

“What happened ?”  he asked helplessly, and it was only the fact that he looked so lost that softened Yami enough to give him a rundown of the events of the previous day, trying to sound as bored as possible as he did so.

“The Black Bulls and a couple of other squads were out in the forsaken realm, rooting out Diamond Kingdom mages that didn't agree with the King's change of heart and were out to make trouble. We got split up, not sure what happened for certain, except that it looked like Asta got himself outnumbered and ended up being kicked off the side of a cliff. Least, that's what it looked like when we found him.”

Yami sniffed and thumbed the bridge of his nose. God, what a shit-show. A simple mission that had snowballed into this nightmare. Unbelievable was what it was.

“Finral and I happened to be close by to notice the commotion and found him pretty quickly, but he was- he was pretty banged up. His leg was smashed to bits. Finral reckoned he was in danger of losing it entirely. In danger of a lot of things, really. We couldn't exactly portal out of there-”

Here, Yami paused to glare warningly at Langris. If the little shit took this opportunity to start yammering about subpar magic or any such fuckery then Yami was punching him, Finral be damned.

But no such thing happened. Langris remained white-faced with clenched fists but kept his mouth shut. Smart. Brat was learning.

Yami continued to eye him suspiciously, but continued, “-so Finral here had to fix him up himself. It was a pretty bloody business, what with bits of bone sticking out of places. He had to get pretty up close and personal with Asta's anatomy to sort him out. He's been running on empty ever since.”

He glanced down at Finral pointedly. Yami was pretty sure that he was the only thing keeping the elder Vaude-come-Roulacase on his feet at this point. When he looked back up, Langris was nodding slowly.

“That's... so very like him.” He smiled slightly.

Yami wished he'd stop. It was creepy.

“Brother was always reading when we were younger. He'd do it just for the sheer pleasure of knowing things, regardless of whether they'd help him academically.” He tilted his head, looking almost fond. “Nice to know some things haven't changed.”

Yeah , Yami thought sarcastically, remembering some of the tales Finral had recounted, maudlin and too drunk to know better. That's why it took most of my squad and Julius himself standing between you and him for you to stand down at the tournament. Why you put him back in a hospital bed as soon as he got out of it. Because nothing has changed between the two of you since you were kids . Right.

As if sensing the turn Yami's thoughts had taken, Finral distracted him by tugging lightly where he'd still snagged a handful of Yami's shirt. Voice suddenly hoarse and almost inaudible, he mumbled, “Can we please leave now. I wanna go home.”

He raised his head slightly, enough for Yami to see that he'd been wrong. Caught in the midst of what was probably the quietest emotional breakdown he'd ever seen, Yami wasn't able to pinpoint at which point hysterical giggles had turned to Finral crying silently into Yami's shoulder. But the red-rimmed eyes looking up at him sorrowfully weren't concealing anything.

“Yami. Please?” Finral sniffed and went to hide his face again. Went to hide it from Langris, who clearly wasn't fooled and looked a little sickened by the realisation, like Yami had actually given in to his baser instincts and gut-punched him.

That didn't make Yami any less furious. It had been the Noble House of Vaude that taught Finral to cry silently, to chronically devalue himself, to hide his tears. Finral may want to reconcile with his little brother, but Yami's heart wasn't nearly as open to forgiveness. A surge of protectiveness rose within him. They were done here.

“As I said, it's been a shitty day, so if you'll excuse us. Or don't, I don't care. I'm taking Finral home.” He sent Langris a long, hard look and saw in the other's face that he had been understood.

Finral was a Black Bull. His home was with Yami, his family, and his squadmates. He didn't belong to the Vaudes, not anymore. Not with Langris. Not today.

Half carrying Finral with him, he made to exit the healing rooms.

“Wait.”

Without looking back at them, Langris thrust out one arm in a familiar gesture, and Yami was honestly astonished when a portal opened in front of them instead of a spatial attack being hurled his way.

“Go on.” Langris's lips were pursed, 'You can't possibly let him fly home like that.' 

That much was true, Yami supposed. He couldn't very well go jump on a broomstick with Finral still clinging to his shirt front. Nor could he go dragging him round the barracks yelling for Cob either.

Not wanting to look a gift horse in the face (especially not this one) Yami stepped through, Finral plastered to his side. He didn't bother to thank him.

xXx

Well then.

When Langris had been roused from sleep by Klaus making a racket over the missing Black Bulls (and Yuno, but Langris didn't care about him) being found, his first reaction was irritation. Langris was precious about his sleep, and any disturbance was usually met with swift retribution. His hand stalled with the creeping sensation of concern when he'd heard his elder brother's name, followed by, ‘covered in blood’, ‘healers seemed worried’ and ‘he looked really bad’.

He'd immediately thrown on the nearest pair of boots and was halfway to the healing rooms before he had fully processed what he was going to do when he got there.

What he'd been expecting was to find Finral bruised or a little battered but grinning sheepishly, readily assuring anyone who'd listen that, “It's perfectly fine, no need to worry, everyone. The ladies dig battle scars!”

To which Langris would scoff, and throw his hands up in the air with copious exasperation and could go back to bed knowing that his idiot brother would go on to live another day.

Instead, Langris finds him looking dazed, sick, and tired with a fat lip, shivering in his undershirt, looking like he'd been stabbed. He hadn't been expecting that, and for a moment, he forgets himself, nearly goes to pat his hands over his brother's chest and stomach to figure out where all the blood is coming from. He calms down long enough to ask and is momentarily very glad he didn't make a fool of himself checking Finral over for non-existent stab wounds.

He's only reassured for as long as it takes for his brother to break down into hysterics and his brutish captain to step in to tell Langris what happened. His brother, his gentle, kind, useless brother, had been forced to perform a brutal and bloody emergency medical procedure out in the field. On his friend. Without any pain relief or proper medical supplies.

Well then.

That explained a few things. Like, why Finral looked like he was inches away from taking a sheet of sandpaper to the ugly mess marring his skin. Why he looked so peaked and ill. Why Finral had buried his head into his captain's shoulder like a lost child to hide his losing battle with tears.

Finral hadn't been able to muster a single attack spell when he was younger, so desperate to never cause anyone any harm. Yet here he was, having just dealt out a considerable amount of it to a friend at that, and it was eating him up inside. That was. Unfortunate.

Being witness to his brother's obvious distress had caused a pang of guilt to resonate through him. Langris could remember how Finral had so often been chastised by their parents for crying when they were children, or cuffed by a tutor when he had burst into frustrated tears. How Langris himself had mocked him, called him weak for his outbursts, even when his brother had never done the same to him. He'd always been ready with a hug and smile on the rare occasions Langris had sought him out for comfort.

What's up Langris?' Finral would say, sleepily. Scary dream huh?  

And Langris would nod, hold out his arms, and Finral would lean over and lift Langris onto the bed. 

Ooft. Must have been one bad dream to scare my brave little brother. Then he'd wipe Langris' face clean of tears, kiss him on the end of his nose to make him laugh and declare it all better, and there wouldn't be any more nightmares that night.

Langris hadn't thought about that for years.

Finral though. Finral hadn't cried in front of him for a long time. Had never been anything but his overly-cheery, self-deprecating (and more recently, unsettlingly determined) brother for a long time. It was. Hard. To see him like that.

So he'd given them a lift. If Finral wasn't well enough to make his own portal, he was hardly well enough to travel, after all. He had visited the Black Bulls' hideout once, two years ago to deliver news of Finral's disownment. He hadn't set foot inside the place but remembered enough to deliver them to the front doorstep. If Langris was expecting a fight from the Black Bulls captain, he didn't get one. He'd stepped through the portal without another word, his brother clinging to him like a limpet.

Once he'd cancelled the spell, Langris sighed, looking at Asta and wincing. What a mess. His leg, the leg that Langris' brother had set, was bandaged tightly from hip to foot. Langris could see pinkish stains mark the wrappings where the bone had pierced skin. It was- would've been- a truly grisly injury.

Langris sniffed. His brother had been seen to and was doubtless being looked after by the rest of his thuggish lot back at their wretched hive of scum and villainy. He'd seen that he was delivered safely. Time to go back to bed.

He was prevented from doing so by a voice rasping out, “You're an idiot, you know.”

Langris whirled around to be confronted by Yuno, half his hair a fluffy mess, the other half lying flat. He was glaring blearily at Langris from where he was half sitting, half lying in the bed next to Asta's.

“What was that?”

“I said,' Yuno said slowly like he thought Langris was dim, “that you're a fucking idiot, Langris.”

Langris gaped at him, incredulous. He wasn't entirely convinced that the wind mage prodigy was properly awake. He also wasn't sure if it was more or less embarrassing to be berated by someone who was half delirious and wondered if he shouldn't just walk away now and hope that Yuno remembered this as some weird hallucination.

He stayed where he was, rooted to the spot, and elected to glare balefully at Yuno, who glared resentfully right back.

“Your brother,” he announced, “is a gift. A goddamn gift. He loves you, but you treat him like shit, you asshole. And he takes it because, for some reason, he seems to think that he deserves it just because he doesn't like hurting people the way you do.”

Langris flinched. Remembered his brother bleeding out in an arena. His hand raised for the final blow. A black sword held to his throat, nine furious glares. The tiny girl who spat, ' Monster! '.

Another, cowering away from him with stunned disbelief. 'I-I can't believe you'd do that.'  

Recalled the Black Bulls captain's fierce protectiveness just now, the arm he'd looped around Finral's waist. Shielding him from Langris.

Yuno scowled at him blearily, but it carried no less heat for its lack of focus. “Finral saved my best friend's life out in those woods. He was incredible, even if he was terrified. He's a good man, a brilliant knight, and you should treat him better.”

Seemingly done with his impromptu rant about how his big brother was apparently second only to the wizard king himself in terms of popularity, he flopped back down to the bed and slurred into his pillow.

“Bottom line? Go say sorry. He'll forgive you. He'd forgive you anything, even when he shouldn't.” Yuno yawned and slightly deliriously added as an afterthought, 'He gives great hugs too...'

With that, he dropped back to sleep, blissfully unaware of how close he'd come to giving Langris a conniption. Dazed, Langris wandered back to his rooms but did not sleep. Instead, he gazed unseeing at the stone wall opposite him, lost in memory until long after the sun had set.

Chapter Text

As he'd promised, Langris' portal spits them out practically on their front doorstep.

Yami made a mental note to take up the concept of base security with Finral sometime. What is the point of having a top-secret headquarters that everyone and their brother knows about?

He was mildly surprised when Finral pulled himself away from Yami's hold, rubbing at the tear tracks on his cheeks. They didn't stand out too harshly in the general pallor of his face, but combined with his red-rimmed eyes and the overall look of devastation, it would take someone a lot more oblivious than Yami not to notice how upset Finral was.

Unfortunately, the Black Bulls were not an oblivious bunch. They were generally more in tune with each other than most normal people were with their own families.

Yami knew that they wouldn't judge Finral for his tears. They would endeavour to make cheering Finral up a team-bonding experience and probably create one hell of a mess trying.

Still, Finral had only been able to start questioning the negativity that lurked inside his skull very recently. If he wanted to hide what he thought was a mark of shame, Yami wasn't going to stop him.

He would, however, be quietly honoured that Finral was willing to let Yami see the extent of his hurt.

Anyway, the team was more likely to focus on the copious bloodstains.

Inside the base, predictably, was chaos.

Vanessa was disturbingly sober, somewhat decent, and shouting into a communication device at someone who might be Sekke but who had definitely been reduced to begging for mercy in the face of her ire. From the intensity of her bearing, she had been trying for quite some time to get any information about where her captain and teammates had got to, whether they were injured or whether anyone was dead.

It seemed no one had bothered to check in with the Black Bulls at home, then.

Yami felt a stab of annoyance. The Bulls are frantic and running rampant as a result.

Grey was rapidly shape-shifting to convey her distress, from Asta, to Noelle, to Magna, to Luck, to Gauche and Zora, then back to Asta again.

Charmy was crying into a cupcake.

Henry was trying to placate the incandescent Vanessa, pretty hopelessly, as she was going at about a mile a minute, whilst Henry could barely utter a complete sentence in the same amount of time.

Visibly more agitated than usual, Gordon was pacing the common area and muttering heatedly, but between Charmy's thick sobs, Vanessa's ranting, Henry's slow drawl, and the loud puffs of steam that Grey was emitting every other second, there was not a hope of anyone hearing anything that he'd said.

As ever, the cumulative racket masked their Captain's entrance.

Finral snickered slightly at their antics, looking more relaxed than Yami had seen him in the last two days, but one hand was still holding onto the loose fabric of Yami's cowl, and he was still shaking. Yami exhaled slowly through his nose and stood on the threshold and just... waited.

He would usually raise his hollering to combat that of his squad, but with Finral calm for the moment and basking in the warmth of home, he was reluctant to disturb the younger mage's temporary peace. As soon as Yami were to raise his voice, he knew that Finral's shoulders would hunch immediately to meet his ears, and he'd dart away from the source of the noise. Away from Yami. So instead, he waited for one of his idiots to spot them.

The first to notice, of course, is Gordon, whose kohl-rimmed eyes widened joyously at their safe return. Delightedly, he raised his eyes to the heavens and began to murmur fervently once more. It looked a little like he's praising the saints or possibly something darker, but who the fuck knew with that guy.

Grey was the next one to notice, but typically only lets out a startled squeak and shifts instinctively into Finral in her horror, equally blood-stained and bedraggled. Thankfully, Finral's was too busy blinking confusedly at Gordon, so his bizarre manifestation went unseen. Yami doesn't like to think about how he would react to his bloody reflection. He shot her an avidly unimpressed glare, and Grey squealed and reverted into her usual blue-haired form, curled into a ball on the flagstones.

This caught the attention of Henry, whose face began to crease into a wide grin when he saw his first tenant literally darkening their doorstep. Finral waved awkwardly.

Oblivious, Vanessa continued to tear into the unfortunate attendant.

“Listen here, mister,” she growled, “for the third time, the last we heard was that there had been numerous and grievous injuries and three of our own were missing in action. We have heard nothing since. It has been hours. We are going out of our minds here with worry. Grey is having a panic attack right now!”

Grey was indeed wheezing in a way that indicated an oncoming panic attack. It was probably all the shouting, though, and Yami's impressive glower that had set her off.

Vanessa jabbed an accusing finger at the projected figure, who ducked away as if she could somehow strike him from several hundred miles away, and the poor bastard on the other end of the line cringed as if he believed she actually could.

“No more stalling! No more of your excuses! I don't care that you only came on duty half an hour ago; I care about my friends, my family. So, where are they?”

“Um, Miss Vanessa?”

“What?!”

Cowering, the poor unfortunate soul on the other end blubbered, “C-captain Yami is standing right b-behind you. F-Finral Roulacase, too.”

He raised a shaking finger and pointed to the named pair as if they were ghostly spectres straight from the pages of a penny dreadful.

As it happened, he was Sekke, which might explain his acute dismay with their reappearance.

Well, it was about to get worse. Yami had words for him.

Vanessa immediately whirled around and, in the same moment that she joyfully exclaims, “Boys!” he's reached out and plucked the device from her slackened grip.

Eyeing his prey beadily, he snarled into the mouthpiece, “Oi, Bah-hah.”

Looking like he was honestly considering pretending to 'accidentally' hang up, the unlucky Bah-Hah peeked around the desk chair he was using as an impromptu shield. He whimpered.

Apparently, Yami's dark aura was intimidating even via communication magic. Good to know. “How is it that my team are here, tearing the damn place apart instead of up at the barracks fucking up their shit instead of mine?”

He doesn't wait for a response.

“The next time me or mine go missing for twelve hours, we will be the first to know,” he barked and is coldly satisfied when Bah-Hah jumped at each syllable. “Not Julius, not Vangeance or whatever fuckwit you report to. Go run and tell your boss that. Now.”

Nervously, Bah-Hah held up a hesitant finger.  “Um, I would love to do that, Captain Yami, but I actually report directly to his Royal Highness himself now?”

Yami stared blankly.

Bah-Hah gulped. “Augustus Kira Clover? The. King?”

Yami's I-don't-give-a-fuckity-fuck expression remained. “Did I fucking stutter?”

Bah-Hah, whimpering nods frantically. “Yessir, I'll pass that on, sir. As soon as they let me off duty, sir-,”

Yami hung up before he could wrap up his babbling. Little wimp is too easy to reduce to a terrified wreck.

He turned to survey his unruly brood, who, already used to their Captain's black moods, hadn't deigned to pay much attention to the exchange between him and the very sorry Bah-Hah. They're too busy gaping at the mess that is Finral, who is trying and failing to smile reassuringly at them.

It doesn't work very well. Must be how fucking dreadful he looks right now.

Grey started blinking between Asta and the rest of their absentee members, more frantically than ever.

Vanessa had both hands over her mouth, and Henry was trying to calm Grey down, but his discordant chiming was going pretty much ignored.

Charmy was now feeding cupcakes to Gordon, who appeared to be devastated for some reason, tears streaming down his face and mingling with the frosting.

Utterly fed up, Yami wearily raised one arm in the universal gesture for 'Shut up,' and was mildly shocked when they obeyed.

Addressing Grey, Yami said gruffly, “Everyone's alive, but Asta's got himself beaten up pretty bad. He's going to need a lot of time to recuperate, but knowing that kid, I'll say he'll cut his recovery time in half with determination alone. The rest of the kids are a little scraped and bruised, but they'll be home tomorrow.”

It might be the truth, but it's heavily summarised. Yami wasn't going to dwell on it anymore tonight; they all need rest, and it won't come easily if they play out the events of the last day in their minds on repeat all night.

The Bulls chuckled uneasily a little in appreciation of their teammate's legendary stubbornness, but remained visibly worried.

Vanessa flung herself towards Finral, careful despite her apparent gracelessness, and he received her hug gratefully. Only with one arm, though, because the other is still tangled in the back of Yami's cowl.

Caught unawares, all three of them stared at the offending hand, Finral growing steadily pinker with each passing moment. Vanessa looked moments away from making a teasing remark, a knowing grin spreading across her face, and any other day, Yami would let her, would most likely laugh along with her. Now, he shook his head minutely in her direction. Today, Finral had earned a reprieve.

In an unspoken question, Grey became Finral in duplicate, thankfully sans blood this time.

Finral was quick to placate her with a hasty, “Oh, Grey, I'm fine, honestly! Not a scratch on me! You know me, more of a lover than a fighter-,”

“He's not hurt, not physically anyway,” Yami confirmed, striding past them, tugging Finral along in his wake and ignoring his indignant splutters. He was sobbing on Yami's shoulder not fifteen minutes ago. Finral was not okay. If any of the Bulls believe he is, Yami hadn't taught them a damn thing.

“I don't suppose anyone's prepped the baths already?”

Luckily, as fate would have it, he had the most cooperative teammates possible to hand, and they had indeed prepared the baths, knowing their captain's preference for a long soak after a hard mission.

Regretfully, however, this wasn't for Yami's benefit.

Henry very kindly indicated a door that led straight to the baths. He must have summoned them from where they usually settled deep inside the fort, having noticed Finral become increasingly wobbly on unsteady legs.

Yami lugged Finral into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind them. Without the eyes of the squad upon him, Finral let himself sag, leaning heavily on the side of the baths to keep himself upright.

“Get undressed,” Yami ordered. At Finral's disbelief, he rolled his eyes and made his way back to the door.

“Don't worry about your modesty, princess, I'm leaving.”

XxX

The base devolved back into chaos as quickly as it had ceased.

An army of sheep cooks was chopping vegetables and prepping chicken for some kind of stew.

Henry was happily sampling every batch that Charmy shoved at him, and whilst his reviews seemed limited to “De-lisc-ious!” he slurped down the next batch as soon as he finished the first, clearly pleased to be included in the rabble.

Gordon was... Is that a doll? Never mind, Yami didn't want to know.

Somehow, whilst practically beating off concerned squadmates with his katana, he made it back to Finral in record time. The price of their concern is how Yami's arms were laden with a leather satchel (courtesy of Vanessa), a large bucket of hearth-warmed water (Grey) and a bowl almost the same size of Charmy's Super Mana Restoring Chicken Soup that she'd shoved into his arms before Yami could protest.

Cursing, he kicked the door open and dumped everything as unceremoniously as he dared (Charmy will know if he's wasting food. She'll just know ) onto a nearby bench. On turning back to the hunched figure in the tub, his blood ran cold.

Leaving Finral alone was a mistake.

In the time it had taken for Yami to make it back to the baths, Finral had gotten his bloody little fingers on a rough rag and had begun scrubbing mercilessly at his hands. He doesn't look up when Yami comes in, which is indicative of his absolute focus on washing his hands.

On wiping them clean.

Any sign of solace that had been gained from being back in familiar surroundings is now gone.

Finral was visibly shaking despite the heat of the water, but simultaneously his skin shone with sweat as if his body couldn't decide whether it felt hot or cold. From what Yami can see of his face behind unruly curls, he looks wide-eyed and slightly wild. The thread of composure that he'd been hanging onto by a thread is very much gone. Yami suddenly felt like he was dealing with a wild animal. That was okay. This, Yami could deal with.

Slowly, he approached, lowering himself down onto one knee beside the bath and snatching the cloth from Finral's hands, unable to watch any longer. Finral gasped and made to reach out and grab it back. Yami didn't feel the slightest bit guilty about holding it high, out of his reach.

“Yami-”

“You may want to actually use the water, Finral. You're rubbing your fucking skin off.”

To prove the point, he gingerly took hold of one of the hands, making grabby motions in his own and holding them up for inspection, finding to his dismay that he was right.

Finral had rubbed his fingertips raw. His cuticles were sore and gaping. Fresh rivulets of red streamed down his forearms and plinked into the bathwater. If Yami hadn't interrupted him when he did, Finral would have likely kept going until he'd torn his fingernails off.

Wincing in sympathy, Yami lowered the hand so it rested beside the tub. Then he stood and emptied the bucketful of fire-warmed water over Finral's head.

Spitting water, Finral gasped something that sounded very uncomplimentary under his breath as he tried futilely to push his sodden hair off his forehead. Miserable, he let Yami catch one of his hands as it came back down before it could hit the water. Yami hooked a low stool with his foot and took a seat. Taking a cleaner rag, he then straightened Finral's arm out to the best of his ability and began to sponge away the worst of the mess. Chancing a glance at the younger man, Yami found him staring mindlessly up at the ceiling.

“I'm sorry, Yami.”

Yami paused, incredulous. “For what?”

Finral wiggled his trapped fingers weakly. “My hands... I didn't- I didn't mean to do that, I just. I just wanted to get the blood out from under my fingernails.”

“By trying to remove them?!”

Yami regretted the venom that accompanied this statement when he felt Finral tense and turn his head back to stare sightlessly upwards. Sighing, he returned his attention to his task. The blood and grime are beginning to shift with the help of the hot water, but some of the larger stains don't want to budge.

“You've got nothing to apologise for, Finral,” He dipped the rag and wrung it back out. “You did what you had to. Did Asta proud. Me too, for that matter. I know. I know that this was hard for you.”

Yami dropped the arm carefully over the edge of the tub, finally clean of viscera and grit, and reached for the pouch Vanessa had shoved at him firmly, filled with poultices and bandages painstakingly prepared and hastily conjured by their resident worried stitch witch.

“I'm the one who should be apologising to you. It should've been your captain to take that burden.”

Yami pointedly ignored the red-tinged puddles gathering underneath where the limb hangs limply. Lifting the injured hand once more, he carefully applied the balm to the worst of the self-inflicted sores and began to skillfully wrap the bandages around his palm, between Finral's long, narrow fingers, and tying them off at the wrists.

Satisfied that it had been cleaned and bandaged to his satisfaction, Yami muttered, “Other arm,” lowly, and Finral obediently offered it up.

“Have you ever done that?” Finral sounded wrecked, his face a mask of misery. “Made someone scream like that?”

Yami grunted. “Nope. Had to hold them down before, though. Had to hold Julius, once.”

Finral hummed quietly in vague interest but didn't ask Yami to elaborate. “I don't suppose it gets easier, huh?”

“No,” Yami said, turning his attention to Finral's left arm.

This one wasn't quite so bad; the worst of Finral's frantic cleansing had been focused on his right hand. Unfortunately, that was also his dominant hand. He'd still managed to draw blood from the left as well. It mingled gruesomely with Asta's, and he hastily daubs it away, then reaches for some more bandages. Packed this one with herbs, bound the hand the same as he had the first.

“It doesn't get easier. It's always horrific. But I never want to do it, and I always had to.”

He hesitated, then reached out and placed a finger and thumb on Finral's chin to tilt his head towards him. Made him meet his gaze.  Solemnly and meaning every word intoned, “You said it yourself, Finral; you didn't have a choice. Do you hear me? Asta is alive, and he'll bounce right back up again because of you.”

Finral met his eyes. Nodded once. Satisfied, Yami nodded back and let him go.

“Lean your head back,” he ordered, and Finral did so. Yami squeezed a small amount of Finral's preferred flowery soap onto his hands until it began to lather, wincing at the smell but continuing to rub it briskly into his friend's scalp. As expected, Finral practically melted under Yami's hands; the heat of the bathwater and Yami's ministrations had made him boneless and pliable.

He was half-asleep by the time Yami had rinsed his hair, and it takes some coaxing (and then brute force) to get him out of the bath and into one of Yami's robes. It barely kept Yami decent, but it buried Finral's slighter frame. Like this, damp-haired and plucking curiously at one loose sleeve, Finral suddenly looked very small, young, and vulnerable.

Having gotten the down low from a quietly concerned Henry as to where Finral's room was currently located, Yami prodded his charge in the proper direction until they reached a familiar doorway illuminated by candlelight from within that someone (Yami suspects Vanessa) had thought to light for them. Squeezing his shoulder, Yami gave Finral a gentle shove that sent the unbalanced mage lurching toward the mattress. Without skipping a beat, Yami pointed sternly and barked, “Sleep. Now.”

To drive the point home, he grabbed an extra blanket from the chest where he knew Finral hoarded them, shook it out, and spread it on top of the coverlet. Finral didn't waste his breath arguing. He'd been around Yami long enough that he knew that tone brooked no argument. He settled under the covers reluctantly but remained stubbornly awake, eyelids drooping.

On a whim, Yami sat abruptly on the edge of the bed and nudged the lump beneath the blankets, who wriggled over obligingly to make more room for Yami's wider frame.

“You know,” Yami drawled faux-casual, “I don't have the foggiest where my room has got to in the last couple of days. Can't be arsed traipsing about looking for it either,” Yami yawned pointedly. “Think I'll bunk with you for the night if it's all the same.”

It's not a question, it's an opportunity. There's a quiet sniffle followed by a soft, “I don't mind.”

Yami made himself comfortable sitting up against the headboard, and Finral curled up beside him under the blankets. Yami could detect a faint tremble that he was fairly sure wasn't from cold and casually set his arm down onto the mattress in the space between them. Left his palm facing upwards. An unspoken invitation.

After a minute, he felt the faint scratch of expertly bandaged fingers scrape hesitantly against his and pretended not to notice when Finral slowly interlaced their fingers. Didn't acknowledge the hushed, “Thank you,” either, beyond a gentle squeeze in response. It took considerable effort to rein in his usual crushing grip.

He doesn't know what exactly Finral is thanking him for. What went down on the mountainside, for giving him a place to hide from his brother or for not letting him shred his flesh to ribbons. Yami doesn't know, and he doesn't care.

It's like he said to Owen about Asta back at the infirmary; Finral is one of his. It would be downright irresponsible to leave him like this, and so Yami won't. He placed his other hand on Finral's back and felt his breathing go from stuttered and hitching to the slow and steady rhythm of the deeply asleep.

Yami was exhausted beyond measure, brittle from attending to his battered squad and Finral's bed was very comfortable, even in his relatively rigid pose up by the headboard. It's not like Yami hadn't slept in much worse places, though, and so he allowed himself to drift off a little. He had intended to keep a watch, for Finral's peace of mind and his own, but at least this way he was still close by when Finral inevitably dreamed of the mountains, the forest, of blood and guilt.

When he was brought out of his doze by unintelligible mumbles and a sharp gasp of distress, he moved automatically to quell the source of noise, stroking the width of Finral's shoulder blades. It's a motion more suited to petting the hell-beasts Yami kept chained in the basement than it is to soothing traumatised humans, but it does the trick. Finral's head had also shifted to nestle against Yami's hip, but he was too tired to care about what would usually be a gross violation of his personal space. He was too damn tired. Smacking his lips, Yami leaned back against the headboard and shut his eyes.

In the morning, he'll have to finally deal with the combined hysterics of his still-mostly-clueless squad. He'll have to go back to the capital to take his doubtless frantic idiots to visit the banged-up idiots still sequestered up at the barracks.

He was going to have to drag those idiots to see Asta and then somehow persuade everybody to leave because they were all too damn old for sleepovers, and the intensive care rooms are too small for a fucking bedside vigil anyway.

Ah, that's the future Yami's problem. The Yami of the present slept lightly and braced for the day yet to come