Archive of Our Own ^beta

As if the very ground itself can hear her thoughts, and wishes to punish her for them, her foot catches on a particularly nasty chunk of ice and she goes sprawling.

Someone shouts. (Fjord? Caduceus?) Beau can’t tell who anymore. The ground beneath her is strangely soft. And… warm?

Huh. That’s weird. She’s warm. Maybe it’s more Aeor magic. Maybe the snow is heating up from some weird city magic. Better dig herself down a little more. If she can just keep her eyes closed, if she can just have a few moments to sleep — that’s all she needs, just a little rest, just a moment to close her eyes and—

Something sharp hits her cheek and Beau sits up with a gasp. Her eyes are bleary. She can barely see. She looks around, trying to see what hit her. Her head doesn’t move very much. Her neck feels like it’s made of jelly.

She’s feeling very warm. Almost like she could be sweating.

“Is she okay?” Veth’s anxious voice asks from somewhere behind her. Beau tries to turn and see her, but she can only blink.

“Beau!” Jester, this time. “Beau, are you okay?”

“Of course she isn’t okay,” Caleb snaps. “She’s freezing.”

“We’re all freezing.” Jester’s voice is just as harsh as his. “But she’s really hurt. A dragon almost ate her today, Caleb.”

Beau blinks. Who are they talking about? She tries to ask the very question, but her tongue doesn’t seem to be working. Her words come out jumbled. “Whorealltlkbut?”

“She’s developing hypothermia.” Beau blinks, and focuses on the looming shape in front of her. She thought maybe a bear had lumbered across their path — it would make sense, the luck they’ve had recently — but it’s no black bear rearing on its hind legs. It’s just Yasha, crouched in the snow. Her hands are on Beau’s face. She must have been the one to slap her. She’s holding Beau’s body upright, the only thing keeping Beau from flopping back on the snow.

It’s Yasha’s giant fur coat. That’s what she thought was a bear. But no, no bear. No danger. Just Yasha.

“Beau?” Yasha asks her softly, her brow pulled tight in worry. “Beau, can you hear me?”

“Yash?” Beau mumbles. She wants to lift her arms, but they’re stubbornly stuck to her sides.

“Does anyone have a potion? She really doesn’t look very good…” Fjord pokes his head around Yasha’s shoulders. Beau softens. Fjord is okay. She can't remember… it’s all a haze. Fjord was in trouble. She was in Lucien’s hand, her head filled with searing pain, her vision gone, bloody and dark. Fjord, impossibly far away. Yasha’s claws around her stomach, so gentle but so tight, afraid of dropping her, afraid she might not really be there. Then… she was a mammoth? She was running, but Fjord was behind her… or he wasn’t? He was on her, or that was Caduceus, or it wasn’t?

Gods, but it’s getting hard to keep her eyes open. But it’s okay. Fjord is here. They all are. Everyone’s together.

Whatever happens, at least they managed that much.

Something cold and glass against her lips. She tries to twist away from it — it’s a potion, she knows it is, but she’s already taken healing spells today, already sucked from their modest supply of health, and she can’t keep taking, not when Lucien is still out there, probably hot on their trail, not when none of them have slept in a day and they’ve all been a few inches from death since the sun set, not when she’s already taken so much, not when someone else might need it more.

But there’s a hand on the back of her head, firm and unwavering. “Drink,” Yasha says, commands really (it’d be almost hot if Beau could figure out which of the three Yashas in front of her is trying to shove a vial into her mouth), her eyes dark and her expression nearly furious. Like she’s mid-rage. Beau is mesmerized, distracted in equal measure, and it isn’t hard for Yasha to tip the healing potion down her throat.

She feels better almost at once. Some of the cloudiness leaves her head, some of the feeling returns to her extremities.

She is suddenly aware of the fact that she’s sitting in the middle of an icy wasteland, her ass getting progressively wetter and colder, fuck it’s fucking cold.

“Fucking shit holy balls,” she yelps as she leaps off the ground, and the relief that shocks through the rest of the Mighty Nein is palpable, even to her half-present mind.

“Oh, thank goodness.” Jester’s arms are around her waist a second later, squeezing the very precarious life out of her. Beau’s ribs groan in protest, and a moment later so does she. “Oh no!” Jester jumps back, terrified again.

Beau tries to reassure her. “‘M fine. Just sore.”

“Not to hurry everything along — Beau, I’m very glad you’re no longer dying — but can we move the fuck along, please?” Veth asks, her attention focused behind them, on the path they’ve come from, not the direction they’re going. “We’ll be exposed until we get to Essek, and I don’t like to think about what might happen if they catch up with us.”

“Are they chasing us?” Fjord asks, fixing his own attention over the expansive, endless snow. They all look for a moment, and no one even breathes.

“No,” Caleb says, quite sure for someone who knows exactly as much information as the rest of them. Beau would give him shit, if she had the energy to do much more than shake where she stands. “I don’t believe they’re following us. They’ve done what they needed to do. They know we aren’t a threat to them. They’re not going to divert from their task just to chase us down for a grudge. No, we should be safe. For now.”

“I still don’t like risking it,” Veth says nervously, and Caduceus joins in.

“I would feel much better if we could get somewhere warm, where we know we won’t be murdered in our sleep.”

“Doesn’t sound like any place in Eiselcross,” Beau tries to joke, but between her clattering teeth and the howling wind, she doesn’t think anyone hears her.

“We should keep moving,” Caduceus says. He glances at her. “I can’t heal you tonight. I’m sorry,” he apologizes, and Beau wants to reassure him, because it’s not his fault he blew all his high-level spells trying to save her from being mauled to death by a dragon.

“Can you keep going, Beau?” Jester asks, her eyes scanning Beau’s body skeptically.

“I can carry her,” Yasha offers. Jester doesn’t waggle her eyebrows or anything. That’s how Beau knows she really must look like absolute dog shit. Her face must be more messed up than she originally thought. Jester never passes up the chance to make some poking comment about her and Yasha (with special emphasis on the and).

“I can walk,” she tries to protest, but six heads shake, nearly identically.

“Too slow,” Veth says.

“You should save your strength,” Fjord adds.

“Don’t be a noble idiot,” Jester chides.

Yasha just slips her arms around Beau, one under her shoulders and the other in the bend of her knees. She lifts effortlessly. Beau scrambles to wrap her arms around her neck for some stability, but Yasha barely seems to feel her weight.

“Let’s go,” Yasha says to the rest of the party. “We should not stop again until we find Essek.”

Beau doesn’t know how long they’ve been walking. She doesn’t know how far they still have to walk. She just knows she’s bone-tired, all the way through her, and being off her feet is, she’ll begrudgingly admit, quite a nice reprieve. It quiets the screaming in her joints, even if only a bit.

Yasha takes care to make sure her coat fits all the way around her shoulders and Beau’s. She has to keep her tucked in tight to make sure no part of her pokes out from the thick covering, but with a little maneuvering (and a bit of surreptitious blushing, Beau’s perception check notes, rather pleased with itself) they manage it.

“This doesn’t count,” Beau mumbles into Yasha’s neck.

Yasha turns her head, dips it lower so that Beau’s lips ghost over the shell of her ear. “What?” she asks, softer than the wind. “Do you need something?”

“I said, ‘This doesn’t count’,” Beau repeats, louder and a little surer.

Yasha readjusts her grip. It pulls Beau tighter to her body, and Beau tries not to make it so obvious that she’s pressing as close as humanly possible. It’s warm against Yasha’s skin. It’s warm in Yasha’s coat. Yasha is warm, so warm she seems to burn, hotter than the river of lava that nearly swallowed her whole. Beau tucks her nose into Yasha’s warm skin, and fists her hands into Yasha’s warm shirt. She’s not even using the opportunity to cop a feel. She’d say that’s a damn good deal of growth, on her part.

She can tell it’s warm, but the longer she stays inside Yasha’s coat the more she shivers. Her body is taken over now, huge wracking shakes that threaten to launch her straight out of Yasha’s arms. Teeth clattering so hard they actually hurt her jaw. Every bit of her body aches. She thinks she might be dying.

“The shivering is good,” Yasha says, preemptively heading off her complaint. She can read Beau so well. Has she always been able to do that? Has she always been so attuned to Beau’s body, Beau’s mind, that she knows what she’s going to say a moment before she says it? “If you’re shivering it means your body’s still fighting to keep itself alive. Just a little longer.”

“As our d-date,” Beau says through her gasping shivers. “This d-doesn’t c-count.”

The rumble of Yasha’s laugh makes it all worth it. “Okay,” she says into the quiet space above Beau’s temple. “This won’t count as our date. I expect more from you.”

“‘M m-much more rom-mantic. G-gonna s-sweep you off your f-f-feet.” She glances down to where Yasha’s arms are wrapped around her torso. “Maybe not lit-terally.”

“We are going to have a conversation when we get to Essek,” Yasha says, suddenly and with conviction.

“We-we’re having one n-now.”

“Okay, then I am going to yell at you when we get to Essek.” Beau pouts, petulantly, but she’s too tired to argue. “I’m tired of waiting for the right moment to say what I want to say to you. So I would appreciate if you would not die, because I want to tell you that I’m in love with you. When you’re feeling better, maybe. Until then, this will have to do.”

Beau’s fingers dig in deeper, clutching at Yasha’s clothes, clutching at the warmth she can feel below them. “Yash, I—”

“It’s alright if you don’t feel the same way. But I… couldn’t go another minute without telling you. In case we don’t have many minutes left. I don’t want to risk it.”

Beau’s heartbeat is a steady thump thump thump in her chest. Not a quickened pace, but like every pound is a sledgehammer against her ribs. She can feel it through her chest and up the back of her neck, ringing in her too-hot ears.

Yasha loves her. It’s not a surprise to hear — not after the letter, not knowing Yasha how she does now. She’s a woman of few words, but her actions speak volumes. (Her hand this morning — was it only this morning? — gently rubbing the back of Beau’s hand, as if just by sheer force of will she could release Beau from the Somnovum. Her face as Beau gets carried away on the side of a dragon’s neck. The sound she makes when she snatches Beau from Lucien’s grip, an inch from death. Her hands now, cradling Beau like she’s the world’s most delicate package. Like she’s made of glass.)

It’s not a surprise to Beau that Yasha loves her. It’s not a surprise to Beau that she loves her back. She opens her mouth to say as much when a lance of ice shoots straight up her spine and she shivers so violently she knocks her head against Yasha’s chin and almost knocks herself out cold.

She groans at the impact. Right. Heal from life-threatening injuries now, grand love confessions later.

Besides, Yasha knows how she feels. She must.

She presses a kiss to the side of Yasha’s neck, just in case. “‘M tired, Yasha,” she whispers, already feeling blackness pull at the edges of her mind.

“I know,” Yasha says soothingly. “Sleep. If you can. We will be there soon.”

It’s not hard to believe her. The calmness that fills Beau’s stomach is overwhelming. A greater calm than she’s felt since stepping foot here.

She drifts away into a dreamless sleep, and that, combined with Yasha’s warm, strong hands, is a comfort, too.