Chapter Text
Unusually, in this corner of the multiverse, Leonie actually has money. She is, not to put too fine a point on it, rich. She also, and also unusually, does not have red hair. She was born with red hair, but, well. Some stuff happened, and it's white now. (This is related to her money situation, which she rarely talks about.)
After the war, after Leonie returns to the aboveground world and has time to stop feeling like she's about to fall up into the sky, she stays at the Derdriu Free Public Hospital. The people there are nice, and they let her keep a lamp burning by her bed at night. They hardly ever get annoyed when Leonie asks twoscore questions about every single treatment before letting them proceed. She just--needs to know, is all. Even if she doesn’t know what stuff is called, she has to know why it’s needed and what it actually does.
Leonie learns the hospital’s routines through diffusion. She knows when the healers change shifts, she knows which healer's assistants take sugar in their tea, and she times her days around the eight and twelve medication rounds. The staff get her as well as they can, but when she’s discharged she doesn’t really leave. She gets a place near the hospital, sure, but she keeps showing up in the hospital itself.
The thing is, she doesn't need money, and she doesn't have a goal, and she does still have two good hands (attached to one and a half good arms and balancing pretty well on slightly less than two good legs) and she can help, a little. (Leonie has lost, among other things, her ability to accurately judge her own contributions. She helps, more than a little.) She brings water and makes tea and chats with the other patients and reassures families and she's just kind of… around. The old healers, and the ones who used to work near the Almyran border, nod and carry on. The newer ones and the ones who were trained up away from a war front, they give her funny looks but they settle. She brings tea, she brings bandages, she's a fixture of the hospital. It's weird, but normalcy is both overrated and unattainable. She keeps showing up.
They're glad she's around when a summer fever hits and they need all hands, even hers, and they're glad she's there when there's an earthquake in Riegan. She does not fully understand how glad they are, but she does at least grasp the general concept. Leonie learns a lot about how the human body is supposed to fit together, mostly by diffusion.
She “sees a few people socially” but mostly doesn't bother. One of the healer's assistants smiles at her every time she shows up, smiles special when she brings his tea (a smoky blend with one spoon of sugar and a squeeze of lemon), and eventually asks her to dinner.
He takes her to a restaurant near the sea wall, holds the door for her (not just because of the arm and leg situation but to be nice), even pulls her chair out for her. She doesn't mind crowded places any more (the healers are really good at their job), doesn't clench her fists when he gets behind her, so all in all she's doing pretty well. Dinner is good, nice flavors, and there's wine too. Leonie has so very much money that she could pay for both their dinners for a year without blinking, but he pays for dinner too. He holds her hand and she lets him.
They go out for dinner again, and they go to a concert and they walk around the public gardens. He keeps holding her hand, and eventually he kisses her. She lets him. He takes her to bed.
It's not bad. It's not anything really. He's done this before, she's done this before, they make it work. He kisses all her scars and is careful of the leg and the arm and the shoulder and blah blah. He looks at her like she's something worth looking at. She looks at him and sees anatomy. His skin is soft, his hands are soft, and he has a comfortable layer of fat. His scars are all little ones, the type you have to look for instead of the type that stand out. His hair has pigment. He asks for reassurance by asking if she is okay, by touching her carefully with his soft hands. She curls herself around him afterwards, cradles him like the seawall cups the city, which seems to suffice to reassure him. She listens to him breathe.
The relationship doesn't last. She is too wooden, apparently, too distant. That makes sense. Leonie was captured near the tail end of the war with the Empire and given to the masked mages. They had her for a little more than a year. It felt longer. She was given a fortune after she was rescued (as compensation for her misfortune), allegedly for the valor she showed in her last battle. It is sufficient to live on.
A few more relationships find Leonie after that, but even though she knows to warn them about herself, they still want her to emote. Nah.
She volunteers at the hospital six days a week. On the seventh day she wanders around the city, stares at the sky from a thousand parks and windows and staircases. She climbs the seawall to put both ocean and sky in her field of vision. When she watches the sky, in all its moods, she almost feels.