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“Captain! Kazuha!”
Kazuha’s blood soaks his shirt, Beidou’s cloak, everything, trickling down her arms, streaking the sides of his face and chin. Furong and Huixing had greeted her at the shore where the Alcor was anchored—their enthusiasm stripped away.
It happened so fast.
“Suling!” Huixing screams over her shoulder as Furong springs forward, “Suling! Suling, get up here!”
Beidou ploughs past Furong and up the gangway. Kazuha’s eyes are open, but empty. She doesn’t know how much blood he’s lost but his skin is icy and white.
She scarcely remembers what happened. Vagrants, thieves, bandits. There hadn’t been many of them. She can’t remember their faces.
Her knees hit the deck and she settles Kazuha down gently. His head lolls.
Downhill, faster than she could keep up with. But Kazuha was faster.
“Kazuha—Kazuha!” She snaps in his face. “Look at me, kid, look at me.” His eyelids flutter and she cups his face between both her hands, wiping blood from his cheeks with her thumbs. “Look at me, kid. You’re okay.”
He presses his face into her hands, eyes slipping shut.
Downhill.
The stars are acute, their lights cutting-edge. The darkness is cut-throat.
Suling throws himself to the deck beside her with Huixing close in tow. Xu Liushi comes running with arms full of medical supplies. Drake has taken over the ship, hoisting the anchor and setting a sharp course for Liyue.
“Kazuha,” she can’t feel her voice, “open your eyes, kid, open them. I need you to keep them open.”
“I brought more towels!” Juza appears with arms full. “What else? Do you need anything else?”
“Standby,” Suling says, folding a towel thrice in on itself and pulling Beidou’s soaked cloak away from Kazuha’s wound. The dagger is buried to the hilt. “Juza, Beidou. Hold him down. Don’t let him move.”
Beidou leans over Kazuha, pressing her forearms across his chest and giving it her whole weight. Juza pins his legs. Huixing takes both of Kazuha’s hands and holds them together by the wrists. Suling grips the hilt of the knife.
There was no need to pin him, though. Kazuha doesn’t try to fight.
The ship rocks beneath them under Drake’s swift command.
Beidou stays with him.
The unwarranted calm makes her uneasy, and the slosh of ocean wave against the hull of her ship is disturbingly familiar, like they’re sailing about on commissions or trade routes rather than a desperate course for Liyue. She sits by Kazuha as night crests and her men scramble about the deck, but there’s little to be done with the course charted and underway and Drake at the helm. They’re pacing, more than anything. Killing time. Anxious.
It wasn’t safe to move Kazuha, and so Suling’s medical supplies were relocated to the deck, where he tends to Kazuha as best he can, but even that is a stagnant effort. Wound stapled and wrapped, there is nothing to be done.
Beidou kneels close, her hands wrapped around Kazuha’s. His face is slack and ashen, his lungs filling shallowly and emptying with a shudder. His hand is cold despite the enthusiastic heap of blankets she and the others assembled around him.
A hand grips her shoulder, and Drake comes to kneel at her side. “He’s a fighter,” Drake says, firm, “and more stubborn than most people I know. He’ll make it.”
“He was protecting me,” Beidou says. “It shouldn’t have been him.”
She can’t recall the events any clearer, and hindsight has done her no good, but she remembers how it happened. She turned her back when she shouldn’t have. Kazuha stepped in. It shouldn’t have been him.
“You’ve gotta work through that yourself,” Drake says, pulling her back. “I can’t tell you what to think or how to feel, but you know what he’s like. After he’s gotten his legs underneath him again, talk to him.”
Beidou doesn’t disagree. But there’s too much twisting in her gut to be able to think clearly. “I appreciate it,” she says. She means it, and hopes he can see that, even if her tone does nothing to prove it. “Thanks.”
Drake nods, pats her shoulder, ruffles Kazuha’s hair gently and shuffles away. The ship is eerily quiet, wind whittling againsts the sails as the ocean slaps up against the hull. Drake takes the galver back from Furong. Huixing is in the crow’s nest. Xu Liushi and Little Yue pace. Juza plays dice with himself and Grub is tucked between two crates reading a book. Beidou hasn’t heard her turn a page in hours.
And Kazuha is still, his breaths so papery she can’t hear them.
Suling was able to stitch the wound and stop the bleeding, and the blade sank below his ribs, away from his chest cavity, but there’s no telling what the dagger did to Kazuha’s insides, and he lost a lot of blood. If he’s still bleeding internally—even though Suling found it unlikely—then he won’t make it to Liyue. Not without a miracle.
She leans her head down and presses Kazuha’s hand against her forehead, squeezing his stiff fingers.
“It shouldn’t have been you,” she whispers. “Forgive me. This is my doing.”
“Beidou…?”
She snaps her head up to see Kazuha’s eyes, half-closed and drowsed with medicine.
“Hey,” she says, leaning in, “hey, kiddo.” He looks up at her, lost, with pain thrumming through his glassy eyes, and her heart throbs. “Don’t try to talk yet, yeah?” She lets go of his hand with just one of hers to smooth his hair out of his eyes. “We’re headed to Liyue, now, we’re gonna get you some help.”
He watches her hands, blinking slow. Then he finds her face again. “Beidou, you… look upset.”
Oh. Oh, if that isn’t—
She catches herself, squeezing her eyes shut until she’s regained her footing. She can’t lie to him. Not like this. “I’m upset that you’re in pain,” she says. “But not with you.”
“W’With yourself…?” he asks, but given the sadness in his eyes, she knows he doesn’t need an answer. His face twists around the edges. “Please.”
He’s right, but his voice is weak and there’s a hole in his gut. “Kid,” Beidou says, “I know we need to talk about this. But the most important thing for you now is to save your strength. There’ll be a better time.”
The frayed edges of Kazuha’s exhausted countenance twist again, reaching his eyes. He looks distressingly close to crying. “B’Beidou—”
Sharply, he snaps his teeth shut and his muscles seize.
“Hey, hey, careful. Careful, Kazuha.” Beidou lets him clutch the life out of her hand, and she strokes his hair while he gasps. “Take it easy, kiddo. You lost a lot of blood.”
“I’I know,” Kazuha hisses, teeth clenched. “Just—”
“Squeeze my hand,” Beidou says. “As much as you need to. Okay? You can squeeze it from now until Liyue if that’s what you need.”
“I don’t want to hurt y—”
“You already spared me from that,” Beidou says. “I know it hurts. It’s nice to have something to hold onto, yeah? Let me help.”
Kazuha responds by squeezing her hand, hard, and she clenches her teeth against the sharp twinge of pain and keeps petting his head. She can’t tell if it’s at all calming, but he leans into the touch instead of away from it.
“I’ll be okay, Beidou,” he strains. “Really. I’ll be okay.”
And it’s ridiculous, because the last thing on his head should be reassuring her, but Kazuha’s always been like this. Even when she and the Crux took him in, his biggest concern was how it would impact their reputation and their safety, as though he weren’t the one on the run for his life. As many times as she tells him to worry about himself—not only her, either, but her crew as well—he isn’t going to change.
“Yeah, you’ll be fine, kiddo,” she says. “But give it a rest, will you? You’ve fought hard enough for one day. We’ll take it from here.”