Chapter Text
Navi took a deep breath, aimed the stick at the button, and leaned into it as hard as she could.
Which was. Pretty hard considering this was an all-or-nothing scenario, she didn’t really have a lot of balance normally, and being down a few units-of-varying-sizes of blood wasn’t helping. But hopefully, ideally, ringing the absolute crap out of this doorbell would work.
The stick snapped in half. Navi barely caught herself before falling after it, and then had to give that up to yank herself backwards instead of touching the heavily warded house. That would definitely have knocked her unconscious in this state. She wanted to die somewhere with slightly more dignity than a doorstep.
The door opened. Navi grinned at the man who stood just inside it, resolutely ignoring the trickle of blood from where the cut on her forehead had opened up again. “Hellooo-“ she started to croon.
The door closed.
“Aw come on.” Navi groaned. “Let me in or I’ll pitch myself into your wards and coat your door in my blood.”
The response was muffled: “I didn’t order anything, thank you.”
“I’m gonna vomit as I die.” Navi threatened. “And expel all sorts of fluids.”
“Very charming, try the next block.”
“You owe me, ass-.” Navi yelled. She realized very quickly that that had been a mistake when she had to swallow the last syllable. Too much effort. Things were blurring. She was still unsteady.
“If this is your idea of a booty call -“ that sentence was doomed to be unfinished. Navi lost the fight with gravity. A slight wobble turned into a pitch of the world’s physics, and she was drawn down, down, the stone steps and blank welcoming mat equally inviting and foreboding, the wards lighting with her proximity and preparing to expel the witch-
She collided instead with a warm, strong, and very annoyed body instead.
“Chicken.” Navi muttered into what was probably an abdomen.
Then she lost the fight with consciousness too.
Not to be deterred, Navi eventually won another round against the Entity Known As Sleep. It felt like she had to claw her way up her own throat and out to reach consciousness again, and the rest of her body still wasn’t happy.
But she wasn’t on a street, at least. She was on… a couch?
Still bleary (the world was spinning at the edges, but if no one else mentioned it, she wasn’t going to) Navi decided moving her head was a bad idea, and instead flicked her eyes sideways. Which meant her gaze slowly drifted sideways, and she forgot why she was looking that way by the time she was.
A man stepped into view, scowling.
“What.” Navi slurred, “No bed?”
The scowl deepened.
“I figured I’d be all bandaged up’n stuff. Clean nightgown. Tea on the table.” So long as Navi didn’t think about her jaw, it seemed capable of working.
“First of all.” The man sounded more annoyed than he looked. Which was very. “I do not undress people without their permission. Second, you’ve only been unconscious for perhaps a minute. Third-“
“Speedrun.” Navi murmured.
“- you are absolutely wrecked and I don’t think I can fix you. Or want to, really.”
“Fuck you. I’m a delight.”
“You have already ruined my clothing, my couch, and my wards.”
If Navi could’ve moved her head, she would’ve nodded sagely. “Speedrun.” She repeated.
Trying to focus enough that there was only one of him was hard, so she closed her eyes instead. “Y’re gonna make me say the words, huh.”
There was a heavy sigh, and a frustrated growl. “Or you could say nothing and die.”
“I’d be even more inconvenient as a corpse.”
“Doubtful.”
“Bet?”
“No.”
“Chicken.” Navi cracked open one eyelid. Rambling didn’t take much, but this needed to be actual words. Proper ones. In the right order. “I, huntress Navier de Mortier, call upon the changeling Nik-“
She fumbled for his full name. Was it just Nick? Nik? Nicholas? Nicole?
“Nikolai Domino.” He sounded resigned, and very bored. Asshole. She was bleeding to death. On his couch. He could at least care more about the couch.
“-the changeling Nikolai Domino, to fulfill the favor - the favor I am owed.”
“And what favor would that be?” Nik asked, voice honey-sweet.
She struggled to focus, because something about that tone said ‘safe’ in a way her body desperately wanted to collapse into. Part of her mind gabbled about hunting tactics and compulsions and glamours, but it seemed to have been muted, and the remote was nowhere to be found.
Navi gave up. “Heal me.” She directed. Everything else could come later.
Another annoyed huff. “I accept the charge. You’d better not drip onto the floors-“
If there was more after that - and there almost certainly was - she didn’t hear it. As soon as he’d accepted the charge, her survival instinct had heard what it needed to, and tapped out.
There wasn’t anything else to step into the ring - so sleep claimed another victory.
Nikolai was not having a good day.
Things had already been vaguely uncomfortable - there was a storm rolling in, and he could feel the barometric pressure trying to melt his sinuses. The raid he’d been scheduled to lead was now half b-string fillers. He hadn’t eaten in a while, and the edge was just starting to make itself known.
And then Navier de fucking Mortier had shown up 80% dead on his doorstep.
(He couldn’t say half dead, because he had seen her half-dead before. He had also seen literal death warmed over, so this wasn’t that either. No, about 80% was fitting.)
He hadn’t seen her in years. He didn’t realize she knew where he lived these days. Technically, they’d only met the once, on the worst day of Nikolai’s current life, and he was pretty sure it ranked fairly low on her list of life experiences too.
Burning out a nest of changelings is never a walk in the park, after all.
She was lucky he was comfortable enough in his current form to be able to surge forward and catch her when she collapsed. She was lucky he wasn’t hungry enough to take advantage of her loss of consciousness and treat her as the universe’s DoorDash delivery. She was lucky-
Nik suppressed a sigh as he carried her upstairs. She wasn’t lucky, not by what he could tell from her wounds. The head wound had bled a lot, and she probably had a concussion, which made the passing-out thing extra worrying. She’d lost a lot of blood before getting here though, so it could’ve just been lightheadedness. One of her ankles was turned a really wrong way, there were claw marks on both arms and the injured leg, and the scratches that covered the rest of her could’ve been from anything.
The only thing he didn’t see was a pair of puncture wounds from a bite, so that was cool, at least.
He managed to get her into the bedroom without whacking either her head or her ankles into the doorframe, which was also cool. That ankle didn’t need any more damage and she didn’t have the brain cells to spare to any additional blunt trauma.
The bed was clean, if not fresh, from where he’d last changed the sheets a week ago, because he hadn’t slept since then. Good enough. Onto the bed she goes.
As he turned away to go hunting through his house for whatever was left that could be counted as a first aid kit, Nik realized there was a bit of a commotion coming from his desk. Namely, the flashing lights on his computer, and the headset he’d left hanging on the monitor.
Oh, right, the raid.
Nik picked up the headset, and unmuted it. “Sorry folks.” He said cheerily, “household emergency. I’m out for the evening.”
He quit the call - and the game - before anyone could get a real question through.
What was next? Bleeding huntress. Disinfectant, bandages, painkillers, water… and blood.
There were three bags of blood left in the fridge. Nik took all three, popped a straw in the oldest, and left the other two on Navi’s stomach to start warming. One of them was O-, so at least he had something he knew he could give her. He wasn’t certain if the A- was going to be compatible; he’d need to taste her blood to check for sure, and he didn’t want to do that until he had to.
He already knew the B+ wasn’t going to work based on… well, smell wasn’t right. Vibes? Gah. Fine. The blood vibes were wrong, and besides, it was better if he was fed to prevent any further shenanigans or avoidable headaches.
The headache that was Navier was at this point classified as ‘unavoidable.’
Sighing, Nik got to work.