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Imogen’s lungs are just a wheeze, her vision dim at the edges. She attempts to rise up onto her elbows, but her shoulders refuse to bear weight.
“We gotta get better at this,” she exhales thinly as she collapses back onto the floor next to Laudna, who is spread-eagle and motionless.
Laudna opens her lips to respond, but all she gets for her efforts is a wisp of dry air. She settles for a wave of her fingers and a grunt of agreement.
Dozens of wooden crates and burlap sacks, packed to the gills with each and every possession Zhudanna has acquired over the past 82 years, loom over them expectantly.
Laudna closes her eyes against the sight.
“Oh, loves,” Zhudanna croons as she bustles between a row of boxes. Spoon in hand, she has already donned in her favorite apron, is already at home in this new space. “You brought these all up the stairs by yourselves? You are too good to me. Too good! I’ll make tea, then we can put everything in its new spot!”
Imogen lets out an involuntary groan. She would cry, just a bit, but her body is too damn tired to operate tear ducts right now.
Hours later, after an impromptu floor nap and three pastries each, Laudna and Imogen recover enough to find their feet again and form a plan.
They corner Ashton in the kitchen two days later, in the middle of lunch preparation.
Ashton lays their knife down beside the rows of sliced peppers and leans back against the counter as the girls approach.
From his perch on the counter beside the cutting board and a pile of potato peels, Orym nudges them. With a teasing smile, he says, “Incoming. Should we run?”
"Nah," Ashton drawls, arms crossed, "I think we could take them if we needed to."
Imogen rolls her eyes at the both of them and receives a pair of winks in exchange.
All business, Laudna clears her throat and sets herself up in front of Ashton. “Ashton. We were wondering if you would, you know – well, we were wondering if you’d teach us to –”
Her hands struggle for the words, and, thwarted, slip into fists as she tenses her arms at her belly and emits a low growl from deep in her throat.
“Um,” Orym hums, slowly moving the kitchen knives a little farther away from Laudna without taking his eyes off of her.
“Should I be insulted?” Ashton asks, eyes darting to Imogen as Laudna bares her teeth and snarls.
Imogen clicks her tongue and bats Laudna’s arms down gently. “No. We’re just weak as fuck and it’s gonna get us killed one of these days. We were wondering if you’d –”
“Train us!” Laudna interrupts, shouting a bit in her enthusiasm. “We want strong lessons!”
“Oh boy,” Orym whistles under his breath.
Ashton raises a slow eyebrow. “Train you. Huh. What’ll you trade me for it?”
Laudna, leans in a bit, “What do you want?”
“You do calligraphy? I want to learn calligraphy."
Laudna smiles brightly. “No. I do not.”
“No deal then,” Ashton shrugs and goes to turn back to their peppers.
Undeterred, Laudna steps a little closer and offers in a hoarse whisper like a last breath, “I can teach you to be scary.”
“I’m already scary.”
A soft pity rises to her face as Laudna surveys them head to toe. “No offense, but your skills could use some work.”
"Really? Huh." Ashton considers her for a long moment, then, “Yeah, okay. We start after lunch.”
“Imogen too,” Laudna adds, suddenly urgent.
“Imogen too,” Ashton nods indulgently, as if they’d ever deny Laudna anything.
They offer a hand and she accepts it. A firm shake to seal the deal. The resulting fracture of Laudna’s fourth metacarpal under the pressure is audible.
Laudna beams.
Imogen groans.
Orym slips from his perch and heads out of the kitchen.
“Hey, Letters?” he calls as he goes. “We’re going to need you…”
Lunch feels a little like a last meal as Ashton lays out their plans for Imogen and Laudna.
Imogen finds herself savoring a sweet roasted pepper, rolling its skin across her tongue and thinking perhaps it will be her very last, perhaps she will die today.
Perhaps this whole plan wasn’t well thought through.
She glances over at Laudna, who is methodically making her way through a second potato, like a little extra starch can save her now. Laudna, dear Laudna.
Laudna will almost surely die today.
The dishes are cleared and cleaned far too soon, and no amount examination will make them dirty again, despite Imogen’s best attempts, elbows sudsy in the sink.
Laudna appears at her side in a pair of old loose cotton pants, patched at the knee by Imogen’s own hands just a few weeks ago. “Ashton says it’s time.”
“Laudna,” Imogen groans, resting her forehead on Laudna’s shoulder. “I think they’re gonna kill us. Accidentally, but still.”
Laudna just kisses the top of her head and pulls her out of the kitchen by a soft hand, which is a small concession all its own.
“Fearne, do you want to join us?” Laudna asks, as they pass Fearne, who has built herself a bit of a nest in the corner.
Fearne looks up, smiling brightly. “Oooh, that sounds like fun!”
Without pause or dip in the wide smile, she ducks her head again and goes right back to slowly unraveling the sweater in her lap, her eyes ticking back and forth pleasantly across the disappearing rows.
Laudna hesitates, the obvious next question hung up at the back of her throat, but Imogen just tugs her away.
“Come on. Better go before Ashton comes looking for us…”
It’s one week before Imogen can keep herself upright when Ashton nudges her shoulder with a palm.
“Come on, Temult,” they say, deep in their own stance, bouncing slightly with their own enthusiasm. “Tighten up that core. Legs staggered, stay low. Show me you mean it.”
“You know, I’d stop falling over if you’d stop pushing me,” Imogen grumbles, climbing back to her feet for the thirteen time.
It’s three weeks before Laudna stops collapsing under even the slightest pressure.
"Get up, try again," Ashton says, staring down at Laudna’s crumpled form.
Laudna stays very still on the floor, limbs splayed at a terrible angle. Eyes wide and unseeing.
Ashton nudges her with their foot.
"Go away. I am deceased." She lets her tongue loll out to the side for further evidence.
"You're gonna need a better excuse than that, dead girl. Come on, up you get," as they haul her back to her feet.
It’s a month before Laudna can run a mile without vomiting. Another week after that and she’s barely retching up clear bile any more.
When she reports this proudly to Ashton, they don’t bother telling her (yet again) that it doesn’t really count if the mile takes her two hours to finish. It isn’t worth the wasted words because she’s already gone off again, bragging to Fearne and FCG and anyone else who will listen.
(Imogen manages the mile in the first two weeks without too much trouble, but she continues to limp along beside Laudna for another two. Ashton eyes her with suspicion as she stumbles and wheezes, but she's always been a good liar when it counts.)
It’s two months before either figures out a stable spine. Laudna is just a stack of bones, and Imogen has been bent gradually into a gentle curve from years of reading hunched over candlelight.
“You lost control of your pelvis, again, both of you. Your backs are going to be sore tomorrow if you keep that up.”
Imogen huffs out a breath and plops face first into the dust. “Oh my gods.”
“Didn’t you ride horses?” Ashton asks her, incredulous. “What happened?”
“I got old, Ashton. I’ve aged fifty years in the past two months, thanks to you. Shut up.”
In a jumble of limbs beside Imogen, Laudna pops eighteen joints with a single twist. “My back has been sore for fifty years,” she says, like a boast.
“Well, it’s time we fix that, isn’t it?” Ashton offers her a hand up.
Laudna twists the other direction, and her shoulders visibly shift in and out of socket.
“Isn’t it?” Ashton says again, this time from the gut.
Laudna sits up straight with a salute and nudges Imogen with her toe.
Imogen rolls over halfway and gives up. "I hate you," she mutters in Ashton's direction, for the little good it does.
“Yeah, yeah, sure you do. Now show me that plank again,” they command, lifting Imogen bodily up into position by the back of her vest, “and really tuck your butt this time!”
After three months, Ashton deems them ready to spar.
Laudna breaks her thumb three times in their first match before she remembers what Ashton had taught her about a proper fist.
“What did I tell you, Laudna?”
Intensely, wild eyes, she resumes her fighting stance as FCG heals her yet again. “Cowardly thumbs get crushed. You said cowardly thumbs get crushed.”
“That’s right. Leave them out and proud. Let’s go again.”
She makes her fighting face, which is ghastly and no one has managed to dissuade her of, and swings wide.
Ashton blocks the hit easily and softly socks Laudna in the gut.
"See, you opened your stance up again, made yourself a target." They reach out to steady her before she can tip over backwards, but Imogen beats them to it, scrambling into the ring.
“Hit her softer, Ashton!” Imogen hisses, giving Laudna a once-over and then a second check, just for good measure. “You’re gonna break her.”
This exact exchange occurs approximately twelve times before Ashton breaks, thumping a fist into their own chest and shouting, “I can’t hit her any softer! I am literally ROCK!”
“Yeah, but –” Imogen attempts, but Ashton is already retreating, hands up in absolute frustration.
“You come hit her then!”
This is how Imogen and Laudna end up sparing at week three and a quarter.
Each match is jammed full of “Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” and “Oh no, come here, let me see it,” and “Time out, time out,” and “Hang on, let me help you up.”
Ashton paces the sidelines, gesticulating wildly and advising strategy and form to very little effect. If they had hair to pull, they’d pull it. But thankfully theirs is of sturdy stuff.
Once or twice, they even enter the ring to physically amend the path of a blow to make it actually land.
“Are you aiming for empty space twelve inches west of her shoulder, Temult? Was that your target?”
“YES!” Imogen grinds out through clenched teeth, with a stomp of her foot in the dust.
“And Laudna, I better not have just heard you warn her before you swung!”
Laudna grimaces, caught. “It seemed considerate,” she whispers, with a guilty little shrug.
After a few fruitless rounds of apologies and far misses, Ashton’s sidelines pressure campaign talks Laudna into one solid swing.
All her might and bone on bone. A single crack in the air.
Ashton cheers loudly over Imogen’s reassurances that all is fine.
But, Laudna’s knuckles come away pink with the start of Imogen’s nose bleed and she immediately sits down in the dust at Imogen’s feet, arms crossed and jaw set, entirely unwilling to continue on.
(Laudna and Imogen spar individually with Orym after that. He is quick enough to dodge their attempts at blows and can pull the weight behind his fists to negate any damage.)
Their training goes on for four months, though Ashton has already mapped out the next six at least, with lofty goals for the two of them.
The changes in Imogen are subtle. A shift in posture, a more assured step. A faint ripple under the skin of her forearms when she raises her hands to cast.
Laudna clocks this new definition before Imogen does and mentions a bit too often, tracing a finger across the skin with that familiar fond enthusiasm Imogen still can’t quite read.
Laudna is still largely undifferentiable from a skeleton, even after months of all her effort, but Imogen swears Launda is softer when they curl up at night. There’s more now in the crook of the shoulder to sink her chin into, more in the dip of the waist to welcome her arm.
“That is not the point of this,” Ashton says, a little defeated, when Imogen accidentally reports this to them one evening on a late watch, tired enough to ramble.
“I mean, maybe not, but it’s really nice…” Imogen mutters in response, blushing fiercely as she averts her gaze.
Ashton stares at her for a long moment, shakes their head, and changes the subject entirely.
In the quiet days between chaos, whenever they can find somewhere to settle for a time, family dinner becomes tradition, duties for the cooking and the cleaning up trading around in pairs.
On a warm evening not long after the five-month mark, Laudna announces dinner will be pickle and cheese sandwiches, grilled and served with sliced apple and dark wine. The meal plan appeals to absolutely no one but FCG, who supports all flavor combinations equally in theory, and Fearne, who eats everything with joy. But no one says a word. They’d have Imogen to contend with if they did.
They all wait fifteen minutes, then twenty, then twenty-five, clustered around the table with a deck of cards. Thirty minutes, and still the kitchen door doesn’t budge.
At forty minutes, Imogen glances out at the sky, now entirely dark. “It’s been a while. I should go check on her…”
Just as she lays down her hand of cards (it was just twos and threes, and wasn’t going to do much for her anyway), a faint pop is audible from the kitchen. Pressure, released.
The pop is followed by a long, guttural roar.
Imogen is on her feet and to the door before the chair she tipped in the process can hit the floor.
Orym catches the chair before it falls, with an approving, “nice.”
Imogen hauls the kitchen door open, finding Laudna immediately on the other side, eyes wide and wild.
“Imogen,” Laudna whispers, in some sort of awe, then with mounting volume, “the training worked!”
Her face breaks, splitting into a grin of teeth and more teeth.
Brandishing an open glass jar violently towards Imogen, clasped in one white-knuckled hand, pickle juice running down her arm and sloshing over the sides, she bellows, “IT WORKED!”
She hands the jar’s lid to Imogen, almost reverently, and whispers her triumph one more time. “We’re practically gods, Imogen.”
“Yeah?” Imogen chuckles, evenly split between fondness and a sliver of hope. “Can we be done then?”
“Yes!” Laudna breathes. “Absolutely.”
“Fuck. Thank goodness,” Imogen sighs, turning over her shoulder to shout to Ashton. “Ashton, we’re done with training! You did good! Thanks! We’re fucking done now.”
“But – ” Ashton objects, shocked and more crestfallen than they will admit to later. “But…”
(Their disappointment falls on empty ears. The girls aren’t listening, Fearne already having bustled away their attention, cooing over their strength and athleticism as she slips pickle after pickle into her damp pocket.)
Orym nudges Ashton in the side. “You did good.”
Ashton slumps down a little. “Yeah, well.”
“You know… I do calligraphy,” Orym offers with a little shrug.
Ashton turns to him slowly and leans back in their chair.
“No shit,” they say, appraising Orym thoughtfully. “Actually, that doesn’t surprise me at all. Will you teach me?”
Orym smiles, mostly wry, though he blushes a tinge under Ashton’s heavy gaze. “Sure. What’ll you trade me for it?”