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It settled in her nostrils, that putrid stench: crisp and brittle like flaking skin layered over a sticky current of rot. It congealed on her tongue, crawled down her throat, and swarmed over her skin beneath its fabric padding. There’s nowhere to purge it; no soaps, no water, barely enough basins to even begin holding it all. Even if there were, there were no linens to scrub with; not even the bandages had been spared the lice and fleas congealed on the battlefield. The only way to cleanse the sensation was to scream, and so she did -- at dull, simple men who blearily squinted at her and hemmed about the uneducated henpecking of a histrionic woman.
Scream long enough, and she could drown anything else out. Change came with the hoarse crack of her voice and a will as unrelenting as a steel veil.
Because how else was she to stop the itching? She ranted, raved, and tore, replacing it with something fresh that muffled the quiet rattling of dying breaths and soothed those rash-red throats. Wood splintered, canals were dug, clean fabric brought in as she scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed to make the world new. Shouts and curses peppered the facility like gunshots, for that was her war waged against apathy and disease. They even gave her a medal for it, a shining little cross suspended from a crimson bar.
She never knew how to stop fighting that war. Never married, never settled down really — always campaigning, always railing against a world that didn’t quite understand how how much humanity would have to scour underneath to wash the fabric of reality clean. That phantom pain prickled over her skin, and ensured she could never rest easy.
(Not when the smell of gunpowder still lingered on the bodies, and it was just her, alone, because no one could beat her out for caring.)
She never understood how they could bear it. How could they not be possessed by the unshakable, unquenchable urge to drive it all out? Delirium, distortion, infection, it surrounded her and she had to punch and kick and burn it all with an explosion of hellfire because no one else would!
How could it not drive them near to madness, seeing injury and disease run rampant across the cosmos? How could they not also be screaming as they beheld the universe’s all-encompassing agony? Even the stars burned with it, the pulsing heat of an infected wound screaming against the black pattern of quiet night, and she saw it in that man, how could Master stand it in that man, that deranged Phantom who was so unwell he wept over a woman who had never existed —
“Nightingale,” the voice came, light yet sharp. “Stop.”
Suddenly, she returned to herself. Florence Nightingale, Berserker-class Servant, was standing in the metallic hallway of Chaldea, breathing heavy beside her Master as the Phantom who claimed to be of a particular Opera regaled his Christine with a song suited only to her.
Her hands flexed. She imagined them circling around the man’s neck, clenching to silence that poisoned voice filled with a heart-sickness so profound it felt like it could only be cursed with total dissolution.
The order was resolute, though. Nightingale shuddered, and excused herself to the washroom.
*****
Stars sparkled behind her eyes, motes of heat flecking down her cheeks and catching in the soft chasm of her throat. They pulsed discordantly, and Nightingale gagged, fingers curling into the warm porcelain of the wash bin. Her eyes stood out before her, sharp in the reflection and gleaming like congealed chunks of blood, and she thought of the sickness in that man’s veins, firing in his synapses like the complex wriggling of nesting maggots.
Nightingale wasn’t sure what happened first, her vomiting or the sink shattering underneath her grip. Her hands flew to her face, sticky with blood where the fragments had pierced through her gloves, and her breaths shuddered quickly out of her lungs like the weak aftershocks of long dead starlight. Water soaked the tile floor.
She stumbled back against the wall, watching in horror as the liquid mixed with her own bile. This wasn’t her, she told herself, this wasn’t who she was, but she was still trying to calm her racing heat when the door opened.
Standing there, to her horror, was Asclepius.
Doctor Asclepius was a man Nightingale greatly admired, and she even had the good fortune of being respected by him in turn. He treated her reasonably, acknowledged her contributions, and they worked together seamlessly to protect and preserve the well-being of Chaldea. She was, to him, the foundational bedrock of medicine, and to her, he was a talented doctor whose hands ever-reached to loftier heights as he lead the charge against the eradication of disease. Simply put, he was the last person she wanted to see her shaking and bloodied in a vomit-covered bathroom.
“I…” she began, voice soft, but it died uselessly in her throat as he cataloged the scene.
It was only seconds before he turned his attention to her. The blood caught his eye instantaneously, and his hand snaked out, grasping her by the elbow with an expression set in stone.
“Come with me.”
With a tug, he lead her out of the bathroom. Obediently, she followed, steeling herself for the sort of scolding he’d inflict upon any one of his patients.
It sat unpleasantly in her, shame. She did not like the idea of being a patient — it left her too powerless, too fragile, too aware of the cracks forming in her iron composure. She couldn’t stand up for herself like this; there was no bite to follow the spark of her voice, just a dull ember fizzling in the rain. Her footsteps, cloddish as they were, brought her closer to her doom: of losing the precious validation she’d held close in her chest. It was such a disappointing prospect, the idea of Asclepius becoming another man who’d only listen to her if she beat him with a chair. She wouldn’t even get any self-righteous pleasure from it.
He took her to the medical office, and hands shifting to her shoulders, sat her down on one of the beds.
Asclepius knew she’d stay, and she had no true motivation to resist, so she sat there, staring at palms soaked through with blood. She heard the clack of a cabinet opening, the clink of jars being moved, but he was efficient in his work and, soon enough, he’d returned to her side, now equipped with bandages, tweezers, and one of his special salves.
“Dematerialize your gloves,” he ordered. The fabric dissipated back into mana, leaving planes of her hand bared to him.
He cupped the backs of them with a shocking amount of care, picking out chunks of porcelain and setting them off to the side on a tray. Strangely, he’d paused when first presented with the wounds, but even more surprising was his utter lack of commentary. There wasn’t one snide remark about boring injuries or being too stupid to use a bathroom properly, and the much-dreaded scolding hadn’t yet come. Simply the clink of ceramic and the unwavering intensity of his gaze before, finally, he spoke.
“What happened?”
Nightingale squirmed, thinking of the after-effects of her tantrum. “One of us should probably inform someone about the leak — “
“That’s not important,” he snapped. Nightingale stared at his face.
“It’s quite important from a hygiene perspective. It would also make Miss da Vinci quite cross.”
“Nightingale,” he said softly, his warm palms cupping her hands. She could see the pulse of light from them; ethereal turquoise. “Do not be difficult. Tell me what happened.”
Worry. Confusion. The glimmer of dawn light rising over a mossy rock, half-covered by alabaster bone. Something wiggled uncomfortably in her chest as she met his gaze.
“I… was with our commander earlier,” she began, not exactly sure how to phrase the events in a way that conveyed their true import. It made her feel quite silly, and if there was anything in the world she hated, it was silliness. “When we encountered that Assassin-class Phantom. He began rambling on about her, addressing her as his Christine and spewing all manner of unhinged nonsense. You know there’s something wrong with him, and I — I simply, it’s not right. He needs to be treated. He’s unwell,” she stressed, as if desperate for him to understand.
He held her hand, thumb pressed against the base of her wrist. “And this frustrated you enough to break a sink in a nearby washroom?”
“It… sounds ridiculous when you put it like that, but…”
“I do not mean it to, and you are never ridiculous. Please, continue.”
(An unnameable emotion arose at that, but it was summarily ignored.)
“Master told me to stand down. I wish to cure him; I must cure him. It is a need in me, as important as bones are to the structure of a human body, but I cannot. There is nothing I can do. And I… I’ve been wondering something, lately. Or perhaps it would be more apt to say that I am perceiving something that before I was able to ignore.” She began to flex her fingers, but stopped out of consideration for Asclepius’s work. “Something is wrong — wrong with the entire world. It’s sick; everything is sick, and fevered, and no matter what I do, I cannot make it well, so…”
“…You took out your feelings on a sink in a nearby washroom?”
“Yes,” she replied. “That about sums it up.”
He let out a little hum of thought, and then lifted her hands up. “You haven’t explained the burns.”
“The… what?”
“The burns on your hand, Nightingale. How do you explain the burns?”
Nightingale looked down, and finally actually saw the palms he’d so carefully spread cream on. Framing the puncture wounds were swaths of harsh, ugly red; burns she hadn’t perceived and had carried with her since… when, exactly? She tried to remember what she was doing before she met up with Master — what she’d even been doing this morning — but found herself coming up oddly lacking. It was patchwork, her recollections of the day, and even further her memories of the week. She’d been deployed to help Master resolve a problem with a minute forming Singularity… was that it? She’d worked with Asclepius in the medical wing to patch up Fergus after an ill-advised flirting attempt, but… that wasn’t…
When was it…?
“Nightengale?” Asclepius prompted. He’d begun bandaging those hands of hers, the white glimmering in the electric light.
“There was an infestation in the pantry,” she finally settled on. “I’m not sure what it was, exactly; some manner of… scuttling, starfish like creature? I must have become so focused on the cleaning that I didn’t pay attention to what the chemicals were doing to my hands. Perhaps it was a harsher product than I realized, or I had to scrub quite hard to remove the stains.”
When this was, though, she didn’t know.
“You didn’t… wear gloves when handling hazardous chemicals?” He asked, deftly finishing with her hands and pinning the bandage in place.
“I — “ there was no defense. Why has she taken off her white gloves? Was it to keep them from getting stained? She couldn’t recall; just scrubbing, and disgust, and the need to strip away the layers of filth wriggling in that horrid pantry. “I seem to have… lapsed in my personal upkeep. Was it because I thought it wouldn’t impact me? But — but that’s not proper protocol for disinfection, so why…”
Softly, she mused this to herself. He hadn’t let go of her hands yet, something she noticed when he squeezed her wrist with his thumb.
“Quite honestly, it shouldn’t have. You naturally should have healed by now as well; Nightingale,” his gaze was steady. “And your memory… I’m concerned something might be wrong with your Spirit Origin. Please, let me keep you here for observation. I’d like to run some tests.”
She did not like those words, and hated to acknowledge the unexplainable particularities of what everyone else called ‘Servants,’ but it was Asclepius and she knew better than to fight a doctor’s prescribed tests.
“Very well,” she said. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”
Asclepius stared at her a long moment, hands lingering on her, face oddly close, before nodding sharply and pulling away.
Strange, she thought. None of this was going like she expected at all.
Was he — was he afraid?
*****
Something was wrong with his Nurse, and Asclepius did not have a cure.
He watched her on the cot, her chest rising in a steady rhythm. He wanted to think of graphs; of the undulations of a sine wave and the even spikes on a heart-rate monitor, but instead he found himself instead fixating on gentle curves and the warm flush of her cheeks. It was frustrating, he thought, to be so captivated by her beauty, but he didn’t know what to do and in the spaces left between lingered the singular folly of his affection.
He loved her: simply, foolishly, powerfully. He loved like it was merely another fact of life, akin to the obvious conclusion of a mathematical formula. She was an element balanced into the equation of his life, and its natural byproduct was a warm and steady emotion as reliable as the scalpel she passed to him during surgery.
She was always there. Always present, always dependable — beautiful, strong-willed, radiant in her pursuits. She did not capitulate, did not back down, and carved her own path in defiance of anything, anyone that would try to hold her back. Man and god mattered not before her; he could vividly picture her dragging Zeus by the scruff of the neck and forcing him to submit to his yearly examination. All would fall into line before her, and if not, she’d treat their idiocy with the barrel of a gun.
I will purge all that is toxic, all that is harmful! For as long as I have this power, I shall lead everyone to happiness!
— That was her vow, and the first time he’d seen the manifestation of her pledge, he’d been enthralled.
Oh, it was purely practical at first, admiration at the platonic ideal of a perfect colleague. He might not match up to her wavelength precisely, but he appreciated the purpose of even her most… innovative treatments, and he fell easily into the dance with her. Having a partner made the movements easier in a way he’d never quite known before.
In the presence of it, Asclepius realized that, all this time, he’d been lonely.
He’d initially denied the feeling, but as she completed his routine, warmed the cold office around him as he instinctively reached for the tools she offered, it became hard to deny. He didn’t even have to tell her to strap down a troublesome patient, and she was intelligent, articulate, and forthright about matters of medicine. Long into the night he conversed with her about all manner of things — and, during his occasional recollections of his past, he’d allow himself idle little fancies of how Nightingale might have reacted to the idiotic escapades of the Argonauts on that long and winding journey. Jason’s face as he beheld her majesty… wouldn’t that have been an amusing sight.
Sometimes, she spoke of that war of hers, distant and far off as if beholding another land. Sometimes too during the hallow hours of the early morning, he’d speak of a birth in a pyre and a mother he’d never gotten to meet. She draped her arms around him then, her cheek grazing his hand and her palms flattening over his chest, and spoke thusly into his ear —
“I’m proud of you, that you carry her still in your heart, as you fight so that the children of this world do not have to grieve.”
He stared, frozen, at the filing cabinet. It was rare for her to offer such comforts in the lulling sweetness of her voice, but he understood in that moment what it must have been like to be bathed in the glow of her lamp as she penned the sentiments from wounded soldiers and sent them, with care, to the families who waited for their return. It was brief, her softness was one that never lingered, but he drank it in nonetheless.
Asclepius realized he fancied her more intimately at around three in the morning, when she’d just brought him tea and placed it exactly a foot and three inches from his hand. There was a space he kept free of paper for it, and on Pavlovian instinct he’d reached absently for the handle at the sound of the saucer’s clink. He thanked her, not looking up, and then it struck him like lightning — a sense of utter completeness as the lingering scent of disinfectant made way for the warm aroma of blended herbs. He set the drink down again, heartbeat quickening in the glow.
He wasn’t blind. He’d known she was beautiful from the moment he met her, and his body was never immune to her charm. But that was just an empty mechanism, nothing like the warm curling flutter as he listened to her footsteps slip away. He knew her schedule, could vividly picture the rhythm with which she went about her day, and every time it intersected with his own it brought him joy.
Losing her would upend every facet of his life. Therefore, it was simple to conclude that he was in love.
He’d needed some time to cope with the realization, before accepting that him being in love with her did nothing to alter the dynamic of their relationship. He wanted her, but he’d always wanted her in some fashion, and he was well used to ignoring his own physical urges in favor of more valuable pursuits. Work was more important, and he loved her too through their shared occupation. For him, that was enough.
Occasionally, he would stare, but allowed himself the diversion as one might take a stroll in the sunlight to absorb essential vitamins from its rays. To see her work hard made him work harder.
— That was his life until today.
What he’d expected in that bathroom was imbecilic nonsense he’d settle with a scolding, not Nightingale, hands shaking and breaths fluttering in discordant bursts. Dazed, distracted, and clearly unaware of herself, she was a far cry from the perfect nurse he’d fallen so deeply for.
It was nothing physical. He’d run the full assortment of diagnostics to confirm this; the origin of her malady lay not in her liver, her brain, nor her heart. Asclepius did detect the instability in her Spirit Origin, but not something he could easily fix with the tools he had available. Scanning through the records, such abnormalities were never fixed in a consistent manner, though many centered around dreams and venturing into the soul itself. Master had supervised many of these operations, and he was just about to go seek Ritsuka out for her input when he noticed a peculiar depth to the shadow by the bed.
“…Is watching over sleeping women just your particular perversion,” he called, voice iced over and glare tinged with frost. “Or are you here for a reason, Count of Monte Cristo?”
There was a pause, a slight undulation of darkness around the rubber protector attached to the frame’s base, before a man’s white hair ascended from the deep. Amusement sparkled in his gaze, a wicked grin playing underneath the shadowed brim of his hat, and he looked up at Asclepius with a mocking merriment permeating his voice.
“I’m here for the same reason as you, Caster of Medbay,” he replied, pushing himself out of the floor by his elbows and rising into a scornful loom. “Except I believe my own assistance might prove a great deal more use.”
“Oh?” Asclepius asked, in the tone of a pencil snapping. “I doubt that greatly, you skulking creep. Get out before I throw you out and tell Master about your hobbies for good measure.”
The Count laughed, the whites of his gleaming. “Jealousy is an unfavorable look on you, dear Doctor.”
“You’re the one who started it,” (Unsaid went the word bitch.) “And I am not jealous. I do, however, greatly doubt that your continued stalking of my Nurse is going to lead to anything productive, and I do not have the time to waste entertaining your numerous delusions. Again: get out, before I force you.”
“Ah, yes, very important matters, like staring wistfully at a sick woman you’ve found yourself completely unable to help.”
It was like the frost-covered reeds crunching under a snowshoe. “Avenger,” Asclepius hissed, rising from the chair with his fists clenched, but the Count raised a hand to stay him for a moment.
“Nightingale and I are linked on the plane of dreams. I am aware of what she sees, just as she has before found herself stranded in the the areas housing my own consciousness.”
“The Prison Tower,” Asclepius clarified. “I’m familiar. Your point?”
“My point is that she’s dreaming, and the outcomes of such a thing will have permanent consequences on her state of being.”
Asclepius’s gaze fell to the woman on the bed. “Servants are not supposed to have their own dreams,” he insisted, though even he knew this was foolish point.
“A symptom of her illness. If she does not resolve that which ails her, she will fragment. Gone untreated long enough, and she will die.”
“…I still don’t understand why you’re here, Count.”
“Let us backtrack slightly. What is your theory about what is wrong?”
Asclepius stared at him. “That is private medical information, and I have no desire to share it with you.”
“What if I told you that you need me?”
“I do not need you.”
“Very well. How do you plan on penetrating her dream-scape to reach her, then?”
“She will — I was going to discuss the matter with her when she wakes. Come up with a treatment plan, with the patient’s input, and we’ll go from there. There’s no need to go anywhere currently.”
“Because you’re normally so, so very concerned with keeping your patients involved in the medical process.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Asclepius snapped. He felt no shame about his feelings, but he was not going to be teased about them by a schoolyard bully. “And get to the point.”
The Count of Monte Cristo did not, in fact, get to the point. It was far too amusing to him to dodge around the question, laughing merrily at the Doctor’s pompous agitation. He did, however, offer a piece of insight compelling enough that it gave Asclepius significant pause. “Isn’t it a little unusual that we’ve been having this conversation by her bedside, and yet Miss Nightingale hasn’t so much as stirred?”
There was only a momentary hesitation before Asclepius strode to her, grasping onto her shoulder and shaking it. “Nightingale,” he called, being a bit more rough with her when she didn’t so much as groan. “Nightingale, wake up. Nightingale!”
For all intents and purposes, she seemed entirely peaceful, but Asclepius whirled around, pinning the Count with a thoroughly unamused look.
“Are you more inclined to speak with me now?”
“Fine,” he spat, before grabbing Nightingale’s chart from the table. He was not going to panic, he insisted to himself, and he was not, in any capacity, going to lose his professional cool. “I believe the current abnormalities in her Spirit Origin stem from her summoned nature as a Berserker. I’ll admit this is not the first incident leading me to suspect that something is amiss. There’ve been prior moments where she hasn’t seemed fully present, especially in battle. I thought at first that it might be a byproduct of her Madness Enhancement, but…”
He flipped a page in the file.
“…More likely to me, it’s a result of a conflict between her historical and summoned self. I’ve talked long with her about her life, and while she’s always been determined, opinionated, and willing to fight others as she campaigns to better the world and do what she thinks is right — “
The Count chuckled. Pointedly, he spoke past it.
“— I’ve never gotten the sense that she was a violent woman,” (Aside, he thought, from an inclination towards biting that he definitely, 100% didn’t think about during slow days in the infirmary.) “Yet, in her current form, she is… contained within the most violent class of them all: Berserker. Her need to heal is juxtaposed against a fierce nature that will harm others in the process of eliminating disease, and she is frequently put into situations where she must defeat foes to proceed with her appointed mission. For a woman who treasures all life to have to come to terms with her inherent nature as a Servant, beings designed to participate in conflicts, is…”
He trails off, staring at his neatly inked notes. Always fighting, ever a soldier.
“The contradiction is straining her very sense of self,” the Count finished. “The angel becoming a devil trapped in her own personal hell.”
“She is neither,” Asclepius responded crisply, looking at him with something like derision. “She is Florence Nightingale. Now. How do you propose we help?”
“We’ll have to venture into her mind,” he said, striding forward with a bit too much enthusiasm for Asclepius’s taste. “And help her resolve the contradiction before she’s destroyed by the shards of her own fracturing self. I could have done so alone, but I thought I should extend you an invitation to help rescue your beloved. It seemed polite.”
Go fuck yourself, is what Asclepius thought.
“Then let us proceed with the operation, Count,” is what Asclepius said, because he was not going to let that washed up vengeance-maniac get to him. “But know — I will be watching you, and I will not let you lead her to harm.“
He said this plainly, without ornamentation or hesitance.
(The Count of Monte Cristo simply laughed.)
*****
Florence Nightingale stared absently into the distance as she walked. Beside her was a man. He was talking to her.
“Don’t do this to yourself anymore, Florence. You haven’t been the Angel of Crimea for a long time now; you don’t have to keep fighting any longer. It’s time you focus on your own life.”
She was not listening.
It would be silly to pay heed to a man who was not listening to her as she spoke of medical supplies and rerouting aid to the front lines. It’s all her head was filled with, the weight of lives, because if she didn’t keep fighting for them, what light would lead them back to their families? It couldn’t be that of the stars in the sky, she knew that. It had to be her lamp. Only her lamp will do.
BECAUSE THEY ARE POISON. THIS WORLD ISN’T RIGHT, NIGHTINGALE. THE SKY HATES THOSE WHO LIE BENEATH IT, AND THAT IS WHY YOU MUST CLEANSE IT ALL.
She marched along the streets (streets?) of London (why was she here?), knowing that she was looking for something (though not sure entirely what it was.) There’s something she’s reaching for, some conclusion she’s trying to arrive at, but she couldn’t find it, not in this hazy heat…
“Don’t you think you should get married?”
That sentence was so absurd she stopped, and turned, and beheld the figure trailing after her.
Baron Sidney Herbert. Her dear friend, the man who asked her to venture out to Crimea in the first place. He helped her there, at that hospital, so why…
“I haven’t been helping solely out of the goodness of my heart, Florence.”
What was he…
“Everything I’ve done has been for you…”
What was he even…
“For years now, I…”
There’s no way he’d…
“I’ve always lo—“
“Stop.”
It’s resolute like the tolling of a church-bell. Her hands were at her head, fingers digging into her skin. It ached.
The wrongness crawled along her temple. There was no way her friend, her dearest compatriot would ask her to forsake her path like that. He was married. He had seven children, fat little babies who she was always terrified to hold, because they were so fragile, the lives of the young were so very easy to break.
No, even more than that —
IN ALL YOUR LIFE, NOBODY EVER TOLD YOU THAT THEY LOVED YOU.
So this, this dream, was a lie.
Nightingale stared that shadowy figure down, her hands flexing and dragging lines down her cheek. This was a malady, a tumor plaguing her. Therefore, she must excise it. With violence, if she must.
LOVE HAS NO PLACE IN THE STERILITY OF YOUR HEART.
It’d be easy. It’s so so so easy, she realized as her hands rose and circled around the false Baron Hubert’s neck. All she needed was to apply the slightest hint of pressure for it to snap, and then, by him ceasing to exist, would the disease be eliminated from the world. What had she been worrying about this entire time, she wondered as the fabric shifted? Why had she been so dazed and confused, rejecting the intense clarity of this purpose?
(Because you never wanted to hurt anyone. Because you always thought of those lives you wanted to save, and how much you cherished them so.)
It’s a hand on her shoulder that stays her, a warmth and a blue-glowing light. She turns and there’s a face there, stern and fervent, with a gaze consumed by the complete intensity of his focus.
“Nightingale,” he said, oh-so very softly, “Stop.”
It was immediate, the way she relaxed, dropping the man on his knees and leaving him gasping for air. It wasn’t even a conscious choice, just a reflexive response to the sound of his voice.
“Doctor…” she asked, confused and now a little lost. “What’s happening? Where are we?”
It was not Asclepius who answered, but a person behind her, arising out of a purple mist.
“It’s you, Nightingale,” said the man she recognized, one who kept following her whenever the stability of her mind began to sway. “When you materialized, most of your rational mind was sealed away. Ordinary people can never keep the fires of purpose raging in their hearts at all times, but that’s not the case for a Berserker like you, is it? Logically, that comes at a cost.”
He stepped forward, closer to the pair as Asclepius tensed beside her. Uncomprehending, Nightingale glanced between them all, and the reflection of memory rubbing his throat on the ground.
“Something builds up in Berserkers over time. It becomes twisted, warped, distorted — at times, it can even manifest. Sometimes, it appears as a monster who wants to follow its own destructive impulses… and sometimes, it embodies reason in the shape of an old friend!”
“She — she needs to rest,” Sidney Hubert gurgled. “She shouldn’t push herself anymore, she’s not a solider, she doesn’t need to fight — “
“I can’t,” she insists. “I can’t, not yet.”
“So kill him. Your first instinct was correct. You cannot keep clinging onto your old self if you want to fight in this way, Nightingale, and if you don’t want the strain to destroy you, you must make a choice.”
She realized then that that was why he was here, the man who existed at the corners of her vision. He too had made that choice, this Avenger, as he continued to remain in this world. It was hard for her to understand, the particularities of Master and Servant, for a woman who refused to look magic in the face and acknowledge it was possible. Florence Nightingale was practical, grounded and resolute, but there were things she averted her gaze from to maintain her position — the acknowledgment of herself as a ghost, for example, and the legend of an angel who was now bidden to commit violence on the earth.
Was that why the Count was here, along with Asclepius? To aid her as she faced the actuality of her being, and help her destroy the building infection that was her remaining sense of reason tying her to a life she’d left behind?
The burning pain rose, that heat of a headache blistering behind her right eye. It begin to leak something as the strands of her hair unwound, the braid loosening and sending grey hair scattering across her back.
If she was to face it, she would do so head-on, as she had all else.
“…If it allows me to stay and fight, I mu— eh?”
Nightingale let out a squeak of shock, for Asclepius had just punched the Count of Monte Cristo.
It was a pretty good punch, all things considered, a twist of the Doctor’s body carrying the momentum of his form. His fist was closed correctly too, thumb tucked over his middle finger, and despite the statistical differences between the two men, it caused the Count to take a stumbling step back. He looked, for a moment, confused, though whether it was the person or the situation that confused him was unclear.
Straightening his back, the man finally spoke.
“Don’t you dare, Nightingale. If you abandon your humanity, I’ll never forgive you.”
“What was that for? Are you mad?” the Count snapped, scowling at Asclepius as he rubbed at his cheek. “None of us can remain exactly who we were in the past! She must accept her nature as a heroic spirit to continue fighting alongside our mutual Master. To do that, she must come to terms with her nature as a being that must abandon its reason and kill!”
“Gods are beings who have abandoned contradictions. They are the ones who pursue life with singular purpose, to supposedly watch over all. You’re not asking her to just act like a Servant; you’re asking her to discard her empathy, abandon one of the core values that made her… her.” Very subtly, he shakes. Nightingale was baffled, but seeing that, she couldn’t help but take him by the elbow.
Asclepius calmed some then, lowering the force of his voice. “You might have abandoned your name, Count, but I will not let you counsel the same of her.”
The Count of Monte Cristo, though, was in no way soothed. “And how, pray tell, do you expect that to work out for her? What you’re suggesting will lead her only to further pain!”
It was then that Asclepius turned to her properly, grasping Nightingale at the base of her arms. Somewhere off to the left was the imagined fragment of Sidney Hubert, staring up at the argument with an utterly perplexed expression, but she could focus on nothing but those eyes, glimmering on his half-covered face.
“Florence Nightingale… do you trust me?” he asked, and the answer to that was the simplest thing in the world.
“With my life, and the life of every person in this place.”
“Then submit yourself to my care. I cannot promise you the answer to your malady; I cannot give you an immediate resolution to this problem wrapped up in a neat and tidy bow. I know though, that until the end of our days, I will fight to find a way for you to do anything, everything you want to do and still remain beautifully, blessedly, entirely yourself. I do not want you to sacrifice something so close to your heart. I’ll…”
(She wasn’t sure who drew a step closer, herself or him.)
“I’ll help bring you relief, somehow, someway. Unceasing, until I find the solution. If…” He gentles, a nervousness entering his face. “If you’re willing.”
Reaching up, Asclepius swiped his thumb across the blood that seeped from her eye. She felt a warmth follow, and beyond it, a dissolution of pain.
She realized then that there was starlight there, held within Ophiuchus, the snake bearer that shone over the summer sky. And it was a warm light, a guiding light, that gave her grounding in a world intent on driving her mad. He was beautiful in it, through the hazy London light of her dream, leading her way in a world that seemed so dark.
How, after all, could she find the proper path without any other point of reference in the world? Captivated by this thought, Nightingale reached her hand up, undid the catch of his mask, and pressed close to him for a kiss.
(It made such sense to her. Perhaps because his words had sounded so very much like a vow?)
The moment hung for longer than she intended it to, because after freezing on her face, his hands slid down to catch at he hips. There was silence, beautiful silence, and in it he heart found peace — not of a cold grave, but of the sort of soothing comfort she’d been little familiar with in life.
When she pulled back, breath hot in her chest, she saw a faint rosiness glimmering on his cheeks.
“I — suppose that’s an answer of a sort,” Nightingale heard after the Count had cleared his throat. Given that he’d half turned himself away, she presumed he hadn’t been lingering on the moment after it had unfolded before him. “And while I think that you’ll have to confront this eventually, if you intend to find a treatment for the symptoms, I will not object.”
“That’s not for you to have an opinion on,” Asclepius replied, tone haughty, before glancing down at the Baron on the floor. “And… don’t worry. I’ll see to it that she gets her proper rest.”
The workings of dreams were misty, and transient in their longevity. With a wink, it disappeared.
*****
It was just them in the infirmary when he awoke, him and Nightingale blinking the bleariness out of her eyes. For the best, Asclepius supposed, since he had decked Avenger in the face. Which he didn’t feel bad about, even though he’d helped in the end; he had been a massive dick during the entire process.
It was definitely, absolutely because he’d been a jerk. It wasn’t out of jealousy; it didn’t bother him at all that Nightingale had gotten slotted into the place of the Count’s dumb girlfriend who had betrayed him or… whatever, nor did it irritate him that he was claiming to have some greater insight to her situation than he did.
It wasn’t!
It was a totally reasonable decision that had worked out just fine! The Count deserved a good punch, anyway.
“…Asclepius?”
“Yes?” He started, returning his attention to her. “Sorry, did you say something?”
“No, I simply…”
He realized then that she’d reached out, and her fingers gently cradled his own. Reflexively, he felt his face heat up to his ears, which was going to be really, really annoying and he wished that would settle down right about now, thank you. It was a little kiss. A teeny, tiny little kiss after she chose to trust him with the safety of her soul. That was nothing for him to feel embarrassed over, whatsoever.
Oh, she was stunning when she smiled.
“I wanted to thank you, Asclepius. For coming, for caring. I’m so very sorry for the inconvenience — “
“You’re never an inconvenience,” he interrupted swiftly, oh-so careful as he squeezed her bandaged hand. “If anything, you’re assisting me in understanding another specialty in medicine, so thank you. I promise I’ll be good to you. I’d… like to lead you to happiness as well, if I can.”
She was still smiling, and his gut was doing strange things, particularly as she sat up and leaned in closer towards his face. Her forehead resting against his, he found himself admiring the gentle slope of her eyes.
(Oh, he had it bad.)
“Asclepius… I’ve realized something.”
“Yes?” He forced himself to say casually, like he wasn’t hanging on her every word.
“I’m terribly in love with you.”
“Oh.” It was a breath, and he felt pleasure hum over his skin. “Oh, that’s nice. That makes me happy to hear.”
“I’m glad,” she said, and then she was kissing him again, softly and sweetly and turning all his thoughts to sodden, goopy mush. He didn’t even spare a thought to how filthy mouths were as he brought a hand up to cup her cheek.
Maybe… if she trusted him to take care of her, he could simply consign himself to her as well? It would be nice to finally get some release for the feelings he’d harbored for so long.
(With a shift of fabric, he pushed her back down onto the bed.)