Chapter Text
Arthur dreams of deer. Has for months, quick flashes of thought, like the sun winking off of metal. A rolling field, a buck with a full head of antlers; serene, remote and golden.
There's something reassuring about that dream, however quick. Settling and grounding, instead of unnerving. Even in Saint Denis, when it had been more real than a dream — a deer walking through the streets of an industrial city like it was leading him to safety…
It should have been unnerving but he's got enough things to worry about. Ain't nothing he can do about the things his mind conjures, anyway. He's had enough nightmares to know that it could be worse.
But when the rising sun casts a warm glow across him for the last time, when he can't even hear Dutch, or Micah, or the Pinkertons anymore…
It feels even realer, then. Like he's lying on soft grass, instead of stone. Like that golden warmth is around him and the deer is blowing warm breath into his face, coarse hair brushing across his cheek.
Then it draws back and there's words, a feeling, that he can almost understand reverberating through the air. "Daughter of the Forest! We require aid!"
Shikako appears in the summon realm with a sudden pull — called through no request of her own. She tucks her pen and papers away into hammerspace, more puzzled than annoyed. She owes the deer more than one emergency summoning, after all.
"Is something— ah," she says, seeing the issue immediately. "Friend or foe?"
Heijomaru pauses and seems to consider the matter gravely. "Friend," he decrees. "In need of healing."
"Yeah, I can see that," Shikako says, and sets about doing what she can about that. The guy has been beaten mostly to death — which is actually the easiest part of healing him; she can handle bruises and broken bones no problem. He's malnourished enough that even Shikako has the urge to sit him down in an Akimichi diner and tell him to eat something for god's sake. Dehydrated, deficient in every vitamin under the sun…
And his lungs are a nightmare.
"Where did he come from?" she asks, casually as she tries to work out how the hell to do anything about that. Konoha Hospital would probably make quick work of him, but…. "Did you guys take another summoner?"
"We have struck no bargain," Heijomaru says. "He has simply found his way here, through the alignment of his soul with ours, the way the first summoners did."
"Pretty impressive," Shikako says. Or desperate. Or both. Desperation does lead to it, in her experience.
"Hurry," Heijomaru urges. "The land may sustain him for some time, but he is not one of us."
"I'm working on it," Shikako says, even though that raises some very interesting questions about her summons that she would like to follow up on. She starts with keeping him breathing — not so different from that very first medic test of keeping a fish alive out of water, sadly. It improves his colour dramatically, and eases the gasping wheezing, so she cautiously settles back, giving herself the time to meditate and sink into sage mode so that the bright edge of understanding that being a sage here gives her helps to bridge the gap between her mediocre medical skills and what is truly needed. Maybe even more so, if he's aligned enough to the summons realm that it's helping keep him alive.
The extra chakra boost doesn't hurt, either.
Maybe a poison extraction jutsu will work? She's pretty sure it's not poison — some kind of bacterial infection, probably — but she's a little hesitant to dose him with the broad spectrum antibiotics that ninja on missions are given just in case it does more harm than good.
He has no chakra system so he's very clearly not from her world. Her new world.
The clothes don't necessarily match what she might have expected from her old world… but they're not so far off, either.
But he'd have to survive if she wants to find out, so she draws water from her canteen and purifies it, before using it as a basis to draw out the worst of the blood and granulomas in his lungs. They're still an incredible mess, but this is clearly going to be a multi-stage process.
But more surprisingly, her patient stirs awake. "Where…?" he murmurs, groggy and english.
It isn't as surprising as it could be, but it still takes her back a little.
"You are safe," Heijomaru murmurs across from her, like he understands it too. That raises all kinds of questions about what language Heijomaru might actually be speaking — summons talking had been both strange and not, just something expected, that now Shikako wonders why she'd never questioned it before.
The man stares at them both, dazed, like a talking deer isn't really how he thought his day would go.
"You made your way into his lands," Shikako says, english feeling strange on her tongue. She cancels her jutsu and sits back. "And I have healed you."
He struggles to sit up, wheezing again without the jutsu assisting his breathing. "Don't bother," he rasps, coughing into his shoulder, as far away from her as he can manage. "'m dying anyway."
"I"ve treated worse," Shikako says, but doesn't add that those 'worse' were usually herself and treated in ways that she can't easily apply to him. She doesn't think that would be very reassuring.
She reaches forward and uses chakra to disinfect the blood he'd just spit out, pulling it off his shoulder and burning it. He gives her the same kind of wide-eyed look a civilian might, if they weren't acquainted with chakra. Curious. He had managed to summon himself, after all. Then again… not all desperate moves were done consciously.
Deliberately, she pulls a canteen out of hammerspace, without trying to disguise the motion. Nothing, one moment. Then a canteen the next.
"Here," she says, offering it to him, part test, part reassurance, "have a drink."
"I've… seen a few good magicians in my time," he says, and she's almost surprised when he takes the canteen. "They could pull a drink out of nowhere, make no mistake, but… I don't think they could'a done the other thing. What is this?"
"Just water," Shikako says, feeling amused anyway. Sure, she doesn't know who he is, why he's here, what he can do, if he's going to be a threat or not… but she's kind of starting to like him. "Did you expect a magic potion?"
"Couldn't hurt," he says, and takes a ginger sip of the water. "Is… are you really a witch?"
"We call it chakra," Shikako says, starting her medical jutsu again now that he seems vaguely on board with the plan. "But sure, it's like magic, I guess. I wouldn't mind being a witch."
It's definitely not the time to start a spiel on the meta-physics of chakra and how it works — and that's not information she would hand out to just anyone, either. It's not not magic is the point.
"And you are?" she asks, all casual like. "Not a witch, I suppose."
"Hah. Arthur Morgan," he says, polite introduction. "Just… a wanderer, you could say."
Uhuh. That sounded like a deflection if she'd ever heard one. "Sure," she agrees anyway. "Where were you, before you came here?"
"Ain't too sure," he says. "Up Roanoke Valley way, I think. Got kind of hectic. How… how did you say I got here? Where is here? This ain't anywhere near Annesburg, that's for sure."
"Magic," she answers, since they've already covered that topic. "When you were dying, you pulled yourself here. This land is kind of… in between. Imagine if your world is a sheet of paper in a book, and this is the next page." And hers the one after that, if one were to continue the metaphor.
"I ain't— I can't do that," he objects. "And I was near dead."
"Best time to do magic," Shikako says. "All that life energy with nowhere to go… people with nothing left to lose… You slip those earthly bonds, then you get a little distracted, thinking about things you should have done, get a little lost on the road of life… and here you are instead."
"That don't sound right," Arthur objects, though he's still watching her hands glow like he can't quite believe it.
"You're welcome to offer another explanation," Shikako says generously. She takes out a brush and paper so she can ink down an anchor seal for the oxygen transfusion technique, rather than have to hold that while she works. She presses the paper against his chest and sticks it there, flicking his hands away when he tries to touch it.
He appears to consider this, and is unable to come up with anything. Which is because Shikako is pretty sure she's right.
"Can I go back?" he asks, sounding apprehensive.
"I don't see why not," Shikako says. "Heijomaru should be able to send you back. It usually isn't that difficult." Unless he has to take the 'secret pathways' option, which could probably be pretty difficult. She's never had to do it, so she isn't sure.
He sets her canteen down. "Then I need to go back. I have to check… have to make sure my brother got out all right."
Well. Any other excuse and she'd probably try and argue him out of it.
He's not dying — quickly — but that doesn't mean he's healed. She might have taken the edge off, but she's pretty sure Tsunade would kill her if she let a patient go back into the field like this, even if said patient isn't one of their ninja.
"Well," Shikako says, thoughtfully. Konoha has been kind of boring lately, what with the end of the Fourth Shinobi War and all the peace treaties coming into play. "Sounds like fun. Count me in."