Chapter Text
It had started off like any other Friday.
They had just finished evicting a gang of imposter clerics from a rundown temple, breaking up their little extortion racket and reclaiming some priceless artifacts that Ed sadly wasn't allowed to keep.
That was the downside of a paladin boyfriend - he was a terrible accomplice for theft.
But they'd had fun, with Simon's creative use of Mage Hand, Doric's turn as a creepy barn owl, Holga and Xenk's tag-team fight action, and Ed's well-timed lute to the face.
Journeying through the woods towards home, Ed was indulging in his favourite pastime of improvising a song about Xenk, while Xenk pretended to be unmoved or mildly disapproving.
"OK, I need ideas, people - what rhymes with 'booty'?"
Which was when an arrow hit Edgin in the chest.
The lucky strike knocked him prone, all the air rushing out of his lungs at the impact with the ground.
He could hear Holga yelling, heard Xenk cry out in horror, and it was this that forced him to sit up and look around for his friends.
Seemed the imposter clerics had found a new life as woodland bandits - and they had been waiting for them.
It was almost enough to make him regret the night they'd spent in the tavern, the good cheer and drinks - before Ed had pressed Xenk down into their borrowed bed and watched him come undone beneath him. Finally losing that famous composure, voice breaking as he called Edgin's name and a fine tremor in the hand that cupped his cheek.
Almost.
Ed plucked the arrow out of his armour, shook off the lingering pain, and staggered to his feet, bringing his lute up to smash into the nearest bandit and sending her bowling into her mate.
Xenk was a consummate professional - he didn't get distracted just because Ed had taken a hit. So he only glanced over once, just to make sure Ed wasn't in need of his immediate aid.
But once was enough.
The blast from the lead cleric enveloped Xenk, drawing a scream from him as his flesh withered. Even at this distance, Ed could tell the cleric had used the fullest extent of her power to bring the paladin to his knees.
And then the others fell upon him, steel flashing in the midday sun.
Ed was running before his brain had fully engaged, but Holga was there before him, her greataxe dispatching three of them in a matter of seconds.
He caught Xenk before he hit the ground, heedless of the clerics being dragged away by magical force and a furious owlbear. He only had eyes for that handsome face, twisted in pain and marred by blisters and rot.
Xenk tried to speak, but Ed shushed him, cradling him close, hands slipping on his blood-slick armour.
He tried to find the source of the bleeding, but there were too many wounds, and Xenk made small, urgent sounds of distress, trying to be brave for Ed.
He was dying in his arms and there was nothing he could do to help him.
Ed was a man of words, not war. He wasn't a deft hand with a sword, and his limited magic was all taken up with subterfuge, deception. Never to heal or to restore.
He felt Xenk slipping away from him, his eyes blank and glassy, but Ed held on tighter, a fierce desperation overtaking him.
"You are not leaving me," he said, stubbornly, refusing to believe this was real. "I won't let you go. Do you hear me? You are staying right here, with me."
Xenk's eyes seemed to focus on him, as if drawing strength from his voice. Because his words were power.
"What were you thinking, getting distracted like that? You have to stay alive, all right? Kira will kill me if I don't bring you back and we can't disappoint Kira." I won't disappoint her again.
He felt the magic leave him, felt Xenk's soul rise to meet it, but then his body shuddered and a low moan of pain left his lips. It wasn't enough - Ed's magic wasn't strong enough to drag him back from the brink of death.
He could only try one more time, and Xenk was about to fall into the abyss.
Fuck, had he ever told Xenk that he loved him? They'd been dancing around the word like schoolboys - because Ed cared for him and Xenk honoured him in return - but words had power and Ed couldn't bring himself to use this one, not after Zia, not when he couldn't be sure it wasn't a curse from his lips.
And now Xenk was dying anyway and he hadn't said it.
But if Edgin was the only thing anchoring him to this plane, he was not going to release him without a fight.
"Xenk, I never said this before but…I need you. I can't do this without you."
He took a breath, feeling the power swell and fill his words as he spoke them: "I love you - and I need you to hold on."
The last of his magic left him - and he saw Xenk rally, taking a deeper breath despite the pain it must cause him, his unseeing eyes still looking up at Ed.
He could feel Xenk's life hanging in the balance and he had no more to give him. Nothing but his fragile hope and the benediction of tears falling onto Xenk's corrupted cheeks.
"I need you…I love you…" he murmured again, terrified to look and yet unable to look away.
Xenk took another breath, and then he went still.
Ed froze with him, clinging to him in terror, unable to move to check if he were alive or dead. Not wanting to know, because knowing made it real.
Holga crashed down beside him, covered in blood and gore, and roughly stuffed her hand down Xenk's breastplate to check for a pulse.
"Still with us," she said, naked relief in her voice, and Ed clasped Xenk's unconscious body to him and wept.
Doric looked him over, though she had no healing to offer either. "He seems stable for now. It will take an hour or more for him to wake. We should make him comfortable."
Ed watched the others make up a bed for Xenk on the forest floor, overcome with the sense memory of lying on a cavern floor in a similar nest of cloaks and spare shirts, holding Xenk's hand and listening to him underplay his role in saving an entire civilisation from destruction.
"Ed, you need to let him go now," Holga said, very gently, as if she were talking to a 5-year-old Kira who had just woken from a nightmare.
"I don't know if I can," he said, in a small broken whisper.
"We just need to take this armour off," she said, in that same soothing tone. "And then you can lie down with him, until he wakes up."
Ed loosened his hold, just enough to let Holga take some of Xenk's weight so that Doric and Simon could work on the buckles.
The left one always got stuck, he wanted to tell them. You had to ease it out slowly and Ed always rushed, because he wanted to see skin and not shiny plate, and it always just made it worse and Xenk would laugh at his frustrated efforts.
Looking down into Xenk's unconscious, ravaged face, it was difficult to imagine him laughing ever again.
Finally, the breastplate was off, taking the pauldrons with it, the vulnerable body beneath exposed. Doric and Simon did their best to tend to his wounds, still sluggishly bleeding and streaking his blue gambeson with dull purple.
As Ed watched dully, still holding Xenk in his arms, Holga carefully removed his vambraces, greaves, chainmail - the beautiful armour that Xenk would carefully set aside before he would allow Edgin to drag him to bed. To see it discarded on the forest floor was its own kind of torture.
He refused to release Xenk even for a moment, lifting him down to the makeshift bed before pressing his body close along his side.
"We'll set a watch," Holga was saying, but Ed was watching Xenk breathe, afraid that he might stop at any moment.
Knowing he didn't have anything left to keep him alive.