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Natasha did say that a group of them went out into the snow fields for a "potentially dangerous" mission, Seele supposed. This wasn't a rare occasion of any sort; no, she wasn't surprised to hear that soldiers were being sent to no man's land and risking their lives fighting against the leftover residue of the fragmentum.
She wasn't even peeved to hear that she herself, Seele, was not one of the chosen fighters on the front lines, and it had to be Natasha that told her the news about it the next day.
It was that Bronya went with the team, and she never said anything. Bronya wasn't even supposed to have gone in the first place.
Not that this fact alone was what irked Seele, because she wasn't irked at Bronya. She wasn't even sure if she was irked at all for that fact. She trusted that everyone would return safely, and Bronya would be back in no time. Maybe after Bronya returned, Seele could yell at her all she wanted because she was worried, but this wasn't because she was irked that she was so hastily abandoned without any notice.
So Seele resigned herself to helping Natasha with her clinic, sequestering patients to their rooms and acting as a resident nurse. She had seen her fair share of battle and injuries, and with the influx of patients from not only the underworld but also Silvermane Guards now, she had the opportunity to put her experience of first aid to use.
"I expected you to rush out and find Lady Bronya in an instant, Seele," Natasha said, after Seele rolled a cart of supplies into the clinic.
"I thought about it, for sure," she responded, "but I trust her judgment. She's the Supreme Guardian, after all. She can command all of the soldiers to form a wall of protection around her, and they would obey. She will be safe."
A knowing smile crinkled Nat's eyes. "She will, won't she? I appreciate you staying and helping, regardless. I can always use an extra pair of hands."
"Don't mention it." So she started counting the days that Bronya was gone.
After the coronation, the silver-haired girl was all over Belobog, in and out of the streets of the common people, taking the newly-functioning train transportation to and from the underworld. Seele followed her when she was able, spending as much time as possible helping Bronya in any way she could.
She could see how exhausting it was to be the Supreme Guardian, and Bronya was taking it all in with the snap of her finger. Even if Seele most definitely did not want to be in that position, she was slightly envious of Bronya's ability to handle so much pressure before cracking.
The best thing she could do was to be an open pair of arms and a listening ear for the grieving girl. So Seele wouldn't ever dare to question Bronya's ability or discretion.
Just a week before, Seele had been there in Qlipoth Fort, talking with her into the late hours of the night, and Bronya had asked her why she didn't just return to the underworld, where she felt more at peace.
"If you wanted me gone, you just had to say so," Seele had teased. The truth was that Seele had always been bitter toward the overworld and its people, so naturally the underworld was a much more comforting place to linger.
Bronya had just smiled tiredly, seeing right through Seele's taunt. "I'm asking what you want, after all of this."
"I'm just trying to help you out with anything you need. Or want. It's been a hard time for you. Definitely more than for me."
An elegant shoulder raised in a shrug, and silver locks swayed around Bronya's pretty face. "I think I've made myself clear in wanting to keep you for myself, Seele."
She gaped at the girl, flushing deeply. "You… do you mean…?"
Bronya looked away, a finger fidgeting with the side of her teacup. She shifted slightly on her feet. "I would like for you to remain by my side even in these darkest moments, as more than just a confidant. But that is only what I want."
Before Bronya had even finished uttering her words, Seele had stepped up close and plucked the near-empty teacup out of her hands and placed it on the desk next to them. She pointedly forced their gazes to meet. "That is exactly what I want, too."
She held her gaze for a long moment. "Do you, really?"
"You must be a dense idiot if you didn't know that already."
Slowly, a delicate hand came up to rest on Seele's shoulder as a welcome weight. Her attention deliberately shifted down to Seele's lips, and she dropped her voice to a near-whisper. "I'd never felt more brazen, admitting my feelings like that."
"You can't take those words back."
In the dim lighting from the night sky cascading long shadows from the open window, Seele finally kissed Bronya, and she had never felt more at home than when she was pulled into a loving embrace by the girl she so loved.
It had been two days since she last saw Bronya, and she missed her deeply. Like there was a cavern in her chest growing larger and wider the longer it was before Bronya returned.
She could practice patience, though. She put her energy into protecting the children without much of a verbal complaint. After all, she would hate to simply sit around and bemoan her aching heart and look the part of a worried wife who hadn't been kissed by her spouse in over two days. Besides, she put her utmost trust into the success of this mission that was happening, so she worked harder to make a difference in the underworld.
On the fourth day, after she woke up, she simply laid on her pad and stared at the wall. She brought her fingers up in front of her face and counted all ten. The number of days since she and Bronya had accepted each other's affections and entered into some unnamed courtship of some sort could no longer be counted on her fingers. It felt like a blink of an eye, not an expanse of time that was growing.
She curled her hands into fists and tried not to let her emotions show in her work.
It was almost a full week before news of the soldiers' return had come to Wildfire, and Seele nearly leapt out of the clinic to chase Bronya down at the front gate of Belobog.
"Hang on, Seele," Natasha said.
Seele hadn't even gotten up yet. She and Oleg were attempting to file paperwork in the lobby, and her attention had immediately snapped to the messenger that came in through the door. Bowing her head back into the paperwork, she scowled at herself. Did she have to look that excited to hear their news? She didn't even think that she had been complaining about their expedition that much over these days.
Natasha spoke with the man from the overworld right outside the clinic, so Seele doubled her efforts into passing relevant documents to Oleg.
"Calm down, girl," he admonished. "Your Madam Guardian coming back down here will take some time, and so will completing this paperwork."
"Shut it, Chief."
She waited the rest of the day for any of the soldiers to come down, but it seemed they were too occupied on the surface to hasten to the underworld. She was about to transport herself up to see what the hold-up was but stopped herself. Even if her patience was tested from the news, she could handle one more day.
A little bit earlier in the evening, Seele forced herself to retire. With her feeling so antsy, she kept feeling the need to jump into action and fight monsters, run a distance, or kiss someone silly. It was probably bad enough that she nearly broke a door by how hard she slammed it closed, so she exited the clinic with a tight bundle of energy in her lungs.
She decided to run to Rivet Town and eliminate whatever threats were still lingering from the fragmentum to dispel the energy. The high-energy burn in her muscles from killing monsters felt good after a week of careful management with patients, and she finally returned to the house she'd been staying in feeling much more calm.
Instead of crashing for the night after quickly washing the grime off of her body, she walked over to the clinic to potentially speak with Natasha about the state of the mission, now that it was supposedly over.
The older woman looked at her with a fond and patient smile after seeing her walk in, refreshed.
"Did it go well?" Seele asked, straight to the point. "This… mission."
"Smoothly," Natasha said. "They had a field medic with them, so injuries were treated quickly."
That sent a wave of relief through Seele about which she hadn't even known she was nervous.
Nat held up a finger. "However. If I were to guess, Lady Bronya probably refused any treatment while she was out."
"What?" Seele grabbed a tight hold onto her dress.
"Something about soldiers who needed it more, if I recall correctly."
She growled low in her throat. "Bronya…"
Seele considered it for a long moment. She paced in front of the clinic, deciding whether or not she would actually storm up to the overworld and demand that Bronya take care of herself.
She made it back to the house, and the other inhabitants in the main common area looked at her funny.
"Somehow, you look even wilder than normal, even after you took that unnecessarily long shower," a girl commented.
She fired back a glare and stood her ground right at the base of the stairwell, about to head upstairs. "It was not an unnecessarily long shower, mind you. I have long hair, and there is only one of us between you and I who will actually dirty herself to kill monsters. Next time, you can try to wash yourself in two minutes after doing what I did."
A scared laugh escaped the other girl's mouth. She raised her hands up beside her head, the teasing grin on her lips faded. "Sheesh, I don't mean to rub you the wrong way, Seele," she apologized. "Take your long showers. Whatever."
She blinked in recoil from both her response and the girl's reaction. She really didn't mean to come off that strong.
Not to mention the part of her that brought up the fact that she stood over the shower drain and stared at the floor for a long time, trying her hardest not to worry.
Practicing breathing calmly, Seele ascended the stairs and focused on dispelling the remaining restlessness from her system. She had trusted that Bronya was safe, and so she would continue to do so.
For a long while, she simply laid on her bedroll in the room dedicated to her, staring at the wooden beams of the ceiling. The muffled noise of the activity downstairs reached her through the crack in the door that she left ajar.
Originally, she had stated very clearly that she didn't need her own room, as her other housemates mostly shared spaces. She was one of them, so she could live like one of them. They'd left one additional room open that Seele had said should stay as an open room, but eventually her housemates started complaining that she came and left at too bizarre of times and needed to make her own space.
She didn't care much about the privacy of living together, but the biggest issue to her was that this extra bedroom was completely empty save for the bedroll and a small table. If other people lived here too, then it would probably look more lived in. She just couldn't be bothered to manage aesthetics of a place she stayed in for a few hours a day at maximum.
After closing her eyes and failing to put her mind to rest, she sat herself up and looked around the room. Although it was small, the lack of furniture made it feel spacious. The sounds of her shifting around literally echoed off of the walls. Perhaps she should move out of this shared house soon, she thought.
The sound of the front door opening downstairs reached her ears, and the conversation stalled for a brief moment. Someone left, or maybe another housemate returned for the night.
It was the voice of the newcomer that, even through the floor disparity, Seele could tell who it was.
She was on her feet instantly, and as soon as she jumped into the stairwell, the tail end of a response of one of her housemates became clear.
"... is upstairs. She might be sleeping."
Someone else added, "This is Seele. She doesn't sleep."
Seele rushed down the stairs and stepped into the presence of the ground floor conversation, and she turned to the newcomer.
"Oh," Bronya acknowledged, looking Seele up and down. "Hello."
A hastily applied bandage adorned Bronya's cheek, and the lines of a recovering wound stretched under it, visible from what the bandage didn't cover. Dark bags lined her moonlight eyes, contrasting the white marks of scratches all along her face.
"Huh. I guess she's awake."
"You're back," Seele said calmly, not letting the rush of butterflies escape her stomach. "Go upstairs." She jutted a thumb at the stairs.
Bronya looked unimaginably tired, and Seele seriously wondered if this girl slept at all during her mission. She seemed to argue with herself about how to greet Seele properly, but the fatigue seemed to hold her back. Seele could see the relief in her features, something that came from the two of them reuniting again.
Obediently, the Supreme Guardian trudged her way upstairs, and Seele grabbed a hand when Bronya took a miniscule pause on the ascent.
"Sit on my bed," Seele commanded, ushering her into the near-empty room. "I'm going to grab a towel and our first aid supplies."
Bronya turned to her. "Huh?"
"Nat told me that you never dress your wounds with the on-field hospital, so I'm going to take care of you."
She opened her mouth to respond, pink lips parted to allow for a full breath before any words came out. "That's… there are other soldiers on the front line who have worse injuries.
"You need to take care of yourself," Seele harrumphed, pushing this stubborn girl onto her bed. She rushed to the communal washroom and picked up what she needed, then whirled back into the room.
Bronya blinked up at her, looking dazed, fully dressed and clearly not contemplating the same ideas that Seele was.
"Come on," she urged, seating herself behind. "I know you took your own hits, so take your clothes off."
That brought an animated reaction out of the silver-haired girl. She whipped a hand out and put an attempt at stopping any further action by placing it on Seele's thigh, eliciting a brief jump. "Hold on. Seele—"
She brushed the long and now-unruly tresses of beautiful silver hair out of the way and undid the back of Bronya's dress in an instant, ignoring the non-committal words of complaint.
As soon as she peeled the fabric back and the girl's back became exposed, Seele froze.
Bronya, breathing carefully, also did not move, her face hidden from her thick curls. Her hand clutched the front of her dress to maintain decency.
Seele could not unsee the thin, long scars lining Bronya's back, the discolored and raised skin creating straight lines. Her muscles underneath were visible though marred with a series of focused wounds.
The fair skin of Bronya's back with the markings burned a horrific image into Seele's eyes. These scars were deliberate; they were trained.
She tore her gaze away, a hand coming up to cover her mouth and nose. She'd looked for too long, and no matter where else she looked, the image was engraved into her eyesight. She'd looked for too long.
I messed up. To think that Bronya had been hiding this under her dress… she must be self-conscious about it. And Seele so uncaringly ripped her clothes off and dug into vulnerable memories. She completely invaded Bronya's privacy without her consent. She'd completely ignored Bronya's note of complaint. I messed up. She could have just taken something so forcefully that Bronya would have wanted to address at her own pace, when she would be ready.
But she couldn't look away. Her eyes magnetized back to the lines disfiguring the Guardian's flesh. Whip marks. And there was only one person who could have done that to her Bronya.
Without even being fully aware of herself, she hovered her fingers over the markings, not touching, and she quickly drew her hand away.
Seele was torn. Should she just continue on and not mention them at all? Bronya should've been the one to talk about it first, even if Seele had been the one to take away her dignity in this manner. She had other, fresh wounds to tend to, surely.
Uncharacteristically shakily, Seele swallowed down her words and forced herself to not be distracted. She felt the secondhand pain of just looking, so she promised herself that she would take care of Bronya to the absolute best of her ability, and if there needed to be medical help outside of her realm, then she would bring Bronya to where she would receive it.
"Seele," Bronya pacified gently. "Breathe. It's okay." Her face was turned back toward Seele with a loving and patient expression. The depths of her mercury orbs held an eternity of emotions. Seele hadn't even noticed that she turned to look at her at all.
She met that tranquil gaze for a moment before looking down at the scars again. "I…"
"When you get this upset, you bite your lip until it starts bleeding," she murmured, twisting around to caress Seele's lip with a gentle thumb.
Slowly, Seele brings a hand up to hold onto Bronya's, spotting the spot of red on her digit. "I'm sorry."
"You did nothing wrong."
She didn't deserve the sea of love in Bronya's eyes. She should be the one with a disfigured back, not the Supreme Guardian of Belobog.
She let her eyes linger over Bronya's form for one last moment before grabbing the towel and a disinfectant alcohol. She grasped the hand in hers properly and wiped the red off of the finger, the red that did not belong.
Seele grumbled. "I might forever resent your mother, Bronya."
"I know. And it's okay."
She received an undeserved smile with the weight of a mountain of grief and vulnerability.
"It doesn't affect who you and I are, as partners. You love me still, Seele."
Bronya's expression became too much to look at, and she had to look away. A lump formed in her throat from the combination of adoration, bitterness, and pain flooding her veins. "You're annoying, that's what. Don't be saying this that way and with that face. Now turn back around. I'm taking care of you."
Obeying, Bronya let Seele brush off more of the dress to expose other fresh wounds. Seele used the disinfectant with the towel and pressed directly onto an open wound.
"Ow!" Bronya hissed. "Be gentle—hey!"
Seele proceeded to properly clean her lover's wounds. "This is for leaving me."
"You—ouch! Natasha said—"
"And this is for not telling me."
"I-I will ask for you next time…"
"And this is for that loving look on your face earlier."
"I'm sorry."
"No," Seele urged, stopping for a moment. She leaned down to press a light kiss against one of the thin scar lines. A miniscule blot of blood lingered on the skin. "I'm sorry."
And Bronya smiled with her, the weight of Belobog in that curl of her lips.