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Keigo carefully removed the hot rag from Dabi's forehead and dipped it into the bucket of lukewarm water. He would need to go pull fresh cold water from the well soon, but he had been hoping for the fever to break before he had to leave the witch's side again. The rag was still warm when he used it to wipe off the fresh sweat that was beginning to pool in the dip of Dabi's collar bone, again. Fresh cold water would be better and getting it before dark would be smart.
Keigo gripped the cloth tightly as he wrestled with his indecision, and watched as some of the water leaked out of it to run down Dabi’s already sweat damp brow. He chewed his lip unsure what to do anymore, not just about the temperature of the stupid water but with this whole entire mess. The way the witch was sleeping seemed peaceful enough but the way his skin burned every time Keigo’s bare fingers brushed any part of him couldn’t be healthy.
None of the other creatures that Keigo had met who lived in the bog had known how to help either when he had been running around two days ago looking for help after whatever spell Dabi had been attempting took a nasty rebound and had knocked Dabi back from the spell desk head first onto the shelves of glass bottles. Toga and the crew had brought some food earlier and Jin said he would ask the spirits, but Spinner had pulled him aside to let Keigo know they really trust the spirits willing to talk to Jin.
It seemed to Keigo that whenever things went wrong in the bog it was Dabi who would be reluctantly putting things back together. Either this was the first time Dabi had been put out of commission or, more likely, it was something the witch would suffer through alone. Keigo had his own knowledge of that kind of thing. The others were good hearted but it turned out that Keigo was the one with the most experience with magic or even basic medical treatment.
The cuts had been easy enough to patch up. A little bit of water, some clean linen and a smart knot took care of that. Even if Keigo had no idea what was in the large clear bottle that had shattered and seeped into the fresh cuts before he could get it rinsed off, more concerning had been how the dark rune markings that covered much of Dabi's skin had significantly spread. All the time spent here, that was something Keigo hadn't seen before. Unlike the smooth dark purple chicken scratch that covered much of Dabi’s skin, the new marks were a bright angry red, the kind of marks one would see left behind from burns raised from the skin like a brand, and Keigo suspected whatever had caused those was what was also causing the horrible fever.
The amount of heat coming from Dabi's skin was unnatural, Keigo had just enough experience with magic and illness to know that much.
In the castle the royal family was well known for their fire magic, and as a member of the royal guard, Keigo had attended many of the magic classes the children took. After the incident with the oldest son, Witchcraft had been banned not just from the castle, but the entire kingdom and the younger children practiced their father’s sorcery exclusively, though only the youngest ended up being well suited for it.
Keigo took the cloth and rinsed it again. He'd seen this type of thing before, but never this badly. That's why witchcraft is banned. It's not safe.
With Sorcery a tool would be used to absorb and redirect the magic and that would prevent this kind of thing, at least that’s how Keigo had understood it. Despite the magical creature blood in his veins Keigo didn’t practice magic himself, satisfied instead to use his wings and his body the natural way to do his job, so he didn't know the finer details of spells or their rebounds. But as far as Keigo could figure, witches, especially the one currently unconscious in front of him, didn't use crystals or wands or orbs–leaving their bodies to take the brunt of the damage the volatile magic they handled caused.
Keigo cursed his surface level knowledge and threw the rag on the side table. He then stood, taking a moment to stretch out his good wing, while also tenderly relaxing the broken one, before bending down to grab the bucket of water he could now properly describe as hot. Maybe going to the well and getting some fresh air would help clear his mind, bring in some new thoughts. Sitting here in the dark dusty cabin and trying to wipe up hot sweat with hot water while spinning his mind in circles over dated lessons he hadn't thought to pay attention to wasn't doing either of them any good.
The well wasn’t very far and Keigo had an easy time navigating the worn dirt path from the cabin. He tossed the water to the side into the weeds and carefully tied the bucket to the rope with a quick bowline knot before dropping it down into the deep well. He slowly worked to bring up the earth-deep cold water, careful to not hurt his hands on the rough twine as he pulled hand over hand, thinking about the situation.
Back in the kingdom a specialized healer would have immediately been brought in, but even if he managed to find one in the city in time, realistically no one would willingly come back with him to help, the superstitions about the bog ran bone deep across generations older than the castle itself, and if Keigo is honest with himself, he isn’t sure even someone as high profile as himself could overcome the stigma. Once you went in, you weren’t supposed to come back from the bog. How would he have, months ago, reacted to hear someone supposedly had come back from the dead?
No, no one from the city would help. Keigo turned from the setting sun and walked back to the cabin. He would do this himself, even if he had no idea how, he owed the bitchy witch that much for saving more than his life when he pulled Keigo out of that broken cage. And there was a part of him that cared, damn it.
He came back into the cabin and frowned. Briefly he thought maybe he would come back to find the witch sitting up and already giving him snark about his wound tending methods, telling Keigo how he had learned that wrong in the kingdom too. But Dabi was in the same spot in his bed, breaths too shallow and skin still burning.
Keigo grabbed the stool by the bed, dragged it loudly across the dirty floor and plopped himself on it as he plopped the cloth into the bucket. He then quickly fished it out and squeezed the cold water from the cloth before, one again, pressing it to Dabi’s cheek along the rune marks there. He traced the freshly burned ancient words that scarred the pale skin of the witch and Keigo wondered what the meanings of them were. Witchcraft was old magic and he had been told the language of witches had been lost and the few that had known anything about some of it had been put to death or exiled after what had happened to the oldest prince.
When he had first seen Dabi’s manic intensity lit up by the blue flames eating the inside of the storehouse Keigo and the other’s were being held captive in, Keigo had thought the marks had looked terrifyingly awful. A curse for using banned magic, and running into Keigo trapped in the rusty cage, helpless with one wing obviously broken, for some reason had burned that mania down into a deep and pure rage. That night under the unnatural light from the blue-flame magic flickering through the thick smoke had made the runes on Dabi’s skin appear to dance in the darkness.
Today they lay still across Dabi’s skin, unremarkable outside of the mysterious meanings and the unknown origins of a fever that just would not fucking break. His eyes drifted to the bandage wrapped tightly around Dabi’s head and the pink tinge that had been seeping through seemed to have slowed at least. The bandage should be changed, but Keigo had been spending all his time trying to use the cold well water to bring Dabi’s temperature back down to one a human can withstand.
It’s been days, Keigo thought frantically, and his worrying teeth finally broke through the worn skin of his lip he’d been chewing off and on for days and Keigo cursed at the taste of iron in his mouth. He tossed the useless rag back into the bucket of water and dropped his head into the hot sheets.
Reckless. That’s all Keigo could think of the witch he’d been spending so much time with lately. Sure he had been rescued by the crazy man from the horrors of living as someone’s pet, but that didn’t mean Keigo couldn’t judge the man’s life choices up to this point. Whatever brought him to this run down building selling illegal spells and causing a ruckus everywhere he went, intentionally and as loudly as possible Keigo suspects–in fact he had long suspected that the arson they had all been caught up in had actually been lit by the same witch that had broken him from his cage and nursed him and his broken wing back to health.
Stupid and reckless and fuck Keigo just wants the damn fever to break.
This was why magic of this kind made Keigo uncomfortable. He was more familiar with the fire spells at the castle that were cast through the expensive tools of sorcerers. The only person Keigo had ever known to use magic this way had been destroyed by it and he didn’t understand why witches would choose this path, when sorcery was so readily available and much safer.
But he couldn’t deny it was also something beautiful to watch. Keigo thought as he turned his head, resting his cheek on the bed and looking out of the window to the last of the fading light. Dabi often spent hours over his books and mixtures obsessing over his bronze scales and murmuring to himself while his fingers poured magic out through calloused hands. Hands that had been rough–but warm–on Keigo’s skin as he worked the hollow bones of Keigo’s injured wing every day for weeks.
“Birdy…”
Keigo’s head snapped up at the sound of Dabi’s voice, but his excitement was quickly doused when he realized Dabi hadn’t woken up. He was just having another fever dream. Keigo grimaced and got back to work re-soaking the rag in the cool water and dabbing at the hot skin.
His stomach gurgling only pulled him away from his task because it made him realize he should probably attempt to feed Dabi some of the soup Toga brought. He slowly stirred the pot on the stove waiting for it to warm up thinking about the man sleeping in the other room unmistakingly calling out for him in his sleep-even if he was using that horrid nickname he had told the witch to stop using. The others dropped off food and had made casual pleasantries but none of them stayed and the absence of anyone else had become all the more apparent with the lack of annoying witch taking up the space.
Dabi seemed to have no one. No family or anyone close. It seemed like Keigo was the only person to have spent any significant time inside of the cabin and it had been made very clear it was an unwelcome presence.
Birdy…
Maybe not as unwelcome as Keigo had been made to believe though.
The harpy shook his head to clear his thoughts, and he scooped up some soup into a bowl and some of the broth into another. Dabi calling out to him in a sick delirium meant nothing and he shouldn’t be reading more into it than there was.
With those thoughts stealing himself, Keigo picked up the bowls and brought them back into the bedroom-where he promptly dropped them to the floor with a clatter.
Ice blue eyes narrowed and a soft scoff floated across the room. “Useless.”
Keigo doesn’t think he’d ever been so happy to hear himself be called useless and he flung himself across the room, his knees hitting the floor without a care.
“You’re awake!” He cried, only feeling a little guilty at the way Dabi flinched back at the sudden loud invasion of his space.
“I am-” Dabi’s smoke-damaged-dripping-in-sarcasm voice was like angel music to Keigo’s ears, “I see you’re still here being noisy as ever and…” Dabi’s cold eyes flicked to the scattered bowls and soup on the floor, “...still just as messy.”
“Forget the mess,” Keigo scoffed, pushing himself into Dabi’s line of sight and dragging his attention away from the spill on the floor, “Do you have any idea how long you’ve been out for? You hit your head and there was blood and a potion and a fever-”
“Fever?” Dabi interrupted Keigo and put his hand to his forehead and Keigo watched in disbelief as Dabi looked almost in awe at his hand when he pulled it away. “Huh, I haven’t had a fever since…” He trailed off when he looked back over to Keigo. “What?”
“What?!” Keigo cried near real tears now in frustration, “you’re dying! No one can have such a high fever for so long and you’re sitting here acting like.. Like-” Keigo flailed his hands about in exasperation.
“Awe Birdy,” Dabi’s voice dipped into that insufferable tone and his lips pulled into a lopsided smirk, “Were you worried about me?”
Keigo huffed and hoped it didn’t sound as much like the wet sniffle to Dabi as it had to him and buried his face in his folded up arms on the bed, sheet gripped in one fist. “Not for one second you asshole, I hate you.” He grumbled as Dabi laughed and hot fingers brushed through his hair and Keigo pretended he hated that too.