Work Text:
Wiping the blood from his sword on the tunic of one of the fallen Valg soldiers, Chaol surveys the scene around him, taking in the blood splattering the walls, black and red, and the reek of death that assaults every sense in turn.
In the confused, shambling silence that always seems to follow a battle; when his mind is thick and confused, moving both too quickly and too slowly, where everyone’s bodies seem to expect more violence and terror and struggle to complete simple actions, he’s drawn back into himself by the stifled sound of a choked sob from behind him.
Turning he finds Nesryn, her slim form bowed over the same Valg commander plunging her knife into his chest over and over and over and over again, without seeming to realise that she’s doing it. Thick black blood soaks her small hands and runs down her arms in long, thin coils, ribbons of darkness twisting themselves around her tanned skin like serpents.
Jamming his sword into the scabbard at his hip he hurries to her side, crouching down beside her he reaches out and tries to take her hands in his and stop what she’s doing. In response to his touch she jerks away and turns on him, her face contorted in such a feral expression that for the space of a thundering heartbeat he half expects her to plunge the blade into him. He withdraws his hands from her, severing the contact between them, but he holds his ground beside her.
“Nesryn,” he murmurs quietly, looking directly at her, his eyes soft and careful, meeting her gaze, the unbridled emotions stronger than any he’s ever seen there, stronger than she’s ever let be seen, hatred and anger and terror and...Shame.
At the sound of her name falling from his lips she shatters. Her face crumples, her body seems to be crushed by a sudden unbearable pressure, as though the weight of the world has descended upon her, causing her to cave in upon herself, her bones seeming to bend inwards, destroying her.
Pushing herself to her feet she staggers away from her, crashing into the walls of the tunnel which feel as though they’re closing in on her, crushing the life from her, the reason forced away with it. All she knows is that she can’t take spending another second in this festering place.
She needs to get out. She needs light. She needs air. She needs to escape from the smell of blood and death and decay. She needs someone to show her how to breathe again because her body no longer seems to know how to do it. Her lungs are clogged with tar, her throat clenched so tightly she puts a hand to it to be sure, to be quite sure that the commander’s hand isn’t still locked around it, nails punching into her neck, boring two rows of deep, crescent-shaped dents in her skin. She chokes.
Whole body shaking; wracked with tremors so violent she can barely stand or walk she forces herself from the sewer, gasping at the fresh air that greets her as though she’s just surfaced from deep water that had dragged her down and tried to drown her.
The bright light stings her eyes after the darkness of the tunnels and the tears that blind her eyes make it impossible to know where she’s going but she doesn’t care. Away. Away from that place, away from the feelings that coil so tightly around her chest even now, away from the fear, away from the blood, the death, the guilt. But she can’t get away from them. They follow her. They cling to her, like a shadow, like a lover, unwilling to let her go.
Without knowing what else to do she simply runs.
Pulling himself up the rusted ladder he hauls himself from the tunnel and looks around, his eyes screwed up, trying to find her slim figure in the distance. Catching sight of her at last to his relief he darts towards her, half wary after her reaction in the sewers but too concerned not to at least try.
He’s never seen her lose control the way she did there, she’s always so calm and controlled, her steady, even temperament keeping him steady, relieving the tension that so often seems to have taken root in his gut over the last few months. Seeing her break so badly scares him worse than almost anything else could have done. A hundred Valg soldiers could have stormed the tunnels and attacked him but as long as he had her standing solidly at his back he felt he could have dealt with that better than this.
When he finally manages to catch up with her he finds her being violently sick a little ways away. Crossing to the well a few feet from him he draws up a bucket full of water, unhooks it and carries it over to her. She accepts it when he brings it to her and rinses her mouth out before taking a few shaky sips.
Tentatively he reaches over and rubs her back when she wretches again, her body heaving. He tries to keep making big, broad motions across her back, trying to soothe her. When she’s done he offers her the bucket again and she rinses her mouth out once more. Legs still trembling she manages to shuffle to the lip of the well and sink down onto it.
Following her he dips the bucket back into the well and draws it up full again. Finding a clean rag tucked inside his tunic he pulls it out and dips it into the bucket he’s set beside her he wordlessly begins to clean the thick black blood off of her arms, trying to keep his movements gentle as she winces. A moment later he understands why when red blood mingles with the black that spider webs across her skin.
Glancing up into her eyes, so dark that they appear mere shadows, sunken into her face he whispers softly, his voice shaking, “You’re hurt.”
She doesn’t respond to his words, her eyes don’t even flicker to him drawing attention to the long, thin gash on her arm. When he reaches up and softly brushes his fingers over her neck where the blood has already clotted against the ring of wounds around her throat however she jerks away from him as though he’s branded the marks into her himself.
He holds his hands up in a gesture of peace, trying to calm her. Cautiously he returns to the wound on her arm. Her eyes have deadened and flat once more, shutting him out and shutting down on him completely. Tearing a strip from his cloak he uses it to bind up the wound on her arm and stop it bleeding until he can get her somewhere to tidy her up properly he returns to washing the blood from her hands, going more slowly this time, afraid of uncovering more injuries.
Aside from a few small cuts and bruises, the kinds that pepper his own hands however, she’s otherwise unhurt. The puncture wounds on her neck still worry him but he’s more concerned about having her explain what’s happened and what’s wrong with her and they don’t present any imminent threat to her life so, deciding it would do more harm than good to try and probe them now, he leaves them alone.
Gazing up at her he tries to catch her eyes again but she’s focused on the little corridors of watery black blood stained here and there with red that now line the channels between the cobbled stones beneath them.
“Nesryn,” he says softly, his eyes still on her face, his hand gently resting on her knee, trying to get her attention.
“I knew him,” she breathed, her eyes now fixed on her hands, as though they’re still stained with blood. He senses that it’s best not to speak and sits watching her in silence, giving her time and space and finally, finally she looks at him, her eyes fractured and tortured, “The commander,” she explains and he remembers the way she had driven her blade into his chest, unable to stop herself and a flicker of horrified understanding flashes through him a moment before she clarifies further, “The man he used to be, before they forced that demon inside him...I knew him.”
Pity stabs at him and he lifts the hand he’s resting on her knee and lifts it to catch up both of hers which have begun twisting in agitation in her lap, her sharp nails breaking the skin of her palms whenever she rakes them across them in anguish. Squeezing gently he tries to coax even a small measure of calm into her.
“We went to school together,” she manages to choke out, the words coming thick and fast now, tumbling over each other in their bid to escape her, as though she no longer has control of them, wild, rabid, starved dogs whose leashes he had inadvertently cut, “We played together. We talked together. We grew up together. We joined the guard together, we-“ she gags again, her body convulsing and he pushes himself up to sit beside her, rubbing her back once more as her chest heaves with the effort it requires to force breath into her lungs.
“I knew him,” she croaks again, shaking violently against him, the vibrations making his body tremble with her, “I knew him and I killed him, I, I-“
Cautiously he takes her hand in his again and gives her a moment to find a shred of composure before he says softly, “That man that you knew, the man you were friends with...He died a long time ago.”
But she shakes her head, swallowing hard and fixing him with a tormented stare, “He looked at me,” she tells him, her breath catching in her throat, “Just before he died. Just before I...Just before I ended it. He looked at me and he knew me too, I know he did, Chaol and, and-“ she shatters then, her body convulsing again and he’s at a loss, not knowing what to do or say to help her, only knowing that he would do anything to take away the obvious pain that she’s suffering through.
Closing her eyes she turns away from Chaol and in an instant finds herself in that sewer tunnel again. The walls loom up all around her, damp with grime and the more recent sprays of blood that provide ghastly decoration to the rough stones. Screams of agony from the demons she herself has helped to slay and from the men who fight with her tear at her and she sees the look in the eyes of the man she once knew, the man who shouldn’t have been there anymore, who shouldn’t have remembered her name or the shape of her face or the fact that she used to smuggle him strawberry tarts without her father noticing.
He had looked at her with shock and recognition and there had been fear, no, terror, in the eyes she had known so well. Something in her had snapped then, in a way it had never done before, whatever she had been through, whatever she had seen, whatever she had done had never made her snap that way in all her years, but this...this had broken something inside her she had thought indestructible.
All she had known in that moment, all she had been aware of as her surroundings vanished and her reason was torn away and her very name and identity and soul were stripped from her, was that she never wanted him to look at her like that again.
She can still feel the blade plunging into his chest in her frenzied, anguished rage; still feel ribs splintering like matchsticks under her blows. Her hands clench in her lap and her nails bite into her palms as she forces them to stop shaking.
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” she whispers, her voice breaking, unable to look him in the eye.
Shock ripples through him at her words. Throughout everything she’s stayed strong and certain. When the Valg vanished from the tunnels, leaving him empty and confused he had gone to her and she had reassured him and comforted him, brought him back in line and reminded him of what they were doing and why. As dissent had spread through their ranks at his flat refusal to abandon the capitol and move elsewhere she had stood by him, always, and never raised her voice in protest or joined the others.
Quickly burying these feelings before she can see he gives her hand a careful squeeze and says, “You can,” so firmly and surely that she looks up at him again, her eyes wide with a faint tinge of desperation in them, wanting to believe him, needing to believe him, “Stay the course, remember?” he echoes softly.
A shudder runs through her and she turns away before he can see the tears that come to her eyes which she hastily wipes away on the corner of her torn sleeve. But the fact that he’s here, still solidly here, beside her, a partner...She had never really wanted a partner before, in any sense of the word. Relationships of any description were complicated and messy and being independent had always suited her far better. But this. She could easily get used to this, to him. She doesn’t know if it’s something she should embrace or run from.
“Come on,” he says, standing and jolting her out of her reverie, she looks up at him, confused and he says gently, “I’m going to take you home now, you need to sleep,” she just blinks at him and he continues, speaking steadily and firmly, and a shadow of the man he used to be looks out at her, the captain giving orders, looking after his men, looking after her, “I’m going to stay with you tonight and make sure you’re okay. Alright?”
Is it alright? The nights she’s spent with him before now have always been short and intense, meeting up in taverns and inns the previous summer, losing themselves in one another for an hour or so before drifting apart again until next time. It had worked, it had maintained the boundaries between them she had insisted be there. Physically they could be as intimate as he wanted but there had to remain an emotional distance between them. Now however, even though there’s no longer that same physical intimacy that they once shared, she feels the emotional barriers between them starting to blur, the lines running like wet paint in a rainstorm until she can’t quite tell where they were or why she had them set up in the first place.
Making her decision at last, she pushes herself to her feet and allows him to lead her home. She accepts his company and his help and, for good or for ill, accepts that she wants to let him in at last, that perhaps some part of her needs to let him in. And so she does.
She lets him in; lets him lead her home, lets him help her wash up and even lets him coax a little food into her before he ushers her gently into bed and takes a seat beside her. He’ll be there when the nightmares come and as her eyes slowly drift shut, she can’t help but feel comforted by his presence at her side, and the feeling that sweeps over her an instant before sleep is that that’s where he belongs.