Chapter Text
When Rae wakes up back in her narrow hospital bed, it’s not to the fantastic feeling of magically returned health and regained strength. Instead, she can still taste the iron of the Emperor’s blood on her tongue mixed with the wilting sweetness of the Flower of Life and Death as well as his own magic.
The sharp pain of her return is still ringing inside her head and her mind is hazy from the sudden change in scenery. Rae had gotten so used to Rahela’s strong healthy body, with its clear mind and painless sure movements, that she’d forgotten the dizziness of her own half-dead body. The Flower might have saved her life, but it had not magically restored her to the perfect health Rae had enjoyed back in high school.
Groggily, she opened her eyes to the dim light of the hallway faintly illuminating the room. It’s hardly enough to make out all the shapes and forms of the furniture around, but the only way for the little light to get inside the small hospital room is the small window in the wall and the even smaller one in the door that had changed and led her to a far away world once upon a time. No, wait. It is a door just like the one Rae had reached for, but –
But this is not her hospital room! The sharp pain rhythmically flaring in her temple isn’t just a souvenir from her hasty escape, but rather her weak ears’ interpretation of the steady beeping that’s coming from the machines to her left. They’re all connected to her body through the myriad of tubes and wires which snake under her covers and the thin hospital gown Rae has grown used to in the last few years. And they are very clearly part of the standard equipment in an intensive care unit.
In an abstract detached kind of way, Rae had known her leaving for Eyam would mean her real body falling into a coma. She’d known it meant stress and fear and even more costs for her family, but Rae had been too surprised at first to think much about that. Then later, she’d been far too busy scheming her miraculous return from the almost-dead and saving the plot of her favourite book.
Now, in the darkness of the night and the uncomfortableness of a body too weak to keep living of its own accord, Rae is reminded of all the reasons why of all the eccentric, heroic, sweet and innocent, cruel and bloodthirsty characters in Time of Iron she had fallen in love with the most cruel, most wicked, most horrible one of all. Why instead of impeccable honour or hedonistic mockery, she had picked the bloody longing for vengeance.
When inescapable physical pain is your constant companion, you slowly start to resent everybody who can live happy pain-free lives while you suffer in silence.
Fighting to lift her heavy eyelids, Rae blinks her eyes open to search for the button with which to call for the nurses. She needs to alert someone she’s back. Well, awake. The effect of the Flower should be instantaneous, but Rae doesn’t feel any better than when that mystery woman came to visit her unprompted. Still, surely the magic just needs a moment to start working and cure her. And then Rae can go home to her mom and Alice and start looking for ways to save Key from the story that she ruined for him herself.
As Rae finally found the bright red button right next to her right hand – it had taken her a little longer than she would have liked to gaze down her own body, but at least she hadn’t needed to reach for the red button on the wall next to the live support machines – she pressed down with all her might. It was barely enough for the small light to click on, symbolising that the nurses had been notified of her call.
Exhausted, Rae’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment and she envisioned how this moment was actually supposed to go:
Rae wasn’t sure what she had expected. Had she thought she’d wake up and be the young, healthy seventeen year old she’d been before her diagnosis? Well, that’s not how healing goes though. Maybe in some fairytales, but not in modern fantasy novels and certainly not in real life.
The Flower of Life and Death had healed Rae alright and brought her back into the real world. But healing seemed to only concern her cancer, not her weak muscles, thin skin, tender flesh and long missing hair. Or her broken trust and latent paranoia, the cynicism of a girl already promised to Death as her groom. No magical or awkward first time, no senior prom, no college. Just slow steady steps toward Death at the end of that horrible inescapable aisle.
Shouldn’t healing magic be an all-around-package, though? That’s how it always looked like in the books: The heroine was gravely injured but some otherworldly healing magic saves her at the last second. And suddenly she is not just not-dying any more, but beautiful and energetic and just so blissfully alive. But to be fair the mystery woman had only promised Rae would live, not miraculously wake up all recovered. No, that was going to be a long long process. Still, she was awake and still alive.
Apparently, Rae had been in a coma for the last almost two months, before she woke up today. It had been disorienting after having gotten used to a healthy, strong body again, to suddenly be trapped in that weak, broken form once more. She had been so excited to be back that she had completely forgotten what a terrible idea it was to just get up. On her ecstatic way to Alice and her mom, Rae had almost collapsed right next to her hospital bed.
If it hadn’t been for that poor nurse Rae had almost scared to her own death, she would be enjoying her return to the real living on the cold hard floor of her hospital room right now. Instead, the nurse had held her up, asked Rae a few routine questions, gotten a doctor to take a look at her and finally called her family.
Alice had cried when she saw Rae was awake and as well as a young woman who had recently defied death, could be. Her mom had not cried as loudly or as obviously as Alice, but Rae had seen the glistening of unshed tears in the corners of her eyes and the relief that lit up her entire face as the doctor came and said that finally Rae seemed to be making progress for the better.
Only …
Everything was turning out so well, there needed to be an impending doom. What else was supposed to create the conflict the plot of her story needed to continue?
And what creates conflict better than a sudden, unexpected zombie apocalypse?
Abruptly, Rae’s eyes snapped open. Even the little dim light in darkened room and the incessant beeping of the machines was enough to force Rae to shut her eyes again, squeezing her eyes closed and desperately trying to blend out all the stimuli that were nothing but pain to her weak body and equally weak mind.
Shouldn’t the Flower fix that? Scratch that. Shouldn’t the Flower have already fixed that? Why was Rae’s body still such a wreck, pulling her under further and further? But Rae did not feel like a magical flower had fixed her body. No, all that Rae could feel was the heavy weight of leaden darkness pressing her down into her little hospital bed and the perpetual cold freezing her insides and making her shake all day.
All Rae could feel was Death’s hand reaching for her.