Chapter Text
It was a bruised and bloody warrior that hobbled into the village square, interrupting the debate. His first attempt at shouting a warning ended in a garbled wheeze which did not carry beyond the last two rows of benches. Mrs Fulliautomatix turned to shush him and did a double-take.
Her exclamation of dismay made several heads turn. Disapproval turned to shock at the sight of him, and in moments, Asterix was mobbed by worried villagers.
“No,” Asterix panted as they steered him to a bench, urging him to sit down. “I need ... chief ...” When he tried to make for the head table, however, his left leg gave up on him, and he barely turned falling down into sitting down, pretending it had been on purpose. The adrenaline that had sustained his mad dash through the forest packed up its equipment and left the battlefield, taking no responsibility for the damage it had wrought, abandoning dead muscles and whimpering nerve endings to whoever was on clean-up duty.
Luckily, Chief Vitalstatistix had the sense to come to him.
“Catapults,” Asterix blurted out, skipping all formalities and jumping straight to his news. “At Laudanum. They could be here any mo-“
A boulder the size of his outhouse screamed down from the sky, smashed into the head table and pulverised Chief’s vacant chair.
“-ment,” Asterix finished lamely, wings drooping. After all that bother, he had still been too late!
Another rock took the top off Unhygienix’s hut, tore down his sign and missed – to the disappointment of all but the shop owner – every smelly fish in the establishment. The Indomitable Gauls scrambled for shelter, though no structure in the village would be sturdy enough to withstand the bombardment.
“The quarry!” Asterix called after them, ignoring the warning spike of pain in his chest. “Go to the-!”
“Potion!” Chief Vitalstatistix countered, pelting off towards the druid’s hut, but not many dared follow him.
Asterix stayed where he was, having more than enough trouble catching his breath after his ill-advised advice-shouting. He sat curled in on himself, wheezing, when he heard the approaching whistle. His head jerked up, saw the sky blotted out by a boulder, had time to think Oh, shit–!
Then the rock halted in mid-air, four inches from the tip of his nose.
The warrior clutched at his chest, where his heart belatedly made a strangled hiccup. The man who had caught the rock shifted his grip, revealing a pair of familiar white-and-blue trousers and a worried face framed by two bright-red braids.
“You alright?” Obelix asked.
Hysterical laughter bubbled in Asterix’s stomach, but he fought it down, knowing his ribs would kill him for it. “I've been worse.”
With a powerful spin, Obelix launched the boulder back in the direction it had come from. There was a massive crash a few moments later, but it was impossible to tell if he had hit his mark or made a new clearing in their forest. He caught the next boulder headed for the square and returned that as well, but there was nothing he could do about the second rock that arced high above their heads and hit deep within the village.
Asterix braced himself for howls of pain or wails of grief, but heard only a housewife bellow, “Not my kitchen!”
They needed to deal with this at the source.
“I’m going to sit this one out,” he told Obelix. “Could you...?”
“On it.”
A moment after his friend left to deal with the Romans, Blinix ran up to the warrior with a backup gourd of potion and Getafix’s golden sickle.
“Mr Asterix, sir, the druid wants you to keep the Romans busy while he’s brewing, and he needs a twig of mistletoe, if it would not be too much trouble.”
For a second, Asterix considered taking the potion. It would give him the strength to power on through his injuries, and he would probably be able to complete the request.
But probably wasn’t good enough when lives were on the line.
“You’ll have to find someone else,” Asterix said, hating himself for being too weak to fulfil his duties. “Someone who knows what mistletoe looks like, mind you.”
The kid gaped at him, flabbergasted. Then he scampered off, hollering: “Muuum! Asterix is dying!”
“I’m not-“ Asterix twisted to grab the miscreant by the scruff of the neck, but ended up doubled over. Iron bands were cinched tight around his lungs, squeezing his breath into whistling pants that he could not quite bring under control, not even when Impedimenta, not Bacteria, came striding out from hiding.
“Deep breaths,” the First Lady chided, and Asterix’s wings wilted with embarrassment under her scrutiny.
“Can’t,” he gasped, fist digging into his kicking heart.
“Come on,” she said, “with me. In–“
Asterix tried, and the bands around his chest blazed red-hot with pain. When he blinked the stars away from his vision, he found himself slumped sideways on the bench, Impedimenta’s arm around him the only thing stopping him from toppling over. He caught the tail-end of her question, one which it sounded like she had asked several times over.
“–hear me?” At his weak nod, she cautiously released him, and when he managed to right himself, said, “I’m getting the druid.”
“No!” Asterix grabbed at her, his fingers barely snagging her sleeve before she turned away. “Don’t interrupt him,” he wheezed. “I can wait.”
She looked him over, and the dubious frown on her face made Asterix wonder just how bad he looked.
“The moment he’s done, he’s seeing to you,” she said.
Asterix nodded, then winced as his head throbbed.
More villagers emerged from their hiding spots, nervously scanning the sky, though no more rocks appeared. The men headed to the druid's, while the women congregated around the chief’s wife, and by extension, the injured warrior. In short order, Impedimenta had organised a head count to ensure no one had been caught inside one of the collapsed huts, tasked Bacteria with taking the ladle from Getafix the moment he started distributing potion, and sent Mrs Fulliautomatix to fetch a bowl and a washcloth.
“I can do it myself,” Asterix protested as Impedimenta tilted his head back and dabbed at the cut above his right eye. The left one was starting to swell shut, but at least it wasn’t bleeding. She only tsk-ed at him and continued her task, and Asterix had to admit it was kind of nice to be cooed over and pampered. Besides, the ache in his chest was deepening, and the simple task of raising his arms didn’t seem worth the bother. Mrs Geriatrix brought him a tankard, and when Cacofonix came down from his tree to inquire what was going on, the bard draped his soft, red cape around the warrior’s shoulders, which were not shaking, thank you very much.
The knots in Asterix’s battered shoulders loosened when the head count confirmed that they had suffered no casualties (besides him, as Mrs Fulliautomatix pointed out, but that didn’t count), and potion-hyped warriors streaked past their bubble of calm, bringing Obelix some much-needed reinforcements, as the three other camps had joined the attack. Apparently, Asterix was missing out on the tribe’s biggest battle in a decade. He found it hard to care. He only wanted to go home and sleep.
Finally, they heard the druid approaching, saying “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me–“ as he elbowed his way through Asterix’s support team. Getafix was usually good at hiding his emotions, but his urgency bordered on panic before he caught sight of his patient, upright and conscious.
The druid exhaled explosively, then muttered something under his breath before covering the last steps between them, stroking liverspotted hands over his long, white beard, where small hairs had curled with fright.
“What have you done this time?” he asked, serene as the deep ocean, showing no sign of his little lapse. ”Bacteria thought one of the catapults hit you...?”
“Nah,” Asterix said, forcing a grin. “I was the one doing the hitting.” This elicited snorts and assorted noises of disbelief from the women. “I did! Smashed a tree-top well and good, and broke some branches on the way down. Then I hit the ground.”
“I think,” Getafix said wrily, “that the ground might have hit you back.”
Despite his initial relief, the druid hmmm-ed and clucked his tongue as he inspected Asterix’s injuries, studying his eyes and the bump on his head, feeling his ribs thoroughly before moving on to his leg, bending the knee and rolling his ankle.
A jolt of pain shot up Asterix’s shin, making him involuntarily jerk in Getafix’s grasp.
“Ow!”
The druid put the limb carefully down. “Who brought him back?” he asked Impedimenta. As if he thought Asterix might not know the answer.
“No one,” the First Lady said, puzzled. “He came back alone.”
Getafix’s exasperation stung twice as badly as the cuts on Asterix’s arms and face. “Don’t tell me you walked on this!”
“Alright,” the miffed warrior said, “I won’t.”
“He ran, actually,” Impedimenta informed their druid. “Almost collapsed at our feet.”
“I had to warn you!” Asterix said. “What was I supposed to do? Sit and twiddle my thumbs, waiting for the Romans to come finish me off?”
Getafix’s bushy eyebrows drew together. “... The Romans? Obelix didn’t throw you?”
“No!” Asterix’s temper flared at the accusation. “He would never!”
The druid held his hands up, suing for peace. “He is the most common source of people hitting trees.”
“If he’d come with me, I would hardly have needed to run home to warn you,” Asterix said. “He would have smashed the catapults right then and there.”
“So how did you end up in a tree?” Impedimenta asked.
“... It’s not important.”
“I will be the judge of that,” Getafix said.
“My head hurts. Could we talk about this later?”
“Asterix.”
“I ... er ...” The warrior cringed beneath their expectant faces. “...IlaunchedmyselfwithacatapulttoescapefromLaudanum?”
Most of the villagers frowned as they tried to make sense of his mumbled confession. Getafix waited for him to repeat himself, depending on his station to make Asterix squirm, but Impedimenta didn’t have the requisite patience. She set her hands on her hips and towered over him with five feet of churning disapproval. “I think I just misheard you,” she said. “Please repeat that.”
Asterix did.
Then was blown over by the explosion.