Work Text:
“I should die more often,” Johan says, still a little woozy. “You never take care of me like this.”
Phanora's fingers curl over his stomach, where the wound is slowly, very slowly, closing. Far slower than usual. He can just barely feel the brush of her hand. Light blazes around her.
The fear had gone out of him the moment Phanora had knelt next to him to heal the wound—he should be more scared that he isn’t healing by himself, but he isn’t.
“You are not dying, Johan,” Phanora corrects, but there's a thin sheen of ice to her words, displeased. “You are not permitted.”
Well, if his lady says so.
He has to savor this fleeting bit of affection if he can. His vision winks in and out; between the blood loss and the mending spell, he sees her cold, blue eyes fixed entirely on him. Her Ultoma cuts a dark shape above him. An ice-cold drop lands on his cheek, a ghost sensation before it disappears.
Johan relaxes. As an undead—as her undead—there is very little to fear even in a world of magic and beasts alike. He's already dead. Tethered to this body by the sheer force of Phanora's unyielding will. The fear that drives at the heels of most eludes him. Most mortals fear death as an end of things; some who know about the cycle fear losing themselves; Johan fears not death nor wounds nor scary things that go bump in the night. Phanora is far more powerful than any of those.
Of course, it's annoying as hell sometimes, but this is the lot Johan chose for himself.
His organs are partway through being healed; he can feel them, an unpleasant itch as the tissues pull together. It is her magic against another’s, but the dark tendrils that extended from his wound are beginning to surrender under her onslaught of magic. Johan eyes Phanora, wondering how far he can push his luck. In for a penny, in for a pound.
“Oww,” he says, just to see what she'll do. “It hurts, ya know.”
“Worse than the last time?”
“Eugh.”
The case with the strays had been… unpleasant for all of them. Phanora had simmered about it for weeks after, having her garden tended to meticulously, near incandescent with rage. Only one of the many reasons he'd gone to her years ago, offering to serve her after death.
“It will be over soon.”
Johan lets his head loll back, touching the side of her knee. Her dress is going to get dirty, he thinks through the haze, kneeling in the grass like this. So are her hands. He never touches her, unless necessary, but she does touch him on her own terms. Extra lucky today then. He grins up at her. She must be rattled enough that she doesn’t bother moving away.
The time with the strays was, in Johan's extended life, the third time he's died, technically speaking. The first he'd bled out in Phanora's arms; he'd felt the cold kiss of death on his soul, rising far above his body—then her hands, closing around him gently, and the faint sound of her voice calling him back. The second, to be honest, he doesn't remember. It happened so quickly he still isn't quite aware of it beyond the haze, only that after Phanora refused to speak of it.
What Johan hasn't told Phanora is that he's felt the beginning of eternity—there's a moment before he gets yanked back again by the chain of magic that he starts to freefall into the Void.
His wounds close, finally.
Phanora's lips curl. “We will have to look into this.”
Johan curls in the grass. He feels weaker than he has in decades. He’s patched up, good as new as ever. Now that his stomach is healed over, there’s enough space in there for shame to make a home. Had he been too weak? Johan is Phanora’s right hand, her tool and her weapon.
Her first.
The other Death Knights serve at her call, but Johan is the only one who gets to stay, always a step behind. For as much as he chose her, Johan wouldn’t be here if Phanora hadn’t taken him.
“Phanora,” he says, voice shrinking, “so… am I? In trouble?”
Phanora dusts off her dress. She looks cold, and beautiful.
“Not anymore,” she says, eyes finally lifting from him out towards the ruined edge of her garden. The wet sheen he’d seen is gone—or maybe it was only a trick of the light. “Not with me.”
He wets his lips. She hadn’t said he was out of trouble, either.
“Those undead…” He swallows. “Fighting them felt like…”
He doesn’t want to finish the thought. Phanora hums, a curious noise, folding her arms over her chest and holding herself.
“Your dress—” he says helplessly, lifting his hands.
Phanora turns on her heel. Her shadow flits over him.
“Can you stand?”
Johan scrambles to his feet. The sudden rush makes him dizzy, and he stumbles, but this time Phanora doesn’t move to support him and Johan steadies himself.
“A report to the Order will have to be made,” Phanora continues, already walking up the hill. “And this mess.”
Aw, Johan thinks. He’d hoped for just one more moment before he’d be put back to work, but he lopes after her, a step behind. The wind stirs, her long hair drifting back so close it almost touches him. He breathes in. The smell of iron gives way to flowers.
She’s right. It is important, and anger stirs now that he’s fully awake again. Sending an army of undead—perhaps, if it’s somehow possible, another witch’s undead on Phanora’s garden… Johan sheathes his knife, but he scowls. How dare they.
Phanora ascends the steps of her house, then abruptly stops on the top step. Johan yelps, flailing so he doesn’t slam into her back.
“...Phanora?”
She turns, looking down at him. There it is again, the full presence of her gaze, an endless void in itself.
She reaches out. Johan goes entirely still as she brushes a thumb under his eye, in the same place where an Ultoma would be. The touch is barely there; it feels more like a cold slice of air than the light tender caress of her hand, but this is more than Phanora gives, ever. He leans forward, chasing it, and Phanora draws away.
“Johan.” She flicks a bit of hair away from her face, as if she had never touched him at all. “You will die after a long life, when I allow you to. Not a moment earlier.”
Heh. “You got it, boss.”
Phanora moves again, and Johan is, of course, helpless to follow her.
“Clean up. You’ve left quite the mess.”
Johan grins at her back. “Yeah, yeah. I know.”