Chapter Text
It was the kind of night anyone who experienced it would remember forever. Total silence, a comforting silence that wrapped around you like an embrace, was only cut through by the soft sound of waves against the shore. The gentle darkness, barely illuminated by the moon and stars overhead, seemed to stretch forever, creating a border between this world and something else, something indescribable and sublime. If it had been a different night, any other night, anyone fortunate enough to witness a sight like this would’ve been left breathless from the sheer beauty of it all.
In spite of her wishes, Mina inhaled, her nostrils twitching. She could still smell smoke on the breeze.
Her hindpaws scraped through the sand as she drew her knees up to her chest, looping her arms around them and pulling the collar of her scarlet overcoat closer to her face to guard against the chill of the night. She sighed. Despite knowing better, she had thought coming down here – to the side of the island with no view of Tenebrous Isle – and staring out at the sea would’ve calmed her thoughts somewhat. Taken her mind off of…who could even say, a different image presented itself every time she closed her eyes.
The banquet hall, seeming to stretch on into infinity as its occupants cast cold, judgmental gazes onto her.
The courtyard of Radiant Manor, rapidly approaching after the man she put her faith in had thrown her from the third-story window.
Thorne’s mutated form, face half-destroyed by Lionel’s onslaught, meeting her eyes as he sheltered her from the attack.
Emerald viscera coating the platform of the Radiant Manor generator, and her own hands, as Baron Lionel lay dead before her.
Cappy’s shocked face, eyes already lifeless, as his corpse vanished into the sea.
The orange glow of Ossex ablaze, growing smaller on the horizon as the waves carried her to a bitter, hollow safety.
Mina shook her head, trying yet again to banish the unbidden memories from her mind. She had only escaped Tenebrous a few hours ago, but alone in the cold night air, the home she had done so much harm still burning somewhere at her back, she felt like these images had always been with her, and hereafter always would be.
Well, not alone, but the less she thought about that right now the better.
Up the shore, inside the abandoned hideaway he had built on this island when he embarked on his grim mission, Thorne, former Marshal of Ossex, lay silent. The man who knew the truth all along, almost paid for her fecklessness with his life, and still gave even more of himself to protect her and save the isle. The Plasma had cured him of his mutation but his wounds were still severe, and he had yet to regain consciousness. Small mercy he was breathing at all, she told herself, shuddering at the memory of his broken body.
A dour chuckle escaped her lips. For all the praise she had gotten through her life for her wits and inventiveness, in this moment she felt foolish beyond reason. A barely-formed child grasping at the world for the first time. For a brief, dark moment she considered waiting there for the tide and letting the ocean sweep her away, ridding the world of her stupidity. Living with her mistakes was the greater punishment, however, even she knew that.
She shook her head again, getting herself up off of the ground. This wasn’t working. She needed something to busy herself with, keep herself from getting lost in thought.
Her thoughts returned to the Marshal, to the dire injuries he had sustained protecting her. Suppressing the reflexive twist of guilt in her stomach, she decided foraging for medicine would be a good project for the time being. Shutting her eyes and taking another slow breath to steady herself, she set about circling the beach for usable herbs.
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Mina grunted, lifting Thorne’s unconscious body onto a makeshift bed of hay and loose fabric she had gathered together. She wasn’t sure how safely he could be moved in the state he was in, but she could at least make him a bit more comfortable where he was. His clothing had been mostly destroyed by his transformation, so she quickly, matter-of-factly tore off what remained to see what she was being made to work with.
It wasn’t good. Horrifying burns decorated the left side of his body, particularly his arm. The delicate-looking membrane of his wing was in tatters, and would likely never see meaningful use again. Worst of all was his face, which had borne the brunt of Lionel’s final assault – small mercy, it was no longer melted down to the bone, as it had been in his mutated form, but his left eye was simply gone. Just looking at him made her stomach turn, not out of disgust but in remorse; the grisly scar that had fused over most of his face may as well have been a mirror reflecting her foolishness back at her.
Feeling the cold air again, she stared down at him, one paw clenching the sleeve of her overcoat. He shivered. With a defeated sigh, she removed her coat, laying it over Thorne as a makeshift blanket.
As she bent down to cover the injured bat, she yelped, pain suddenly shooting through her side. Pulling back her waistcoat to investigate, she quickly discovered the cause: through her fur a large, dark bruise had formed on her breast, only now making itself known as the adrenaline from her escape was finally wearing off. A parting gift from Lionel, she thought sardonically. Gritting her teeth, she quickly felt around for further damage to her midsection. No broken ribs, it seemed. Good; minor injuries like this could be safely ignored while she had bigger things to worry about. Pain was pain, if she was breathing she had work to do. Not letting herself slow down, she began reducing the handful of medicinal plants she had found into a workable state.
She wiped her brow – the back of her paw came back red. Shocked, she paused to investigate further, but couldn’t manage to find any notable injuries. She scanned her memory for where it may have come from instead, and immediately wished she had; it was Cappy’s blood on her face.
She shook her head clear and got back to work.
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To say that Thorne “woke up” would be a misrepresentation; his consciousness was dragged, unwillingly, into a waiting blanket of dull, unbearable ache radiating through his body. He could barely move, but a despondent groan announced his return to the living. Swiftly accepting that sitting up wasn’t an option, he attempted at least to turn his head to absorb his surroundings, blinking wearily like a newborn.
He couldn’t get his left eye to open. He tried not to think too hard about why.
What little he could see from his position told him he had made it to the hideaway, somehow. Instinct, probably, given how little he remembered. He could visualize himself confronting the baron atop the Spark Generator, but the rest was a blur. Or approaching a blur, at least; there were hazy images he could reach for with some effort, but his head was too submerged in pain for him to attempt to cleanly piece together memories of the night.
Before he knew it, a figure was beside him, dropping to their knees to survey him. Through blurry vision, he could put together it was the esteemed Mina the Hollower – clearly his respect for her, his hopes that she would eventually see things his way regarding the Generators, had been well-placed. Reflexively, he cracked a small, self-satisfied smile; not the time, he knew, but the feeling of vindication was still a small balm.
“Welcome back.” she said, somewhat tersely. Obviously she was in total focus mode. “How are you feeling?”
“...Bad.” Thorne croaked, with great effort. “Hurts.”
“That’s to be expected.” Mina leaned in, placing a paw on Thorne’s face to support him while the other held a vial of viscous green fluid up to his lips. “Here. If you can keep this down, it should help with the pain.”
As soon as the mulched herbs hit his tongue, it became agonizingly clear why she had said it like that. Thorne seized, his gag reflex immediately protesting, but Mina held his chin closed, gently as she could, and tilted his head back to make swallowing easier. Once she released him, he voiced his discontent with a protracted retching cough, the sound making her shrink back in guilt. After he settled he laid back, softly panting as his body recalibrated itself.
“I know, I know.” Mina sighed, leaning back into a seat on the ground beside the supine bat. “Sorry. They should hopefully start working soon, at least.”
True to her word, Thorne’s breathing slowly grew less laboured, the ebb of pain throughout his body gradually receding. His senses finally came back into proper focus, allowing him to look around better than he had before. Though dawn had broken there was no sunrise to be seen, a great curtain of grey blanketing the sky. Across the sea, Ossex was no longer actively burning, but a plume of smoke could still be seen rising into the sky. Seeing the smoke, he felt a brief moment of shock, though while his memories of the night were still sand through his fingers, he could reason that whatever had happened was likely a byproduct of his and Mina's actions.
He then turned his gaze to his makeshift triage nurse. Mina looked absolutely haggard; her white fur was matted with blood, soot, and seawater, she visibly hadn’t slept in days, and he could see that behind her eyes the resolve that had kept her standing for – he couldn’t begin to guess how long by now – was starting to waver. Once again finding his mirth in what was clearly a terrible situation, a wry grin found itself in his eye, though not quite his lips. “You look like hell.” he mumbled, his voice returning to him.
Mina blinked, briefly stunned by his comment. Despite herself, she laughed – a sincere, joyful, but somewhat pained sound, the sheer volume of misfortune that she had endured that night temporarily rendered absurd by the Marshal’s quip. “I FEEL like hell,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye as she continued smiling. “It’s good to hear that almost dying didn’t rob you of your rapier wit, Marshal.”
“I’ve been practising my gallows humour.” Thorne replied, his face creasing in a weak smile. “Going up against the baron, we thought it worth preparing for the worst.”
A ragged cough drew a groan of pain out of the bat as reality reasserted itself upon their moment of levity.
“How long was I–”
“A few hours.” Mina answered, gazing up at the brightening sky. “Maybe ten, as a high estimate, given when I cast off from Tenebrous last night. You were already here unconscious when I arrived.”
Thorne nodded, as much as he was able to from his current position.
“...Do you remember anything that happened since your final conversation with the baron?”
“...You were there.” Thorne said. “That makes sense, since you’re here now.”
The sight of Lionel throwing Thorne into the Spark Generator, electricity violently surging through his body and twisting it into a half-feral monstrosity, flashed before Mina’s eyes again. For a moment she could no longer look at him. “...I was.” she replied listlessly. “I’m cursed to always be in the right place at the right time, it seems.”
Thorne coughed again. “Well, it just saved my life, so.”
Mina chuckled. “That’s true.”
“Anyway, no. There’s bits and pieces, but I was basically thrown into the Generator by the baron and then woke up here.” He felt a dull ache pulse through his skull from the mess of scar tissue where his eye used to be. “Clearly a lot happened in those few hours, though.”
Mina took a long, shaky breath, and set about catching up the Marshal to what had happened while he was out of his right mind.
“...I see.” Thorne said, looking forlornly at his companion. “I’m sorry it had to come to this.”
“So am I.” Mina replied coldly, staring out towards Ossex in the distance instead of meeting his gaze. “But it is what it is, I suppose.” She got herself up off the ground, closing her eyes for a moment to feel the breeze run through her fur. “It’s going to rain soon. Would there happen to be any actual shelter in this little hideout you’ve made?”
Grunting from the effort, Thorne tilted his head towards the half-built wall behind her. “Under those crates, there’s a trick door.” his voice grew strained as the painkiller he’d drank was slowly losing its potency. “To the barracks. There’s beds and supplies inside the cliff.”
Nodding wordlessly, Mina left his side, quickly padding over to the corner to reveal the hidden door right where he’d said. As gently as she possibly could, cringing against the inevitable groans of pain, she wrapped Thorne up in her coat, scooped him up into her arms and swiftly descended into the mountain with him.
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Thorne had called it a “barracks”, but the size of the true rebel’s hideaway inside the island betrayed just how small his rebellion had actually been. An extremely makeshift stairway opened up into a modest, highly utilitarian sleeping chamber staffed by roughly a dozen cots at most and some gaslamps for illumination. In the back of the room was a large table with a stained map of Tenebrous spread across it, clearly having been used for both eating and strategy discussions, and further beyond that was another room filled with crates of rations and other supplies. If she had been in higher spirits, Mina would’ve almost considered the space cozy, or perhaps teased Thorne for his lack of design sense, but in her current state of mind all she could think was that it would work perfectly as an infirmary for the ragged bat she was carrying. She gingerly laid Thorne into the closest bed to the entrance, putting her coat back on after he was freed of it, and then doubled back to shut the door behind her and guard against the oncoming weather. With an exhausted sigh, she sat down on the edge of the bed opposite where she had laid Thorne, taking another look over his injured body. “...There are bandages and medicine in the supplies back there?” she asked.
Thorne, fairly drained by even the short trip here, weakly nodded an affirmation. Only affording herself that small break, Mina jumped back on her feet and got to work.
After a long and arduous process, the Marshal lay still, wounds cleaned and dressed, sleeping as peacefully as one could hope for after the ordeal he had endured. Mina sat back on the bed she had claimed across from him, sighing deeply and rubbing her eyes. His screams of agony as she attempted to spread medicine onto his mangled body were yet another horrible thing that had permanently burned itself into her memory, but through the pain it had caused them both, the end result was worth it. He was safe – they were both safe, for the first time in a long time.
After a short moment in the silence, Mina doubled over, quickly grabbing a nearby bucket to vomit into. A pure stress response from her body, she knew, considering that in addition to not sleeping she had also neglected to eat for the past few days. As she wiped her mouth clean and caught her breath, her own unaddressed injuries half-heartedly signalled for attention, but she was too tired to care. At this point she couldn’t even be asked to clean her fur before giving up on the last shreds of consciousness she still held onto.
She fell back, not bothering to remove her waistcoat or otherwise undress, settling quickly into the hard bed beneath her. The mattress was cheap but that didn’t matter, she could sleep anywhere. Especially now, where despite her mind protesting she could feel her body actively shut itself down. She lay on her side, and as she faded her eyes locked onto Thorne’s sleeping form, compelled to keep vigil on him in case some new thing suddenly went wrong. Watching his chest softly rise and fall, knowing he was safely sleeping after everything that happened caused her own body to relax in kind, but seeing him in full again, his arm completely bandaged and much of his face wrapped up as well, she was once again filled with a formless, all-consuming guilt. This was all her fault, was the last thing she told herself while conscious.
“I’m sorry…” she muttered, voice barely a whisper, as her weighty eyelids pulled her into a restless, unbidden sleep.