Chapter Text
Everything hurt.
Every step, every breath, every word felt like needles stabbing into Legs. Worse than needles, but his brain was too tired to think of a better comparison.
It didn't matter anyways—It's not like he was trying to describe it to anybody, they didn't need a description of the consistent agony he had been in for the past several hours—days.
He shut the door to his room and leaned against it, sighing painfully. One of his ribs was definitely fractured, if not completely broken. Something was wrong with his leg (again), and he hadn't gotten a chance to properly look at his neck beneath the blue hood that settled around it, but he was certain there was some form of rope burn, at the very least.
Who knows what else he hadn't noticed yet.
For their credit, Graecie and Juniper's healing magic did help—the wound on his shoulder had closed, and the swelling around his eye had gone down. He'd need to check the cut on his face, too, under the bandage he had managed to stick on there.
Regaining breath, Legs pushed away from the door, gingerly pulling off his tunic and hood and glancing in the mirror. His torso was covered in ugly shades of yellow, green, and deep purple, some parts even veering into black as the bruises crawled up his side.
The skin on his neck was rubbed raw, colored a fleshy pink. The top layer of skin curled away at the edges of it, peeling back in small layers.
He didn't think it was that bad.
Legs went over to his chests, wincing as he began to rummage through one of them for bandages. At some point, he had stashed them away after recieving them from Violet, but he couldn't remember if they were still there.
A quiet, sharp knock sounded at the door, and he looked up, hesitating.
He wasn't sure if he could face any of his friends right now, especially knowing how they'd freak out.
He managed to cross over to the door, leaning close to it. The mana veil did its job well, but it wore thin at the edges, providing a bit of room for error.
"Who is it?" he asked, raising his voice slightly and wincing at how raw his voice sounded. His throat ached at the words, and it would probably do him good to not speak, but he doubted the possibility of that, knowing everyone else at the Academy and their preference for conversation.
"Um, it's Lukey. I know you're probably recovering, but I wasn't able to check in with you when you got back, so I wanted to stop by." The familiar voice broke through the thin edge of the veil, muffled by the magic and the door.
"Oh." Legs hesitated, swallowing painfully. "I… Yeah, come in."
"Oh, I wasn't-" Lukey started as he opened the door, immediately cutting himself off. "Oh… wow. That's-"
"Will it help if I say it looks worse than it feels?"
"…Are you lying?"
Yes. "…Maybe." he pulled the door open fully and walked back to the opened chest, continuing to look through it. He heard Lukey close the door behind him, resealing the mana veil and leaving the two of them.
A tense silence filled the room as Legs finally found the bandages, pulling them out from the chest and closing it. He could feel Lukey's unasked questions from the other side of the room, but to his credit, the other man hadn't asked.
And then he did ask, but it wasn't a question Legs had expected.
He probably should've expected it.
"Where'd the blue come from?"
It was a question Legs had probably heard over a hundred times since arriving at the Academy, something that he had started to grow tired of answering.
And yet, he was relieved to hear it.
Because it wasn't about the Shield, or Olsted, or his injuries. Granted, it was about the colbalt, which wasn't a topic he was a fan of, but still.
"Experiment gone wrong. I was working on a type of fuel, and it exploded." he untucked the end of the guaze on the roll and sat down on the edge of his bed. He had only wrapped his ribs once before, and he wasn't even sure he did it correctly, but he was still alive, so it wasn't going to kill him to do it again.
…He could just ask Violet how to do it properly when she comes back from her trip.
"…Do you want help?" Lukey asked tenatively as Legs began wrapping his ribs, wincing at the pressure it put on the likely fractured bone.
He shook his head. The bruises were darkest higher up on his chest, so he was probably good to only wrap that area. The rest was just bruised from…
Impact.
He tore the guaze from the roll, tucking the end into one of the layers of bandages before tossing it aside. He reached down to pull his bag out from beneath his bed, grunting as a bolt of pain shot through his side, his grip tightening on the strap of the bag.
Legs managed to pull the bag onto his lap and open it, searching through it for a clean shirt. He felt the bed sink down beside him, and while Lukey didn't say anything, Legs could feel his eyes watching him.
The only tunic he had managed to find within the bag was a rust orange colored one that he had honestly forgotten about. He had gotten it some-odd years ago, and it had never fit right on him, but it seemed to be his only option, especially considering the state of his only other tunic.
He managed to pull it over his head with minimal difficulty, his ribs disagreeing with him trying to raise his arms higher than his shoulders.
Now that that was handled, he had things to do.
Legs rose from the bed, his vision immediately fuzzing at the movement as he swayed on his feet. A stable arm gingerly wrapped around him, just below his arms, preventing him from toppling back down.
"You okay?"
He managed to nod, his vision swimming as Lukey eased the both of them back down onto the edge of the bed. Everything felt so heavy.
His head leaned to the side, resting against something soft as the edges of his vision began to darken.
"…I've got you, Legs. You're safe here."
Legs mumbled something unintelligable as the darkness spread to the rest of his vision, pulling him into sleep.
You're safe here.