Work Text:
The lights were too bright.
Cardan struggled to breathe against the weight in his chest. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been so aware of the beating of his heart but now that he could feel it he was acutely aware of the fact that something was wrong with it. When he moved his eyes he saw the world blurring on the edges. The cheap tile of the ceilings and bright panel lights reminded him cruelly that he was not in his territory.
He and Jude had come to the human world to visit her family. His thoughts came slowly to him but Cardan remembered walking hand in hand with his wife. They’d been shopping. The both of them were trying to find gifts for the human holidays for her relatives. They’d turned up empty handed and resolved to finding something from their kingdom to give to them that they would enjoy and they were walking back to her sister’s home to take their leave for the night. Jude had been watching everything almost as curiously as he was. People often commented on the mortal High Queen and referred to the human world as her domain but Cardan never forgot the fact that Jude barely knew it.
She had grown among faerie as much as he had. The human world and their customs and clothing were just as foreign to her as they were to him.
They had been walking. Hand in hand and happy. A reprieve from the work they did as the High King and Queen. They had the chance to pretend like they had no other responsibilities. It was nice to get to pretend. To see Jude relax and take her ease. She was always ready for a fight at every moment. She was still prepared here in the human world but it was different. She wasn’t as distrusting here as she was with the folk. It was always interesting to him. The way she would rely more on the words of humans even with their ability to lie. He’d never understood how she could trust in things when there was no promise of truth but she would grin at him with all of her cunning and tell him she simply knew.
He wished they’d known what was going to come of them when they wee walking. He wished they would have known to take another path.
Cardan closed his eyes against the light of the room and all he saw was the damp street they’d gone to cross. Jude was leading him across and they had been arguing. A debate for some foolish thing he couldn’t even summon to the front of his mind in the moment. He had felt the vibration of the ground change. He’d seen the bright headlights of the car as it swerved off its path and barreled toward them.
All of the power the both of them possessed. All of the skill in fighting and training in escape they had.
All of it.
But none of it was enough.
Not when the car slammed against both of their bodies and sent them flying. He could hear the crunch of metal and the sound of Jude’s body crashing against the glass. He heard the sound of his skull connecting to the rough pavement of the street and the wya the land had rushed to his aid. He coughed blood and flowers bloomed beneath him. It didn’t matter that he wasn't in his land, what mattered was what he was. His magic did not leave him just because he crossed to their world. His power and his healing remained at his beck and call and Cardan could handle the pain to carry on. He had been beaten before. He had suffered before.
The only thing he could think about was Jude.
A crowd formed around them too quickly. He’d been in the process of pushing himself to sitting upright when people blocked his sight of his wife. They were urging for him to lay down. They were pushing at him to make him stay down. They were treating him as if he was hurt.
He saw his blood when he looked down at himself. He felt the uneven shift of his chest as he breathed.
He would heal. The land would care for him.
“My wife—”
“An ambulance is coming. It’ll be alright.”
He shook his head at them and tried again to get up.
“She needs me.”
“Sir, stay down. You’re bleeding.”
He didn’t care. he would bleed for an eternity if it meant that Jude was alright. he would bleed for however long it took if he knew she would recover.
Cardan knew he didn’t know much for the mortal world but he was very aware of how fragile their bodies could be. He knew the stories of the death traps they built for themselves. How a fall at the right angle could be all it took to kill them and take them from the world. How they could eat something their body simply rejected and they would fail to be able to breathe and would die without intervention. How they would get in metal machines to travel far faster than they were capable of and they would crash them into each other and die.
People survived sometimes if they were in another car.
Jude had been walking. They had been walking. Jude had been hit straight on.
The land would heal him. Cardan knew that it had healed her in the past. He knew that it had done its duty with her as its Queen before when she was bleeding and dying but it was a matter of luck that it had happened then. She healed slower than him. She did not have the same safeguard that he did. She did not have magic running through her veins and her blood did not as easily bloom flowers from the ground.
She could be dying.
She could already be dead.
Flashing lights and sirens filled his senses and Cardan remembered fighting. He remembered yelling at the people around him that he needed to get to his wife. He needed to make sure she was okay. They’d told him they were doing everything they could but that wasn’t enough. Humans could lie. Jude was a liar. He had no proof that the people were telling him the truth or if they were trying to make him calm down. He wouldn’t know until he saw Jude for himself.
He remembered thrashing away from them. How they had moved like they were surprised that he could fight back and he used the moment to get upright to see.
He’d seen the team of medical workers around his wife. The owner of the car that was being pulled out with a bleeding head and confused expression. Cardan didn’t care for them. They didn’t matter. All that mattered was his wife. Making sure she was okay. Making sure she would survive this.
He turned his head slowly now. The room twisted around him with blurs of light and white and Cardan struggled to keep himself conscious. It was a harder task than he initially planned. Nothing in his body seemed to want to listen to his commands. He could make out the hazy image of a stand beside him. A red bag that was hanging with a tube coming down out of it. He traced it slowly. Swallowing bile that rose in his throat when his vision doubled over itself until he tracked the tube back to the crook of his arm. He struggled for his thoughts to work with him. For anything to connect in his head to tell him what happened.
He remembered watching them move his wife to a board. He watched them strap her down and carry her to the back of the ambulance. He watched them try to take her away. He remembered fighting and yelling for them to keep him with her. He remembered being brought in and waving away the hands that kept trying to touch him. He remembered watching her as they placed a mask over her face to help her breathe. He’d pushed the magic of the world toward her to try to save her life. He wasn’t sure if the reflection off her skin was from the flashing lights of the emergency vehicle or if it was his magic beginning to show through with his fear for her. He wasn’t used to being so afraid anymore. The years of their marriage had brought him comfort. Jude had taught him how to fight and their Court of Shadows had offered enough protection that he allowed himself to relax.
He had learned how to fight and he had learned how to deal with the emergencies handed to the High Court but he had never learned to deal with losing Jude. He had never thought he would need to live in a world without her. He had never thought that there would be a time she would not be at his side. The realm of Faerie protected her from aging. It protected her from the diseases she would catch here. It protected her from everything else and after the time they’d been apart on different sides of the divide, the twins no longer looked the same. Jude could die here. Cardan might not be able to save her here. He would have to go back and face a world without her there at his side.
He had promised her his heart forever. If she was gone he would never be able to love another person. Even without a vow spoken out to her, he would never fall for another. He would live forever but he knew already that no one would be able to compare to Jude in his memory. She was untouchable, incorrigible, a divine God, his dearest divinity. She was his heart.
He would not continue without her.
He refused.
The ambulance had arrived to the hospital and he’d stayed beside her. He had watched the doctors and nurses as they rushed around the gurney that whisked her away. They had run after themselves until the moment she was being pushed past two large doors and a woman stepped in his way to stop him in his path. She put her hand up to prevent him from continuing on. She blocked him even when he tried to get around her.
He remembered what she’d said.
“You can’t go back with her there.”
“Why?”
“She needs surgery. The risk of infection is too high with you there. It could kill her.”
He hadn’t been able to refute that. He hadn’t been able to think about her mortality and ignore it the next moment. Cardan remembered nodding to her.
He remembered being asked to examine him.
They knew that he was from the crash. They knew that he had been involved. They had the statements from witnesses that informed them that he’d been struck by the same car that hit her. It wasn’t fair that Jude was in such a worse state than him. If either of them deserved to be harmed in the accident then Cardan knew it was him. He knew that he was the reason they were out as late as they were. Jude had wanted them to go back earlier but he’d wanted to continue looking. He wanted to exhaust every option before they went back to what was familiar to them. He wanted to see more of it. He wanted their time pretending to be a human couple to last longer. He hadn’t realized it could come at a cost so high.
He’d told them yes. He’d permitted them to take him back to a room and examine him. He’d listened to their questions with half interest and only partial answers. He was fine. The magic of the land had done what it needed to do to heal him.
It wasn’t until he was being pricked with a needle and feeling searing heat rush through his veins that Cardan realized something had gone wrong.
“Reaction to iron.”
The doctor at his side laughed. It seemed almost hysterical. Out of instinct Cardan reached for the land only for it to refuse his summon.
“You’re one of them.”
He woke up here. His body too heavy to move and the room too bright to truly see. He was in pain. He couldn’t move. He was suffering and he could barely breathe. He didn’t know where Jude was. He didn’t know if she was safe.
“Jude?…”
He could barely make out his own voice. It wasn’t until then that he heard the rushing of his blood in his ears. It wasn’t until that moment he even heard it. He tried to move his arm to pull the tube from his body only to meet resistance the moment he tried. With spinning vision Cardan rolled his head to look at his other limb. He saw the leather restraint wrapped around him. The metal that was lining overtop of it and he didn’t need to guess what it was made out of.
“Your wife is recovering and she will be safe out of your influence soon enough.”
He blinked and the doctor was back at his side. There was mirth in their eye. He could make out the blurry image of a rolling table of medical instruments behind him.
“I have iron being given to you. It’s blood.”
He didn’t understand why he would need blood. The doctor must have seen it on his face.
“I operated on you while you were unconscious.”
The words were stated so matter of factly that he nearly missed them and their weight.
“I have waited for years to figure out how you all are built the way you are. How you are able to live forever while humans age and die. It would be a miracle to put it together. I can do that miracle. With you.”
He was going to be sick.
“I cut you open. Your organs look normal all things considered. I took some of your blood too from the operation and am testing it.”
He had the feeling it meant that he was going to die here.
“Is she alive?…”
Speaking was difficult but he forced the words out. If he was going to die here at the hands of this mad man then he needed to know that she was alive. He needed to know she was going to be okay.
She would find him when she was. She would come get him. Either to save him from torture or to bring his body someplace it won’t be examined.
“Your wife is fine.”
Cardan breathed. He couldn’t care less what happened after that. Jude would live. She was alright. She was healing.
“She will be free of you. You’re done hurting her.”
He would never hurt her.
“Your magic should be almost gone by now with the iron in your system. It will be safe for me to cut into your brain soon. I’ll see how you command it.”
Cardan felt the man’s fingers trace the edge of his ear. The point of his ear. It made him want to gag.
“I wonder if this is the price we would need to pay for immortality.”
There was a crash beyond the door. Cardan tried to follow the man’s reactions but his vision whited itself out and he struggled to remember how to breathe. He could make out the sounds of fighting. He could make out the gurgling of a man being killed. The wet thump of a body hitting the ground. Fingers pressed against his pulse within a moment and Cardan struggled to breathe.
“Are you awake?”
He pried his eyes open to come face to face with the Roach. Cardan could barely make out his features with the way his vision was turning but he sighed in relief all the same.
“Jude?”
“The Bomb is getting her. She’s safe.”
He swallowed. If Jude was getting surgery then she would be in danger for infections. They couldn’t go to her. They had to wait.
“How long?.. Is she—”
“It’s been five days. Her sisters were called about the accident. They weren’t permitted to see her and they weren’t permitted to see you. They came to us for help. We’re here now.”
“Iron.”
“I know.”
The Roach had taught him enough that Cardan knew he would be safe. He could feel the restraints giving way from around him. He could feel the arms that slid beneath him to lift him up.
“…See her?…”
Exhaustion hit him like a wave the moment he was being moved. He felt the grip on his body grow tighter.
“I’ll take you to her. She’s been awake. She’s been asking for you.”
“She hates when…when I’m late.”
His eyes were closing of their own accord. There was too much iron in his blood. He had grown too weak.
“You were cut open. She will forgive you.”
“Are you certain?..”
He tried to laugh but he felt the seam down his middle. He felt the opening that had been cut through his skin to get to his organs. He was dizzy.
The room was too bright.
He was too tired.
“Stay awake.”
He could not.