she has had her fair share of bad nights. sleep has been an absent friend before, but sharing king's been had seen to its return. but even before the nightmares, the early morning hours startled awake with guilt, there was the night emma had found her in the ocean, body crumpled and mangled. paramedics and the icu staff put her back together again and that night is a strangled one that stands out among the rest. 

this one is worse.

her skin is hot and feverish. the scant thirty minutes of forced unconsciousness does is broken by the cracking and stretching of her mangled shoulder. a headache pulses and behind swollen lids are visions of slaughter.

throughout the night, she shifts anxiously, mouth in a permanent fixation of pain, her whimpers scratchy and broken. and it goes on like this for some time. she won't ever be able to fathom how she stayed in that bed, how her stitches didn't pop, how her skin was cooled.

morning comes and there are words - a scream? - in the back of her throat as she suddenly seizes, eyes snapping open. (well, one does. the other is too crusted with blood to do so.)

"thearrow. don't - the arrow, king. don'ttouchit."

KING WAYLAND

☉

she comes to her senses and her position is not great. she is keenly aware of every twinge and ache because she's fairly certain it's everywhere. all that pain, slowly coalescing on her shoulder. her grimace is answer enough as she slowly lowers herself back down, one arm slung over her ribs. 

"about...as well as i -" a cough, "probably look."

raising her hand takes a considerable amount of effort. she gingerly touches her swollen eye, thumbing out some of the blood and fluid and manages to unstick her lashes. sweat has left a dewy glow on her skin, a clammy pallor to her face. her braids are mostly undone, hair still matted with gore. 

they'll need to get new sheets after this. hell, they might need a new mattress. 

"lyra," she says suddenly and points to where she keeps her pokeballs. "she can help."

her words waver, throat tightening, and she takes the glass of water gratefully. her belly has a bit of a shock when she downs it in just a few gulps, but it's worth it. 

the arrow. where had she gotten it? this is where she least remembers. her words are warbled. visions of a serpentine mask, that alien blighted dragon. a mutual compromise. and then darkness, shuddering awake to - 

moxie's death hits her like a wrecking ball. she slumps back, empty glass rolling out of her palms and onto the mattress. and then flashes of a charizard raised from infancy, its throat ripped apart by an enemy's rhydon. her mother's dragalge, floundering before her as its lifeblood spilled out of it.

she doesn't even know if the league was successful. 

her eyes close, heart beats, and then they open again with a flint-eyed stares. she peels some of the hair from her cheek and distantly asks, "can you get me a washcloth? some water so i can clean myself up?"

KING WAYLAND

☉

her goodra are, perhaps, her most docile dragons. when lyra emerges from her ball, her small mouth forms a perfect circle of surprise. it does not take her long to figure out why she's there. she shuffles to king's side and looks into the bowl of water.

without further prompting, she raises one of her paws and flexes. glowing blue water gathers in her palm and then trickles down into the bowl. she stays like that, refilling the clean water when king needs it, imbibing it with healing energy. 

she shifts, restless, wincing as the rag scrapes against her open skin. he's as gentle as he can be. 

"it's...it's hard to remember. it's all jumbled together." except for the worst parts. only briefly is she awash with visions of strength as her enemies were felled to flame. to claw. to fang.

"one of them got my shoulder early on." miserably, she adds, "i think a handful of them knew to get close. to separate me from lyune."

she hisses at another touch and then shakes her head. "the girl from last night. she's your daughter? delta?"

KING WAYLAND

☉

shame sits hot in her belly. against that first admin, no, she hadn't been outnumbered. but he'd gotten close enough to strike like a viper. briefly, she recalls the feeling of her teeth sinking into his flesh. she hopes he walked away with a scar too. 

"something like that," she says. she's not sure whether she wants to steer into the unfamiliar waters of his child or dwell more on her miserable last day and a half. and the frustration she still feels with how they left things. 

"we need to talk about that." she swallows. "and some other things, i think."

KING WAYLAND

☉

she gives him a withering look, but that fades into a wince when he presses the pink rag back against her face. it's hard not to squirm and to just let him clean her up, but it feels like all he's done is clean up after her. 

"i'm in one piece," she argues. "and it can't wait. because i did run, at the end. i wasn't scared for my life. i was scared for our life."

more twinges make her shudder, sheets fisting in her fingers. clenched teeth. the life dew soothes, but it does not erase. 

"i'm bleeding out and making deals with devils for weapons of war, but the whole time i'm sitting there thinking if i die now, the last thing i did was call him stupid." throat still sore, she coughs a bit and that lights up every ache on her body. she hisses through her teeth and leans back, blinking hard. 

KING WAYLAND

☉

"try me," she says. she'd totter out of the bed to make her point, but that would be a stupid thing to do. so she settles to letting him see it in her eyes. the glass is achingly dry though, and more water sounds good to her throat.

it's hard to keep the accusation from her voice.

"i only want to talk, king. i'm not asking for much. it's much less, i think, than when i wanted you to come with me."

why then? why, when i leave for a bloody war, do you bring home your family?

KING WAYLAND

☉

"it's about a lot of things," she snaps. he's so irascibly frustrating and every thin veil of anger that lays between them only makes it that much harder for her to say what she needs to say. but all he's done is answer her with questions, closed himself up tight. and brushed aside her guilty confession. 

so be it. "but fine. you win. we'll talk later."

KING WAYLAND

☉