It's embarrassing to admit how long I struggled to write about a pairing I love so much. I tried writing anything for them before the show even finished! Still, I'm pretty happy with this one.
Enjoy!
"Hey, is the nurse in?" came a voice from behind Diana. The day was nearly over but the nurse's student aide could take another patient before her shift finished. A golden curtain of light poured in through the infirmary's large windows. These windows were large on purpose - sunlight lifted moods, and better moods helped patients recover.
"I'm sorry, the nurse isn't in right now." Diana turned to greet her guests, "But as the student aide to the nurse, I can certainly help." Her voice kept strong, though her heart sank as she noticed just who the incoming students were. In the doorway stood Amanda O'Neill, tall and proud, though her normal smirk gave way to a nervous half-smile. Amanda supported Akko Kagari with her arm under the shorter girl's armpits. Akko's robes were ribbons of cloth, and a deep red stain visible on her stomach cleared all doubt as to who the patient was going to be that day.
Diana cleared her throat. She had to be professional here, in spite of her hammering heart. "Let's get Akko onto the bed." She ordered, walking over to the girl's side and supporting her in the same way as Amanda. Akko stayed uncharacteristically silent, wearing an awkward grin. Even with the visible wounds, Diana wondered if it wasn't the girl's pride that hurt more than her body.
"Awww, guys, I can walk to the bed myself." she protested.
Her limp said otherwise.
Outside of the nurse's office students made their way back to their respective dorm rooms; the sounds of shuffling feet and young voices - excited, or angry, or upset - made up for the lack of sound in the room.
Amanda and Diana gingerly hoisted Akko onto the examination table. The Japanese witch lazily kicked her feet back and forth as they hung over the lip of the table, apparently enjoying herself enough to forget about her earlier embarrassment.
"What happened?" Diana asked. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest.
"We were racing - " Amanda began, before being cut off immediately.
"On school grounds? I believe that's against the rules."
"Not on school grounds! By the bog outside of the village - "
"That's even less approved of." Diana pointed out. She narrowed her eyes at her peers' disregard for proper conduct.
"Anyway, these cute little draco-flies started flying along side us!" Akko joined in. She spoke animatedly. and the memory lit up her deep red eyes in a way that caused Diana's heart skip a beat. "But then the mama draco-fly came, and it was this biiiggg creature," she spread her hands out wide in front of her face in an approximation of the magical insect's size. "And boy did it not like us playing with the little ones!"
Amanda took over from there. "The thing all but chased us out of the countryside. Tried to bite me a ton, but it got Akko real good with its sharp tail. Knocked her right off her broom and out of the sky."
"Thankfully we weren't too high up."
"But beneath us was a giant, thorny briar patch and, well..."
"I think I still have a thorn in my side!" joked Akko, although after lifting up the lift side of her cloak, she did have a thorn stuck in her side. She plucked it out, giggling all the while.
"I see." Diana nodded. She walked across the small room to a shelf stacked with tons of spell books of all shapes and sizes, some centuries old and others published as recent as that year. She took a few minutes to read through the titles before picking the one she thought most appropriate.
Meanwhile, Akko was all but pushing Amanda out the door with her words. "Honestly, I'm fine!" she said to the taller girl.
"Are you sure? Man, I feel pretty bad about all this..."
"No need! I had fun racing you, Amanda. I wanna do it again soon." Akko heard Diana tut-tut-tut her tongue and laughed. "Go have dinner with Jasminka and Constanze."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm in Diana's care!" the girl grinned wide. "I'm sure I'll be fine!"
Diana turned back around then; it took all her willpower to hide the smile forming on her lips, and even a small spell, uttered under her breath, to erase her bright blush.
"I assure you that Akko here is in good hands, Ms. O'Neill."
Amanda paused for a moment, but eventually gave up with a shrug of her shoulders. With one last "Sorry, Akko" she walked out of the room and headed to dinner. The girls were alone, then. Silence returned not only to the room, but to the hallways as well, as if no one besides the two even attended Luna Nova Academy.
Diana took a deep breath, then spoke as she crossed the room once more to close the door tightly. "Honestly, Akko, you need to be more careful. You've been flying for barely a year now. You still have to watch out." Although her words were admonishing, her tone was worried, and this concern reached her bright blue eyes.
"I know, I know. But flying is so great! I feel like I have to make up for all that time I wasted on not flying."
Diana looked Akko over as the girl spoke, writing notes on the injuries she could see. Small cuts on face and extremities, bruises on left side, and...
"Akko, please take off your clothing." she ordered. "I can't see what's causing that large blood stain on the front of your shirt." This time she didn't have a chance to whisk away her blush with magic.
"M-my clothes! But can't you just, like," she made exaggerated wand movements with her hands. "My wounds away?"
"Healing magic does not work like that. Your clothing is little more than rags at this point anyway."
"...Right. You're right." Akko grumbled. She slowly removed her torn cloak and school uniform, wincing every time the cloth rubbed against her wounds. She took the top off first and bunched it up beside her on the table, followed by her skirt in the same manner. On the exam table Akko sat in nothing but her simple white bra and panties, arms straight and hands clasped together over her thighs. She didn't look Diana in the eyes. The Cavendish witch exercised all of her own self-control in not looking Akko up and down hungrily. The wound on Akko's stomach, to Diana's relief, didn't seem to be as dire as the bloody stain attested to. She examined it closely, prodding very lightly, and Akko took a sharp intake of breath at even the slightest of touches. The wound was very bloody, and difficult to make out.
"I can't see it well," she admitted. "I'm going to wash the wound, but brace yourself Akko - this might sting a bit."
One wet wash cloth with a light touch of alcohol and a cacophony of squeaks later, the worst of the blood was cleaned away. Akko's stomach wound turned out to be less of a single cut and more of a collection of shallow gashes grouped together, not deep enough to cause real trouble but enough to cause a good amount of bleeding. It was nothing that Diana couldn't fix, she was sure.
"Is it bad?" Akko asked, looking away.
"Not too bad. Does it still hurt?'
"Yes." she nodded vigorously. "In the back too."
"On your back? Why would that be?"
Diana circled the girl slowly and found that her back was covered in minor wounds just as the girl's front was. What caught her attention was a wound, a collection of gashes like the ones on her stomach in more or less the corresponding place.
"Just how far into that briar patch did you fall?" Diana asked. Akko gave her a noncommittal shrug.
"Thankfully they're not too bad," the blond flipped through the book she'd chosen. "Though the healing might hurt. I have to apply the wand directly, according to this book."
Akko looked over her shoulder to stare at the girl in wonderment. "I'm surprised that you're even using a spell book, Diana! I thought you knew everything." she was genuine about that, just as she was genuine about everything.
In response Diana smiled, though she launched into a mini lecture just afterwards. "Healing magic can be dangerous, Akko. For all the good it does, misusing it, or making mistakes, can do more damage than you might think. Such powerful magic, and magic that affects the body so intimately...I wouldn't overestimate myself at the cost of accidentally harming yo- anyone. At the risk of harming anyone."
She continued after finding the right page and the right spell. "And I only started helping the nurse a few months ago. Healing magic, even with my family's predisposition, requires training like nothing else."
Akko "ahh'd", but then grinned wide, innocently, at Diana. "I'm sure you'll be as great as your mom and Beatrix one day, Diana. Better, even!"
"Turn around, Akko." it was the only way for Diana to hide her blush. "I'm going to start now."
With a wave of her wand Diana confidently recited the healing spell she'd found. Her wand's tip glowed with a green-blue sphere of magic, and as lightly as she could the young Cavendish applied the magic to the wounds on Akko's back first. A small moment passed before the spell's effect took place and the gashes on the girl's back closed up, until it was as if they'd never been there at all. Diana circled the girl and healed the front in the same manner. Once that was done she moved onto the minor cuts and scrapes covering the girl's body, fresh and red but not bloody, and these disappeared almost instantly. Akko sucked in breath the entire time, letting it hiss out whenever the pain was too great, but nonetheless kept tears from forming in her eyes.
It was only after the healing was done, only after Diana no longer worried about this lovable girl's immediate health, that she noticed just how marked and scarred Akko's body was. It looked as if she'd been attacked by someone, or something, constantly and for years at a time. Her arms and legs, knees and stomach, even her toes - the girl was covered in small, faded scars that shined fresher than her skin in the strong golden sunlight coming in from the window. Without speaking, but with a protective worry filling her heart, Diana moved to Akko's back and noticed the same thing; her shoulder blades, the small of her back, her sides...all were covered in small slivers of scars and crescents of old wounds.
Without a word Diana softly ran a finger over one scar on Akko's spine. The Japanese witch shivered in response.
"A-ahh! Diana, what are you doing?!"
"You're...you're covered in scars, Akko. How? Why?" she barely whispered. The sight of all those scars made the girl uneasy. She knew about a few deep scrapes on Akko's elbows and knees that inevitably scarred up from all of her previous failed attempts to fly, but this...this was entirely different.
"Ah, these?" the girl rubbed the back of her head nervously. This time she didn't look over her shoulder. "Well, you know, this magic stuff is hard for someone who isn't all that smart." She shrugged. "The one you're touching now? I think that was from when Lotte and Sucy and I faced that Cockatrice in the forest."
The girl grew bolder then, as if remembering more and hoping to share her stories. "I have this one on my right side from when that bear chased Andrew and I around the campus." Next she pointed to one on her chest, near her left shoulder. "And this happened after Constanze's robot took a beating." Akko motioned to the multitude dotting her legs. "Most of these, and the scars on my arms, are from my attempts at flying since I was a kid."
"You have a story for all of these?" Diana ran her fingers across a few more, and involuntarily Akko arched her back in some kind of passion. It took her a moment to collect herself.
"Most of 'em! Some I got just because I'm a klutz, though." she laughed. Her mood had lifted considerably after her initial discomfort. "I bet your perfect skin isn't like this at all." she said, her face dusted with a light blush.
"Perfect? I wouldn't...say...that. A-Akko..." Diana stopped her thought half-way through when she spied something that caught her breath in her throat. Although it took her eyes a moment to see it through the flush of Akko's skin and the starry night of scars, Diana noticed a large, darkish, almost star-shaped imprint that seemed to be burned into Akko's back covering a large area from her center mid-back and stretching towards the bottom right near her kidney. It felt...familiar, in a bad way, and unnatural in comparison to the happy scars Akko was proud to discuss.
"What's this one, Akko?" she touched the blast-like shape with her fingers with trepidation.
"Aww, Diana, don't ask about that one. It's old now and, uh..."
"Akko, please tell me how you got something that looks so painful." Diana pleaded.
After taking a deep breath Akko began. "Do you remember when we had that little argument by the Jennifer Memorial Tree? Before the Pappiliodya hatched?"
Diana picked up the peices immediately. Her eyes grew wide, and she bit her bottom lip. Her heart clenched in her chest painfully. "Are you saying that my 'murowa' did this? I did this? Akko, why haven't you told me before?"
"I dunno. I guess I just didn't want you to worry. Kinda like you're doing now." Akko giggled nervously. "I figured you'd blame yourself, and - "
"But I am to blame! Akko, I'm so, so sorry."
"I jumped in front of the blast - "
"I fired a powerful spell without the right information in the first place. It's absolutely my fault."
"I forgave you a long time ago, though. Before we even really became friends. You were my rival, you know? If I went to the nurse or something you would've thought of me as weak."
"Never, Akko." Diana said with utmost certainty. "I'd never consider you weak. You're the strongest person I know."
Still, a voice nagged Diana from inside. "Before we even really became friends." She thought back to what she'd consider the beginning of her friendship with Akko; the time where the Japanese witch risked her life to bring Diana back to Luna Nova. That night, when her aunt attempted to take control of the Cavendish family, Akko threw herself into a problem she had nothing to do with simply to help Diana - a girl who then was not even her friend.
That night when Akko suffered because of the bite of her family's venomous snakes.
Diana, without speaking, found the spots where Akko had been bitten in her elephant form, and sure enough she saw nearly faded snake-fang imprints on her right ear and on her nose. Diana looked away, filled with self-contempt.
"Akko, I never realized...I didn't think I'd been the cause of so much pain for you." she couldn't look the girl in the eyes, and instead focused on the tile floor beneath her feet.
"Oh, it's nothing that serious, Diana. Please, I've been very happy since we've grown closer after last year. I really like being with - being friends with you. That makes up for whatever little pain you accidentally caused me."
"Don't downplay how I've hurt you." Diana looked the girl in her eyes now. "Can I heal them? I'm positive I can find a spell to rid you of my crimes. Please, let me fix this." her eyes were defiant, powerful, and Akko sat back inadvertently.
"No, it's fine Diana, really. I, uh, kind of like these scars. They remind me of how far I've come."
"But these will be there forever! Are you sure -"
"And they remind me of how long you've been in my life. They remind me of you." Diana's eyes grew wider than she thought possible. "In a good way! In a good way!" she waved her hands in front of Diana's face.
The Cavendish witch was silent for a time. She held her chin in her hand, thinking deeply.
"Then please, allow me to heal them symbolically."
"Symbolically?"
"Close your eyes, Akko." she ordered.
Although she lifted one eyebrow in question, Akko did as she was told. Diana took a deep breath, then squared her shoulders, resolute to see this through. She first moved to the snake bites and, after tucking her hair behind her ear, kissed the spots lightly one after the other.
"Diana?!"
"Keep your eyes closed, please." she said softly.
Next, Diana moved around Akko to the 'murowa' burn on her back. She was sure Akko suffered with this one, and it was so visible that Diana questioned how she'd initially missed it. The burn would be with Akko forever, and for that she was terribly sorry. Diana wrapped her arms around Akko from behind and then placed her lips at the center of the imprint with affection and remorse and tenderness. She stayed like that for what felt like forever, and Akko kept silent as she herself rubbed the backs of Diana's hands while they were wrapped around her stomach. The room was quiet, the sunlight an even deeper gold, and the girls' hearts beat in sync.
Finally Diana pulled away and Akko opened her eyes. "I've hurt you twice now, Akko. I swear there won't be a third." she promised, looking deeply into the girl's eyes as if she could imprint the thought into Akko's very soul the way the 'murowa' burn was imprinted on her back,
The Japanese witch sat for a moment, thinking, before her blushing cheeks grew a shade darker. "If it gets me another kiss, I don't think I'd mind you hurting me." she averted her eyes, unable to contain the bashful smile coming to her lips.
Diana swallowed hard. This little witch didn't know what she did to her heart. She reached into her cloak and pulled out her wand. Diana lightly, very lightly tapped Akko on the lips with it. Akko caught on immediately and gave Diana the warmest smile she'd ever had.
Taking the other girl's warm face in her hands, Diana brought their lips together with delicate ardor.
Thanks for reading!
Reviews, criticisms, and responses are all welcome.