Kuvira winces, recovery has been hard. It was a simple cold, so they said. And soon after it was just a bit of a fever. And after that...she doesn't remember what they had said it was, some new virus, possibly brought back from the Spirit World. But she was out.
And maybe it was for the best.
She has just woken up and she can barely move. She can feel her arms and legs, they sting and throb with little pin-prick sensations. But she can only twitch her fingers provided she put a great effort into it.
There is a warmth, running from her nose, she is almost certain that it is blood but she cannot wipe at it to check. She gives a weak cough, only to find that her throat is raw and perhaps ripped.
She is cold and her body trembles. Yet, there is a light layer of sweat. She is sure that she has the pallor of death, perhaps tinged with some other sort of sickly hue.
She sees the door open and Baatar appears within the frame. She swallows, tears prickle at the corners of her eyes because it comes back to her. Slowly but it comes back. She had chosen conquest over the man. Yet, he walks over to her and takes her hand. Reflexively she jerks it back. "What are you doing!?" A sharp stinging resonates in her throat. She doesn't know what she wants to think about first; that, Baatar, or the triumph of having moved her arm.
"You're not contagious." He shrugs. "If you were, I probably would have caught it by now." He takes a cool was rag and runs it over her forehead and repeats everywhere, where there is exposed skin. She realizes, faintly, that he is cleaning her as best as he can until she can get a real bath.
He brings a different cloth to her nose and it comes away tinged in red.
"What's wrong with me?"
"Some kind of Spirit Sickness. Apparently, only the Avatar and a select few people can handle the Spirit World."
Clearly she wasn't one of them.
He squeezes her hand and it is like nothing had gone wrong between them. She tries to sit up. A working attempt, but she can't hold herself up right and her head collides with the mattress again. "How long have I been like this?" It must have been a while, she has grown alarmingly thin.
"A couple of weeks." Baatar replies.
She brings her hand to her forehead, "that is a lot of lost time..." though she is almost certain that, had she not fallen ill, she'd be wasting it in a prison cell anyways.
Baatar shrugs and helps her into a sitting position, propped up against his chest. He strokes at her hair. "On the bright side, the Avatar seems to think that this is punishment enough, so you might avoid a prison cell."
"What about you?"
"I get the son pass." He replies.
"Not what I meant." But it is good to know. "I mean, what about you? Are you still angry?"
He stops stroking her hair for a moment. "Very."
Kuvira winces.
"We'll talk about that when you're..." He grabs another tissue. "Not bleeding from the nose."
At least he is willing to talk. Tenderly, he wipes away a trickle of red and holds her tightly. At least he is willing to care for her. If their engagement were truly unsalvageable, he wouldn't be there tending to her with such care. He dabs at her forehead and gives it a kiss. She has a feeling that the talk won't take long.