Contact
He'd held his own in the fight at first. She'd been watching.
She always did, always had if she was honest. Once, it was with a healthy degree of cynicism, trying to catch him out on his claim of never using his powers during fights with mortals. At first she'd suspected otherwise, always looking out for a punch to hit with more force than she knew was possible from a mortal, or for him to ignore a sword strike that should have been fatal. But she'd had to conclude he lived up to his boasts. She knew he noticed, but they never spoke of it, and neither of them minded.
Then she'd watched as they fought each other, the one contact she allowed herself with him freely. Regardless of words they exchanged or deceptions they tried, when they fought there was honesty, understanding, and she took comfort in it.
Now she watched for a different reason, to protect. Without his godhood, she knew his punch might not be forceful enough, or his block of the sword strike might be too slow, and now that mattered. She knew that he didn't know, couldn't know. And still they never spoke of it.
But she'd momentarily turned away to deliver a spinning kick to her attacker, and in that dizzying instant she heard him scream. As she landed, she saw him go down, hard, clutching his leg, and in one motion she flung a dagger into the chest of his grinning assailant.
She knew that the fight was over, but as she ran to him a fresh surge of adrenaline hit her. He lay heavily on his side, eyes closed, face tensed, unable to silence the screams that he would once have scorned in others. He'd dislocated his kneecap during the fall, she could see the protrusion on the side of his leg. He looked at her where she knelt beside him, fingers already reaching for pressure points to numb the pain. She met his eyes.
"Ares… I can fix this. But it's going to hurt."
She thought of screams from another time, her own, as the Roman mallet slammed down on her legs, as Nicklio the healer pulled the bones back into place, as she herself rebroke them in her frenzied attack on Caesar's soldiers a few hours later. She thought of the long months of recuperation, of time spent resentfully being carried on litters, hobbling around supported by crutches and canes, of all the times she'd longed to kick her opponents or her friends. As she made others scream as she had, she'd smiled – but her own pain still stung.
He had all that ahead of him. He'd survive, of that she had no doubt. But, like her all that time ago, he would be unable to move the leg, unable to mount a horse alone or kneel to make a fire or stand his ground in a fight. He'd have the indignities and fears of being crippled, and fail to ignore the derision – or worse, sympathy – of observers. But unlike other mortals, he'd never had to imagine it, never accepted that someday it would happen, that he was not eternal.
As she worked to heal him, one of his hands touched her knee. He knew she was watching. They didn't speak, and neither of them minded.