She was being carried. Whoever had their arms around her was was muttering familiar words in a familiar tone. After several seconds, one of the more frequently repeated words managed to filter past the obscuring haze in Adora's mind: "Idiot."

She kind of wanted to complain at that, but all she could manage was a quiet groan. The volume of the words increased and sounded angrier. The anger didn't bother her, for some reason. It was strangely comforting.

Each step forward jostled her uncomfortably and she shifted her head, another soft sound of discomfort escaping her throat. Everything hurt. Her side hurt. She felt like she was forgetting something important, something horrible… she couldn't remember. She didn't want to remember.


Being carried had hurt, but being dragged hurt more. The arms were under her shoulders now, pulling her upper body in one direction as her feet tried to drag her in the other; her wounded side caught painfully in the middle. A chill was spreading through her body, offset only by the unnerving wet warmth at her side. The dragging stopped.

A blurry mass of tan and brown came into view. Words were being spoken again, but she could understand even less than before. The tone was vaguely apologetic and broken by times when the figure tried to catch its breath. A surprisingly gentle touch moved loose hair out of her hazy vision. She blinked.

The figure was gone, replaced by another, smaller figure in shiny armor. No, not smaller… farther away. The new figure stopped short, then started to run toward her, shouting urgent commands over their shoulder.

The voice was painfully loud in her head. She wanted to tell them to shut up, but she didn't have the energy.


The third time she woke was different. Everything was dull, distant, and hazy, but the surface on which she lay was soft and clean. No rocks dug into her back, and while there was still pain at her side, it was strangely muted. She managed to roll her aching head to one side and blinked blearily until she could barely discern the scene before her: Glimmer, unnaturally still and pale on the bed next to hers with Bow sitting at her side. His back was to Adora, and it looked like it was shaking slightly—like he was crying.

Her vision blurred again, this time from her own tears.


"Miss Adora, the head physician would really much prefer that you stay here—"

"Then get him," she demanded, then closed her eyes when the assistant flinched backward at her tone. "Please."

It was the second day of her confinement to the infirmary. The first day, she had only woken only briefly. She had finally remembered what happened when she woke in the middle of the night, mercifully alone. She'd managed to turn her face into the pillow to stifle her sobs.

Bow and Angella both came early in the day to see Glimmer, who remained as still as she had been when Adora first woke. Her wounds had been treated, she still had not woken. The stress of it was evident in their faces. The guilt that washed over Adora whenever she looked toward her bed made her stomach churn.

By the time they'd arrived, Adora had managed to wall off the fragmented memories she had recovered in the night until she could be truly alone to process them. They'd both spoken to her, happy to see her awake, any mention of the battle kept out of their conversation—whether as a mercy to Adora or themselves, she wasn't sure.

The assistant poked her head apprehensively back into the room. "The head physician will be along shortly, Miss Adora," she informed her.

Miss Adora. The castle staff had some difficulty figuring out how to address her, and she latched onto the thought in an effort to distract herself. "Adora" seemed too informal a way to address a champion of the rebellion, but her history with the Horde had prevented her being granted an official military ranking. "Princess Adora" just wasn't accurate—although she'd never have let them call her that even if they tried. They had tried "Princess She-Ra" in the past. A chill ran through Adora at the thought of the name, and she quickly threw back up the crumbling mental wall that prevented her from thinking about what had so recently transpired. Not here. Not now. Not yet.

The assistant returned, a few steps behind the head physician.

"I am told you wish to leave," he stated in a measured, patient tone.

"Yes," Adora said, tiredly. "And you're not going to stop me."

A refined, silver eyebrow raised.

"I've been listening. I know that this," she gestured to her bandaged side, "isn't a dangerous wound, and I was mainly brought here for exhaustion and blood loss. I know everything has been treated, which just leaves exhaustion—and I also know I will rest far better in my own room. So. Can I leave now?"

The cool blue eyes of the physician narrowed, and Adora hoped for a moment that word of her preference for a slab-like mattress had not spread throughout the castle.

Apparently, it had not. "Very well," the physician sighed. "But you must rest." He pressed a small bottle into her hand and white pills shifted inside the transparent casing. "Take one of these twice daily," he instructed. "They'll help with the pain."

She tucked the bottle in her pocket and got up from the bed, pressing years of Horde practice into service to masterfully suppress a wince at the motion. "Thank you."

When she passed Glimmer's bed on the way out, she felt a stab of pain that had nothing to do with her side.


Perhaps there was a point in wanting to keep her in the infirmary, Adora thought when she finally reached her room, teeth gritted and sweat starting to form at her hairline. Walking... hurt.

She started toward her bed, then froze when she saw what lay there: the sword. Someone must have returned it to her room after the battle. Gleaming, polished, sharp.

Clean.

It shouldn't be clean. It should be red. Black. Dripping. It's how she saw it in her dreams, despite how the stain of war had never lingered on its glowing blade.

She wrapped her hand in a blanket and grasped the hilt with a barely contained shudder, dragging the weapon toward the furthest corner of the room. A whisper started to form at the back of her mind after only a few steps. Panic gripped her and she hurled the sword the remaining distance into the corner, heaping the blanket atop it to cover it from view. No. Not again. Never again. She turned her back and sat down heavily on her bed, blinking away the tears that sprang to her eyes.

"Let me help you," a voice whispered in her head, despite the hands she had clamped over her ears to block it out. "Let me heal you."

She forced her mind blank.

It was hours later when she regained some awareness of her surroundings. Hours first spent hiding in her own mind from that horrible voice, then reliving the battle in flashes and spurts of terrifying memory that couldn't be hers, shouldn't be hers, but belonged to her all the same. She had expected to cry again, but instead just felt a deep... emptiness.

Whatever sound had pulled her from her thoughts made her realize how much time had passed. The sun had long since set, and her room was only illuminated by the moon outside. An uncomfortable lump pressed against her hip from inside her pocket. She pulled out the pill bottle and stared at it. The physician's instructions rang in her head, and she mechanically dispensed a single pill into her hand before rising to place the bottle on a shelf above her wash basin.

The pill tasted horrible, sticking in the back of her throat on the way down. She almost choked before finally washing it down with several large gulps of water. When the nausea induced by its chalky flavor didn't fade in the next few minutes, but rather intensified, she read the back of the bottle.

Take twice daily with a meal.

Oops.

The nausea intensified again and her empty stomach heaved, the muscles in her abdomen clenching involuntarily. She gripped the sides of the sink as her stomach heaved again and the pill made an unwanted reappearance. Fiery pain lanced her side at the motion—she felt something tear, then a warm wetness. She closed her eyes in frustration. There went at least one of her stitches.

She pulled up her shirt and slowly peeled away the bandage, hands shaking. The damage wasn't as bad as it could have been. Her shield had managed to deflect the strike into a glancing blow, so while the cut was long, fairly deep, and had bled profusely, it had not severed the underlying muscle. Several stitches held the wound closed. One of them, however, was no longer doing its job: it had torn open, and a thin line of red ran down her skin. She held the freshly removed bandage back to her side before the drip could stain the waistband of her trousers.

Adora screwed her eyes shut and cursed softly. She should probably go back to the infirmary, but there was no way they would let her back out after she tore a stitch within hours of her initial release. Besides, she thought, her heart twisting in guilt and pain as she thought of Glimmer, they had far more important things to worry about than a slipped stitch.

She peeled back the bandage again and found the bleeding had already lessened to a sluggish trickle. Holding the old bandage in place, she reached underneath her mattress to pull the pads and strips of gauze she had slowly hidden away over weeks and months.

Changing the bandage was easy enough, but by the time she finished she found herself strangely exhausted. Moving slowly, she swiveled her legs up onto her mattress and used one arm to gently lower herself toward her flat pillow, suppressing the whimper that formed in the back of her throat as the motion pulled her remaining stitches. When her head finally hit the pillow, she just lay there, one hand pressed against her wound to prevent it from bleeding further. Logically, she knew she should get up in a few minutes to eat – but nausea, pain, and exhaustion won in the end. Her eyes shut and she fell into a dreamless sleep.


I meant for this to be a longer chapter to finish this up in two parts, but unfortunately I didn't get that far... however, I did want to post something this week, so I hope this is okay!