Over the next few days, she had three different doctors tell her there was nothing they could have done to save her leg.

The muscles had been shredded down to the bone, the bones themselves broken so badly they were impossible to set. By the time her team had pulled her out of the troll's mouth, what had once been a working limb was already reduced to an unsalvageable chunk of raw meat and bone shards.

What the doctors couldn't answer was why the Valkyries hadn't taken her like they should've.

"You're lucky to be alive," everyone around her said—nurses, doctors, her parents. "You almost didn't even make it to the hospital. Just be glad you're alive."

Sigrun hadn't been afraid to die.

Oh, she hadn't wanted to, hadn't been seeking it out, but neither had she been dreading it as some people did. Though dying was never fun, what came after didn't seem so bad. Before, there'd been a place for her. There'd been people waiting, friends she was never going to see again in this life. Now, though…

The first night, Sigrun did something that she had not done since she was a little girl who couldn't learn to read no matter how hard she tried. Burying her face in her pillow so no one would hear her, she sobbed until her breath came out in choking gasps, her shoulders shook uncontrollably, and her eyes burned because they no longer had any tears left to cry.

The next time General Eide came in to see her, she immediately knew he was meeting her not as her father, but as her commanding officer.

"We can't keep your team out of the field any longer," he said without preamble as he pulled up a chair. Sigrun nodded, and sat up a bit straighter; she should have seen this coming. At least he was getting right to the point, getting it over with quickly, rather than dancing around it and making it hurt more. "Traditionally, leadership would pass to your first lieutenant, but I would like to hear your say first."

She shook her head. "Ragna's got what it takes. About time she got a promotion." Before, Sigrun had planned to bring up the matter herself at the end of the season. It was still a bitter thing that Ragna's well-earned advancement had to come at her expense.

"Then it's settled." He stood, pushing his chair back. "I'm afraid I can't stay any longer. I have—"

"Duty calls," she said dully. "I know." Sigrun swallowed. "We're—they're also short a cat. If one can be spared."

"I'll see what I can do." In spite of his pressing responsibilities, though, he stood by her side a moment more; his mouth worked as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he only rested a hand on her shoulder.

"Get some rest."

For some reason, it wasn't until she'd been in there for three days that the pain really hit.

What had been a detached tangle of sensation during the heat of battle and a dull ache when she'd awoken in the infirmary now bloomed without warning into an unbearable throbbing agony that made her feel like her leg was being torn off all over again, one excruciating chunk of flesh at a time. The medic on duty that morning took one look at her, teeth gritted and fists clenched in the sheets, hurried away, and returned with a syringe.

It could not have been more than a few minutes between the medic's departure and his return, and swabbing her elbow, drawing clear liquid out of a small glass bottle, and working the needle into a vein was the work of seconds at most. To Sigrun, though, it seemed like an eternity of mind-numbing anguish. Even the sight of the needle didn't bother her: she'd put up with anything, anything, to make this stop.

The medic stayed with her until the drugs knocked her into a state of blissful numbness.

She spent the next few days—or possibly the next few weeks, she wasn't exactly in a position to know or care about the passage of time—in a drugged haze. Her parents' visits were blurs, with no memory of what was said, though she did have a vague impression of her mother sitting by her bedside at night, gently stroking her hair. Once, she thought she even saw Ragna at the door, though that one might have just been her mind playing tricks on her.

They weaned her off the drugs eventually. The pain was still there, but by that point she had gotten used to it, a constant dull ache in the background of everything she did.

One day, the medics gave her a set of crutches.

This was not the first time Sigrun had used crutches. She'd broken her toes, broken her leg, sprained her ankle, and on one memorable occasion even managed to step on some sort of sharpened metal rod that had gone straight through the bottom of her boot and out the other side. The mechanics of this were not new to her.

What was new was how much her sense of balance had been thrown off.

The first time she tried to stand, she toppled, and only managed to avoid the floor by catching herself on the nurse's shoulder. Without the weight of her missing leg, it seemed, she felt lopsided, too heavy on one side and too light on the other. Still, she gritted her teeth and pushed herself back up onto her feet every time, because faen if she was going to sit around in bed for the rest of her life. By the time they let her go, she had gotten most of her balance back.

"Come home," her mother had said, when Sigrun had made mention of returning to her own place. "You're going to need some time to adjust. Come home."

Sigrun had another home to go to first.

Everyone stood as she entered the Great Hall, even the generals at the head table. A chair had been saved for her, and those around her parted as she made her way to it.

Her discharge was honorable. She had fought bravely, she heard the generals say in their speeches. She had done everything in her power to protect her team, Ragna said in her own speech, later. For this, at least, she was allowed to have one last feast with her former comrades, one last glass of ceremonial mead. The food was tasteless as ash, the mead vinegar-bitter in her mouth. Her mother cried when she handed over her uniform.

As she made her way to her parents' house after, one of them walking on each side of her, shortening their strides, Sigrun could not shake the feeling that she'd just attended her own funeral.

A/N: I'm going to go ahead and post two chapters tonight, because I've got two done. Don't get used to it.