When Diarmuid wakes for longer than a few seconds, he is warm. It is still night—or perhaps it is night again. His body still aches, and his eye is swollen shut. But he is lying on a makeshift blanket, under a haphazard shelter. Someone sits silently next to him. He struggles to sit up, his body fighting him on every inch. He can barely make out the form that tends the flames in front of them, but he knows exactly who it is. He thinks for a minute that he is hallucinating, seeing what he so desperately wants to see in a last attempt to comfort himself before he dies at the hands of the Baron de Merville.
But when he reaches out an unbound hand to touch the Mute's shoulder, he feels solid. Warm and real against Diarmuid's palm. The Mute turns to look at him, and that might be the ghosts of a reassuring smile carved on his lips, but Diarmuid cannot be sure.
Still, every breath burns an excruciating pain through his chest, and his stomach has not fared any better. He coughs wetly into his hand, leaving blood behind on it. His body gives up trying to stay upright, and he falls forward, his forehead landing on the shoulder of the Mute, who wraps his arms around Diarmuid protectively. He lays Diarmuid back out on the cloth gently, as if one false move could destroy him. Diarmuid supposes it could. He also supposes it will not even take that.
His stomach heaves, turning out bile and blood in equal measure. He feels the Mute's warm hand on his cheek, and he leans into it. His body is slick with sweat, but he shivers uncontrollably. He is struck with the thought that he will not make it to morning alive. He opens his mouth to pray, or speak to the Mute, or say anything at all, but nothing comes out but more blood.
The Mute takes Diarmuid's face in both his hands, pressing their foreheads together. Diarmuid's eyes close. He can feel consciousness slip out of his fingers, and he takes one of what he is sure will be few breaths he has left on this Earth, ragged, hitching, and painful in his chest. Just before he slips under the waves of darkness, however, the crook of his shoulder erupts in pain centered around a crescent of teeth.
This time, when he opens his mouth, a scream escapes. His thoughts are swallowed by feverish agony.
The Mute knows one thing above all else: he would do anything for Diarmuid. From the second he opened his eyes on the shore of Kilmannán to see a strange young monk, their fates had been inextricably tied together. As much as he had hoped Diarmuid would be able to lift him into the light of God—a God the Mute no longer believes in—he knows that what he has just done will more likely drag Diarmuid down to the ranks of the damned like him.
Still, it is hard to believe that any God could create a creature as pure, as crookedly perfect as Diarmuid and ever stand to forsake it for even a second.
The sun peeks above the horizon sliver by sliver, and the Mute watches Diarmuid shiver and writhe in pain. He watches the bruises and lacerations heal themselves, leaving dried blood smeared across unbroken skin. Diarmuid's body knits itself back together perfectly even as his pale, sweat-sheened face twists in pain. Pathetic whimpers escape his parted lips, but his eyes stay blessedly closed.
The Mute tries not to think about the possibility—the very real possibility, given Diarmuid's unwavering faith in the Lord—that Diarmuid will reject the only life the Mute has to offer him. He looks back to the fire, poking at it absently with a stick.
Whatever comes, they will face it together.