Prompt #27: Future
Disclaimer: HEY, I own something here! Melia, the wifey, is mine. Rikion + everything else... Nope.
Warnings: BIG BIG BIG spoilers for up to chapter 145 or so! Geh. Also, bad language~.
Also, this is another request fic for UruruwuvsRikion4eva. I know you just said 'a conversation', but...one thing led to another...
"I don't fucking believe this!" Rikion flung his weapon to the side, ignoring the clang of blade against stone. Letting out a wordless snarl of frustration, he slammed his fist into the wall. The dull ache in his hand only added to the throbbing pain all over his body. But physical pain was something he could handle – the embarrassment, however, that embarrassment that didn't even deserve to be called a battle… It was intolerable. Chest heaving with ragged breath and blood pounding in his ears, he could barely hear his men's pleas.
"General Rikion, your injuries–"
"–and get a healer for–"
"Please sit down–"
"–still have men, General, we only–"
"Enough!" Rikion finally barked out. And beaten dogs that they were, the whole pack shut right up, watching him now with wide eyes and eager ears. He needed them to stop looking at him, to grant just one minute for stupid, pointless fury and behavior absolutely not befitting a general of Silonica. But they wouldn't allow him that. They needed orders, directions and reassurance, and he didn't have the strength for that right now. How did Icarus manage it all so easily?
But Icarus is dead.
His vision blurred and then darkened in a moment, like someone had decided to extinguish the sun. Rikion swayed into the wall, leaning his full weight against the stone, and three men rushed forward to help. He waved them off with one hand and a growl.
"Get out." When they paused, he took a shaky breath and clarified the order: "All of you, out. Go, gather your men, take a headcount, tend to them, go do something, something more productive than crowding around me like a bunch of old women!"
Most of the crowd vanished at that. A few tarried, one man helping him to find a chair (despite Rikion's initial resistance), another offering water. Rikion greedily gulped down half the bowl, then set to washing some of the blood from his face; his right eye was nearly blind with it. However, when the officers started up with soft words and gentle, nervous suggestions again, Rikion pointed them to the door.
"When the healer arrives, send him in," he gave a final command, hoarse voice cracking as he tried to maintain strength and volume. "No one else."
The great door to the hall thumped shut and silence finally fluttered down over the hall, Rikion imagined with the same exhaustion and relief he felt. With everyone gone, he let himself slump down in the chair with a groan. He bowed his head and, setting his elbows on his knees, pressed his palms to either side of his head to hold it together. That little pressure didn't assuage the pounding that threatened to halve his head like a dropped melon, but he couldn't help trying.
Warm blood from his ear trickled down his neck and shoulder; the cloth there felt stiff as wood from all the dried blood. He remembered the pain of the earring tearing through his lobe more than the actual event – who had yanked it or how or when, all blurred into the mind-consuming ache of his battered body.
Isiris had routed them. A complete and perfect victory for King Fucking Michael. And how would things have gone, he couldn't help but wonder, if he had challenged the boy at their first meeting, there on Icarus' ship, so long ago? When he was still an unknown mercenary, a lowly bug who refused to call Rikion by proper honorifics.
"Shit…" A wave of dizziness wiped out that train of thought like the tide devouring sand creations. No point pondering hypotheticals. What was he going to do, right now, with his people in danger? How could he even plan against strategies that underhanded? Using civilians that way – how could Rikion anticipate moves from a monster like Michael? If only he could talk to Icarus and –
"Oh, fuck," he rasped, voice shuddering as involuntarily as his body. Icarus is dead. Rikion tried to draw a breath, clear his head, but a metal vice crushed his chest and his hands wouldn't stop trembling against his skin and the endless pounding slammed against his skull and his vision tumbled into deeper and deeper darkness and he could not fucking breathe or think or breathe and –
"Rikion!"
The high sound split open his mind like a ray of light slicing through stormclouds. A soft pattering of slippers hurried across the floor and by the time he raised his head, Melia already stood in front of him, close enough to touch.
"They told me that – " she gasped out breathlessly; poor thing must've run all the way here, " – that the battle was lost – and – oh! Rikion, you're hurt!"
Ever the brilliant woman, he thought with a tired smile. Black spots drifted in and out of his vision, but he could still see her clearly enough: far younger than him, and so small and pale and clean, like a polished glass window. Her green eyes trembled, darting all over his bloody face and shivering body.
"…Rikion?" she whispered, and he forced himself to take a slow, long breath. Couldn't lose composure here. Keep it together a few minutes, just to get her out. But for some reason, even when he dropped them to his lap, his hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"Yeah," he croaked, throat rebelling against the roars and battle cries of earlier today. "We lost."
"Oh…" her hands twisted against each other like anxious snakes, and he knew he'd said the wrong thing. "What – what does that mean? Isiris – are they going to – "
"No." He forcibly pushed out some air to make room for more. Fucking ridiculous, having to focus this much energy into regulating so simple a function. "We lost a battle, not the war."
"But you're so hurt…"
"Well, that's what happens you almost die," Rikion snapped, and his wife's hands flew to her mouth with a gasp. "No – no, no, shit, it's fine – no, I didn't mean – "
"You almost died!"
"No, I meant – no, I'm fine – "
"But you aren't!" Without warning, the girl suddenly dropped to her knees and Rikion started forward, sure she'd fainted. He found her eyes wide open, however, and her sweet, round face set with determination. She reached out and took his hands in her own, though her tiny fingers could barely stretch enough to hold his sweaty palms.
"You can't die," Melia said softly. It sounded like a prayer coming from her lips – but that would make Rikion a god, and he was just a very tired and dirty and busted-up bag of blood and flesh.
Despite that fact, he squeezed her hands in return, and promised, "I'm not gonna die. Not by the hand of that bastard Michael, or any of his rabid dogs."
"You can't die," she insisted, as if he'd said nothing. To assure her, Rikion clenched tighter and leaned down so they looked at each other almost eye-to-eye.
"I know," he said with a little nod. "I know I can't. Icarus is already gone. If we fall as well, then…"
Melia bit her lip, looking honestly impatient with him. She seemed to want to speak, but instead looked away, fingers kneading anxiously into his hand. It…actually felt pretty nice, Rikion had to admit. A tiny firefly of pleasure amidst the blazing pain.
"That's not why!" she said suddenly. "Not because of Icarus or Silonica or Isiris, but – I – you can't leave yet. Please."
Rikion realized that this was the first real time they'd touched. For ceremony, they had clasped hands and danced at formal occasions, and yes, of course, they'd consummated their marriage. But truly, this was the first time she had chosen to touch him and the very first time he felt any desire to touch her back.
Grip firm on her wrists, he pulled her a little closer, just enough that he could press his lips to her smooth forehead. And if he left blood, from busted lips and broken noses – hell, her maids could wash it off.
"I'm not gonna leave you," Rikion told her, a small smile twisting the corner of his mouth. "So stop worrying about it. You're making me scared."
She looked up at him with bright, trusting eyes, and before she could speak, he kissed her forehead again, and again. And when she whispered 'thank you' under her breath, his small smile suddenly got very, very wide.
Because even the manliest men have panic attacks, and even the very strongest warrior needs a girl to come home to.
(Or a boy, but that's another story altogether...)