Disclaimer:I don't own anything!

Author's Note: I survived the first, and last first week, of public education.

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Blessed is the servant who loves his brother as much when he is sick and useless as when he is well and can be of service to him. And blessed is he who loves his brother as well when he is afar off as when he is by his side, and who would say nothing behind his back he might not, in love, say before his face.
~St Francis of Assisi

-/-/-/-

She hadn't slept, even though Mithos had tried to get her to. Mithos, who was currently curled up on the floor with Noishe in the tent at the foot of Yuan's bed. It had been a day and a half since the blood transfusion and neither of them were waking up. Yuan, she knew, was still recovering and trying to get his mana sorted back out. The other Healer had said that he'd woken once, but that he'd passed out almost immediately afterwards.

Martel had been living on stale coffee and whatever meager rations she could find, mostly crackers. Two of her boys weren't waking up and, strange as it was, she wasn't sure what she would do without them.

They hadn't really known each other all that long—a year and some change—but Yuan and Kratos had a way of growing on you. Sweet and charming in their own strange and slightly awkward ways and they were the first friends that she'd had in a long while. They'd carved their own niches in her life and she knew that nothing else would fit.

She looked up from her empty mug as Kratos stirred. "…Kratos?"

Garnet eyes, cobwebbed with weariness and sleep, half-opened to look at her. "…'Tel."

"Hey." She said softly, moving to sit on the edge of his cot. "How're you feeling?"

He scrunched his nose, which she took to mean 'as well as the situation allowed'. "'Uan?"

He would ask after him after he'd nearly died, Martel thought with fond exasperation. "Yuan's fine. You did cause him a lot of worry though."

Kratos winced. "…We never saw 'im. He came outta nowhere…"

"I know. Yuan told me." Martel hesitated. Kratos didn't hate half-elves, but the circumstances here were quite different. "And…there's something else."

Kratos watched her with that seemingly endless patience of his.

"…That ax that hit you…it was a human magitechnology weapon that they copied off of a weapon that the elves designed. But they couldn't work out all the kinks, so it still affected humans much more than people with elven blood."

"…What're you saying, Martel?"

"You were bleeding out and—there was really no other way to save you and the Healer didn't think it was such a great idea, but Yuan insisted—and so did I, a bit."

"You're rambling." Kratos told her, smiling a little.

"You had to have a blood transfusion." Martel saw the immediate understanding in Kratos' eyes. "Yuan volunteered."

Some distant piece of Martel had half-expected Kratos to rage or panic. He didn't. He went very still and quiet and stared at his hands as though he could see the new traces of mana running through his veins like liquid lightning.

Then he looked up and narrowed his eyes at her. "When was the last time you slept?"

"I'm fine."

"Liar." Kratos could be very blunt when he wanted to be. When it came to fussing over people, Kratos generally wanted to be.

"Someone needed to watch over the two of you."

Martel saw the automatic glance to the side, as if to reassure himself that Yuan hadn't gotten up and left. "Doesn't mean you shouldn't take care of yourself."

"Go back to sleep, Kratos."

He shook his head, but stopped, wincing with a hand to his abdomen. You never thought about just how often you used those muscles until you couldn't. "No. You need sleep."

"But—"

"Martel, I'm okay." He reassured her. "And I don't really want to go back to sleep right now. I'm kind of bored with sleeping actually. So you go to sleep. You can even have my cot if you like."

"I'm not winning this one, am I?" Because as stubborn as she was—or so the boys had told her—Kratos was even more stubborn.

"Nope."

Martel huffed a chuckle and said, "I'm going to find a blanket."

-/-/-

The first thing Yuan saw when he cracked his eyes open was the rough fabric of the tent above him. It took a fuzzy moment to remember just what had happened and he sat up too quickly, head spinning, but trying to focus on the person in the other cot.

"You're okay." Yuan breathed a sigh of relief, drawing up his knees and touching his forehead to them.

"…You didn't have to do what you did, y'know." Yuan glanced at him, indignation rising up inside him. Didn't have to do it? Of course he did. What would he have done without Kratos? "Martel told me what happened."

"You're an idiot." Yuan told him flatly. "You must've gotten hit harder than I thought if you think that I didn't have to do that. You're my best friend. The least I can do is save your life."

"…I can feel it. The magic. I can feel it now." Kratos understood now what Yuan had been talking about, that itch just beneath the skin that couldn't go away. It was wonderful. The mana that those of elven blood had to be able to use magic was distinctly different from human mana and the difference was astonishing. Kratos could feel the infinite possibilities of magic thrumming in his veins.

"It's somethin', isn't it?"

"Mm." Kratos hesitated, the question sounding ridiculous and absolutely impossible in his head. "…Do you think I could learn magic now?"

Yuan grinned roguishly at him. "Of course you can. We're blood brothers now, after all."

Kratos couldn't help but grin back. Maybe there was something to this wishing on stars after all.