Unrequited.. Not?
Chapter 3
Reader note:
Little bit of gore in the start of this chapter! Skip to the first "Erandur..?!" you find and that'll get you clear of it if you've a queasy stomach.
Wyrmsong poured all the Magicka that she could into the healing spell, but Erandur grimaced and wrenched as he coughed (she was fairly sure now that it was blood). He was already pale for one of their kin, but his pale grey skin was getting paler still - moment by moment.
The pale yellow glow of magic (which partially illuminated the cave hovel into which she had retreated to heal him), was filling the hole in his chest, but through it she could just about see the pulsing of his heart. She didn't exactly need the Divines to tell her it was bad.
As if that wasn't stomach-churning enough on its own: through that small line-of-sight and magical currents of light she could spy an even smaller hole in his palpitating heart. She could almost see the pressurised blood pushing back from within against the magical barrier that struggled to contain it.
- Another bloodied, convulsive cough and swallow by Erandur.
She suspected that a little blood was managing to seep into his left lung. He would …slowly… drown from that. The magical barrier between his organs was obviously inadequate. Despite her best efforts, the spell just wasn't working well enough. In other words:
Even if she could keep this up, he was dying.
"Erandur..?!" She called to him softly, earnestly – as cold sweat beaded on his face and a cold dread settled in her stomach.
In a parallel thought she wished someone could give her advice on healing magic... And then realised, miserably, that he would be the first person under any other circumstance she would likely have thought to ask.
- Damned helmet.
She could scarcely see through the eye-slits at all in this dull light. She really wanted to see his face, to make eye contact, to see his eyes were bright and calm through the pain, that he was collected and confident as he had been a number of times before that she was (of course) wrong to worry and he was going to be fine...
Except she knew that was a lie. She'd never been so concerned as she was now. He definitely wasn't... fine.
She found herself thinking a terrible number of thoughts near simultaneously. She wishing a lot of things too, actually (which was not her habit), here in this moment as she began to perceive his mortality... Such were the thoughts of an exhausted mind meandering a path of its own freely for once because it no longer had to focus on the many ordinary tasks that Wyrmsong otherwise had to occupy her.
She found herself thinking thoughts like: Would it be inappropriate here and now to tell him that she truly admired his character?
- She'd never told him such before for fear of him taking it the wrong way, but now she felt like she should have.
She sincerely respected him for the hardships he was willing to endure to turn his life away from what it had been. She'd never known anybody try so damned hard to be a good person - a better person than they had once been.
Most people just either were or weren't good people to begin with. Wherever it was on that scale of morality that they had fallen (or risen to) after life had shaped them, they then simply accepted. She'd never met anyone other than herself who tried to take any agency over their own character, before she had met Erandur.
That said, Erandur probably wouldn't understand the gravity of such a confession of admiration from Wyrmsong - wouldn't know that in confessing such a thing, it would be the first time she'd ever professed admiration for anyone, in all her forty years of living.
Her mind raced to yet another question:
Would it be wrong to inform him that of all the people she'd ever known, he was the one person she trusted?
- A silly thing to say on second thought, because he'd watched her back and she'd watched his for nearly over a year now.
Besides, it probably looked like her trust was easy to earn... Judging by how easily she spoke (and so openly as well) to just about anyone, anywhere.
That ease was a lie that only her body language in close quarters betrayed, and seldom few people noticed such subtlety beyond her masking, cheerful (and more importantly attention-grabbing) smile. So Erandur probably couldn't know that she had 'attached' to nobody before him, or know how readily she had shed those who had previously followed her from her company, whenever logic had required.
Wyrmsong's former companions had preferred to console themselves that 'being The Dragonborn an' all', she had a 'destiny' to follow - one that they imagined they could not be a part of even if they had wanted to be, either for their being inadequate, unworthy, or at the very least just powerless to shape.
They had rather believe this than accept the ugly truth that they'd never really earned Wyrmsong's trust... And Wyrmsong had let them believe that. She thought the lie was kinder.
Erandur, however... Erandur was so used to people not trusting him that he might well have been not in the slightest bit offended to know that she hadn't trusted him, or not until very recently, at least.
Perhaps he was aware but amicably accepted her distrust, presuming it to be more about himself than anything to do with her. He was, after all, a very humble fellow - that being one of the qualities she most liked about him - but that meant he likely could not understand his own uniqueness, either.
Within these brief moments of reflection, Wyrmsong was confronted with the realisation that everyone else before him had out-stayed their welcome and/or their usefulness, but that while she didn't need his arms in battle, she'd kept him around the longest.
She flinched and lowered her head sombrely: There was significant compliment toward him in that acknowledgement. It was something she felt she probably should have shared with him (credit where credit is due).
She owed it to him to tell him... And... She might even have done so, until it was that she attempted to mouth the words so as to say it out loud:
"I invited you at first out of charity because I really don't need your help but then I sort of got used to you being around so I didn't send you away and kind of trust you now."
- That sounded awful!
He might angrily rather ask her why he had taken that lightning bolt for her at all, in that case! Could she say nothing at all?! She would have needed time to figure out how, but as he turned a more sickly colour she told herself bitterly that all this 'thinking' was obviously quite pointless.
- She tried to tell herself she didn't need him (why am I reassuring myself..?).
- She tried to reason that this parting was sad, yes, but that she had a destiny to get on with (why am I reminding myself of that?).
She felt the panic rise again in her gut as he coughed up another mouthful of blood, and tried to tell herself that it was stupid to dwell on 'what she should say' or things she only in hindsight now wished to have expressed. She'd never done that before, there was no need to start now.
It was just the first companion she'd lost instead of leaving, that was all. It was just shock. Whatever he thought about her was quite irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
- Yet somehow, suddenly here and now... It wasn't.
These questions, they burned; the nearness of his passing brought an irrational need for him to live that gripped her so tightly it near choked the breath out of her. Her mind darted this way and that, clutching at how much she wanted to say something – and desperately also nothing at all.
Would it discredit their friendship to say these things, to have thought them at all..?
...Because... For some reason... It really felt like saying them should carry that risk... The risk that she might have him leave this world burdened by concerns he need not carry with him, or worse that even if he didn't die here: he'd be gone from her side merely for her speaking them.
That upset her a terribly and she could not explain why. The thought of him leaving was actually worse than him dying... Why..?!
She was so exhausted - mentally, physically, emotionally - that she felt as if she were cleaving herself into portions that now did battle against one other (and with her general capacity for rational thought).
Yet another thought entered her mind unbidden and in her own voice (she) asked:
And what if he harboured some affection for you, Wyrmsong? You assumed he wouldn't – couldn't. But what if you were wrong?
To which she answered:
All this time I kept him with me… Obliviously stringing him along on a hope and a dream, and all just because I merely decided that I didn't mind him being around?!
Unwanted memories flashed to recollection of the typically frustrated, haunted look-of-longing that former companions had often worn whenever she casually abandoned them to be on her way elsewhere. Wyrmsong really was woefully poor at recognising it when affection was directed at her. She often didn't realise it had been a 'thing' at all until that very moment she informed them that it was time for them to part ways.
Well... She was woefully poor at recognising affection excepting the lustful sort… She did have a very keen eye for that kind, but that was different: she had no need or want to shield from the pain of rejection the callous or sexually objectifying scum that approached her on streets and in taverns in that way.
For the seldom few good people who'd done nothing wrong except to find the wrong person (Wyrmsong) too interesting, sadly she had learned there were seemingly no combinations of words on Nirn that blunted the pain of rejection. In fact the only thing she'd really improved upon in all her years was spotting attraction sooner, sometimes instinctively dropping companions before they dug themselves too deep a hole to get out of and move on with their lives afterwards.
Generally knowing that their lives were yet ahead of them was enough to ease her guilt over any pain or confusion she imagined they might have felt from being abandoned...
...But such a salve for her conscience didn't really apply here, did it?
All she could do was sincerely hope that it wasn't the case for Erandur that he had harboured such feelings. Certainly she'd never seen any sign of such… And yet...
Erandur was rather good at keeping secrets: was it possible he could have hidden it?
He wasn't bad at lying either, since one necessitated an ability to do the other. Perhaps he wasn't any different than the others in truth; only better at hiding it..?
The mere possibility prickled Wyrmsong, for it actually mattered to her more than she had expected if she would hurt him by rejecting him.
Quickly thereafter she felt ashamed, as if she were the one who'd been keeping secrets, and lying about her feelings... As if her 'not having known or noticed', was a denial on her part in and of itself. The mere proposition that scenario irked her considerably, because Wyrmsong Waterfell, Arch Mage and Dragonborn, had in her wisdom always gone to great lengths to never live in denial of anything.
Of course I wouldn't do such a thing! If he had such feelings, my not knowing would be because he hid them too well, nothing more!
- She told herself solidly...
...Except she could not deny that there were nonetheless things she now strongly felt she should have expressed. Things that she had thought about often and for quite some time. Such things that in spite of her conviction of forthright honesty, she had never spoken, but in hindsight now very much wish she had told him.
There was one thing that burned her conscience in particular.
Perhaps it was a petty thing to hesitate and think of this, now of all times ...but... Wyrmsong forgave Erandur his past. She believed it possible she knew more of it and more intimately than anyone else possibly could, thanks to the Dreamstride in which she had lived his final memories of the Orc attack on Vaermina's temple, during which he had fled and left his bretheren there to die.
She found herself able to forgive him his past even if it seemed nobody else could or would, including Erandur himself. It mattered to her for some reason, that someone yet living, should do that: forgive him, and tell him so... She earnestly wanted him to know that at least one person in this world knew what things he had done but that he had nonetheless managed to earn their keeping him in high esteem.
Words lacking, she had at least attempted to make him feel her sentiment by the way she treated him.
Whenever he said something dark about his past that started with 'I'll never forgive myself for-' she'd found herself desperately wanting to say it. Instead, however, she usually just pretended not to be fully listening - as if whatever dreadful detail he'd let slip should not be of any great concern for the learning of it; a trifling matter that didn't affect how she saw or behaved around him.
That was the best she'd ever known to do for him, but was that enough? It now felt sorely lacking.
She had wanted better for him. Genuinely wanted better for most people she met, and if it was within her power to give it to them, she would. She'd felt that the most strongly about Lucia and Erandur when she met them. She'd given Lucia a home, but having Erandur with her had seemed to be the best way to provide a better life for him. Or so she'd thought.
Every time she'd ever thought about ditching him, she'd had nightmares of him dying alone in that place, that dark and falling-apart old fort where he'd declared that he otherwise intended to spend the rest of his days praying and seeking forgiveness from Mara.
Now she lived a nightmare she feared she might well re-live every night for the rest of her life.
As she watched the grimace of agony that was now permanently fixed to his face, she shook such nonsense from her head and sternly told herself:
Stop this. Stop it. Just stop it!
All these thoughts... Wave after wave of them striking upon her consciousness, each in a frenzy of attention-seeking, were suffocating. She shut her eyes tightly and a tear rolled down her cheek. All these thoughts were helping neither him nor her. It was pretty damned clear as she looked down upon him and refocused her eyes that nothing was.
The silent tears she shed were numerous, and she had not cried like this in a long, long time. She was at a loss for what to do, but more than that she felt lost.
She was about to ask if she should stop healing. She was about to just stop, anyway...
- To remove his helmet and simply try to look into his crimson-red eyes as to reassure him, in these final moments, that after everything they'd been through together she would not abandon him here...
- To lock eyes with him and not look away, to show him that she didn't want him to die alone, wouldn't allow it, and just hope he understood that she had believed he deserved better…
She found herself exclaiming aloud:
"I'm sorry, Erandur… I'm trying but the spell just isn't…"
- But she couldn't finish that sentence.
She was sure he knew what she was going to say better than she did and what it meant, if he was able to focus on her words at all.
He made a woefully unhappy sound thereafter, and it occurred to her then that she was already only prolonging his misery - all just to allow herself the luxury of all these ultimately selfish thoughts. Thoughts which truly only revolved around herself and her guilt.
Healing him this way might in all honesty be torture… And if she knew there was no hope of his recovery, then it was merely for her own comfort that she was keeping him alive right now… And that was both cruel and selfish. She needed to stop. She needed to stop.
She needed... to stop...
...Except that Erandur sputtered something...
...And it sounded like words..?!
She tried to replay the sounds to fathom what it was he'd said if indeed he'd just said something... "Hegl...mnt" She thought she had heard between swallows.
- Helgen-meant? Helga met? Maybe 'helmet'?
His right arm began flailing in what seemed like an attempt to reach for his face.
- Helmet!
She refocused her healing efforts into one hand and was quick to oblige. Using her free hand she unbuckled the strap beneath his chin. Aedra knew how he had the strength to do anything in his present state but he and she together somehow (with one hand each) pulled off his Ebony helm. Straight away she yanked it from his his fingers, tossing it to the floor (she cared not where) and paid no attention to the thud of impact.
Earnestly she looked to his face thereafter, only to see blood trickling from the corners of his mouth and his eyes... His eyes were so desperate as they locked onto hers, which only made her feel the worse.
By the Nine she wanted to soothe him somehow. She would have done anything in that moment to ease the wildness of pain in his eyes as they met hers...
"Skin… Contact..." He gargled and choked, thereafter squeezing his eyes tightly shut in agony as much as he clamped his teeth shut.
Wyrmsong frowned, mouth open in confusion. What on Nirn..?!
"More efficient, faster..." - What'?!
He whispered, sucking air (and liquid) intermittently through bloodied, gritted teeth:
"Help me get..." - [Wheeze, gulp] - "...this armour off..." - [Cough]
Wyrmsong's response was instant. Even if it made no sense, she was resolved to do anything he asked right now without question. Reason didn't matter, she would simply comply.
- More efficient… Faster..? ...Wait - does he mean the healing spell?!
He was potentially by a century the more experienced Healer, so if he had he some notion for how he might yet live, then absolutely she'd do it!
Although in the back of her mind confusion proliferated: If he meant what she thought he meant, then his request was going against every instruction she'd ever been given by a Healer,and every ounce of learning she'd ever read from a tome or a book about Healing. Every one of those prior sources of learning expressly underlined that at no point should you ever make skin contact with the patient. Surely there was a reason for that..?
(Only in romanticised novels was this not the case, and Wyrmsong was of the opinion that their authors in their writing bent more facts than a bowyer bends wood.)
"Gloves!"
He gargled, limply waving his own gauntleted right arm weakly above his chest. She ignored her confusion and quickly removed one then the other.
She removed his pauldrons with the help of his surprisingly deft fingers well enough, and then she and Erandur each one-handedly unbuckled the formerly gold-embellished (now scratched and dulled) torso plates. He (somehow competently) attended to most of the buckles on his left side, she: all the ones on his right, and the one under his armpit on the right that he hadn't managed to reach (presumably too painful).
He managed (somehow) to sit up just slightly and long enough for her to pull both the plates off - in spite of his wretched coughing and grimacing cries of pain. Every piece of his armour had been tossed away the moment it was removed, and the Ebony armour plates hit the stone floor shortly thereafter beside the bed with as equally a stone-sounding thud as the rest, only a little louder and with an additional crunch as the back plate cracked in two (well that it was ruined anyway).
The cloth-lined underlay was next, but that had mostly disintegrated from the charge. Once the sturdier leather buckles were undone it had (all of it) come off easily enough.
The instant it was off Erandur immediately slapped his hand to his bloodied chest next to the still-charred and gaping wound, and somehow focused his own magicka through the searing pain to cast Heal upon himself. Somehow he resisted what must surely have been an ongoing and dire temptation to fall unconscious, all of which Wyrmsong would have been seriously impressed by had she only a single thought to spare.
"Gloves-" He near-choked with urgency. "Yours!"
Wyrmsong cast her own glass gauntlets to the floor with utter disregard (let them break!). Then presuming what he had meant for her to do, she spread her fingers and thrust her hands towards his chest having balanced the spell to flow through both once more. She was utterly baffled when he suddenly blocked her feebly with his other arm:
"Wait!" - He croaked.
Wait what?!
Wyrmsong glared at him with confusion and dismay as she bit her tongue only to save time, hesitating for to wait upon whatever explanation or counter instruction he would give, assuming there was some trick to this new technique. She was not impressed by what next came out of his mouth:
"This is secret to the priests of Mara-"
Boethiah themselves would have been unable to match the scathing scowl that Wyrmsong directed at Erandur in that moment.
That's what he's worried about? Religious secrets?! Oblivion take both him and his religion!
Exasperated she eye-rolled and growled before near-shouting:
"Aedra and Daedra I don't care what it is if it means I can save you - tell me what to do!"
It took real presence of mind to ease down her voice to just 'yelling'. She could easily have put sufficient force into it for it to transcend into a Thu-um in her present emotional state, dragon words-of-magick spoken or not!
"There are reasons – there are... consequences..!" He sputtered, pleading as if to attempt further explanation.
She was having none of it, and cut him off before he could sputter any more nonsense.
"I don't care if it sells my soul to a Daedra Prince! I will simply have to take it up with whoever that is, later!"
She over-powered his weak attempts to impede her touch and pressed her hands either side of the wound - one on his shoulder, one on the neighbouring pectoral muscle.
"Now tell me what I need to do!"
She glared at him, and for a moment the fool just stared back.
"Erandur?!" - Her eyes widened in furious impatience.
"Just..." - [Cough-Cough-Cough]
"ERANDUR!"
- Again catching herself just short of a Thu-um, although the mere volume of her voice was more than enough to make him visibly flinch.
"...Heal..!" He squawked, finally: "Heal as you already... know how..."
His words grew faint at the last, and then his head rolled back and is eyelids relaxed shut, him seemingly then unable to keep his own hand in place as he stopped casting. He was drifting out of consciousness.
Wyrmsong renewed her spell-casting with fervour, both hands pressed against his flesh.
"Erandur! Don't you dare die! Don't you dare!"
Author note:
And herein lies my twist on how healing works. Just because I don't know about you, but whenever I do it in game my character is no less than a meter a way it seems! Never skin contact. So what if that's the way it's taught, but skin contact offers a boost... for a price? It may not be the sort of price you'd expect, either...