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Hello everybody! I am so very sorry for this long delay and I don't really have an apology that will not sound like a lame excuse, but let me say that I found this extremely difficult to write although maybe it doesn't seem so. I tried something rather experimental with the style, so please let me know what you think. If you don't like it, I'll never do anything like it again! I hope you enjoy this chapter anyways.Love, Jojo
Chapter Two Recovery"What happened?", Sonea asked hoarsely, when the young Healer woke her up to a room bathed in bright sunlight. The horrible exhaustion and blind panic from the day before had gone although the pain had not, speaking now was far easier.
The Healer had told her his name, but she had already forgotten it. He had helped her sit up and now tried to coax some more of the warm liquid into her. She refused, too eager and anxious to get an answer to her question, which referred not only to her condition as he probably thought but also to the fact that she was alone although she should not be.
"You don't have to worry," he said now, with that soft voice that sounded too old for him. "You are recovering fast, you'll be fine in no time."
She wanted to protest, she wanted to tell him that she did not care about her recovery as long as she did not know why she had to recover in the first place, but he interrupted her before she could even start.
"Really, don't worry. I'll get you something against the pain as soon as you finished this," he said, holding up the cup. Sighing, Sonea obeyed. She had no choice.
Over the next days, not much changed. Everything was repeated in regular patterns – she would ask the same questions over and over again, with more words as time passed, and he would ignore them and cover up with everlasting kindness and caring. In some other situation, she might have thought him sweet. Right now, she found his behaviour suffocating and frustrating.
With a lot of time and refusal of food until he told her, she made him list her injuries. After that, she had needed a moment to catch her breath.
How could she not remember an event that had left her this broken? She was only a pile of fragments, completely dependent on the Healer's well-meaning and skill. They had had to remove the bandage that had kept her broken ribs in place so she could breathe freely, leaving her in constant danger that one of them might puncture her lungs, which was also the reason she was barely allowed to move a muscle even though the Healer had tried to convince her that the most dangerous part of that was over. Her leg was so badly broken that it might take months to fully heal. And that was only the worst of it.
Meanwhile, she was almost certain that Akkarin had to be dead. It was the only scenario she could imagine, painful as it was. They had lost a battle, and he had lost his life. Only that did not explain how she could be in the Healers' Quarters in Imardin – could the Guild have defeated the Ichani on its own?
She spent hours pondering although her head hurt despite the medicines she had to take. She did not allow herself to grieve until she could be certain, not caring that she might never be. Day after day she lay still, sometimes until far into the night, trying to put together the puzzle she knew she would not be able to solve on her own. But her only contact was Healer Marin, whose name she finally remembered after he had told her every single time he came to check on her.
At some point she felt that she could breathe painlessly, and the constant throbbing of her head slowly subsided until she could follow her own thoughts again. Not that that was of any use to her, not if all she could think of was how she could possibly find out what in the world could have happened here and why Marin refused to explain anything to her.
She knew that she would never find out if she appeared as weak as she felt. Then nobody would ever take her seriously, but if she hid her pain and fear, she might, with a lot of luck, possibly get her questions answered. But right now, with all she was feeling either pain or fear, she did not stand a chance.
So Sonea learned to hide her fear, learned to bite back the grimaces that pulled at her face when she had to move, repress the wincing when Marin touched her. Her expression became a carefully constructed mask, and Marin did not seem to notice.
One day, almost two weeks after she had woken up for the first time, he came to her with a real, enthusiastic smile on his face. "I talked to Lady Vinara, and she agreed that we can move you over to the recovery rooms. You are healthy enough not to suffocate in your sleep, and strong enough to be transferred. Isn't that good news?"
She took this information in as if through a veil and simply nodded, because her mind was unable to grasp what he had said just then. When she did understand, he had already left the room again to finish the necessary preparations, and she was alone with her thoughts once again.
It was a relief to know that she would not die just now, but did that mean that it had been a possibility until then? How close had she really been to Death's doors all this time?
But the recovery rooms were a step closer to… to what exactly? Freedom? Certainly not, not after what she had done in the past. Injured as she might be, it could not be denied that she had broken the law multiple times with full intent. Or had the Guild forgiven her in the time she could not remember? No, that sounded too good to be true. And therefore, freedom was not an option for her. Possibly not ever. The only thing she could actually hope for was not to be executed, and with all the effort the Guild apparently put into her recovery, execution seemed thankfully unlikely.
Unfortunately, there were two and a half more days between announcing the transfer and actually moving her. two and a half days of wondering what would eventually happen to her. two and a half days of trying not to fall into the grief she wanted to fall into so desperately.
Her body was betraying her. Marin was watching her even more closely in these days to ensure that she really was healthy enough, and that observation almost cost her the success of her plan.
Her throat was too tight for food because the last real food she remembered she had gathered herself in the Sachakan wastelands, feeling Akkarin's dark eyes watching her as she ran her fingers through the brown grass or carved a rock to a rough bowl. Sleep seemed to avoid her now because the mattress seemed to be too soft compared to the beds of rocks she had slept on. She had to fight tears every time he entered the room and she had to fight the urge to cringe away from his touch every time he changed her bandages. But she never allowed him to see what was going on inside her. Nobody must ever know about the pain she did not allow herself to feel.
Finally Marin came, accompanied by another young man in the tell-tale green robes, and together they told her how great it was that she could be moved, and how quickly she would now take the last steps to her recovery. Sonea did not believe what they said but could not speak because they were helping her to sit and it hurt as if she was hit by two dozen stunstrikes. When they swung her legs over the edge of the bed and her feet touched the ground, she could not stop the gasps from escaping her lips. Immediately she cursed that sign of her weakness.
The two men manoeuvred her into a chair with wheels instead of legs and carefully helped her to sit as comfortably as possible. Marin opened the door while the other Healer pushed the chair out on the corridor which was mercifully empty. If she had not known that she could on no account have managed to walk herself, she would have fought against this method of transportation. Now all she could do was hope that it would be over soon.
She tried to think of something other than what was happening right now, but just down the first corridor, something violently pulled her back into reality. A voice. A voice that seemed to grow louder and of course it was because she was getting closer to the source, a voice that was painfully familiar. A voice that sent shivers through her body and had her fighting for air like she had not fought ever since the moment she first woke up in the Healers' Quarters.
But right before the corner behind which she would be able to see if her mind was not playing tricks on her Marin stopped and showed no intent of moving on anytime soon and then the voice moved away and she would not survive that.
In that one, frantic moment, she used all her willpower to force her arms to push her out of the chair, to tell her legs that it was all right, that the pain was not real and did not matter, at least not as much as getting up and walk and just walk around the corner. She heard Marin and the other man calling her name, shouting at her to stop and come back but she intentionally ignored them. For the first time since she had woken up, she had a real goal, a real purpose, and she was not going to let that pass.
Ten painful, torturous, limping steps later she had mastered the corner and what she saw there lightened her steps and sped up her heartbeats so much that her head almost seemed to explode but it did not matter because there he was. Standing tall and strong and alive and breathing and possibly a hallucination but she was not going to find out if she did not reach him so she forced more steps out of her protesting legs and tried to say his name but her mouth was too dry.
Somehow he must have heard her anyways, because he jumped, straightened and turned around. When their eyes met, a mask seemed to fall off his face and then he was coming towards her, not running but obviously as eager as she was.
And then they met in the middle of the corridor, their bodies as if crashing into each other but neither of them felt the impact. His hands cupped her face, traced her lips and jawline and grasped her shoulders. Hers ran over his chest, his arms, anything to make sure he was real and not just a dream. She could feel the warmth radiating from his body and his pulse on his wrist as she took his hand in hers. She wanted to rise to her tiptoes, but her body would not obey, and he noticed her efforts and leaned down to her. Her free hand found his neck and held on to him, their foreheads touching, breathing in each other's scent and taking in as much as possible.
"I thought I'd lost you," he said in such a rough voice that she knew he was fighting down just as much emotions as she was herself. She felt the tears she had refused herself to cry in sadness running over her face in relief and joy.
"I thought you were dead," she breathed. She was aware of the other people standing around them but chose not to care. All that mattered was that right in this moment, she felt whole for the first time in weeks.