Ludger didn't even turn when the footfall sounded behind him. The first bath hadn't exactly been relaxing, so he'd come back after dark in the hope of a better attempt than the last time. With Elle still missing, it wasn't the best time for this, but after the last few weeks he desperately needed some way to unwind. It hadn't really worked, but the effort needed to be made. The warm pool at least drew some tension out of his muscles if not his mind. He would need to be at his best for what came next. He couldn't break yet. Not until it was done.
"Ludger?" came the call from behind, and this time he turned his head.
"Hello, Nova." She was standing in her pink suit on the stone floor beyond the other pool, for once seeming more concerned than perky.
"You're missing the pillowfights… Elize and Muzet's unholy alliance will be the undoing of us all!"
He didn't respond, and she hesitated. "Are- Are you okay?"
"Not…really. Am I paying for all this, by the way?"
"What? Oh, no… I got a bonus from all your hard work, thought you deserved a treat. I'm sorry it worked out the way it did…"
Ludger shrugged, leaned back, and closed his eyes. He stretched out his arms and she got a glimpse of his back. As someone that dealt in medical loans, Nova had had to learn something about injuries, and she could pick out the marks of teeth, claws, burns, crush injuries, scalds, wounds from spirit artes and spyrixes, even a few bullet wounds. There were several healed broken bones she could see just in that small patch of skin, some of them multiple times. Over them all were a few mild acid burns from Teepo this afternoon. Ludger Kresnik was a shattered wreck, holding himself together with sheer determination and easy access to the best healers in two worlds. Even so, there was only so much punishment one body could take, and he was not far short of the limit.
He turned back at her gasp.
"L- Ludger, what happened to you?"
He hesitated. "I've… been having a rough time lately."
"Yes, I can see that, but-"
"How did you think I was getting all that money so quickly?"
She'd wondered, of course, but it was strictly against the rules to ask, in case the method was something Verland bank could get in trouble for condoning. But, since their professional relationship had ended, that no longer applied. "I don't know. What was it, contract killing?" She had been desperately hoping for a smile, but got a flinch instead.
"Close."
"What?" Not the answer she expected or wanted.
"Monster hunts. Can be big rewards." If he ever found out who the 'Mad Scientist' was, he was either going to murder them outright or thank them on his knees. Until he or she got involved, the monsters had been challenging but manageable. The scientist's decision to revive them all three times as dangerous to all comers had been when he started losing teeth and breaking bones on a daily basis, but it had also allowed him to clear the bulk of his debt in under a week. The others could hang back, but Ludger had no time to be subtle, not with Elle waiting, and was in the vanguard of every attack.
He had lost count of the near death experiences along the way. It left Elle in Bisley's hands for far too long, but he had to hope Origin's defences would hold out. There were loose ends, and plans to make before he could move on them.
"But- You-" That did explain the scars.
"And the rest came from my nefarious army of kleptomaniac cats." He still wasn't sure who had paid 50,000 gald for a lump of beast dung, but he was not complaining.
Nova almost laughed despite his entirely serious tone, but then she remembered overhearing Elle shouting "Fly, my kitties! Fly! Ahahahahaha!" over the GHS once. She'd wondered at the time, but professional non-curiousity had prevented her from enquiring further.
"That sounds… tough."
"It… wasn't easy. Sometimes we'd try to take three or four a day." He moved again, giving her another view of the extent of the scars down his back. He had been beaten half to death on multiple occasions, and even with some of the best healers in the world on his side, it had to hurt. And she had had no idea.
Her GHS rang before she could complete the thought, and she glanced at it. "Vera, wondering where we are. You want to be left alone, right?" At his nod, she sent a brief text explaining and telling her not to look for them. "Why did you pay it? Spirius-"
"-got them to back off, but I wasn't going to leave the debt hanging over Elle when she comes back, especially if…" I'm not there to protect her. It didn't take a genius to figure out what he hadn't said. She couldn't deny it. Verland would use that debt against Elle given half a chance.
Ludger still had his back to her, seated in the pool with a wall between them.
"So… can I help you with anything? Soap? Towels? Want me to climb in with you?" He jerked in surprise at that, and she was glad to see she could still get at least some reaction out of him. In her profession you got to see people in the deepest depths of despair. At the end, they cared about nothing, which was why she was taught to keep her conversations light. They either grew to love the one sunny personality in their lives, or grew to hate them. Either was fine, as love and hate were both galvanising forces, they would compel a debtor to pay up as best they could, even if just out of spite. She was paid to stave off despair, so that debtors would continue to work as long as possible. But the haunted look in Ludger's eyes wasn't going to give way to some chirpy conversation. He'd nearly worked himself to death to pay off an impossible debt within weeks, her supervisor had been a little upset that it hadn't even had time to accrue interest. But he'd broken himself to do it, and that was all her fault. She'd had to watch Ludger break apart in front of her eyes, and been able to do nothing about it. He was the toughest person she'd ever known, had always been able to take hits and keep going, but she knew debtor eyes, and these one were a hair away from breaking point.
His brother had been declared a terrorist, his first day in a new job resulted in a twenty million debt and narrowly surviving a trainwreck. That was only the things she knew about, but whatever was going on behind the scenes had nearly broken Ludger. And she'd had to stand and watch.
"I'm so sorry!" Nova said, feeling the tears come and starting forward. Not wasting the time to go around the women's pool, she splashed straight through it and wrapped her arms around him from behind, reaching over the edge of her pool to hook her arms around his shoulders, with the wall between them, crying into his back. (Even in her current state of mind, she wasn't quite thoughtless enough to jump into the same pool as an unsuspecting naked man and expect it to go down well.)
"It's not your fault." Ludger said, as she kept crying into his shoulders, the strain evident in his voice of staving off despair.
"B- But I did nothing…"
"Nobody could have stopped this." He was coming back to himself, some of the tension leaving his body. Her own distress was helping him, the knowledge that someone cared. So many friends had abandoned him, Julius had disappeared, and even his new friends didn't know him in quite the same way she did. In the cutthroat world of Elympian debt, you found out who your friends were.
The debt was paid, but Ludger was not acting like someone freed from a burden, but someone facing into a new one. She didn't think he was likely to be wrong.
"So, um, what happens next? Something to do with that giant glowing baby in the sky, right?"
He said nothing, and she took the hint. "Okay then, how can I help? I can do it now that you're paid up."
He said nothing for a long moment, and then, slowly, "If things… don't go well, I might need someone to take care of Rollo and… Elle. Could you…"
"Of course. But I meant more right now." He'd performed a miracle in paying up his debt, but he couldn't even relax yet. What could she do?
The traditional thing to do in these circumstances would have involved the fact that she was soaking wet in a hotspring with an underdressed man known to have once upon a time had a crush on her. But that wasn't what Ludger needed, not tonight. Probably not ever, from her, much as she didn't like to admit it. He was barely holding himself together, the wrong move could break him. But she had an idea.
"Get your towel and come out, you're making me dinner." Cooking had always been how he distracted himself from his problems. And that did finally get another reaction from him, albeit confusion. "Come on. I expect to be impressed."
There, finally, a smile, or at least, the beginnings of something that might eventually be one. He wrapped a towel around himself and stood up, and aching with what she could never say, Nova took his arm and led him back to the world. For a little while, at least.
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