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Author's Note: Sorry to leave you on a cliffhanger yesterday but since I'm trying to update every day I figured you wouldn't be left hanging for long. So here you go. Please enjoy.
Interlocking
Chapter Thirteen: Barrier
"Harding's voice is laced with a tender hidden question. 'To better attend to your wound…I will need you to disrobe.'" - Krem and Harding find each other in a world torn apart. A story told in brief glimpses.
Krem stirs to consciousness and finds Harding's face looming over his. He blinks, tries to swallow and finds his mouth dry. Then there is the sudden and tearing pain at his shoulder. He cries out without meaning to, and then clenches his jaw tight, sweat beading down his face.
Harding's voice is soft and yielding, her hands smooth along his cheeks as she eases him through the first initial bout of pain. When he has enough awareness he tries to raise himself up. His shoulder and chest are a tangled mess of burning and throbbing, but with the help of Harding at his uninjured side, he manages to sit up and rest his left shoulder against the rock wall, his hands bracing himself in the mud. He looks up and around them, catching sight of the shadowed pit they were in. They seemed to have fallen into a small ravine amongst the rocky ledges on the outer edge of the swamp. Thick roots tangled around the mud beneath them. The chasm seemed to only stretch a dozen feet or so either way, and probably a dozen feet or so high, as best as Krem can judge, on a semi-steep climb. There are no trees obscuring sun from the pit but it is still shadowed. "What happened?" he manages to croak out.
Harding sighs, leaning back on her haunches as she looks at him. "Fell into this hellhole running from the gurguts. We both got knocked out for a few minutes there."
At the mention of the beasts, Krem looks back up to see if they still lingered up on the ground, waiting for them hungrily.
"They're gone now," Harding supplies. "Didn't stick around after I shot one in the mouth as it was scurrying around the edge looking for a way down." She sighs and brushes hair from her face that had escaped her bun.
Krem thinks he can make out the scaled foot of the dead creature hanging just over the edge above them. When he looks back down he notices the wide scratch along Harding's cheek, and the way she cradles her left elbow. Her face is marred in dirt, her hair matted with mud and twigs from the fall. He imagines he must look the same. He pulls in a breath and winces with the pain of it.
Harding eyes him with a hesitant concern. "The ledge isn't so steep that we couldn't try to climb back out, but with your wound…"
Krem manages a quick smirk, though shaky and pain-riddled. "I can't make the climb. And you can't carry me," he finishes.
"Exactly." Harding rests her hands on her thighs as she kneels before him, her shoulders sagging somewhat.
"Alright," he starts, clearing his throat. "Easy fix, that. You climb out and get help. Gurguts can't do much to me from up there."
Harding shakes her head. "No. If raiders show up, you're an easy target for any man with a bow. Best plan is to stay here together until my scouts make their rounds. Once we don't show up for call they'll come looking."
Krem opens his mouth to try to argue but she holds a finger firmly in the air, halting any words. He huffs.
"You can't change my mind Krem so just deal with it. I'm staying."
Krem sags back against the rock slightly, a wave of relief he won't admit to washing over him. But the uneasy way that she is looking at him now lights a caution in his eyes. "What?"
Harding cocks her head to look at him, her eyes intent and wary on his, but it is a soft wariness. It tells of quiet trepidation. "I tried to stem the blood flow as much as possible but there's only so much I can do through the chinks in your armor."
Krem glances to her hands held light in her lap and notices the bloody palms for the first time.
Harding's voice is laced with a tender hidden question. "To better attend to your wound…I will need you to disrobe."
Krem watches her in steady silence for many moments. Harding does not turn her gaze. He begins to wonder how much she knows. How much she thinks she knows. Begins to wonder if that face, that warm and promising face he sees in his dreams, will still look at him the same when the armor comes off. There is the sharp drop of dread spreading through his stomach.
Harding swallows, shuffles her knees just a little closer to him and pulls her leather pack from her back to rest between them. "I only have one potion left. Maybe it will last you until we are found." She pulls the vial from her bag and holds it out to him.
He realizes this is her giving him an out. He would take the potion regardless. But he does have one of Stitches poultices on him and that would need to be rubbed into the wound. Double the healing properties would definitely be helpful, especially with the filth they were in and all the rotting corpses filling up the plains. Who knew what diseases were spreading around? It wasn't smart to risk infection. And the potion could only help so much. They had no guarantee of when Harding's scouts would find them.
Krem blinks at Harding. Looks at this small, dirt-smeared woman kneeling before him. Looks at the sharp glint in her eye, the tight line of her mouth, the soft and straightforward outreach she offers him. The way her freckles still peek out defiantly from beneath the grime. The way she opens herself up, fully and honestly to him. He realizes he doesn't know what shame is in her presence. Never has. And he realizes now that that cold sting of dread he felt earlier is because he wants to open himself to her as well. Wants to bear all the ugly, gruesome things he keeps buried inside.
But this. This shameless moment between them. This is not the ugly. This is not the gruesome. This is the beautiful. This is the honest. This is the worthy, the significant, the needed.
This is Krem. This is the man she wants. And she will not back down from that.
Krem finds his smile easy as he lifts his left hand to reach for the latches on his chestplate, wincing slightly from the pain of it.
Understanding flashes swiftly across Harding's eyes and she places the potion back in her pack, silently moving to help him with his armor.
And slowly, painstakingly, but unashamedly, they begin to remove the barrier between them. Together.