"Good, you're waking up. How are you feeling?"

Cter blinked, finding herself in her own bed on top of a layer of towels dotted with blood. Hers, most likely, as the towels were laid underneath her bandaged left arm. Thicker ones were wrapped tighter than before, with splotches of dark visible through them. At the side of her bed sat Sarbor on a stool with rolls of red cotton littered around him. His sleeves were rolled up and washed.

"You wouldn't mind talking to me, Cter? Otherwise I'll have to send for more help."

"Oh, sorry," quipped the Monster Mage as she moved to sit up. Sarbor helped her, making sure that she didn't put any weight on her left arm. "Thanks." As he leaned back to sit down in his chair again he motioned for her to keep talking. "And I'm feeling fine. A bit tired. Drained." Her eyes swept over the stains of blood on the towels and on the pieces of cotton. "Dizzy."

"You lost a fair amount of blood before Kry managed to put healing magic on your arm, they told me. Something about some magical rejection." Sarbor reached over to a warmly soaked sponge which he squeezed out into a bowl of clean water. "You'll have to ask him about it," he continued while patting gently at Cter's bandages. It stung, but less than it did before. "They left half an hour or so after monitoring for a while." The next squeeze into the clear water bloodied it from the bandages. "Sooner than I expected, come to think of it." His mustache bounced as he pouted in thought. "You wouldn't mind telling me what happened? You're still pale from whatever it was, more so than the loss of blood."

Did she have enough left in her to react properly to him informing her of that?

…

No, not really.

A tingle had Cter shifting the pillow that pushed against her lower back. Usually it was that she spoke with Idyll as the first outsider to things. Sure, Sarbor was her brother, but even though they shared a last name there wasn't really a lot else that they shared. She wasn't against telling him, it was just a bit of a tingle that she noticed.

That she noticed the tingle was a good sign, if nothing else. Had it tingled at her the day before she would probably not have noticed it. Even with her dizziness from loss of blood she felt more aware than she had been the day before. More awake and more in tune with her aura.

Enough that maybe…

"Woah!" Sarbor reacted with a startle seeing Cter's left arm lit in a magical blaze. A burnt smell hit his nose, curling his mustache thin. "The bandages!"

Cter dissipated her flames. "Oh golly!" She looked down at the charred fabric that oozed a cough-inducing smell of burnt fabric and blood. "Foul!" Her right hand came up to cover her mouth and nose while she jutted her arm out over the water bowl containing the sponge Sarbor had used.

And would have to use again.

"Half an hour of work..." he muttered under his breath as he pushed himself up from the stool and went to open up the window. "But I guess that you have your magic back again, Cter. It was the reason you went to the training area, after all." He paused for a moment to let the afternoon wind play with his dark hair and mustache. "You can still see some of the cloud of sand still hovering outside."

With squinted eyes he leaned out the window. "Whatever you did it still shimmers faintly from around the castle corner. Hard to see from here though what with the bright marble making everything look purple instead." A chuckle passed by his lips. "Maybe it's so brightly white that you can't help but see the royal purple wherever you look on the castle. At least for humans, it is."

That...Cter hadn't thought about before.

"Huh."

Once back in his stool, Sarbor began to assess how he would begin peeling off the ruined bandage. He settled to begin at the top of Cter's shoulder where he hadn't tucked it in. Before he even managed one layer, he coughed under his breath. "So, what happened?"

Even though Cter felt awake she did not feel like telling the whole story to Sarbor. He wouldn't have understood it, even with his changed soul. His decision to deny anything magical about it didn't really line up well with the rather...intricate magic that took place. With an inhale through her nose, she said it straight.

"I killed the fusion."

Sarbor's bushy eyebrows sank deep. His hand half-filled with splotched bandage, both with blood and charring, stopped unraveling. He let his mustache descend over his lips, hiding his mouth in a shadowed tilt downwards. "It wasn't dead?" he replied with his eyes snapping down on Cter's arm covered in blood and sprinkled with the ash of the bandages she burnt. "You're telling me that it wasn't dead?"

The roll of bandages in his hand scrunched together.

"It's dead now," Cter said without any emotion. She felt Sarbor's though.

As it grew inside his vague aura.

"How can you be sure now?" he understandably challenged. "I cut off its head. I watched it collapse screaming its unholy howl with both Dr. Bonny and Sund's voices into a disorganized pile of dust-mixed-flesh that convulsed in agony that looked both pathetic and mocking at the same time. It laughed at me while it cried, Cter!"

She didn't say anything.

She only watched as the good doctor, who smiled to her so gently as she woke up under his care, curled his mustache deeper down over his mouth. His voice became like a low growl, filtered through the thick strands that hung like curtains over his mouth. "I burnt it, until there was naught but ash left, which I burnt even more with the chemicals I could salvage from Dr. Sallus' house. Some of those chemicals I can still smell on my jacket, that's the potency I deemed necessary to use. You..."

A wave of conflict had Sarbor recoil his head away from Cter's eyes.

"You I did not give even the vaguest of thought towards. I checked your pulse and breathing, but nothing more." Shame painted its wide strokes of red across his face. "I moved you away from the dust-like pile, but left you only sitting against the low wall of the fountain. Your braid was in the water that leaked out one of the shattered corners, and when I finally came back to you most of it was hanging in the air behind your slumped head. I think the wet weight of it was the only reason your unconscious body didn't slide off, you were sitting so limply."

Cter went to grab at her dry braid, but decided not to halfway, instead putting her right hand on her right shoulder so that it wasn't obvious what it was that she was about to do.

"The pieces of the stone fountain that had been chipped off were more alive than what I left to scatter to the wind. If it wasn't dead because of that, then it wasn't alive to begin with, and if so then..." Sarbor's grimace retracted into a defeated sigh. "Then perhaps I've just explained to myself that it was stupid of me to be surprised that I didn't kill it. That I didn't put Dr. Sallus and Sund's souls to rest."

Before the defeat could take over Sarbor, Cter spoke. "They were dead the moment their souls fused together. What they became...wasn't them. It was made out of them, but they weren't them." She said it to Sarbor just as much as she did to herself.

If anything though it only deepened the shadows over Sarbor's eyes, as it did hers. "The way you say it reminds me of fallen down. Of how a human is supposed to live on after returning to the earth from where they had borrowed their entire life. Human magic has its roots in the concepts of death from both monsters and humans, so wouldn't what Dr. Sallus and Sund became also be rooted in the concepts of death, yet still be alive?

Through that lens they were both still alive, they were both the echoes of who they were, and not as another being who's actions can't be put on the two that were combined within it. Sund lived on as fallen down inside the fusion, giving back magic to the monsters that he had borrowed from. Dr. Sallus lived on through his memories coating what he held dearest to his soul, the human equivalent that he had dedicated his entire life to studying."

Cter caught a glimpse of a book about monster death sticking out from Sarbor's doctor bag as he leaned his head down into his hand, gripping down his face and stopping at his chin. From that she could very easily guess why Sarbor had such a vivid description. Maybe he asked Frioke about the books for that reason, or did he discover it while he was reading it?

Had he talked to Frioke about it like he said that he wanted to? Cter doubted that, for Frioke would have informed her if that was the case, especially with the way that he presented it.

How could Cter even begin to deny it? In doing so she would be denying the way that humans and monsters thought about death, and from that she would be denying that human magic was a possibility. Even the true Cooperative Connection which did not need any cooperation still was rooted in the two views of death. A good-enough shadow to the light which human magic allowed that no one sought any further with it, and thus could back up the lie of the cooperative part of the Cooperative Connection.

However, even if it was used as a lie it did not make it any less true.

"You've had thoughts," Cter said quietly.

"I've had thoughts," Sarbor replied with a slow exhale out his nose and down his mustache which flattened from the weight of his exhaled breath. "I've spent my life seeking answers. Seeking the cause of the symptoms, and the means to prevent them. I've spent the nights at this castle tossing and turning between wanting to seek answers so that I may put my thoughts to rest, but fearing what those answers might be. It has gnawed at me. Sunk its flesh-similar claws into my head even though I removed its."

Cter could almost see the claws gripping at the doctor as Sarbor's grimace tightened.

"Did I kill Bonny and Sund by doing so? Did I free them? Each thought has resonated differently within me, within this...aura that the fusion forced upon me. It angers me to feel it, yet that too fuels it. I'm being urged to invest my emotions into solving this mystery by my mind, and also discouraged by the same mind due to how it fears the answers I may find and the strangeness it induces within me due to this new aura residing within me."

"Yet still you chose to read that book you requested from Frioke?" asked Cter as neutrally as she could with a point towards the part of the book that was sticking out Sarbor's bag. "Didn't it only further those thoughts?"

With a furrowed look behind him, Sarbor nodded. "Have you heard of the story about how the king of Xoff came to power? Or, to put it in more accurate terms, do you know the story of how he stays in power?" He looked back at Cter, concluding immediately that she hadn't from her hesitant expression. Seeing a chance to calm himself down a bit, Sarbor returned to unwrapping Cter's bandages while he spoke. "Do you know about how the Xoffian army is structured?"

"Flat hierarchy between the generals who're only below the king?"

"Which is why plagues grip so hard as they do due to the County Generals not wanting to look weak," Sarbor added under his breath before continuing. "With each succession there is a struggle for which of the generals' families will ascend the throne. It used to be a straight line down the royal tree, but with the second-to-last king marrying a monster and failing to sire an heir, that straight line turned into a scribble of madness. It was a boon for human and monster relationships inside Xoff, and is probably the most significant reason as to why I have Idyll as a sister, so to speak."

A smile broke through the hardened grimace. "Outside influence from Monster Country with Queen Toriel's decree was good and all, but changes in a country come internally rather than externally, even if pressured externally like a tightening vice. Hjearta had King Soulay for its catalyst to human and monster solidarity, whereas King Kheydan and Queen Laimutifah were the equivalent in Xoff."

Cter had heard of that story before during her history lessons at Soul's School. While Professor Leraull told it with as much love and care that he had told about how Queen Toriel watched the stars with Prince Soulay, Sarbor told it from his heart. Cter did not want to acknowledge his aura due to how much he rejected it, yet still she could feel such love for his sister through it. Blessed, he felt. It was not only Cter who found comfort in Idyll's cooking.

"Ouch."

"Sorry."

Some of the charred bandages had sunken into Cter's carvings, mixing together with the blood. There was no easy way for Sarbor to peel it off without it hurting.

"No, don't be."

In a good way.

"What?"

It hurt. Cter could feel the edge of her exposed flesh. It wasn't covered in magic, only the ruined remains of the bandages. That was good. Something for later though. Something that she had to test with her magic when she had recovered a bit. "No, nothing," she assured with a loose shake of her head, if only to stop looking at the blood slowly oozing from the carvings in her arm. "Just that you didn't have to be so apologetic."

"Bedside manners can be the difference between one week and two week recovery time," Sarbor rattled back as if habit. Then he paused at a bandage that had folded itself into one of the bloodied carvings on Cter's arm. "This one might sting a bit."

It did, and Cter had to grit her teeth against it. She felt tears form behind her closed eyelids. Still she didn't feel hurt by it. If anything, it made her glad. It was a pain that felt more raw. More cold and naked. She savored it, thinning her lips into a smile, nodding along.

It was pain that she felt not through the fusion filtering it or Sund protecting her from within her soul. It was pain that was purely onto her.

Which meant she could heal it!

Perhaps even as far as healing her carvings too!

The latter she would not hold her breath against though. Even if her soul saw it as damage and not a part of her since she was able to cast magic through it, the extent of the damage might have been too much for healing magic to heal. Repair was one thing, but replacing entire chunks of flesh?

It all depended on whether or not Cter's test would come to fruition later. While the fusion did try to kill her twice, it did do a good job in keeping her alive with how it kept her left arm from bleeding her dead. It was to keep itself alive, but a parasite with a dead host is a dead parasite.

As Romrom so lovingly described to her son-in-soul at times.

"Strangest thought I've ever had..."

"Hm?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing again?" murmured Sarbor with a glance up past his bushy eyebrows. "You're giving me some other thoughts with all this nothing you're letting slip, not gonna lie." He studied Cter's face intently for a few seconds before reaching over for the jug of water. His hand left a bloodied mark on its handle, but the wooden cup he poured into he made sure to grab with the end of a towel. "Drink some for me to ease my mind, would you?"

Cter did.

It was refreshing.

"Flubbing thoughts while pale is different from flubbing thoughts while you have color on your cheeks," Sarbor explained as he poured Cter some more water. "I'm sure you can understand why."

Cter did.

It was refresh–

…

Yeah, she needed the water. After the second cup she felt that she was actually quite parched, and that she had specks of sand in her teeth from the training area. The jug had become half-emptied when she finally felt quenched. "Thank you," she said through a caught breath. "Didn't realize I needed it so much."

"Heh," Sarbor huffed with a peek behind towards his doctor bag. Onto the book that stuck out. "Can say that twice." The half-empty jug was placed back with a slow hand that reached even slower back to the bandages on Cter's arm. "Can say that twice indeed..."

The moment of self-made respite was over for Sarbor, who inhaled with a sigh. "I'm not gonna repeat myself though. That's not the twice I meant." With a pair of metal tweezers he plucked out the cotton stuffed inside Cter's carvings, placing them in a steel tray and replacing them with fresh ones that stung something fierce. "To ward off...miasma," Sarbor explained as he uncorked a bottle of medicinal alcohol, hanging the last word on the tip of his tongue like a weight. "And so that it won't bleed too much into the bandages."

"Thanks."

Sarbor nodded, quietly. His unwrapping turned more hurried, as if he wanted to get it done without anything else said. It ate at him from inside though, which he couldn't ignore, or hide that it was bothering him. As he was digging clumsily with a finger to get under one of the edges of a bandage dried into one of the carvings he slipped and cut open fresh one of the semi-formed scabs and paused with his grimace returning to tug down at his mustache.

The instinctive tears in Cter's eyes she dried off with the heel of her right hand.

"The reason the current king of Xoff is sitting on his throne is because he followed in Queen Laimutifah's footsteps and have incorporated monsters into his court to give different perspectives. While Queen Laimutifah married a monster to be her king, the court was kept human due to the succession that wouldn't come to be disrupted until after her departure from this world. The royal court still managed to hang onto some threads of their own lineage, but eventually those became unraveled too as a new ruler was voted in. King Kheydan abdicated the throne due to his queen's passing, and died in his self-imposed exile. Rumors went abound whether or not it was self-imposed or not, but even if it was a plan to root out any monster contenders to the throne, the seed of monster influence would eventually take root, as it has now."

Cter's pained inhale through gritted teeth fell silent on Sarbor's ears as if she was any other patient who needed the cotton in the magical carvings in her arms replaced. "Today the Xoff king sits on his throne as legitimate due to his willingness to uphold new information as more valuable than older, for doing so he allows more squabbles between the County Generals. They are half-allowed to mess with the flat hierarchy between themselves, and that they've taken to heart plenty plenty. The king's choice is the reason why Dr. Sallus managed to build his Clinic Hill though, so there's good with the bad. Bonny served at the court of Xoff for a period of time due to his miasma theory."

At Cter's wrist Sarbor only loosened up the old bandaging, but did not remove it. Instead, after a quick rinse and clean of the soot and blood that covered the length of Cter's left arm, he began to apply new bandages. So that the bleeding would be contained, Cter reckoned. "All of these royal affairs I've danced around with only to tell you that I find comfort and peace in figuring out why and how. If I can rationalize I don't have to involve any emotions. No magic too, I guess."

The new bandages he rolled out were tight around Cter's arm. "I don't have to be bothered by the mourning of the families of those that I failed to save from their sickness." Really tight. "I only note down the cause of death and then I can close the book." Really, really tight. "I don't have to..." Really, really, really tight! "I don't have to..."

And loose.

"I don't have to grief for anyone."

Loose enough that they unraveled from Cter's elbow.

"I don't have to cry for anyone."

And caught the heavy tears.

"I...don't..."

Cter blinked her head to a bend down, matching Sarbor's sobbing one.

"You didn't feel like you understood how to cry for Dr. Sallus in a human sense? That why you asked about the book?" she guessed with care. When he asked about it, Cter had her suspicions. Had she been free of the fusion she would have known.

She understood the feeling of wanting to say something but not being able to. She had been there before plenty, both with herself, and with others towards her. Even someone with such a bright mind as Sarbor was only human. Even with a forced-upon aura he was only human. Only human, and only able to understand so much. Even something as powerful as the human soul had its limits.

"I've ruined so many pages with dark dots..." said Sarbor with a chuckle that was clearly forced. His words weren't though. Strangely, they sounded genuine. Not emotionally distant as how he had explained. There were relief sprinkled within them, peaking Cter's curiosity. She was tempted to read off Sarbor's aura to know exactly, but she decided against it, reminding herself that he did not want anything to do with his aura. "I dread to explain to Priestess Frioke about how I've soaked such an old and important book from her collection." The levity was also genuine.

"I think she'll be fine with it if you explain why," Cter offered back. She took the bundle of bandage in her hand that Sarbor had dropped and tightened it as best as she could before holding it out for him to continue. "She's one to forgive easily."

Sarbor took the bandage bundle in his hand. "Guess so." It seemed lighter to him. With the back of his sleeve he dried his eyes, lingering for a few seconds on how it darkened the fabric. "If she's the one to remove this aura within me it's a good idea to talk to her about how and what my emotions are so that she doesn't remove the wrong one."

There was something else in how he said it that lowered Cter's brows. "Have you?"

A hark was all she needed as an answer.

Turning her pale once more.