featherweight, will & lux

[fox]

The sun's in a different place in the sky when he wakes up, gold and high in the west, and years of seafaring had taught him how to read indications of time between the clouds. The ships on their docks would be fitted with brass and copper sundials, and he was taught how to adjust the gnomon to local latitude, shadows aligned with a compass – all the things he’d learned since he had been old enough to stand on a hull.

His hand goes to his pocket. Vincent’s compass is a soft weight that reminds him of home, and he grasps the cool metal briefly.

Sitting up, Will touches the length of stitches on his back, feeling the little pink ridges dip and rise from his skin through his shirt. It stings, but he keeps his hand there for a moment, a lump forming in his throat.

Everyone else is gone, but Lux is there, buried in her sketchbook that's propped on her knees.

"Hi," he says. His throat feels dry. The sound is harsh in the silence.

He brushes the hair from his eyes, putting a palm to his forehead, and the dizziness has stopped now. All the surroundings come into focus. And now he can see the smoke of the tavern in the distance, rising high above the trees, twisting and turning towards the clouds. The earth smells like foliage after rain, the sun hazy in the fog.

He scoots up to sit in front of her, and then notices the way Lux is holding her left arm, cradled to her chest. He reaches for her hand carefully. "Can I see your arm?"

For years, he'd watch his mother tend to the wounds of his sisters and cousins, setting fractures and stemming blood before they could go to the infirmary. It's memory buried in muscle and sinew, how she fixed every bone he's ever broken, every stitch he's ever needed. The radius juts out slightly from Lux's arm, swollen, bent a few milimetres off center. A bruise begins in shades of lavender. Will stands up, snaps two sticks of the same length from a tree.

Then, he sits back down, holding it to her arm, wrapping bandages from the medkit in the capsule around the makeshift splint. From his robes, he tears a square, the fabric soft and plush, and folds it into a triangle, slips one end under her arm, and ties it at her shoulder as carefully as he can.

Something sinks inside him, a knot of an ugly feeling that's as big as an organ, bleeding between his breaths. And he knows they stopped because of him. And he knows he is not like them.

He glances up from his hands to Lux, for just a moment, as he knots the fabric together. "Sorry."

It's soft when he says it. And he feels nine again, cheeks burning with the knowledge that he would never be as good as his name.

Will looks away, gaze catching on the sketchbook in the grass. He touches the spine, but doesn't flip it over.

"What's this?"

table by kait

[actions in maint]

[alex 🐺]

Willem had passed out and Lux thanks him for it. Not to his face, obviously. At any rate, skin is easier to stitch when it’s more pliable.

She takes the needle and plunged it in, anchoring the first stitch before she began the second. While most girls in Two were braiding hair, little Lux Bellisario was suturing wounds on dead pigs.

She hadn’t really thought about how morbid that was until the moment that the sunlight shines golden on the needle, on Willem’s hair, on Freyr’s eyes and Charlie’s smile. She wonders if their childhoods looked anything like hers.

At least he’s peaceful when he sleeps, his head on his bag. Lux tells Freyr and Charlie that she’ll watch him while they check out the surrounding areas. Their footsteps fade into the silence. She hears a branch break and the gurgle of a stream not too far off. She’d wander when the boys were back and Willem was awake.

“Hi,” he says, and she glances up quickly, shoving her sketchbook and her charcoal pencil under her thigh.

“Hey, sleeping beauty,” she teases, but he shimmies over to her, grabbing her arm where she had it against her chest.

Weakness was like a hive of wasps, buzzing underneath her skin. It laces through her body, hot and sharp, and tasting of metal. She had known weakness before and her body had borne witness to her failures, but the feelings that surged within her now commanded all of her senses and curled into her core.

She wanted to shed the skin of a cobra encrusted in diamonds, but knew that wasn’t possible. It would never be possible. Love was a testament to that. He had started to feel and that was his downfall. She couldn’t-wouldn’t-feel anything for her allies. For Willem.

“Can I see your arm?” he asks innocently, and rather than waiting for the devil to grant him confirmation, he moves her arm into a splint. She bites back the venom she wants to spit at him and nearly tears her lip bloody with her wrath and vitriol.

He says sorry and she sighs, the weight of their morning hanging on her neck like a halo of regret. “You have nothing to apologize for,” she allows him, before he grabs at her sketchbook. She’s taken back to the night she stumbled into his room.

“Ah, oh,” she reaches for the journal, but it’s with her broken arm and the pain lances through her, hot as molten iron.

“It’s nothing like yours.” It’s death and chaos and destruction. It’s the arena-or rather- the ten square miles that she could see from her vantage point as Willem’s sentinel. She had refused to leave his side.

It was the tavern, the wood and stone building, the overturned chairs and mahogany walls. It was unfinished.