"We've got him. Focus. Try to see how everything connects."

Mirk bit his lip, giving up on staring at the gaping wound in the twitching leg in front of him. Yule was right. The man wasn't going anywhere. Yule and Danu had made every effort to ensure that Mirk had time to think about what he was doing — they'd given their patient laudanum, though they usually didn't waste that on flesh wounds, and Danu was using her Deathly magic on his leg, slowing the flow of blood to the limb by keeping her hands wrapped tight around his thigh.

He felt ungrateful for not taking advantage of the help. But Mirk had quickly learned over the past week that he'd never be the same kind of healer Yule was. Yule had poked around inside so many bodies that he'd memorized where every vein and sinew belonged, understanding after just a glance where things had gone wrong. Mirk was more certain of himself when he did things by instinct, through sensing rather than looking.

Lowering his shields a bit further, Mirk closed his eyes and let himself feel.

Despite how the aching in his mind intensified, Mirk felt a wave of relief wash over him. Everything made sense once he closed his eyes and slid his fingers deeper into the wound. When he stared at the gash with his physical sight, the mass of split flesh made him feel nauseous and uncertain of where to begin. With his eyes closed and his fingers warmed by the man's blood, all the severed connections became obvious. Mirk could feel parts of the man's body straining to be joined back together. It was almost as if he could hear his blood like a voice in the back of his head, someone who’d been happily singing a familiar song before losing track of the verses. All Mirk had to do was give things a little push and the man’s body would gladly restore itself.

Mirk withdrew his mind's eye and reached down into himself, dipping into the warm well of magic there, the spare life energy he could choose to give to others and that could make things grow and mend. Deep at the center of it was the slowly beating core of his own life energy, which Danu had already warned him dozens of times to never touch. Mirk drew off only a bit of the extra healing potential, running it up into his arms and down into his hands. Then he pressed it further out into his patient's body, into the bits of it that were calling to each other, encouraging them to reunite. Yule had told him that there weren't any magic words he needed to say, that there was no power outside himself he needed to invoke in order to heal simple wounds like the one he was working on. Still, the words came to him, like they always did.

Beata Maria, make him whole.

Distantly, Mirk heard Yule sigh. "You didn't need to heal it all the way, Mirk. If you keep doing that, you'll burn yourself out before noon."

Mirk blinked his eyes open, looking down at his patient's leg. The wound was gone. All that was left was a faint white scar, one that wouldn't have even been noticeable, had the limb not been positioned under the bright magelights hung over the table. Mirk shrugged, sheepishly, taking his hands off the man's leg and stepping back from the table. "I'm sorry, Yule. I just got carried away, I suppose."

As Mirk settled his magic, Yule circled around the table to his side while Danu began unstrapping the man from the table. His patient had fallen asleep while Mirk had been distracted. Some combination of the poppy and the influence of Danu's Deathly magic. "Let me take a look before you bring your shields back up," Yule said, reaching a hand out to Mirk's forehead.

Yule's magic was warm against his mind, though it tickled a little, like being brushed all over with feathers. Like the static feel of Genesis's magic, but much less intense. Yule was a rarity among the infirmary healers, Mirk had learned, a healer with a chaotic rather than an ordered orientation, but who had too much empathy to work in the field. Yule’s magic stayed pressed against Mirk’s mind for only a few seconds before Yule withdrew. The older healer shook his head, muttering to himself. "Barely put a dent in your reserves. You'd better keep that to yourself. Otherwise Emir will be sticking you on all the bad ones, new or not."

"Well, if I can help..."

"Help yourself first," Yule said, shooting him a pointed look. "Rule number one."

Danu scoffed. "Don't listen to him. Unless you like having more enemies than friends."

"I'm trying to keep him from burning himself out," Yule protested, though he joined in helping Danu prepare their patient to be taken off to a recovery room by the aides. Yule snatched the man’s ripped and bloodied uniform trousers off the supply cabinet, dropping them on the unconscious man's chest before him and Danu worked together to fold his limp arms over it. "Could probably put him in a chair instead of a bed," Yule muttered to himself, looking the man over. "He's fine. Just asleep."

Danu went to the door to the room, calling out into the hall. "What are the beds like on fourth?"

"Almost all open," someone shouted back.

"Lucky bastard," Yule said, as he glanced at the patch on the man's shoulder. "First. Probably won't end up trying to hog a bed for a week, then. Seventh and Second are the ones you have to look out for."

Two of the burlier aides shuffled into the room, stretcher in hand, and carted the sleeping man off. After doing what he could to help clean up the blood smeared all over the table and floor, Mirk followed his two team members back down the hall to the common room.

It was the steady rhythm of work in the infirmary, a pattern Mirk didn't mind and was quickly growing accustomed to: pick someone from the waiting room and fix them up, then retreat to the common room to have a drink and regroup before taking the next. There were other tasks that needed to be done, but Emir had been keeping them on waiting room patients ever since Mirk had started. To get him ready for when one of the divisions the Twentieth was in charge of healing came back shredded from some nasty battle and they needed all available hands over in emergency, Yule had explained. Yule and Danu had been debating ever since he'd joined them which was more exhausting, being on emergency watch or having to constantly keep chipping away at the crowd out in the waiting room.

"Pick your poison," Yule said, dragging himself into the common room and surveying the stock of liquor in the cabinet against the back wall. "Gin, or whiskey?"

"What do you think?" Danu asked, as she stole a bun from the basket on the room's central table. They had been stale and tasteless ever since Mirk had arrived, but, in the infirmary, there was no such thing as proper breaks for meals. You ate what you could, when you could. Just like you had a drink whenever someone offered.

They were given one dose of pain blockers at the start of the day and were expected to make it last until they left for the night, unless something particularly bad happened. The gap was covered with liquor: it dulled empathy, supposedly, though it never seemed to help Mirk as much as it did the others. Yule theorized that Mirk would need to drink triple what the rest of them did to get the same effects. The older healer had personally witnessed how many bottles it took to put K'aekniv on the floor. Yule had assumed it was due to the half-angel's size, but was beginning to suspect it had more to do with angelic blood.

Mirk couldn't be sure. He'd never seen his father drink.

Yule passed out glasses of whiskey to all of them -- not much, but enough -- sitting down at the table while Danu collapsed onto a couch. Mirk decided to join her, after taking a bun of his own. The moment he sat down, the fatigue hit him.

When he was up and moving around, it was easy to put it out of mind. But once he sat down and let his body relax, it nearly overwhelmed him. It made Mirk feel more useless than he already did. If he'd come to the K'maneda straight away after the abbey instead of trailing after his mother for four years, idling about in the parlors of her friends and relatives, attending plays and dances, his body and mind might have held up better. Father Jean and his father had done their best to try to keep him working, but both of them seemed to know from the outset that fighting and leading wasn't for him. He was meant for softer, more delicate things.

"Are you all right?" Danu asked, breaking into Mirk’s thoughts. She reached out to him, putting a hand on his wrist -- her magic felt a bit chilly, but her feelings were still warm, her sympathy and concern a welcome distraction from the ever-present pain lurking beyond his shields, constantly pressing in on him, like he was always being dragged at by entreating limbs.

Mirk nodded, mustering up a smile for both her and Yule. "I'll be fine. Just a little tired. Methinks after a few more weeks it'll be better."

"I've been here almost twenty years and it hasn't gotten better." Yule sighed, spinning his glass restlessly on the table. "But, you're right, it does get easier." He quit fidgeting and threw back his drink. Then he forced himself up onto his feet and went to the door, looking both ways up and down the hall. "Hey!" he yelled at someone. "Is anyone else dying out in receiving?"

There was a laugh. "No one's bleeding bad enough to need the mop."

Yule leaned out into the hall further. "Don't see Emir either. Good. We've earned a break. Let's go up to fourth and do some restocking. If they can't find you, they can't make you do anything."

Though it felt like it took more effort than it rightly should have, Mirk shoved himself up off the couch. He kept picking at his bun as they walked together down hall after hall and through barrier after barrier, moving fast so that it looked like they were on their way to something important. Once they were past the long-term patients on third, Mirk started to feel less tired. The shields between third and the rest of the infirmary were some of the strongest on the building. They made both the quiet suffering of the long-terms and the acute pain of those down in the waiting room more distant, less pressing. Easier to forget.

The fourth floor supply closet was at the rear of the building, near the barrier between that floor and the next. Yule paused in front of its door to fish his key ring out of the pocket in the sleeve of his robes. All the supply rooms were kept locked up tight -- the mundane supplies inside, the bandages and the cloths and the spare clothes weren't worth stealing, but the potions and their components were expensive. And even if someone wasn't looking to make a bit of gold, half the potions could be used in other ways. Especially the ones infused with laudanum.

Yule undid the two physical locks on the door quickly with one hand while making the necessary arcane gestures with his other to disengage the magical ones. The supply rooms were kept dark and cold to keep the potions inside from reacting and going bad. Yule ducked inside, bumping the magelights on with his elbow as he went. Then he froze.

"Oh, hell."

"What...do you want?"

Genesis was standing before the rack full of wound treatment supplies at the back of the room, reorganizing its jars and packets like it was perfectly normal for him to be inside a dark, locked room in the depths of the infirmary. Yule stormed into the supply closet, shooing Genesis away from the shelves. It took the threat of the older healer laying hands on him to get the commander to stop fiddling with their supplies. Or, rather, limp away -- the leg that Genesis had been able to walk normally on a week ago had gotten significantly worse. It was easy to tell where he'd already been in the supply closet by the bloody footprints he’d left on the floor.

Although Mirk wasn't happy Genesis's injury was worse, he was still relieved. He hadn't seen much of Genesis ever since he'd started at the infirmary. Mirk thought that maybe Genesis had decided that he needn't bother with him any more, not with the other healers there to look after him. He'd been wrong. Genesis hadn't been avoiding him; he'd been avoiding having to deal with the other healers poking and prodding at him.

"Can't you just sit in the waiting room with the rest of the normal patients?" Yule asked, taking a long look at Genesis's leg. "You've been picking at that."

"It was not...set evenly," Genesis flatly replied. It was easy to get the impression that Genesis didn't like anyone. Which, Mirk was willing to admit, was partially true. But from the depth of his frown and the extra distance he was keeping between himself and Yule, Mirk could tell Genesis especially disliked him. "I required supplies to repair your shoddy workmanship."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"You probably knocked it out of line by walking on it."

"As I said. Shoddy...workmanship."

"Fine!" Yule hissed, throwing his hands up in frustration and storming back the way he'd come, sidestepping Danu and Mirk without looking at them and heading back into the hall. "But you're breaking it yourself this time."

Even though the pain didn't radiate off Genesis like it did with other patients, Mirk could tell that the commander was suffering. The sparks of pain that escaped his chaotic aura were steadier than when he'd seen him last. Sharper. Mirk went to Genesis's side, looking down at his leg. The whole length of his trousers were soaked in blood on his right side below the knee. "Messire, you should have said something..."

Genesis sighed. "It is of little importance." He began to limp off toward the door, still determinedly trying to walk on his injured leg as if nothing was wrong with it, though he couldn't keep himself from wincing with every step. Mirk edged in front of him, blocking his way and shaking his head.

"No, you'll make it worse." Mirk scanned the shelves and bins that filled the room. "Danu, we should give him...euh...walking sticks..."

She'd beaten him to it, already hunched over the long bin by the door where they were kept. "Crutches. Looks like someone stole the last of them."

"Tiens," Mirk said, circling back to Genesis's side. "Use me, then. As much as you need."

Danu burst out laughing. Genesis's expression went puzzled, then cross.

"What is it?" Mirk asked.

"Some...madness, doubtlessly," Genesis grumbled.

Mirk decided it'd be best to switch back into French. He'd have no chance of convincing Genesis to accept healing if he had to struggle against both English and Genesis when he was in a mood. That aside, he had a feeling that the commander would be more accepting of concern if Danu couldn't understand what he was saying to him."If you lean on me, you'll get there faster. And you'll keep it from bleeding more. Though, it looks like you've ruined those trousers anyway. Why didn't you come in earlier? You know we wouldn't keep you waiting too long. It isn't like you to waste good clothes."

Genesis still refused to budge. "I find the waste to be less...tiresome than the healers."

"Come now, messire, there's no sense in being stubborn. Being prideful never got anyone very far. How can you help everyone else do their work when you're like this? You're making it harder on me too. I've had my head full of pain all morning. I'll have to ask for an extra set of blockers if this keeps up."

This, at least, got Genesis to uncross his arms. "I see they are well on their way to making you… dependent on the things."

"I wouldn't need so many if more patients came in before things got this bad."

Grudgingly, the commander put a hand on his shoulder, though he made it a point to lean on Mirk as little as possible as he hobbled toward the door. "Meddling...miserable..."

It was time to resort to final measures. From what he knew of Yule, the older healer wasn't fond of waiting. "Genesis, please...let me help you. You've done so much for me. Let me return the favor a little."

More pressure on his shoulder. Mirk couldn't tell if Genesis was still keeping too much weight on his injured leg, or if he simply weighed so little that there wasn't much extra weight for him to shift. Mirk put a supportive arm around Genesis's waist, keeping his pace slow so that the commander was forced not to rush. Mirk couldn't have been sure, since Genesis always kept every possible inch of himself wrapped up in countless layers of clothing, including a drab, shapeless, and unflattering overcoat that he wore even during the summer, but it did feel like he'd grown thinner. Somehow. Mirk tried to ignore it, just like Genesis was doubtlessly trying to ignore Danu trailing behind them, still chuckling to herself under her breath.

Mirk hoped that Yule would be in the nearest examination room -- and he was, continually cursing to himself as he mixed something in one of the biggest potion bowls they had, barehanded. "Look, you ungrateful bastard, I'll even use your stupid magic water this time. Can you try not to be a pain in the ass?"

"Magic water?" Mirk asked, drawing over to Yule's side once he guided Genesis to the exam table. It looked like the bowl had nothing in it but plain water, still steaming from being drawn from the magicked taps a few rooms down that heated it. But the water had an unpleasant smell to it, one Mirk didn't recognize.

"It is not...magic water," Genesis muttered to himself, as he shifted back from the edge of the table. At least Genesis was tall enough that it wasn't much of a struggle, broken leg or not.

"Complete hocus pocus," Yule replied, shooting a glare over his shoulder at Genesis before returning to his work.

"What is it, then?" Mirk asked Yule.

"You see, Mirk, there is magic, as in the useful things that mages can do, and then there is magic, like alchemy and believing you have to put your hands in poisoned water before you work on a wound. Apparently we're all covered in tiny invisible insects. According to some people."

"Insects are not involved," Genesis said, crossing his arms once more, settling in for a protracted debate on the matter. "It is a serviceable...analogy, but incorrect nevertheless."

Yule rolled his eyes. "Fine, you explain it to him then."

"Disease, as all...reasonable persons are aware, is spread by touch. Motes of it settle on all surfaces as the sick pass by or touch them. Thus, one must properly...clean oneself before touching an open wound, unless they wish for the disease to spread."

"So, invisible insects," Yule said, swirling his hands about in the water, wincing. "Ugh, this stings!"

"That is how one is certain of its...effectiveness."

"It can't be effective if there isn't anything there!" Yule snapped. He turned to face the commander, absently drying his hands off on the front of his robes. "Do I tell you how to kill people? Let us do our job."

As Yule approached, Genesis cringed away from him. "Wash them again."

"What?"

"You...touched your robes. Your robes are unclean. Wash them again."

Yule stomped back to the bowl, pointedly splashing his hands about in the water. Mirk was beginning to see why the other healers groaned and shook their heads whenever Genesis was mentioned. Mirk had no idea that the commander's strange rituals involving cleanliness were so involved.

Before Yule could return to the table, Genesis gestured to Danu. "I would prefer if you would...cut off the necessary fabric. Wash the scissors first. They are...doubtlessly filthy."

"We clean them twice a day!" Yule spat, now standing beside the table. But at a distance of a few paces, his hands held out awkwardly away from himself and at the level of his waist.

"As I said."

Yule glanced back over his shoulder at Mirk, while Danu sighed and went about scrubbing the scissors she took out of the room's supply cabinet in the bowl of water. "Do you see now? He's horrible!"

Mirk shrugged, at a loss for how to explain. "Everyone has...euh, ideas? Like religion."

"Religion is...mostly nonsense," Genesis said, shaking his head. "This is fact."

"You're right about half of it," Yule grumbled, bending down to examine Genesis's broken leg. Danu returned to Genesis's side and began cutting away his trousers, first detaching them at the knee, then cutting a slit in the side of the leg so that the bloodied fabric could be drawn away. Once it was gone, the wound revealed underneath was terrible, a horrible cut that stretched from Genesis’s knee to his ankle, the flesh around it mottled purple and red, blood seeping from it in a steady stream. And his leg looked wrong, hanging at an angle that was just a hair off. It was a wonder Genesis was able to keep upright, not to even think of walking on it. "It gets worse than invisible insects," Yule said as he straightened back up. "Wait and see."

Genesis spoke up again. "It will not stay shut. I have...sewn it closed seven times."

Yule caught himself just before he could plant his hands on his hips, scowling at the wound. "Either your magic is eating the stitches, or it's from walking on it. Probably both. But, you're right, the bone is healing itself crooked. Do us all a favor and force it straight. If I have to do it myself, there's no way I'm going to get through long enough to heal anything."

As Genesis prodded at his leg, contemplating the best way to straighten it, Yule backed away from the table until he was pressed against the wall of the room opposite the exam table. Danu took Mirk's arm and guided him over to join Yule.

"If you stand too close, his magic will think you've done it," Danu explained. "Sometimes if it's really nasty, you have to go out into the hall until after he's done what he can on his own."

Mirk had never heard of such a thing, and he'd treated patients of every element and orientation since coming to the infirmary. "What do you mean, his magic will think?"

"We're not sure whether it actually thinks or not, but it doesn't do what he tells it to. There's a pattern to it, though. Like it thinks."

"Thinks like a rabid dog," Yule commented with a derisive snort.

The wet-sounding snap took Mirk by surprise -- he'd been too distracted by his fellow healers to keep an eye on what Genesis was doing. Though Mirk had braced himself for pain, none ever came. Genesis didn't so much as flinch as he continued to fiddle with his leg, nudging it imperceptibly from side to side.

"That should have hurt," Mirk said. “Even coming from you.”

"If one limits motion and...focuses the mind, pain can be dismissed. Temporarily. It is not an adequate replacement for full repair. But one must operate within the…constraints they find themselves in." True enough, as Genesis spoke, Mirk felt sparks of pain slip through his chaos. Once the commander fell silent, the pain faded again.

"Basically, he's a freak of nature," Yule said.

"But a useful freak of nature," Danu added. "And, more importantly, our freak of nature. Morty always tells me that they'd be lost without him."

"Mordecai will sing the eternal praises of anyone who throws him a few spare coppers. Same as the rest of them," Yule said.

Though Genesis didn't comment on this exchange, his expression went blank as he settled back on the table, laying his hands flat on its surface at his sides. As if he wanted them all to see, clearly and deliberately, that he wasn't making any arcane gestures with them. Sucking in a deep breath, Yule approached the table. Mirk moved to follow, but Danu shook her head, pressing a restraining arm across his chest.

Mirk soon saw why. Before Yule could even touch Genesis's leg, a coil of shadow whipped out from underneath the table, lightning fast, and smacked him away. Yule cursed, but managed not to rub at the spot on his side where it'd hit him. Visibly bracing himself, Yule tried to reach for Genesis's leg again. That time, Yule managed to get one hand on the wound before the shadows pried him off and shoved him away.

So, Yule tried again.

And again.

"Damn it, can't you do anything?" Yule hissed. That time the shadows had grabbed him about the ankles and had tried to pull his legs out from under him. Yule had managed to escape, but had gone reeling into the supply cabinet. Mirk noticed that, despite all his complaining about Genesis's poisoned water and disease motes, Yule made it a point to simply take the blow rather than throwing out a hand to steady himself.

Danu sighed, pushing up the sleeves of her robes. "I'll distract it. If Emir comes to bother us after this, you're telling him we've earned a light afternoon," she said to Genesis, who nodded, once.

Before Mirk could ask Danu what her plan was, she'd shoved off against the wall and taken up a defensive stance over near the room's window. With a shudder, she changed -- all the life drained from her, all the color and emotion, her eyes shifting from green to black as the faint feeling of her mental presence beyond Mirk's shields vanished. In its place was a horrible feeling of coldness, of void, like the sinking feeling that came in the midst of falling from a great height, waiting helplessly for the pain of impact. The shadows were drawn to the feeling, snaking out from under the table and coiling around Danu until she was completely obscured by them. Every so often they tried to jerk her in the direction of the window, but they never got very far.

"Come here, quick," Yule said, knocking Mirk out of his confused daze. After splashing his hands in the bowl of water for a few seconds, Mirk joined Yule kneeling on the floor beside Genesis's leg. "Don't even bother trying to heal anything. Just try feeling your way through this mess."

Mirk banished his shielding and closed his eyes. He put one hand over the wound, reaching out with his mind as if to begin healing, searching for misalignment and drawing life energy from the warm pool within himself to help pull the broken parts of Genesis’s body back together.

He instantly felt what Yule meant by Genesis's body being a mess. Whereas he'd found it easy to spot the misalignments in his other patients' bodies, both chaotic and ordered, it was impossible to make sense of Genesis's. Everything felt out of place, disjointed, strange and twisted. Even worse, just when Mirk thought he was beginning to make sense of some of it, beginning to feel how the injury differed from the general disorder, the whole of it shifted, the patterns in Genesis's body becoming impossibly jumbled again. It made Mirk feel disoriented, like he was being spun around in circles.

"How...euh..." It was difficult for Mirk to think of any of the right words to say while keeping a grip on Genesis's shifting magic.

"No idea. Nearly twenty years I've been trying to heal him, and I don't have a clue how any of it works," Yule said.

"So, how can you..."

Yule laughed, his fatigue coming through to Mirk strong now that both their shields were gone. "You blast at the first part that makes sense as soon as you see it and hope for the best."

"It generally fails," Genesis said, flatly.

"Not my fault if it doesn't work now," Yule said, not diverting his attention away from the wound. "You've cursed it."

"Superstition has nothing to do with it. It is simply...how I am." Genesis didn’t seem bothered by either his strangeness or the difficulty it posed in healing him. Mostly, he just seemed annoyed by them touching his leg all over.

Mirk couldn’t argue against that. Not for the first time, he wondered what Genesis was, exactly. The commander never spoke of his parents, nor did he ever explain much of what his magic could do or how it worked. And when he did, the explanations were usually so complex and theoretical that Mirk lost track of them a few minutes into his lecture. Yule made an attempt at healing the wound then, but he didn't get far. Mirk thought that the strange, not-pattern of Genesis's body seemed a little more put-together, but he couldn't be certain. And there was no visible change to the depth or thickness of the wound.

Mirk sighed. It didn't seem right that a person could be made in such a way that healing did nothing to them. That their body could constantly be undercutting them, making things worse instead of better. How did anyone survive for long living in such a state? There had to be some explanation, some kind of right, one that was different from everyone else's body, but suited to Genesis's. Mirk felt that he owed the commander some small relief. Not only because of what Genesis had done for him, but because every person deserved better than walking around for weeks on a broken leg simply because no one had the time or patience to understand them.

Then again, considering the way Mirk could feel the shadows stirring restlessly about his legs, as if contemplating whether he deserved to be thrown out the window too, he also understood why no one else had tried it.