12 – 2
Leda won't let us help her. She moves slowly, each limping step pulling a hiss from the snarl of her bared teeth. She holds tight to both her side and stomach, curled over them protectively as she goes ever-more pale. Sweat is breaking out across her bruised, sallow skin. She won't let us help her; not Clarke, whose magi prowess would pull the sharpest of her wounds' teeth; not Juliana, whose arms and shoulders could carry her weight all of the way to her bed; and not me who is sister to her, who came for her when her own mother would or could not.
The quarter-mile path from the jail to its town seems to be growing longer, rolling away from us into that thick and endless fog. Why won't she let us help her? She is adding misery to her misery, and for what? Wariness? Pride? If the former, I should think we've proven worthy of some measure of trust. If the latter, then she is being a fool. Even I am not so much of one, and I'm not yet grown. What excuse does she have? The fog begins to brighten, gilding itself in the glow of the burning streetlamps.
Halfway there, or near to it. Leda's hissing breaths have grown to wheezing rasps, her sweat dripping from her face like tears. The bruises on her skin stand out all the more. Every inch of her must be in agony. Whatever reason has she for refusing us, I can bear the sight of this no longer. I step in front of her. Turn her face her, force her to stop. She looks at me with dark, distant eyes. I see the question in them, the one she hasn't the air to ask.
“Enough,” I say quietly to her, “Enough of...of this. Let us help you. Clarke is a skilled healer; she's saved my life many times.” I see Clarke nod from the corner of my eye, fingers drifting to throat's hollow, where her piece of ice resides. Leda begins to shake her head, to refuse, and so I keep on. “Juliana – you know she is strong. You've seen it. She can carry you,” I glance past Leda, up to a look of great concern on a thunderhead brow. “Can't she?”
“Easily,” Juliana answers, her rich voice barely dulled by the press of fog. She comes to stand beside me, her hand finding a gentle place on my shoulder. To Leda, as gently as that touch, she says, “There's no shame in it. We won't think less of you. None of us will.”
Leda shakes her head. Lifts trembling fingers to brush matted hair from her brow. Her breathing slows, gentles, until she can say, “I know,” in a voice scraped hoarse from harsh gasps of cold night air. “I do, it's – it's just that...” She searches for the right words. Finds, “I have to. I – need – to.”
Clarke moves to ask, but I'm faster. Frustration, and the now-familiar torment of having to watch someone in pain, makes me so. “Why?!”
Leda reaches out to me. Curls her fingers 'round the back of my neck, her thumb on my cheek. Her skin is clammy, palm slick with chilled sweat. Her eyes meet mine. There's pain in them, yes, but also determination and no small amount of spite. “They didn't win, little sister,” she says to me, “I did.”
Juliana touches her elbow. Smiles at her, small and proud. Understands, as she always seems to. “They know,” she promises, “They saw you.”
“Yes,” Leda agrees, crooking her lips into a grin, “They did.” Her grin becomes a grimace. Her knee buckles and she dips, reeling to the side. Juliana and I catch her between us, our hold the only keeping her from tasting dirt. “I may have overdone it,” she admits, rueful. She says to Clarke, “I think I'd like that healing now, daughter of Valdenwood.”
Clarke nods, eyes narrowing into her thoughtful furrow. She tells us, “Help her sit,” and kneels at Leda's feet after we lower her to the ground with gentle care. Blue eyes flicker over cut and bruise, a swelling eye and the ever-present hand pressed to a side.
“Shall I count the ways?” Leda asks, sly and teasing and, perhaps, a touch flirtatious. I know jealousy for what it is and have never liked its sour touch. I did not expect to feel it in such a place as this, for such a reason as that.
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For her part, Clarke seems only to notice the tease. She rolls her beautiful eyes and shakes her head. “Save your breath,” she says, and touches her fingertips to her gleaming gem of ice. Its witch-light blooms, pale and blue, and curls in wispy streams around her hand. “You should feel a cool touch,” she warns Leda, “If it's anything else, you must tell me at once. Do you understand?” At the nod, she begins. Her power flows into Leda's skin, whose eyes flutter closed and head rolls back.
Juliana's hand on my shoulder, a beckoning pull in her touch. She guides me up and a few steps away, looks down at me with a drop to her thunderhead brow and an out-of-place look of worry in her narrowed gaze. “Is everything well?” I ask, lowering my voice to do it.
“For now,” she answers, just as quietly, “but –” Her eyes flick into the fog behind me. She ceases to be this Juliana and becomes the other: the one who wears violence with the same ease I do a cloak; the one whose hands break bone and spill blood; the one whose size and strength creates fear instead of safety. Her fingers dig painfully into my shoulder as she pushes me behind her and calls out into the fog, “Who goes there?!”
- - -
I strain to listen, blinded as I am by the breadth of Juliana's back. The clink of metal comes first. It's a dull shuffle of chain-link muffled by fog. Then, the creak of shifting leathers. Look to the others and see the one helping the other to her feet. Clarke pushed herself too far, her eyes now sunken and shadowed, her legs barely able to hold her upright. She leans heavily on Leda, who stands tall and hale once more. Anger burns in her dark eyes. Fear, in the stiffness of her back. “What is it?” she hisses. Her free hand curls into a fist. “What do you see?”
“Quiet!” Juliana snaps over her shoulder. She gives me a push without looking. “Stay with them,” she orders, and once again steps forward. The sounds grow louder, closer, and we all stare uselessly into the fog's gilded glow. Louder still, and nothing to see. Tension winds itself around and up my spine, pushing the bunch of my shoulders up to my ears. Again, Juliana's voice rings out. “Identify yourselves!”
The sounds stop. From the shroud ahead comes a man's voice, muffled and bewildered. “Captain?! Is that you?!”
Juliana cocks her helmed head as a second voice answers the first. This one is also a man, no less muffled but much less confused, “Who else you know can holler like that, dimwit?! 'Course it's her!” The first voice makes a sound of protest and offense. He's ignored. The second raises theirs to call, “It's us, Captain! Hull an' Turner! Flint's here, too!”
In utter bemusement, Juliana calls back, “What are you doing – here –?!”
A figure pulls free of the fog: a tall and slender man, handsome in the smile on his face and the glint of his green eyes. His armor is clean of scuff and scar, polished to a shine that reflects the narrow beam cast uselessly by the hooded lantern he holds. He grasps Juliana's forearm in some knightly greeting I've never seen before, then says, “Could ask you the same, Captain. Last we heard; you were up at the Fort.”
Juliana answers simply, “I was. Now I'm here.” She looks behind him. “Where's your better halves?”
“That's...” He twists at the waist to look back, “a good question. Hey! What are you doing?!”
“Keep your hair on, Hull!” a third voice calls back. “I dropped me lantern!” There follows the crunch and tinkle of breaking glass. “Found it!”
Hull's smile turns rueful and wry. “What'd I do to deserve them, ma'am?” he laments with a shake of his head. “I train hard, follow orders...it's not fair.”
“You sooted my armor,” she answers drily, “ – and – smeared it with grease. I had to run twelve miles in full kit because of you.”
“That was a long time ago,” he defends himself. This has the sound of a talk well-tread. A second man, then a third, emerge from the fog. One of them is of a height with me, his scalp bare and his beard thick. He carries a hooded lantern's broken frame in his hands and a sheepish look. The other is small and thin, his frame wiry and protected by leathers. His eyes are gray and see us all.
“Captain,” greets the bearded one.
“Turner,” Juliana nods to him, then turns to the small one, “Flint. It's good you're all here. We have a situation developing.” Her voice is flat, like the plain before a storm. They all three hear and straighten.
“Ma'am?” Flint asks. His voice is hoarse and gruff.
She nods, “The Guard here is compromised. Abductions and abuses of power at the least. Their Captain, Vance, is back at the jail,” she points a thumb over her shoulder, “Him and five others.”
“Your orders?” asks Hull.
“I want Turner on guard duty. You're at the jail, be ready. Flint, hit the streets. Find the off-duty Guardsmen, bring them in.”
Flint nods. “If they resist?”
Juliana shrugs, “Ask nicely. Hull, you're at the mayor's. Someone let this happen, I mean to find out who and why. I need to get this girl back to her family, then I'll meet you there. Questions?” When her men say nothing, she continues, “Good. Get to it. Come on girls.”
As we pass, I swear that something flashes in Hull's eyes. There and gone in a blink, too quick to name, but lingering enough that I know to dislike it.