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Feb. 24th, 2019 01:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dantealighierimagictavern on tumblr said:
“If you stay still, I promise that this won’t hurt a bit.” As gentle as Azu’s hands on her back are, Sasha knows a lie when she hears one. Was that proper Aphrodite protocol, to lie to the patient, or did Azu miss that day of school in addition to the one on ethics? And immediately, Sasha feels bad for the snippiness of the thought. It isn’t Azu’s fault, she’s just trying to help—
It does not, in fact, not hurt a bit. It hurts quite a lot. Sasha grits her teeth and squeezes the hilt of the dagger she’d been spinning below the exam table, hard enough that the wrapped ridges of its grip dig into her bandaged hand. The antiseptic is cool and stinging on her skin, like Channel saltwater in her innumerable scratches and scrapes. Cost of doing business. The memory takes her back, briefly, to that stupid, tiny little boat, to the dizzy exhilaration of having survived the storm, to the weight of Hamid’s small frame leaning on her and Zolf as they made their way to shore— strange, how much things had changed, between then and now. She isn’t used to that. As volatile as Other London is there’s a sense of continuity to it— maybe it’s the quality of the light, the uniformity of the turning hours and the fact that there is Barrett, only ever Barrett Rackett at the top, and no matter how things below him roil and shift there is a terrible guarantee of constancy for him and for his kin—
Azu’s dabbed away the remnants of antiseptic and is now smearing some kind of ointment on the still-relatively-falcon-shaped wound on her back. (Another painful twinge, the memory of times gone away— she never thought she’d miss Bertie, of all people, he was her vague hate of Upper London personified, but somehow she did, she missed his booming voice and his glaring armor and his idiotic godsdamn greatsword. But maybe that’s just nostalgia.) “This is to promote healing,” she tells Sasha serenely, and Sasha has to fight back a distinctly humorless laugh.
“You might as well not bother, mate. They’ll just open up again tomorrow night.”
Azu stops, and though Sasha can’t see her she can tell she’s biting her lower lip and frowning in that way she has, with a kind of benevolent concern you only really get with her type. Hamid has a similar expression— they remind her of each other, the two of them. Too soft, too kind for their own good. She fingers the hilt of her dagger, its cold and constant steel.
“Is there anything you know of that might…help? In the short term?”
“Not really,” Sasha says sharply, and immediately feels bad. That came out more brusquely than she’d intended and Azu is— is sensitive, to things like that. Strange characteristic for a paladin, but she is Aphrodite. Their lot seem to be a bit touchier than, say, Artemis. Or Poseidon. Sasha swallows. “I mean— it’s fine. Just bandage me up and I’ll be good to go.”
Normally Sasha isn’t terribly good at divining people’s feelings (none of it makes sense to her, raised with the straightforward black-and-whites of the Barrett clan) but Azu is…different. She wears her heart on her sleeve— or on her shoulder, because that’s where you see the design on her armor. You could see her feelings from space, and not just because she’s a head taller than almost everybody else. Larger than life— a bit like Bertie, but also nothing like him. Sasha isn’t good at analogies, and Azu still seems hurt.
Her fingers are tentative with the gauze and bandages, a far cry from the gentle sureness of a few moments ago. Like she’s defusing a bomb, but without the practiced expertise with which Sasha would go about it— like she’s not quite sure which wire to cut, fiddly bit of metal to remove, so as to make sure that it doesn’t blow up in her face. It takes her a while, but when she’s done Sasha sits up, gingerly, and faces her. “Thank you.”
Azu’s face is absent its usual cheer. She looks at Sasha with worry in her eyes, and something else— something like disappointment. “I’m sorry I could not do more.”
Sasha isn’t sure what to say to this, so she gestures for Azu to hand her her clothes, and goes about the complicated business of dressing. (It’s difficult, making a place for fourteen daggers, some of which need to be invisible to hand and eye.) As she’s buttoning her vest, Azu reaches out and, with the suddenness of unsurety, grabs her wrist.
Sasha stops. Azu’s hand is twice the size of her own; she could snap Sasha’s wrist with barely a motion. But she’s gentle, more than she needs to be. Sasha meets her eyes, and—
“We’re going to fix this,” says Azu, and for half a wild moment Sasha thinks that by this she means everything— Barrett, Hamid and Grizzop, Zolf, London and Paris and Prague, the bank and all the other aftermaths of Mister Ceiling, Eiffel’s Folly, Saleh, even Bertie. In that fraction of a second all this seems possible, because Sasha is a fool who has never really ground down the small spark of hope she’s harbored in her chest since that alley in Upper London— that these people, these odd and ridiculous and wonderful people, might really save the world. In her rational life Sasha is a pragmatist and she knows that worlds are not saved, ever, and if they are it is not by kindness and good will, it is by cruelty and compromise and a brutal, unconscionable politics. Azu, sweet and hopeful and ambitiously good Azu, is going to get hurt, just like Sasha— but for a moment it seems that that sweetness and hopefulness and ambitious, all-encompassing goodness might be something of more value than Sasha has ever considered.
But only for a moment.
Azu’s hand is still gentle on hers and when she pulls Sasha into a hug Sasha lets herself relax, uncharacteristically, the cold light of the exam room blotted out by a warm and comforting darkness. “We’re going to fix this,” Azu repeats, and Sasha feels more than hears it, with her cheek pressed against the rumble of Azu’s voice in her chest. How long has it been, since she was this close to another person?
“I believe you,” Sasha says, and she almost means it.
sasha/azu with azu helping sasha with her wounds?
Sasha Rackett has never really had a problem with bedside manner. The bedside manner of her caregiver, that is— heaven (Olympus?) knows she’s had a lot of them. The way she sees it they’re just there to patch her up and send her on off, maybe give her something for the pain on the way out the door. Even that last part is optional; she’s been banged up enough that what would bring an ordinary person to tears is to her a minor-to-moderate inconvenience. She can manage. She’s spent her whole life managing. And as far as she’s concerned, the less whoever’s making sure everything inside her is where it’s supposed to be opens their mouth, the better. She and Zolf had got on well, because he had no truck with the kind of nonsense they taught you to tell the patient in…wherever it was that clerics went to school. He’d let her know it like it was. She respected that.
It does not, in fact, not hurt a bit. It hurts quite a lot. Sasha grits her teeth and squeezes the hilt of the dagger she’d been spinning below the exam table, hard enough that the wrapped ridges of its grip dig into her bandaged hand. The antiseptic is cool and stinging on her skin, like Channel saltwater in her innumerable scratches and scrapes. Cost of doing business. The memory takes her back, briefly, to that stupid, tiny little boat, to the dizzy exhilaration of having survived the storm, to the weight of Hamid’s small frame leaning on her and Zolf as they made their way to shore— strange, how much things had changed, between then and now. She isn’t used to that. As volatile as Other London is there’s a sense of continuity to it— maybe it’s the quality of the light, the uniformity of the turning hours and the fact that there is Barrett, only ever Barrett Rackett at the top, and no matter how things below him roil and shift there is a terrible guarantee of constancy for him and for his kin—
Azu’s dabbed away the remnants of antiseptic and is now smearing some kind of ointment on the still-relatively-falcon-shaped wound on her back. (Another painful twinge, the memory of times gone away— she never thought she’d miss Bertie, of all people, he was her vague hate of Upper London personified, but somehow she did, she missed his booming voice and his glaring armor and his idiotic godsdamn greatsword. But maybe that’s just nostalgia.) “This is to promote healing,” she tells Sasha serenely, and Sasha has to fight back a distinctly humorless laugh.
“You might as well not bother, mate. They’ll just open up again tomorrow night.”
Azu stops, and though Sasha can’t see her she can tell she’s biting her lower lip and frowning in that way she has, with a kind of benevolent concern you only really get with her type. Hamid has a similar expression— they remind her of each other, the two of them. Too soft, too kind for their own good. She fingers the hilt of her dagger, its cold and constant steel.
“Is there anything you know of that might…help? In the short term?”
“Not really,” Sasha says sharply, and immediately feels bad. That came out more brusquely than she’d intended and Azu is— is sensitive, to things like that. Strange characteristic for a paladin, but she is Aphrodite. Their lot seem to be a bit touchier than, say, Artemis. Or Poseidon. Sasha swallows. “I mean— it’s fine. Just bandage me up and I’ll be good to go.”
Normally Sasha isn’t terribly good at divining people’s feelings (none of it makes sense to her, raised with the straightforward black-and-whites of the Barrett clan) but Azu is…different. She wears her heart on her sleeve— or on her shoulder, because that’s where you see the design on her armor. You could see her feelings from space, and not just because she’s a head taller than almost everybody else. Larger than life— a bit like Bertie, but also nothing like him. Sasha isn’t good at analogies, and Azu still seems hurt.
Her fingers are tentative with the gauze and bandages, a far cry from the gentle sureness of a few moments ago. Like she’s defusing a bomb, but without the practiced expertise with which Sasha would go about it— like she’s not quite sure which wire to cut, fiddly bit of metal to remove, so as to make sure that it doesn’t blow up in her face. It takes her a while, but when she’s done Sasha sits up, gingerly, and faces her. “Thank you.”
Azu’s face is absent its usual cheer. She looks at Sasha with worry in her eyes, and something else— something like disappointment. “I’m sorry I could not do more.”
Sasha isn’t sure what to say to this, so she gestures for Azu to hand her her clothes, and goes about the complicated business of dressing. (It’s difficult, making a place for fourteen daggers, some of which need to be invisible to hand and eye.) As she’s buttoning her vest, Azu reaches out and, with the suddenness of unsurety, grabs her wrist.
Sasha stops. Azu’s hand is twice the size of her own; she could snap Sasha’s wrist with barely a motion. But she’s gentle, more than she needs to be. Sasha meets her eyes, and—
“We’re going to fix this,” says Azu, and for half a wild moment Sasha thinks that by this she means everything— Barrett, Hamid and Grizzop, Zolf, London and Paris and Prague, the bank and all the other aftermaths of Mister Ceiling, Eiffel’s Folly, Saleh, even Bertie. In that fraction of a second all this seems possible, because Sasha is a fool who has never really ground down the small spark of hope she’s harbored in her chest since that alley in Upper London— that these people, these odd and ridiculous and wonderful people, might really save the world. In her rational life Sasha is a pragmatist and she knows that worlds are not saved, ever, and if they are it is not by kindness and good will, it is by cruelty and compromise and a brutal, unconscionable politics. Azu, sweet and hopeful and ambitiously good Azu, is going to get hurt, just like Sasha— but for a moment it seems that that sweetness and hopefulness and ambitious, all-encompassing goodness might be something of more value than Sasha has ever considered.
But only for a moment.
Azu’s hand is still gentle on hers and when she pulls Sasha into a hug Sasha lets herself relax, uncharacteristically, the cold light of the exam room blotted out by a warm and comforting darkness. “We’re going to fix this,” Azu repeats, and Sasha feels more than hears it, with her cheek pressed against the rumble of Azu’s voice in her chest. How long has it been, since she was this close to another person?
“I believe you,” Sasha says, and she almost means it.
