Work Text:
Risen woke up in pain, she blearily blinked at the ceiling to evaluate how much it hurt. It wasn't odd. Since what she'd taken to calling the command block incident in her head she was always somewhat in pain. On the best days it would be just a slight burn, on the worst ones just trying to turn over in bed would bring her to tears. K9 never mentioned it, he just silently handed her a regen potion each time and ran a hand through her hair. This time the pain was roughly in the middle of that scale, not strong enough to make her afraid of moving, but not weak enough that she was able to go back to sleep.
The woman threw the covers off of herself and carefully shuffled off the bed, looking over for a hint of movement from K9 with her remaining eye. He seemed to be still asleep, that was good. The bed was more than big enough for both of them and sharing a bed was better than one of them having to sleep on one of the couches, though K9 would probably insist that she take the bed. Well, it wasn't like this was the first time they shared a bed. Risen got off the bed, leaned on the wall and slowly made her way down the stairs. Spiral staircases were pretty, but going up and down them was a dizzying experience these days. She wasn't sure if that was due to the general weakness from being stitched back together or because her vision was weird since she lacked one eye. She made her way to the kitchen and started to methodically look through all of the cabinets for potions, she couldn't recall if there were any left, but she wanted to check first before making new ones. Even if she had to sit on the floor, because just walking downstairs tired her that much. After a few minutes of searching she groaned at the fact that she didn't find so much as an empty bottle, which meant she would have to make the potions herself. Shakily she got up and made her way to K9's workstation, he showed her how to make regen potions one day so she just had to recreate the steps. It was one of the worse days pain wise so she spent the whole time heavily leaning on him and barely processing what he was saying to her. If not for the fact that she needed to know how to make them she would have either gone back to bed or to lay down on one of the couches.
"First it was... the nether wart and then... then the tear, I think..." she mumbled to herself reaching up for the materials. There was always a lot of them, in clear view and just low enough that she didn't have to struggle reaching too high to get them. "Yeah..."
Risen filled up six bottles with water and placed them on the brewing stands, followed by quickly adding the nether wart. She didn't want to remain standing longer than absolutely necessary, it was already embarrassing that she was only remaining standing, because she was leaning on the cabinets and if she had to wake up K9 just so he could help her at least get to a couch she'd burn with shame. So as soon as she added the nether wart she slid to the floor and put her back to the cabinets, listening for the sound indicating that the brewing was finished. She yawned, half asleep, when she heard it and quickly added the shiny tears, half sitting down and half standing. At the very least she would prefer to stay awake long enough for the potions to finish brewing. It wouldn't have been the first time she fell asleep like this actually, but she would rather spare herself the embarrassment and get at least one potion in her system before that. Risen waited once more for the bubbling sound of the potion finishing brewing and clumsily got out one bottle from the brewing stand. The rest could stay there, it wasn't like they had an expiration date or they'd go bad overnight, besides putting them away was too much effort for her that night.
She got up and drank what was in the bottle as fast as she was able to without spitting any of the potion out. She shivered with disgust. It was sweet, so ridiculously sweet that if not for the brief relief from pain they provided and K9 forcing her to drink them she'd never touch them again. Although it might have been the sheer amount of them she drank speaking, maybe if she didn't have to drink so many of them she wouldn't find them this disgusting. Golden apples were similar, also way too sweet, but apparently good for her. Risen walked to the stairs and left the empty bottle on the table on the way, she would put it away in the morning. She steeled herself before slowly making her way up the stairs, not taking her eye off the steps for a second. Once she was back on the upper floor she glanced to the bedroom, K9 was still asleep there. She made a few steps towards it, before deciding to head to the red room. She quietly closed the door behind her.
It was a morbid curiosity, but there was something she needed to see. The only mirror in the house was in the red room and she couldn't see it otherwise. In the mirror she could see herself, her hair wasn't tied up even slightly, instead it was hanging freely over her shoulders. She was wearing her button up shirt, without her coat. She didn't know where it was and sleeping in it wouldn't have been comfortable anyway. She brought a finger to the left side of her face and watched as her finger sunk into the bandages far deeper than it should. It could have gone even deeper if not for the tight way the bandages were wrapped. Whenever they got too bloodstained she would sit on one of the couches or on the bed and K9 would gently unwrap them before washing away the blood with a cloth, then he would wrap new bandages around it and she would silently let him manoeuvre her head around. All she knew about what was actually under the bandages was that it was bad, but it ended at that. The true extent was left up to her imagination. She needed to see.
The woman sighed and squeezed her remaining eye shut as she started carefully unwrapping the bandages, hopefully she would manage to wrap them back the same way they were or K9 would just assume they came loose while she was sleeping. Unwrapping them took longer than she expected it to, she wasn't sure if it was because of how secure they were or because of the shakiness in her hands. Maybe it was both. When she finally managed to get them off she put them away on the side without opening her eye, she would need them later.
Risen held onto the counter and mentally counted down from three before opening her working eye. She gasped at what she saw. The flesh around where her eye should have been looked almost raw, it was still bleeding slightly and now without the constraint of a bandage some of it was sluggishly trickling down her cheek. There was a dark, almost black line going through what was roughly the middle, it must have been where the chunk boundary went through her. The most distressing part about what she saw in the mirror was the hole where her eye used to be, it was bloody, it was dark and it seemed to keep going forever. She wasn't sure if it would be better if she could see where the eye socket ended or not, but she couldn't force herself to look away. It was disgusting, she wanted to gag.
She felt herself tear up and as much as she didn't want to let the tears come she couldn't stop herself from crying. She sniffed, watching with increasingly blurry vision as tears fell only from her right eye. She tried to wipe them away, but they just kept coming as she quietly hiccuped. She wouldn't have that eye anymore and the scars would remain for as long as she existed. If only she moved a little more to the side, maybe then she would have actually been deleted. She made peace with the consequences of her actions, she was fine with them, why did it have to be interrupted? Risen quietly cried for a few minutes, before managing to calm down enough to pick up the bandages and wrap them back around her head. It was a lot harder than she expected it to be, K9 made it look easy. It was a blessing in disguise that only her right eye seemed to be capable of producing tears as she tried her best to get the bandages to the previous state and smeared blood all over her hands in the process. In the end the bandages were a little loose and she wiped most of the blood on her pants since it shouldn't be too visible on dark fabric. The woman looked into the mirror once more, her eye was bloodshot and there were places where the bandages were loose enough to expose some of what was under them.
The woman quietly made her way back to the bed and crawled under the covers, facing away from K9. She didn't want to look at him at the moment, she was embarrassed about what happened in the red room. Risen almost yelped as he pulled her closer unconsciously and buried his face in her hair. It was nice. She didn't pull away, instead she made a mental note to act confused if K9 mentioned how loose the bandages were in the morning. She fell asleep in minutes.