Chapter Text
[?]
Marianne arches from the bed in a half-conscious bid for Marsha to press her back down, and finds herself immediately rewarded. Her legs shift helplessly, pinned beneath her lover as Marsha laughs with a touch of smugness into her flushed neck.
“One more?”
“You-” Marianne gasps, flushing further; she already knows what the answer will be. “You had said that…twice ago now.”
“Did I?” Marsha nips at her ear, voice sunk low and knowing. “But you’ll still believe me this time, won’t you?”
The only truth she is capable of believing in this moment is that Marsha will do whatever she wants, and Marianne will gladly let her.
“You’re – close?” she asks, because there are things she wants too.
To hear Marsha confess her enjoyment; to feel the deep purr of pride in her chest when the younger woman is so overtaken that her restraint wavers into cries of delight. To be the cause, to have Marsha’s voice shatter on her name, to taste the job well done on her satisfied smile.
“Mhm.” Sweaty fingers squeeze her free hand, then pat it indulgently. “Will you let me have one more, Marie? If I promise to take care of you, hm?”
With a wince Marianne slides numb fingers from between her trembling thighs, muscles stiff from what feels like hours of denial though surely it has not been so long since the room darkened to night.
She doesn’t regret this endeavor, not when Marsha is breathing as unsteadily as she is, uneven red spread from cheeks to neck to heaving breasts. But Lord, Lord, she is far from undisciplined but the hand not clutched in Marsha’s grips the damp sheets so tightly it cracks back into stone to avoid the temptation between her legs.
Cruel woman, she laments, not without wry amusement. No need to drive me to the edge when a lighter touch would suffice.
But her head thumps back to overheated sheets, already resolved to surrender if Marsha will keep looking at her like that, light and happy and hungry as she covers Marianne’s burning body with her own again.
“Si ce sont tes mains…une seule. I am not so strong, I may, nn!” Marsha presses, testing, at her stomach and Marianne splays further apart, all too willing to indulge for yet a while longer. “May rebel.”
Marsha, because she is an unrepentant menace, licks her lips.
“Please do.”
–
[1: discomfort]
The first time Marianne refuses her aid is when Marsha barges into her room after hearing a clatter and a yelp. She halts over her rushing feet in the doorway at the sight of her stoic friend hopping on one foot, indignant hissing escaping from behind gritted teeth.
Marianne leaps a full foot in the air and miraculously lands back on her swaying leg. If she were a cat, Marsha has no doubt her back would be arched toward the ceiling.
“Is this a bad time?” she asks, locking any hint of laughter behind a neutral smile.
“Mais quelle impolitesse!” Marianne cries, eyes wide. “Pas vrai, tu es tellement – aah, Marsha!”
“Don’t be rude,” Marsha chides, not at all put out. To save Marianne further witnesses, she steps inside and closes the door.
“Me, rude!” Marianne retreats to her cot, plopping down with a huff and shaking one foot as if to dust off the injury. “What could have brought you here, so eager as not to knock?”
I heard a noise and worried you were in trouble won’t help the situation, so Marsha settles on “I missed you,” which is also true.
Marianne’s hackles fall immediately. The way she pouts at the floor makes her seem years younger.
“Ah so? I – I as well. Perhaps you might…stay a while.”
Marsha expediently covers her mouth and moves to share the cot, bemusedly watching the gargoyle move her foot in agitated circles.
“The bedframe,” Marianne offers curtly when the expectant silence becomes too much for her to bear. “I had hardened the toe but the bruise remains. ‘Tis a small thing only, pay it no mind.”
Poor thing, Marsha does not say lest Marianne haul her back out the door. Instead she offers a hand, without gauntlet today within the suitcase’s walls.
“If it’s so small, let me take it from you?”
Marianne eyes the hand like she might a small dagger.
“This is your arcane skill?” Her foot stills, but doesn’t relax. “Then you will feel it later, in my stead?”
“Barely, unless the mighty Sentinel is so bothered by a stubbed toe.”
But now Marianne’s foot stamps against the floor, her bearing disproportionately upset.
“Think you I could ever rid myself of an ill by passing it to you?”
A throbbing toe, an ill. She fights to keep her lips in a straight line, because when Marie is this haughty she’s either trying to lighten Marsha’s own mood or very unhappy indeed.
“Really Marie, I’ve endured much more than a little sting.”
Marianne scowls, unmoved. “All the more reason you should not suffer such from me. Must you press this? I had missed you true, and wish not to argue. Might we not take tea together?”
Marianne trying to deflect in the way Marsha so often gets away with herself surprises her so much that she lets it drop. Besides…
Just last week she’d drawn the unimaginable pain from an amputation without morphine, then again the helpless fear and denial from a dying man so he’d have time to dictate a final letter. Later still, the maddening, bubbling itch from a leg wound oozing with pus, watching the poor soldier’s shrieks fade from agonized to disconsolate and had known the same impossible trial awaited her soon.
Compared to all that, Marie’s staunch insistence that she not add a dull throb to such staggering, overflowing torment makes something in her melt hot and sweet.
–
[2: terror]
She hasn’t slept heavily in years, medicine or no medicine, so when Marianne tumbles from the bed they share in the dim light of early dawn it takes Marsha only seconds to move to the floor and place a palm on her heaving back.
Some nights she knows better, pulls back when Marianne is insensate in the unsparing grip of memory, but this morning finds her mewling like a child so Marsha knows she’s awake and bitterly helpless with it.
“Okay,” she murmurs, wishing she could shield Marianne from every tremor. “Okay, you’re okay. The night’s past, Marie.”
Marianne only tosses more quietly, trying to burrow into the floor with petrified fingertips.
“We’re at the Foundation,” Marsha continues, steady and soothing as if reading a bedtime story rather than trying to ground her dear Marianne in the here and now. “You came to visit me for once, remember? Because I promised Commander Creius wasn’t here, and that you could torment Hound some more if you wanted.”
“Torment.” It’s watery, and Marsha can hear the effort it takes not to exit as a sob, but it’s something. “I had only declined to reward his abysmal wit.”
There you are.
“Mm, but he was avoiding you, so I said we should go out…”
“...To train with that brazen witch, from the Eastern Front.”
Marsha exhales, a gentle release of tension, and circles her hand the slightest bit more firmly when Marianne stops trying to make herself small next to the bed.
“She said she knew where to get a plane, but I’m worried she’s going to borrow one instead. You went and encouraged her…”
“Tacitly. Because I wished to see your profile in the air. To – for when I am able to craft you something suitable for flight.”
“Hmm,” Marsha hums agreeably, shifting closer so she can pull Marianne into her waiting arms.
The other woman goes without fuss, nuzzling into Marsha’s neck in a way she seldom does.
“I’m here,” she mutters, bent and chagrined. “‘Twas only a lapse. I am sorry to wake you.”
“It’s no bother.” Marsha moves from stroking her back to her hair, feeling stone return to vulnerable flesh with every pass. “Do you want to move back to bed, or stay here a while?”
“Mn.”
That might mean Yes, or If you try to move me I will roll under the bed. Either is fine. If it’s what Marie needs Marsha will stay here until the first chirps of birdsong turn to the chatter of groggy personnel, and beyond.
“A bad one?” she asks carefully. Sometimes they talk; sometimes neither of them can stand to. It’s largely the same, as long as they’re together.
“Mm.”
“You know…” Marsha adjusts so they’re both on their sides, Marie tucked in close so she can petrify as she needs to without pinning Marsha under pounds of stone. “This isn’t something you have to suffer alone. I could take a bit, so you could sleep…?”
It’s a gentle nudge, but Marianne scrambles to her feet in a manner wavering and off beat.
“Ah, sommeil, oui, we ought – the floor is no place for rest, come.”
Marie is all limbs, coltish, near hurling herself back into the bed without care for sheet or bedspread. She curls upon herself on one side, a baleful eye staring down at where Marsha has perplexedly managed to fumble onto her knees.
“Come, Marsha!” her woman bites out, kicking the sheets down in a poor attempt to line them up. Chest still heaving, arms still stone. “No need for tricks. Let us…take advantage of a slow morning.”
So insisting, Marianne finally wrenches a sheet from its priors and snaps it into place like a command. Marsha joins her, bemused but willing to rest beneath arm and cloth, too confused to find real offense in having her skill reduced to a ‘trick.’ Thoughts of alleviating Marie’s distress by taking it into herself fall by the wayside as they settle back into each other.
The chatter from birds and intrepid critters outside is too loud, but their softening breaths are enough to lull them both into some semblance of rest once again while the world continues to wake around them.
–
[0: quälen]
Sentinel does not often visit Marsha in the night. They share beds commonly enough, but this is ritual decided upon and welcomed beforehand. If one of them desires an evening of contemplation, it’s a small thing to wait for morning and a fond reunion.
This night in particular is different. The thought of steaming tea drove Sentinel from her cot not long after midnight, and as she pads past darkened tents and the exhausted watch, her night vision catches something that drives chamomile and honey plain out of her mind.
There’s smoke wafting from Marsha’s tent, in thin tendrils low to the ground. The knight is not so clumsy as to leave her lantern unattended, but what if she has fallen ill, or sustained an injury, or–!
Sentinel races for the tent, heart pounding, and tears open the flap to find – just so, guttering candle fallen from desk, papers catching in its wake. It’s a simple thing to stamp it out, inhale of smoke of pitch of char but the room is dark-still-dead and where is Marsha–
A cry pierces the tense night, low and small.
A critter? Non, too much distress in that whimper, too human. It takes Sentinel so many long seconds to understand what she’s seeing only because she does not wish it to be so, then she’s by the bedside almost without registering the movement.
“Marsha!”
Her knight is writhing, heat pouring off her so stridently it near burns Sentinel’s own hand when she lights it on Marsha’s forehead. Yet she suppresses the urge to petrify, because she needs the gentlest touch she can yet draw forth for what comes next.
Marsha’s skin is aflame, head lolling, eyelids fluttering, and when Sentinel casts around she finds only a pitcher half full on a small table and a cup cast to ground combien de temps-
They need a – physician. Sentinel drags claws up her legs, hears fabric rend. On this foray, Marsha is the physician.
Her chest is too tight; she lets it crack to expunge the weight. She has the knowledge to rectify this, they’ve discussed each other’s abilities and, help from an unforeseen source, the steward Adelheid had said – ice and a bath but there is no bath but – food stores, ice for them, ah, courir-
Minutes later, Sentinel thrusts her hastily acquired bounty to the ground of Marsha’s tent. No guilt is found; the soldiers will eat bread then, or take their chances in recompense for what this foolishly burning woman has done for them.
Ice, on the cot melting into linen, in buckets, surrounding Marsha, cloth for the forehead, wick the sweat, let it be enough there were not so many wounded in camp this must not be as before Sentinel can still-
She arranges things as best she can, and still her knight is bound by restless unconsciousness.
Her lips, those softest – they’re near blue, but her pulse is calming, from clamor to tremor, not good but less alarming as Sentinel makes pass after pass. Time passes as well. Ice turns to water turns to steam turns to Sentinel’s twitching hands, absent true purpose excepting this one, that Marsha yet breathes.
And it was not so close a thing, she comes to realize. This was not a conflagration, merely a flare. Yet what might have transpired without-
Why suffer this? Why not seek aid? Why not seek mine-
She grinds her teeth and folds the cloth over again.
“It will be alright.” She prays it is not a lie. “This will pass ere long, and I shall keep watch until it does.”
Sentinel is no longer certain whom the reassurance benefits, so she wets folded cloth again, uses it to wipe beads of sweat from Marsha’s clammy forehead and looks around for the buckets of ice she’d hauled in frantic hours ago.
Melted. Just their luck tonight, but she’s loathe to leave and commandeer more. Not when her reckless chevalier might wake to find herself alone. She dips the cloth back into water only lightly chilled, folds and refolds it in a fruitless effort to imitate routine, then places it as lightly as she knows how atop Marsha’s brow.
“Make it stop,” her knight begs with a helplessness Sentinel has only heard from her twice: years ago, and on a barren plain through a haze half-remembered. “He’s only a boy, Gott, alles brennt, don’t look, bitte, ich kann nicht mehr–”
Look or look not, she is useless to stem Marsha’s suffering; must only watch with white-knuckled hands while the younger woman tries to quiet her cries so pitifully her lip splits.
Sentinel watches the steam curl up to the ceiling, and thinks of how burning wood below an unopened chimney will flood back into the room to choke its inhabitants. She can’t bear to watch Marsha choke in kind, but she’s helpless to do anything but stroke stiff fingers through red hair, hoping in vain their stone might cool burning skin.
In this moment she sees plain why Marsha asks again and again to ease her pain, stymied though she is by refusals both gently exasperated and stern. If presented the opportunity to take a fraction of this torture from her, Sentinel would turn it on herself with greedy haste.
A thought forms, half there amidst concern and impotent frustration. This is what results when Marsha uses her skill to absorb painful things, terror and panic and sharp wounds. What if – her cheeks warm despite the unpleasantness of it all – what if she were to take something good, something from Sentinel without the usual protest, something like–
Oh but sûrement pas, unless…
Fleeting and embarrassing as the whim is, she will not remember it again for weeks yet.
In the now she wrings the cloth out yet again and prays morning comes soon.
–
[3: madness]
The next time she’s rebuffed is shortly after Marsha recovers Marianne from her bloody crusade on the Western Front.
The body bound to the bed is delirious. Teeth bared, shadows weaving sinuously over her skin in a way that seems to leash her to the cot the same as her restraints, unwilling to release her.
Marsha thinks of her own convulsions, released only under cover of night if she can help it; a price paid gladly for soothing others during the day.
“Marianne,” she tries, forcing away the emotion weeding tremors through her voice and shoving thoughts of the consequences to later, always later.
It’s been days and she hasn’t received a coherent response, but nothing will stop her from trying until she does.
“I know you don’t like the idea…” She begins by circling around it, managing to sound chiding and not as if she’s minutes from having to use her arcane skill on herself again to keep from folding once more to her knees, “...but I really think I could help. I’ll just take a little, how about it? Enough that you can rest a bit.”
Marsha strips one glove off and reaches for a bound hand carefully, hoping this will still work when one of the points of contact is stone. But Marianne wrenches futilely against the chains securing her to the bedframe, shaking her head wildly and batting Marsha’s bare hand away with movements so jerky they nearly topple the cot.
Claws leave only faint scores risen across her hand and not torn flesh, but it’s a near thing. Marsha withdraws, steeling herself to find only more blind fury in Marianne’s frenzied gaze – but when their eyes meet, there’s a lost sort of terror behind that red glare instead. Fanged mouth works, though only a warning growl makes its way past the display.
She takes a testing step back towards the bedside; the growl intensifies. Inches her hand slowly and obviously down to her side, then folds it behind her back; Marianne lowers her volume to a disgruntled rumble.
She’s afraid I’ll do it, Marsha realizes. Because she’s found me in the backlash before, knows it will hurt me? Oh Marie…
She backs away slowly, sinking into the sole chair with the first relief she’s felt since the gargoyle let Marsha club her in her stubborn head. She knew that Foundation nurse was too quick to declare it hopeless with well-practiced patronizing pity, how could she, verantwortungslos sein, ich sollte war-
She takes a deep breath, then lets it go. She’s been reckless these last several days, certainly, but even she knows intellectually it isn’t worth it to use her skill to douse indignation – no, searing anger – on Marianne’s behalf.
That kind girl is still in there, they have time to draw her back out. There’s no sense upsetting her further; Marsha will stay with her for as many sunrises as it takes.
–
[4: agony]
There are more pressing concerns than the one hammering against the front of her searing brain, of course there are.
Such as: this safehouse is no longer safe, there’s no useful intelligence here, Marsha’s medical bag was lost hours ago along with half of the rest of their forces and she can only hope the diversion she and Marianne pulled off will see the remaining soldiers safe.
It’s only. Only that…it’s night now, and they can’t risk more than moonlight, and Marianne’s dark coat has gone stiff with blood from chest to hip and is beginning to seep into even her pants.
Marsha’s hauled her onto a rickety table, much of that coat cut away to provide a clear view of the obstacle but while she’s prepared to operate it’s only that...
The circumstances are less than ideal, but what has Marsha’s skull pounding pounding pounding is that, even capable of bracing up on her elbows, disheveled and dissatisfied with it, Marianne's jaw is quivering and Marsha’s lost her forceps.
A broken radio rests on the floor, along with the surely unsanitary materials salvaged from Marsha’s spilled bag – the rest lies crushed into the mud somewhere, lost in the Manus ambush.
She doesn’t have a scalpel. She barely has gauze to stuff the wound in case the gargoyle passes out mid-surgery and this isn’t an area she can tourniquet and she would just leave the bullet in but Marianne isn’t like other patients, can heal herself if Marsha can only remove it, um Gottes willen but her own chest is stuttering, her hands are tingling and Marie’s have gone cold but she can’t petrify with the bullet still in there, is it in bone or tissue-
She scans Marianne again to stall for time they don’t have, aghast but pushing it back and back and back lest her bullheaded patient discover her and internalize Marsha’s own fear while blood still pools on the table to drip sticky onto the floor.
They stare at each other, Marianne defiant while Marsha can only hold back her wince when fangs grind audibly together behind stiff lips.
“Don’t be silly,” Marsha admonishes again, fighting and managing by a hair to sound only lightly bothered and not incredulous. “I heard four shots; there are only two holes in the wall and one exit wound.”
“What of it?”
The veins in Marianne’s throat are straining and she’s still trying to play it off. At this rate Marsha might collapse before her patient does; she’s likely in the beginning stages of shock herself.
“I’ve watched seasoned veterans scream at what I’m about to do,” Marsha reiterates with a forced calm she’s seen those same veterans shrink from. “This position isn’t secure, you can’t make noise or pass out on me, and–” most importantly “–you’re in pain.”
“Mais d’accord, all are in pain in this stretch of land.” If their position weren’t so insecure she’s sure Marianne's low timbre would be raised and snapping, as if her pain weren’t writ large in the clutch of her body, defensive and trying to pull into center mass; to preserve, to persevere. “Then tell me, why do you seek to shoulder more yourself? I have fought and killed, I near died once and again. I would not let an errant scream be the end of us.”
“You can’t be sure.” Marsha feels closer to insane every second for the way Marianne stares back at her as if she’s the idiot. “If I pressed too firmly, or-”
“Marsha!” Marianne lurches up and muffles her resulting cry in Marsha’s collar, hands flinging forward to clutch her shoulders.
Fingers shocked into stone curl into her thick cloak in defiance, as if needing anything to ground wayward claws while they poke holes in the fabric.
Her Marie is holding her, so why does it feel like they’re both about to fly to pieces?
“You can see the entry, here–”
Marianne jerks Marsha back down towards the wound, ungentle in a way she’s been reduced to only once far in the past, arms shaking uncontrollably with the effort it must be taking her to move like this.
“I know you can draw the bullet out, it isn’t so far in, écoutez-moi-”
Marsha sags into stunned stillness, unable to fathom how to proceed. Her heart thrums like hoofbeats out of sync, she can't afford to fail here, the cost would be too high, too high to admit-
She can’t even use her arcane skill on herself anymore. She tries and tries but it fails to flicker into existence, like a lighter whose spark has been drowned by the rain.
if I can’t take it from you or from me then what use what can I please tell me what do I
“What use-? Marsha.”
Oh, she’d said that last part out loud. How can she navigate this, she is spent, entirely spent, might convince her inner workings to give up adrenaline but what might she lose in turn, she needs to focus, needs to be-
“Chevalier.”
Marsha blinks her eyes back into focus, staring hazily into Marianne’s own demanding gaze.
“Hm?”
“You’ll clean your hands with what you can. I will remain conscious so you can tell me every step that needs doing, you will not be left to toil alone.”
“But then-”
“You’ll get it out, and I’ll be silent. There is a…truest trust I’ve found in you. Might you not…” Marie’s chest heaves, but silently, silently. “Might you not reciprocate it for this moment at least?”
Another blink, to process the tools laid to the side; already lined up, ready to begin the process.
When had she done that? When they first cleared this cabin? When her ears were still ringing from realizing the extent of Marianne’s injuries?
“Marsha. I know you well, and you know your craft. Trust in this, and we shall see it through.”
So they must. They do see it through.
Through Marianne near gnawing through the leather strap Marsha had cut from her boots. Through flesh fighting every instinct to stay malleable around the fingers dug into it. Through the amateur recovery of the bullet, while Marianne makes good on her assurance not to scream and fights to stay lucid until the very end.
It’s only when Marsha is bent in half, sweat pouring down her chin and matting her hair to her haggard face but silent in the utter relief of a job at last complete – when a layer of gravel closes over the ragged entry wound and blood finally stops escaping from a body that can’t afford to lose any more – that Marianne takes one last assessing look at her and then promptly swoons back to the table’s hard surface.
If Marsha refuses to succumb herself, jerks back into frantic consciousness every few minutes to be sure of a pulse, that her nightmares remain false, that Marianne is resting and exhausted only but here, still here, still–
Well. If any of that, neither of them mentions it come morning when allied reinforcements arrive.
And when Marianne refuses to allow Marsha into the room she’s been laid up in to convalesce until days have passed, they don’t mention that either.