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It’s shit. This is shit. This is an absolute goddamn shitshow and Rayla will be damned if she has to watch it go on for another second while she helplessly sat on her knees doing absolutely fucking nothing.
She’s scrabbling on her knees towards him the second the brawl’s attention had been focused somewhere else—it’s barely a brawl, really, not when Soren is getting beat up raw over and over and Rayla couldn’t even begin to imagine what in the two lands his plans with this are, and she doesn’t want to know, either; she’s just praying that his endearing idiocy actually brings him somewhere this time. But Callum—he’s laying there, just laying there, and she’s scooting over with two tied ankles and she sobs and sobs and sobs and it’s pathetic but it doesn’t fucking matter.
Runaan taught her this, when she’d been thirteen—assassins are bound to know how to give life as much as they know how to take them. First: she scans for signs of breathing. Elevated heart rate, asthmatic bursts of breaths that came with a whine, but it’s—it’s good. He’s breathing. She could work with this. His neck or ribs might be fractured—shit, definitely fractured, but he’s breathing. Fuck.
Second: coherence.
“Callum.” She called, realizing how much her voice trembled, and then again: “Callum.” Then again, and again, his name filling her mouth like poison, like shame, a fistful of his shirt in her hand like it would save him—she left him! She was fourteen and she left him and it was supposed to keep him safe! His name fogged her brain, and this time Rayla let the tears blur away her vision.
“You’re—y’r hurtin’ me.”
The agonized gasp she let out felt like a blade to her throat. The fog in her eyes melts into tears, and her eyes fixed onto his, and—
“Shit—I’m sorry,” she swallowed thickly; hears a cut-off scream, a grand splash of water, but none of it mattered to her. Cupped his bruised cheeks in her hand, burnt thunder-like marks all over his skin, what have they fucking done to him—“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, m’sorry, sorry—”
“You’re hurt,” is what he says after, hands stuttering to reach up to hold her, and Rayla might just start laughing out of the sheer absurdity of it all. He’s here with half his bones caving in to his organs and he’s here with burn marks and cuts and bruises because he’d refused to give them her life and he’s asking if she’s alright?
“Don’t—Rayla, stop,” he whispers. “Stop. We’re alright. I’m—”
“Not in the slightest bit alright,” she shakes her head, scans his body from head to toe, toe to head, and nothing is the slightest bit alright. “Callum, this is shit. You—” you did this to yourself and for what? All this, and for what? Love makes you stronger? Does it? Does it really? She shut her eyes so firmly that she began to see explosions of white behind her eyelids before opening them again—something else she’d learned from Runaan. “You need—ice compress, and willowbark, peppermint, rosemary—”
“Don’t turn me into steak,” Callum has the audacity to joke, and Rayla wants to chew him up alive. She doesn’t get to, though, because a pair of arms rounds around her waist and pries her away from him and the high adrenaline immediately kicks back in—one moment he was safe in her arms and the next moment he’s gone, so she lets out a guttural scream and clawed and clawed because they are not taking him away from her, not again, let it be her, it was supposed to be her—
“It’s me—Rayla, look, it’s Soren—” a sentence managed to penetrate the ringing in her ears. The calloused hand tilted her head to face her captor, and a pair of striking blue eyes stared back at her. “It’s me, honey, just—breathe, just breathe. It’s over. I’ve got you.”
“Callum,” she demands, “where’s Callum, you have to—” Rayla whips her head around; he’s no longer lying on the deck, someone has taken him away, and the sheer panic makes her buck and strain away from Soren’s embrace. “Where did you—have to—”
“Shhhh—stop, stop, I’ve made the crew get him help,” Soren says, like it was meant to be soothing, but all it does is make her scream.
“The crew that was out to fucking kill us?”
“They were under Finnegrin’s control,” he elaborates, calmly, “and we’ve thrown him overboard, and he’s probably being digested by one of those freaky sea monsters by now, so just—I need to take care of you, too. You’re hurt.”
“It doesn't matter!” she screams, to hell with anything else. “I need to be with—”
“Rayla, you’re hurt.” There’s a sort of firmness seeping into his voice, but her hold on her is still as gentle. “You need to calm down so I can help you.”
“I’m not her!” Rayla spat out without thinking twice, because her head is fucking splitting and the panic in her throat kept surging on. “I’m not your fucking sister!”
Soren’s whole body hitches—it’d happened for less than a split-second, but it was enough to put a sense of guilt into her. And then he says, as calmly as he had before, “I know.”
Rayla doesn’t let herself breathe.
“I know I have no authority over you, and I don’t have a right to be smothering you, but—I do know you’re hurt. And I do know I care about you. So,” he sighs softly, “I’m going to take you to him, and you’re going to let me take care of you then. Deal?”
Rayla nods, twice, and doesn’t say: I love you, I didn’t mean that, sometimes I do wish I was her. Instead she lets him untie her ankles and gather her knees into his arms, rests her head on the sturdy shoulders that he’s ever so proud of—and for once in her life, does exactly what she’s told to do.
Soren took him to a dark room two stairs below the main deck, and for once Rayla is grateful for the gloomy surroundings. In here, there’s no light to pierce into her skull, and the surroundings is finally, blessedly small enough for her to control; doorway on her left and a small circular window to her right overlooking the new crystal clear sky, but when she took in the sight of Callum’s body on the bed, nothing else had mattered at all.
“How are you?” she croaks, reaches out to grab on him before Soren could fully settle her down on the bed.
“Take it slow, lovebirds,” Soren is chiding, but he doesn’t try to interfere between them and busies himself on pressing a cold rag to her forehead instead.
Callum cracks open his left eye, the one that hadn’t been bruised. “Never been better,” he smiles, and Rayla wants to eat him alive. There’s a rune drawn on the bandage wrapped over his torso and she grins like a madman when it feels cold to the touch.
“Shit,” she breathes as she lets Soren prod and examine her. “Good. That’s good—ow.”
“Sorry,” Soren murmurs, at the same time Callum says; “they hurt you.”
Rayla laughs, but she isn’t really sure if it’s out of relief or amuse or despair. “They hurt you. They—you let them hurt you, because of me?”
“You would have done the same,” Callum murmurs.
She shakes her head, whispers, horrified; “I should have. I did, and it was supposed to—it was supposed to keep you safe, they promised me that love is supposed to make you stronger…” The thick pain grew in her throat until she couldn’t swallow them anymore, and a sturdy arm is quickly slipping below her waist and guiding her to turn on her side; she gags once, twice, feels something wretched squirm and claw up her throat that she couldn’t rid of no matter how hard she tried.
“Breathe,” Soren murmurs eventually, rubs the space between her shoulder blades. “It’s okay. You’re empty. Just try to breathe.”
“Hurts,” she croaks, and she feels like hot shit admitting it, but she’s so tired. “M'tired.”
“I know, darling, I know. You just rest,” he wipes her mouth with his sleeve without a second thought and again, Rayla thought about how much of an idiot Claudia must be to leave someone as good as him. “I’ll get you something for the pain. Willowbark, you said?”
“Uh-huh,” Rayla hums, feeling a hand grab on a fistful of her shirt and gently pulling her back down on the bed. She obliges, rolls over to settle into Callum’s bony crevices—he’s gotten so thin—and tries not to think about the warmth radiating off her skin, or how she’s trying to hide her trembling by shoving herself between his body.
“You’re so warm,” Callum runs his fingers through her loose hair, sort of flirty.
“You’re warmer,” she quips back.
“You both are, and it’s fever, so God help me,” Soren exhales, and they both sigh out a suffocated laugh, trying not to disturb their broken ribs too much. There’s shuffling—a fur blanket draped over their shoulders, Soren’s lips briefly on her forehead, and this time Rayla doesn’t even push him away.
“It’s alright,” he tells them when the bedroom door creaks halfway open, and repeats it under his breath like he’s trying to convince himself, too. “I’ll be with Ez. You two just rest. We’ll be there when you wake up.”
“It is alright,” Callum kept on repeating like a mantra too, long after Soren was gone. “We’re alright. It’s us. It’s just us, now.” And then, the promise again, “we are stronger.”
Rayla hopes that his eyes are still closed so he doesn’t see the hopeless look in hers. “I still feel weak.”
“Give it time,” he just says. Sort of praying. “We have time.”
“Promise,” she begs, even as they both know exactly what her promises are worth.
“I promise,” he tells her regardless.