or do you thank him for always challenging you to be better, be more, be what others see in you? Who: Bram Thornton & Elvira Treveil. What: Convalescence. Where: A city clinic. When: Backdated to March 27th. Rating: Tame. Status: Complete.
Thirty-eight years in the Fighters’ Guild had taught Bram Thornton to shed his warrior’s pride, and allow himself to be tended and healed when necessary. He submitted to the ministrations without fuss, aloof and distant. The man sat on a cot at the city clinic, waiting patiently while they bound his wounds; his arm was back in a splint, immobilised for the healing magics and potions to do their work, binding the bones back together over the next week or so.
He wasn’t as young as he used to be. With each foray, Bram was increasingly aware of the changes and complaints in his body—the injuries bowled him over faster than they used to, and took longer to heal. There was always that nagging, exhausted question of whether a younger dragoon might have taken down the Dreadguard with Priddy more easily, more effectively. Was the old warhorse officially past his prime? Time to be put out to pasture, perhaps?
Those were questions to ask Toku later, one old grizzled creature gravitating to one another.
But for now, he sat. The mages had pressed him back with an entreaty to stay here overnight; he could return home at the end of tomorrow evening, once his injuries had stabilised better. So the man sank into the pillows, looking diminished out of his armour and covered in bandages.
Vera would be by later. For now, he was alone.
His solitude did not last. Voices seeped in from the cracks around the door. With a creak, a click, a squeak, the door slid open.
In entered the small blonde figure of a familiar holy knight, her hair sweeping against her shoulders as she glided towards him. As she approached, it looked as though the years fell away to reveal a younger Vera, one from before age wore away their joints, before death took away their son.
His wife sat down in the rickety stool at his bedside. She folded her hands in her lap, eyeing his bandages. “How,” Vera began slowly, “are you feeling?”
“Like hell.” It was a blunt sort of honesty, an admission of vulnerability that he only gave around his wife. Bram’s hard edges seemed to ebb away at her approach, voice turning softer, with less iron in it. He hadn’t expected her so soon—the way they cared for each other these days was perfunctory, business-like, more professional nurse than wife.
He blinked blearily and tried to offer Vera a reassuring look, a cracked smile through the salt-and-pepper stubble that had encroached on his jaw while he was trapped here. She was like a vision swimming out of the past: hair cut short like it hadn’t been for years.
“When did you—” he started, but then blinking some more, Bram lined up the facts (ever the consummate detective inspector) and noted the inconsistency, pried it open like a stubbornly-locked box.
With a jolt, he realised.
“Elvira,” he said, his eyesight clearing through the haze of painkillers and potions.
“Yes, sir,” his wife’s former squire responded with slight bow of the head, as if the moment’s worth of an averted gaze was enough to pretend she did not hear him slip.
“No sirs. Not here.” But he straightened in the cot anyway, struggling to sit up (not to be seen as weak, not here, not in front of her, even if she was essentially family). He tried to shoulder through the momentary lapse. “Ought to be on home rest in a couple days, though back to duty will take longer,” Bram said, with a sigh that spoke more of impatience than actual irritation.
“How good to hear.” As close to genuine as she could be, the way things were with the Thorntons. She straightened her own back in imitation (unable to be mirror Vera here, she settled for copying him). Her hands moved from her lap to the edge of his bed, stomach clenching at the sight of his face etched with lines, eroded by time. If not Sir or Councilman, he was to her a mentor’s husband, a father, family when she had none (and wanted none). It was he confined to bed, yet she who felt like a child searching for solace after a night.
“Will you be staying here?”
“I will until they let me go,” he said. A pause, a mulling, a consideration: “Truly, I wouldn’t object to a visitor and some baked goods. The food here is unimpressive.”
Elvira’s presence here was an anchor, an inkling of home within a cold, clinical, and impersonal environment.
“Why, I could bring your favorite when I come by tomorrow. Not homemade, but one of Emillion’s finest bakeries.” The offer came like a knee-jerk reflex. “Same time, then?”
“Same time.” Bram nodded. And to any outsider looking in, it might have looked as casual as any appointment scheduling: something steeped in normalcy rather than haunted by the sight of him in his splint, the bandages crawling up his collar, gleaming at his sleeves. (Mortality dogging his heels.)
After a beat, the dragoon added, “And thank you. For stopping by.”
“Oh, no. Not a problem at all!” A buoyancy returned to her voice and the holy knight scooted her seat closer to his bed. A hand slid over to pat his bandaged forearm.
Elvira smiled at him, only then did the realization hit her: she had not been smiling before. They shed their armor, plastic happiness and metal shields, in the sterile room of the clinic. Her mouth tightened.
With the slightest hesitation, she set aside her mask (only for now, never). Elvira stayed with the man for a few moments longer, time ticking backwards as they remained in each other's company.