but turn your face away and still you feel the cold Who: Elvira Treveil and Divina Marcos. What: A fell knight retrieves her sword. Where: A clinic. When: June 17; after this. Rating: PG. Status: Complete.
The walls were white, as white as the overworked clinic employees could manage, which was to say not very.
At the sound of the door, Elvira sat up in her bed. The slit in the back of her exam gown revealed her back, all exposed skin and bandages. Normally, the sight of Elvira’s exposed skin would have been enough for Divina’s palms to start to sweat, for the pace of her heartbeat to quicken shamefully. But, decorated as the pale expanse was with an intricate pattern of wounds, Divina found she did not know what to feel.
“Ajora abide, Nettie,” she said. “You look a damn sight.”
“Why, thank you,” Elvira replied tersely, without missing a beat, without batting an eye. “Your sword is over there.”
“Marvelous,” Divina said, rushing to wrap her hands around Deathbringer’s hilt. The cool balm of the Dark, of her Dark, allayed the fell knight’s burgeoning fears, even if marginally. Buoyed, she might have uttered a “thank you” were the other woman not, after all, Elvira. Instead: “How long?”
“Long enough,” she snapped back, still refusing to turn around.
“Do not play the child.”
“As long as I need, thank you very much for inquiring.”
Divina regarded Elvira quietly. The fell knight ought to have felt some vindication, no doubt. Had they not been in the other’s position years and years ago? Then, Elvira had laughed her way out of Divina’s life, leaving the latter with the pieces of a broken reputation.
Yes, Divina ought to do something similar, now. But, pausing at the door, unbidden, came the words, ”May you need little.”
Elvira pushed her shoulders back upon hearing the words, reining her breathing back to a slower pace. Her smile tightened, calling out in the fell knight’s wake: “Thank you.”