Entry tags:

!: action/thread/log, she-ra: adora, ₴ inactive: leon orcot

WHO: Adora & Leon
WHAT: Adora heals Leon's leg, as one does
WHEN: Backdated to morning of Sunday, October 3rd
WARNINGS: None! Unless dogs being seen as humans freaks you out
STATUS: Complete

There really was no other word for it. Leon was, in actuality, annoyed. He knew he shouldn’t be. He knew that he should be overjoyed at the idea that he was finally getting his stupid leg fixed, assuming that Adora could actually do it.

It felt, somehow, like cheating. Or maybe like he’d been cheated. It had taken months after the incident before Leon could walk for any length of time without the use of a walking aid, and months after that before he’d been able to spend the full day on his feet again. It had been a decade of not quite babying his leg, but making sure that he didn’t put too much strain on it. A decade of doing nearly daily exercises to make sure that his leg was as functional as it was ever going to be again.

And then, what? A month into Vallo, and he was being told that someone could just snap their fingers and there was a chance he’d be as good as new.

He knew he shouldn’t be annoyed. It wasn’t like that sort of magic existed in his world - or if it did, people kept it close to the chest. But looking at things logically had never been Leon’s forte.

That wasn’t to say he wasn’t grateful to Adora for making the attempt. Far from it. He’d woken up extra early that morning so he could grab a fancy fruit tart from some high-end bakery; it was about as big around as a pie, and apparently they always sold out within the first half-hour of the place opening, and he carried it now in a large gift bag.

He stared at the spaceship in the middle of the woods with only a little bit of suspicion, decided that out of all the weird shit that had gone on in the last month that this was pretty far from the weirdest, and approached. “Adora?” he called. “You home?”

Darla wasn’t the only spaceship in Vallo, but as far as Adora knew, it was the only one grounded and used as basically a giant house. It was unusual, at the very least, but she loved it. It reminded her of home and Mara, and it gave her, Catra, and the pets plenty of space to wander around in that Morningside didn’t offer. Plus, it was free. And since the Defense teams didn’t make a lot of money, that was a convenience they couldn’t turn down.

There were plenty of cameras, microphones, and sensors embedded externally and internally across Darla. Even if Leon’s trip hadn't been pre-planned, it wouldn’t have taken Adora long to be alerted to his presence, especially when he called out her name. The camera feed popped up on Darla’s window and she hurried over to the door to let him in.

She was a little nervous about this, she had to admit. She had offered to try healing Leon’s leg and she meant it, but the last time she’d healed someone other than Catra was — well, it was probably on Etheria. She wasn’t confident enough to offer her services in the clinic, but for a friend, why not? And she was pretty sure she could do it. She had transformed the Fright Zone (again) and with Interitus gone, she was back at full power. It shouldn’t be a problem, but she tended to stress herself out too much.

The ramp up to the door was permanently extended, but the door itself was locked and only opened at Catra and Adora’s discretion. She scanned her retina from the inside and the door slid open enough for her to step outside.

“Hey, Leon!” she called out, waving at him. “Come on up!”

Leon was a little proud of himself about the fact that he only hesitated for a moment before he began the walk up the ramp, trying not to think too may X-Files thoughts. He had a slight hitch in his step still, but he’d spent the last few days resting, icing, and stretching, and if this didn’t work, he’d probably wake up a little bit before dawn tomorrow to run laps and do squats in the pool before anyone else came up there; the high resistance and low impact did wonders for helping strengthen the muscles without causing further injury.

People might tell him it was possible to get this fixed magically, but he wouldn’t believe it until he actually saw it.

He didn’t bother to hide his wonder when he walked onto the ship. He’d never been one of those guys who watched and talked about Star Trek or Star Wars or whatever, had never wanted to be an astronaut, had never dreamed about space travel. But even he had to admit this was pretty cool.

“This from your world?” he asked her.

Adora had to grin at the look on his face. Before becoming She-Ra and later finding Darla, she had never really considered what space was like, never mind what life was like outside of Etheria. But now that she’d been out there and seen it all, she had to admit she’d caught a little bit of that bug. Traveling like that wasn’t an option while she was in Vallo, but living in an actual spaceship was still pretty cool. And impressive to see, no matter if you were really interested or not.

“Yep,” she confirmed. “It belonged to the She-Ra before me, so it’s like a thousand plus years old, but my friend Entrapta modified it and improved on it. She’s like a crazy technology genius.”

She led Leon further inside to the observation deck, which she and Catra had converted into a makeshift living room. It was as cozy as it possibly could be in a big open space that wasn’t really meant to be a living room, but they’d taken up as much of it as possible with pretty big pieces of furniture — most notably a huge, dark brown sectional that Spirit was all stretched out on. He had calmed down a lot as he got older, but that puppy was still inside there (and he wasn’t even a year yet, to be fair), if the way he bolted upright and started barking at Leon was any indication.

“Spirit, shush,” Adora laughed, stepping over to scratch the top of his head and receiving kisses for the attention. “Not everyone likes to be barked at by big dogs, okay?” She rubbed his neck and pulled away when a thought occurred to her and she looked at Leon curiously. “How do you see him?”

“No shit. Well, they don’t build them like that anymore.” He laughed boisterously at his own joke, and let Adora lead him through the ship.

His rubbernecking was put to an abrupt halt when the child - about seven years old - close enough to the age Chris had been when he’d come to live with Leon and D - with brown hair, wearing a brown vest over a white t-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, bolted up from the sectional. Leon’s first thought was that he didn’t know that Adora and Catra had a kid - not a biological kid, unless one of them had had them when they were way too young.

But then the kid was asking if he wanted to cuddle, before even exchanging names, and Leon realized that this was probably a dog, not a child at all, and his confusion was replaced with a grin at the thought of Catra having a dog. It was definitely more amusing than the image he’d had of Catra having a cat.

“Not right now, thanks,” Leon said to the kid, well aware that that probably wouldn’t stop him from coming up and cuddling him anyway. Most dogs didn’t really seem to have any grasp of ‘personal space.’ It probably didn’t help that Leon was headed over to the sectional to sit down next to him. “I’m Leon by the way.”

“He looks like a kid,” Leon said, turning to Adora. “Around seven, so I’m guessing he’s actually… what? A year old or so? Cute kid all the same.”

That was so weird, realizing that Leon saw animals just like any other regular person when, to her, they were so clearly animals. She couldn’t picture her eager puppy dog looking like a little kid, but seven sounded about right. She’d read that dogs aged differently than humans — one dog year was equivalent to seven human years, so at least human Spirit was on the right track.

And despite Leon’s gentle brush-off, Spirit was not entirely to be deterred. There were a few more eager barks — “Hi! Hi! Hi!” — and he followed after Leon to lay down beside him on the couch, curling up next to him and laying his head down on his leg. That wasn’t too unusual. He was a super friendly, cuddly dog, and as long as Leon didn’t seem to mind, Adora would leave him there for a few minutes.

“That’s not the bad leg, right? You can totally just move him if it is, he’ll give up eventually.” She took a seat on the edge of the coffee table across from him, and that’s when her eyes zeroed in on the bag still in Leon’s hands. She’d somehow missed up until this point. “What’d you bring?”

"Yeah, I didn't think you'd listen," Leon grumbled, heaving out a long suffering sigh, but he was already scratching Spirit behind the ear. He'd long since adjusted to the weirdness of petting or scratching animals when they looked like humans. Sometimes, if they moved in to lick his face or hands or whatever, they reverted back to their animal forms. Leon never thought about it, but if he was forced to, he'd assume that it was probably because his brain just couldn't deal with it, even if he'd learned to accept everything else.

It wasn't his bad leg though - that was his right one, and Spirit was no doubt going to start drooling on his left - so there was no need to move him. Leon would feel bad anyway; he already looked pretty comfortable.

"Oh right," Leon said, glancing at the bag. He held it up for Adora. "It's for you. I figure magic's probably hungry work or something, so I picked it up on the way here." A bit of a lie, but not much of one.

“You didn’t have to do that, Leon,” Adora said, but the grin she wore was what really spoke volumes. She really wasn’t expecting anything other than a ‘thanks’, but she wasn’t going to turn down the offer either. She reached over to accept the bag, licking her lips when she peeked inside and saw what awaited her. “Thank you. That’s really nice - and it looks really sweet.” She set it aside for now, though. Work first, treat later.

“Okay, so, I haven’t healed anyone but Catra in a really long time,” she admitted with a sheepish smile. “But it comes with the whole She-Ra package, and it’s easy, normally. No, uh, removing clothes or anything like that is necessary. But I have to put my hand on you. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t have to do this either,” Leon mumbled, brushing off her thanks with a wave of his hand.

Leon hadn’t had much in the way of intentional, prolonged human contact recently. He’d shaken people’s hands when he met them, or he’d been forced to push against people when they’d been crammed like sardines into the subway - Japan had been especially bad for that - but the life he’d led hadn’t led to much else. He hadn’t made friends, he hadn’t hooked up, and the only people he’d talked to were coworkers - if he needed to talk to them for work - and people he’d questioned about D. Animals made contact frequently: strays who’d curl up in his lap or on his shoulders, birds that would nest in his hair, even after he tried shooing them away, but it wasn’t really the same thing.

He’d been touched more in the last month than he had been in the last decade, he was pretty sure, first with James holding his hand while he installed the shield in his mind, and then when James had kissed him a couple nights ago. Which Leon was still trying to make sense of. Which was probably why Leon’s mind went there instead of answering Adora’s question, and it wasn’t until he became aware of a too-long silence that he realized that she was probably expecting an answer.

“Oh, yeah, that’s fine,” Leon said, snapping back to attention.

Adora could tell when Leon drifted off into her own head. She did the same thing sometimes, and Catra had a tendency to snap right in front of her face to get her out of it. While she’d never seen her own expression, she knew what that glaze in his eyes meant from experience. But she gave him a moment because, well, sometimes you just needed a moment. And she figured it had to be about this. If he was having second thoughts, he should have that chance to think it out.

He did, eventually, snap himself out of that fog and she smiled at him reassuringly. “It’s okay. You should be able to feel the difference pretty quickly, so. Here it goes.” She placed her hand at his knee, took a breath through her nose, and focused. Her hand began to glow instantly and warmth filled from her head to her toes. She could do this. She had brought Catra back to life — a messed up leg was completely doable.

Leon grit his teeth, expecting pain. All his rehab, nearly every aspect of his healing, had all been painful. Except it wasn’t painful. It was, in fact, the exact opposite of painful. There was a pleasant warmth, like getting hugged by his mother when he was a kid, and Adora was glowing, and then he was glowing, which probably should have been unnerving, except, again, it was the opposite of that.

He stared, slack jawed, completely unable to speak. She was right about him being able to feel the difference right away. Aches and pains he hadn’t even noticed he had been feeling - ones he’d grown accustomed to ages ago - all disappeared, not just the painful twinges in his leg, and by the time the glow faded, Leon felt about fifteen years younger.

Adora wasn’t sure what she was expecting because, again, healing someone else was new. Catra usually kissed her, and obviously she didn’t want Leon to do that, but she expected something verbal? The way his jaw totally dropped really said it all, though. She knew there was a lot of stuff that happened in Vallo that Leon struggled to believe was real, but she figured this had to be one of the tougher ones. They obviously didn’t have healers in his world that could do something about his injury if he’d been struggling with it for years.

She bit her lip, pulled her hand back off his leg, then studied him for a minute, head tilted. “Do you - feel okay?” she questioned. It felt to her like the job was done or she’d still be glowing and trying to figure out what had gone wrong. But his lack of response was still weird. Even Spirit had raised his head to look at the source of his new pillow — the petting had stopped, too.

“Okay?” Leon asked, his voice tight. And then said again, a little louder, “Okay? Adora, this is amazing.” He extended his knee, once, twice, and then, abruptly, stood up (sorry, Spirit). He managed, barely, to stop himself from doing squats right then and there, or burpees, or mountain climbers, but he did bounce up and down on his toes. He felt like he could probably run a marathon right then. Or at least a half-marathon. He also felt, a little, like he might start crying.

Adora’s head snapped up to follow Leon as he got to his feet unexpectedly. Spirit was clearly surprised and barked at him like he was wondering what the heck was going on, and Adora was right there with him. But it didn’t take long for her to realize he was just excited. She knew he’d been dealing with that injured leg for years now. Having it feel basically like new had to be a pretty great feeling.

“Well, good,” she chuckled. “You wanna go running or something? We can take Spirit out to burn off some energy and test the leg out?”

“God, I wish I had one of you back home,” Leon said a little thoughtlessly, standing on his good leg - though, they were both good now, weren’t they? - so that he could grab his right ankle to stretch his quads. Amazing.

He grinned at her. “You bet your ass I do.” He turned to the dog. “What do you say? Wanna come running with us?” A useless question, really, because he’d never met a puppy in his life who’d say no to that question, but Spirit’s face lit up so he figured it was kind of worth it.

Leon hadn’t raced anyone since he was a teenager, but he was feeling giddy enough that he said, “I’ll even race you. Loser picks up lunch next shift.”