That particular wet and clinging southern cold of has come creeping in after the sun's set. Even inside the tent, he is as aware of it across the crown of his close cropped skull as he might be the chilled pant of some ice breathing lizard—that bizarre combination of bitter and humid that doesn't dare try to find a foothold in more northern latitudes. Or maybe that's just the sweat, and the close quarters, and the smell on both of them after a long day spent clawing through the backwoods to this point that's left him both sticky and only just not shivering under his clothes. It's possible he's been unfairly critical of the climate.
(No he isn't; fuck the south and its miserable wet, grey springs.)
Sitting on what is arguably his side of these close quarters (although the tent isn't really designed for two people to loiter inside so much as it is for two people to sleep in), Flint has a crinkled piece of parchment laid across the calf of his boot. The soft scratch of a pencil nub makes for a dulled, consistent rhythm under the sharper staccato of clinking buckles and leather fastenings coming unbuckled and unfastened. Near midday, he'd halted their progress to take some measurements of shadows cast by a copse of reedy trees. Now, a number of hours later, Flint is doing the math between those figures kept in his head and the snatches of constellations he'd been able to observe while pitching the tent in the dark. There is an image of a regional chart stored in his head, imprinted there by hours of meticulous study long before their little raiding party had ever left the Gallows—
"I suspect we'll have rain tomorrow," he says without looking up.
It's stupid, but Marcus is fond of this weather—for its horribleness, in particular. Its insistent misery, the lingering cold that gets its claws in without remorse, the creeping moisture. Colder, even, the hard-edged winters and Kirkwall's particular brand of bracing sleet. (The Circle had been comfortable. He had been ungrateful, continues to be so, even when it was and sometimes still is explained at length about the harder living of those less fortunate. It's hardly his fault that so few choose to be where they are.)
But Flint says that, about the rain, and he isn't looking forward to it. He grunts.
Slithers one last strip of leather through buckle and removes the breastplate. There is a fresh scrape across it that Marcus doesn't remember receiving, giving it quick inspection before he lays it aside atop the other pieces he's removed.
A hand curves around his side, under his other arm, blindly questing after that twinge while he looks down to the piece of paper that has Flint's attention. Curious, quiet, observing incomprehensible pencil scratches, before speaking up, "Do you know where we are?"
"Yes," is cleanly articulated for all that it has the characterization of being little more than an acknowledging grunt. After a few further scratches of the pencil, his answer manages to stretch past that single syllable: "More or less. We'll have worked our way clear of the foothills so long as we keep to this heading for another day. Sooner, should the weather be kind."
But all afternoon he'd watched the clouds building themselves up into their slow moving pillars. So that seems unlikely. And if it's as wet as all that, they've little reason not to hold here in the hills with the added benefit of tree cover. Tracking out over open territory in foul weather will be slow going, and risk exposure to any lookouts in the area who might have their heads on a swivel.
This conclusion seems to satisfy his own calculations (or vice versa) for the pencil comes up from the page shortly thereafter. Dispensing with lingering unnecessarily over the figures, the page is crinkled back into a folded shape suitable for safekeeping in a pocket.
"If it's already turning come morning, we'll chance staying here to see about setting snares or whatever other game can be taken in. Otherwise, we may find ourselves thin on rations dependent on how far we've fallen off to the south once we do manage to cut out."
Well, that news does something to minorly degrade any latent whimsical feelings about poor weather, at least for right now. Marcus watches the piece of paper get folded and stowed away, before flicking his attention back up.
"Alright," he says.
Not new, this, just not lifelong. Waiting for weather to pass, navigating the invisible line between moving through the wilderness and then finding oneself surviving in it. "I doubt any waters up here would be still enough to fish in," he mutters, thinking now to the day ahead as he withdraws his hand to check the inevitable dark smear of old blood.
Or. His fingers could instead be shinily coated with fresh bright red, as they are now, and his next breath out is one of surprise. Irritation.
He sort of holds that hand out to the side—instinct, to keep it off his clothes, despite having definitely bled into them already, and for who knows how long—as he turns to look at his belongings, internal inventory of what he has that might solve this issue. A penchant for healing magics was left behind a long time ago.
The unspoken benefit to getting into scuffles with an obvious mage in tow: everyone aims for the mage.
Flint, slow to withdraw his hand back out of his pocket, looks from the wet gleam of blood rendered dark by the firelight to the discarded plate crowded in with them. It's a judgemental look in the measuring sense—some part of him involuntarily beginning to make a calculation while the rest of him reserves the right to ignore whatever result is produced until otherwise required.
"Alright?"
They've both been admirably well behaved collaborators without having to sacrifice the pretense of self-reliance these past miles. So that isn't an offer in the sense of an extended hand, merely a check of barometer. No need to alter this quietly equitable arrangement if it isn't necessary.
(But it's going to be annoying if they have to account for Marcus bleeding through his clothes in addition to the rest.)
It would be uncomfortable to have to need anything from anyone, Maker knows.
Mage armor is not particularly well-suited for close combat, even with its pieces of plate. Designed, optimistically, for a warrior who operates at more range than what Marcus tends to stray into, permitting agility over defense. Still, it's a lot of metal and leather to still have gotten nicked that badly.
The sound he makes in response is non-committal, a probably. He remembers, he thinks, the edge of a blade having slid past his defenses from his blind spot, catching under leather before he'd withdrawn in a rush of smoke and cinder, and then that person had died.
Impatient, Marcus opens the lacings at his shirt collar, then goes and peels bloodied fabric up off his side on his way to removing the garment, now keeping a firm lock on any unbidden hisses of complaint. There, a gash at an awkward spot high up on his ribcage and dug further towards his back, an obvious attempt at a killing blow that couldn't get the angle right. Blood, dry and wet, makes a mess of trying to gauge its depth so he gingerly feels what he can reach with his fingers.
"Feels shallow," he reports, at a clip. "Just aggravated it."
To call his examination skeptical would be overstating the thing, but there's a degree of dissatisfaction there in Flint's face. Maybe it's for the smear of bright blood with the darker dried stuff, or for the way that Marcus readily twists to get at it and potentially motivated some further frooze ooze, or for the simple general inconvenience; regardless, it lingers as he reaches to sort his waterskin from the sparse gear they have in their possession.
It will rain tomorrow. They can afford to be certain.
"Let's see it," comes with the pop of the waterskin's cap and a gesture. A tilt of the broken. Turn round. "Give me your shirt."
If he can actually have it off, the cut is unlikely to impact their progress too much.
An argument sharpens itself just on the tip of Marcus' tongue, but he catches it before it can do more than that. Like maybe of the balances they've maintained so far, one of them is that they've suffered no real disagreement. But what he wants less than to be administered to is to be a liability.
That second thing won't go away, if it's true, at an insistence that he's fine. It just takes a moment to reconcile.
Taking off his shirt is only minorly awkward, choosing to favour against lifting his right arm and tugging the garment off the rest of the way down that sleeve. The prickle of cool in the air is a sort of relief, after a day of being buckled into all these layers. Older scars ribbon through skin, a weapon's rake across the other side of his ribs and nicked up the inner arm. Likely, there'd been no armor at all, that day.
Marcus pushes his shirt across to Flint's side, sweat stiff at the collar and bloodied and torn on one side. Moves, turning to sit facing away and bringing right arm around. There, sticky dried blood looks black on pale skin, and fresher, brighter rivulets leak down, slightly smeared, to his waist.
Too much of a mess to sight, but there's the evidence of where the gouge ends, dark and bruised, out of his reach.
The shirt's fucked. There's little point to being particular about whether or not more blood should be got on it. Identifying the cleanest portion of it in this light is as much an exercise of feel as it is sight, calloused fingertips working then length of a sleeve as he studies the geography of Marcus's back. The black crusting blood and the bruising. The tail of an old scar, and the wetter, brighter blood, and the sweat crinkled hair at the nape of Marcus's neck.
With a slosh of water into the (highly relatively) pristine shirt sleeve, Flint sets his hand directly there near this last point. It's a bracing touch. Square palm and firm fingers at the curve of shoulder and neck, thumb setting promptly against a line of muscle he suspects must be work sore and pressing there. It's possible that the shock of pressing the wet shirtsleeve over the bruised gash will come less sharply then.
"I hope you don't have a favorite color," he says, the set of his hands giving every indication that he means to sit a moment like this while the dark blood loosens under the wet sleeve and the fresh eats up into the fabric. "You're going to be all of them come morning."
(They don't have much between them, he is thinking. If it becomes absolutely necessary to maintain their pace, it won't be impossible to repack their kits and the tent in such a fashion that Marcus has less to carry. Only inconvenient. And potentially the least of his concern should they finds more Venatori in the lowlands. Marcus may be able to play the range if he chooses, but someone will have to close the distance.)
Marcus is thinking backwards rather than forwards, of the strike itself, having scarcely done so since it landed. That the attacker had slithered past his notice, and he'd let his defensive magics lapse. That perhaps it would have been the better thing to create distance, focus on keeping the Commander viable for combat and rain down terror from afar. Or perhaps he just should have been quicker.
And so on.
This loop of quiet thinking is interrupted at the bracing hold, a slight twitch suggesting it hadn't been expected. Flint's thumb sets against overworked muscle and the breath out of Marcus is audibly appreciative before he can stop it, head ducking as he braces for—yes, that, the familiar sting, which he does a better job at not reacting to.
Another quiet sound at that comment. Laugh-adjacent. Water trickles out translucent, rust-pink. The blood he'd caught on his fingers is already drying. "Sounds pretty," is dry, and on a slight delay as the seconds go by.
Doing the math, now, on what to do about it. Sewing or burning, if it seems to have dug too deeply to quiet on its own with stillness. Feels a human pulse of reluctance for these prospects, but stays quiet, awaiting verdict.
The low rumble of Flint's hummed reply is just this side of cynicism, though has little to no bearing on the stiff set of his thumb pressing there into the meat of Marcus's shoulder. There's a kind of thoughtless patience in that gesture and in the clasp of the wet cloth over the gash—a certain lack of finicky reservation that might produce more delicacy and grate more. He doesn't bother to count the beats in his head. Instead, he simply is aware of the pattern of Marcus's breathing and how it rises against the palm of his hand. At some point enough of that occurs that it seems correct to release his shoulder, wipe away the loosened grit of dry blood, and actually make a real assessment of the injury.
A series of fine, stinging probes. Another press of the sleeve, subsequently drawn back to study the speed at which the blood wells back up after—
"It should take a dressing," he says, closing the shirt sleeve back over the wound. The press of his hand is firm there. "But the edges are clean. I might stitch the start if you have the needle."
Between them, they might have enough bandaging to get something around Marcus to accomplish a wrap. But for his part, he's working off kit scavenged from a Venatori who apparently hadn't felt particularly moved to do his own mending.
Marcus closes his eyes through the quiet arrangement of twinges and stings—the peeling up of the damp linen, the prickle from the exposure of air, physical inspection, the return of contact and pressure. Staying still, where any flinch or twitch is minor and beyond conscious control, confined to minute muscle contraction while his sitting posture doesn't change.
A token glance back over his shoulder as Flint speaks. A deeper draw of breath under the now warm press of the sleeve.
"Aye," he says. "Alright. Hold there, a moment."
Which is warning for leaning aside, pulling his things closer. Well, everything is close; it's a tent. And even though that's so, it feels a little like the invisible borders within this small space have become murkier. Sure to snap back into place as soon as this is done, but the scent of his own blood is sharp and Flint's voice does not normally come from just here, at his shoulder. Perhaps it wouldn't feel as notable if it wasn't for
well, everything about them.
The item he retrieves is a small pieces of folded leather, something he threw into his pack a long time ago and only now and then checked if anything needed replacing. A straight needle, a curved needle, some catgut and twine. Being no kind of surgeon, he'd accepted the item some Satinalia ago (one of Sister Sara's ever practical gestures) with polite indifference; reflects, now, that this is what it was for, more than likely, to be handed over, which he does.
The press of his hand follows, his attention for the lower edge of the linen and what does or doesn't prickle past it in accordance with the pull of muscle and skin, the flex of the ribcage. There is something in it the whole arrangement that has sat wrong to his eye, though he hasn't yet puzzled out the exact motivation behind that prickling certainty. Something about—
He takes the folded leather packet, grunting 'Hold that steady,' as a means of surrendering the improvised compress in favor of picking through the little surgeon's kit unfolded across the crook of his knee. The lapse into quiet hangs heavier on this side of the tent than it had on the other; primed for the appearance of some bristled hackle, maybe. If he stabs Rowntree the wrong way with the needle and it elicits a complaint, there will be some impulse to repeat it.
—How surprisingly pale he is, he thinks once he has successfully threaded the hooked needle. That's what it is. Not from any particular shock of the gash, just unfreckled in a way that is easy to overlook under any more ordinary circumstances.
A touch at Marcus's elbow, firm too. "Here," callused fingers asserting the appropriate angle. "No higher."
A breath in sounds like it might carry complaint when its let out again, but doesn't. Marcus positions his arm as moved, then grips onto it with his other hand in an effort to keep it still. Knows some shift in biochemistry, heart beating a little firmer than before and nerves prickling down the back of his neck, all informed by the knowledge of what he's bracing for, which is not a small amount of pain.
The wind outside buffets the tent, sends a spray of water from a nearby tree striking the canvas outside. The lantern swings. The world is very dark and empty and wild around this little flimsy hut. This all feels so stupid.
Maybe he'd be more primed to hackle if not for steady hands, the kindness of practicality (or the other way around). That the other man is now holding something very sharp, and Marcus is concentrating on giving him free and ready access to injury. Still.
He doesn't quite think, in so many words, of how counter this feels to the habit of being on guard with James Flint, of shielding vulnerability, but a little beneath the surface—
There’s a joke in there somewhere that’s likely too obscure for present company to find funny. Something about maritime mending being broadly applied to skin and canvas both, or maybe the frequency with which sailors find themselves in need of repairs. But he says it in some matter of fact fashion that suggests—
Sure, maybe he does make a practice of it.
This, before Flint shifts up onto a knee and unhooks the lantern from its fixed point above them. It’s set in it close near Marcus’s hip. Better to have the light from under his hand and take advantage of the ground being more reliably stationary that the flapping tent canvas.
And then, having settled in behind him, there is no more delaying the thing. The wet linen is drawn away and set aside. The hand that replaces it is more subtle—balancing fingertips encouraging that first involuntary flinch be for that touch rather than the needle’s prick.
“Next time you find yourself cut off and wandering Marches backcountry, you might consider arranging to be with Derrica instead.” Is a joke, not a delay.
(But if it were, the hesitation to actually use the sharp gleaming needle would be a natural thing. And it would be obscured by the angle of their bodies and camouflaged by some shifting of the patient lay of Flint’s spare hand. It would be mastered in part by the blood that wells up out of the gash in a ribbon made wet and gleaming by the light.
Using the syllables of a pre-constructed question as his countdown rather than steeeling himself in any other fashion,) he asks, “Where’s the other scar from?”
There's still sort of a joke in there, and if nothing else, a sense of perspective. Like this is less favour and more perfunctory maintenance. Like he is, himself, equipment that was dinged in the course of work, that requires mending to continue to perform duties like rabbit catching and Venatori murder and carrying items. A split second musing that doesn't churn up resentment so much as take the sting out of needing any of this.
More stings to come. The instinctive flinch under Flint's hand is more like the twitch of horse flank from a bothering insect, almost isolated to that one spot. A breath in, and out at the comment on Derrica, something rueful in the sound of it.
Here, he might tell Flint to just get on with it. But then he does.
The sound out of Marcus sounds like it escapes tense muscle and up until now tightly controlled breathing, a short groan, chin tipping up. Thinks fast after what scar Flint means out of the desire for distraction, decides he must mean the one who is about to get its twin.
"Starkhaven," momentarily breathless, until he breathes, speaks again. "The first time."
Assuringly distant, then. It's been years.
"Ours wasn't peaceful, leaving. Me and a few others went to block a hall while the younger apprentices were being collected. We met resistance there. Learned fast, how to do it, having a frontline, and others in the back, away from the Silencing." A breath in, funneled out through his nose. Nearly meditative. "So there was one I tangled with. Knight-Lieutenant Renley. Got his sword up under my staff, caught my arm on withdraw. Ate through the last of a Barrier spell, I think."
Finishes there, question asked and answered, determining how far along that got them from where he can feel Flint's fingers through the oddly numbing radius of hurt.
Very little blood wells up to meet the needle or mark the passage of the catgut thread slithering after it. They are some stitches in already and already there is the sense of the cut being discouraged. Nevermind the fingerprints he's left on the surrounding skin.
"Bad luck for the Knight-Lieutenant." He isn't finished. The set of his fingers would imply he isn't close either, but what he says almost as an afterthought—some low rumbled aside—is, "Nearly there."
He believes Flint's aside more than his sense of where his fingers are, the location of the next pierce and tug. It feels tight and sore but he has felt it before when stitches are more misaligned, pulled too closely, and trusts these ones will ease.
Thinking of that, that first time he'd used magic to hurt someone. It had been easy. Bad luck, to be born to the wrong decade, and assigned to the wrong Circle, and to strike out at the wrong mage.
Maybe. Marcus hadn't felt like a very proficient warrior, in the moment.
"Bad luck we hadn't very many healers in our ranks," he says. His voice is quiet gravel, half mumbled where his chin has found a place to rest against the raised fold of his elbow. "Or sailors."
He can do jokes too. Even, or especially, under duress.
His answering sniff has some slanted, humored edge to it—a dry reflexive not really a laugh that flakes easily off him. Hold that thought until after you see what's been done to you, Marcus, being the very generalized sentiment.
"Or seamstresses."
This is an ugly patch job. Someone back in the Riftwatch infirmary or the laundry may have strong words for the Commander should they have the opportunity to observe his handiwork. That there will be some days before there's any risk of either is—
What it is, mostly.
It takes both hands to whip a knot into the catgut. His belt knife to clip its tail.
"Keep your arm there." A blunter instruction. In short order, the needle has been hooked back into it's leather case and the waterskin is uncapped again. The shirt returns, bundled below the gash to catch the excess water as the pinched red line is flushed clear.
"The end won't take a stitch. But the air may do you some good if it starts to go off."
Responding remark adjacent to how handsome that patch of him still is or is not is mostly met with a heavier exhale, not particularly pointed. He won't himself get the opportunity to make his full and fair assessment until they are somewhere with a mirror, just the hint of where Flint's stitching progresses around his torso.
Follows instruction, even as tension releases itself in his muscles, a deliberately stretch at the neck to loosen more of it from where it's gathered along his spine, shoulders.
He makes a sound at that, grunting agreement or comprehension. Here, he can glance to Flint. Had mostly kept his focus rigidly forward throughout, and so the other man had been the quiet rumble of his voice, touches, limited data. There's a quick study made, now, as he says,
A serious attentiveness, not very different from the way he'd deliberately seen to calculations on that bit of scrap paper. For a moment as he works the cap back onto the water skin and moves the re-wetted shirt back into place across the gash, hand firm, the closeness of the space isn't at all strange. The tent is small. They have been making their way along in one another's company for some time. This—the scuff of hands and the splash of water and careful invasion into that purposefully maintained arm's length separation—is all very practically minded.
And then his attention flicks up, catches Marcus's eye, and the compression of that space instantly thickens under direct observation. No, actually. There is something notably transgressive against the bristling norm in having shifted over by these degrees and these more plain points of contact, and he is as aware of it as he is the stripe of grit on the back of Marcus's neck that must be from where the edge of his collar sits and has ground the atmospheric dust kicked up by the landslide into the skin.
"You're welcome." Has the burr of a challenge in it. So this is irregular. So what? Did he really expect him to sit and pretend like it was none of his business while just a fraction removed as Marcus dripped blood? Don't be absurd.
A rasp of wind pulls sharply at the tent canvas. But having been removed to the dirt, the cast of the lantern light remains very steady.
But does it matter? Later, Flint will run the edge of a thumbnail beneath the other to dislodge what could either be dirt or Marcus' blood, dried to rust. Particles, molecular mingling, made all the closer from the oppressive damp of the air. Fingerprints left behind and rinsed away. Marcus, for a moment, looks
not amused, exactly. Registering challenge, considering it. Considering Flint, a frank kind of appraisal made at closer proximity than normal.
"Don't move," then, a directive and request, and he raises his hands. They are rough where expected, skin more leathery where movement of mage staff grinds against the meat of his palms, the edge near a knuckle. He makes a small elegant maneuver that is more practiced than natural or innate, and traces of magic wrap around the ends of fingers. His opposite hand reaches back.
At the edge of Flint's hand, knuckles, there's a prickle of cold where Marcus only barely avoids touching him, instead placing his fingertips on the edge of wet fabric. Cold again, spreading beneath Flint's palm and by extension the wound he is administering as it frosts through damp fabric. Chilling and thereby soothing aggravated skin, and maybe it won't swell and pull against thread.
Marcus had lowered his focus in concentration, but picks it back up again.
The linen turns crisp under the palm. Nevermind Marcus's direction. There appears to be little in the way of an instinctive urge to flinch back from the working of magic; its point is to serve, after all. The pressure of his hand and the focused point of his attention both hold steady.
(The compress should stay thus for a short while. Then they will have to find something to bind Marcus's side up with and so be done with it.)
Somewhere in that murky space between them, Flint's spare hand tucks the unused thread back into the leather packet and folds it closed. He says, "I imagine it all came more naturally the next time you met a Templar."
He expects it, and makes no attempt to hide the fact he looks for it—a wind up of tension, a withdraw, a more subtle frosting over than the kind under the Commander's hand. It isn't there.
Which doesn't have to mean much. Flint is a man of Tevinter. Flint is Flint.
But it'd have meant something, flinching.
A flicker in focus, momentary introspection—recalling half-mumbled scar story, apparently listened to—but keyed into the present. "Mm," is agreement, first, gravel. "It had to."
Subtle movement, then. A careful rearrangement, a shifted leg, and now they are looking at each other more forward on than a moment ago, something a little like an answer to implicit challenge from a moment ago, of the irregularity. There is also an irregularity of being touched, so, and keeping his hands to himself.
It isn't a tender impulse. There is still a trace of moisture down the back of his neck where his skin had prickled from the effort of not simply shuddering through that whole procedure.
That small shift. The squared heel of his palm following it, some downward twitch of the chin that narrows the accessibly broad angles of his face by degrees. But so long as they are facing one another more directly—
With his spare hand, Flint offers the little folded surgery kit back to him.
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no subject
(No he isn't; fuck the south and its miserable wet, grey springs.)
Sitting on what is arguably his side of these close quarters (although the tent isn't really designed for two people to loiter inside so much as it is for two people to sleep in), Flint has a crinkled piece of parchment laid across the calf of his boot. The soft scratch of a pencil nub makes for a dulled, consistent rhythm under the sharper staccato of clinking buckles and leather fastenings coming unbuckled and unfastened. Near midday, he'd halted their progress to take some measurements of shadows cast by a copse of reedy trees. Now, a number of hours later, Flint is doing the math between those figures kept in his head and the snatches of constellations he'd been able to observe while pitching the tent in the dark. There is an image of a regional chart stored in his head, imprinted there by hours of meticulous study long before their little raiding party had ever left the Gallows—
"I suspect we'll have rain tomorrow," he says without looking up.
They've been lucky it's held out this long.
no subject
But Flint says that, about the rain, and he isn't looking forward to it. He grunts.
Slithers one last strip of leather through buckle and removes the breastplate. There is a fresh scrape across it that Marcus doesn't remember receiving, giving it quick inspection before he lays it aside atop the other pieces he's removed.
A hand curves around his side, under his other arm, blindly questing after that twinge while he looks down to the piece of paper that has Flint's attention. Curious, quiet, observing incomprehensible pencil scratches, before speaking up, "Do you know where we are?"
no subject
But all afternoon he'd watched the clouds building themselves up into their slow moving pillars. So that seems unlikely. And if it's as wet as all that, they've little reason not to hold here in the hills with the added benefit of tree cover. Tracking out over open territory in foul weather will be slow going, and risk exposure to any lookouts in the area who might have their heads on a swivel.
This conclusion seems to satisfy his own calculations (or vice versa) for the pencil comes up from the page shortly thereafter. Dispensing with lingering unnecessarily over the figures, the page is crinkled back into a folded shape suitable for safekeeping in a pocket.
"If it's already turning come morning, we'll chance staying here to see about setting snares or whatever other game can be taken in. Otherwise, we may find ourselves thin on rations dependent on how far we've fallen off to the south once we do manage to cut out."
no subject
"Alright," he says.
Not new, this, just not lifelong. Waiting for weather to pass, navigating the invisible line between moving through the wilderness and then finding oneself surviving in it. "I doubt any waters up here would be still enough to fish in," he mutters, thinking now to the day ahead as he withdraws his hand to check the inevitable dark smear of old blood.
Or. His fingers could instead be shinily coated with fresh bright red, as they are now, and his next breath out is one of surprise. Irritation.
He sort of holds that hand out to the side—instinct, to keep it off his clothes, despite having definitely bled into them already, and for who knows how long—as he turns to look at his belongings, internal inventory of what he has that might solve this issue. A penchant for healing magics was left behind a long time ago.
no subject
Flint, slow to withdraw his hand back out of his pocket, looks from the wet gleam of blood rendered dark by the firelight to the discarded plate crowded in with them. It's a judgemental look in the measuring sense—some part of him involuntarily beginning to make a calculation while the rest of him reserves the right to ignore whatever result is produced until otherwise required.
"Alright?"
They've both been admirably well behaved collaborators without having to sacrifice the pretense of self-reliance these past miles. So that isn't an offer in the sense of an extended hand, merely a check of barometer. No need to alter this quietly equitable arrangement if it isn't necessary.
(But it's going to be annoying if they have to account for Marcus bleeding through his clothes in addition to the rest.)
no subject
Mage armor is not particularly well-suited for close combat, even with its pieces of plate. Designed, optimistically, for a warrior who operates at more range than what Marcus tends to stray into, permitting agility over defense. Still, it's a lot of metal and leather to still have gotten nicked that badly.
The sound he makes in response is non-committal, a probably. He remembers, he thinks, the edge of a blade having slid past his defenses from his blind spot, catching under leather before he'd withdrawn in a rush of smoke and cinder, and then that person had died.
Impatient, Marcus opens the lacings at his shirt collar, then goes and peels bloodied fabric up off his side on his way to removing the garment, now keeping a firm lock on any unbidden hisses of complaint. There, a gash at an awkward spot high up on his ribcage and dug further towards his back, an obvious attempt at a killing blow that couldn't get the angle right. Blood, dry and wet, makes a mess of trying to gauge its depth so he gingerly feels what he can reach with his fingers.
"Feels shallow," he reports, at a clip. "Just aggravated it."
no subject
To call his examination skeptical would be overstating the thing, but there's a degree of dissatisfaction there in Flint's face. Maybe it's for the smear of bright blood with the darker dried stuff, or for the way that Marcus readily twists to get at it and potentially motivated some further frooze ooze, or for the simple general inconvenience; regardless, it lingers as he reaches to sort his waterskin from the sparse gear they have in their possession.
It will rain tomorrow. They can afford to be certain.
"Let's see it," comes with the pop of the waterskin's cap and a gesture. A tilt of the broken. Turn round. "Give me your shirt."
If he can actually have it off, the cut is unlikely to impact their progress too much.
no subject
That second thing won't go away, if it's true, at an insistence that he's fine. It just takes a moment to reconcile.
Taking off his shirt is only minorly awkward, choosing to favour against lifting his right arm and tugging the garment off the rest of the way down that sleeve. The prickle of cool in the air is a sort of relief, after a day of being buckled into all these layers. Older scars ribbon through skin, a weapon's rake across the other side of his ribs and nicked up the inner arm. Likely, there'd been no armor at all, that day.
Marcus pushes his shirt across to Flint's side, sweat stiff at the collar and bloodied and torn on one side. Moves, turning to sit facing away and bringing right arm around. There, sticky dried blood looks black on pale skin, and fresher, brighter rivulets leak down, slightly smeared, to his waist.
Too much of a mess to sight, but there's the evidence of where the gouge ends, dark and bruised, out of his reach.
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With a slosh of water into the (highly relatively) pristine shirt sleeve, Flint sets his hand directly there near this last point. It's a bracing touch. Square palm and firm fingers at the curve of shoulder and neck, thumb setting promptly against a line of muscle he suspects must be work sore and pressing there. It's possible that the shock of pressing the wet shirtsleeve over the bruised gash will come less sharply then.
"I hope you don't have a favorite color," he says, the set of his hands giving every indication that he means to sit a moment like this while the dark blood loosens under the wet sleeve and the fresh eats up into the fabric. "You're going to be all of them come morning."
(They don't have much between them, he is thinking. If it becomes absolutely necessary to maintain their pace, it won't be impossible to repack their kits and the tent in such a fashion that Marcus has less to carry. Only inconvenient. And potentially the least of his concern should they finds more Venatori in the lowlands. Marcus may be able to play the range if he chooses, but someone will have to close the distance.)
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And so on.
This loop of quiet thinking is interrupted at the bracing hold, a slight twitch suggesting it hadn't been expected. Flint's thumb sets against overworked muscle and the breath out of Marcus is audibly appreciative before he can stop it, head ducking as he braces for—yes, that, the familiar sting, which he does a better job at not reacting to.
Another quiet sound at that comment. Laugh-adjacent. Water trickles out translucent, rust-pink. The blood he'd caught on his fingers is already drying. "Sounds pretty," is dry, and on a slight delay as the seconds go by.
Doing the math, now, on what to do about it. Sewing or burning, if it seems to have dug too deeply to quiet on its own with stillness. Feels a human pulse of reluctance for these prospects, but stays quiet, awaiting verdict.
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A series of fine, stinging probes. Another press of the sleeve, subsequently drawn back to study the speed at which the blood wells back up after—
"It should take a dressing," he says, closing the shirt sleeve back over the wound. The press of his hand is firm there. "But the edges are clean. I might stitch the start if you have the needle."
Between them, they might have enough bandaging to get something around Marcus to accomplish a wrap. But for his part, he's working off kit scavenged from a Venatori who apparently hadn't felt particularly moved to do his own mending.
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A token glance back over his shoulder as Flint speaks. A deeper draw of breath under the now warm press of the sleeve.
"Aye," he says. "Alright. Hold there, a moment."
Which is warning for leaning aside, pulling his things closer. Well, everything is close; it's a tent. And even though that's so, it feels a little like the invisible borders within this small space have become murkier. Sure to snap back into place as soon as this is done, but the scent of his own blood is sharp and Flint's voice does not normally come from just here, at his shoulder. Perhaps it wouldn't feel as notable if it wasn't for
well, everything about them.
The item he retrieves is a small pieces of folded leather, something he threw into his pack a long time ago and only now and then checked if anything needed replacing. A straight needle, a curved needle, some catgut and twine. Being no kind of surgeon, he'd accepted the item some Satinalia ago (one of Sister Sara's ever practical gestures) with polite indifference; reflects, now, that this is what it was for, more than likely, to be handed over, which he does.
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He takes the folded leather packet, grunting 'Hold that steady,' as a means of surrendering the improvised compress in favor of picking through the little surgeon's kit unfolded across the crook of his knee. The lapse into quiet hangs heavier on this side of the tent than it had on the other; primed for the appearance of some bristled hackle, maybe. If he stabs Rowntree the wrong way with the needle and it elicits a complaint, there will be some impulse to repeat it.
—How surprisingly pale he is, he thinks once he has successfully threaded the hooked needle. That's what it is. Not from any particular shock of the gash, just unfreckled in a way that is easy to overlook under any more ordinary circumstances.
A touch at Marcus's elbow, firm too. "Here," callused fingers asserting the appropriate angle. "No higher."
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The wind outside buffets the tent, sends a spray of water from a nearby tree striking the canvas outside. The lantern swings. The world is very dark and empty and wild around this little flimsy hut. This all feels so stupid.
Maybe he'd be more primed to hackle if not for steady hands, the kindness of practicality (or the other way around). That the other man is now holding something very sharp, and Marcus is concentrating on giving him free and ready access to injury. Still.
He doesn't quite think, in so many words, of how counter this feels to the habit of being on guard with James Flint, of shielding vulnerability, but a little beneath the surface—
"Done this often?"
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There’s a joke in there somewhere that’s likely too obscure for present company to find funny. Something about maritime mending being broadly applied to skin and canvas both, or maybe the frequency with which sailors find themselves in need of repairs. But he says it in some matter of fact fashion that suggests—
Sure, maybe he does make a practice of it.
This, before Flint shifts up onto a knee and unhooks the lantern from its fixed point above them. It’s set in it close near Marcus’s hip. Better to have the light from under his hand and take advantage of the ground being more reliably stationary that the flapping tent canvas.
And then, having settled in behind him, there is no more delaying the thing. The wet linen is drawn away and set aside. The hand that replaces it is more subtle—balancing fingertips encouraging that first involuntary flinch be for that touch rather than the needle’s prick.
“Next time you find yourself cut off and wandering Marches backcountry, you might consider arranging to be with Derrica instead.” Is a joke, not a delay.
(But if it were, the hesitation to actually use the sharp gleaming needle would be a natural thing. And it would be obscured by the angle of their bodies and camouflaged by some shifting of the patient lay of Flint’s spare hand. It would be mastered in part by the blood that wells up out of the gash in a ribbon made wet and gleaming by the light.
Using the syllables of a pre-constructed question as his countdown rather than steeeling himself in any other fashion,) he asks, “Where’s the other scar from?”
From. The needle bites.
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More stings to come. The instinctive flinch under Flint's hand is more like the twitch of horse flank from a bothering insect, almost isolated to that one spot. A breath in, and out at the comment on Derrica, something rueful in the sound of it.
Here, he might tell Flint to just get on with it. But then he does.
The sound out of Marcus sounds like it escapes tense muscle and up until now tightly controlled breathing, a short groan, chin tipping up. Thinks fast after what scar Flint means out of the desire for distraction, decides he must mean the one who is about to get its twin.
"Starkhaven," momentarily breathless, until he breathes, speaks again. "The first time."
Assuringly distant, then. It's been years.
"Ours wasn't peaceful, leaving. Me and a few others went to block a hall while the younger apprentices were being collected. We met resistance there. Learned fast, how to do it, having a frontline, and others in the back, away from the Silencing." A breath in, funneled out through his nose. Nearly meditative. "So there was one I tangled with. Knight-Lieutenant Renley. Got his sword up under my staff, caught my arm on withdraw. Ate through the last of a Barrier spell, I think."
Finishes there, question asked and answered, determining how far along that got them from where he can feel Flint's fingers through the oddly numbing radius of hurt.
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"Bad luck for the Knight-Lieutenant." He isn't finished. The set of his fingers would imply he isn't close either, but what he says almost as an afterthought—some low rumbled aside—is, "Nearly there."
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Thinking of that, that first time he'd used magic to hurt someone. It had been easy. Bad luck, to be born to the wrong decade, and assigned to the wrong Circle, and to strike out at the wrong mage.
Maybe. Marcus hadn't felt like a very proficient warrior, in the moment.
"Bad luck we hadn't very many healers in our ranks," he says. His voice is quiet gravel, half mumbled where his chin has found a place to rest against the raised fold of his elbow. "Or sailors."
He can do jokes too. Even, or especially, under duress.
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"Or seamstresses."
This is an ugly patch job. Someone back in the Riftwatch infirmary or the laundry may have strong words for the Commander should they have the opportunity to observe his handiwork. That there will be some days before there's any risk of either is—
What it is, mostly.
It takes both hands to whip a knot into the catgut. His belt knife to clip its tail.
"Keep your arm there." A blunter instruction. In short order, the needle has been hooked back into it's leather case and the waterskin is uncapped again. The shirt returns, bundled below the gash to catch the excess water as the pinched red line is flushed clear.
"The end won't take a stitch. But the air may do you some good if it starts to go off."
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Follows instruction, even as tension releases itself in his muscles, a deliberately stretch at the neck to loosen more of it from where it's gathered along his spine, shoulders.
He makes a sound at that, grunting agreement or comprehension. Here, he can glance to Flint. Had mostly kept his focus rigidly forward throughout, and so the other man had been the quiet rumble of his voice, touches, limited data. There's a quick study made, now, as he says,
"Thank you."
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A serious attentiveness, not very different from the way he'd deliberately seen to calculations on that bit of scrap paper. For a moment as he works the cap back onto the water skin and moves the re-wetted shirt back into place across the gash, hand firm, the closeness of the space isn't at all strange. The tent is small. They have been making their way along in one another's company for some time. This—the scuff of hands and the splash of water and careful invasion into that purposefully maintained arm's length separation—is all very practically minded.
And then his attention flicks up, catches Marcus's eye, and the compression of that space instantly thickens under direct observation. No, actually. There is something notably transgressive against the bristling norm in having shifted over by these degrees and these more plain points of contact, and he is as aware of it as he is the stripe of grit on the back of Marcus's neck that must be from where the edge of his collar sits and has ground the atmospheric dust kicked up by the landslide into the skin.
"You're welcome." Has the burr of a challenge in it. So this is irregular. So what? Did he really expect him to sit and pretend like it was none of his business while just a fraction removed as Marcus dripped blood? Don't be absurd.
A rasp of wind pulls sharply at the tent canvas. But having been removed to the dirt, the cast of the lantern light remains very steady.
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But does it matter? Later, Flint will run the edge of a thumbnail beneath the other to dislodge what could either be dirt or Marcus' blood, dried to rust. Particles, molecular mingling, made all the closer from the oppressive damp of the air. Fingerprints left behind and rinsed away. Marcus, for a moment, looks
not amused, exactly. Registering challenge, considering it. Considering Flint, a frank kind of appraisal made at closer proximity than normal.
"Don't move," then, a directive and request, and he raises his hands. They are rough where expected, skin more leathery where movement of mage staff grinds against the meat of his palms, the edge near a knuckle. He makes a small elegant maneuver that is more practiced than natural or innate, and traces of magic wrap around the ends of fingers. His opposite hand reaches back.
At the edge of Flint's hand, knuckles, there's a prickle of cold where Marcus only barely avoids touching him, instead placing his fingertips on the edge of wet fabric. Cold again, spreading beneath Flint's palm and by extension the wound he is administering as it frosts through damp fabric. Chilling and thereby soothing aggravated skin, and maybe it won't swell and pull against thread.
Marcus had lowered his focus in concentration, but picks it back up again.
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(The compress should stay thus for a short while. Then they will have to find something to bind Marcus's side up with and so be done with it.)
Somewhere in that murky space between them, Flint's spare hand tucks the unused thread back into the leather packet and folds it closed. He says, "I imagine it all came more naturally the next time you met a Templar."
Pain is usually instructive.
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Which doesn't have to mean much. Flint is a man of Tevinter. Flint is Flint.
But it'd have meant something, flinching.
A flicker in focus, momentary introspection—recalling half-mumbled scar story, apparently listened to—but keyed into the present. "Mm," is agreement, first, gravel. "It had to."
Subtle movement, then. A careful rearrangement, a shifted leg, and now they are looking at each other more forward on than a moment ago, something a little like an answer to implicit challenge from a moment ago, of the irregularity. There is also an irregularity of being touched, so, and keeping his hands to himself.
It isn't a tender impulse. There is still a trace of moisture down the back of his neck where his skin had prickled from the effort of not simply shuddering through that whole procedure.
"Do you want to know about all that?" is curious.
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With his spare hand, Flint offers the little folded surgery kit back to him.
"If you believe it matters."
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