Chapter Text
It was galling to admit, but Louis had become soft, as mayor of Oakhurst.
Over a hundred years it had taken for him to reach maturity as a vampire, and every moment of it had been a burning indignity— but he had thought he was finally done. Being soft.
His mind had gained experience throughout his century long adolescence, but he did not have the cognitive ability a grown vampire might have possessed for quite some time afterwards. It had taken him decades to learn how to read, much slower than a human child might have learned. His coordination had not come until his limbs had finished lengthening, and his baby teeth had been a trial to lose. Everything had been slow when children were meant to grow as fast as possible, and it had been a constant reminder to himself of what had been done to him.
For him.
When he was finally grown enough to leave his mothers coven he had done so gladly.
People grasped on to things they loved, but sometimes they grasped too tight. Louis had not asked to be turned. But what's done was done, and he could only be grateful now in retrospect for the opportunity his vampirism afforded. The care he was able to take for the town, the sights he had seen in his travels— meeting Owen. Still, his relationship with his mother had been… complicated, right up until her death.
Louis hadn't ever taken a fledgling or started his own coven like he had expected when he left. That same… choice that had been taken from him, had been a glaring reminder that he had a responsibility to humans. They were sustenance, life. Humans were good clothing, movies, books. Humans grew crops that kept the cities and cattle and sheep fed. Humans were important, and the moment he treated them as nothing more than a number was the moment he became that which he hated so much. He never wanted to take the ability to decide from someone, and had not been afforded the opportunity besides.
Eternity was a long time and you could not trust someone to know what that truly meant.
(Louis hadn't known, after all.)
Louis kept to his morals the same way some would keep religion. It was easy for that care to fall into patronization, or disinterest. He had to be careful, to walk a thin and barbed line bordered by rules made only to himself.
He'd learned to defend his territory, after a few centuries. Oakhurst was a large area for a single vampire to keep, but it wasn't particularly wanted by any other larger coven. Most covens preferred larger cities, or warmer climates, and had no interest in the homegrown agriculture and husbandry that Louis fed himself on— any other vampire would have burned through the human population years ago, but Louis was a more careful custodian. Their kind were rare besides, and Louis had only had to rebuff a few attempts over the centuries to take his territory from him.
The first time had been a challenge. The fifth, less so. By the time Louis' hair was white and his eyes were red, he no longer had to repel attackers. They came to his door in the town and asked permission to pass like they had his mother centuries past, and they ate nothing but cows and sheep as they did so. Louis' town was safe after a hundred years of work…
And he had grown soft with complacency.
He'd been so busy protecting from supernatural threats, he had not considered the human. Despite his discipline, despite his care, he'd let human concerns fall beneath his regard, and it had killed him in the end.
Or just about.
After all, no other vampires wanted his territory, but humans could be just as greedy. Just as vindictive. Just as worth defending against, although he tended them like a helpless flock— there were wolves among them, and he had been too blinded by hubris to see it.
Louis had grown soft, and now he was suffering for it.
By the time the pyre had taken off the first layer of skin, most humans would have been dead. Louis knew that. There were things humans could not survive, and he felt confident in saying that this would be one of them. The pain was worse than anything he had ever felt, worse than his turning— nerves flayed, singing with agony, and every time he thought he had reached a new height of pain, it would increase again.
He begged. He screamed. There was no dignity, in the fire, and his pride was a forgotten broken thing— but still, not a single person stepped forward to help him. People he had seen grown, children he had helped cross the street, even the butcher, who he had helped keep in business, and given a loan without any expectation of recompense. They all stood, and watched, as he was dragged from his home. Bound. Accused.
Louis had no coven, but he had fooled himself into caring.
Once the fire had reached fat and muscle, most of the nerves were gone. He was wrapped in a cocoon of ice and fire, all of it burning, parts of his skin not able to feel the pain any longer, parts of his skin gone. There was an icy burning numbness on the ravaged portions of his extremities that was almost worse than the burning. It was as if Louis was being wiped clean from the face of the earth, bit by bit, the red hot and choking smoke finding entrance to his lungs through his gasping, retching, screaming. He could not stop, although it was only killing him quicker.
His chest was full of fire— he felt as if he was burning from the inside out.
Louis' eyes went quickly after that, the heat boiling them out of the sockets, skin so swollen and blackened that at first he had not known when it happened. The last thing he saw was his own burning feet, curling and cracking into the red hot coals beneath him.
Better that be his last sight, he thought, than the hateful, twisted faces in the crowd. The children on their parents shoulders, the streamers hanging from the tents.
(A fair, had been coming to town. He was going to take Owen, when he woke.)
Louis heard the cracking of wood as loud as a pistol shot between his cracked and hoarse screaming. He was blind, burning. His limbs had broken in his thrashing to try and get free of the silver chains.
(And hadn't that been telling? That they had bound him with silver? It was his own fault, he knew that now. Soft. Complacent.)
The most horrible thing however, to being burned alive, was how Louis never lost consciousness.
The bible spoke of hell, and Louis knew there was no light. Just burning. He prayed to whatever god would still hear him that if he died it would stop, but in his frenzied terror he thought that perhaps he would pass straight from one inferno into another, and never know. An eternity of this would break him, he had already broken, any more and he would be gibbering. Mad.
But eventually, the flames cooled.
He could no longer make noise, by the time the fire began to die. He had lost all sense of time, no heart to beat to keep track, no way to see the passage of stars crossing the night sky, or the setting of the sun. It had been almost lunch, when they came for him. He had been doing paperwork, in the cool dark refuge of his office.
His throat moved, still screaming, although no sound came out. His throat was burnt shut, his lungs charred, incapable of moving air in or out of his ruined body. He was a corpse.
It had to be night by now. He could feel it, somehow.
Louis went away from the body, tied to the pyre. He did not want to feel what he had lost— the skin, the muscle, the wet bloody pain of things exposed that had no business seeing the light of day. He was flayed, crucified, bare. He knew what people meant by exquisite pain, because truly he felt as if he had reached a state that was so purely inhuman, that he did not think he would ever reach it again. Any more, and he would die. He already felt as if he had. If the catholic saints had reached a fraction of this pain, he had no doubt that they had reached divinity in some capacity, as the clergy claimed.
So Louis left his body, removed his mind. He thought of that same cool dark office they had dragged him from. He thought of Owen being there as he was on occasion. Sitting and whittling with a towel at his feet to catch the shavings, laughing or commenting on occasion as Louis spoke of his work with him.
He knew what people meant now, when they said someone's laughter sounded like music. Owen's voice was hoarse, low. Angry, sometimes. But when he laughed, it was filled with such unrestrained delight that the first time Louis had heard it he had stared in blinking amazement. He had been fond of Owen of course, but…
That was the moment that love took root.
That's what Louis thought of. Not the cracked bones, and charred flesh, or the soundless roar in his ears of things damaged beyond sensing. He thought of laughter, like music, broken only by the delicate tick tick tick of the grandfather clock in Louis' office.
He was not here, on the pyre. He was moving a body, that was not his. A puppet, dragged on tangled strings.
Louis had one arm left that would bend when he willed it, although the hurt when he did so made stars burst supernova bright in the dark behind his blind eyes.
But some driving instinct told Louis that there was something. Something in front of him that would help. Some pulsing awareness that had nothing to do with sight, and hardly a thing to do with smell. The soft tissue of his face was so burnt that he could not smell anything regardless, but he knew there was something ahead that he needed. It would fix him, if he could find it.
No sight, no smell, no touch besides pain licking along his muscles and nerves, and barely any hearing, as Louis dragged himself off of the pyre. But there was some sense pulling him along. It wasn't the quicksilver outline of echolocation, but it was enough for him to have an awareness of the cobble beneath him, of the smoldering ashes behind him.
There was no logic, and no rational thought. Just animal reasoning, and the resignation of someone dying.
Louis dragged himself, and he began to drink.
"What's your name?" the human asked, as he busied himself wrapping a bandage around his arm. Muscled— surprisingly so, for his apparent age and vocation.
Louis was assuming he was a doctor, of course. Judging by the bag of utensils he stowed below Louis' line of sight, and the deft way he cut the end of the bandage with a sharp blade, and tucked it into itself. He had never seen the sort of white smock the man was wearing, but he did not know how long it had been since he had been burned, and gone to sleep.
It could have been ten years. It could have been a thousand.
"… where are we? …Owen…" Louis' eyes were heavy. He could not keep them open, and struggled, the taste of blood heavy and rich as velvet in his mouth. If his eyes shut, he feared they would not open again. He had not fought sleep like this since he was a fledgling, curled in his mothers lap, or his parents bed between the two.
(He had done quite a bit of sleeping, as a child.)
"…We are in the forest around Oakhurst. A crypt," and Louis supposed that was right. His senses were dulled, and he was weak, but he could hear the sound bouncing against the walls, see the stone and marble and the glow of the beacon behind the human. "I do not know where Owen is—"
"… you…" Louis swallowed, cursing his dry throat. He sounded like a stranger, voice hoarse and low and as crackling as the flames that had ravaged it. "You know… Owen?…"
"… not so much, no. He has kept himself separate, from ah. The town. I am assuming… he is a vampire, like yourself?" and Louis could hear the leading edge to the question.
Louis opened his eyes long enough to look at the human, vision blurry. His right eye was still blind, only the faintest hints of dark and light passing through it like the wavering flicker of flames.
The human had short dark hair peppered with silver, jaw shadowed with stubble and face wan with exhaustion, and stress. His eyes were a daytime green, the right one covered with a monocle or jewelers glass of some sort. Between the two heavy furrowed brows ran a thick painful looking scar, ridged and healed and pulling the nose slightly askew.
He did not look angry. Or frightened. Louis felt pathetic, and grateful, and felt the burn of tears he could not afford to cry. He felt… dizzy. Blurry.
"… name?" Louis tried, losing the battle, and letting his eyes fall shut, as much to stop the onset of tears as it was to let his eyes rest. He still had his hearing, although it made his head hurt more than it already did to note the bounce of sound off of solid objects. Every step as the human came closer burned bright in his mind, snapshots of the crypt, of the human reaching down and putting the bandages away. Of him hesitating, before coming closer, and kneeling at Louis' grim and stony bedside.
"My name? It's Legundo. Doctor Viktor Legundo," the human hesitated, and Louis managed to crack his eyes open enough to see the hesitation written there. An unblinking gaze, as if weighing some decision. "May I take your vitals?"
Vitals? He assumed that meant… well, he wasn't sure. But the Doctor had fed him. He knew Owen. "…Mm," Louis said, his chin twitching just slightly in a nod, and he let his eyes drift shut again. Thick scarred fingertips came to rest there on his throat, burning hot against cold skin. Louis sighed at the relief it brought, pressing against it like a cat. Like he might Owen, and he missed him so much, that he felt a sire call spill out of him, loud and bright from somewhere deep in his chest.
The touch paused, as if startled, but Louis did not mind. "My name is Louis… Louis Legrange…" he said. It took a moment, to remember.
Louis could hear Legundo swallow, throat clicking, but his fingers stayed gentle as he tilted Louis' chin, checked his blind eye. Louis hardly felt it— or perhaps his sense of pain was so skewed that he would no longer know what hurt felt like. But his stomach was warm, from blood, and there were chemicals in his brain telling him that this was safe. The place he was resting was soft, and smelled of Owen, and him, and he had to resist the urge to turn his head and mouth at the Doctor's wrist so close to his teeth. Not to bite, just to feel.
"…Are… are you alright?" Legundo asked, his hand moving to Louis' good eye and checking there. He had to lift the lid, and Louis frowned in sleepy protest. "Your pupils are… large."
"…was hungry," Louis managed to explain, and then shook his head with a wince. The pain of speaking pierced the languid warmth he felt, and Legundo nodded in agreement.
"Don't speak, I will try to stick to yes or no questions— nothing invasive," the man felt necessary to add. Louis was reluctantly charmed.
He had been burned. Burned at the stake. He did not know how to feel, yet. But regardless of his feelings on being prone on his back, with this man twice his size kneeled disarmingly next to him, it wasn't as if he could do anything about it. And still, the man apologized as if Louis was in position to take offense.
He was naked for goodness sake, beneath the fur.
He felt like he was dreaming. Perhaps he was. Perhaps he had died on the fire, and this cool dark place that smelled of Owen and warm fresh human willingly given, wasn't the hell he had feared.
But then he heard something.
A call, and Louis turned his head, the pain blinding as he pulled something inside his neck not done healing— but. That was Owen. The Doctor did not hear it but before he could comment or admonish him, Louis called. Another sire call, desperate. Legundo said something, surprised, and tried to keep Louis down without hurting him, as Louis tried to heave himself forward. Off the stone, off of the warm furs, toward the distant chirp so high and faint it was barely audible. Distant, but getting closer.
The tears he had tried to keep at bay fell. Owen, that was Owen, he was alive, he was well, he was calling to him. His fledgling! His love!
"Please, sir, Louis—" Legundo said, and his hands were large enough that there was no single point of pressure to hurt Louis' raw and healing skin, as he half caught, half pressed Louis back into the bed. "You cannot walk, I hardly think you could crawl at the moment, please. I can help you, if you would just—"
A small dark shape flitted into the crypt. Louis could hear it, the flutter of leathery wings, and he shouted. It hurt something deep inside him to do it, his throat seizing, but the joy was overwhelming.
He thought perhaps Owen might have been hurt. He remembered… he felt Owen. Heard him, after the fire. He had seen the vague outline of him, before sleep had taken him, lit from behind like an angel, by something bright.
But anything might have happened since then. Louis was not there to take care of him, and the sorrow caused his shoulders to shake, weeping silently as he reached out to the small bat that did one circle, then two of the crypt.
Legundo noticed as well and swore, gently pushing Louis back onto the furs, although on his side now so he could look desperately at the bat. Small, and dark, with a reddish undercoat beneath the sable brown fur, and small eyes as bright and dark as the buttons on a stuffed bear.
Oh, he was beautiful.
Louis' own bat was pale, colorless. Not quite white, and not quite gold, and he had always felt unnatural even as he showed himself to Owen one summer night… before. Louis did not like to think it was a defect, but there were not many of his bloodline, nor many who had been turned as he had been. He could not know what was normal, and what was… not, about his coloring. His shape. His conformation, or proclivities.
Owen had been delighted all the same, holding Louis in his arms with as much gentle affection as a beloved cat, or child. But Owen would have loved any horrid part of him, Louis knew.
Owen looked lovely. Louis' heart hurt to see him, and it hurt even more when Owen finally landed, stretching up, until he was standing before them. Across the crypt, shoulders hunched and wary— but it was Owen.
His ears were longer than Louis remembered— charmingly so, like Louis' fathers had been. His fangs were sharp as he bared them, and his hair was still that lovely gorgeous shade of brown, streaked with sun, and dark ochre. Louis could see smudges of color on his skin, his eyesight still not well enough to make out the details— but he thought it might be scarring, where there had previously been patches of livid welts and sores. Owen did not smell sick any longer, there was no crackle in his lungs, no creak in his joints, or hiss and pop of fluid in his spine and neck that had become like the hand of a clock to Louis, moving towards some inexorable end.
He wasn't sick any longer. Owen was not going to die in the snow, or the street, or somewhere Louis could not reach him. He was safe and the villagers had not found him, sleeping so quietly and sweetly in Louis' basement.
The Doctor's heart was pounding. Louis had not ever heard someone sound so afraid before, but Louis could not think of why. Could not think of the blood on Owen's front, the red staining his teeth as he hissed a deep guttural growl at the Doctor, pale and ill looking and trembling with leashed violence.
"Owen," Legundo said, still gingerly kneeling, holding both his hands up and releasing Louis to do so. Louis was too tired after his previous struggle to reach Owen, could not take advantage and go to his love like he wished, but he called instead. A high pleading chirp that had Legundo flinching, although he did not turn to stare at Louis like he had before. He, like Louis, was not taking his eyes off Owen.
Owen, who was across the room from them. Surely if this was a dream, Owen would come here, he would not leave Louis cold and alone and hurting.
"Owen, I am not hurting him, please—"
"You're not leaving this place alive, Doctor. You've made a mistake, coming here, you and Avid both."
Owen sounded cold, and detached, when he spoke. Like he did when he spoke of the baker, the butcher, the guards who refused to open the gates to him after nightfall, no matter the storming weather or wolves in the forest. People who hurt him, or worse, did not even look his way in the street, or on the road.
"Owen, I can help him, I only want to help, you and Louis and— and everyone. I don't…" Legundo swallowed, and Louis could see his hands shaking now, where he held them up, vulnerable. "I don't know what you did to Avid, but. We can fix this, do you understand? No one has to be hurt—"
"Someone has already been hurt!" Owen roared, voice echoing off the stone, claws and fangs bared.
"Owen," Louis asked, and Owen fell silent.
He stared at Louis over Legundo's shoulder, his face a blank and icy slate.
Louis smiled through the red tears blurring his vision. He hadn't thought he would see him again. He could die right at this moment, and it would be more than he could have hoped for. One last time to see him, to look at the spray of moles under his jaw, the way one side of his tangled hair was windswept from flying. He had a leaf, caught above his ear.
Owen tried to stay cold, Louis could see it. There was a way Owen shored himself, a tension in his shoulders as weight upon weight was stacked upon him, and he would not let himself buckle, would not let himself break. Louis had been plagued by the horrible thought on occasion, that he could not understand how Owen had kept going, in spite of all that befell him. The illness. The vitriol. The backbreaking work and the cold and the loneliness.
But that was what made Louis fall in love. Owen Oakley did not break.
Owen's face crumpled in on itself, like a glacier cracking. His mouth twisted, and Louis could see dark red tears well in his eyes, his shoulders shaking as if he was fevered. Dying. But he wasn't, he wouldn't.
"Owen," Louis asked again, begged, reaching his hand out.
Owen rushed to him so quickly that Legundo barely threw himself aside in time, heart still thunderously loud, fear a bitter smell that did not belong here.
Owen chirped, sobbed, burrowed his face into Louis' chest and held him so tightly that the pain was like a bright and burning brand of love about Louis' healing body.
But Louis did not care. He grasped him back, put his nose into Owen's hair and breathed in, tears falling. "My love, oh you are so lovely, I missed you. I dreamed of you— you spoke to me. Did you hear me speak back?" he ran a hand through Owen's hair, greasy, his fingers catching in tangles, his thumb rubbing behind his ear. It was hot— too hot. He must have eaten something that did not agree with him, and Louis fussed about it. rubbed his cheek and chin and scent all across him, like a banner of claim.
"Leave," Owen snarled between his sobs, voice and face twisted in a rictus of sorrow as he turned from Louis to snap his teeth at the Doctor. Making the man flinch backwards where he was sprawled in his retreat from Louis' nest.
Louis chirped and purred comfort instead, pressing his raw and stinging fingers to Owen's face, smoothing the anger there, the fury. His arms were as weak as brittle reeds, but he did not think Owen was capable of breaking his hold, if he wanted to kill the Doctor.
Louis did not want him to kill the Doctor. He wanted Owen here, in his arms, holding him. He pressed Owen down to his chest, and Owen crawled into his bed with him, pressed them together head to foot and sobbed. All the hurt of a lifetime, all the pain of that fire, and Louis felt tears streak down his face as well. He could not cry as heavy as he wished, ribs still broken, lungs scarred, skin welted in places with healing burns— but Owen poured himself out for the both of them. It rang against the stone, like an animal wounded.
Oh, they had been hurt so deeply, but they were together.
Louis heard retreating footsteps and the rasp of boots on stone steps. The smell of fear went with it, and Louis simply held Owen close, eyes heavy, and heart full.
Adrenaline got him far, but by the time Oakhurst was in sight, Legundo had finally given in and taken a dose of laudanum from his bag. He did not have much in his stores, but he felt a sense of urgency about getting to town.
He still went slow— just because the pain was dulled did not mean he couldn't damage himself, and he didn't want to risk being bedridden for however long it took for his leg to heal from his fall, and the subsequent hike back through the woods. As it was, he would have to elevate it, and possibly brace it tomorrow if he didn't want to be limping for the next month.
The other concern that had him hurrying, was Avid.
That had been blood, on Owen's front. A large amount of it.
There was activity in town when Legundo finally reached the barren scrubby fields about town. People moving, Abolish standing outside the gates, a cigarette of all things held in his gloved hand. Where he got it Legundo did not know, but from the way the man was savoring it, he had to assume he did not have many.
"Doctor," Abolish nodded at him, the end of the hand rolled cigarette glowing a cherry red as he inhaled. It did not fit the mans austere persona— Legundo had seen soldiers and sailors with cigarettes not rolled half as well. "You're needed at the clinic," Abolish said with a flat stare. He had his sword on his belt, and as Legundo approached he did not move to follow. The man remained at the gate, staring out at the treeline, silent. He did however reach behind him, and offer Legundo's cane.
Legundo stared at it. He reached out and took it, the polished wooden handle familiar in his grip as he eased the pressure on his bad leg, and did not sigh in relief. But the pain had eased with the laudanum, and had reached a tolerable plateau that the cane only helped.
Legundo did not say anything. He stared at Abolish, and nodded curtly, acutely aware of the mud on his robes, his skinned palms and the sweat darkening his clothes. It had been… a disastrous day.
He had learned… much. But he was still trying to think through it all, to figure what was… was usable. Actionable. The goal as always, was preservation of life.
Above all, even escape.
Abolish did not press, and Legundo passed him, walking through blue curling smoke, and shutting the gate behind himself.
There was a crowd gathered at his clinic.
When Martyn saw him he shouted and waved, Apo raising her head from the other side of the doorway. Like two sentinel gargoyles, red and gold and mismatched. She looked ill, her weight held by the wall behind her, and face the paper pale of someone who's blood pressure had plummeted very suddenly. The paper pale of someone who was about to faint, cold sweat beading on her face and throat. Legundo hurried his steps as much as he could. There was blood, on the ground. Experience told him that this was where someone took pressure off of a wound, and he felt sour guilt like a physical pain in his stomach. He had one use here in town, and he had not even been present.
If Avid had only listened and not run after Owen—
He cut off that line of thought.
"Thank God you're here Doc— Avid's hurt," Martyn said, giving Legundo a careful once over. Legundo could see him noting the dirt and dust, the knees of his trousers dark from his fall, and the mud spattered on his boots. It didn't stop Martyn from opening the door for him, eyes hard, a sword on his belt as well for all they were secured in the walls of Oakhurst.
Apo had an axe, sharp and deadly for all it had only been used to cut wood so far. "Put your head between your knees and drink some water— do not let her stand up," Legundo ordered Martyn briskly, who nodded. "Last thing I need is to deal with a head wound from fainting."
Apo nodded dutifully as well, lowering herself until she was crouched, head dipping down. Martyn rubbed a hand on her shoulder, although he did not drop his guard, or cease looking about town.
As if keeping watch for something.
The inside of his clinic smelled of blood, and antiseptic. They had lit every candle, washing the patchy walls with light, and the fire was roaring behind the grate despite the warm weather outside.
Cleo was by the clinic bedside, soaked bandages littering the ground about her feet, Legundo's chest of medication gaping open. He did not begrudge her the clutter, when he saw the blood staining her dress, and her hands. Ren was on the other side, mouth tight with strain, a more subdued spray of blood across his clean wool shirt.
Avid was on the bed, chest rising and falling in rapid, desperate pants, his fists clenched on the sheets in pain. His neck was hidden behind a packaged dressing of bandages, Cleo's hands white knuckled with the applied pressure. Legundo was relieved to see she knew enough not to cut off pressure to the brain, and assumed she must have been their best next choice for first aid with himself absent. Many accidents happened on farms, he knew.
"Grab that bottle from my bag please Cleo— laudanum. I don't want him struggling. Ren, get the kettle going, I need clean bandages, and if you could please salvage the ones on the floor, I would appreciate it. We do not have enough to be wasting them. Cleo, aside— the laudanum is the brown bottle. In German," Legundo limped over to the bedside, balancing himself just a moment to reach his cane out and hook it in one easy movement onto his desk stool, and drag it over to Avid's bedside.
He would not be able to kneel if he tried, at the moment. There was clean water in a bucket, and Legundo dipped his hands in it, rinsing free the mud, and grime. His lotion was near in it's small tin jar, and he applied it, the astringent smell burning his nostrils as he ensured to cover between his fingers, and under the nails.
"Aye, o 'course Doctor," Ren moved away immediately with a curt nod, gathering the bandages as Legundo eased himself onto the stool, and Cleo released the pressure on the wound, switching with Legundo's own hold.
He folded the bandages over as Cleo moved away to get the medicine, reapplying the pressure in preparation for a quick examination. Avid's lurid purple eyes darted to him, wet with pain, pupils pinprick small in a panic. He still grinned faintly, manic looking, with a hint of smugness that had Legundo struggling not tighten his hold.
"… Vampires, huh?" Avid asked, voice wet and choked. He giggled, the sound drowned and desperate, eyes darting from Legundo's grim face, to the room behind him. Fearful.
"…We'll speak about it later," Legundo said, keeping his professional calm. Like an armor, to pull around himself, for all his mind was still churning, his hands not as steady as he would like.
He had almost died, in that crypt. He knew that as a fact. He breathed in slowly, ignoring Avid's bleary, questioning gaze, and breathed out again through his nose. Away from Avid, and his open wound— although the man had already gone through a mile of woodland, he was going to need dressing and styptic powder regardless. His hands steadied, and Avid giggled again, his bloody hand with dirt under the nails clasping at Legundo's wrist, and squeezing. Comfortingly, perhaps— or requesting comfort.
The wrist was broken, and splinted. Not as Legundo himself would have done it, but he suspected Cleo or Ren had done a serviceable enough job. He would look at it later.
"Cleo, sutures as well please. Size four needle— second to last," he added, at her blank stare. "They should be labeled. The last gauge thread in the line too."
It was easy, to work. This came to him automatically, and Avid's wound was not even the worst he had treated. Far from it, in fact, after the trenches, and the things he had seen in his travels. A man had been caught under a new combine harvester two years ago in a farming village he had been passing through, and Legundo had taken three days to fully stitch him back together. It had taken blood from near everyone in the village as well.
This would take perhaps a few hours of careful work, but even as Legundo peeled the bandages back and observed the wound, he noted it was not bleeding as much as he'd feared, despite the size. Avid took his laudanum without complaint, sighing in relief, and Cleo even offered a comforting palm against his forehead in the bargain, after she had placed the threaded and curved needle in Legundo's bloody hand. It was wet with disinfectant, merbromin and turpentine.
"You're a fool, Avid," she commented wearily, and got a pained giggle in response.
Legundo thought of his own wound, on his arm, stinging under the bandages. Although he had used a knife, and the cut had been clean, after Louis' mouth had come off of it the wound had not bled as much as he'd expected. It was hard to compare the ravaged mess of bite wounds on Avid's shoulder to that, but… the similarities were there.
It may be the only reason Avid was still alive.
There was another wound there as well— older. It was stable, so Legundo did not give it attention quite yet, but it did not escape his notice that the smell and coloration was not quite right for something that was healing. Avid was his patient, and he would do no less than his best. Already he was thinking of the medicine he had on hand, what he could get from the forest— oxeye, basilica, rosehips and willow bark.
He would send out Pearl, and Drift perhaps. Drift would be able to spot what he needed, she had a keen eye, and Pearl was a deft hand with a sword.
(And Owen had not attacked anyone yet, who was with company. Legundo had to believe there was time to fix this.)
The door opened behind him as he began to sew, the stuffy sick smell of the room swept out to be replaced with the autumnal smell of the forest, and the cookfire smoke of town. It cooled the sweaty back of Legundo's neck, as he listened to Pearl converse with Apo and Martyn outside before the door was shut again, with a delicate click so as not to startle Legundo in his work.
Footsteps came over to the side not occupied by Cleo's assistance, the heels sharp against the worn and pitted timber of Legundo's clinic floor. He did not have any rugs quite yet, to warm the floors or muffle the sound of his footsteps and cane.
Scott leaned over Legundo's shoulder to watch him work, and Legundo had time to spare the man a passing glance, between the neat row of stitching as he worked first on the blood vessels in Avid's neck, and then the skin above. Closing him up as neatly as a love letter.
Scott looked appropriately concerned, the smooth skin between his brow wrinkled, and his mouth covered by a demure handkerchief. He was as clean and put together as always, but…
Perhaps Legundo was ungenerous, but he did not think he was imagining the glint of satisfaction in the mans eyes as he looked at Avid, and the blood soaked sheets.
"What happened?" Scott asked, breathless. "I was with Pyro and Shelby, fishing. Abolish says we should not leave town, and Pearl and M. are performing patrols all of a sudden."
"Avid was… attacked," Legundo said reluctantly, painfully aware of the way Ren and Cleo gave him their attention as well. Listening. "We got separated, as he chased after Owen— the lumberjack. No one is to approach him," he added, grim, and focused down on Avid again.
Ren and Cleo murmured acknowledgment, Ren moving to the door to open it, and Legundo could hear him relaying the information to Martyn and Apo outside. Scott moved closer, and just as Legundo started to consider asking the man to move out of the light—
There was a deep, sniffing inhale. The breath on his neck was cold, and Legundo could not help the way his hands froze, instinctively pressing his fingers down on the blood flow as he paused. Like bookmarking the page in a story.
Scott was smelling him.
He looked at Scott, whose eyes glinted in slit eyed satisfaction. Ill disguised. Legundo felt Cleo stiffen next to him, before she turned away, towards Avid. Away from Scott.
"I see," Scott said, before drawing the concern back about himself like a mask. For Cleo and Ren's benefit, Legundo did not doubt, as Ren returned.
"Well, please let me know if there's anything I can do to assist you," Scott said, voice dripping with concern as he stepped back from the bedside, and towards the door. "I would hate for anything to happen to this town, after all."
"… Of course," Legundo said, resuming his work.
Scott left, the door shutting just as neatly and quietly as it had when he'd come in, and Legundo kept his hand steady, as he treated his patient.