Chapter Text
What is he doing.
What is he doing, here, now, adrenaline-fueled focus bleeding away and leaving him with nothing but cold hard reality, blood on his hands and chitin shards on his tools and a stranger who tried to throw their life away lying deathly still on a table he normally uses to butcher meals?
What is he doing, trying to save a Fool? Putting time and effort and supplies and the last dregs of his compassion into someone who walked to their death for nothing more than a promise of glory? Risking losing a finger to desperately snapping mandibles, or having his throat torn out by a reanimated husk that drags itself to half-life in the night?
The ant twitches. Long past unconscious- he’d roused briefly to struggle, pure mindless instinct driving him to snap like a feral thing until Oro pinned him to the table and blood loss took over again- but still, somehow, grasping for something. Almost beginning to reach, as though for something vitally important.
Probably that shield. It had been locked into what well could have been a death-grip, until Oro had pried it free to avoid getting his face broken if the ant managed a swing. Dropped by the door, along with everything else he’d put down.
Oro watches his attempted pity case try and fail to grasp for a shield that had done nothing to save him from whatever had all but split his shell open like a nut in a nutcracker, and knows exactly what the fuck he’s doing.
Setting himself up to get kicked in the heart, is what.
Kingdom’s Edge is fucking cold. Colder, when some quirk of geological activity stirs to life and sends wind howling through every tunnel and passage, piling ash against his hut. The ant’s body temperature is already far too low, courtesy of blood loss and time spent lying exposed to the elements, and only threatens to drop further as a windstorm kicks up.
Oro dumps the little bastard (carefully) into his own bed, with a particularly ragged, expendable blanket under him in case of leaks, and heaps just about every other blanket he can find over said little bastard. It only manages to make the ant look even more pitiful, swamped in fabric like he’s about to drown, claws digging into the blankets for support.
Banishing the latest question of what the fuck he’s doing, on the grounds that he’s already committed supplies to this, Oro sets the kettle up and turns to… rifling through his guest’s belongings. Might as fucking well, try and see if he can find anything like a name. Or an affiliation, other than “self-proclaimed idiot”.
There’s not much to go through. Besides the hood, cracked armor, and trick shield Oro has opted not to lose an eye to fiddling with, whoever dumped the idiot seems to have swiped nearly everything he’d owned. Whatever purse he’d paid the entry fee out of is distinctly not present, and neither is any sort of jewelry or personal adornment.
The only thing left is a travel toolkit, maybe for the shield, and… a tiny fire-starting kit.
Not a complete idiot, then. No first aid, though, so- close.
He means to set up the hot water bottle and go the fuck to bed. Or, to floor, since he’s somehow conned himself into giving away his bed.
Two things stop him.
First, the realization that leaving the idiot loose, to probably die in the night and maybe wind up a husk in the process, is stupid. He’s got a solid enough bedframe, and a decent bit of scavenged chain- he should make sure he doesn’t wake up to his throat being cut.
Second, when he uncovers the ant enough to start figuring out how to chain him to the bed without obscuring any sort of emergency medical efforts, the little pity case twitches towards him and whimpers.
…fuck.
He hasn’t talked to someone else in… hm. A long, long time, barring brief exchanges with idiots on the way to die.
He talks, now, as he rigs a serviceable ankle cuff from cloth strips and the chain, knotted and layered enough to be difficult to remove even by intent-driven hands. Just in case the little bastard wakes up properly and decides to try something.
Talks, even though all he can offer is platitudes. “You’re all right” and “you’re safe” and “nothing is going to hurt you”, fastening the cuff into place and anchoring the other end of the chain to his bedframe, tugging experimentally and lying through his fucking mandibles the entire way. Idiot isn’t safe, and he can’t guarantee something won’t bust his door down and slaughter the both of them in the morning, or that blood loss won’t win out somewhere in the night. It’s all lies.
It’s not even particularly convincing lies. He’s a shit liar.
He lies anyway.
What else is he supposed to do, when the Fool wakes him up in the middle of the night, twitching and gasping and trying to fight something that isn’t there? He pries himself up from where he’s leaned against the bed, far too close to someone who might soon be trying to kill him, muttering “-stop that, it’s okay, it’s okay” as he plants a hand on the ant’s chest, trying to keep his pity case from lurching up and wasting all his work wrenching everything back open. Nearly loses a finger yet again to those bladed mandibles snapping at him, at nothing, little claws scraping down his arm in a thoroughly pitiable effort to fight.
He keeps talking. “It’s all right, you’re all right, you’re okay” as the ant slowly, slowly begins to settle, claws loosening on his arm, each breath fast and unsteady and painfully shallow. “You’re okay.”
It’s all lies. Near-dead and likely on the way out isn’t ‘okay’, or anything near it.
Somehow, he can’t quite stop himself.
He keeps lying.
To the ant, to himself. Trying to convince them both that this isn’t a lost cause. That he isn’t wasting time and supplies on this idiot, on a self-proclaimed Fool who doesn’t value his own life enough to try and save it, to walk away from confined spaces full of things that want to slaughter him.
He lies. “It’s all right, you’re okay, you’re going to be fine,” over and over. Until he could almost, almost begin to believe it himself. Until he nearly manages to delude himself into thinking that the little bastard’s periodic gasping fits are a sign of will to live, of the ability to fight, that they’re anything other than half-present nightmares from a brain probably damaged for lack of bloodflow.
Until the seeping, insidious fever-heat very nearly comes as a surprise, instead of the inevitability it always was. Nothing of the supernatural at work here; the dangerous warmth against his palm is a mundane infection. Pure, simple, and nearly as deadly as the creeping, mind-eating rot devouring this kingdom alive, chewing it through its death-throes.
Oro stares down at his would-be rescue, at the discoloration creeping slowly along the edge of one shell patch, and resolutely ignores the sensation of something vaguely akin to hope withering and dying.
Stupid. Should have known.
Mundane infections may not be entirely as deadly as the burning rot, but they’re still nasty, insidious things. All too common in wounds like this, filthy crush injuries ground into dirt laden with who-knows-what, a thousand deaths staining an arena floor or a battleground until the sand strewn over the top can barely hide the blood.
Infection is stubborn. Dangerous, creeping under shell and forming pockets of sickness and decay, the body thrown into a riot around it, painful and sickening and aggressive.
Sepsis is worse. Sepsis is rotting limbs, failing organs, is delirium and twitching, mindless fever and vital signs spiraling out of control. Sepsis is death, looming, near-inevitable death, inexorable as a falling blade for all that it’s near-intangible and impossible to pin down. There is no single thing he can trap in his claws and say “this- this is sepsis, this is the thing to fight”, but he doesn’t need to hold it in his hands, or see it swung at his face, to know exactly what sepsis is.
He’s seen far, far too many shuddering, gasping deaths to miss this. Too many to delay any further, when the fever-heat sinks in, when the discoloration begins to spread.
Leaving is dangerous. He may well return to a corpse.
There’s nothing else to do.
He sets a jug of water in easy reach, knowing full well it’s not going to be touched, and goes to waste his time trying to save a dead bug.
A bug who doesn’t even have the decency to die while Oro is out. To save him the trouble and the grief of watching someone die in his bed, and the vague thought that maybe, maybe it's not too late to help.
“Stubborn little bastard, aren’t you,” he complains, setting the jar of little blue bug-things on his workbench, and risks his fingers on checking the little bastard’s pulse. Lightning-fast, faint, and unsteady, the racing thrum of a life somehow not yet extinguished but doing its damndest to get there.
He’d like to think it’s a sign that there’s still a chance. That there’s some sliver of hope. That it’s something.
It’s not. That thrum is nothing but a downward spiral, creeping rotting death wrapping its claws further into his patient’s body with every heartbeat, the very thing that’s meant to keep the poor idiot alive driving him closer and closer to nothingness.
There’s no hope to be found here, in the ant’s thready pulse and shallow, strained breathing. There may be some fragment of it in the skittering, squirming result of Oro’s trip, but he doesn’t dare go looking for that. Only for one last, desperate effort to help. One last thing, before all he can do is offer somewhere quiet to die. One more thing to try.
Lifeblood. Odd substance- it beads like quicksilver when spilled, and all but flows towards the first living thing to come near it, coating shell and sinking instantly into exposed flesh. Something akin to an antiseptic when applied directly to an open wound, and an odd sort of stimulant, spurring the body far beyond its usual limits. Magic and biology bound together, entwined in a way that twists each beyond the ordinary bounds of the other.
Oro doesn’t bother to close the jar on the drained bug-things. They always manage to vanish regardless of lids, whether by escaping or by simply evaporating like the empty bubbles they are. They’re also useless, drained of the stuff that gives them form and purpose, courtesy of a somewhat alarmingly large syringe pulled from what’s left of his medkit.
Extracting the Lifeblood is simple enough. Administering it… may be something of an issue.
When he reaches for his patient, the ant hisses at him. Antennae pinned back, eyes wild, mandibles spread and flashing in the lantern-light, wasting every last scrap of energy on a threat display as he tries and fails to shove himself away from Oro. Still all but gasping for breath, unable to so much as prop himself up, and nowhere near fully conscious.
Fuck.
Oro’s favorite kind of patient; too feverish to reason with, and scared out of their damn mind. He might be able to win the pissy little bastard over if he had a few hours… and was an entirely different person. Sadly, he doesn’t have a few hours, and the poor self-named Fool is stuck with him.
He’s going to get bitten, isn’t he. Or he’s going to hurt the little bastard worse, trying to hold him still enough to get the needle in without stabbing anything important.
Resigning himself to, at minimum, getting holes put in the bracers he’s donned specifically for this, he steps closer and tries to meet his patient’s eyes.
There’s no comprehension, no sign of anything other than raw, mindless fear, flicking between him and the syringe. No sign that anything he says will be heard, let alone understood. He tries, regardless, on the off chance he’s wrong. “I am not going to hurt you. I’m trying to save your life.”
Nothing.
“If you want to have any hope of surviving, I need to get this” with a flick of the syringe “into you. Which means you need to be still. If you can’t hold still on your own, I will make you. I’m not going to hurt you, but I need to do this. Understand?”
For an instant, there’s a flicker of something softer in the ant’s expression. A hint of something akin to- not relief, but something other than all-consuming terror. Like he might actually believe that Oro is trying to help him.
Until Oro reaches out.
The flicker dies like a candle in a snowstorm, choked out by a flinch and another hiss.
Fuck.
“All right,” he mutters, smothering every response he wants to have to an injured bug flinching away from him, and moves. One quick lunge, and he’s planted a hand on the ant’s shoulder, pressing his leather-wrapped forearm into the snapping mandibles so they can’t close on his hand instead, shoving his patient down against the mattress. A knee across the ant’s legs pins him firmly in place, keeping him from squirming loose- but not from clawing at Oro’s arm, trying in vain to escape.
Ants are strong for their size. A healthy ant might put up a decent effort at escaping, or, if nothing else, might manage to push away the syringe. A healthy ant would probably also bite through the bracer and into Oro’s arm. Would probably achieve something other than scrabbling desperately at the bug pinning him, trying and failing to fend off what must feel like an attack, gasping for breath the entire time.
Whispering “I know, I know,” under his breath, Oro carefully works the needle into a small gap between living shell and carefully constructed patch, one of several deliberately left to allow the wound to drain. It earns him a choked whimper and an attempt to kick free- both of which he ignores in favor of staying perfectly still as he slowly, slowly depresses the plunger.
Unfortunate fact; Lifeblood is best administered gradually, to allow it to infuse as well as possible. He has no way to speed this along, and no way to explain that the worsened pain is temporary and should fade once he takes the needle away. No way to provide any sort of reassurance.
He’s shit at reassurance anyway.
Still tries.
“You’re all right. It’s all right. I have you,” which probably isn’t very fucking comforting considering he’s the one pinning the terrified bug down, “you’re okay.”
Useless nonsense, muttered to a bug who is absolutely not all right, whose struggles are actively getting weaker and weaker the longer Oro holds onto him. The frantic, ineffective scratching at his arm slowly fades, the bite-grip on his shell weakens, and the hissing trails into something more akin to a continuous, fluctuating whine, until finally the ant burns through the last of his energy and goes limp. Surrendering, or unconscious.
He doesn’t move as Oro extracts the needle and lets him go.
Doesn’t move, save an occasional twitch, at being bandaged up and tucked under the blankets again.
Doesn’t move at the scent of cooking, at a (failed) effort to get a few sips of broth into him.
Doesn’t move, doesn’t stir, doesn’t wake, until Oro finally stops watching for adverse reactions and goes to bed.
He wakes to screaming. A high, wordless cry, fear and desperation and terrible pain, like a dying thing aware of its own fate.
Nail in hand, Oro lunges upright, ready to swing-
And finds nothing to strike. No raised weapon other than his, no predatory crawling thing, no staggering husk. Only a gravely injured bug, gasping “no no no no no-“ as he struggles against something that does not exist. Back arched, claws and spurs digging into the blankets, eyes glowing oh-so-faintly blue.
…fuck.
Lifeblood is a stimulant. Mix it with fever-delirium and recent trauma, and that surge of energy can twist inward, stirring nightmare and delusion alike to strangling, choking life.
Much harder to fight than any sharp-edged crawling thing.
The ant calms down eventually. Jostling him fails to wake him, but he grasps desperately at Oro’s hand as soon as he’s touched, clinging on as though his hold might save him from drowning.
Which is how Oro winds up sitting next to his own damn bed, trying to remember if he’s ever learned what ants find comforting, petting the little pity case and muttering platitudes.
“You’re okay. It’s okay- you’re okay. You’re safe.”
He’s probably not. Fool ant is probably dying, Lifeblood or not; there was far too much blood in the lining of his armor, far too much damage to his shell and everything underneath, and now sepsis to finish him off. This is how people die slow, inevitable, miserable deaths.
Not that Oro’s going to tell him.
Oro is, it seems, going to sit here petting a dying bug, because the little Fool starts whimpering every time he tries to pull away.
Ants. All flared mandibles and bravado, until they get hurt, then all they want is someone to hold them. That much, he remembers; the few ants he’s treated, he practically had to pry their comrades-in-arms off them. Ferociously defensive of their allies, and gentle with each other practically in the same motion.
Oro doesn’t do gentle.
He doesn’t.
Who is he kidding. He’s the fool here.
And he is going to get no fucking sleep tonight.