[open post for real]

[onthewillowsthere]

When the burning stopped he found himself alone. His memory of what happened is hazy -- aren't all his memories hazy? -- but he remembers the light and the fire, the way his hands and mouth were blazing, and even if he didn't remember the scorching on his blue tunic would tell a tale.

He remembers enough.

He can't seem to get warm now, despite the perfectly pleasant climate, and he builds a fire in one of the mansion's many sitting rooms with fireplaces, and then he huddles in front of it, his knees clasped to his chest.

Crowley couldn't make him Galahad again, but he doesn't feel like Damien any more. He remembers enough to know what he had wanted to escape -- whatever purpose it was that made him like this, capable of subsuming into flame or holding a brand-new weapon like a familiar part of his body -- but not enough to know why he's like this, and not enough to be the person Claudius is waiting for. He feels like stone, but a stone that has lost all the earth's heat.

If Crowley, who changed him in the first place, can't change him back, then can he be changed back? It seems to him from what Lan Wangji said that this is all there is now. He's incapable of being loved, incapable of knowing himself, incapable of the lit path that Lan Wangji exhorted him towards.

He stares into the fire, his fixed blue stare that might as well be a stranger's, and wishes he had been rendered in his own bonfire.

Comments

[timebethine]

"If thou wilt come with me, I'll keep thee warm," Laertes promises. He lays his uninjured palm against Damien's arm, letting Damien feel the warmth of his body. "Here--there's life in me still."

[onthewillowsthere]

A hesitation, then: "All right."

When he gets to his feet it's much more obvious that something has happened to him. Where before his body moved easily, there's weight on his shoulders now, and all his clothes are burnt. He keeps forgetting that his hand is hurt and using it: he brushes off his knees without thinking and breaks one of the blisters.

[timebethine]

Laertes only narrowly avoids making a low sound of distress. He thinks of healing salves and poultices, bandages and dressings, trying to reach out to whatever capricious spirit decided to give them a place for dancing on a better day--with the hand not linked with Damien's, he throws open doors on sitting rooms and libraries and bedrooms. As desperation begins to sink in, he flings back the door on an elaborate bath with a sunken tub large enough to seat six or more.

It will have to do.

"We'll wash thy hand in cold water," he says, and paws at the taps until water flows. "Here. Let it ease thy hurts a little."

There's a little box beneath the sink with the words First Aid printed on it in red, and for lack of any better option, Laertes pries it open.

[onthewillowsthere]

The while he's followed Laertes almost placidly, making no comment, going where he's led. He sits down on the edge of the bath and puts his burned hand under the water, with a hissed little intake of breath.

[timebethine]

Laertes finds a roll of bandages (designed for bracing strained muscles, but he hardly knows that) and a tube of chemical-smelling ointment labeled burn cream, which is probably as good as he's going to get at the moment. "Dost feel any better?" Laertes asks, and forces down his squeamishness to examine Damien's burns.

[onthewillowsthere]

"No," he says simply, because he doesn't. He's begun to feel like he's going to vomit again. He holds out his hand for Laertes to inspect -- most of his palm is one big blister, which has split in multiple places; the ones on his fingers are splitting too, serous fluid oozing through.

[timebethine]

Laertes also feels perilously close to wretching, but he puts on a brave smile for Damien and squeezes a little of the burn cream into Damien's palm. "This will hurt more; I'm sorry," he says, and begins to smear it around the blisters with his fingertips.

[onthewillowsthere]

He stares at his hand while Laertes works -- the idea of not looking doesn't occur to him -- and reminds himself: this is what it will feel like to everyone else if he loses control again. This is what he could do to anyone. He is a weapon. He is a sword, he is a flame, he is dangerous.

[timebethine]

Once the cream's been smeared liberally around--Laertes doesn't know how much to use, so he all but empties the tube--Laertes begins wrapping Damien's hand with the bandage. Unbidden, his hands fall into the rhythm that he's used to wrap his own hands for boxing (and the memories flow freely through him: duels in cities where common men were not permitted rapiers, the explosive bloom of pain from a well-thrown punch and the long, sweet bruise blooming after). Wrist over the web of the thumb, around the palm, around each finger separately before wrapping them together. "There," he says as he tucks the end beneath another (oddly tacky) length of bandage. "That looks well."

It doesn't. It doesn't at all.

[onthewillowsthere]

He turns his hand over, observing Laertes' efforts, and then starts to laugh.

There's definitely an edge of hysteria, but he feels so terrible and so wrung out and so afraid, grounded by little more than the pain, and Laertes has done his best and it's terrible, everyone's best has been terrible, everything is unravelling, and he laughs until he starts to sob.

[timebethine]

And what can Laertes do? He reaches for Damien and pulls him close, rocking and holding him through that wild laughter, and feels so very close to sobbing himself.

[onthewillowsthere]

This time he sinks in close, rocking himself back, until he finally cries himself out and it doesn't feel so impossible to sit up. He wipes his eyes on his uninjured hand and whispers, "I'm sorry," hiccupping a little.

[timebethine]

"All's well," Laertes lies. "But I fear for thy hand--thou need'st better ministrations than my poor craft can give thee. Wilt come with me?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods. "Anywhere."