The Untold Powers of The Body
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Category:
+A through F › Fire Emblem (all)
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
1
Views:
2,472
Reviews:
2
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
Fire Embem and all assorted characters and trademarks belong to Nintendo and assorted companies, I am not making any money from this and am only writing for my own personal entertainment. The end.
The Untold Powers of The Body
Title: The Untold Powers of The Body
Series: FE8 / Seima no kouseki / The Sacred Stones
Character/Pairing: Noshua/Natasha
Rating: R/NC-17
Word count: 3064
A/N: Kink Meme, to the request of: "FE8, Joshua/Natasha. He's hurt in battle, her staff broke and she's too far away from the item caravan (whichever twin has it is up to you) to get a new one. So she has to turn to a more unorthodox method...in other words, sensual healing. :3"
Since I’m always complaining about the lack of Seima fic, I suppose I should actually do something about it~
The battle was particularly fitful about her. She had been separated from Joshua and followed after a knight – Kyle, she believed until he ran to rescue another wounded soldier far from her.
She did not see the brigand until the axe was upon her. The axe swung close to her, close enough to rip her dress at her waist but not hit skin. Close enough that she could feel the air left by its movement cold against her. She bit back a scream and shrank back to avoid the assault, the silver gleaming like the blurred stars and half moons.
She didn’t see the sword that struck them back, but she guessed its owner longer before she recognized the subsequent groan of pain.
Joshua.
She heard a rush like wind, like the sound of sound breaking and heard two bodies fall.
Natasha rushed through the cloud that had been left, like a dust storm around him. His hat had been knocked off and lay dirty and bent in the ground beside him. It hid no lazy eye or scar, and his reasons for pulling it down over one eye remained a mystery. His clothes were torn in jagged lines and bloodied. A red ravine of a wound made its way down across his stomach. She reached for her staff only to find it broken. Cracks and fault lines surrounded the blue-tipped head. She tried to pray it alive but it only gave a faint glow before dying completely.
“Joshua...”
He coughed, and smiled, or tried to. It looked more a grimace from pain.
“I guess my luck’s running out? I really didn’t think it’d be brigands of all things...”
“He had a Swordslayer,” she said. She remembered it now, that one single recognition from all the unknowing and fear.
“Yeah, I saw. Too late though.”
“My staff is broken,” she said
But even without her staff she refused to wring her hands helplessly while the man she loved died. She could not lift him up and carry hum to safety, the mere thought was laughable with her slight, delicate frame. However she was still strong enough to be leaned on, and it was this she offered even if
“We’ll catch up with the others, surely L’Arachel has a staff she can use–”
“Too many enemies that way, there’s no way to get by them like this.” Joshua coughed again. His shirt was soaked in his blood now, tinted like clay from the river from the dust and the lifeblood.
“Lady luck doesn’t seem to be on my side today,” he said.
But Natasha didn’t relegate her life to the whims of luck – she may have lived under the commands of deities, but she could also fight when death seemed imminent. She had once before, and she dug deep and readied her courage again.
“Then there’s bound to be a shelter of some sort.”
“There’s a fort a few paces over, the trees block it so it’s easy to miss.”
“Then we’ll take refuge here. Do you have any vulneraries? They might stem the bleeding.”
“Used em all up two days ago,” he replied.
Joshua was heavy, and in truth too heavy for her to be supporting. She bent under his weight, and her back ached with each step. Joshua was not a big man, not musclebound like Gerik or Dolza, but as limp and weak as he was now, she was carrying most of his weight.
She strived each step, reminding herself that she had crossed Grado with guards chasing after her heels. She had slept in haystacks and gone into rivers until her habit was waterlogged and almost too heavy to dragged. She had ran through brambles until her skin was a criss-cross patchwork of cuts and when her shoe leather had given out, she had walked barefoot until a pilgrim near the border had taken pity on her and given her a new pair. Even these were shoes fit for a man with larger feet than her own, and without socks her feet blistered so bad that she had almost been better without such a gift.
These paces were nothing in comparison.
When they finally reached the fortress they found it in disrepair. Ivy scaled up the masonry that time, the elements and even the ivy itself had chipped away at through the years. The bit of woods had kept it hidden well enough so that the only intruders would be of the four-footed or winged variety. A murder of rooks alighted as she dragged through the overgrowth. Joshua was near unconsciousness and had not said a thing during the walk. Had he, she would have ordered him – begged him really – to keep silent to save his strength.
She steeped over the threshold and no curse devoured them into nothing, no plages appeared and no monsters stumbled out from the shadowy corners. She guided him a few steps more in and leaned him against the wall until he slumped down into a seated position. That being done, she bent and ripped at her habit. The bottom of her skirts were too soiled with mud and blood to be of any use as dressing, so she started about her waist where the brigand had cut. She tried not to think of what would happen when they were rescued, of how there would be little to hide away the cloth that bound her breasts. But modesty meant little by the side of the life of Joshua. She ended up ripping off the lowest skirting simply to get more and thicker bandages from about where her knee was.
Natasha opened the shirt, peeled it off and heard a groan come from Joshua. She bit her lip to keep from trembling and spat upon her hands to clean them. It was the best she had at the moment. She spat upon a clean bandage as well and wiped the dust that had accumulated there. She picked out the brambles that had caught on them through the brief illusion of woods they had gone through.
With that, Natasha pulled him up as well as she could and wrapped the remainder of the bandage to stem the bleeding. He surveyed her now, his eyes lucid and not scaled over with a filmy gloss of pain.
“The magic is in you, not the staff,” Joshua said. “You can heal me.”
“Joshua...I can’t,” she said. “Just like mages can’t call thunder from the skies barehanded I cannot heal with my hands alone.”
There had been a holy woman – a saint, named Ignatia who had been able to heal things with her hands alone. With staves she could transfer an endless healing property to inanimate objects. She had blessed shoes that were shod to the bishop’s horse and the horse lived twenty-five healthy years and never a day went lame.
But Natasha had been a mere novitiate when she had left.
His arms ran up her leg, up to where the crooked line of her ripped skirts now hung above her knees. She knew the request for what it was.
“You’ll reopen your wounds,” she admonished.
“You’ll heal me,” Joshua said.
It is a peculiar aphrodisiac, belief. Just the mere fact that he believed in her enough to think that the sheer uniting of their bodies would make his wounds bend back and mend sent a warmth through her. She always had a hard time resisting his honey-sweet voice. It dripped down her, melted away at her defenses like embers to ice until she was compliant and beneath him.
“It’s no crime to take the woman you’re to marry to bed, Natasha. Only priggish father’s who’d never taken any woman to bed could call it that.”
He’d said this before, the first time he had convinced her that it was no sin if they were practically married already. He had whispered warm breaths against her ear and offered her a veritable kingdom. She thought him an exaggerator, but smiled secret in the dark towards the canvas of the tent.
(She had said then what would her mother-in-law think?
Joshua had simply looked said, and said she would’ve loved her.)
He had used this argument often since then, always reminding her of the sinlessness of such an arrangement. He’d even won her a ring from the gambling table once when they were encamped in a larger city – she demanded he return it to the poor wife whose husband had gambled their marriage proof away. He did, but returned later with necklace that had been boughten just for her. Of Jehennan craftsmanship and rubies set within the gold filigree. It was the kind of necklace suited more for a queen, and completely unsuited to her own plain desires. Still, she wore it under her habit, pressed close over her clavicle like a secret, a promise unknowing.
His hands were the mix of coarseness and yet had a feel as if they had once been far softer. He did not have the hands of an indigent worker, but nor did he have the hands of a nobleman either.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” she said, not quite able to get enough roughness into her voice to turn it into an admonishment.
He smirked. “But you want to.”
She lifted her skirts and he motioned for her to sit on his lap. Already she could see the bulge there, waiting for her closeness and touch. Then again, Joshua was always a step away from arousal. She couldn’t tell if it was simply his nature or if he was particularly taken with her body in itself.
“Don’t go too fast or you’ll tear at your wounds and make it worse.”
She eased herself down upon him with as much care as she could. When she did his hands were searching and touching for every part of her he could reach. He seemed stronger now, as if his wounds had already begun to heal. She thought for once that perhaps his tale about her having innate healing was true after all – though it would be impossible to test, for her would be the only one to ever see or touch her like this.
His attentions were divided yet slow. He started below the ripped skirts of her ruined habit and caressed up her thighs in stroking motion all up to her loins. He always stopped just short, or just enough to graze the triangular sides, just enough to set her into a rhythm of want that would leave her moaning when it was over. He moved to her breasts, and unbound the cloth she had wrapped about her chest for modesty. Joshua never cupped her breasts too hard, and never squeezed them with too much lust. He was gentle enough to not leave bruises that weren’t intended yet passionate enough to leave her whimpering and begging when he was in the mood to push her that far.
But he never lingered long. It brought strange childhood memories to mind, as if objects floating on water. Once when she was a girl, before she went to the convent she had heard other girls, older girls giggling about what attracted men. Elliphine, an older dark haired girl with sharp, cunning eyes muttered that almost all men were ‘breast-men’ and would become willing puppets to any woman who would let them reach around under her bodice. Another older girl, a red-haired one named Mora chimed in that just as many men loved girls with long, slender legs or long soft hair they could wind around their fingers.
The memory had stuck with her and Natasha had supposed Joshua a ‘breast-man’ though now, having known him, he seemed just as bewitched by every part of her. He would start from her back all the way to her neck and bury his face in her hair. He gave her breasts just as much attention as her thighs, buttocks or waist, and did not linger with special fondness on any single one.
She was the one to undo his pants, undoing the lacings with care. Each time before she had been the submissive as he pressed her down and taught her the language of the body. This time, however, it was as if the thoughts of healing had infused her mind till whatever virginal shyness was temporarily misplaced. She kissed him almost wantonly. Neck, shoulder, the uninjured part of his chest, even just above his bandage– She let her hands wander about him with no direction.
He grinned against her skin, nipped at the base of her neck and whispered. “You’ve changed a lot from the first time.”
She was more comfortable in her own skin, and his.
Still, she wasn’t quite the level of whorish moaning, and still, the thought of gripping the base of his cock would bring a blush to her face. His teaching would have to go on a lot longer before she was up to something as brazen as that.
He gripped her backside and pulled her in closer until she gasped, until there was nothing else but them and the fitting of their bodies close, closer. It came crashing into her, the heat, the desire, the ache of being filled. Each of them let out a shaky breath, a groan. Joshua rocked his hips back and forth slowly, as metered as ocean waves. She buried against him, careful not to touch the injuries, her arms thrown about his neck, her hands resting clasped over his shoulders. Everything within her, every cell seemed more sensitive under his touch. Each move of him was a slice of wet, unadulterated heaven and even she couldn’t find sin within the act.
She’d been prudish and virginal once and still it would take a life-changing experience to get her to this level again, but even she couldn’t blush away that she liked it. She’d resisted tried to resist him out of modesty, propriety, and to prevent meeting her future in-laws with a swollen at five months along. (He had an answer for that, as all answers: “Tell them we eloped.”)
When the heat built up to the point of no return, she came in a paroxysm, pleasure flowing overflowing until it was one drop rippling over her all the way from her core upwards.
When it was over he looked at her, an adoring and possessive glance all in one. He pushed a bit of tangled gold-spool thread of hair from her face and kissed it.
“You’ll be my queen,” he said.
And she thought it was an exaggeration like any other but almost half a year later she would find that he hadn’t been lying to her all that time after all.
*
They were rescued eventually. A few knights had taken to checking for bodies and by chance, Franz had stumbled upon a bit of mortar that lead them both to where Natasha and Joshua were splayed.
She was beyond the mere description of disheveled, here habit was little more than dirty, bloody tatters and her hair had frizzed and tangled from his repeated attentions. Joshua looked far too pleased with himself, a look that only the most innocent could mistake for anything but post-coital. If that wasn’t enough, both of them were covered in marks that were too light to be true bruises and were obviously made by passion, not speartip.
“She healed me all by herself,” Joshua said. “Without staves.” He leaned back, lazy and languid with a cat’s grin.
“Joshua!” Her face burned as she saw the reserved understanding in Seth’s face, and the utter blank unknowing on Franz’s own. It was Franz who she road with, and Franz who queried repeatedly to her health – considered she was so ripped and bloodied
It was then that she had to explain that she had been uninjured; it was Joshua who had been gravely hurt. Franz made a sympathetic sound and would’ve talked more, had Seth not given him a gentle reprimand. Franz apologized, to both of them and after that had silent.
Later when she went to change the dressing, she found the bleeding had stopped and wound almost completely healed. It was an amazing feat, this gift she had never known. She looked at her hands wondered at the untold power of the body.
*
It wasn’t until long after both of their rescued comrades had been put to bed that Franz voiced the question that had been gnawing away at his mind since finding their comrades.
“But General Seth, aren’t all forts blessed by Saint Ignatia with healing properties?” Franz said.
“That’s right, Franz,” Seth responded.
“He must be sorely mistaken in her properties then,” Franz said thoughtfully. “Maybe he never took that class?”
Seth cleared his throat. “You’ve obviously studied your textbooks, but you made sure to pay attention to your physical training. Correct?”
“Oh, yes sir! I practiced earlier but if you think it would help more–”
“I think that would be best.”
Franz left, just as earnest and energetic as ever. Seth was glad for this, for he really wasn’t up to teaching Franz about the birds and the bees just yet. If anything, he’d leave that to Forde – though with such a teacher as Forde, he couldn’t help but think the lesson would be pictorial, or possibly with live models and that Franz would never be quite the same afterwards.
*
Not too far off in a cot under the glassless, starlit window, Natasha healed Joshua again. This time even slower, with vulneraries and staves, until there was nothing but the barest of scars on his skin. It was so faint, like a fading memory that she had to trace it to find the jagged path again. After that, she never doubted her healing prowess again.
Series: FE8 / Seima no kouseki / The Sacred Stones
Character/Pairing: Noshua/Natasha
Rating: R/NC-17
Word count: 3064
A/N: Kink Meme, to the request of: "FE8, Joshua/Natasha. He's hurt in battle, her staff broke and she's too far away from the item caravan (whichever twin has it is up to you) to get a new one. So she has to turn to a more unorthodox method...in other words, sensual healing. :3"
Since I’m always complaining about the lack of Seima fic, I suppose I should actually do something about it~
The battle was particularly fitful about her. She had been separated from Joshua and followed after a knight – Kyle, she believed until he ran to rescue another wounded soldier far from her.
She did not see the brigand until the axe was upon her. The axe swung close to her, close enough to rip her dress at her waist but not hit skin. Close enough that she could feel the air left by its movement cold against her. She bit back a scream and shrank back to avoid the assault, the silver gleaming like the blurred stars and half moons.
She didn’t see the sword that struck them back, but she guessed its owner longer before she recognized the subsequent groan of pain.
Joshua.
She heard a rush like wind, like the sound of sound breaking and heard two bodies fall.
Natasha rushed through the cloud that had been left, like a dust storm around him. His hat had been knocked off and lay dirty and bent in the ground beside him. It hid no lazy eye or scar, and his reasons for pulling it down over one eye remained a mystery. His clothes were torn in jagged lines and bloodied. A red ravine of a wound made its way down across his stomach. She reached for her staff only to find it broken. Cracks and fault lines surrounded the blue-tipped head. She tried to pray it alive but it only gave a faint glow before dying completely.
“Joshua...”
He coughed, and smiled, or tried to. It looked more a grimace from pain.
“I guess my luck’s running out? I really didn’t think it’d be brigands of all things...”
“He had a Swordslayer,” she said. She remembered it now, that one single recognition from all the unknowing and fear.
“Yeah, I saw. Too late though.”
“My staff is broken,” she said
But even without her staff she refused to wring her hands helplessly while the man she loved died. She could not lift him up and carry hum to safety, the mere thought was laughable with her slight, delicate frame. However she was still strong enough to be leaned on, and it was this she offered even if
“We’ll catch up with the others, surely L’Arachel has a staff she can use–”
“Too many enemies that way, there’s no way to get by them like this.” Joshua coughed again. His shirt was soaked in his blood now, tinted like clay from the river from the dust and the lifeblood.
“Lady luck doesn’t seem to be on my side today,” he said.
But Natasha didn’t relegate her life to the whims of luck – she may have lived under the commands of deities, but she could also fight when death seemed imminent. She had once before, and she dug deep and readied her courage again.
“Then there’s bound to be a shelter of some sort.”
“There’s a fort a few paces over, the trees block it so it’s easy to miss.”
“Then we’ll take refuge here. Do you have any vulneraries? They might stem the bleeding.”
“Used em all up two days ago,” he replied.
Joshua was heavy, and in truth too heavy for her to be supporting. She bent under his weight, and her back ached with each step. Joshua was not a big man, not musclebound like Gerik or Dolza, but as limp and weak as he was now, she was carrying most of his weight.
She strived each step, reminding herself that she had crossed Grado with guards chasing after her heels. She had slept in haystacks and gone into rivers until her habit was waterlogged and almost too heavy to dragged. She had ran through brambles until her skin was a criss-cross patchwork of cuts and when her shoe leather had given out, she had walked barefoot until a pilgrim near the border had taken pity on her and given her a new pair. Even these were shoes fit for a man with larger feet than her own, and without socks her feet blistered so bad that she had almost been better without such a gift.
These paces were nothing in comparison.
When they finally reached the fortress they found it in disrepair. Ivy scaled up the masonry that time, the elements and even the ivy itself had chipped away at through the years. The bit of woods had kept it hidden well enough so that the only intruders would be of the four-footed or winged variety. A murder of rooks alighted as she dragged through the overgrowth. Joshua was near unconsciousness and had not said a thing during the walk. Had he, she would have ordered him – begged him really – to keep silent to save his strength.
She steeped over the threshold and no curse devoured them into nothing, no plages appeared and no monsters stumbled out from the shadowy corners. She guided him a few steps more in and leaned him against the wall until he slumped down into a seated position. That being done, she bent and ripped at her habit. The bottom of her skirts were too soiled with mud and blood to be of any use as dressing, so she started about her waist where the brigand had cut. She tried not to think of what would happen when they were rescued, of how there would be little to hide away the cloth that bound her breasts. But modesty meant little by the side of the life of Joshua. She ended up ripping off the lowest skirting simply to get more and thicker bandages from about where her knee was.
Natasha opened the shirt, peeled it off and heard a groan come from Joshua. She bit her lip to keep from trembling and spat upon her hands to clean them. It was the best she had at the moment. She spat upon a clean bandage as well and wiped the dust that had accumulated there. She picked out the brambles that had caught on them through the brief illusion of woods they had gone through.
With that, Natasha pulled him up as well as she could and wrapped the remainder of the bandage to stem the bleeding. He surveyed her now, his eyes lucid and not scaled over with a filmy gloss of pain.
“The magic is in you, not the staff,” Joshua said. “You can heal me.”
“Joshua...I can’t,” she said. “Just like mages can’t call thunder from the skies barehanded I cannot heal with my hands alone.”
There had been a holy woman – a saint, named Ignatia who had been able to heal things with her hands alone. With staves she could transfer an endless healing property to inanimate objects. She had blessed shoes that were shod to the bishop’s horse and the horse lived twenty-five healthy years and never a day went lame.
But Natasha had been a mere novitiate when she had left.
His arms ran up her leg, up to where the crooked line of her ripped skirts now hung above her knees. She knew the request for what it was.
“You’ll reopen your wounds,” she admonished.
“You’ll heal me,” Joshua said.
It is a peculiar aphrodisiac, belief. Just the mere fact that he believed in her enough to think that the sheer uniting of their bodies would make his wounds bend back and mend sent a warmth through her. She always had a hard time resisting his honey-sweet voice. It dripped down her, melted away at her defenses like embers to ice until she was compliant and beneath him.
“It’s no crime to take the woman you’re to marry to bed, Natasha. Only priggish father’s who’d never taken any woman to bed could call it that.”
He’d said this before, the first time he had convinced her that it was no sin if they were practically married already. He had whispered warm breaths against her ear and offered her a veritable kingdom. She thought him an exaggerator, but smiled secret in the dark towards the canvas of the tent.
(She had said then what would her mother-in-law think?
Joshua had simply looked said, and said she would’ve loved her.)
He had used this argument often since then, always reminding her of the sinlessness of such an arrangement. He’d even won her a ring from the gambling table once when they were encamped in a larger city – she demanded he return it to the poor wife whose husband had gambled their marriage proof away. He did, but returned later with necklace that had been boughten just for her. Of Jehennan craftsmanship and rubies set within the gold filigree. It was the kind of necklace suited more for a queen, and completely unsuited to her own plain desires. Still, she wore it under her habit, pressed close over her clavicle like a secret, a promise unknowing.
His hands were the mix of coarseness and yet had a feel as if they had once been far softer. He did not have the hands of an indigent worker, but nor did he have the hands of a nobleman either.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” she said, not quite able to get enough roughness into her voice to turn it into an admonishment.
He smirked. “But you want to.”
She lifted her skirts and he motioned for her to sit on his lap. Already she could see the bulge there, waiting for her closeness and touch. Then again, Joshua was always a step away from arousal. She couldn’t tell if it was simply his nature or if he was particularly taken with her body in itself.
“Don’t go too fast or you’ll tear at your wounds and make it worse.”
She eased herself down upon him with as much care as she could. When she did his hands were searching and touching for every part of her he could reach. He seemed stronger now, as if his wounds had already begun to heal. She thought for once that perhaps his tale about her having innate healing was true after all – though it would be impossible to test, for her would be the only one to ever see or touch her like this.
His attentions were divided yet slow. He started below the ripped skirts of her ruined habit and caressed up her thighs in stroking motion all up to her loins. He always stopped just short, or just enough to graze the triangular sides, just enough to set her into a rhythm of want that would leave her moaning when it was over. He moved to her breasts, and unbound the cloth she had wrapped about her chest for modesty. Joshua never cupped her breasts too hard, and never squeezed them with too much lust. He was gentle enough to not leave bruises that weren’t intended yet passionate enough to leave her whimpering and begging when he was in the mood to push her that far.
But he never lingered long. It brought strange childhood memories to mind, as if objects floating on water. Once when she was a girl, before she went to the convent she had heard other girls, older girls giggling about what attracted men. Elliphine, an older dark haired girl with sharp, cunning eyes muttered that almost all men were ‘breast-men’ and would become willing puppets to any woman who would let them reach around under her bodice. Another older girl, a red-haired one named Mora chimed in that just as many men loved girls with long, slender legs or long soft hair they could wind around their fingers.
The memory had stuck with her and Natasha had supposed Joshua a ‘breast-man’ though now, having known him, he seemed just as bewitched by every part of her. He would start from her back all the way to her neck and bury his face in her hair. He gave her breasts just as much attention as her thighs, buttocks or waist, and did not linger with special fondness on any single one.
She was the one to undo his pants, undoing the lacings with care. Each time before she had been the submissive as he pressed her down and taught her the language of the body. This time, however, it was as if the thoughts of healing had infused her mind till whatever virginal shyness was temporarily misplaced. She kissed him almost wantonly. Neck, shoulder, the uninjured part of his chest, even just above his bandage– She let her hands wander about him with no direction.
He grinned against her skin, nipped at the base of her neck and whispered. “You’ve changed a lot from the first time.”
She was more comfortable in her own skin, and his.
Still, she wasn’t quite the level of whorish moaning, and still, the thought of gripping the base of his cock would bring a blush to her face. His teaching would have to go on a lot longer before she was up to something as brazen as that.
He gripped her backside and pulled her in closer until she gasped, until there was nothing else but them and the fitting of their bodies close, closer. It came crashing into her, the heat, the desire, the ache of being filled. Each of them let out a shaky breath, a groan. Joshua rocked his hips back and forth slowly, as metered as ocean waves. She buried against him, careful not to touch the injuries, her arms thrown about his neck, her hands resting clasped over his shoulders. Everything within her, every cell seemed more sensitive under his touch. Each move of him was a slice of wet, unadulterated heaven and even she couldn’t find sin within the act.
She’d been prudish and virginal once and still it would take a life-changing experience to get her to this level again, but even she couldn’t blush away that she liked it. She’d resisted tried to resist him out of modesty, propriety, and to prevent meeting her future in-laws with a swollen at five months along. (He had an answer for that, as all answers: “Tell them we eloped.”)
When the heat built up to the point of no return, she came in a paroxysm, pleasure flowing overflowing until it was one drop rippling over her all the way from her core upwards.
When it was over he looked at her, an adoring and possessive glance all in one. He pushed a bit of tangled gold-spool thread of hair from her face and kissed it.
“You’ll be my queen,” he said.
And she thought it was an exaggeration like any other but almost half a year later she would find that he hadn’t been lying to her all that time after all.
*
They were rescued eventually. A few knights had taken to checking for bodies and by chance, Franz had stumbled upon a bit of mortar that lead them both to where Natasha and Joshua were splayed.
She was beyond the mere description of disheveled, here habit was little more than dirty, bloody tatters and her hair had frizzed and tangled from his repeated attentions. Joshua looked far too pleased with himself, a look that only the most innocent could mistake for anything but post-coital. If that wasn’t enough, both of them were covered in marks that were too light to be true bruises and were obviously made by passion, not speartip.
“She healed me all by herself,” Joshua said. “Without staves.” He leaned back, lazy and languid with a cat’s grin.
“Joshua!” Her face burned as she saw the reserved understanding in Seth’s face, and the utter blank unknowing on Franz’s own. It was Franz who she road with, and Franz who queried repeatedly to her health – considered she was so ripped and bloodied
It was then that she had to explain that she had been uninjured; it was Joshua who had been gravely hurt. Franz made a sympathetic sound and would’ve talked more, had Seth not given him a gentle reprimand. Franz apologized, to both of them and after that had silent.
Later when she went to change the dressing, she found the bleeding had stopped and wound almost completely healed. It was an amazing feat, this gift she had never known. She looked at her hands wondered at the untold power of the body.
*
It wasn’t until long after both of their rescued comrades had been put to bed that Franz voiced the question that had been gnawing away at his mind since finding their comrades.
“But General Seth, aren’t all forts blessed by Saint Ignatia with healing properties?” Franz said.
“That’s right, Franz,” Seth responded.
“He must be sorely mistaken in her properties then,” Franz said thoughtfully. “Maybe he never took that class?”
Seth cleared his throat. “You’ve obviously studied your textbooks, but you made sure to pay attention to your physical training. Correct?”
“Oh, yes sir! I practiced earlier but if you think it would help more–”
“I think that would be best.”
Franz left, just as earnest and energetic as ever. Seth was glad for this, for he really wasn’t up to teaching Franz about the birds and the bees just yet. If anything, he’d leave that to Forde – though with such a teacher as Forde, he couldn’t help but think the lesson would be pictorial, or possibly with live models and that Franz would never be quite the same afterwards.
*
Not too far off in a cot under the glassless, starlit window, Natasha healed Joshua again. This time even slower, with vulneraries and staves, until there was nothing but the barest of scars on his skin. It was so faint, like a fading memory that she had to trace it to find the jagged path again. After that, she never doubted her healing prowess again.