#oh also technically nudity? idk if i spelled it out?

[whimperwoods]

titles are hard. it’s d&d-based fantasy whump tho. Arms of the Enemy? somebody give me a better title challenge.

I saw a post about being rescued and carried bridal-style by an enemy and it was great but now I don’t know where it is? If you have it, please shoot it my way and I’ll link it, ‘cause whoever thought of it first was a genius. ^_^

Anyway this got quite long so I’m stopping here and hopefully gonna write more at some point?

Castor is a warlock, in service to the Great Old One and the Dark Emperor, in that order. Ed is a fighter, a knight and battle master in the service of the True King of Lumenea. They have always been enemies. In the space between the Old One and the Emperor, they might be able to become something else.

Also Ed is hurt real bad and Castor is carrying him out of the dungeon because sometimes he acts on impulse.

tw: blood, tw: coughing up blood, tw: descriptions of deaths in battle

***************

Castor stepped into the cell and found himself frozen, his feet unmoving on the floor. It was one thing to see Sir Edmond like this in his scrying orb and another entirely to see it in person.

The limp, battered form of his enemy didn’t move at the sound of the door creaking open, and Castor felt a cold weight settling in the pit of his stomach. He’d left his room in the tower knowing the knight couldn’t be left in the dungeon, but Sir Edmond had still been awake then, struggling to keep his head up even as the rest of his body lay unmoving where it had been thrown.

His footsteps didn’t rouse the man, either, and the relief he would have expected turned to a sick horror twisting around the weight in his gut. He hurried forward, moving before he could second guess himself, and scooped Sir Edmond into his arms.

His hand shook as he held it out toward the point where the chain around the knight’s ankle was attached to the wall. He had to be careful, had to cast the spell far enough on the other side of the wall that he wouldn’t catch the two of them in it, but he couldn’t afford too long aiming or he’d drop the dead weight in his arms.

He released the magic, and a concussive wave sped forward with a loud crack, breaking open the end of the chain and sending a ripple of cracks outward through the stone, stopping just short of his feet.

Sir Edmond started shifting in his grip, moving weakly, and Castor felt his face begin to burn, unsure how to explain himself. But what was done was done, and he needed to hurry out of the cell before someone could find him in the middle of things.

He’d meant to wrap the end of the chain around Sir Edmond before he left the cell, but up close, there was nowhere to wrap them that wasn’t already bloody, the knight’s body ripped open in so many places that even where he was whole, Castor couldn’t see it through the blood crusted over his skin.

He scooped up the end of the chain, gathering it up and draping it over his own arms before he hurried out of the room, his greatest enemy cradled safely against his chest.

*****

As Ed came to consciousness, everything hurt. His breath stuttered and faltered in his chest, and his eyes teared up in silence as the movements of his own lungs sparked waves of agony that rolled through him like fire.

Something was different. He wasn’t on the ground. He was in the air, held up by - something. Something warm. There was something against his side, against his cheek, that was warm and solid and gave like the floor didn’t.

He needed to know what it was. It was new. He forced his eyes open, desperation and despair settling against his breastbone as even that required two flickering tries to accomplish.

He was being held. Carried. He could feel the motion, now, could identify the additional waves of pain that didn’t match his breathing. The arms around him were strong, but the chest was clothed in a thick sweater he didn’t recognize. The face was blurred with the tears he hadn’t been able to hold back, and he couldn’t identify the man.

He leaned into the man’s chest as best he could, grasping the front of the sweater and holding on, hoping it would help him steady himself at least long enough to blink his eyes clear.

*****

Sir Edmond’s breaths came in shallow, broken gasps that shook his whole body, and Castor was relieved when the man grabbed ahold of his sweater, because it meant that he at least wasn’t trying to get away.

His own heart was racing and not only with the exertion of climbing stairs while carrying a man nearly his own size. Before, he never would have managed. Before, Sir Edmond had been a looming figure, terrifying, his eyes full of fire as he crossed battlefields, kept away from Castor and the other mages only by the strength of Zhok’s rage kept defensively between them. He still had nightmares, sometimes, of Sir Edmond’s sword tearing through an assassin’s chest, the light dying from her eyes before she even realized she hadn’t evaded his notice.

Sir Edmond’s grip on his sweater tightened and Castor instinctively pulled him in closer as they reached the top of the dungeon stairs, his heart racing and his throat filling with an old lump.

He knew where he’d meant to go, but it meant so much extra distance, before the night was out, and Sir Edmond was so weak, so much weaker than he’d realized, through the tiny image of the crystal.

Sir Edmond’s breaths were loud, choking things, and Castor’s feet turned toward the outside, where he’d planned to go, and tried not to worry too much about the rest. It would be extra distance, but the sound of the knight’s breathing wouldn’t echo, wouldn’t be so deafening without the walls to bounce it back to him, hollow and damning.

He just had to get outside. Get to the stables. Not look back, or second-guess himself. He pulled Sir Edmond closer again, hoping he wasn’t making a terrible mistake. Things had seemed so clear through the crystal, so obvious when Sir Edmond was lying, ruined, at his feet, and now - now the only thing he could make sense of was that he’d at one point had a plan.

*****

Ed blinked. Blinked. Forced his eyes to open, to close, to open, to clear.

The face above him was familiar, but it took a moment to place, even knowing where he was imprisoned. Castor the Black, Herald of Night, Battle Mage of the Dark Emperor. One of many men who had killed Ed’s soldiers. The man who had blasted common soldiers backward like he had a cannon at the end of his am, who had sucked the life from their battle cleric with one hand and run away so fast even horses couldn’t keep up with him. One of the emperor’s finest.

He sucked in a sharp, deep breath that made him dizzy with pain. His body spasmed around it, his tensed muscles pulling open his injuries as they tried to protect the aching lungs that half-collapsed in his chest. As he gasped to refill his lungs, his whole body convulsed with a violent, racking cough that brought up some of his own blood.

“Shit!” the mage said, stopping in his tracks and pulling Ed closer to him, holding tighter as Ed’s coughing shook them both. “Shit! It’s ok! I’ve got you!”

Ed choked and gagged, every inch of him screaming in agony around the rough jerk of his coughs, and his eyes filled with tears again, obscuring the mage’s face.

He was pressed tightly to the mage’s chest, and the hand he’d balled up in the man’s sweater had instinctively clenched tighter against the danger of falling, his own body betraying him as it fought to live through the coughing fit.

His head grew lighter, and then lighter again, bright sparks lighting up the inside of his eyelids with every sharp, shallow hack his cramping lungs could manage.

His breath only slowed itself after his consciousness slipped away again.

*****

Castor felt Sir Edmond’s grasp tightening in the front of his sweater, but the man’s panicked choking still threatened to wrench him out of Castor’s arms. He slid to his knees, trying to shorten the distance to the ground, and ended up half curled around the man, as if that would protect him from what had already been done.

Sir Edmond’s fingers loosened when he fell unconscious, and Castor took a deep breath, his head sagging forward toward the knight’s bloodied face as he held the man in his lap.

“Fuck,” he whispered to himself. When it didn’t satisfy him, he whispered it again, more vehemently. “Fuck!”

He sat up.

This was stupid. A mistake. This had always been a mistake. And yet - he looked down at the unconscious body in his arms, the man he had watched through his scry crystal for all those years and hated, watched again for all those months of unbrokenness and scorned, watched in these last days once he was broken and pitied - no. No, he’d made his choice.

He rearranged his grip on the knight and clambered shakily to his feet, hoping to get to the stables before the man woke up again.

*****

Ed hurt. He hurt. He fought through the pain, trying to find a sense of himself, and realized only after a dozen ragged breaths that he wasn’t in his cell. He was warm, floating, held by something, and the surface against his face was - was - things slid into place and he cried out weakly, shoving away from the mage’s chest and going nowhere, his arms too weak to free him.

“Hey,” the man answered, his voice rumbling through his chest so that Ed could feel it in his hands, a pleasant hum in a pleasant warmth, and everything in him hated that Castor the Black was the only pleasant thing in his world, now.

It was a trick. It had to be a trick. A new torment, cleverer than the old pain, like this enemy was cleverer than the ones who had beaten him in the cell, long after he’d given them what they wanted.

“No,” he rasped, his voice more groan than speech, “No.”

A ‘please’ hovered at the tip of his tongue, right there, before he snatched it back. No. No. He wasn’t begging. He had begged before, just once before, and look what it had gotten him.

He shoved against the mage’s chest only to find the man’s grip tightening instead of loosening, humiliation on top of humiliation. His throat tightened, and his breath came harder, made him fight harder for it, made his whole body shudder and quake and threaten to rattle itself into broken, bloody pieces. He was dying. He was dying. Why was he not just allowed to die?

The arms tightened around him, the pressure agonizing against his wounds, but the tightness in his throat was something else, something else, and it was getting worse, and he would not cry in front of Castor the Black unless he was made to.

“It’s alright,” the mage said, the rumble in his chest back, his voice gentle, gentle, a trick. “It’s alright, we’re almost there. I’ve got you.”

“No,” he managed again, barely a whisper, his hands sliding uselessly down the front of the mage’s soft sweater as he tried to push away and found himself falling closer instead, his arms giving out before he could even begin.

Castor the Black had armor, gleaming leather as dark as he could get, almost not brown at all, but in spite of the blood Ed had gotten on it, the fabric under his cheek and hands was soft, warm and comforting, something that belonged somewhere safe, somewhere far from here. His fingers closed around it, and he couldn’t stop them.

*****

Sir Edmond stilled in Castor’s arms, going quiet and unresisting, his fingers locking back into the front of his sweater, and Castor didn’t know if that was better or worse than the knight trying to push away. It was at least easier, which was something, and Castor forced himself to concentrate on that part, on the practicalities of putting one foot after the other and getting to the stables.

His arms ached from carrying the man’s weight, almost as dead and leaden now as it had been when the knight was unconscious.

He wasn’t built for this. He wasn’t trained for it. He’d fooled himself, thinking himself so different from the wizards that made up most of the emperor’s forces. If their positions were reversed, Sir Edmond could carry him with ease. If their positions were reversed, Sir Edmond would have put a sword through his heart long ago.

When he reached the well beside the stables, he set the knight down beside it and collapsed onto the ground next to him, his arms strangely weightless and aching softly.

He knew better than to speak directly into the man’s mind, knew he shouldn’t open up that kind of link, knew it would only frighten someone who had been an enemy for so long. He caught his breath instead, watching the knight pull himself together, curl in on himself in tiny, weak, desperate motions, and split open some of his wounds, barely scabbed over.

“Don’t,” Castor said, as gently as he could manage, his hand hovering over Sir Edmond’s shoulder as he realized he couldn’t find a place to touch him that wouldn’t be worse. “Don’t. You’ll only open up more of your wounds.”

*****

Ed’s face burned. Castor the Black pitied him. Had he really fallen so far? He moved in tiny, tiny jerks, motions of less than an inch that took all of his strength and sent dizzying waves of pain through him as surely as the mage’s steps had.

It didn’t matter. Breathing hurt, too. Everything hurt. He’d never hurt, like this. Not even with lightning coursing through him in the middle of a fight. A wretched, pained noise fell from his throat unbidden, and he turned it into a growl as best he could, baring his remaining teeth at the enemy mage.

The mage sighed heavily, tipping his head back and leaning it against - something. Ed forced his head up, trying to get a better look, only to find that he didn’t have the strength to keep it there. Fuck. He turned his face away from his enemy as much as he could without grinding it into the dirt, embarrassed and focusing the last dregs of his strength on keeping himself from crying.

“I don’t think I can get you back to the castle tonight,” the mage said eventually, his voice calm and soft. “So we’ll have to make the best of it.”

The mage moved, a rustling sound accompanied by a soft half-grunt, and then footsteps. Ed twitched, an instinctive flinch he only half managed to stop, and another pathetic high-pitched noise wheezed out his throat. He breathed again, his closed eyes tightening against the shame and the motion of his lungs hurting, hurting, hurting.

Make the best of it. Gods, what did that mean? The words thumped dully against his brain, but he was too dazed and overwhelmed to know anything more than that they sounded like the important part.

He breathed, and breathed, and did not cry, even as reopened wounds oozed blood down his back and thighs.

The mage walked away from him, the man’s footsteps becoming fainter and fainter, and Ed lay there, too weak to run, too weak to move, too weak to fight for anything but a last shred of dignity. His throat was thick and his sinuses pressed at the back of his nose. It wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough.

The breeze blew over him, gentle, and he waited, and feared, and hurt, and did not cry.