#cassianweek2026d4

“We’ve got time.”  Nesta’s words echoed through Cassian’s mind. He sat on the chaise before the fire, flinching with each crack of the wood not for himself, but for the trauma he knew it caused her. With each log she added he felt an overwhelming sense of failure. He’d let himself get so cold she had to confront this fear. And he was too weak to stop her from taking care of him. He needed it too much.  The sound of a rag dunked in water followed by soft drips that he heard, then felt against his skin broke through the numb fog of Cassian’s brain. Instead of pulling him toward the present, it sent him back to a day he simultaneously longed to remember and had tried to forget.  His wrist throbbed, but the pain was minimal compared to the soldiers who’d fallen around him. He knew the mud that coated his face was mixed with more than water, that he wore the blood of the fallen.  “You’re hurt.” “It’s fine.” It was a lie and not. His wrist would be fine, but would he? Cassian denied knowing the answer to that question. “And it’ll be fixed by morning.” Then Nesta offered her hand to him for the first time. Slowly, hesitant about the implications or lack there of, Cassian held out his arm. He tried to fight back the hiss that escaped when Nesta’s gentle fingers began to probe around the swollen wreck that had been his wrist.  “How do I fix it?”

Finish the chapter on AO3.