#febuwhumpday2

Zayne smiled as he bent down, but there was a tightness in his jaw that she didn’t miss.

She didn’t want to press him now though. “Come sit by the fire and warm up. I’ll bring some tea.”

Ariadne hurried to get the tea, then sat down beside him, offering him a cup.

“Thank you, darling,” Zayne replied softly, pulling her against his side as he relaxed by the fire a little of the tension in his body easing. Ariadne finally looked up.

“How did business go?” she asked tentatively. “Was your trip fruitful?”

“It went well,” Zayne replied, surprising her a little. “There will be little persuading on my part to start my plans for the town commerce come spring. Now that Li Gui is no longer an issue, things should run a lot more smoothly.”

“That’s good,” Ariadne replied.

“You looked like you were expecting bad news.”

She shook her head, sipping her tea. “You just looked like something was bothering you.”

Zayne shook his head. “You’re mistaken. You shouldn’t fret so much, my love.”

Ariadne tucked herself against him but could still feel a certain stiffness in his body. She couldn’t shake the suspicion that there was something else.

That night, Zayne worked late in the study. Normally Ariadne would have stayed up to help, but it was cold and she wanted to be in bed. Zayne had insisted she go get warm with a soft laugh and sent her on her way.

“Okay, but you must come to bed as soon as you’re finished, Zayne. You wouldn’t want your wife to freeze in the night, would you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied.

She went to their bedchamber and undressed to her shift before crawling into bed. She was too cold to fully change.

The bed still felt cold without Zayne. She cuddled up to his pillow instead, trying to warm it for him.

She dozed off for a while, but woke a couple hours later, still shivering, to find the bed empty.

A glance at the moon out the window told her it was far too late for Zayne to still be working, so she grabbed her robe and made her way through the chilly house to the study.

“Zayne?” she chided as she stepped inside. “I told you to come—”

She froze. Zayne was sitting hunched over his desk, his clothing loosened, hanging down over one shoulder. In front of him sat an array of herbal oils and creams, giving the room a rather sharp scent. But it was the ropy scar visible on his shoulder that caught her attention the most, making her gasp.

Zayne glanced up, almost guiltily at her arrival, and swiftly pulled his robe into place. “My apologies, my dear. I’ll be there in a moment.”

Ariadne only stepped further into the room, closing the door behind her. “Do you think I’m going to just forget what I saw?”

Zayne pressed his lips into a thin line. “It’s nothing to concern yourself with. I am fine.”

She moved over toward his desk and looked through the herbal creams. “You’re hurting,” she stated.

He let out a sigh. “These old wounds…they tend to ache in the cold.” Ariadne took a seat on the desk in front of him, reaching for his clothes. “May I?”

He sat back, resigned, and allowed her to tug the robes over his shoulder.

The sight of the scar was worse than she had expected. Long and ropy. Starting at his shoulder and traveling down between his spine and shoulder blade. It looked like the wound from a blade.

She swallowed hard. She had known Zayne had scars, of course, she had felt them on his body in the dark of their bedchamber, but her husband had yet to let her see him in full light. Always keeping the lights dim, always rising before her. She didn’t know his wounds had been this bad nor did she know they hurt him like this.

“Why did you keep this from me?” she asked, genuinely hurt. With where the scar was located, it must have been difficult for him to properly apply the balms. “How long have you been hurting?”

“It only really bothers me when I’m in the cold for extended periods. Perhaps my body remembers being in the North.”

“Have you seen a physician?”

Zayne motioned to the pots and bottles. “I went today and he gave me these to try. I’ve never really found anything that truly helps.”

“Well, it will hardly help to sit in this frigid room.” Ariadne chided, reaching for his hand. “Come. I’ll draw you a bath and then I’ll help you apply the cream.”

“It’s quite late,” Zayne protested.

“You won’t be able to sleep if you’re hurting. The hot water will help.”

He sighed, but allowed her to pull him upright and dutifully let her lead him back to their bedchamber. Ariadne lit lanterns to better see by, then recruited one of the maids to help heat the water for the bath. Once it was steaming, she put salts and some of the oils the physician gave Zayne into the water.

She beckoned to her husband with a gentle command. “Come here.”

He rose stiffly, and moved to stand in front of the tub. Ariadne reached out and began to help him undress, unable to help the small blush that appeared on her face, finally seeing her husband in full for the first time.

Her appreciation was soon dampened as she saw even more scars on his body. A thin scar across his ribs, a slight pucker on his hip. A short, white scar just above his knee. Even the ones her fingers had discovered hadn’t seemed this bad upon touch. Her stomach twisted.

“Zayne…”

“Don’t,” he chided, taking her hand as he stepped into the bath. “They are old wounds.”

“A wound is never old enough if it still hurts,” she remarked.

Zayne huffed a breath, hissing as he settled into the hot water. “I suppose you have a point.”

She let him settle, gathering the things she would need on a small table. “Is this why you wouldn’t let me see?” she asked as her back was turned.

He was silent for a moment, then, “I didn’t intend to hide them from you forever. I just didn’t want to startle you. Our wedding night was not for discussing my scars.”

Ariadne thought of that night between them, which had only been good memories. Would it have changed if Zayne had shown her everything? She didn’t think so. She recalled him suggesting they keep only one candle lit. At the time she had assumed he had done it for her so she wouldn’t feel as self-conscious, but perhaps it had really been for him.

Ariadne pursed her lips, but pulled a stool over and sat at the head the tub behind him. “Lay back.”

Zayne settled against the tub and let out a long exhale, closing his eyes. Ariadne picked up a cloth and trailed it over his skin briefly before placing it over his shoulder to keep heat on it.

“Shall I wash your hair?”

“Mm,” Zayne hummed.

Ariadne slowly loosened his hair from its usual style, smoothing the midnight locks, before she urged him further down into the water to douse it. She gathered soap on her hands and began to work it into his hair and scalp. Zayne groaned in contentment, head tilted back, eyes blissfully fluttering.

Ariadne massaged his neck as well to try and loosen some tension, smiling. “You really enjoy this? Perhaps I should wash your hair more often.”

Zayne smiled. “I wouldn’t complain.”

She rinsed the long locks then carefully used a towel to squeeze the excess water and combed his hair until it was only damp before tucking it up into a loose topknot.

Ariadne then picked up one of the bottles of oil and spread some on her hands. “Sit up, I’m going to try to work some of this in.”

He leaned forward over his knees and she began at the top of his shoulder, slowly massaging the oil into his skin along the scar. She could feel Zayne tense, the soft grunts of pain escaping him. The muscles around the wound were tight and knotted from long days of tension. After a while though, it seemed like her ministrations and the hot water were actually loosening the area.

“Is it feeling any better?”

Zayne exhaled. “It is, actually. I suppose I didn’t realize how much of the pain came from the tension.”

Ariadne continued working it until all the oil had soaked in, then smoothed her fingers gently over the area. “Who would be such a coward as to strike you from behind?” she murmured.

Zayne stiffened, and she wondered if she had overstepped before he replied quietly. “It wasn’t a blow intended for me. I just happened to get in the way. It healed badly because I wasn’t able to properly rest myself. It couldn’t be helped.”

Ariadne’s heart broke a little, but she also couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride in her husband. He truly was selfless above all else. Still, the thought of him standing with his men against their enemies while his wound bled under his clothing made her chest feel tight. She wished she had known him back then so she could have made sure he took care of himself.

“The water’s getting cold,” she said.

“Hmm, yes. This truly has helped—thank you my love.”

Ariadne flushed a little and stood to fetch a towel, wrapping it around him as he stepped out of the bath. He watched in fond amusement as she patted him dry. “Come sit on the bed and I’ll put the salve on it.”

Zayne sat on the side of the bed and she knelt behind him, rubbing the salve into the old scar.

“What about the others?”

Zayne’s fingers drifted to a smaller scar on his ribs. “They don’t pain me, truly.”

“If they do—”

“I will tell you,” he promised, looking over his shoulder at her.

Ariadne was unable to help leaning over and kissing him softly as she wrapped her arms under his, palms flat against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart. He was pleasantly warm and pliant from the bath.

Zayne hummed in contentment, placing a hand over hers. “It already feels better,” he assured her.

“Good,” she breathed. “Please let me assist you in tending to it from now on while it’s cold and bitter out. I don’t like to know you’re hurting, especially when you try to hide it.”

He nuzzled her cheek with his nose as he reached for his robe. “If it will make my beloved happy, then I shall oblige.”

She helped him into the robe and pressed her lips to the scar on his shoulder before pulling the garment up fully. She loosened Zayne’s damp hair and combed it until it was dry and untangled. She could see him sagging a little, obviously exhausted. She also bit back a yawn.

“Do you think you can sleep now?” she asked him.

“I believe so,” he replied lightly. “I finished my work for the night.”

Ariadne got up to blow out the lamps before happily crawling into bed with Zayne. He pulled the blankets over them both and the warmth and the comforting scent of herbs enveloped her as she cuddled closer to him.

“I don’t mind your scars, you know,” she said, leaning in to kiss a very light one just under his collarbone. “They tell the tale of your bravery and dedication.”

“Hm, I see,” he murmured into the top of her head, already half asleep. “Then perhaps, I should be more willing to bare myself to you in the future.”

Some nights, he could swear the fall never happened at all. In his dreams—not the night terrors, but the good dreams—he always has two arms. Two skin-and-bone arms.

In one, he's at the fair with Steve and has his arm around the shoulder of a girl. In another he's pulling some tough guy off of Steve and giving him a taste of his own medicine. In a third, he's just walking down the street, feeling perfectly balanced. Each arm swings just right and his steps are even.

But he wakes up every time, leaving his arm in his dreams. He brings the pain. He brings the sensation, that phantom limb.

Ponyboy scoffed as his back ached in quiet pain. His burns always hurt more in the cold than they ever had in the heat. Which didn't make much sense, but old injuries hardly ever did. Most of his scars hurt when it got below certain temperatures, Ponyboy had come to learn after he'd moved to New York.

New York was one of the colder states in America, at least, to someone who was born and raised in the southern heat. He was sure that there had to have been a colder state, but he hadn't cared to look for it.

And maybe, Ponyboy wondered, he wanted to feel a little closer to Dallas.

That was another thing that Ponyboy was mourning today. Dallas Winston. It had been six years since two of his closest friends had died, and while Ponyboy had made peace with Johnny's death by the time he'd reached 18… Ponyboy hadn't quite found his footing for Dallas' death.

They'd died in the same night, so he should have been… not quite over it, but something close to it.

The memory was a scar on Ponyboy's mind, an old wound that refused to heal properly and was constantly breaking open… like it was infected and needed attention. Ponyboy hadn't known how to fix it. He probably never would.

But he'd hoped that watching a sunrise might give him some peace of mind, get his mind off of one of his brothers in everything but blood for a few minutes though Ponyboy knew it wouldn't work. He could hope and wish and pray all he wanted, but it would never work. He still sat in that park and tried, though.

Ponyboy's neck was tense with residual pain as the sun started peaking over the horizon, his shoulders were drawn up tight to his ears. The burn scar from the church fire was the only remaning injury that Ponyboy could conect back to that time in his life.

Soc's and Greaser's were a thing of the past according to Two-bit, the only person still in Tulsa that Ponyboy had kept in contact with. The explosion between Soc's and Greaser's after Bob Sheldon's death had been the peak, and the resulting three or so years after had a turning of the tide into a new era of interactions.

Ponyboy didn't think that he would understand the new lifestyle or movement or whatever people were calling it now. Which was a ridiculous thought to have…

Hadn't he heard some of the older people in Tulsa say the same thing when Ponyboy was greasing his hair back to fit in on the East side? When he was showing his Pride of being a Greaser instead of a Soc?

Ponyboy shook himself out of his thoughts as he watched the colors slowly beginning to bloom across the sky. His breathing was labored and his lungs hurt—they had hurt every winter since he'd been nearly drowned, often leaving him bed ridden if it got too cold in the house. Ponyboy had known that there would be lasting consequences to that event in his life, he just hadn't expected them to be basically permante.

Ponyboy pinched himself to get his mind back onto the sunset, though it was all in vein as a phantom sensation of someone sitting next to him occurred. He knew who it was. Ponyboy didn't need to look to know who had materialized next to him.

Ponyboy refused to acknowledge him, instead grabbing his notebook and beginning to write. He'd begun writing every morning when it prove that watching the sunset wasn't going to keep him out of his head. Never his homework though. No, that was for the sunset each and every night.

Ponyboy had finished three different novels by doing this, all in the last year. One of them was even published. Out of the other two, one was under review but looked to be getting a green light to be published the following year. The third one was tucked into the furtherst corner of his apartment, carefully preserved so that he never had to worry about it and never had to pull it out.

The one he was working on then was beginning to shape into another story that would be shoved into his closet to be forgotten about.

The cold bit at his hands, trying to lock his joints in place as he carefully placed each and every letter. The ink dried quickly, but the smell stuck to the insides of Ponyboy's nose—it made it seem like the ink was still fresh.

Ponyboy sat there for hours before deciding that he needed to start heading his way to his college campus for his afternoon classes. The notebook was carefully closed and tucked into the bag at his feet. Never once did he let his eyes stray. The figure beside him watched just as silently as he did every morning.

Ponyboy only hesitated before walking away without saying a word. But somewhere behind him, he thought he heard the rough accented drawl that had been haunting Ponyboy's nightmares in recent nights.

Ponyboy walked faster.

"This ritual of yers kid… It's not gon' work forever."

— We are never going to catch them if you keep walking this slow!

Piper, the young and energetic child she is could never comprehend the amount of pain covering Kaoz body, but likewise he could never dream of telling her about it.

Saying he was a quiet person would be an understanding, the fact that child ever heard him speak was simply because she spend every hour of the day by his side and even then, after years together, Piper only knew a handful of facts about him, like his name and the fact he liked to drink wine.

— Im going, go first and climb that tree... Tell me what you see when I get there.

As usual, his intructions were short and precise, which she appreciate and with a nod went to fulfill, oh sweet child.

Kaoz, finally alone and walking at his own pace, was able to kneel down and grab a slightly work down bandage from his backpack, rolling up the pant leg to allow him to wrap the bandage as tight as possible, hopping to ease a bit of the pain from the badly scarred calf, used too often to stop attacks to the point of getting himself a permanent walking disadvantage.

He scoffed quietly while fixing his clothes and standing up to keep walking, barely getting to the tree by the time the child was getting down from it.

He switched off the light, put a hand on the door to slide it shut, and froze. 

Four may have had an afternoon of TLC. He, however, had not. The dull ache he’d been ignoring at the base of his back had gradually been climbing his spine as the afternoon wore on, like each vertebra was a step on a boney ladder. 

But as he finally straightened, letting his muscles relax, the dull ache morphed into something significantly more... fiery.  

His eyes shut and he swallowed as he carefully began timing his breathing, forcing himself to relax each muscle as he did so.  

Get upstairs. 

Heat pads. 

Drugs. 

It was the only thing to do. The sooner he got there, the better. 

But he didn’t move, giving himself a few seconds of slow inhale, steady exhale. Ignore the tremble in his hand. Loosen his jaw where he was instinctively grinding his teeth. Stop trying to pinpoint the pain and instead let it wash over him like a wave and, just like the tide, recede. But he knew better than anyone that the tide came back in again. A soft grunt slipped through pinched lips as the sensation climbed another rung. 

Getting out of the silos was his only option. If he stayed here much longer, he wouldn’t be able to. 

It was no ex-Olympian who headed upstairs, though. More like an old man, shuffling each step to avoid picking up his feet properly. Leaning against the wall so he didn’t fall, while trying not to twist either. There was sweat on his forehead by the time the warm natural light of the villa washed over him. 

The pain had spread: his entire back felt like the twisted and broken thing it really was. He wasn’t crying, but the tears were an involuntarily response to the pain, slipping from his eyes without his say-so. Rude. 

“Come on.” 

A soft voice. An arm around him knowing exactly where not to put any pressure. The promise of warmth, pain-relief, and oblivion as his shuffling walk continued to where he could get all those things. 

He was proud of his past. Gold medallist. Decorated WASP agent. A name for himself, rather than just his father’s.