#lilja

Notes: Hi, so I started writing this months ago for FemFeb, as it has now become my yearly Ciconia tradition. I’m obviously well-aware it is not February anymore, but hey, it's still 2025, so I feel it still count, right? Every month should be FemFeb anyway! This was for Day 3: Fracture, from those prompts. Also, I admit I’m a very lucky person who has never twisted or broken my ankle, and I’ve never had to take care of anyone injured like that either. So I hope the way I wrote this here seemed, uh, credible enough. Plus, I know I keep saying Lilja ‘twisted’ her ankle the whole time in this, despite the prompt being ‘fracture’; it’s just that they don’t know here that Lilja’s ankle is really broken and not just twisted. AND WOW did you know you can indent texts on AO3?? Cause I didn’t! Brief spoilers for, well, at least the middle of Phase 1 and for the tip “Auxiliary Major General Gustafsson.” Not much content warnings except for the inevitable vague mentions of child soldiers and human experimentation.

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Gunhild didn’t know how she intended to spend the rest of the day, but it had not been with Lilja Viljakainen hissing and hurling insults at her as she tried to drag her to the infirmary.

It was supposed to be a chill day, too. They had training in the morning, sure — but then they had free time for the rest of the afternoon for once. Gunhild had started numbering her options during breakfast but hadn’t landed on anything yet; maybe she’d finish reading one of the books she’d started this month; maybe she'd hang out in the city; maybe she'd relax in her room with a cup of tea and soothing music while petting her cats—

“I told you, I don’t need your help, meow! Let me go! Let me go right now!”

Lilja tried to get away from Gunhild yet again, hitting her on the head — lightly, to her credit — and flailing as wildly as she could. Gunhild sighed.

“If I let you go, you’ll just fall on the ground. There’s no way you’ll reach the infirmary on your own with that ankle.”

“I’ll be fine! It’s just one ankle, meow, and— ow!”

Gunhild didn’t argue this time; she just let go of Lilja’s arm. And sure enough, the other girl instantly lost her balance and crumpled on the ground with a loud shriek. Gunhild crossed her arms, raised an eyebrow and stared down at Lilja with narrowed eyes.

“Th-that doesn’t count!” Lilja argued, flushing bright red. “I fell because you didn’t warn me!”

“I don’t understand why you’re so annoying about this. C’mon, we’re almost there.”

Lilja grumbled something Gunhild didn’t catch, but she stopped protesting when her fellow Gauntlet Knight grabbed her arm once more and wrapped it around her shoulder.

Lilja had twisted her ankle during training. Or, well, not exactly during — you couldn’t hurt your physical body during a training simulation — moreso after. Koshka and Lilja had been arguing and competing the whole morning — not anything unusual, as it happened… well, Gunhild couldn’t remember a day where she hadn’t seen Koshka and Lilja arguing and competing over something. The difference today had been that during their break, Lilja had been so engrossed in her word sparring with Koshka that she’d accidentally tripped over a chair and landed on the ground in the most awkward pose possible. She kept crying over how much her ankle hurts, so Miyao had ordered for someone to bring her to the infirmary. And of course, that someone ended up being Gunhild.

Koshka hadn’t stopped making fun of her until she left. Thinking about it, maybe it was because of this Lilja had been so adamant she didn’t need anyone to chaperon her and that she could perfectly reach the infirmary on her own.

Still, she seemed to have accepted her fate by now — because she fell quiet until they reached their destination. But once there, they faced another problem: the infirmary was completely empty.

“Where did the nurse go?” Gunhild wondered aloud as she helped Lilja sit on the bed.

“How would I know? I never go there,” the other girl replied snappishly.

Gunhild almost asked her more about that. Never going to the infirmary seemed strange. It wasn’t like any of them went there frequently — their training sessions were usually simulations, which meant pretty much no risk to their bodies. However, they still had physical training, and everyone occasionally gets sick or has some scrapes to mend.

But then Gunhild reminded herself that Lilja was also a Geroy experiment. That meant if something was ever wrong with her, then she probably had some specific checkups, instead of just going to their everyday nurse. Then again, she didn’t say anything about not being allowed to go to the infirmary for her ankle — just that she didn’t want Gunhild to accompany her.

Gunhild wondered suddenly if maybe Lilja hated the infirmary because it reminded her too much of Geroy. As AOU’s Auxiliary Major General, she knew a bit more than most about Lilja’s past and experimentation — so that tended to be on her mind a lot when she was around her. Not that she’d ever let anyone know about that.

“Whatever, meow! We’re here now, so you can go. Miyao’s gonna nag you otherwise.”

“Miyao is the one who asked me to bring you here, so he’s not gonna nag me about anything. And if the nurse’s not here…”

“Wait… What are you doing?”

Gunhild didn’t respond, and instead started to look around the place. She found what she wanted rather quickly; ice in the fridge, bandages and a splint in the closet. When she came back to the bed, Lilja was staring at her with big, scared green eyes, as if Gunhild was about to open her up or something.

“We can’t just let your ankle be until the nurse comes back,” she explained while kneeling on the ground. “We need to treat it now.”

“What— You’re kidding, right?! No way! I’ll just wait!”

“We already waited long enough. C’mon, I know what I’m doing. Don’t look so worried.”

“Th-that’s— that— wait! Nooo!”

But Gunhild only rolled her eyes. She almost expected for Lilja to try to kick her in the head in protest or something — but despite her loud pleas, nothing else came. So Gunhild slowly started removing Lilja’s brown boot on her right leg, then her white sock. Once the leg was completely bare, she gently grabbed it right above the ankle.

Lilja’s skin was warm.

Gunhild wasn’t sure why, but a part of her expected it to be cold. Maybe because she had the habit of thinking of Geroy experiments as not so dissimilar to walking corpses.

Though maybe it wasn’t just Geroy experiments. Maybe she had the habit of thinking of most people around her as dead already. It just made more sense, that way.

She heard a shriek above her as soon as her fingers touched the rosy skin, and she lifted a curious look in Lilja’s direction. Lilja flushed, as red as she probably could be, and looked away.

Gunhild really didn’t understand why she seemed so embarrassed. It was just a leg. It wasn’t like she had to strip naked in front of her. And Lilja was always wearing miniskirts, so it wasn’t like she had an issue with showing skin in general.

The ankle was so red and swollen that Gunhild actually worried it might be broken. It looked pretty nasty — it’ll probably take weeks to heal. She had been right about taking care of it right away.

She put the ice pack wrapped in clothing on the ankle first, as gently as she could, but Lilja still whined at the contact. For as much as she said earlier she knew what she was doing, Gunhild didn’t really remember how long she was supposed to keep the ice pack there before bandaging it up. It had been a while since she’d done something like that…

There was a strange comforting silence between the two of them as they waited. Well, Lilja did seem a bit anxious — but Gunhild didn’t mind. It was… unusual, for Lilja to be so quiet. She was always so loud and wild. Gunhild had just never seen her like that before; and there was something a little charming about it. She smiled.

“This brings back memories," Gunhild said softly. “I used to do this quite a bit when I was a kid.”

“O-oh?” Lilja didn’t seem all that interested in what Gunhild was saying; she just sounded like she was trying to find some distraction.

“Yeah. Me and my siblings would get into some trouble a lot as kids. Me and… Maja, especially. So we used to get quite a lot of broken bones. And because there was nobody around to take care of us, we had to take care of each other…”

Gunhild’s voice trailed. What was she doing now? She never talked about her past with anyone usually. Not even with Miyao and Jayden.

Especially not with Miyao and Jayden. They were the last people she ever wanted to talk about her childhood with.

But now she randomly started telling anecdotes to Lilja, of all people? Telling her about Maja?

Maybe Lilja was not the only who had gotten injured after all. Maybe Gunhild had gotten hit on the head on the way here too, or something.

“I… used to get into trouble a lot too,” she heard Lilja say suddenly. “As a kid, I mean.”

Gunhild threw a brief look at Lilja. She hadn’t expected her to respond to her — especially not so… seriously. For a moment, they just stared at each other, and then Lilja shook her head.

“A-anyway, meow! Are you going to stay like this for long? My leg’s so cold I almost can’t feel it anymore!”

“Oh. Right.”

Gunhild removed the ice pack, then was about to put on the bandages. But she stopped at the last minute.

She looked up towards Lilja once more, who stared at her curiously. Looked at her ugly, swollen ankle. And before she had the time to think more about it, she grabbed Lilja’s foot’s heel, leaned forward and pressed a kiss on her skin. Right above the swelling, so as to not hurt Lilja any more. Lilja still yelped all the same.

“W-w-what the hell are you doing?” She screamed, so loudly Gunhild was almost certain the whole building heard her.

She didn’t answer; instead she took care to finish bandaging up the ankle, then put on the splint. When she got up, Lilja was back to blushing as red as possible. Gunhild smirked at her and winked.

“Maja used to do this to me too, when I had a twisted ankle. It helps heal faster.”

“Like hell it does! You just wanted to screw with me, you weirdo!”

Lilja’s reactions were pretty amusing sometimes. Usually she found them a little exhausting, but right now Gunhild could almost understand why Koshka loved arguing with her so much.

Gunhild smiled, shrugged nonchalantly, and then said: “Maybe I just wanted to kiss you.”

Lilja, beat red, opened her mouth; but in the end she seemed too shocked she couldn’t even find anything else to say.

“You better rest there until the nurse come,” Gunhild continued, heading towards the door. “I think I should go now. Bye.”

She grabbed the knob and was about to open the door when, surprisingly, she heard Lilja’s voice raise once more.

“Ah, er… Gunhild!”

She turned around. Her blue eyes crossed Lilja’s green. Lilja sighed, lying down on the mattress and pointedly not looking at her.

“Will you… uh, come back again? Later?”

Gunhild blinked. That… was unexpected, to say the least. Lilja will likely be stuck in bed for a while, so maybe she was afraid she’d get bored at some point. But Gunhild would have thought she’d rather have Koshka instead to keep her company…

Maybe that meant she enjoyed Gunhild’s presence more than she had expected.

Gunhild smiled back at her, this time more fond than teasing.

“Of course. I’ll be sure to come again.”

That really had not been what Gunhild had in mind for her free afternoon — but, well, she couldn’t say it was a terrible way to spend the day either after all.

* * *

Notes: Gunhild is still my favorite Ciconia character, so it’s funny I’ve never written anything for her or from her POV until now, huh?

Lilja has a crush on her in this fic, though Gunhild’s feelings for her are more debatable. She comes across as more clueless than I think she should be — Gunhild’s a pretty perceptive person, so I believe she’d notice if someone obviously had a crush on her like that. My reasoning for why that is is that she just isn’t interested in noticing it.