#sensless

At that, Cassian took the pan out of the fire, dividing the breakfast between the two plates that were ready at the counter. When he finished, the commander pried his mate’s arms from his waist and turned around to see her face. 

She had dark circles under her eyes and he brought his hand to her forehead, checking her temperature.

“Nes, you’re a little hot”, he said, looking into her tired eyes.

“I’m always hot. That’s why you married me.”

“That is true. I mean hotter than normal”, he chuckled. “Do you want me to call a healer? Rhys can winnow Madja here, it wouldn’t take too long-”

“No. Not yet anyway. I wanna have my delicious breakfast”, interrupted Nesta, stepping away from Cassian, getting both plates and bringing them to the table, pulling out a chair to sit on it.

The first bite Nesta took tasted like nothing, but she thought that, obviously, she had to be mistaken, because it was her favourite breakfast, so she took another one.

Still, she could’t taste anything, so she stopped wasting a perfectly good meal.

She stood up and headed for the sink, wanting to see if drinking a little water would wash watever was happening to her tongue down.

“Nes?”, enquired Cassian, standing up right along her and carefully nearing her.

“I just-”, she sighed, closing her eyes and bracing the counter. “I can’t taste anything, and I still can’t smell either.” She opened her eyes, turning to look at Cassian...

Only to see everything black. She tried opening her eyes again, thinking that she had had a lapse and hadn’t really opened them before.

Still, everything was dark, as if all the light of the world had been snuffed out.

Nesta started whimpering, turning her head frantically and throwing out her arms, searching for something, anything that could anchor her to reality.

“Nesta?!”, panicked Cassian, bringing his arms under her shoulders and knees and picking her up, carrying her to the couch and setting her down on his lap, cradling her head and swiping the shiny brown hair away from her face.

Nesta thrashed a little and cried out. “Cassian! Cassian... please Cass-”

“Shhh, I’m right here sweetheart, I’m not leaving. I’m right here...”, said Cassian while kissing her temple. “What’s wrong Nes? Can you tell me?”

“I- I can’t see anything. Cassian, I’m scared”, whispered Nesta, bringing her hands to both sides of Cassian’s face, feeling his stubble on her hands, which calmed her down.

“Okay. It’s okay. I’ve sent a message to Rhys and he’s gonna bring Madja over, yes? You’re going to be just fine. She’ll tell us what’s happening to you”, assured Cassian, almost more to himself than to her.

While they waited for the healer, the commander took Nesta to their room, asumed the same position they had in the sofa and started running his hands over her body, caressing her and drawing slow circles to make her know somehow that he was there and hadn’t gone anywhere, leaving her power and defenseless.

Not long after they sat on the bed, a knock sounded through the bedroom. It was sharp but not too loud, and Cassian answered it with a “come in!”, and resumed his labor of calming Nesta.

Madja came in, followed by Rhysand, carrying her bag with the medical supplies. After setting it on the night table, Rhys carefully let himself out, making sure he didn’t disturb anyone, but not before offering his help whenever they needed it.

The healer slowly made her way to the couple on the bed and started speaking.

“Hello, Nesta. Hi, Cassian. Could you tell me what’s happening?”, she asked politely.

“Yes. I just woke up really stiff, and with a little bit of a running nose, but I dismissed it because it wasn’t too bad. But, then I couldn’t smell the breakfast Cassian was making and when I went to taste it, I coudn’t either. And then everything just went black”, explained Nesta, looking aproximately where she thought the voice of the healer was coming from.

“Mmm. Are you running a fever?”

“Yes she is. I touched her forehead a while back and the temperature seemed higher than normal”, contributed Cassian, not stopping his ministrations.

Madja got up and open her bag, taking out a few strange looking leaves out, along with a mortar to mix them. She went at it for a minute or so while she explained:

“Okay, so you have what we call ‘Isolation Syndrome‘. Basically, is a virus that cancels your senses one by one, leaving the affected with the feeling that he’s alone, even if he’s in a room full of people. Usually the senses that are invalidated first are the last to come back, and they stop working aproximately one hour apart from the previous one, so probably your smell disappeared while you were sleeping and so did your taste. They don’t have a fixed order of disappearance, so you’ve been really lucky that the first ones you lost were the less used and isolating ones.”

“But you can fix it, right?”, urged Cassian, looking at the healer with pleading eyes.

“Kind of. I can’t make it go away, but I can make it go quicker. Say, it usually takes an hour between the stopping of each sense and twelve hours for the first one to start functioning again. With the medication I’m just finishing preparing, the senses she has left will disappear with ten minutes of diference, but, instead of half a day in complete isolation, she will only be an hour.”

Nesta took a sharp intake of breath, as if the air had been knocked out of her lungs.

“A whole hour?”, she whispered, tears already threatening to spill in anticipation of what was coming.

“Yes, I’m sorry. That’s the most I can do”, apologized Madja.

“No, no. That’s very kind of you”, thanked Cassian. Then he turned to Nesta, and spoke, with love and kindness in his eyes and voice.

“Nes, you can do this and much more. I’m gonna be here with you the whole time, even when you don’t feel like I am”, he reassured.

When the concoction was ready, Madja neared the bed once again and pushed the cup into Nesta’s hands with great care. 

“Whenever you’re ready, go ahead and drink it all. I’ll leave you two alone for it, but I’m staying right next door preparing a tonic for the commander so he doesn’t get sick too, until everything is over, so if you need anything, just shout a little and I’ll come.”

After that, she packed up her things and left the room rapidly.

“Cass?” asked Nesta. “I’m ready.”

“Are you sure? You don’t have to take it now if you aren’t.”

Her only response was to bring the cup to her lips and swallow the entire thing in one swig.

Right next, she huddled into his arms even more than she was, and pleaded, “Just don’t leave me... Please?”

“Never. I love you.”

She never heard it.

When the hearing went away, Nesta’s hand started working frantically against Cassian’s chest, writing random patterns just to grasp onto that security the tact was now only giving her.

But when the touch went away... Oh, when it went away she was reduced to a crying, whimpering mess, breaking Cassian’s heart like no one but Nesta ever could.

Nesta’s heart, on the other hand, was being squished, reliving her Cauldron experience. Over and over again. Watching Elain being pulled under, then out. The two men grabbing her next. Getting her into the damn Cauldron. Pushing her underwater. And then, the drowning. The endless, inexhaustible drowning, along with suffocating... And again it began.

Suddenly, she’s started feeling him again, and the caresses he had kept up doing. Then, not a minute after, she heard him.

“Shhh... It’s okay, sweetheart, I’m right here... I love you, always”, repeating his mantra for the last hour.

“Cassian?”, groaned Nesta, her voice rough because of all the tears she had spilled and the constant groaning.

“Hey, hey. How are you feeling?”, he asked.

“I- Cass I was so scared. It was the Cauldron over and over again and I-”

“You’re out. And it’s over. Never again, Nesta”, he interrupted.

“I know I just...”, she nuzzled her head onto his neck, her vision finally returning. “I love you. So much”, she concluded, sleep dragging her, now that everything was returning to normal.

Cassian chuckled and pulled her hair out of her face, pushing it behind her ears.

“I love you too Nes. But now, sleep. It’s been a hard and long morning and I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Always?”, she asked.