Two Crows Watch from the Gallows Tree (part 5)

She felt a strange sense of calm. Validated. Seen. Heard. And allowed time and space to air her grievances. 'Better' seemed like a strong word, but in a relative sense, she supposed she felt a bit better now.

Which just left her exhausted.

The door opened a few minutes later, and Laura came in with two bowls of soup. Her brow furrowed as she saw Ky. "Oh, hello! Didn't expect you in here just yet. Didn't the medicine help?" She handed one bowl to Gaius who took it and set it on the nightstand beside his bed. What did she expect him to do with that?

Ky flushed a bit, not sure how to respond to that. She couldn't very well lie, seeing as she'd all but admitted the truth to Gaius, so he'd know if she wasn't honest with Laura. But she didn't very well want to admit to everyone in the Keep that she really just wanted to die rather than recover.

"It did help," Ky murmured, dropping her gaze. "I think I just need rest for now. I didn't sleep much."

"That's understandable. Would you like this soup?" She held up the second bowl. "You look pale; it'd be good to get some fluid in you."

"No thank you," she murmured. She'd eat if she had to. But she didn't feel like consuming anything at all.

"I think you should, even so." Laura set the bowl by her nightstand. "You need sustenance."
"I'd do as she says," Gaius said with a hypocritical nod. "The heart can't remake blood all by itself, Ky."

Ky didn't miss the hypocrisy, but she looked between them and nodded gently. Conflict seemed even harder to palate just then than soup. She'd done worse things under command before -- in even worse states than she was in now. She pushed herself further upright and grabbed the bowl. She cradled it in her lap, staring down at it rather than eating it. She truly didn't feel like it.

Laura sat herself down on a chair beside the fire, sighing to herself. "Well, Raina's doing well," she said to Gaius. "Anneke wanted to see me because she had a bit of a cough, but it's only a little congestion."

Ky took a deep breath and forced herself to take a bite of the soup. It tasted nice. Sebastian's food always tasted nice. Maybe it wasn't so terrible to eat, even though she still didn't want it. Perhaps it'd make her feel stronger.

"That's good to hear." Gaius nodded. "Newborns always bring a little extra stress to a household, I've found, but it's usually worth it in the end." Laura made a noise of agreement.

Ky was listening but didn't respond. This was the first household she'd ever been in with a newborn in it -- but it made sense. Routines were certainly upended over all this. She kept mechanically shoveling more soup into her mouth -- focusing on emptying the bowl rather than on the taste.

"When do you suppose I'll be able to walk again?" Gaius asked after a beat, and Laura's brow furrowed.
"Well, I expect that you twisted or sprained something when you were lunging about with that knife," she mused. "It's hard to tell what's what in there, though; the muscles are so distorted." Gaius huffed through his nose, half-amused. "I mean no offense there. But by my estimate, if you shift your leg around a few minutes every day to try and get those bones and muscles back to where they were before the fight, you should be fighting fit in a week or so."
So his entire time at Caracal Keep would be spent in bed. Lovely.

Ky swallowed the mouthful without chewing. Wait what? He couldn’t get out of bed at all? She supposed she didn’t really know why he’d still be there if he could. But it hadn’t occurred to her before that moment. That was her fault, too. That he’d needed to do it in the first place.

"I'm honestly shocked you haven't been fitted for some sort of brace," Laura went on. "It would make walking much easier, and you're just shortening the amount of time in your life you'll be able to actually walk the longer you go without one. How long has it been like this again?"
Gaius looked away, back towards the window. He'd tried a brace early, when the damage was still new, but it tore his skin and hurt more than walking on broken bones had. It made it harder to run, too, and creaked incessantly when he needed to move quietly. A walking cane suited his needs just fine as it was.

Ky decided she didn't want to be part of that conversation -- even though she was going to continue eavesdropping -- and looked back at the soup, continuing her mission to shovel through it all.