Ajax: Damsel in Distress pt III

[Andros]

Pulling out the poker was awful. Hakon screamed in pain and tears ran down his face, which made Ajax start to cry himself. Not a lot, just a few tears he wiped away. He still felt mostly numb.

The whole thing didn’t take long, not more than 30 seconds. Ajax thought it best to do it quickly but was careful not to rip anything that wasn’t already torn up. When he got the poker out he tossed it to the side. He was ready to step in with a tourniquet to stop the expected torrent of blood, but none came.

Ajax had been in and out of consciousness when Alecto had healed the wounds she inflicted on him. He had been too frightened to notice exactly how it happened when she healed Lukos during the fight. This time he watched raptly, seeing the thin white line come out of Hakon’s torch and the wound start to heal in front of his eyes. It was incredible. He stared openly.

When Hakon was done the leg still looked like a disaster but the wound was just gone. Hakon snapped Ajax into action with simple request.

“Yes, sir, thank you sir, yes, I’m glad you’re ok, I’ll get it right away, thank you,” he rambled, struggling to get words out of his mouth. Things were starting to catch up with him. He ran out the door and scanned the tree until he found the box, then shimmied up.

Ironically, it was catching his own male anatomy on a little walnut on the walnut tree that knocked the numbness out of him. It scratched, just a bit, and that pain was enough to wake him up. He was naked in a tree after having spent the day being cut open repeatedly. This wasn’t a nightmare or something that happened to someone else far away. It happened to him and it was still going on half an hour ago.

Ajax clung to the tree as his vision clouded with tears. He mastered his feelings just for a moment, blinking the tears away long enough to grab the box and jump out of the tree, scratching his bare feet on the rocky ground. He had dissociated so much that he didn’t even realize he wasn’t wearing any clothes, but now it hit him. Knowing he was about to start sobbing he ran inside, handing the box to Hakon with one hand while trying to cover himself with the other. Then he sat down on the ground and leaned against the door. He hugged his knees to his chest and began to cry freely.

[Hakon]

When Ajax ran out of the door, Hakon hoped that the lad would be back. He really needed his Sundering tools while Alecto remained between this world and the next. He needed to Sunder her before she woke up or passed on, then harvest her soul so that he could finish healing himself. He could kill her without Sundering her and heal himself, of course, but then he would have failed his assignment as an Initiate of the Endornotkun. He was not positive of the consequences for that, and he did not wish to find out.

He assumed Ajax would return. If nothing else, the lad needed to get dressed. So he made good on his promise and began dragging himself over to Alecto. Dragging his mangled leg across the floor was excruciating. He tried to tell himself that moments ago, he'd been in exponentially more pain, and actually nearing death due to multiple wounds, but his body did not care for this line of logic. When is broken foot went up and then down a fragment of what had been the table before Lukos had punched it into kindling, he sucked air in through his teeth and almost wept from the pain before excoriating himself to get it together.

"You. Will. Do. Your. Duty." He said to himself, punctuating each word by slithering closer to his target.

When he reached Alecto, his brow was covered with flop sweat and he felt light-headed, but he was otherwise none the worse for wear.

Ajax chose this moment to come back in and dropped the box by Hakon wordlessly before retreating to have a bit of a cry. Hakon felt bad for the lad, but he knew what had to be done. Alecto could come awake at anytime, and he was in no state to defend Ajax right now if she did. Still, he didn't want to ignore the kid.

"Lad, don't look over here for a few minutes, okay? Just close your eyes and think of something pleasant. Once this bit of business is concluded, I will do my best to help you."

Without waiting for an answer, Hakon levered himself onto his elbows, then upright with his long legs splayed out. His badly broken leg throbbed and he felt a searing pain, but it passed. Once upright, he opened the box and took out his sunderstrike. Alecto was unconscious and face down, but was so light that he was able to roll her over with one hand. She was so pliable like this that he would have felt bad about what was to come next if she weren't a vicious rogue who was responsible for countless murders. It took far less than that for him to excuse quelling a rogue, so in this case he was all but jubilant at the prospect.

"You deserve this, you know," he murmured to Alecto, almost conversationally, as he lined the sunderstrike up between her ribs. He smiled beatifically as he plunged the sunderstrike into her heart. He enjoyed his work, and was not about to pretend otherwise.

Less than a minute later, what had been Alecto was nothing more than a sunderscrap, a beautiful big piece of shining basalt rock that had an inner glow that he thought miraculous.

"Look at you," he said in wonderment. He held it up to the scant light in the cabin for a few heartbeats, turning it his way and that, admiring the stone.

Then, he scolded himself for dawdling and Engulfed her soul into his nightorch before it dissipated. He immediately began healing his broken bones, putting them back to where they should be, undoing the internal bruising and trauma, and knitting his bones back together. He was still exhausted and a bit dizzy from expending so much ether in one day, but he was better than he'd been since getting mauled by Lagunikos. He put the sunderscrap that had been Alecto in the pocket of his pants before walking over to Ajax.

The lad was still crying. Hakon didn't blame him. What he'd been through was awful. It wasn't anything anyone should have to endure, let alone an innocent. He knelt in front of the musician, extending one long arm and putting it around the younger man.

"Lad, you're okay," he said reassuringly. "You survived. They cannot hurt you any more."

If Ajax seemed receptive, Hakon would pull the boy in for a hug, trying to reassure him with comfort and warmth that he was safe.

[Andros]

Ajax did watch, despite Hakon’s urging, Or he watched as much as he could through teary eyes. He didn’t stop crying, but at least he tried to keep the volume down while Hakon was working.

It was oddly calming to see Hakon at doing his job. He wasn’t upset. There were no screams, no threats. It was almost serene. He dragged himself over to Alecto and, stabbed her in the heart. Then she simply faded away, leaving a shiny black rock where she had been.

That should have been awe-inspiring, and it was indeed something Ajax would never forget. For the rest of his life, he would dream about Hakon dragging himself across the floor in great pain and calmly dispatching the woman who’d tortured him. But in the moment, the relief he felt at Alecto’s miraculous death led to a torrent of emotion he couldn’t control.

He cried as much as he’d bled on that table earlier, sobs racking his body until his throat and lungs hurt. When Hakon came and haltingly put an arm around him, Ajax launched himself at the bigger man, wrapping his arms around his enormous torso and holding on for dear life, shoving his face into Hakon’s chest.

Ajax wasn’t looking pretty. His face was covered in tears and snot, which were getting all over Hakon’s shirt. His eyes were puffy and his cheeks pale. He was naked and covered in thin white scars all over his body where he’d been cut. But none of that mattered to him. It would - soon - but at the moment he clung to the sense of safety that his rescuer offered.

[Hakon]

Despite the fact that it did not have much to do with the situation at hand, holding Ajax rocketed Hakon back in time, far back, to when a rogue mage had killed his father. The differences were manifold: he'd been initiated (not tortured), there had been one intruder (not three), the man had sought out Hakon's father (and not opportunistically kidnapped him), and he'd been a boy of eight (not a young man of easily twice that). Still, though, he remembered the pain and terror of being at the mercy of a mage and knowing that nothing stood between him and death except their whim.

So he pulled the naked Ajax in for as tight a hug as he could give without it becoming something he'd do to someone to hurt them. As with many expressions of physical intimacy, the line between something tender and something painful fascinated him. Touch was a powerful force, to be sure.

He put his head in Ajax's hair, which smelled like sweat and grease and blood but also, under that, like flowers, and rocked him back and forth a bit. He couldn't say exactly why he chose to do this, other than the fact that other man clearly needed it more than anything and that it felt nice to do so. Hakon was not much of a hugger by nature, but in this context, he wasn't sure what else could be done to comfort Ajax.

"Shh," he repeated that syllable several times. "It's okay, lad. You're safe. I promise. I won't let anything bad happen to you. I'll keep you from harm from here on out. Your tormentors have been quelled, and you are safe."

[Andros]

Ajax felt safe with Hakon, just as Hakon said. That was a surprise and he didn’t even register it consciously. But how could he not? This giant of a man had just come and saved him. Hakon rescued Ajax - who couldn’t possibly be worth the effort - and now he was holding him and speaking gently and rubbing his hair. Hakon was a real, dyed-in-the-wool hero. His presence was deeply comforting.

Unlike Hakon, Ajax didn’t think of his father. He had been perfectly ordinary and lived until Ajax came of age, which was all that could be expected in a place with no medical care or sanitation. He wasn’t the most hands-on father, anyway, always busy with the flock. Ajax missed him, of course, but he wasn’t hung up about it.

Ajax did, however, think of an incident from his childhood as he regressed into crying like a little boy in someone else’s arms. He would have been three or four at the time. The story sits right on the edge of his conscious memory, but he could recall how he felt during the incident with total clarity.

Ajax was playing in the street and wandered into a brawl between larger boys from Upper and Lower villages. Some teenage brute barreled into him, sending him sprawling on his back without even seeming to notice. It knocked the wind out of Ajax. He was terrified, unable to catch his breath, and sure he was about to be trampled in the fray.

Suddenly Papa Andros shot out of his front door like a hurricane. He shoved the big teenagers out of the way like they were matchsticks, and sending boys who a moment before were pretending they were men at war slinking away in shame. Andros scooped Ajax up, spoke gentle nonsense into his ear, and held him until the pain and fear passed.

The memory of going from total terror to complete safety had stuck with Ajax all these years, and he felt the same with Hakon. He scooted himself forward so he was sitting in Hakon’s lap, the better to soak up more of his generous affection. With the adrenaline that had kept him going all this time rapidly leaving his bloodstream, he was left totally exhausted. As his sobbing slowed and finally stopped, Ajax fell asleep right where he was, in the arms of his hero.

[Hakon]

When Ajax cried himself out, Hakon kept hold of him, rocking him slightly as the lad cried himself out. He would have thought it childish if Ajax were a soldier, but the lad was a musician who had just been through what was clearly the worst thing that had ever happened to him. In a way, Hakon was cheered by that. This was not the sort of event that should be commonplace. Mages should not be free to terrorize ordinary people like Ajax. The report had said other people had gone missing from this place, and after seeing what they'd been up to, Hakon had little doubt that they'd been snatched, tortured, raped, murdered, and eaten. It made his stomach twist just to think about it.

He hadn't been dispatched to save them, but someone should have. He was grateful he'd gotten to Ajax in time.

When Ajax fell asleep on him, Hakon was surprised, but not upset. He wondered when Ajax had last truly rested. He imagined it had likely been before he'd been snatched off the road. A few days of terror and torture had a way of catching up to anyone. So Hakon moved the lad so that he was supporting him in a bridal carry and stood up with the sleeping boy in his arms. Ajax roused then, and made a questioning noise, but Hakon shushed him, and repeated that process when he laid him down in the mercifully clean bed. It was the only thing in the entire cabin that wasn't filthy.

"Rest up, lad," Hakon said quietly in Ajax's ear. "I'll be here. Just rest."

With that, he set to work. He couldn't just leave the place looking and smelling like this. He expected to be in it for several more hours if not overnight, and the competing odors of mold, rot, dried blood, and unwashed bodies did not sit well with him.

First, he opened a chest and found a spare change of clothes for the big guy, and used that to wrap his gaping torso wound, then dragged his corpse outside. He repeated the process with the little one. Then, using a rusty shovel he found in their former hovel, he set about digging a shallow grave for the two of them behind the hovel, where there were other piles of disturbed earth. Presumably, this was where they'd disposed of whatever remained of some of their victims.

It was tempting not to even bury them, but ultimately he decided it was better to do so. They had been vicious killers, but if he let them rot, their bodies would attract animals and who knew what other sorts of unpleasantness. Digging a hole big enough for Lukos in the silty soil was thirsty work, but Hakon was nothing if not physically strong and resilient, so he persevered. He dumped the little one in first, then pushed the bigger one in on top, counting on his dead weight compressing the smaller body of his brother. They had not yet started to stiffen, fortunately, so he could still arrange their limbs and position them optimally. Then he put the disturbed earth back on top of them, compressed it with his shovel and by stomping his feet, and covered them with a small boulder that obediently enough into place.

He returned to the cabin to check on Ajax: still asleep. So he grabbed a bucket from the house and went in search of water, finding a footpath down to a small stream. He supposed if it had worked for them, it would work for him.

Returning to the cabin, he grabbed the lone bar of soap and used it to make suds in the water. That would be important later. Then he proceeded to gather up various disgusting debris: pieces of Alecto's wings, clumps of what might have been Ajax's hair, bloody splinters of wood that may have been from when Lukos punched the table, and of course, bits of blood and the occasional missed piece of viscera from their fight earlier. All of it, he piled on to a torn and bloody table cloth he'd found while making his initial search for useful supplies. Then, he put all of that into a corner and checked his bucket: nice and soapy.

"Good," he said aloud, before starting to scrub the everloving shit out of every part of the cabin.

He picked a spare corner in which to start and starting scrubbing the walls, cleaning them of smoke, ash, grease, and who knows what else. When his rag became filthy, he tore a fresh piece off of the unsoiled table cloth and began again. When his water became soiled, he emptied it outside gathered more water, and started to soak the soap in the fresh bucket, digging a hole to make a midden while he waited. After a few hours, he had a clean cabin that smelled like soap, with no grisly traces of its former occupants.

Their stuff, he'd categorized and put on a small counter by the hearth according to its monetary value. He recognized the necromancer's kit and some of the jewelry as clear keepers, as well as some fine clothes, soiled though they were with blood and other fluids, and a few hundred farthings all told, mostly in the moderate denominations travelers favored. Most of the rest seemed to be sentimental trinkets, which he tossed on the basis that the people who valued them were clearly dead, or just complete garbage, like old bones that one of Ajax's kidnappers had been keeping for some awful reason.

Ajax's belongings were relatively easy to pick out: they were still neat and together in a pile near where the table had been when Hakon entered. He did his best to give them a wash and hang them up while the lad slept, because he deserved clean clothes if Hakon could manage it, and that proved to be his downfall. With one arm full of Ajax's sodden clothes and the failing light of day to guide him through the unfamiliar forest paths, Hakon missed a snakelike tree rot, and tripped. He didn't want to soil the clothes again, so he twisted his body on the way down, making sure they didn't hit the forest floor. He was successful in this manner, but his freshly mended ankle let him know its displeasure in his foolish decision when he tried to get back up and just... couldn't. It felt weak and would not bear his weight.

He sighed heavily. "Of course," he murmured. "Of course this would happen when you have no vitescence left to heal yourself."

At a loss for what else to do, he conjured his kite shield and used it as a makeshift crutch to get off of the ground. He could level off of it onto his good leg, and then hop the remaining distance to the bare tree branch that he assumed Alecto had used as a laundry line. He hung up Ajax's clothes standing on one leg in the manner of a water bird, and then hopped back to the cabin, feeling ridiculous.

It was only then that the full exertions of the day caught up to him. He made a frantic beeline for the chair, and barely got there before his other leg gave out on him. This one wasn't injured, as far as he could tell. He was just spent.

Deliberately, he stood on his good leg and dragged the chair over to the bed. He wasn't above sleeping in the straw if he had to, but, well. He would prefer to sleep where Ajax was, though he wasn't certain there was room for both of them.

"Lad, any chance you could help me?" Once he was mostly certain Ajax was awake and listening to him, he continued: "I've injured myself again cleaning up, and I've no reserves left to help me this time. Do you think you could help me into the bed?"

[Andros]

Ajax awoke with a gasp, not knowing where he was or who was talking to him. He had slept a lot, but his rest was clouded with nightmares of his experience. When Hakon woke him up it took a few seconds for him to realize he wasn’t still on that table watching Alecto come at him with a knife.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t remember coming to bed. In fact, his memory of the rescue was rather hazy, but he remembered the giant on the chair next to him having done it. And he remembered the feeling of safety he had when he’d hurled himself into Hakon’s arms.

“You saved my life before. You’re a guild mage, aren’t you?” he asked, rather stupidly.

As his conscious mind clicked into place, he realized he had been asked to help and was laying around doing nothing. He wanted to be useful. He felt so inadequate next to the bravest man he’d ever met, who’d now taken yet another injury. Helping hm to bed was the least he could do.

There was a problem though. He was still naked and didn’t see his clothes anywhere. Modesty wasn’t usually an issue for a young man who liked to show off his assets, but he was feeling deeply vulnerable.

“Oh, sorry, yes. I’ll get up and you can take my spot. I’m not wearing any clothes though. Don’t look, ok?”

He waited for Hakon to nod, then tossed the blanket and tried to cover up while he stood. It was stupid. He had nothing to be ashamed of, and Hakon saw it all yesterday anyway, but he couldn’t help himself.

In any case, it was impossible to cover up while he helped the big man into the bed. He bent down so Hakon could put an arm around his shoulder, then stood, supporting him. With some difficulty he shifted Hakon into the bed and helped him settle in. Then he stood, covering up again and starting to shiver.

He could look for his clothes and his things. He could get dressed and get the hell out of there. Ajax certainly didn’t want to be in that horrible place a minute longer than he had to, though he noticed Hakon had scrubbed it from top to bottom and it was no longer looking like quite such a hell-hole.

But then he looked at Hakon in the bed. It seemed warm and inviting. If he were being honest, he was scared to go back on the road by himself, but here next to that giant it would be safe and comfortable. And, taking a real look at his Hakon’s for the first time, Ajax noticed how strikingly handsome he was. Snuggling up with him would be a treat after what he’d been through. And he couldn’t leave Hakon here injured, could he? It would be extremely churlish after his rescue. No, he’d stay.

“Sir,” he said tentatively, tripping over his words, “or is it my lord? Or just Hakon? Sorry, sir. Anyway, yeah. Can I? I mean, can I join you? We need rest.”

Ajax could hardly believe how he sounded, so weak and nervous. It wasn’t like him. He was confident and outgoing before all of this happened. Now the presence of the big hero turned him into a tongue tied boy. He hoped that would wear off. And he hoped Hakon would say yes.

[Hakon]

Hakon did not spare a single thought to there being an ulterior motive here. He was exhausted, he assumed Ajax was as well, and there was only one bed. He had no desire to lie down in the straw if there was a bed, and presumably the lad, used to being in the company of the gentry, felt similarly. So Hakon nodded with a warm if spent smile before obediently looking away to preserve Ajax's claim to modesty. It was rather silly because he'd been naked this whole time, but it wasn't really about that, or so Hakon surmised. It was about being afforded the dignity and the agency to make a request and have it be honored after having been in the hands of his kidnappers who had presumably not been so respectful.

"Please, it's just Hakon. It would be Magus Hakon if you wished to use my rank, but I have not attained a rank so special as to demand its use in social circumstances. You are welcome to join me, but I take up, ah, most of the available space."

That was an understatement. The bed had been made for Alecto, and Hakon was nearly two feet taller than she had been and about three times as broad. He was used to curling his legs up so that they fit on his bed in the tower, but even with doing that, he hung off by quite a bit.

"If you don't mind using me as your bed in portions where your body cannot make contact with the mattress due to my intrusion, then I am happy to share with you, Ajax. And it is, Ajax, yes, not Lord Ajax or similar?" Hakon was fairly certain the man was a commoner, but it would be better to find out now than to make a faux pas later.

He did his best to make room for the boy, opening his arms and rolling onto his side so that he could enfold Ajax and keep the lad warm as day turned to dusk and the evening chill began to set in. He wasn't sure it was all that successful, but he'd obligingly position himself with and around Ajax so that the two of them could be somewhat comfortable, if a bit overly close for two strangers.

"Sorry about this, lad. I was hanging your clothes out to dry -- ah, that's where they are, by the way. I washed them and then hung them on a tree branch about thirty yards from the cabin, when I tripped on a tree root and now my leg will not bear weight. Your clothes are as clean as I can make them, though, and they should be ready for use by tomorrow morning. My ankle will fare similarly, I hope. Normally, I would take away the injury on my own, but I have no energy left to heal myself, and in case you are about to volunteer, I refuse to use Wither on you to rectify my own idiocy. You have been through enough. I will not make it worse."

[Andros]

“No, it’s not lord anything, sir,” Ajax corrected. “It’s just Ajax. If someone told the guild I’m rich they were as wrong as Alecto. Don’t let the clothes fool you, just a gift from a man I spent some time with on the road. I’m broke. Just a wanderer.”

There was no reason to waste time taking up Hakon’s invitation. Ajax doesn’t typically hesitate when a handsome man invites him into bed. But this was different. Hakon wasn’t a conquest, though he looked better than most of Ajax’s boyfriends. He was more than just an ordinary person. He was a mage with immense, awe-inspiring powers, and a brave hero to boot. He’d accomplished things Ajax could never have imagined doing, not just because he was magical but because he stayed calm in the face of danger and fought on despite excruciating pain. And he did it all for Ajax, a man he’d never met and who had nothing to offer in return - except the one thing he hoped to offer if Hakon seemed receptive.

How could he feel anything but inadequate next to to such a man. He was a wastrel. A useless mouth to feed. A pretty boy, at best. And before he was a wastrel he was a nobody. Just some shepherd plucked out of the pasture and dropped on a foreign shore. He enjoyed life on the road, drifting from town to town, but he was ashamed of himself in the presence of a hero.

It made him hesitate. But not for long.

Hakon clearly wanted him to join him. He was holding his arm out, making space. Maybe even the big mage wanted a little affection after their ordeal. Ajax got over himself and climbed into the bed. He faced away from Hakon and slid into the space he made. He was still naked, but under the blanket it didn’t matter. He pushed himself close to the giant, as much from necessity as from any desire. It was get close or fall off the bed. But it felt comfortable. Hakon was built like a brick outhouse, for one, and his body was several degrees warmer than Ajax’s. The boy nearly purred when Hakon pulled him in and got them settled into a comfortable position.

“I know you’re not going to do any bad magic on me, sir. I trust you. How could I not after what you did? I’m really a nobody, and you nearly died for me. Thank you. And thank you for washing my clothes.”

[Hakon]

Hakon wrapped his arms around Ajax in a way that he hoped would help the lad keep warm. For his part, he was still in his soiled clothes, something that he now felt acutely aware of with the naked boy snuggling up to him. What had felt fine when it was just him was now unbearable. The thought of sweet Ajax getting blood on him -- Hakon's or those of his former tormentors -- felt unconscionable.

"Ah, lad, I look forward to passing an excellent evening in this manner with you, but before we get too comfortable, I wonder if you could help me with something, ah. I'm no knight from old tales, but with my injury, I have need of a squire. I don't want you to be exposed to the blood and gore on my clothes all night. You are better than that."

"Unfortunately, as you may have seen from the battle, I took some deep wounds, so there's rather a lot of blood. Would you be able to help me out of everything save perhaps my small clothes?" Hakon said, trying not to sound embarrassed.

It wasn't being naked in front of another man -- he'd grown up in a culture where this was not an issue, and had been in communal baths all his life -- so much as it was the weakness of admitting that he couldn't stand up to remove his trousers. Were he not so weary, he probably could have figured out a way to do so. But his mind was addled, and despite his general abhorrence of reliance on others as weakness, something told him that Ajax would be unlikely to refuse this request. The thought of the lad helping him do this cheered him, though he could not quite say why.