Alexandria was still dark and quiet, but now...Daniel didn’t feel quite so alone.
- Chapter Seventeen -
Somewhere, high overhead, the wind continued its endless howl. The lanterns hanging from the rafters swung back and forth, casting shadows to dance across the ground.
Daniel leaned back, his eyelids drooping. His head settled against a wooden bar, books stretching out on either side of him. His mask bounced against the frame, filling his ears with a low clacking.
He smiled grimly. Even a week before, he’d have been panicked—here he was, sitting in Alexandria, maskless, with a visitor in her walls. He should be beside himself, in fact.
But that was then, and this was now. His leg prickled, burning, and he shifted, making a face. He couldn’t bring himself to worry about something like a mask right now, and besides. The damage had been done.
Reaching down, Daniel clasped a hand around the wound in his calf, squeezing. The leather of his pants was soaked through by then. There was no bullet hole, he mused. He hadn’t been wearing them when he was shot, he supposed—but if Alexandria could whisk him into different clothes when he came to the Library, it would have been nice to slap a new leg on him as well.
She hadn’t. And already, red was starting to drip to the tiles underneath him.
He closed his eyes. He’d fix it all. Somehow.
The clatter of urgent footsteps around him sliced through the silence like a hot knife through butter. Daniel’s eyes snapped back open.
Leon burst back around the corner, his face still cherry-red—and a white box hung from his grasp. A comically-oversized red cross was emblazoned on its side. “Found it,” he gasped. “Right on the table. T-This is it, right?”
“Probably,” Daniel said. “Let’s...Let’s see.”
For a moment, Leon’s eyes met his. Just as quickly, they flashed away. Daniel’s heart sank.
With everything else in his life falling to shambles, the idea of something coming between the two of them was almost more than he could bear.
Leon crossed to him in an instant, though, falling to the ground beside Daniel’s leg. “Okay,” Daniel heard him mumbling. “I can do this. Yeah.”
It’ll be fine, Daniel willed. “Alexandria...doesn’t use regular medicine,” he said instead. The piercing agony was starting to fade, leaving him numb and cold. Somehow, he didn’t think that was a good sign. “Don’t panic.”
Just for a moment, Leon’s lips curled up into a crooked smile. “You’re telling me not to panic. When you’re lying there bleeding.”
“Yep.”
“Man, how’d I wind up here?” Leon mumbled. He dropped the case to the floor, though, flipping it open.
Two objects waited inside—a roll of bandages, and-
Daniel snorted, leaning his head back again. Another tub of salve.
“W-What?” Leon spluttered. “What the hell is this? How am I supposed to-”
“She never gives instructions,” Daniel said. “Just...slather it on, or something.”
“But what does it do?” Leon said. He hadn’t moved, still staring at the case’s contents like they might explode.
Daniel bit back a sigh. “It’ll- They’ll help. Probably.” He swallowed. A sheen of sweat was starting to glisten from his forehead, and the taste of acid rose in the back of his throat. “I’m...I’m not feeling so great. So can we-”
“Sorry,” Leon mumbled, shaking his head. “Of course.” He grabbed the tub, unscrewing it. For a moment he stared down at the white paste within, his eyes wide and his face starting to turn a distinctly green shade.
“Fuck it,” he whispered, plunging his fingers into it and turning to Daniel’s ruined leg.
Daniel had steeled himself, expecting the worst, but even Leon’s gentle, careful touch sent red-hot daggers up his calf. The edges of the wound screamed, one final protest. Within seconds, the areas he’d covered in the goop started to chill and go numb. Not fully. Definitely not fully. But...it was better.
Watching Leon through eyes that were starting to water, Daniel exhaled, forcing himself to relax. “It’s...doing something,” he whispered.
“Well, that’s good,” Leon said with a hollow laugh. “My parents always wanted me to be a doctor. Look, ma, I’m doing it.”
Daniel laughed along with him—until he saw something tucked under the edge of Leon’s coat. A long, slender pipe, poking from an inside pocket.
The dead man’s pipe. He still had it, even here in Alexandria. He swallowed again, and for a moment, even the agony of Leon poking and prodding at his leg fell away.
That pipe had come from a mage. It’d stayed behind when the mage had...disintegrated. And now, it showed up here in Alexandria?
Maybe it was just because Leon had been carrying the damn thing, Daniel told himself. He’d had it on his person. Surely that was all.
It was a rational explanation—but Daniel couldn’t shake the sick feeling in his gut that worsened by the second.
His eyes flicked back to Leon’s face. Leon...hadn’t hardly looked at him since he’d returned. He was all but huddled over Daniel’s leg, working with an intensity that bordered on feverish. Daniel was worried about the pipe and its implications, yes. But in that moment, his mind was made up.
He couldn’t just let this lie, and watch everything get wiped away into the silence.
“Hey,” he said, forcing himself to sit up a little straighter.
Leon’s finger swiped across the raw flesh as Daniel shifted. “Hey,” Leon snapped. “Don’t-”
“About before.”
Leon jumped, his fingers brushing across the wound again. Daniel held himself steady, refusing to flinch away. Leon licked his lips. “It’s- I don’t know what you’re-”
“Come on,” Daniel said. “You do know.”
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Leon muttered. His head drooped forward, half-hidden behind his shoulders, his face vanishing from sight. “Idiot. I...I never should have-”
“Leon, I-”
“I’m sorry, Owl,” Leon said, his voice tight. The name was like a slap across Daniel’s face, stinging worse than his leg. “I shouldn’t have made you uncomfortable. I apologize. It won’t-”
“I’m glad,” Daniel said. A thin flicker of amusement flashed through him as Leon came screeching to a stop again, his mouth
