CLOSED ♔ THE BREATH THAT CARRIED ME

[slay]

{ between two lungs ♔ florence + the machine }

WHO || Buffy Summers & Arthur Pendragon
WHAT || Arthur wakes up from his near-death experience at the hands of the Slayer.
WHERE || Knights HQ, Medical Center
WHEN || After training
HOW || Whatevs.

According to the clerics, he'd be out for a while longer, despite the fact that he was perfectly fine now. A little while longer meaning hours, and she should go eat something and finish up with the others.

Buffy declined.

Instead, she pulled up a chair beside the Med Center's bed that Arthur was laying in, opened up a gossip magazine and began to flip through. By the time he did actually awake, she had made herself a nest of them. But, she wouldn't leave, no matter how bored out of her mind she might have been.

Because, thing about anxiety, it made sure you were never too bored. It just figured. Jack had been gone, like, less than a week, and already she had managed to screw up in major ways. First the thing with Lan at the feast, then showing off her colossal freakiness at training with Luthir, the guy who had been giving her hinky feelings since day one had turned out to be a freaking vampire, and on her first day of actual combat training, bam. She killed King Arthur.

Well. She cast him a glance over People. All but killed, anyway.

He was gonna be so mad when he woke up.

Comments

[king]

Maybe a little mad.

Arthur cracks his eyes open, but doesn't move or speak. One moment he's deep under, far below healthy REM, and the next he's awake and his body is clamoring for attention.

The loudest voice is actually his side where her sword had slipped through the chinks in his armour, but it no longer feels like a fresh wound. His nose isn't throbbing as it should, either, but he still reaches a hand up out of the constricting starched sheets, to feel gently at the bridge of it. He likes his nose. It's regal. He'd prefer it not be crooked.

But it seems to have healed well enough, and Arthur wonders how long he's been out. His eyes glance around the room, catch on Buffy reading her magazine, and his eyebrows raise.

"Come to finish the job?" he asks, and it's wry and probably completely inappropriate, but not as bitter as it could be. Looking at her, he's only really angry at himself. She's tinier even than Morgause. Surely he should have been able to put her on her back, and even if she looks like he managed to do her over well enough, he still feels humiliated that it's him bedbound and not her.

He doesn't say any of that, though, just asks, "How long was I out?"