Chapter 121: Sleeping from ten days

My eyes slowly opened and The first thing I noticed was the ceiling.

It was a plain timber ceiling, and I stared at it for a long while trying to work out why it wasn’t on fire. Last I remembered, there had been a road, a cliff splitting in half, and a lot of blood. Now there was a straw mattress under my back, a quilt over my legs, and sunlight coming through a window in a long, dusty beam.

Every part of me hurt. Not sharply, but deeply, the way a bruise hurts when it has gone all the way to the bone.

I turned my head, and stopped. Qing Yan was sitting beside the bed on a low stool. She had folded her arms on the edge of the mattress and laid her head on them, fast asleep. Her hair had come loose and spilled across the quilt. Her gold earrings had slipped sideways. The vermilion robes were as spotless as ever, but her face wasn’t. There were grey hollows under her eyes, and a thin line of dried salt on her cheek, as though she had cried and not bothered to wipe it.

Her right hand lay on the bed next to mine. Not holding it. Just resting there, close enough that the edges of our fingers touched, as if she had reached for me in her sleep and never quite arrived.

I looked at that hand for a long time. I’ve been looked after before. People bring soup, people sit with you when you’re sick, and it’s kind, and you say thank you. This was different. Nobody sleeps on a stool with their head on a mattress for the sake of politeness. She had been here for a long time, and she had not meant to fall asleep.

My throat did something odd. I lifted my other hand, slowly, because my shoulder complained about it, and laid it on her head. Her hair was soft. I stroked it once, from the crown down to the nape. She stirred.

"Mm..." Her eyelids fluttered. She frowned, rubbed one eye with the back of her wrist like a child, and lifted her head. "Barry?"

"Morning," I said. My voice came out like a rusty hinge.

She stared at me. I have seen Qing Yan burn a demon commander to ash. I have seen her walk into a camp full of the monsters who destroyed her sect. I had never seen her face do what it did then. It crumpled, all at once, as though somebody had cut a string.

"Barry!" She threw herself at me. There’s no other word for it. She came off the stool and across the mattress and wrapped both arms around my neck, and the whole weight of her landed on my chest. She was sobbing, big wet gulping sobs, with her face pressed into my collarbone.

"You idiot," she said, in pieces. "You idiot, you stupid, you would not wake up. I kept calling you and you would not wake up. You slept for ten days, ten days, Barry, straight. You did not even move. The healers said your core was empty, they said it might not come back. I sat here every night and you did not..."

"Qing Yan."

"...and I did not know if you would ever... I thought..."

"Qing Yan."

"Hm, What now?"

"If you keep hugging me like this," I said, "my wounds are starting to hurting again."

There was a pause. She went rigid. Then she let go as though I had caught fire, scrambling back to the edge of the bed with both hands pressed over her mouth. Her eyes were enormous. "I—your ribs—are you—"

"Kidding," I said. "Mostly."

"Barry!"

"It does hurt a bit. But it was a good hug. I’d like to file a request for another one in about an hour."

She stared at me, red-eyed and hiccuping, and then she hit me. It was a small hit, a flat-handed smack on my good shoulder, and then she did it again. Then she was laughing and crying at the same time, wiping her face on her sleeve.

"You are terrible," she said.

"I’m told it’s a charm."

"It is not."

"Ten days, though." I let my head settle back on the pillow. "I’m sorry. I didn’t plan that."

"You did not plan anything." She sniffed. "You never do. You walk in front of an army and say something rude and expect it to work out."

"It did work out."

She was quiet for a moment, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. Then she said, much lower, "The healers told me you used your entire core. All of it, down to the root. They said people do not wake up from that."

"Well. I’m very stubborn you know."

"I know." Her eyes came up to mine, wet and steady. "Why did you do it?"

I thought about giving her a joke. I really did. It was right there, a nice one about mountains and bad weather.

"Because he was going to kill you," I said instead. "And everyone on that slope. And I’d promised."

"You promised to take responsibility. You did not promise to die for it."

"Same thing, in my line of work."

"It is not the same thing." Her voice cracked. "Do you understand what it was like? Standing there, unable to move, watching you get thrown across the road like a rag, and being able to do nothing? I could not even lift my hands. I knelt in the dirt like a slave. I have done that already, Barry, I did it for three years, and I swore I would never—"

I caught her hand. She stopped. "Hey," I said. "Listen. When I was lying under that sword, and I thought it was over, you know what I was thinking about?"

She shook her head.

"The cave. The way you looked at me when I told you I’d take responsibility. I’d never had anyone look at me like that, like I was something they could lean on." I rubbed my thumb along her hand "I’ve been moving around for a long time. Doing what needed doing. I didn’t really have a reason to stay in one piece. And then you showed up with your terrible temper and your ridiculous fire, and suddenly I did."

Her lips parted. Nothing came out.

"So that’s the real answer," I said. "I got up because of you. Every time he knocked me down, I thought, I can’t leave her alone out here, and it was enough to stand on. That’s all it was."

"Barry..."

"I told you I’d keep my promises." I smiled at her, a bit crooked. "I don’t like breaking them. Especially that one."

She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me, and her face went through four or five expressions in a row. The color rose in her cheeks, slow and deep.

"You cannot just say things like that," she said finally, in a very small voice.

"Why not?"

"Be–Because if–if you say something like that –I have nothing to say back."

"You don’t have to say anything."

"But I want to." She swallowed. "I want to say... I..."

She stopped, flustered, and looked down at our joined hands. I tugged, very gently. She let herself be pulled, a little at a time, until she was sitting on the edge of the mattress with her knee against my side. Her free hand came up and touched the faint scale pattern along my wrist, the one that had never faded, tracing it with her fingertip.

"Y–You came back," she said. "That is all. That is all I wanted to say."

"I’ll always come back."

"You cannot promise that."

"Watch me."

She laughed, a wobbly breath of a laugh, and then i leaned toward. I felt her free hand settle on my chest, light and warm, right over my thudding heart. The sunlight lay across her cheek. A tear still clung to her lashes.

I lifted my hand to her jaw. She didn’t flinch. Her eyes closing and we were just about to–