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“What the hell were you two thinking!”
Laurence’s eyes were traced downwards as he subconsciously picked at the skin surrounding his nails. He expected Lucinda to be mad, he just hadn’t expected her to be this mad.
The Shadow Knight tried his best to avoid looking at Lucinda, he knew the face she’d be making, she’d look at him with those sharp red eyes that seemed to drill into him, she’d look just as disappointed as she did when he left.
It’s not as though they did anything wrong, Laurence and Katelyn had fought just like the rest of them. The issue was that Katelyn and Laurence were the only ones who were injured. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong, went wrong. And on the last bridge out of the fortress, Katelyn and Laurence were cornered by Gene and Gilda. Leaving Aphmau and Garroth to take the newly rescued Ivy back to the rebels. Zenix and Vylad needed to come and save their asses, but not before they had already put up a fight.
“You were told to grab Ivy and get out of there!” The ginger witch proceeded to scold the two people lying stiffly in the beds in front of her. “Why in Irene’s name would you stop to fight?!”
Laurence couldn’t give his friend an answer. They could have run. They should have run. But they didn’t. Laurence remembered that look passed between Katelyn and himself, they wanted to win. No. They needed to win. No one on the island had a win in months, they needed this. Laurence thought that if they won maybe it would finally gain his friend's trust back. It didn’t.
A white sling was wrapped over his shoulders, holding his right arm up, his shoulder pulled out of its socket during his brawl with Gilda. A few haphazardly thrown bandages were wrapped over his right eye, per Gildas shadow saber. Katelyn and Laurence were both bandaged in a panic by Lucinda the night the group had returned from the Nether; and the witch had come back every morning without fail to rebind their wounds. It was only recently that Lucinda had started to scold them. Laurence was questioned prior to this, but she didn’t pry until Katelyn woke up from her own injuries.
It didn’t help that Ivy was in the infirmary until two days ago. Lucinda hadn’t seemed too eager to talk to the newly turned Shadow Knight.
To Laurence’s right was the recently woken Katelyn, sulking in the makeshift cot next to his own. Her arms were crossed as she looked pointedly away from Lucinda.
Katelyn’s left arm was bandaged tightly, thick beige-tinted cloth swarmed around her hand and ended wrapped twice around the nape of her neck. Blood-stained and worn bandages swarmed over her midsection, connecting with the beige bindings from her arm at her collarbones. The blood that inked from behind the cloth made Laurence sick to his stomach. Her armor had been discarded as soon as they came through the portal, and Laurence thought back to the way Katelyn staggered after their quick escape. How Zoey had caught her before she hit the ground, yelling for Lucinda and Aphmau. How he couldn’t see what was happening or who was injured. How weak it made him feel.
Laurence didn’t remember much of the fight on the Nether bridge, but he remembered Gilda and the scarlet broadsword. He remembered feeling the hot flashes of fire around him, the blue tongues of amber and ash swarming over the bridge. He remembered being confused and disorientated, in that instance he was reminded of Katelyn’s Jury title. He remembered Vylad carrying him away from the fight, his vision impared by streaks of blood he hadn’t yet understood to be his own. Laurence remembered the hot, unbearable heat and fire that left his mouth dry and eyes water. It was different from the fire from the Nether, it felt hotter, it felt angier in a deep-rooted way he could quite find the words to describe.
Laurence remembered looking up and seeing the sword through the back of Katelyn’s armor. He remembered the blood and the fire and the smell of burning flesh and warm red iron. He had forgotten how much blood was in the human body, he was sure he would never forget again.
He looked at the tightly wound bandages up Katelyn’s arm, trying to spot any of the odd smelling goo Lucinda and Zoey had put on her burn marks before the white cloth. He couldn’t, but the room still smelled like that plant Zoey had brought back for Katelyn’s injuries.
“Doesn’t matter anyway.” Katelyn huffed, glaring at the witch, scattering Laurence's thoughts. “They kicked our asses, but we’re alive. It cancels out or something like that.”
Lucinda drew in a sharp breath, red eyes flashing dangerously. “You almost died!”
“You should’ve seen the other guy.” Katelyn didn’t look smug, she just continued to glare back at the witch with a certain stubborn confidence.
Laurence figured he should intervene before this got louder than it already was. He was reminded quickly of the Emmalyn and Lucinda argument last night. He had never been more relieved to know that Katelyn was truly asleep. He doubted her spirits would be high after overhearing that.
“Sorry Lucinda, it won’t happen again.”
“Of course it won’t. Because we lost. Next time we're winning.” Katelyn snapped, eyes cold as she glared at Lucinda, defiance.
The witch's nose scrunched up as she struggled to keep down her temper. “I don’t understand how you lost this badly. You were a member of the Jury of Nine, an elite guard of O'khasis paired with a Shadow Knight on the Jury List. How in Irene’s name did you two lose?”
Katelyn huffed and looked away, shutting her eyes with a quick short breath as she rotated her torso.
That feeling was back, that deep vile feeling of guilt he’s had over the past two weeks. It was his fault they lost, and Katelyn was taking the blame for him. He should tell them what happened. But telling them that he killed Gilda wouldn’t be helping his case, and telling them he didn’t remember it happening would be even worse. He couldn’t bear to see Aphmau and Garroth scared of him. Not again.
He just wanted Lucinda to stop posting guards by the infirmary so he could sneak out. Laurence left for a reason, a selfish, jealous reason. But because of it he had made friends that could empathize with what he was going through, and those rebel Shadow Knights needed him back in the Nether as quickly as possible. He needed out of here, out of the infirmary, off the island, away from everyone and everything, away from his mistakes. He could only handle the smell of the strange plant Zoey put on Katelyn’s arm for so long. It didn’t help that whenever he looked at his friend, his stomach twisted in a strange lurking motion. Seeing the blood on her bandages made him sick.
It was his fault that Katelyn was injured. He should have stayed focused. He shouldn’t be this distressed about killing a Shadow Knight. Gilda deserved it, she tried to kill him first. She had to die. But why was he the one who had to decide that? Why should he be allowed to make that decision? Why did he have to kill her? Why didn’t they run?
Lucinda let out a heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I just- I’m not mad at you two. I’m worried. You two could have died. You understand that right?’
Her words were met with a thick silence.
Laurence was reminded of how tired Lucinda looked. Sometimes he tended to forget the rest of their friends had moved on, lived full lives when they were trapped in that dimension. He forgot how much older Lucinda was, he should remember that more often. He’d been forgetting things lately, Zenix told him to write stuff in a journal, a diary of sorts. Laurence made a mental note to buy one before he went back to the Nether. He’d probably forget.
This witch opened her eyes again, “Okay fine, I’ll reword it. You two are aware that people would miss you if you were to die, right? You have people who care about you and it’s really starting to piss us all off when you two go off-script and do all these dangerous things just because you can.”
“I don’t care how much you care about me,” Katelyn glares at Lucinda, eyes locked with their ginger friend. (Laurence remembers that this is becoming a recurring theme after Katelyn and Luci’s fight on the boat) “You don’t have a say in the things I choose to fight for-”
“You didn’t have to fight!” Lucinda spat back, “You chose to put yourself in that situation and now you’re both paying the price and everyone is left worried about you!”
“I didn’t ask for any of you to be worried about me!” Laurence focused on the force of his friend's voice, she didn't yell often, but recently that’s changed, especially around Garroth.
“Well tough luck Katelyn! Because I do! We all do! I’m so sorry that you can’t control that people seem to care about you!” The witch’s voice cracked as she yelled at the fire mage in front of her, red eyes burning with something Laurence couldn’t quite place.
Katelyn’s hands balled into fists as she sat up straighter in the infirmary bed. “We get into fights all the damn time! We’re guards, it's what we do! So why the hell are you so upset about this one! You’ve never had a problem with it before!”
“Because you chose to defend the enemy!”
Laurence remembered Ivy with a jolt. How Katelyn had held Ivy after they rescued her, the promise to bring her home. An unspoken look that no one in that room understood. Laurence didn’t believe Katelyn fully understood it either.
“In case you've forgotten, I’m fairly certain we have some damn good allies in the Nether.”
Laurence knew Katelyn wasn’t going to willingly talk about Ivy, she didn’t even after Garroth brought it up. Laurence thought back to the fight in O’khasis, Garroth telling him what happened to Ivy. He remembered being surprised by Raven’s actions, but not as surprised as Katelyn’s response to her old friend's death.
The locked room that no one could seem to get open. Not Aphmau, nor Vylad, not even Nicole.
“I’m not talking about Shadow Knights! My Irene Katelyn, you fought for Ivy! You fought for the enemy! I thought you were past this!”
Katelyn’s mouth snapped shut, eyes blinking as she stared at Lucinda, looking as though she was rifling for a response. Laurence saw the locked room again.
Lucinda continued, voice harsh. “She tried to kill you! She tried to kill all of us!”
“So did I!” Katelyn found a response, to Laurence’s surprise. She was surprising him more often these days, he used to be able to predict what she’d say and do. He didn’t think he would be able to do that again.
“You- You’re different” Lucinda stammered, breaking eye contact to glance at the empty infirmary bed a few paces away, the bed Ivy was in until two days ago.
“How?! How am I any different!”
Laurence didn’t like where this argument was leading, it was oddly similar to Emmalyn and Lucinda's argument last night. He hated that argument, he’s never had a problem with yelling, but that, that felt wrong. He still couldn't place why.
“Because you’re trying to do better!”
She was. Katelyn wasn’t like the other members of the Jury Laurence had met. She was truly trying to save the world, she wanted to help. Maybe that’s why he hated that fight last night. He could have defended her better.
“How do you know she isn’t!”
Lucinda let out a long groan in frustration, pushing her red-orange curls out of her face. “Why do you keep defending her!”
“Because I loved her!”
The room went quiet. Katelyn swallowed, looking as though she was trying to bite back a temper Laurence didn’t know she possessed. In his eyes she was always the level headed one. Maybe it wasn’t just him that changed in the past few months.
Laurence didn’t think she’d ever admit that she loved Ivy. He hadn’t understood the looks passed between the two women, how Katelyn had held Ivy after they saved her. How she had caught her from falling, the desperate promise to bring her home. How Ivy wouldn’t leave the infirmary until she knew Katelyn had woken up. How Katelyn had locked herself in her room after Ivy’s death, how Katelyn was all too eager to rescue her from Hell's Core. Laurence half-knew what was going on, he just hadn’t put the pieces together. But in this moment he knew what Katelyn was saying was true.
Maybe this was one of the reasons Travis and Katelyn didn’t seem to be on speaking terms. He’d have to ask Nicole later, Katelyn had been talking to her more than Laurence and Aphmau anyway.
Lucinda’s face fell, it looked as though she was struggling to find a way to respond to Katelyn’s words. Laurence knew nothing she said would be a correct fit for the puzzle-piece silence.
“I- Just forget it.” Katelyn crossed her arms again, setting her head back against the wall behind her.
Lucinda sighed, raising her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. “This is going to affect things in a messy and complicated way.” She let out another heavy sigh before raising her eyes back to her two injured friends. “I’m not your mother, I’m done yelling at you two. Just- Just be careful. Look before you leap. I don't know. Damn Kate. Is this why you and Travis were fighting?”
“Uhhhh no, that was something else.” Katelyn’s face went red, glancing at Laurence from her spot on his right. If it was supposed to be a look for him to understand, he didn’t. Laurence has had questions about the Travis thing since he came back. “Let’s just not bring it up. I don’t really want to talk about either of these things.”
Laurence nodded, wanting to respect his friend's wishes. He didn’t feel the need to be the target of her recent anger, that was a job solely for Garroth. Laurence recognized this was probably how everyone on the island felt before he left, no one wanted to anger a Shadow Knight, and Laurence didn't want to anger a Jury member.
Two even raps split the awkward silence of the room, halting whatever response Lucinda had towards Katelyn.
Lucinda looked at Katelyn one final time. “We're going to talk about this later.” She turned her attention to whoever was behind the stiff wooden door. “It’s open.”
The metal hinges creaked and the door swung halfway inwards, hesitancy. Long pink hair and soft curtain bangs half-covered green eyes that were trained on the wooden floorboards. Brows lifting to peer at the others in the room with a surprised expression.
“Oh, Ivy!” Lucinda blinked, swiveling her head to peer at Katelyn with a pointed look over her shoulders. “I thought Hayley cleared you?”
Ivy’s hand hadn’t left the doorknob, slitted eyes darting past Laurence and focusing on the blue haired mage in the second cot down. “She did, I just wanted to talk to Katelyn.”
“Me?” Katelyn straightened quickly, looking at Ivy in expectancy. She shuffled quickly in the makeshift infirmary bed, flattening the mismatched quilt Zoey had made for her.
The ex-jury member nodded, eyes never leaving Katelyn as she twisted the metal handle in her hands. “Yeah but you seem busy so I’ll just, I’ll just talk to you later.”
“I’m not busy.” Katelyn blurted out quickly, gaze never leaving Ivy’s prying sage eyes.
Lucinda fought to hold back her smile, biting her lip as she locked eyes with Laurence. He understood her amusement, Katelyn’s behavior had been odd since Ivy came back, more awkward hand gestures and nervous ramblings. But he was getting rather bored of this slow game they were playing by dancing around their feelings. He had just understood what was truly happening a few minutes ago, and he was already sick of it.
Ivy blinked, Laurence thought she might also be startled by Katelyn’s eagerness to talk to someone that wasn’t Nicole. “It’s uhhh, it’s sort of a -” She looked away from Katelyn, eyes trained on the books Lucinda had piled on the two desks she and Hayley had shoved together that morning. “It’s sort of a private conversation. So I’ll just uhh, I’ll come back when you’re not injured or whatever.”
Katelyn’s face flushed, the red making her freckles all the more prominent. “Yeah, that’s - that’s fine.”
“Right.” Ivy nodded, taking a short step behind her, closing the door an amount that Laurence might have thought of as rude, still fumbling with the copper door knob Brendan and Aphmau installed. “So I’ll uhhh, I’ll see you.”
Katelyn nodded stiffly, raising her non-injured hand for an awkward half-hearted wave. Ivy didn’t wave back.
As soon as the door closed, Lucinda and Laurence focused their attention back to the fire mage, who had her face stuffed into the palms of her injured hands, letting out a low groan of frustration.
“Okay so that was, that was something.” Lucinda laughed quickly, smiling as she crossed her arms. The earlier fight was forgotten in the aftermath of Katelyn’s awkward conversation with Ivy.
Katelyn had stopped grumbling, peering through her fingers at the ginger witch, “Shut up.”
“I didn’t know you could get that red.” Laurence jokes, hoping to keep up the light atmosphere. He motioned towards his friend's face. “Even your ears look embarrassed.”
She quickly moved her hands to cover her ears, effectively blocking out the noise around her. “Gaahhh just stop talking! Don’t talk about it, we’re not talking about it! New topic!”
“Oh come on.” Luci drawled out, a whine creeping into her voice as she paced towards the two tables shoved together near the door. “It’s so much fun teasing you.”
Laurence didn’t believe that, usually teasing Katelyn ended with a black eye, but she had loosened up since he left. Talking to her was starting to feel more natural, less like pulling teeth through sentences and silences that seemed to last awkwardly too long. A part of him missed the Katelyn that couldn’t communicate with others, but he loved seeing his friends opening up to people. She really was trying, and that’s more than Laurence can say about himself.
“As much as I love prying about others' lovelife, I have to meet with Hayley and you two need rest.” Lucinda broke through the comfortable silence, deftly picking two books off the tables and opening the door Ivy had closed mere moments ago.
Laurence nodded, watching Katelyn roll her eyes next to him. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Same time tomorrow.” The witch nodded in confirmation, walking through the door frame and closing the wooden panel behind her. She left the room with an awkwardness that always seemed to follow his blue haired friend.
Laurence racked his brain to try and come up with something to say before the chasm of silence grew ever deeper. He tried to think of what he would have said back when he and Katelyn were close, before he left. He remembered the teasing in the makeshift tents on the too-thin sleeping bags that only helped to separate the trio from the wet grass, they never provided any actual comfort. What would Aphmau have said?
“Sooooo, you and Ivy huh?” He drew out the question slowly, watching his friend turn to focus on him instead of the just-closed door. It felt like a question Aphmau would have asked on one of those rainy nights of camping, or even in those shared rooms at an inn.
“Laurence, shut the hell up.”
Her response gave him a sense of deja vu, they’ve probably had a similar conversation before, Aph did love to gossip. Laurence smiled at the irony of it all, this banter felt like nothing had changed, everything was fine. This time it didn’t feel like he was trying to convince himself of something he could never truly obtain. Everything was fine.
“What are you smiling about?” Katelyn huffed, her fierce glare softening as she lowered her hands back to Zoey’s quilt.
Laurence continued to smile at his friend. “Nothing, just glad to be back.”
She scoffed, a smile she tried to push back creeping up her freckles. “Yeah, yeah. Just don’t make us have to drag you back here again.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
Laurence laid his head back against the wooden board behind him. He thought his feet would need to touch the cobblestone pathways of Phoenix Drop for the pitted feeling of homesickness to leave his chest. But in this makeshift infirmary with offwhite walls and crooked floorboard to match the haybale cots and patchwork quilts, Laurence had never felt more at home. And in this strange moment of comfortable silence, he knew he wouldn’t be able to leave all of this a second time.
Laurence would never be able to leave the people he called home again. And this time, he knew he meant it.