STITCHES

Written on October 25, 2024 (♏︎)

Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2024 for prompt No. 25: Surgery (Stitches).

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Zalbag had not made a noise the first time anybody had stitched him back together–back in his first flush of youth when Romanda was on the march. At sixteen, he had quite convinced himself that it was a fine thing to be nearly run through–proof of his bravery to be wounded and proof of his piety to survive it. To be able to sit in silence, as still and unflinching as he could while the priest patched him up, was doubtless proof of some merit more. It was not the last time he would be injured, and it was not the first time he should feel a stubborn compulsion to endure.

He supposed that he endured now–stitched together by different priests and for different battles. He even endured in silence, still. As the overseeing Templar re-attached dead flesh to dead flesh, there was nothing to feel. The puckering lines that trailed along his arms, his chest, his throat… these did not pain him. Still, in such instants, when he perceived himself being remade, he regretted all those past years’ stoicism. He wished he had screamed and wept more when there remained air in his lungs and hot humours within him.

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