Separate Wounds

"Separate Wounds" is a [SEASON NUMBER] thread started on [IRL DATE] and finished on [IRL DATE].
==Summary==
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==Full Text==
=== Part One ===
“…sir? Do you have a moment?”
The formality didn’t immediately register when used in context to the deer, causing Dario to not react as quickly as he normally would to being a target of conversation. When the realization hit him, he swung around and almost lost grip on the wounded Rebellion soldier that he was assisting. A fellow troop stood in anticipation of his response.
“Gods, I am so sorry, yes, hello!” He turned his head to see a pained expression on the injured soldier, flashing him a sympathetic glance before returning his attention to the inquiry. “What can I do for you?”
“A young Rebel, sir, just a ways out from here.” The young woman, clad in battered armor and on the brink of exhaustion, forced out her words in an exasperated plea. “I don’t know how to get the bleeding to stop. I was told to find you immediately.”
The stag nodded in understanding before returning his attention to his current patient. “Can you make it to the infirmary on your own?”
“Yeah, go take care of that.” The soldier replaced Dario’s hand with his own, gripping his forearm tightly. “I can keep this on until I get there.”
“Good, good. They’ll take great care of you there, I promise.” Dario helped him to his feet, walking with him for a few steps before giving the woman his undivided attention. “What is your name?”
“Daia, sir.”
“It’s good to meet you, Daia. There is no need for sir; you can just call me Dario.” He gave her his typical grin, hoping to imply he didn’t take offense to it. “Would you please lead the way?”
There was a commotion surrounding a body just meters away as they approached, and the sight of two Rebels leaning a young man’s torso upright was the main focus. The stag picked up his pace to kneel at the soldier’s side, taking note of what was very clearly a mangled leg losing blood at an alarming rate.
“Okay, let’s… let’s lay you back down. Keep everything level with your heart… that’s good, gently.” Dario watched as the two soldiers softly lowered their counterpart flush to the ground. The man, who could not be older than his early twenties, was pale in the face and didn’t exude any signs of being in pain. Shock had most certainly set in by this point, and they had little time to rectify the issue at hand before a more cruel fate would be met.
“Can someone please go get a wet cloth… or anything, really?” He motioned to a bystander that heeded the instruction quickly. “We need to keep him coherent and awake. You two keep talking to him, alright?”
The pair nodded to the stag, lightly striking their palms on the young soldier’s cheeks and using the most reassuring tones they could muster. Hoping this would provide enough of a distraction, Dario looked back to the wound of mixed crimson and brown. He shut his eyes for just a moment, closing out the sounds of his surroundings and concentrating his focus. Hands aglow, he recoiled slightly as he placed them against the leg. The jolt from the leg was anticipated, and the stag was able to keep it against the ground, despite hearing the pained objection from the soldier.
“Just breathe through it. Keep focused on your breathing.” Dario spoke calmly as his hands remained firm. He gave them a few moments before taking note of blood pushing through his fingers… it wasn’t enough.
“Gods… I’m going to have to try again, but if we can’t get this under control, I-”
“Hey, take these. Throw them on quickly.”
A figure dropped down beside him, and he was unmistakable. Vox removed one of Dario’s hands from the wound and placed a few strips of fabric in them.
“Place them right above the impact point, right here…” He guided the deer’s hand to signify where they would be best positioned before taking the last strip in his own hands. “I’ll put this one below it to try and control the bleeding. We need to be quick.”
The scout turned his head and looked into the soldier’s eyes. There was now an apparent response to the pain, and no matter how uncomfortable, they needed to move with aggression.
“I’m so sorry, I know…” Dario gripped the man’s hand tightly, locking his gaze. “You’ve got this. Keep breathing.”
Vox motioned for another soldier to take the man’s hand so that Dario could continue his work, and heeding his friend’s advice, the two lifted his leg and quickly began to wrap the fabric pieces above and below the wound. Two would serve to keep the blood flow from impeding from his core, and the one placed at the lower portion of his leg would do the same for the remaining appendage.
“Good, tightly, right there is perfect.” Vox inspected the deer’s work while securing the final band, using another soldier’s hand to replicate his missing one. His voice was soft; he intentionally did not sound urgent in an attempt to not further escalate emotions. “This should at least give you a chance to fix something in here.”
Dario continued to inspect the gaping wound, feeling dread creep in slowly the longer he stared at it. I can’t… I can’t fix this.
“Vox, I think we need to take him to the proper infirmary.” He could feel his blood-stained hands shaking now – they mimicked the rising instability in his voice. “This gives us a shot at- at moving him safely, and there are others who will be more knowledgeable in what to do here. I… I don’t know.”
Vox gave him a solemn nod of acknowledgement. “That’s a good call. Everyone, give us some space, please.”
The crowd around them had grown a bit, and had been encroaching closer and closer as time dragged on. They collectively stepped away to allow for additional soldiers to carefully lift the man, paying extra attention to supporting his leg, and shuffled towards the infirmary with Vox and Dario. The man, groaning louder now with each step they took, reached out to grab Dario’s forearm. The deer looked upon him with a defeated, sympathetic face.
I’m so sorry.
=== Part Two ===
“…so there wasn’t anything they could do?”
“Not short of letting him bleed out, no.”
“I… I guess that makes sense.”
Dario held his head in his hands as his legs hung over the edge of the cot, hooves barely missing the floor as they swung. No matter how many times it would happen, he would never get used to the sensation of being without antlers. It had been days since the young soldier had been transferred to the same infirmary they occupied, and the deer hadn’t brought himself to visit until now. Even with the distraction of Yun from the evening before, which had been more than welcome in his current mental climate, he acknowledged that his mind was more inclined to wander into the dark than normal.
Vox, with one leg propped up on a table, leaned back further into the chair across the room. He maintained a level demeanor in an attempt to bring Dario to the same. “Given the alternative, I would say that he’s pretty lucky you were able to get there so quickly. You saved his life, Dario.”
“We saved his life, Vox. You knew how to get the bleeding to stop. I should have known, I should have been able to save it, if-”
A sudden stream of images intruded into the deer’s thoughts; a strong and gentle Luca moving Dario’s hands into the proper form to cause the faintest light to glow from them. Seeing his father’s own shine with a brightness he could only hope to achieve.
If I had lived.
“I just don’t want to imagine what he’s going to have to endure. I can’t fathom it.”
An unexpected laugh from Vox caused Dario to jolt upright, catching a glance of the scout in a fit. Wiping tears from his eyes with his one hand, he took a deep breath and let the last bit of chuckle escape before returning to a more serious tone.
“I think you’re being too empathetic, bud.” Vox ran his fingers around the wrist of the less fortunate appendage. “You learn to move past it. I mean, Hel, I would consider myself acclimated at this point. It just takes time. Don’t forget that even you have had to come back from worse, I would say. Would you have traded a leg for those five years?”
The stag wasn’t anticipating the question; it wasn’t something that he paid too much thought to on any given day, let alone in comparison to another’s injuries. He looked slowly to the floor and let his eyes gloss over. The memories that he had been unable to shake for the last few weeks were enough – he didn’t need the additional reminder from Vox. The scout took notice of his intentional silence.
“Hey… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.” The guilt of bringing up the only thing that allowed him to be present in the current moment crept in quickly. “I just want you to understand that sacrifice happens, and though it isn’t easy, we all get through it.”
“Yeah…” Dario’s tone was deep and gruff, almost exhausted. “…and forcing others to sacrifice on my behalf happens too, right?”
“Let’s not talk about this right now, Dario. You’re not in a good-”
“No, we have to.” The stag’s voice remained low and remorseful, with a hint of frustration. “We can’t wander through the rest of our- the rest of your life just treating things like they never happened.” He had shifted from tapping his fingers together to balling up two tightly closed fists. He could feel his throat prepare to bellow every word that crossed his mind as he stood and began pacing the room. “You were enraged with me that night, and with every reason in the world to be. You told me I needed to tell the kids and Tree, and I intend to do that… but I can’t carry this weight anymore, Vox, I can’t-”
“Dario, stop yelling, there are people trying to re-”
“I don’t want to live with this anymore! I want to make this world better, not hurt everyone who comes in any sort of proximity to me-”
“You need to stop it, now.”
“It’s destroying me, Vox. I won’t forgive myself if I can’t-”
“That’s enough, Dario.”
The scout was inches from the stag’s face, staring him down in a way that neither were familiar with. Dario could feel Vox’s breath as he looked just to the left of his head, unable to make eye contact. The two held their respective grounds before Dario caved, lowering himself slowly back onto the cot.
“I had a conversation with an old friend not too long ago…” Vox didn’t move from where he stood, looking down at the calming deer. “You can’t drown yourself in guilt and expect it to fix everything. Killing yourself over what is past won’t give anyone the closure they deserve, and the only thing you can do now is just… be there.”
–
“I’ll blame anyone for their part of a problem. Dario isn’t special enough to avoid that, no one is. Shoulder more issues? No…say something like ‘hey let’s go see your family, it’s been three months’…absolutely. Like it or not, you two isolated yourselves and made yourselves accountable to one another in this matter.”
–
The flashback of Stonegit knocking sense into Vox, in both a literal and figurative sense, was fresh in his mind. Though the methods were unorthodox, the message seemed to have stuck, and knowing that Dario felt the same remorse that he did meant that there was a shot to pay forward the epiphany that the bodyguard bestowed upon him.
“So… what do you want to do?”
Dario, with a hand holding his chin up and elbows on his legs, monitored his breathing while he pondered on his friend’s words. Vox was right, no matter how badly the deer didn’t want him to be.
“I want to move past all of this. I want us-” He dramatically gestured between himself and Vox, “-to be okay. I want the people I care about to not feel like they have to protect me, or give up something so intrinsically tied to them for my sake. I want to be better at the one thing I think I have the capacity to do well in, and I want to know that I’m not going to just wallow for the rest of my existence.”
The words fell heavy on Vox’s heart; a very familiar string of emotions that he dropped on Stonegit.
“…you need to think of a plan. A real one, before you go walking out another door…”
“So let’s do it. Right now.”
The stag looked up, eyes red and slightly puffy from the plethora of feelings they endured.
“…we can’t, Vox. Liam and Kendra need us here, and I might still be able to help if there are more wounded-”
“You can’t help anyone until you help yourself, Dario. We need to go back to Haligan, and we need to talk to Tree. We start there. Waiting is only going to cause you to self-destruct, and I won’t sit around and watch it happen.” He grabbed the deer by his arm and pulled him to his feet. “I won’t let you do it alone. It’s not going to be easy, and I can promise you that it’s going to hurt, but taking the first steps to feeling anything but pain and guilt starts here.”
Dario stood and gave Vox a smile that teetered on the brink of a breakdown. “…okay. Yeah, you’re right. I’ll go talk to Milae, and we… we can go.”
Vox squeezed his arm and returned the smile; one that was far more genuine. “I’ll tell Liam and Kendra that we’ll be back soon enough. I don’t anticipate that this will take too long at all. Meet me back here when you’re ready.” He walked to the exit, leaving the stag to his own devices. With a deep breath, he followed suit, thinking of what he would say when he found Milae, and what he would say when they reached Haligan.
Gods help me.