Private Rough Edges

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora was moving before Roman stumbled upon the pub.

Evening hours meant a busy night. The tavern's raucous ambiance spilled through the doorlight, lingering in the dark, cool air like the flicker of a distant hearth.

She slipped her way through the crowd, and where she couldn't slip, she shoved. Patience only came in to play as when pushed the heavy oak door open, carefully so as to not strike anyone waiting on the other side.

The rain would cause her hair to frizz when it dried. Contrary to the neat, straight style she often wore, her natural texture was wavy. That minor annoyance wasn't even worth the thought, not now. Not when the cold drops of rain were a small price to pay to see Roman alive again.

"Oh," she gasped. "Oh. Oh dear. Come here."

Alive was a strong word. Broken, battered and bleeding, she had no earthly idea how he'd managed to get here in his condition.

Cora resisted the urge to hug him. Instead, she did her best to guide Roman by the shoulder as she tried to take some of his weight. No sooner had they made it through the door, did one of the burly bartenders come to provide support.

"Bring him to the back, and quickly!" Her order was breathless, fueled by both panic at his condition and the unmitigated joy that he had not only returned, but breathing. She would see that he was kept that way.

"You incredible fool," she whispered. It was not an admonishment, but reverent praise of whatever higher power has chewed Roman up and decided to spit him back out at his last moment.

Roman Vossari

 

[Roman Vossari]

​

LOCATION: Ukatis
TAGS: Corazona von Ascania

​

Roman didn't remember crossing the threshold.

One moment, the door was a distant, flickering beacon at the end of his ruined, endless tunnel. The next, it wasn't just opening, it exploded inward, a supernova of warm, golden light. It hit him like a blow. His knees buckled, threatening to swallow him whole, but then Cora's voice wrapped around him.

His eyes, crusted shut by exhaustion and pain, snapped open. That voice. Had he conjured her? Was this the end, another hallucination in a long line of them, dying in another forgotten hallway? But then her hand was on his shoulder, warm, solid, utterly real. Cora.

"Cora?" The name was a raw rasp, wet with something more than just thirst, fractured like broken glass in his throat.

He stumbled forward, leaning into her touch, each step a desperate negotiation with the black maw of unconsciousness. The pub swam around him; too many flickering lamps, too many shouting voices, the sickening lurch of too much motion, the smell of ale and old wood. But then another solid weight was at his other side, a burly arm slipping under his, a barkeep's steady mass pulling him onward, toward something.

The back room. The same one. He knew it without seeing it. Full circle.

He was lowered onto something soft, a cot, the precise moment a blur. He felt the sickening warmth of his own blood blooming beneath him, soaking into the cot mattress. The talisman, cold against his chest, pulsed with a faint, insistent glow, a tiny star burning through the crushing dark, anchoring him.

He blinked, forcing his eyes to focus. Her face. A soft blur of golden light, edged with a worry so profound it twisted his gut.

"I made it…" he rasped, eyes fluttering, heavy. "I… I came back, Cora. I…" His voice broke. He tried to reach for her, but his arm barely lifted.

"I left it. All of it," he whispered. "Didn't matter. None of it… not them. Not what they made me." He exhaled, a ragged cough.

Another wave of unconsciousness, deep and inviting, dragged at him. His head lolled to the side, breath hitching, shallow.

Then, a sudden, sharp gasp. His eyes flew open, the panic a cold claw in his chest. "Don't go," he choked, voice tearing. "Cora, please… don't leave me. Not like everyone else." His hand fumbled, a blind, desperate claw in the air, until his fingers hooked onto the edge of her robe. He clung there, knuckles white, like a child lost in the dark, terrified of waking to an empty room.

"I'm so tired," he whispered, the words barely a breath, small and fragile as winter ice.

His grip tightened, if only for a fraction.

"Thank you."

And then he slipped again, head slumping back against the cot. His chest barely rose, barely fell. He hung there, caught between one last, shaky exhale and the thinnest, most fragile thread of light.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

With the barkeep's help, Cora removed what remained of Roman's armor. Then his shirt. Her hands moved quickly in sharp, familiar patterns - triage medicine had rapidly become a part of her life.

Suspended from his neck, the metallic glint of the talisman was striking enough to give her pause. Just for half of a second, during which Roman's delirious pleas seemed to become that much more vivid.

He kept it, all this time.

"He needs blood," she murmured. "Get the plasvol. Hurry!"

The barkeeper needed no instruction, already rushing off toward the supply closet. During the war, the pub had served as a temporary shelter. More than one person had bled out in the very same corner Roman laid in. The cot hid the deep stains that soaked into the wood.

Cora's hands hovered over Roman. Then, they grazed against flesh as gently as they could manage. Broken ribs. A laceration that had almost reached through to his ascending aorta, and much more.

Trembling fingers curled around the sleeve of her tunic. The sudden motion drew her eyes to where she'd avoided looking - his expression. Ashla, she nearly broke then and there.

Who had done this to him? They would pay with-

Dark thoughts curled like billowing smoke, then dissipated into steam at the sound of his small, broken voice.

"I won't go," she choked out. Bloodied fingers, opposite to the sleeve he'd grabbed, wrapped around his hand. "And neither will you, Roman. You've made it this far. Stay with me, now."

A needle was inserted into his arm, through which the blood product flowed.

"He looks awful pale," the barkeep said softly.

Cora ignored him. One hand pressed to Roman’s chest, pouring all of her concentration into knitting the most grievous wound closed. Blood vessels pinched off, then rebuilt themselves. Flesh gradually bonded itself back together in real time.

It was an acceleration of the natural healing processes - imperfect, but learned out of necessity. He'd have pain. He'd have scars. He's have life.

Cora's hand drifted. His injuries had stacked up into something deadly, but now she could focus on the less urgent lacerations.

"You'll be alright, Roman," she murmured. "No matter the mistakes you've made, you're here now. I won't let any harm come to you."

He was hurt, so hurt, not just in body, but in spirit.

"Just rest," she whispered. “You’re safe.”

Roman Vossari

 

[Roman Vossari]

​

LOCATION: Ukatis
TAGS: Corazona von Ascania

​

He was floating. Or maybe drowning. Hard to tell the difference when the world was just a haze between agonising bursts of pain and the sweet, encroaching quiet, a quiet that smelled of cool earth and endless rest. He was untethered, weightless, a ghost already, wrapped in the fading veil of memory. The galaxy had shrunk to a few insistent pulses: fire in his ribs, the reassuring press of something warm at his wrist, a steady weight against his chest, and cutting through it all, her voice.

"I won't go."

A lighthouse, burning through the storm. Force, he wanted to believe her. He truly did. But a hollow part of him was already letting go, slipping deeper, spiraling down into something quieter, colder, where the gnawing ache couldn't follow. Where names blurred into nothing. Where guilt, that constant hook, finally released its hold.

It was inside that quiet dark that the real fight began.

He stood at the ragged edge of himself, gazing out over an endless, black ocean, the stars above already dead, their light drowned beneath its glassy, indifferent surface. A phantom wind stirred, carrying the ghost of voices he couldn't quite grasp from shores too far, too beautiful, to ever reach again.

He was so tired. Bone-deep, soul-weary tired.

And the water, a sleek, dark void, leaned in, not whispering, but murmuring directly to the hollow space inside his chest. "It's done," it crooned. "Let it end." Roman lifted a foot. He took a step.

Then... Her hand.

Not an echo, not a memory, but a sudden, searing warmth. Solid and real. Cora's fingers, he knew them, bloodied and trembling, fiercely, impossibly alive. He felt her grip, even here, through this veil of death, a tether snapping taut. And her voice, no longer distant, no longer a faint hum, but here, now, a desperate, raw plea.

"You've made it this far," she gasped, or maybe he just felt the words. "Stay with me, now."

The words struck him like a physical blow, a bolt of lightning through the endless dark. The black ocean bucked, its glassy surface shattering into a thousand angry ripples.

He saw her, not a ghost, but clear as day: her face streaked with soot and salt, eyes wide, unflinching, anchoring him. Her light, the light of her very being, was literally a burning ember beneath his ribs, her talisman a searing brand against his skin, a thread not just tying him, but hauling him back to something solid, something true.

He stopped. His foot hovered over the black water. The ocean roared, its current pulling with the force of a thousand dying desires. He clenched his fists, felt the bite of his own nails, the slick warmth of his blood. The darkness within him rose up, a cacophony of screeching voices, ancient, insidious, begging for surrender.

But something else began to rise, too. Slowly. Painfully. A reluctant, stubborn clench of his gut.

A will. A choice. He turned his back on the endless sea. Live.

The word wasn't a roar, barely a whisper of a thought, but it struck through him like a white-hot blade. And just like that, the sea of silence ruptured.

Roman's eyes flew open. Morning.

Gray, watery light bled through the single curtain. Rain, no longer raging, tapped a soft, lullaby against the windowpane. The storm, it seemed, had finally passed.

His body screamed. Every nerve ending shrieked in protest, every inch of him a fresh landscape of agony. Each breath scraped like broken glass, but he was breathing. Breathing. There was no muddy battlefield, no cold earth pressing against his back, no fresh blood pooling beneath him. Only the whisper of rough linen, the faint, comforting tang of healing salve, and the undeniable, overwhelming warmth of life.

He blinked, slowly, a few more times. The ceiling above him was wooden, old, scarred, familiar. The pub. He remembered. Cora.

His throat felt like splintered wood when he tried to speak, but he forced the sound out anyway, a dry, ragged rasp that was undeniably, wonderfully real.

"...Cora?"

It wasn't a scream torn from despair. Not a sob of relief. It was a call. A desperate, hopeful sound. The first, hesitant step of a man climbing back from the edge. A man who had, against all odds, chosen not to die.