Chapter 40: Much Ado About Bucky

The ride back was painfully long, made all the longer as the Soothe spell started to fade away and my burnt arms were exposed to the cold wind that bit into them. It rankled and irritated me even more, but I could tell that the situation would have been far worse without Jammy's use of the skill. I gritted my teeth and tried my best to stomach the pain, clutching tightly to Blue’s neck as I struggled to keep my balance.

But it wasn’t just the pain--the burns had cracked open and begun to bleed slightly and ooze something other than blood. The agony alone was extreme enough to make me want to faint, but now I was losing fluids, too.

After what felt like an eternity or two, I finally saw the Sanctuary appearing on the horizon. “About damn time,” I groaned, fighting the urge to rub the terrible burns that were now open sores in some places, leaking pus but no longer bleeding all that much.

Blue sensed my discomfort. I was sure because he took the descent on much more cautiously than usual--it was deeply appreciated. When we landed, I attempted a graceful dismount as the girls all rose to their feet to come greet me and hear all about my latest adventure--only to fall right off of Blue and hit the ground with a heavy thud.

“I should have worn Bonny’s armor,” I groaned to myself. I was careless, yet again. How could someone as stupid as me be an Apex Hero? I was a fuckup, nothing more than that, and this time my thoughtlessness and lack of planning nearly got me killed. Nearly made virtual widows out of all my girls, a bunch of them pregnant.

Daisy and May Belle were pregnant. Etherea was, Bonny was, Vale was, Scalia was--notably Ivy, Autumn, and Sprinkle weren't. Autumn decided to wait until the mission was done--or at least further along. Ivy was being dodgy recently, though with the latest drama, I more or less understood why. But the real heartbreaker was my unicorn girl. Rainbow Sprinkle was having trouble conceiving. I couldn't die. I had to survive, for her. To see all my kids.

My mom would have been a bit kinder to me than I was being to myself, though. She would have called this a ‘Live and Learn Moment.' “You survive a lot of first mistakes, Buchanan,” she used to say. “Don’t make the same mistake a second time.”

The sounds of squeals and screams and panicked breathing surrounded me on all sides. Suddenly the pain in my arms was second to the pain I felt in my heart from making my girls worry.

“Bucky!? What--What--”

“What happened?! Bucky-Baby, no! No-no-no--”

“My Bucky? Say something, my Bucky!”

I tried to speak, but I felt my consciousness failing. For a split second, I could make out their beautiful faces hovering over me, but then they were gone, faded away into blackness as a heavy shroud seemed to press itself upon me from all sides.

***

Hours later, maybe longer, I awoke in Etherea’s cottage, my head on the moon elf’s lap. My eyes fluttered open, and the first thing I saw was her gorgeous eyes. They opened wide like saucers as she noticed me stirring, bringing her hand to cup my cheek as she tutted and clucked at me soothingly.

“Shhhh,” she whispered. “Slowly, now, hero.”

I was in no hurry to sit up. The pain in my arms was still there, but the sharpness of it was replaced by a dull but powerful ache. I wondered then if I would have even made it back without the Soothe spell or if I would have fallen off Blue mid-flight.

I shook my head, casting off that dark thought. Blue would have caught me. Still, if this was what I felt after banishing the worst of the agony, my mind would have reeled to know what it would have been like to experience the extent of it.

And I was still so weak.

“So quiet, hero,” Etherea said. “Lost in thoughts, I see from the frantic movements of your eyes. Say something to ease my worry, would you?”

“I’m alright,” I said, my voice croaky and dry. “What happened after I got back?”

She giggled softly, stroking my hair. A fire crackled in the hearth nearby. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ivy stepping into view.

“What happened is you gave your girls quite a fright,” Etherea said calmly.

I looked over at Ivy and immediately confirmed that it was true. Her face was streaked with half-dried tears, her gorgeous eyes swollen and puffy from crying. Her red hair was unusually disheveled, and the wood elf's brow furrowed as though in fury.

“So stupid,” she muttered, and I winced at the words as they echoed my own inner monologue.

“I know,” I said. “I am so fucking stupid. I should have brought you. I should have brought my armor. I should have gone in slower. I’m a fucking idiot, I--”

“Shut up.” That’s all she said. She just stared at me angrily, like she couldn’t even process all her feelings at the moment. If Ivy was this bad, I had to wonder how the other girls were doing.

I looked down at my arms--the scars would be immense, my new reality. They would make Aldon's scars look inconsequential. The burn marks were still there and fresh but mostly bandaged. I was shirtless now, my torso, neck, and arms wrapped carefully by skilled hands. I smelled herbs on the bandages--ointments or something similar that was likely accelerating the healing.

“We used magic to repair what we could,” Etherea said. “You’ll have lost some feeling in your arms and neck when it’s all recovered. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that."

“And you’ll have the scars,” Ivy added, still seething quietly.

I nodded. “It won’t happen again. I’ll be more careful.”

“In less than two weeks, you’re going to raid Kingfury’s Keep,” Ivy grunted, swallowing. “You’re not ready. You won’t be fully healed. You have to call it off.”

I closed my eyes. “I’ll think about it. First, let’s see how bad the damage is and how slow I am to heal.”

I didn’t open my eyes back up, but I heard a squeal as Ivy likely burst into a fresh batch of tears, and then the sound of the slamming door filled the room. When I opened my eyes again, she was nowhere to be seen.

“She loves you, you know,” Etherea said, blowing a wisp of white hair out of her gorgeous features. “You’ll need to give them all some time. I recommend you stay here tonight.”

“I want to see them, though,” I groaned in complaint.

“They’re fine. Seeing you in this state will only make them worry more.”

I shook my head. “Hiding them from me won’t help. I need to be with them--what if something happens? I need to be ready. On my feet.”

I sat up--the pain was so intense on my neck in particular that I retched and almost vomited on the floor. Etherea tried to pull me back onto the cot, but I pushed her away. “Get off of me!” I shouted.

She looked shocked at the outburst. “Bucky… I--”

I frowned, closing my eyes, and I stood up. She let her hand fall off of my shoulder. “I’m sorry about… I shouldn’t have yelled. Thank you for healing me.”

“Bucky, if you leave now, you won’t heal properly,” she warned me. “Don’t go, please!”

“Then you come with me,” I grunted in annoyance. “I don’t fucking know why you even stay in this cottage. Just move into the sanctuary. I’ll build you a new house.”

Again, a look of surprise appeared on her face. “You want me on the Sanctuary?”

“Did I stutter?” I asked, muttering through a clenched jaw. The pain was persistent. “Fuck, why does it hurt so bad?!”

“Dragon flames are cursed,” she said with a heavy sigh. “It’ll leave a pain that always lingers.”

That didn’t sound ideal. "But it was blood," I corrected her.

She cringed. "That would be even worse, I'm afraid. I'm sorry, Bucky. We tried Sprinkle's saliva, but even that wouldn't work on the wounds caused by dragon's power."

“Does it ever get better?” I asked shakily. I couldn't bear the thought that this unyielding pain would be my new normal for the remainder of my life.

“Yes,” she said with a short nod. “It does get better--but it flares up in the presence of dragons.”

“That puts a damper on the dragon’s special request,” I muttered.

Etherea stood and walked up to me, guiding me back to the cot, but I wordlessly refused to sit. “What do you mean? Request?”

“Apparently, I’m destined to meet the empress of the dragons or something,” I shrugged.

“The Dragon Empress? She was mentioned to you?”

“Yeah,” I said, shuttering my eyes at the memory. “He seemed pretty sincere about it--telling me even as he was dying.”

“An alliance with the Dragon Empress would be incredible,” she said. “You could work together to fight the Dark Queens.”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” I pointed out with a dull chuckle. “Let’s get back to the sanctuary first. Are you coming?”

“Let me gather my healing implements,” she said with a grin. “But Bucky, you must rest as soon as we get there. Don’t let your girls dote on you or fuss over you. I mean it.”

I laughed--it hurt to laugh, but I managed it anyway. “Good fucking luck with that.”

“If you can’t promise me that, then I forbid you from leaving this cottage,” she said, stomping the floor dramatically.

I thought about that for a minute, staring into her eyes. I sighed. Reluctantly, I plopped back down on the cot. “Could you, like, bottle feed me some of Daisy and May Belle’s milk?” I asked. “It helps regenerate from wounds.”

“Of course, hero,” she cooed. “I will arrange for some to be sent up right away, though I doubt it will be all that effective given the nature of the injury. Ivy!” she called out for the Wood Elf. After a moment or so, the door opened, and an angry green waif was standing at its entryway.

“What.” She said it rather than ask it.

“Can you fetch some of the holstaurs’ milk? Now that Bucky is awake, the regenerative powers of their milk should be able to speed along his healing, at least a little bit.”

The door slammed shut again. I grimaced.

“She is only so upset because she wanted to be there for you and feels like you deprived her of that,” Etherea explained. “It is selfish of her, but to be fully transparent with you, hero, I was quite angry when I first saw the state of you.”

“Why?” I asked, a bit surprised by that. I hadn't ever seen her truly angry before, save for when she thought I was a traitor when I mentioned Darkmaw wasn't our enemy. That thankfully got cleared up very quickly, at least. “Not that I don’t deserve your anger, but I’m curious. Why were you mad?”

She bit her lip as she struggled to find the words to articulate it. She was playing with my hair again, and it felt damn good and soothing, distracting me from the agony of the burns for a moment.

“I suppose I thought, ‘Surely he was foolhardy and brave again.’ It’s an endearing thing about you, but it’s also very selfish.”

“Selfish?” I repeated.

“Yes,” she said flatly. “You are so quick to sacrifice yourself for others that you don’t think about the position it would put us all in if you were to die.”

“Even if I died, I know you’re all strong. I believe that together you could find a way to survive,” I pointed out, and I believed it.

But she frowned at me and relinquished the clutch of my hair she’d been grasping. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, emotionally. Half of the girls in town are pregnant with your daughters. Even I bear your seed. How painful it would be to lose you. How sad it would be for your daughters to never know what a good man their father was. But you don’t think about others’ feelings. Instead, you’re focused on others’ safety. That’s only half of your duty as a hero to monster girls and elves.”

I was speechless. I offered nothing back, just stewing in the truth of her words as guilt continued to creep its way into my heart.

“I’m sorry,” I said after a long, long silence.

She didn’t offer forgiveness, at least not out loud.

When Ivy came back, she hastily delivered the bottles and left. I tried to take a bottle from Etherea, but she evaded my grasp.

“I will feed you myself,” she insisted. “Just as you suggested before.Your arms are too weak and burnt to hold the bottle on your own. You’d disturb the bandages.”

I nodded, feeling utterly helpless as the nipple of the glass container found my lips. I drank every last drop. It was sweet with a hint of vanilla--I knew it was Daisy’s from the taste. I savored the flavor, but it was colder than I was used to.

“How do you feel?” the moon elf asked me after I finished the first bottle.

“Like shit,” I confessed. “But maybe a bit better. I can feel a tingling in my arms and neck.”

Etherea smiled. “Good,” she said. “You were smart to think of their milk.”

“I’m surprised the girls didn’t think of it themselves.”

Etherea actually laughed out loud. “May Belle fainted upon seeing your wounds, and Daisy has been talking to herself in the fields for hours. They aren’t thinking clearly at all.”

I gasped. “Why is that funny?! I have to see them! They need to know I’m okay!”

“It’s normal behavior for a marked girl--they will be fine. They’re linked to you. Now that you’re awake, they will be better.”

“What about Sprinkle?” I asked.

Glancing down, she grimaced. “Let’s… leave that question alone for now.”

A furrow formed across my brow. “What happened to Sprinkle?”

She sighed. “Let’s just say you owe Vale about seven sheep. Everyone deals with grief in their own way.”

“Fuck,” I said. “She must be pissed.”

“Of course she isn’t. The whole town was primarily worried for you. Ivy is the only one currently angry, and she will soon calm down. But, if I were you, I’d make some time for her in the near future. She has been feeling rather lonely of late.”

“I know,” I said. “Just one more thing I’m fucking up on the growing list.”

“I don’t envy you,” Etherea giggled. “You may have a town full of women at your disposal, all of whom adore you--but you’re just one man. It can’t be easy.”

“It isn’t,” I agreed. “But… you’re all worth it. If you were someone else, I might not feel that way, but I’m totally invested because all of you are precisely who you are. I’ll never back down.” I paused. “I’m going to do better.”

“You’ll have to,” she said quietly, her smile fading for just a moment. “I don’t think your marked girls’ hearts could survive the loss of you if the attack on Keenfury’s Keep went awry. Keep that in mind.”

“I promise--I will survive. You can tell them I said that. No matter how bad the pain gets or how dangerous the enemies are, I will endure for all of you. I swear it. Even if I'm cut wide open, I'll find my way back somehow.”

She smiled softly and brushed a tangle of white hair out of her face. “May I kiss you?” she asked. The question caught me off-guard.

“Please,” I replied, breaking into a grin.

She leaned forward and planted her lips on mine. It was unusually chaste for her. It was also a great distraction from my problems. A few seconds later, she pulled back, sat up, and smiled mischievously at me. “I’ve sealed your promise with a kiss,” she said, winking. “Don’t forget it.”

I smiled at her. “I won’t. Now, if you don’t mind, I think the smartest thing for me to do is go back to sleep.” I yawned and stretched, snuggling up against her lap again.

“Sleep all you want, hero. When you wake up, I’ll be here for you. We'll all be here.”