#Baku has an ulcer every time because being an Immortal last thing he wants is his wives dying prematurely but he still trusts her

[hel-phoenyx]

26) Doctor's visit/Sad eyes

I am a lot of things.

I am head of the Frosilaen dynasty.

I am Queen of the Divine Mandate.

I am the one that held her grounds against a Worm.

I am the woman that fought against a god trying to incarnate.

I am the cultist that lost faith and gave back a world to people I once hated.

I am the one who almost reached the end of the Tournament of Glory while being old and weakened.

I am the one that looked God in the eyes and told Them to fuck off.

I am Lina Frosilaen.

People call me the Feline Queen, the Last Fortress, the Striker. All of those are true. I am a cat, I held my grounds, and I always, always, strike first.

But today, I am only a woman lying down in a bed, some kind of nursery bed, while a man in a white blouse is turning around me like a nervous cat. That man is the head doctor of the Mandatian palace. He is also my husband, and the father of my children.

And boy is he pissed.

"What the hell were you thinking, Lina ?! Running away without anyone knowing to none other place than the fucking Tournament for Glory ? You could have been killed !"

I roll my eyes. It's always like this. It's been like this since I was thirteen. Today, I am older than eighty. Not dying anytime soon, even if I do admit my body is failing me. My last adversary, I could have gotten him. Or not. He's evenly matched. Who knows.

It's been like this since I met him, but it still annoys me.

"Calm your tits, Baku, I was not here without supervision, Selene was here and she could have patched me up in a minute. Well, using a lot of my life force, no doubt, but people die at one point or another."

Except him, as young as he was when I gifted him that dagger. As young as he was when he put the wedding ring on my fingers. I look like I'm forty, maybe fifty now ; he's as immaculate as the first day.

People born recently joke on our apparent age difference. It's true, we do look like we have decades between us. The truth is, however, than even though I am the oldest, he follows me three years behind.

His pained look stays the same.

"Lina, I do not want to see your life end prematurely, nor do I wanna see your lifeless body again. If Chiara wasn't here that day..."

He's right. Thymos killed me. Chiara used her powers to bring me back. That I remember.

He doesn't remember she died in my place. That Death brought her back to help through the Beyond, and They cristallized their ressurection to reward me for not dying, and reaching Her.

There's not a lot of people that remember death.

I sigh.

"Baku, com'on, do you really believe one of this fuckers would manage to harm me ?"

"Well, SOMEONE did."

"And he left me alive when I forfeited. I didn't wanna reach the end, anyway. I already got my destiny."

The Tournament of Glory, for many youngsters, is the place where everyone can try and reach a glorious destiny between the hands of War herself. For me, it's just a way to see if I am still the hero they all pray for. I already got my glorious destiny. Plus, don't wanna fight my daughter-in-law. That's for the younglings that haven't lived a lot.

Baku is patching me up. We're alone in this tent and I want to do a little joke about other ways to patch me up ; not that he would care, and it proves I am in good health despite the wounds. But his eyes look so sad, so pained, I can't do that.

So I let him bandage my wounds in silence.

A silence he ends up breaking, after a long while.

"You used your Berserker form."

Oh.

So that's the cause of his anguish.

"Well, needed to put up a good fight."

"You know how I feel about pushing your Domain to the extreme."

I know. Baku thinks those powers are too much for my body. Maybe they are, since until a not so recent date, using that form always brought me to coma. But I know how to control them now. That was both an effort from my part, and a present from Them.

I remember when I was about twenty-five. The look in the eyes of the one that would become my most trusted advisor, one of my best friends, when I transformed for the first time in front of him. My magic has always been there, it sounded so natural, so normal ; apparently it wasn't.

Apparently it's an heritage from my father. A peculiar form of the Infinite Domain that lets me assume the form of every species I could have been. Limited to non-intelligent ones, because I am no changeling.

Mairù says it's a combo between the Infinite Domain from the old fucker, my Traveller blood and the human part I got from the woman that would have been my mother.

The Berserker is a problem because it is not a species per se. It's a vision of what I would have been if I was, myself, devoid of everything but pure, animal fighting instinct. That's why my body can't bear it, according to Crow. Because it is supposed to be outside my limits.

I don't care about all those magical chit-chat. I am me, I am my powers, I am my physical strenght and speed, I am my love for my spouses and children. I am Lina Frosilaen.

Baku and I only see the harm that form brings me.

"I know."

"Then why did you use it ?"

"Because it may come a day when I will be forced to do so. I need to train so that day, it won't cause me any harm."

He smiles. His eyes are still sad.

"You've done enough for this world, Lina."

"Never enough for you."

My wedding ring is bruning around my thumb.

His wedding ring. From a world where I wasn't enough.

Something is caressing my cheek. Wet, a little rough, the hands of a doctor. Yet, so soft, so warm.

"You've done all I ever wanted by just existing."

Sadness still glimmers in his iced blue eyes, and yet I see behind the light of pure, unalterable love. Those eyes that made me fall for the teen he was despite our fights and his black magic problems, the eyes that never, ever, ever, looked upon me and saw a stranger.

He's here.

It's all I've ever wanted, too.