#Ikaris was a little dimmer about it

[softquietsteadylove]

For the Maleficent AU: Thena snuck away on her own to a village to watch the humans. Days after Gil noticed that her behavior is odd so he investigates and then Thena admits that she snuck away and got shot and that the iron bullet is still sticking in her body.

"Dammit!"

Gil frowned as he landed at the lower level of the mothernest interior. When he was checking that everything was okay, he didn't expect to see a figure huddled around the healing pools. It was far later in the day than anyone would usually be here. "Hello?"

The figure startled, and he could recognise those sparkling white wings anywhere. "G-Gil?"

"Thena," he frowned, stepping a little closer on the mossy ground around the pools. He was careful, but he could see the skirt of her dress pooled around her bent legs on the ground, even though she was holding her wings around herself protectively. "Are you okay?"

"Oh, I-I'm fine," she smiled, although she was still letting her wings somewhat hide herself from him. "I just...got something on my dress. I thought I would try to use the cold salt water to remove it."

"Right," he murmured, trying to apprise himself of the situation. "The healing pools might not be as good as the shore waters for that."

"Right."

Gil stood a respectful distance away, crossing his arms as Thena made no move to leave the warm salt springs around them either. He sighed, settling his wings comfortably. "What happened, Thena?"

"Nothing," she tried to deny, but her breath was short and choppy, and those long, lithe shoulders of hers weren't moving right.

"Show me," he urged, stepping closer. She remained huddled over herself. "Let me help."

She stayed still for a little longer, her wings rustling against the mossy ground at their feet. "You can't tell anyone."

Gilgamesh wasn't sure how he felt about potentially keeping something that could very mean her being injured to himself, but he agreed. He moved closer, crouching down behind her, with her wings between them. "Please, Thena?"

She sighed, and slowly her shimmering feathers drew away from his view, revealing a splotch of red in the side of her white dress too large to ignore. She really had been trying to clean it.

"When did this happen?" Gil asked immediately, moving closer, ducking his head under her wing as he tried to see if it was still actively bleeding.

"I-" she began and hesitated for another second. "I was flying to the farms."

The farms were quite far inland, and they never went unless it was on a peace convoy with a full guard and protection detail.

"Someone must have seen me, and..." she trailed off, letting him move her hair over her shoulder. She winced as he moved her arm. "They didn't shoot me down but it-it just won't heal."

"Thena," Gil gulped, his hands on her delicate shoulders. Her skin was so soft, and so pale, like her feathers. "Can I, uh--just enough for me to see, okay?"

She had already accepted her defeat, it seemed. She nodded, letting him un-knot the strap of her dress at her shoulder and let the back of it come down around her side. Even her ribs were perfectly sculpted.

Gil frowned, too preoccupied with the iron burn along her side to worry about her state of undress. "Thena, it's still in you?"

"I-" she winced again as she attempted to turn and look at him. "I can't get it out."

"Okay, hey, it's all right," he shushed her, trying to get her breathing even again. He rushed to tie her dress properly again. Even the sight of her back half bare was too much for him. "Here."

Thena nearly whimpered as he helped her onto her feet and towards the caves. "I've been managing it thus far."

"I don't know how," he muttered, not at all pleased by the thought of her walking around with an injury to this degree. He let her lean on him as he walked her away from any prying eyes. "How have your brothers not found out?"

"Druig is with Makkari day and night, it seems," she sighed as the scent of the healing pools' deeper well reached her nose. "Ikaris, all I have to do is stand to his left."

Gil rolled his eyes. Druig was fine, but that other brother of hers...

"Gil," Thena attempted to plead with him, seeing what his intention was. "I don't think-"

"Thena," he frowned, steps away from lowering her into the healing spring himself. "You need to submerge it, and for more than a few minutes."

"I only came because Ikaris is hunting with Kingo," she argued with him, the warmth of the saltwater practically glowing at her from the ground. "I have to get back."

"You need to not walk around with an iron bullet in your ribcage!"

Thena blinked, completely surprised by the even marginal rise in his voice's volume. Her wings trembled on her back faintly, but she didn't wrench herself away from him. She tilted her head, "is that an order?"

He sighed; if she were part of his perimeter detail or guard team, then maybe. But he softened, running his hand down her arm until he could take her hand in his. "No, it's not. It's just something you can do to put my heart at ease."

Thena looked terribly torn. She had her own reasons for trying to keep this injury of hers contained. It was bad for the delegation, it was bad for human-fae relations, and it was bad for their reputation if people thought they could get shot out of the sky while flying.

It was bad if her brothers thought their only family in the world was hurt.

"Do you intend to undress me yourself?"

Gil huffed, turning around as his face became unbearably hot. He even spread his wings out, "very funny."

Thena's laughter was softer, but it echoed around the cave interior. "I am ruffling your feathers, Gil, nothing more. I know you would never."

He blocked out the sound of her light and breezy dress slipping off her body and onto the cave floor. He cleared his throat, "okay, okay, just get in the healing bath."

Thena hissed and then whimpered as she submerged herself properly, something she had probably avoided since she was first injured.

"You okay?" he asked, instinctively wanting to check on her but forbidding himself from even moving his head remotely in her direction.

"I'm fine," she uttered, but it did sound less strained than when she was huddled around the healing pools outside and trying to both bathe her wound and clean her dress at the same time.

"I wouldn't say you're fine," he growled, but tried not to start raging about how serious her injury really was, despite the way she was acting.

"Gil," she chided him before he had even said anything, "they were trying to protect themselves."

He snorted at her defense of the humans. "They can protect themselves with regular arrows. They don't need iron bullets the size of a walnut."

"What's done is done," she concluded, and he could hear the sound of her cupping her hands and letting the water run over herself. "There's no use imagining what could have happened differently."

Gil stayed quiet. He wouldn't win an argument with her about the humans. For how unsocial she was, she really was protective of those stupid walking fleshbags. "How did you fly home?"

"Slowly."

That made him even angrier--the thought of Thena hauling herself home, desperately using the air currents and the size of her wings to bring her injured body back to the nest. How had no one else noticed?!

"No one knows, Gil," she said quietly, going still in the water. "I wasn't intending on telling anyone."

He frowned to himself, letting himself turn his head faintly just to catch the sheer black of his wings in his periphery. He rustled them gently, "That's what bothers me the most."

Thena was quiet again, and he supposed he wouldn't expect her to have an answer to that. He continued to stand guard, although no one used the healing pools when it was late (they were too cold, then). But he was hardly going to let someone stumble upon something they shouldn't.

"I would have told you."

She sounded like a young faerie admitting to something only after the fact. Her contrition made her voice heavy. "I wanted to heal up just a little before I told you--so I could prove it wasn't dire and that there would be no need for action."

Gil made a face just for himself, "you mean so I wouldn't freak out and go track down the human that shot you?"

"You don't know it was a human."

"I don't know any other species that uses stuff like that."

Thena laughed, although it was still a little hollow and breathless. "I suppose you're right. But perhaps if we were as helpless as they are, we would be just as afraid."

Gil was not afraid of any human. Even if he had to take one of those iron monstrosities on for himself. He would face one down happily to look into the eye of the human that had done this to (his) Thena.

"Ah!"

Gil nearly leapt and flapped his wings in reaction to the noise. He still didn't want to look at her in any state of undress, but he stared hard into the opaque wall of his black feathers. "What happened!?"

"It's okay, it's okay," she panted faintly, but her voice was indeed stronger, "it's out. The saltspring is working."

Well, that was a relief. One of the best assets of this particular mothernest - home to so many biomes and nests within it - was its proximity to the healing springs. Ajak valued their medicinal properties greatly, after all.

"You were right," Thena conceded, which he got the feeling didn't happen often. "I should have just come here sooner, saved myself the trouble of secrecy."

"Well, yeah, I was right." She huffed, just loud enough for him to hear. He chuckled, "but I know you didn't want your brothers to freak out. Hard to slip away for too long with both of them around, right?"

"Dreadfully," she sighed much easier this time.

"Tell you what," Gil smiled, maybe a little too relieved now that Thena was actually on her way to better health. "I'll show up at your nest every morning this week to ask you to join me on 'convoys' inland. But you've gotta come down here and soak that wound of yours."

"Gil-"

"It's iron, Thena," he scowled straight ahead at the opening of the cave, "it's not going to be completely healed overnight. And you don't want them to know, so it's this or I bring you the spring water and tell them about it myself."

"Fine."