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onlythegoodpretzels · 2 months ago

Text

Forced Choice

Next bit of the Rost-taken-by-Carja fic I posted earlier in the month. First chapter here if you want to see it with the beginning.

As with the last one, burns and a wonky sense of self worth under the cut.

______________________________________________________________

“Nora?” Burnsetter moved so soft in his sandals that Rost barely realized he was there until he blocked out the light.

Pain prickled angry across his back. Instead of hazy and crushing, now it set him shaking, aching to move. Follow Helis. Rost was alive, and so was he. And Aloy wasn’t. He had to think, plan the hunt, find a way to kill him.

Holding still stung now, chillwater biting in.

“You��re seeing. Listening? Do you hear me?” Burnsetter leaned down. His face focused too quickly. Rost didn’t want to see Carja faces. A desperate lurch of rage stung his eyes, hitched his breathing.

No. No more questions. He wanted his oath back. Rost dug his arm into the sand, trying to lift his chest.

“No, don’t roll. Down here it’ll be worse.” Burnsetter caught his wrist. He was strong even with his shoulders hunched in. Rost grit his teeth. He felt gouged open, bare and easy for harvest. He didn’t think he could pull many more times. So instead he blinked, forcing himself to focus. Burnsetter’s garments creaked and bent, soft. Unarmored? If he could move, he would be able to dispatch this one quickly.

If he could move.

Burnsetter hissed, frustration in his curt movements. “Dirt first. Sun above, and he opened them twice! For the love of -- !” He caught Rost’s forehead. “Come on, Nora. Just a little.”

Rost tensed, a half-involuntary growl tangled in his teeth. But he allowed Burnsetter to lift his head. Choosing made it taste a little less sour. So did how slow Burnsetter moved, like he was being careful. The contrast with Helis’ frenzied blows before rattled somewhere in Rost’s neck, ready to flinch even though no swing came.

“Good.” Burnsetter let him down on something red and smooth. That slickcloth from before? Rost’s skin crawled at the unnatural texture. “Sun witness us.”

“Aah! S ---” Rost tried to recoil from the quick hands reaching under his chest and gut, but he couldn’t. He managed not to protest in words, but syllables came out anyway, sharp and hard. Burnsetter shoved, forcing him up off the ground, and Rost scrabbled. He couldn’t hold himself up! Even just lifting him this far was a threat. “Khh!” He pushed at Burnsetter’s knee. Let him down!

“Whoa! Well that’s a good sign, too.” Burnsetter barely flinched, and didn’t shift. Rost gasped, shoulder and back clawing into him from the attempt. Goddess…goddess, he couldn’t even fight a healer.

“Easy, ok, down.”

Rost couldn’t brace, only fall. But he hit down strangely slow, Burnsetter clumsily steadying him. More of the hissing cloth caught his chest and side, red spreading around him. Slick, blood colored. Surrounded. He lay there gasping, stretched and torn in places he couldn’t find.

Every time he thought All-Mother had taken everything she needed to show his shame, she took something else.

Burnsetter left him there. Rost watched his sandals hurry amid a thicket of crates and parcels and barrels hemming in the close, cluttered walls around them. From down here he could make out the small, close room. The red-draped platform in the center looked hunched and claustrophobic.

Strange. Weren’t Carja supposed to be all grandiosity about other people’s suffering?

The platform was lower than Rost had thought, and the knowledge settled sick in his stomach. So easy to reach when he was strapped to it.

Burnsetter returned with jars and a bowl, arraying them a careful arc.

Anticipatory twitches ran through Rost’s scalp, as if the actual pain wouldn’t be enough on its own. He’d never seen sear preparation, so he couldn’t be sure, but the smell was too familiar.

Burnsetter held out his hands, red-ringed with beads. The clear brown of his eyes felt unreliable after Helis’ frenzied face. “I need to work your back. It will hurt. But in the Sun’s view you earned your choice: Will you hold yourself or do I tie you?”

Rost blinked. Choose? What, like the Carja cared how they made him scream? His pulse thundered in his fingertips. Goddess he wanted to fight again, grasp for some proof he could. Do something with the rage eating in his ribs.

But he was a Nora hunter. No matter what he saw, how close the Ravager brushed to him in the grass, he had to stay in position and wait.

Rost uncurled his fingers, breathed as deep as he could, and pressed his chin into the slickcloth. He tried to look open and resigned. He could cooperate, even with Carja, if that helped his hunt.

Burnsetter hissed. “Fine. Don’t talk. Me, it won’t kill you.”

Rost hated the splash of searwater. The smell cluttered up his mouth, trying to make his retch. Still. Ripples. Let the rest go.

He should be able to do this. He was Oathbound. He’d let so much go.

He’d tell Aloy -- a new test meant new parts you needed, just like any hunt.

“Sunstrong.” Burnsetter pinned his wrist. Rost didn’t pull away. “Sun forgive our disobedience. It wasn’t this burn’s doing.”

The first wet bite hit his shoulder like a blaze arrow, the drips over his neck hot as blood. Rost howled into the slickcloth. His weakness worked for him, so even where he failed to hold completely still he didn’t pull enough to make a difference. It felt like the dirt cut streaming down, even though he couldn’t feel it on his back.

Without something in his mouth his cry sounded wrong. Too close to words.

He didn’t want Aloy’s name to get out of him.

The next splash lit up the back of his neck. Rost rocked forward, clenching his eyes shut, heaving in half-sob half-gasps. A-at least that was quieter. It felt like he was trying to dig into the ground, like it could save him.

“It’s normal to curse.” He’d stopped feeling Burnsetter’s grip on his wrist, but it resurfaced, squeezing. “Even exalted ones try to fight the Sun. You don’t have to do better.”

Curse? Rost scraped at the smooth, trying to claw. He didn’t think he could even hurt this damned weave. What curse did he know deep enough for what these Carja did?

This time the heat pressed into his back, right in the center where his breaths caught and churned. Rost couldn’t. He bucked, pain lancing up and down his spine, every part of him overwhelmed with ‘stop.’ It felt like a spark straight through him, too fast to understand, think, remember he wasn’t supposed to -- !

“Don’t tell me Nora don’t curse!” Burnsetter stopped him like it was easy, palm flat to his forehead, slowly levering him back down. Rost choked, still twitching, but the two grip points easily kept him in place. Trying dug into his back and his neck in sharp jabs, hurting more each time he couldn’t stop.

“Calm. Calm, that’s the worst of it.”

It took three tries before Rost wrestled his self control back. As soon as he had it his arm collapsed like the bones turned to water. Fighting and being so easily stopped churned low in his chest, and he fell.

Except he didn’t. Burnsetter cushioned his head, braced his chest, and he hit the ground with an odd sort of hiss from the slickcloth. Only half the force he should have. It hurt, it hurt, but it should have hurt more.

“That’s it. The rest are still closed. They won’t be as bad.” Burnsetter blurred in and out of focus, leaning close. “Good. Ok, deep breath.”

Stinging moved over Rost and he was too tired to buck now. His side. His spine. The lower reaches of his back, twitching his feet in the dirt. Wet trails meandered down his skin, over and over. Such strange rivers. It did hurt less, maybe, in the way it could rain less. You’d still be soaked eventually either way.

He should have worried how much of it didn’t feel real. But the thick sear smell blotted out the dust, and he was too tired.

No curse. At some point the pain-drunk decision clicked in place, a wire turned right. He knew of no curse to use. He would live long enough to be it.

______________________________________________________________

“It’s too early.” Burnsetter muttered, talking to himself. Rost glanced away from the featureless red drape and saw Burnsetter’s short fingers, tracing the mouth of a closed jar. Around and around, pensive. “But if he will move you anyway…”

His right arm twinged sharply. A jabbing pain. A different pain.

Rost slowly closed his fingers in the fabric. The cold before that freed his elbow enough to bend?

He swallowed, throat ragged and dry. “Tie me down.”

Burnsetter looked down at him, face drawn. Rost was too tired to parse the dark lines around his eyes for emotion. It could have been surprise or suspicion or just annoyance being interrupted and he’d have known as much as from a machine’s eyeplates. Shivers ridged up Rost’s neck as he kept going. “He won’t wait. I need…”

He needed to move. To be able to move. And he needed to understand the restraints they kept him in.

Don’t, he knew better than to try using words again. The rush of fear was disorienting after so much anger. A Carja wouldn’t care if he died, but Burnsetter seemed to care about some Sun rules. Helis opened the burns, and he was angry. Rost twisted his hand, trying to gesture backwards. “If I can move, I can protect them better.”

Burnsetter sighed, slow and light. He looked away, up at one of the sputtering candles. “Your test is extensive, Nora.”

Only if cruel healers didn’t make it it very, very short. The loss of eye contact rushed sour on Rost’s tongue. Like it wasn’t even him Burnsetter was considering. His pain, but the Sun’s choice. Hatred for the candles, this room, loomed black and thick inside him. Rost held onto it for later.

“You would rather Helis have his way with you than die of the Sun’s judgment? I’d give you an honorable burial.” Burnsetter finally looked down again. The curiosity on his face set Rost’s blood boiling.

“Yes,” Rost spat. Was that what Carja thought someone should want? To die to teach a murderer piety? Devils if he could just force them through one Nora winter, just one! Let the Goddess beat it into them. “I would.”

Burnsetter nodded and stood. “Well, you are Burned. Until the Sun says otherwise, the choice is yours.” He pulled bright red rope out of a basket, piling it on the platform like bloody braids. “Not how I’d choose, pain for pain.”

Rost bit back anything he might say about Carja and what they knew about pain. But Aloy’s hair had been bloody when he held her, and he could still feel her sag against his grip, weaker than he felt right now. So Rost watched the ropes and rested. They were heavy and bright, no signs of fraying or water damage. They were dyed, probably purpose-braided for this spectacle. The thought twisted his stomach.

“But, then, I’ve known the Exalted Champion…long enough.” Burnsetter shook his head as he crouched, keeping the ropes carefully out of the dirt on the drape with Rost. Rost grit his teeth, bracing not to flinch away from them. Maybe it was his imagination but they smelled like sear.

Instead of treating each of Rost’s legs separately, Burnsetter lashed them together at the ankle. Moving them into position dragged jabs of pain out of Rost’s lower back, but Burnsetter seemed to guess them, pausing each time Rost was about to hiss. If Rost had wanted proof he was too weak to fight, Burnsetters hands on him in his blindspot not even driving him to pull was more than enough.

“That’s not awful.” Burnsetter shuffled, kneeling by Rost’s head. Rost scowled at the lick of slickcloth around his wrist. But the texture let the line slide, still with some play even as Burnsetter added more unfamiliar knots to the cuff. Rost tested his finger motion. Could he maybe twist?

“Stop.” Burnsetter pressed on his knuckles, pinning the fingers down. “I’d rather not add joint locks, but I will.”

He definitely didn’t want to know what that was. Rost froze.

“Thank you.” Burnsetter tugged the cuff, pressure rough and precise. The feeling of being a spear on a workbench surfaced again, intensified by the slow loss of his ability to move. The Carja had so many paths to to treat people like things. Rost focused on the ground under him, its hard packed pressure up through the slickcloth. It wasn’t as good as water, but it helped him when the Goddess’ will demanded he accept. He’d found it with his knees enough times.

It felt worse without his greaves.

Burnsetter crossed to the platform, unwinding rope each step. When he drew the slickcloth drape back, a chiseled edge flickered stony in the candle-cast. Small pinpoints of metal glinted. Wrought iron rings?

Burnsetter fastened the rope to the metal. The heavy immobility of it in Rost’s wrist was familiar. This was the anchor that held him for sears.

He could find a way to use that.

Burnsetter was back too fast, nudging his other arm. Rost hissed, accidentally pulling at the other cuffs as he tried to help. Not because it hurt less; the tearing in his shoulder jabbed just as deep. He didn’t want to give up the little freedom he had any faster than he needed.

Because he needed to. He needed to do this.

“This is the best I have.” Burnsetter knelt next to him. His proximity ached in the burning center of Rost’s spine, the wounds prickling in sharp awful waves. He couldn’t see the his face. He couldn’t turn his head enough.

His pulse thudded in his sternum, aching against the ground.

This time the cuff at his wrist dragged him back. Rost could barely make out the edge of a red loop around Burnsetter’s knee. As Burnsetter shifted, the motion tugged into Rost’s arm. He’d tied Rost to him.

“Not ideal, I know. Don’t try to hurt me. They’ll forbid me feeding you.” The jar clacked. Rost twitched, a kind of desperate laugh bubbling queasy in his chest. He choked it down into a shuddering cough. If he weren’t burned, the things he could do to someone this unbalanced, even without a weapon.

It hurt. He didn’t try.

“As you said.” Burnsetter settled his weight, nudging Rost’s arm back. “No time to wait.”

Clinging cold stabbed into Rost’s lower back. Not like searing. Slow waves of kneading pressure, sharp pain that burst and congealed into a deeper aching underneath. He hadn’t known he could feel anything else under the skin screaming.

He…he didn’t want to feel it. It felt like reaching through, like it might catch his insides.

Then it moved. Rost gasped, fighting the ropes despite himself, as the crushing feeling moved a careful path along his hipbone. The ropes felt rough and sharp even through the wraps.

“Good.” The kneading stopped. Rost slumped, full-body shaking. But the cold lingered somehow embedded, raw and biting. Breathing into it felt heavy.

W-wait.

Rost forced himself not to flinch away from the choked edge that he hadn’t been able to breath past since waking. His gut coiled, anticipating the pain. His sides were just as strained and stretched as before. But --

But stinging erupted through his back instead of blazing fire. And he could -- he could take a deeper breath!

Burnsetter’s sigh shook him out of his stupor. Frigid sweat prickled on Rost’s arms. “This hurts more than it should. I’m sorry, Nora.”

This time, Rost felt hands through the cold spearing into his side. He couldn’t make himself breathe into them, the pain like a shock into his chest. Burnsetter kneaded up, cold gnawing into Rost’s mangled skin. Rost dug his face into the ground, teeth grit. It had a smell, sharp and murky in his mouth. Sting lingered cruel in the path of the touch.

It felt like being a blade on a whetstone.

“But it will -- it should help.” The ointment had a rich mutter when Burnsetter paused to gather more. Rost forced his jaw to unlock. He could understand what was happening this close. It shouldn’t be worse.

But he could feel the hand on his spine, pain crackling all the way into his lungs as it dug in. Pinned, scream knotting in his chest.

Again, when Burnsetter pulled away a fraying tearing feeling lingered. Small, constant, like a thousand tiny splinters. The burn sear was blunter. Less like a blade stabbed in. The pain migrated slow. A machine on one of Aloy’s routes. Up his side. Across his spine. Down again.

The more of him it touched, the more parts of him filled with needles. The slickcloth wouldn’t scratch the way he needed it to when he dug his face into it. Lightheadedness fuzzed at his vision, everything slanted and red.

He -- he wasn’t bleeding. Or…he shouldn’t be?

Red, a line across the sun-splattered floor.

“Nora?” Something tugged his wrist. “You still with me?”

He would never be with them. Rost choked down a short shred of air.

“I can’t do this if you pass out.”

Red. Rope. His pinned, useless arm. The Carja Burnsetter, knee holding him down. Rost blinked sweat out of his eyes. He turned his wrist, feeling the shift in the rope, and the bones behind it. Everything was simple, then. He had to stay awake.

He signed the ‘go’ hunting signal. Hopefully his hand wasn’t shaking too badly for it to show.

“Ha. Alright.” Burnsetter sounded relieved, so Rost must be really drifting. He blinked dully at the rope snaking under the platform across the room, trying to understand the sounds over him. The stone peeked past the drape, tugged by Rost’s trembling. Under the needling agony, something nagged him.

An anchor like that…ornate…purpose-made. It couldn’t have been in this mess of a chamber originally.

The pressure worked into his shoulder, and Rost howled. The ropes hissed around him, biting all at once. As the slow kneading moved down onto his arm, the distinct fingers began to register, the drag and push of them as they dug into his skin. By the time Burnsetter reached his elbow Rost heaved and tremored, drenched with sweat, barely able to think of anything else.

What felt like cruel gouging in his back was barely a brush at the edge of the wound, quick and sure in his unbroken skin. Fingertips skimmed down the crook of the joint, below the burn. “Not too low…” Burnsetter muttered. “Near the outer edge…no infection.” His touch throbbed, but Rost knew that must be him, the slow pulse of the wound.

Dizzy, unwelcome dislocation swept over him. Last time…last time someone felt along a pain edge like this, it had been Aloy. Aloy’s fingers, her unfollowable mutters from her Old World tool. He’d held his tongue then, too, swallowing the pain-sharp demand for her to take it off. At least take it away.

He’d let her keep it. That was his burden to bear. Scrounger claws or no.

Rost choked. D-devils. He wanted to hear it again. So badly.

Burnsetter twitched away. “Easy.” He sighed. “All right. That’s all I can do.”

The tingling ate over Rost in sharp arcs, triggered each time he breathed. He blinked past the tear-blur. T-that wasn’t as much of him as a sear burned. Not his neck or his left shoulder.

Burnsetter watched him. The sharp attention made Rost curl his fingers, the sensation of someone behind his back eating in.

Usually he didn’t remember sears ending.

“Good.” The rope pinning Rost’s wrist spat him loose. He froze, fingers aching. H-had he been pulling? He hadn’t thought so. “Good…I wasn’t sure that would work.” The other ties snapped loose, red chiming tongues hissing in the dust. And Burnsetter was up, moving around him. Rost shuddered, feeling surrounded all over again. The sensation dragged his knees against the hissing cloth.

W-wait. His---his knees? He could shift his legs? The tingling flared agonizingly, sharp individual stabs all across his lower back. It hurt. Goddess, it hurt, but it didn’t stop him. Rost gasped, scrambling. His arms trembled but obeyed him. The tearing feeling was blunted when it gnashed into his side. He could move!

“Whoa, slow down!”

Hands on his wrist. Rost snarled, dragging against it. Let him get up! He had to get out of here!

He managed to startled Burnsetter back, but as soon as he tried to lift his chest the white searing pain burst out of his neck and upper back. Rost shrieked, clawing at the slippery surface. No, please! He was so…so close! Pain curled him down, sparking through his neck. Sh-shit…

“Wait!” Burnsetter, hands on Rost’s chest, catching him before he fell. “Wait, with just one treatment, it won’t be enough on its own.” Rost panted, trying desperately to growl, get the Carja hands off him. “I couldn’t even do the upper half, the burns aren’t closed.”

No effect. He was too trapped to recoil. Rost flinched as Burnsetter set one hand under his jaw and the other flat on his sternum. “Slow, ok? It’ll only work slow. With me. Try again.”

A-again. How many days had it been since he told Aloy that in the Sawtooth pit? Not knowing welled tears of rage in his eyes.

Rost tore a creature-sound from low in his chest and pushed. The tug of thousands of stabs along his back felt like the scrape of lake ice, hungry for blood no matter where it touched. Burnsetter pushed with him, forcing his chest and neck straight instead of buckled. The force hurt in his jaw, enough for Rost to grit his teeth.

He could feel his legs through the needles. His arms screamed but answered him. Whatever Burnsetter had done, the pain bent now, instead of bending him.

Rost heaved broken gasps and collapsed on his knees. I-it worked…

“Yes!” Burnsetter’s astonishment nicked at Rost’s anger. “That’s earlier than anyone’s tried, Nora!” Not enough. He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t fight. Rost groaned, trying to parse through the overwhelming overlap of grip pain and burn pain and moving pain. If…if this was all he had tomorrow, he’d be useless!

He…he wasn’t all the way on the ground. He was slumped, but he was…sitting? He dug his hands into the slickcloth and tried to look up.

The platform. He could see it, as Burnsetter’s feet moved around it. It was heavy wood, with bolts like it might be reinforced with metal. Carja glyphs carved in its edge. Rost shuddered, even though it hurt. He…didn’t want to know more about it.

Burnsetter paused two paces away, watching, his face distant and painted. “They really must do something to you in the Savage lands, that you can endure this…”

Rost closed his eyes tight. He knew plenty of what the Goddess could do to someone unworthy. If the Carja Sun were to kill him, it would only be on her terms.

Footsteps closer. “Here.”

Rost started, and groaned at the jolt it dragged out of him. Burnsetter stood too close, looming over him. He tried to look up, but his neck speared alight at the motion, forcing him down, rushing his breathing ragged. All he could see was Burnsetter’s hand, offering three small balls of charred yellow fluff. “You need to eat while you’re up.”

Food. The warm smell hit Rost like a punch, completely unfamiliar and so clearly edible his mouth watered miserably and he started to shiver. Sudden crumpling pain from his stomach competed with his back. Rost lurched forward automatically.

And regretted it, jarring to howling stop as his back stabbed him, his ribs twisting. Punishing him. N-no!

“No, keep your head still!” Burnsetter sounded shaky. “You…you need to find where it lets you move…”

It was like his body was fighting him. Rost grated out a mangled sound, trying to move anything separate from the starving rush shaking in his limbs.

A-a test. Burnsetter wanted to know what a screaming savage could do.

Rost flinched. There it was again, blurring his vision. He felt Lansra’s gaze biting into his back. Needling impatience as he carried Aloy past her. Automatically shielding the child wit his body, even as he scolded himself -- Lansra wasn’t watching to punish her mistakes. It was his. He’d made it. She was right to remind him…

Hunger gouged him, and he forced himself to breathe. He would always pass the Goddess’ tests. Penance for the one he failed.

His arms felt steel-coiled, wired to the ground. Rost lifted them anyway. He could only move them together. Any tilt felt like a slash straight across his back. But if he accepted the awful stinging, he could defy the dragging weight, and reach. Slow, shaking so badly it felt like watching someone else’s fingers reacting to his directions.

He bumped Burnsetter’s hand, and has a split second panic. There was no way he could grab.

But Burnsetter set the bites in his palm, deft and fast. And they were so warm Rost forgot he was afraid. D-don’t move…he thought about holding his chin perfectly still. Lining up a shot. Don’t breathe. Don’t duck or tilt. So miserably painful as he dragged his hands to his mouth. He shook so violently trying to focus his vision hurt dimly in his face.

But he could reach.

Rost moaned, hiccuping he swallowed the puff balls so fast. They were warm and grainy, the strange taste mild and fading. Biting something that gave, that had heat in it instead of hard splintering edge made him whimper. Gone almost before he tasted them, so easy to swallow it let him shocked and trembling.

Rost slumped, arms too heavy to hold up anymore. Panting, giddy from the aftertaste. Goddess he was starving. He could -- he could eat!

“Incredible…” Somehow Burnsetter was crouched in front of him now. Rost weaved, too tired to try to lean away. Water sound called up thirst in his gut like a machine on a lure. He moaned again, blinking in the blur. H-he didn’t even know how to fall now, the burns a tense and choking net across his back. He--he couldn’t…

“Easy.” Butnsetter caught his arm just below the burn. “I won’t make you spill everywhere. That was enough.”

Rost flinched from a cold edge brushing his jaw. Burnsetter let go of his arm and held his chin instead. “Drink?”

W-what?

Blinking dumbly, Rost let Burnsetter lift the bowl to his mouth and pour. Rost gulped messily, wincing at the bitter taste, choking when he forgot to pause to gasp. W-was that salvebrush making him hazy? Or was he too seared not to be?

By the time Burnsetter lowered the bowl, lightheadedness softened the edges of Rost’s vision. Clouds, flickering just out of sight. After-hunt exhaustion. No escaping it, no matter how long you chose to push into it. It would swallow you.

He’d never been this hurt with that hovering over him. Rost shuddered, dread deep in his bones. Small pathetic noises kept slipping out of him. He couldn’t help it! He could move. He could! But something else in him was trapped and broken. And if he didn’t fix it, fast…

He had to be able to strike. He had no other purpose now!

Burnsetter crouched, arm held between them. “Lean. I’ll help you.”

S-stupid. Rost coughed, the force scraping across him in needling waves. Even like this, he could probably hurt someone. At least enough to mean something. He was a Nora brave, even if a broken disgrace of one…

But until he could finish his hut, he didn’t get to care about that. Burnsetter had food. Had water. Could make him scream and needle his burns until they loosened enough to move. Rost needed everything he had.

It had been been so many winters since he’d had any pride. The Goddess cut it out when he left her.

So why did it still hurt?

Everything hurt…

Rost thought about holding his neck straight as he set his head against Burnsetter’s shoulder. He shivered as Burnsetter’s hand dug into his gut. How easily the man could reach his back and its easy searing pain. His arms still moved when he tried. His grip was weak, but Burnsetter’s robes had loops that caught his faltering thumbs.

Burnsetter took his elbow in his other hand. “Good. Now.”

When he lifted pain reared white hot in Rost’s shoulders, and he screamed. It felt like he was melded to the floor, his back trying to tear in two. He clung, stumbling without any awareness of his feet, his entire chest a cracked wound.

F-falling?

Thud.

The platform creaked under Rost’s hands and knees. He weaved, dangerously close to blacking out. He -- he couldn’t -- no air came when he tried to breathe ---

“That’s it. That’s it…”

Warm. Pull across his chest. Bracing him. Rost managed a moan as the pressure shifted, unlocking his lungs only to settle searing in his shoulders. T-too much. He c-couldn’t… Words bled out. “N-not…c-can’t…”

Panic strangled him. Stop, don’t talk! Talking made everything worse! He’d tried to explain to Aloy, she couldn’t speak to him. Anything he said -- he wasn’t -- !

“Okay, okay. Come on, Nora, let’s get you down. The burns I seared need to close.” The hands on Rost fluttered, confusing number of places too fast. His face. His sides. His shaking hands. Words, too many words. Rost barely understood them before more rattled in. “I’ll see range of motion tomorrow, see if I can treat…”

Down. Down was the important word.

Rost let himself slump toward his hands. How long had it been since he wanted to curl this badly? He…he remembered Aloy doing it when she fell too far, bruised black training.

He…he hoped it hadn’t hurt this much.

He never felt hitting down.

#whumptober2024 #no.23 #forced choice #horizon zero dawn #fic #burns #forced medical care #my stories #whump #rost #hzd rost #captivity #tw: burns #hzd

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