#longfic stuff is coming slowly but in the meantime have an endless supply of jaheira ficlets XD

[blackjackkent]

Karlach - "That's a very stupid idea."

Jaheira - "I don't feel so good."

Wyll - "Why did you do that?"

With or without their usual pairings, as you choose. Pair them up with whoever you feel like :)

(Five-Word Sentences prompts)

Jaheira - "I don't feel so good."

Slowly getting caught up on all my inbox stuff. :D TY as always. I will pick the Jaheira one again, but we're gonna mix things up a bit. >:)

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"Mmph." Jaheira squirms slightly. Her head and eyelids feel heavy and for a long, numb moment, she does not know exactly where she is. There's a hard stone floor beneath her, pressing against the back of her head. The distant sound of voices. Someone kneeling next to her head, a hand on her shoulder.

"Kh...Khalid?" she mumbles. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth; his name comes slowly to her lips. But she can feel him nearby, the immensely comforting presence. And she fills with dizzy joy, because it has been so long, although she cannot quite remember why. "My love..."

"No, Jaheira." The voice is jarring, dissonant -- too deep, too sharp, a harsh roll on the 'r' of her name. "Wake up."

The fog fades, washed aside by a rolling wave of painful reality. Her eyes snap open and she moans as she begins to register the shattered state of her body. Nearly every inch of her skin is burned, and to judge by the sharper knifeblade of pain stabbing through the staticky haze of baseline agony, her left leg is broken.

Minsc is crouched over her, his eyes unusually wide with deep alarm - but he relaxes slightly as he sees her eyes open. "Ah, good," he says; it's an attempt at his usual blithe cheer but it falls somewhat flat. A muscle twitches with strain in his temple. "Minsc tried his best with the scroll, but the wizards use such terribly long words..." He swallows, squares his shoulders. "But you live. So all is well.”

A spent scroll of revivification falls from his fingertips as he returns his hands to the hilt of his greatsword. Jaheira stares at the paper, hypnotized by its slow and unsteady flutter onto the stone. Her brain shies away from the implications of its muted gold letters with the magic all drained out of them.

“What happened?” she asks weakly. 

“Raphael,” Minsc says, with an unusual note of venom. He stands up, taking a guard position over her fallen body, his eyes flicking rapidly around the room. She follows his gaze, slowly registering the high marble walls, the shattered soul columns and cracked tiles. “Cursed be his name forever. Minsc would like to spend another scroll and draw him back from death, that Minsc might kill him again for what he has done to Jaheira.” 

“He is dead, then?” Jaheira whispers. Memory trickles in, bit by bit. She remembers it now - the devil’s explosive transformation and the hellfire that surrounded it, licking out, blasting her backwards, surrounding her, consuming her…

Minsc makes an affirmative grunt. “Minsc saw the blood pour from his chest,” he mutters. “Karlach struck the final blow, but Minsc’s heart was in it too…” 

“Good,” she says vaguely. Her head lolls to the side, her eyes drifting half-closed again. “I do not feel… so good…” she mumbles. Oblivion beckons again at the corners of her thoughts; it would be so easy to slip back under, away from the pain. She can still feel Khalid so near her, as if she could turn her head just a little further and see him watching her with his quiet smile and bright gaze…

“Jaheira!”

“What?” she mumbles irritably, squeezing her eyes fully shut against the grating rumble of Minsc’s voice. “Be damned to you, ranger… it hurts…”

“Do not go to sleep,” he says sharply. “The others have gone to speak to Hope. When they return, we will bring you back to camp, so that Shadowheart may tend to your wounds. Then you may rest, and not before.”

“Do not give me orders, Minsc. I will sleep if I… if I please…” Her voice is slurred with pain.

“Minsc will set Boo upon you to hold your eyelids open, should it be needed.” There’s the faintest touch of humor in Minsc’s voice, though it is still underlaid with strained worry.

Jaheira laughs just a little, in spite of herself, and the motion sends a bolt of pain through her whole body; the sound morphs rapidly into a groan. “Nngh… howling hells…” she says with a pained grimace, forcing her eyes open again obediently. “All right. All right, I am… awake…”

As it should be. There is too much yet to do. Always too much yet to do…

“Are you hurt, Minsc?” she asks.

“It matters not,” he answers quietly.

“Minsc--”

“It matters not,” he snaps, and the ferocity of the words startles her. “Minsc will rest when you are safe. His aches are greatest at the heart, where no healer can reach.” A pause. “You are no wychlaran, you have told me so. Minsc knows this; he has listened well, Jaheira. But wychlaran or not, the pain was still the same to watch you fall.”

A long, long pause. “Minsc has watched too many fall…” he adds in an undertone, almost too low to hear.

She frowns. For once, she does not have the heart to try to push his loyalty away. There is something comforting, after all, in the guard-dog posture he holds, standing over her with his sword in both hands. Boo sits on his shoulder, watching the door of the room intently.

Her oldest friend… She feels a sudden bleak gratitude towards those nameless ambushers who turned Minsc to stone all those years ago. In their attack, they gave her a gift, that his friendship is not lost to her in these dark hours, as so many others have been.

“Thank you, Minsc,” she says quietly. “Do not fear. You have done well. And I will stay awake…”

He relaxes visibly, his habitual smile already tugging at his features, indomitable again with this reassurance. “Good. That is good to hear.”