#this is a ranger's apprentice inspired au if you will but nobody knows what that is in my experience lmaoo

[flowercrowngods]

okay due to popular demand (3 people mwah!), here's all i have on prisoners ranger!steve, bard!eddie, and the royal entourage accompanying the diplomatic mission that went so horribly wrong

Steve’s whole body is made of pain, and has been for the past few days. His feet are aching and raw from trying to keep up as they were bound to horses and dragged along. His skin is chafed and bleeding where the unforgiving rocks have managed to destroy his clothes after one too many falls, and every smallest of cuts feels like his body is nothing more than a pulsating mess. 

Worst of all, though, is the dizziness. He doesn’t know if his head is still bleeding or if the wetness he can feel running down his temple is his body’s testament to the unfamiliar heat, but it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. 

There’s only pain. And nausea. His eyes are open but he needs a second to understand what he’s seeing — and what he’s seeing is a ceiling made of sand coloured stone. Distantly, he hears a door clanging shut, but that might just as well be a memory. 

He’s going to throw up. Tough luck when you don’t even know where up is. 

A groan leaves his mouth as he tries to take a deep breath and fails miserably. Instead, he can add two broken ribs to the list of misery. 

Gods above — whichever of them are listening — he’s tired. But he fears that if he closes his eyes, he might not open them anymore for the sheer release that would bring. He can’t sleep, can’t rest, not when— 

“Easy now,” a gentle voice interrupts his less than coherent thoughts and just moments later, a tender hand is combing through his blood-crusted hair. “You shouldn’t move, my friend. There’s nowhere to move to anymore.” 

Steve frowns, his brain trying and failing to provide any information at this point. The hits to his head must have been worse than he thought if his short term memory refuses to work with him anymore. 

“We have reached Capital City,” the voice continues and Steve has to blink the fog away to make out its owner. When he does, it must show in his eyes, for the worry in Theodore Munson’s eyes makes way to the briefest of smiles before returning even stronger than before. “Do you not recall?”

Steve just stares up at him. That’s all his wrecked body and mind allow him to do right now. That’s all they want to do when gentle hands comb through his hair and chase away some of the pain. 

It is then that reality slowly comes back to him and he realises where he is. Where they are. What is at stake if they fail any more, if they decide to torture information on Elanor and William out of them — out of him. He’s not sure how much he can take. They have been held prisoner for weeks. Steve has been hurting for even longer.

Shame rises in him and he has the urge to apologise to Jim, to explain, but moving his head to the side, he sees that his old master isn’t any better off. He appears to be sleeping, his face bruised, and a teary-eyed Maxine is wiping blood away from his face with a piece of her cloak. 

Steve blinks once, twice, and takes in the man who practically raised him, watches the steady rise and fall of his chest and listens, beyond the pulsing rush of his own blood, that his lungs are not rattling. Shame makes way to satisfaction when he sees that none of their party has taken as many hits, kicks and punches as himself. His distractions have worked, then. 

That’s good. Now if only they didn’t make him so nauseous. So tired. So…

“Don’t fall asleep, Steven,” Eddie demands, and the world tilts slightly, which makes everything worse until… soft. It’s softer now. 

Eddie has moved him so his head is resting in his lap now. 

“You don’t look too good, Ranger. Sleep is dangerous in your state, no matter how badly you might need it. Give it a few hours, please.” 

A beat passes where Steve tries to process the words that are just too many. Since when does Eddie talk with him so much? 

“Lies,” he says after a while and with greater effort than should be necessary.

“Lies?” 

“I look very good. You just can’t see it under all the blood and the bruises.” He tries to crack a smile, but even the huffed breath jolts his head too much. 

Eddie does him the favour of a brief chuckle, and Steve feels better for it. Lighter. Light is good, he finds. Maybe all he has to focus on is Eddie and his hands working out the clumps of dirt and blood from his hair, maybe all he has to do is make him smile and the world will be a bit less painful. 

His world narrows down to all the ways Eddie is close to him and it does keep him occupied, but it also gets his mind wandering, the adrenaline of the past days wearing off. 

“Keep doing that and I will fall asleep,” he says after another beat of silence. Fall asleep and dream. Dream of what this could mean. Dream of smiles that make me feel lighter. 

“Keep doing what?” Eddie asks, and Steve senses a trick to just keep him talking, no matter how slurred his speech is. He needs a moment to remember what he said.

“This,” he says eventually, and Eddie only hums. Finding words is hard. He tries. And tries again. “Being gentle.” 

Another smile, and Steve wants to close his eyes to keep it there to hold on to. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, my friend.” 

“Can’t not be gentle?” He’s losing force on the consonants. The pain is getting stronger, his nerve endings more frayed and his vision blurry. This is familiar. He gives himself another quarter of an hour at most before he will lose his consciousness, no matter how hard he tries to stay here. With Eddie and his wavering smile. 

“Not with my friends, no.” 

This time it’s Steve who smiles at the word friends. He likes to be Eddie’s friend. The man, as it turns out, is admirable, he’s strong, he’s wise when he wants to be and gentle with young Maxine. He’s kind, he’s quick-witted and patient, and his hands are impossibly soft. 

“I know you said not to sleep, and I’m not normally one to deny a well-respected bard’s command, but…” He swallows. Words are hard. He’s not sure they come out as planned, but he perseveres. “I’m afraid I have to prove to you now how stubborn the Queen’s Rangers can be.” 

Another hum from above him and Steve opens his eyes he hadn’t even noticed closing. The world is fading, but still Eddie is at its centre. 

“I’ll be here when you wake up, then, stubborn Ranger.” 

Will you smile at me still? Steve wonders. 

“Always,” Eddie says, but before Steve has time to wonder if someone else has said something, darkness has swallowed him whole.

———

Steve wakes to something cold touching his forehead, moving to his temple where suddenly a jarring pain wrecks his body and he can’t quite suppress the flinch. 

“Forgive me,” comes a quiet voice from above and Steve opens his eyes to the darkness of a cell, only faintly illuminated by the flickering light of a torch somewhere and the redness of the setting sun. “But I am glad to see you awake.”

The voice belongs to Eddie, who is looking down at him, a piece of cloth in his hand. Gently, he presses it to Steve’s forehead again and the cool sensation comes back, gentler this time. It takes a moment for Steve’s tired and frayed mind to catch up with reality, but when it does, he realises that the bard is washing away the dried blood and cleaning his wounds. 

What an odd picture they must make.

“Tell me,” he says before he has time to consider his words. “Is it normal for a bard of Northlands to take care of wounded Rangers?” 

“No,” Eddie says and there’s something to his voice Steve can’t quite identify. He’s not sure he likes it, not sure what it does to his insides. “There are never any Rangers there.” 

Even through the dim light, Steve can see the mirth in his eyes and it makes him laugh – if only briefly, for his body is quick to remind him that any sort of movement is a bad, terrible, truly horrid idea. He just barely manages to suppress a groan, but nothing could get past the bard’s eyes, and his hand moves from Steve’s forehead to his cheek almost immediately. 

“Careful, my friend. You shouldn’t be laughing.” 

“Stop making me laugh, then. That would make it all so much easier.” There’s no heat behind his words and he doesn’t even try not to lean into the touch. 

Eddie hums but stays quiet otherwise and keeps wiping Steve’s face clean, watching his every reaction. A frown slowly forms between those brows and Steve wonders what that is for. Did something happen while he was out of it? Time passes differently in the desert, yes, the sun and moon following different paths, but he can’t have been unconscious for more than three hours. It is barely yet nightfall, their cell colder than before. 

Three hours. And Eddie still sits cross-legged with Steve’s head on his thigh. 

Guilt and embarrassment shoot through him and he wants to move, wants to get up and release the bard from his demeaning task of playing nurse to a wounded Ranger, but his ribs protest and his head pulses with white-hot pain before it sends his world spinning again and Steve sags back into the warmth of Theodore. 

“I must be painting the most pathetic picture of her Majesty’s Rangers. I swear, most of us are better than this.” 

It comes out light hearted as always, despite the pain it leaves inside his chest to be presenting himself like this. Representing all Rangers to the kingdoms of the South with his weakness. All that on top of losing Will. Again. 

He closes his eyes against the pity he is bound to see in Eddie’s eyes. 

“You paint a picture of bravery such as I scarcely saw it before. Never in my life did I see a man move so slowly, so unseen unless as I was looking right at you. You are excellent with the sword and the bow, and even the weapons of the desert folk are natural to you. I can imagine the pain and suffering you have seen, some of which you must have caused in the name of justice, yet you carry inside yourself a light-heartedness that is refreshing to say the least.” 

Steve swallows, has never been good at taking compliments, and luckily hasn’t been in the position to accept them in quite a while. 

“Light-hearted?” he rasps. “You can’t be talking about the same Rangers I know, surely.” 

“I was talking about you, Steven,” Eddie admits quietly, and his voice is so tender when he says his name that it makes Steve’s breath hitch. 

“Oh,” he says intelligently. Swallows. “Then the head injury must be severe.” 

“Admirable of you to hide a concussion for so many days. I think healers of all kingdoms would have a lot of questions for you if they knew.”

Steve huffs and smiles through the pain of his undoubtedly broken ribs protesting. “My apologies, Eddie. Queen Joyce of the West and Sir James himself would both have my head if I taught you our concussion-hiding ways.”  

“A pity,” Eddie says and there’s that smile in his voice again that doesn’t show on his lips, at least in this light. Steve doesn’t care, though, as he smiles up at him. 

This moment in time belongs to the both of them as Steve finds he can’t quite look away, and it’s not the pain that keeps him. 

Eddie opens his mouth as if to say something, but then closes it again. The frown reappears between his brows and Steve wants to reach out and smoothen the creased skin above his nose. If only moving his arm didn’t require such strength that keeps evading him, the night weighing heavy on his limbs.

After another minute, Eddie does find his words, though they are quiet this time. “I worried.” 

“About what?” Steve asks when he doesn’t continue. 

Eddie resumes his endeavour of washing the crusted blood from his hair and face, the sensation soothing his skin but not his nerves. Steve does reach up this time to still his hand, and the bard meets his eyes again. 

“That you wouldn’t wake up.” It comes out small, void of that usual easy confidence. 

Steve swallows every comment on the tip of his tongue about how the rest of their group could easily keep Eddie entertained without any concussions bothering them. It’s not often that he has control over his tongue, but in the face of such open worry and vulnerability, his heart aches and he wants to say the right thing. 

“I’m awake, Theodore Munson. It takes far more to put me out for good.”

It’s a lie, he knows. It would not have taken that much more, but Eddie doesn’t need to know that. 

“Don’t let them hear that, they will take that as a challenge.” 

Steve only gives a non-committal hum and closes his eyes again. If he didn’t, the darkness of the cell and the kindness in Eddie’s eyes would have made him say stupid things like, Let them, if that means everyone else is safe. That would surely dim the light in those black eyes and very likely make Jim throw a boot at him. And Steve really doesn’t want to have to deal with either of those things. 

Eddie resumes his task of gently cleaning him, and Steve gets the feeling that the bard must be doing it for himself just as much as for him. It’s something to keep himself occupied, and the way he talks betrays his intentions in turn of keeping Steve awake and occupied, too. 

A gesture that is almost too kind to bear, as dusk turns into night and the silver light of the full moon illuminates their cell. 

———

Jim lies just a few feet beside them, and now that his eyes have had the chance to adjust to the darkness properly, the concussion already weaker than it was earlier, Steve can see that his eyes are open. Or, one eye is; the other is swollen too badly. Another wave of guilt and shame clouds his senses for a moment and he has the urge to ask forgiveness. He feels responsible, even though he knows Jim would hit him over the head if Steve so much as mentioned that.

His eyes cut back to Eddie above him when a yawn interrupts the bard’s steady movements with the cloth that is barely wet anymore. 

“You never got any rest, did you?” he asks – stupidly, because the moment the words leave his lips Steve remembers the very reason for Eddie’s wakefulness. He winces before the other man even gets the chance to answer. “Right, my fault. Forgive me.” 

If the ground beneath him could open now, he would have a banquet in its honour. With a groan, he moves to sit up and free Eddie of his dead weight, the motion pulling on his cuts and bruises, irritating his broken and burning ribs in a way so sudden it steals his breath for a second. Steve is well acquainted with pain, but the all-encompassing nature of it right now is thoroughly unwelcome.

Hands come up to steady him, guiding him to sit up and lean against the stone wall, his own shoulder coming to rest against Eddie’s, who only slowly lets go of him. 

“Thank you,” Steve breathes, looking at him out of the corner of his eyes. 

“It’s hardly a question of fault,” Eddie says in that calm, soothing way of his that keeps making Steve want to reach out and hold on. Hold him. “And it was no hardship to stay and… be gentle.” 

Something in the back of his mind wants to tell him something but it’s too foggy to grasp. 

“Gentle,” he says, inquiring, as though saying the word out loud would tell him its meaning. 

“Even Rangers of the Kingdom deserve gentle hands and smiles. Even if they are too badly beaten and concussed to recall their request.” 

Eddie’s words aren’t making sense, but what they do is make his heart beat faster for some reason other than shame and embarrassment. He presses his lips together and tries to find his voice.

When he finds it again, it’s barely more than a whisper hidden in the moonlight. “Allow me to return the favour, then. Rest, Eddie. Find some sleep while I ensure it is safe.” 

Something shifts in those black eyes and Steve wants to chase it. Eddie cast in silver light of the moon is different than the golden figure of the past days. Less imposing and more… fragile. Gone is the teasing, replaced with something more… More. It suits him, the light of the moon, as much as it makes Steve’s heart and mind race. 

“Will you smile at me still?” Eddie asks at last, and even the darkness cannot veil the quiver in his voice. 

Steve is reminded of something he must have dreamed of earlier, but he cannot focus on that, not with the way the moonlight catches in those dark curls that have managed to slip out of the band keeping his hair bound at the back of his skull. Not with the way it illuminates the twitch of his lip or the impossible way he is looking at Steve still. 

“Always,” he says before he can even think about it. Always, he thinks. However long that may yet be.

Another smile twitches and tugs at the bard’s lips, lingering in its nature as he closes his eyes and leans his head against the wall behind them. It can’t be comfortable, and Steve has half a mind to offer his own lap, but there is something about seeing Eddie so calm. He doesn’t dare to interrupt him. 

He waits until Eddie’s breathing has evened out before he gives in to the urge to brush the treacherous curl behind his ear. It leaves his fingertips with a tingling sensation that makes him want to do it again, so he does. Sitting there, trying to breathe through his broken ribs and his fluttering heart, Steve doesn’t dare to do it a third time, as much as he yearns for it. 

He rests his own head against the wall, too, and watches the bard, because watching him is easier than letting his gaze wander and be reminded of the situation they’re all in. 

The moonlight guides his gaze towards Eddie even as he tries to look away, and Steve watches as it caresses the bard’s features in such a way as though that is what it has been sent here to do. 

It makes Steve smile even as the ache in his chest grows stronger. He is starting to realise what this is, and he’s too weak to fight it. Not in this prison cell, not in this foreign country where the sun is out to kill you and the moon will watch you shiver helplessly. 

How could he fight the moonlight and its tender caress, the world tinged in silver as he lets it work its magic on him? Only a fool would be able to resist. 

“Steve.” 

He just barely manages not to flinch as Jim’s rasping voice rips him away from his musing – no, his yearning. Turning his head, he finds his eyes in the dark, though he can’t make out any question or command in them. Has Jim caught him? Does his old mentor know his thoughts regarding the bard, has he seen the twitch in Steve’s fingers as he refused to let them reach out and touch? 

Jim’s silence is as good a command as any, and summoning all his might not to let his face betray the pain shooting through his body, Steve gets up with a suppressed groan and walks over to his old mentor. 

As slowly as possible without giving away the pain that feels like his ribcage is being both torn apart and pressed together, he sits down beside Jim, guiltily thanking the swollen eye and the darkness, for he seems none the wiser to Steve’s injury. 

“Don’t do that again.”

Steve freezes, his thoughts tumbling over themselves trying to figure out what exactly Jim refers to — the guilt still warring inside him insists that there are many things he should not have done. 

“What do you mean?” he asks, feeling like he is but a green student again, getting berated by his mentor after he did something wrong. 

“Take a beating for me. I understand why you would do it for the others, but—” 

“Jim,” he tries to interrupt him with a gentle sigh, but the old man won’t have it. 

“No, Steve. They hate me more than you, we don’t need you riling them up and making things worse for yourself.” 

“I will not let them break your arms and ribs, James. I can take it, I’m—” 

“If you say you’re younger, Steven, I’m going to throw you out of the window..” 

An innocent grin spreads his lips and he inclines his head, meeting Jim’s good eye. “But I am.” 

He sees the hand coming, shooting out from below, but his range of motion and reflexes are still heavily impacted by his injuries that he can’t manage to get out of Jim’s reach in time. Before he knows it, Steve loses his balance and falls flat on his back without any grace but with all the more agonising pain. 

Nobody would have been able to hide broken ribs and a nearly split skull like this, but Steve still mentally kicks himself as the wheezing groan of pain leaves his lips.

All traces of mirth leave Jim’s expression and everything turns into worry as he, too, sits up with a groan to check over his former apprentice. 

“By the Gods, Steve, are you okay?” 

Another groan that is supposed to be somewhere between “Just peachy” and “Fuck off”, but even that sound is pathetic with the way the air has been pushed out of his lungs at the impact. All he manages is a whimper, and he doesn’t try to open his lips for more than that.

He doesn’t even attempt to sit up this time, can only try to catch his breath and breathe through the agony with more wheezing, rattling whimpers. Hands hover over him in the dark, but he shakes his head rapidly, scared that Jim would try to touch and feel the injury, only to find a broken rib or two. Or five, at this point.

His lungs don’t work right and he can’t quite catch his breath. It is only experience that tells him this is normal, this will pass, he will breathe right again. Hopefully. 

“For God’s sake, why would you hide an injury like that, Steve? Why would you… You idiot!”

There is movement around him in the cell, the others waking up from Jim’s anger and worry and guilt, but Steve keeps his eyes closed lest the tears fall. 

“Breathe,” Jim tells him, and Steve finds that to be a wonderful idea, actually, so he tries. And he tries again. “Yes, good. Breathe, Steve. It’s all going to be fine, you’ll get through this.”

“Have to,” he presses, barely any sound to his wheezing. “So you can throw me out of the window.” 

“Fucking moron,” Jim mutters, though Steve can hear the emotion in these two words. It makes him smile despite the situation.

“S–sorry,” he wheezes again, and trusts that Jim understands that he means more than his sarcastic retorts or the hiding of the wounds. Sorry for losing Will again. Sorry for not saving Elanor in time. Sorry for failing the mission. Sorry for being weaker than you need me to be. Sorry for—

“It’s alright, Steve,” Jim promises and there are fingers in his hair again, wetness running down his cheek. Did the fall open his head injury again? The situation must truly be dire if Jim is being outright gentle and worried. “Just don’t do it again. Let me take them next time.” 

He wheezes again, but won’t make that promise. If their captors come back, he knows he won’t sit and watch them hurt his friends, won’t sit and watch them treat Jim the same way they treated him on the journey here. 

It takes a moment for the world to right itself again and for the cell to become quiet, but somehow Steve manages to get his breathing under control and the pain subsides from agonising to miserable, like before. He rolls his head and looks at Jim through a blurriness in his eyes that he has to blink away. 

“You think we’ll make it out of this alive?”

Maybe it’s the pain clouding his mind, maybe it’s the darkness that has always made it easier to ask such questions, but Steve finds the words falling from his lips easier than they should have. 

Jim’s expression that just a moment ago has been filled with worry and anger sobers now, and Steve doesn’t quite like what he sees. 

“Will is still out there,” he says, evading the question and answering it in the same moment. 

“Yeah. He is,” Steve says, not sure if he believes it or not. Not sure if it changes anything. “You’re right.”

They stare at each other for a moment, the moonlight catching Jim’s eyes in a way that highlights the emotions in them. The desperate hope that Will is out there, alive, and reunited with his sister — they have their ways of finding each other against all odds. Always have. Steve likes to believe that they won’t stop now, that a desert can’t keep them apart. That they found friendly faces who won’t betray them, and bring them home. 

Bring them home even when Steve and Jim can’t follow them. And Maxine. Princess Elanor would turn the desert into an ocean before she left Maxine to die. But down in their cell, the ocean would leave them to drown all the same. 

Jim has hope, though, and Steve decides to follow his mentor again. Just for tonight, when all he feels is pain, when his head is being split open, his chest crushed and bursting, his limbs bloodied and bruised. Just for tonight, he will allow himself not to think, not to worry, and to trust Jim blindly like he did all those years ago. 

“Sleep, Steve,” Jim says then, and only now does Steve realise how tired he is, his eyes closed long ago.

He spends a brief moment thinking about Eddie and the promise he made the bard to be there when he wakes up. It’s silly, because he’s merely a few feet away, but it still hurts to have abandoned him to lie there by himself while everyone else has company. When he never moved while Steve himself was asleep.

“You should sleep, too, Ranger.” A sudden wave of warmth washes over him when he hears that voice with its foreign inflections. “You both need your rest, I can stay awake for some time to keep watch and wake you up at the first sign of danger.” 

“Eddie, I really don’t mind—“ 

“I insist, Ranger James. You two have taken the most of their hatred and displays of power, it’s the least I can do.”

Jim seems to hesitate for a moment, but Steve doesn’t open his eyes to look. His lids have become far too heavy, even heavier still when a certain hand is back in his hair to comb through it in even movements, mindful of his wounds. He doesn’t fight the secret smile this time. 

“Well, if you insist, bard,” Jim finally concedes, never one to really pass up an opportunity for sleep. “Good night to you, then.” 

“Goodnight, my friend,” Eddie says in that calm, kind manner of his that is still new to them, and Steve feels as though he breathes easier for it. “And you, Steven,” he lowers his voice, appearing closer now, “truly are a fool.” 

“Oh?” he says, wishing that it wouldn’t hurt to laugh or even just to huff. “What happened to brave, kind-hearted, and whatever else you said earlier?” 

“You can have those back when you stop lying about being injured.” 

“Keep them then,” he says, and it’s meant in jest, but that doesn’t translate well when you barely have enough strength left for a voice, he finds. 

“Sleep,” Eddie repeats, gentler this time, though he sighs long and hard after. “You impossible man.”

It makes Steve smile again, even as an impenetrable darkness wraps around him. 

He’s sure that the hum and the whispered, “I see you’re keeping your promise still,” are figments of his imagination, his tired mind playing tricks on him. But it’s a dream he likes to sink into, filled with moonlit skin, gentle hands, and kind words.

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