¤ All Kinds of Hurt

It took Jaysen the better part of one hour, four wrong turns, three backtracks to the lift pod lobby, and one enquiry of a harried-looking Master to finally find the archery range. Sighing in relief as he finally entered the range, his discerning thief’s eye was attracted almost immediately to the racks of bows and crossbows that lined the wall closest to the door.

Running an appreciative finger along the golden crosspiece of a particularly well-polished Golden Crow, Jaysen was starting to wonder if it was possible to secrete a crossbow somewhere on his body, when a soft sigh made his ears prick and he turned to look to the opposite corner of the room.

There, Jaysen saw the back of a tall muscular warrior type dressed in blue Ad Lib robes, his head bent low as he stood before a girl who had her pale hands entangled deep in his black hair. Jaysen whistled silently in his mind. Someone looks pretty busy, eh.

Come on, dude, let the loverbirds in peace. Hiding a grin, the bandit was about to turn away. There was no sign of Silver here, perhaps-

Just then, he was stopped in his tracks by a loud cry of pain. Jerking his head back, he saw the girl’s hands clench tightly in the man’s hair, her fingernails digging deep into his scalp as she yanked as hard as she could. With another cry of pain, the warrior stumbled backwards, his hands letting go of the girl to wrest her hands out of his hair.

Without the warrior’s head in the way, Jaysen saw the girl’s furious face now and recognised her as Silver. What on earth…? Something that felt strangely uncomfortable did a little angry hopping dance in the pit of his stomach and yelled at him to jump on that unworthy knave, what was he doing to her!, but Jaysen was too stunned to pay attention to it (or at least, he told himself he was.)

‘Damn you-!’ The warrior turned to grab Silver by her arm as she tried to run away, making her wince in pain as she fought to escape his steel grip. There was a snarl on his lips, which were bleeding where Silver had bit him viciously. ‘I told you struggling is no use!’

‘Let go of me now, Brandon!!’

Brandon? Silver’s frantic yell made his mind quickly screech to a halt in its hurtle down the Highway of Overactive Imagination and turn sharply into the Side-lane of Relatively Logical Thinking. (In other, less complicated words, Jaysen swiftly put things together.) ‘Oi, let go of the lady!’ He started to dash towards them.

In the moment that Brandon was distracted by Jaysen’s shout, Silver took the chance to sock him on the nose with her free hand, putting in more than ten years of training with the bow behind the punch. Brandon let go of her again with another cry of pain, his hands flying to his broken nose as he staggered back, right into the approaching Jaysen.

‘Hello, dude.’ Jaysen gave him a friendly grin as he caught Brandon. ‘Nice to meet you again.’ The warrior only snarled and wrenched himself away from Jaysen’s grip. Before the warrior could stand up properly though, Silver had gone up to him, braced herself and kicked him hard in the-

Ouchies to the ten thousandth degrees. Jaysen winced and squinted in sympathy. He let Brandon fall away from him as the warrior doubled over with a strangled sound not unlike what an asphyxiated Roloduck would make. That gotta hurt, dude.

‘Bloody…idiot.’ Breathing hard, Silver continued to glare at the fallen Brandon as he writhed in pain on the floor, his hands clutching between his legs.

‘Uh, lady Silver? Are you feeling okay?’ Jaysen asked cautiously, not sure if he should keep a distance from the huntress or not. He decided on the former.

As if noticing a newcomer on the scene for the first time, Silver looked confused for a moment, her grey eyes unfocused and puzzled, before she finally recognised Jaysen.

‘Yes. I am now.’ The seriously annoyed look came back to her face as she stared back down at Brandon, whose writhing had subsided into slightly violent twitches. Her shaking voice was particularly vindictive as she nudged him none too gently with a foot, ‘And he’s not.’

‘I’m getting out of here.’ Picking up the discarded Asianic bow, she turned her face away from Jaysen and walked to set the bow back onto the racks before leaving the range in a flurry of blue robes.

Jaysen frowned, undecided if he should stay to deal with Brandon, or hurry to catch up with Silver. In the end, concern for the girl made the decision for him. No way anyone could be alright, after something like that.

But he didn’t leave before he ‘accidentally’ tripped and kicked Brandon in the head. Hard.

‘Oops. Sorry, my bad.’ Watching Brandon’s eyes roll up to the back of his head, Jaysen allowed himself a grin. Sometimes, you really don’t need sharp pointy things to hurt someone.

Though I believe the lady takes the cake in that department…

Silver forced herself to keep a brisk pace as she made her way away from the archery range, her heart still thumping away in her chest like some insane rabbit. The image of Brandon kissing her kept coming back to her, the idea of her lips being so forcibly abused making her gag in disgust. She felt a desperate need to gargle, to get rid of that disgusting feeling in her mouth.

It was all she could do to keep herself from retching. She felt filthy, as filthy as all those rumours had painted her to be. And there is always some sort of truth in rumours. So somehow you must have planted that seed of truth yourself, That voice again, taunting and telling twisted truths in false sympathy. How awful.

Even as she hurried down the corridor, the edges of her sight blurred. There was a prickling in her eyes that made her blink repeatedly. But I can’t cry now. Not now.

‘Hey, Silver, wait up.’ She tensed as she heard running footsteps approach her, but could not escape the hand that caught her on her right upper arm. She winced, as the grip closed about the same place where Brandon had grabbed and bruised her last.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Feeling Silver flinch, Jaysen quickly let go. ‘Did that guy hurt you?’

‘No, it’s nothing. I’m alright.’ Silver turned from him and tried to walk away, but found that she could only move so far, the gentle but firm hold Jaysen had on her leather covered wrist restraining her.

‘Look at me, lady Silver.’ Jaysen’s quiet voice said, his command so compelling that Silver was forced to look up. He continued, still in that mild voice. ‘You don’t have to keep pretending that everything is alright, you know.’

Silver said nothing.

‘Let me see that.’ Without even waiting for Silver’s nod, Jaysen pushed the sleeve of her robe up, revealing a large and rapidly darkening bruise on her upper arm. But that injury paled in comparison to what caught his attention: the sight of the grotesque scars that ran all the way from her shoulder to under her glove.

‘It’s just a bruise.’ She tried to pull her hand back, but Jaysen still held her wrist firmly, staring in horror at the scars that she knew would be there.

Why in heavens did he look as if the scars were etched on his arm instead?

Jaysen reached out to touch the raised scar tissue gently and Silver flinched.

‘That looks much worse than a bruise, lady,’ he said, still horrified.

‘Old scars. They are nothing,’ she said needlessly, the words sounding hollow even to her.

‘May I?’

Silver froze for a while. Should she? There was no harm in that, right? He had already seen the worse of it. Jaysen’s hold on her wrist continued to be gentle, so unlike Brandon’s rough, bruising grip… In the end, she nodded stiffly again.

Jaysen fumbled with the laces that held the top of the glove closed; Silver watched for a while, before moving slowly to help him untie the knot. The air was cool against her bare skin as Jaysen rolled down the soft leather glove to expose, in their entirety, the parallel slashes that ended a few inches below her elbow.

His light blue eyes wide in shock, Jaysen could only look at the horrific scars, the glib-tongued bandit speechless for once. ‘He did this?’

‘Yes and no,’ Silver said quietly, staring down at her own scars distantly as if observing someone else’s arm. It all seemed so far away- no, she was only wishing for it to be far away, because it hurt too much to bring everything all up again.

‘Can you tell me?’ Jaysen said gently.

Their eyes met as Silver looked up in surprise, her grey ones full of confusion and tiredness, his full of sorrow and concern.

‘You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.’ He smiled tentatively, drawing her glove back over her scars again. Hearing those soothing words seemed to nudge open a floodgate; the stubborn wall in Silver that had kept everything contained up till now cracked open that tiny miniscule bit.

But it was enough: Silver felt her tears fall, defying all control now.

‘I hate him. I h-hate that damned man so much. How could he still come back and mess me up like this, when he knows I hate him! He knows it and he enjoys knowing it and proving it to himself, because, for him, it adds to all the fun! And after all he did to me, leaving me to die, stealing my work, telling all those lies, and, and, and all those days I spent in the clerics’ wing, a Huntress with a crippled arm, so useless, so crippled, so hurt, so! How can he still think that I will want to- that I will…!’

She ran out of words and her babbling halted abruptly, lost to incoherence as she became gagged by tears.

‘Ssh, it’s okay.’ Through her tears, Silver was dimly aware that she had sank to the floor in one disconsolate heap, and Jaysen was right next to her, brushing her hair away from her wet face and stroking her on her back. She turned and buried her face in his shoulder blindly, clinging onto this sole source of comfort, not caring that the ridges in his hard Scorpio armour dug uncomfortably into her forehead.

‘Ssh, it’s okay here, lady. I’m here.’ Jaysen held her gently, rocking her like an upset child and soothing her with a stream of calm, meaningless sounds.

The tears continued to flow, bringing with them all the hurt, the fear, the gnawing insecurity, the unspoken shame, the pent-up bitterness… It did not hurt any lesser afterwards; each racking sob only seemed to gather up some of the pain in her heart, press it into one fist-sized lump before letting it fall back again, compressed into a heavier mass.

But still she cried, relieved at last of all the strain of simply being Silver.

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Links to previous chapters:
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Oh noes. It’s all weepy and soup-opera-ish, in the most cliche-ish way possible.

Anyway, yeah. Answered now are the questions of ‘Where’s Jaysen all this time?!’ and ‘When are you going to be done with Brandon?!’ Now you are free to have Brandon, you lovably savage people. I’m done with him, until further notification. I really want to see what you can do to him, because whatever I have here sure like heck don’t meet up with your expectations. So bring on the bloody scenes of torture and terrible visitations of sadism-whatever!

And here’s some Red Jam and Cookies~