Eirian regretted agreeing to this.
Yuze was still unconscious in the bed next to her, and Eirian had forgotten that healers liked to check on their patients so regularly.
Every fucking hour.
And there was no way she could sleep through someone coming in and poking at things.
Her eye started twitching the first day, and by the second, the other one was twitching too. By the third day, she nearly takes the healer's head off when they come in at dawn to check on Yuze, and Chenzhou admitted she was strangely bug-eyed when he came by to eat breakfast with her, like he has every day since she agreed to stay with Yuze.
"I can't sleep, Chenzhou."
He'd swallowed, so nervous and apologetic but unwavering, that Eirian could practically smell the confliction on him. "You're healing faster, though."
That was always his argument, and Eirian hated it solely because it was true. The potions from the healers were healing her faster than her magic alone would have, and the strain from having to control her magic while using had been slowing down the healing process even further. Most of her skin had regrown in the past few days, and her hair was several inches longer.
Almost long enough for her to willingly suffer cutting off the damaged length that still made up the majority of it. None of her potions or oils had made any progress in restoring it. Deep down, she'd known they wouldn't work, but she'd held out hope for a miracle anyway.
"You could use your magic to make it grow faster?" Chenzhou pointed out, around a bite of eggs and slightly charred bacon.
Eirian's stomach, full from her three servings of the same, rumbled, but Chenzhou was the one person she wouldn't take food from. He was still regaining weight from the years he was dying, and he was doing it a lot slower than Eirian did after using her magic. She was already halfway back to her normal weight after a week, and Chenzhou was still struggling after months. She tuned back into their conversation. "No. It feels different when I use magic to grow it. Strange. I don't like it." She scowled, poking at the burnt ends.
Chenzhou swallowed. "That makes sense."
Eirian rolled her eyes. "You don't care what your hair feels like at all." Chenzhou was far too much of a pragmatist to think about something like that.
"I don't like the way it feels when it's dirty?" He offered, and he was clearly trying hard.
Eirian sighed. Mingzhe didn't care any more than Chenzhou did, and he was even less willing to try. "Appearances matter, you know."
Chenzhou grimaced, which said everything about how he felt about that inside. "I know. But far too much."
Eirian shrugged; he wasn't necessarily wrong.
"Mingzhe said to tell you he's going to come have lunch with you. He's having breakfast with his mother today." Chenzhou shivered. Lady Zhao was an intimidating figure even when she wasn't in the room. She'd invited Chenzhou to breakfast too; he suspected she'd learned how close Mingzhe was growing to both of them, but he'd used visiting Eirian to get out of it.
After dealing with the mess that was Eirian's father, he wasn't all that eager to get tangled up with Mingzhe's parents.
Eirian and Chenzhou glanced over at the other bed, where Yuze lay still and silent. He looked like he was sleeping, more peacefully with each passing day, but there was still no sign of when he was going to wake up. Most of his cuts had healed closed, but they were still red and inflamed. The healers had started letting them sit unbandaged, saying the fresh air from letting the wounds breathe helped the healing along.
Eirian couldn't help but stare at them every time. Yuze looked like he'd been lucky enough to avoid a lot of scars despite his occupation, but this single event seemed to make up for it. There was barely an inch of skin on his back and the backs of his legs that didn't have some mark now. It's a small miracle he got out of it with his face unscathed, since it was such an easy target during torture.
Chenzhou was becoming more and more disheartened with every passing day that Yuze didn't wake up. "I haven't gone this long without talking to him in years." He admitted, poking lifelessly at what was left of his food. "Not since he stopped working in the field to help me here."
A pang of sympathy struck her. He and Yuze were as close as she and Eric, and she hated that it was taking so long to hear from him.
And that he was so far away, and they couldn't spend time together the way they used to. It was strange to be separated from someone who had taken up so much space in your life for such a long time.
Was that why Death was so angry they'd left? Why he felt so betrayed?
Eirian could understand that.
She didn't agree with getting banished forever, but she'd completed her task now, so she figured it was a moot point.
…
The anger flared, but not nearly as strongly as before. She was still too tired to really devote that kind of energy to anything but healing.
She had completed her task, right? She hadn't seen Death since it had happened, but she also hadn't had any dreams about the world of the dead either, and she was kind of surprised about that.
But maybe it was all a good sign?
Maybe things were finally getting better?
~ tbc