The paralytic haze sat on her face like a veil someone had thrown over a fire — present, dulling things, but not extinguishing. He could see her working. Behind the gloss of the compound's progress, behind the half-closed eyes and the shallow open-mouthed breathing, the woman who commanded soldiers was still 'in there', processing the sensation with the particular horror of someone who had trained for every kind of pain except this specific one.
Her breasts.
He hadn't fully — even earlier, even when the underlayer had come off — he hadn't fully registered.
The armor had been compressing them, doing the structural work that plate armor does, and their true weight was only now present in the world, sprawled across her chest with the heavy, patient reality of things that had spent years contained and were finally free.
Large. The kind of large that made large sound like an inadequate word.
