I Wish

Chapter 24

I had never been more glad to see anyone in my entire life. Gone were the cute short dresses, or casual winter wear. Now she was wrapped in leather, and the strangest metal accents I’d ever seen. Black boots crawled halfway up her legs, and her hair fishtailed into a beautiful braid. There was a stab of something disturbingly like irritation, considering she was here to rescue me, at the idea that she stopped to change first. Don’t get me wrong, I was all for the goddess of war vibes, if I probably wasn’t dying it would have been fine. She looked coldly at Isaac, whom to his credit only tilted her head to the side and looked at her like she was something funny if slightly confusing. 

“You certainly didn’t waste any time getting here, did you?” he taunted her, “It’s a shame that you weren’t quite quick enough to stop her from sustaining any damage. You won’t mind that I damaged her, will you, right?” Ivy growled in response, and the muscles that had been clenched in pain and terror relaxed a little at the sound, and oh my god. I was clearly mentally damaged. I didn’t like the calculating way she looked at me, as I panted softly from the floor.

“You know what you’re going to die for,” she spoke dismissively, as if he were a bug she’d found the remnants of on the bottom of her shoe. This was all shaping up to be one hell of a throw down, if my head would just stop swimming, I could enjoy this. Notably because I thought there was no way that she wouldn’t win. Ivy was going to f**k him up for hurting me, and if I had anything in me at all, I would have gotten to my feet and helped her. I was too badly hurt to contemplate the standing up part of that, let alone anything else. 

“Am I?” Isaac scoffed, and inching towards the way out that Ivy was currently blocking. She laughed, and despite sounding both cruel, and insane, it was comforting enough to me that I just wanted to roll myself in it. Any sane person would run screaming, and apparently as knocked around as I was made you think that this possibly slightly feral creature was a perfect cinnamon roll. I was magically gone on the girl, not stupid. 

“Question, not statement,” Ivy pointed out with spiteful amusement, “You wouldn’t have asked if you could do it without lying.”  It started to get dark again, and I panicked. Thinking I was heading solidly to unconsciousness and getting really irritated when right on the verge, it up and refused to happen. They shook their heads ruefully, and took another step forwards until the only light was guarded by Ivy.

“Doesn’t matter,” they sneered in response, “We will fight, and she will die. You lose, and there is nothing you can do about it.” Ivy hummed, and my fingers twitched. She was so far away. Why was she so far away, and why hadn’t she sorted this yet? 

“Are you sure about that?” Ivy questions, and this time they snort.

“Are you asking?” they returned venomously before digging the jab a little deeper, “Is that a question?” Ivy smiled, might have smiled, my vision was too fuzzy to be sure about it. My head stabbed, and something important scrabbled at the edge of my thoughts.

“No,” Ivy replied serenely. I felt the floor vibrate before anything happened. The slightest of bits that, had someone not been lying on the floor, wouldn’t have been noticed by anyone. Before anything more could be said, there was a series of rustling pops, and another almighty spray of dirt. Root’s coming up from the floor and falling off of the walls. The entire structure shook, and the jostling was agony. Dust got into my eyes and I started coughing. My lungs burnt, every inhale dragging in more and more dirt particles and starting the cycle over again. It was with a strange sort of detachment, with which I realised that I was twitching. My whole body was seizing, actually, as I jerked around on the floor uncontrollably. “You really shouldn’t have been so stupid, Isaac,” Ivy whispered so sharply that I was actually capable of hearing and understanding her words. 

Isaac was screaming. Their voice is ear-piercing, frantic and completely without help. Even I was doing better than Isaac. It was pretty much all a range of crunching, wet tearing, gurgling and popping sounds thrown in with the screaming. Until there was an almighty splat. A wave of warmth burst through-out the room, a room which now reeked. It reeked like a cross between a broken public toilet at the royal show that people still insisted on using, rust, and a butcher's shop. Warmth liquid ran down my skin in rivulets, slimy bits of god knows what sliding off me. The dirt floor developed sticky muddy puddles, and Isaac had shut up. There was a soft tap-tap as Ivy’s shadow came to hover over next to me. I speak before she can, very aware that I only had so long until I passed out. 

“Babe,” I muttered in a strangled voice, “The f**k?” I’d smacked fast first into the mud and slipped unconscious before the last word was finished.

When I woke up I was warm, and clean, and physically? Perfectly fine. Swaddled in familiar bronze sheets, and not even naked. I would have thought Ivy would have left me naked, it seemed like a very her thing to do. Right around the time I was ruminating about this, I recalled the last thing that had happened that I could remember. Fear, pain, fear, pain, pain, pain, Ivy, and… splat. Oh. One minute I was lying on my back, feeling like I was kicking it on a cloud, and the next I was frantically leaning over the bed and puking. There’s nothing in there, no food to speak of anyway, so it’s only bile that I hack up. Bitter and disgusting, it coats everything. Rushing out of my mouth in sickly yellow puddles, and flooding out of my nose in an acidic upheaval. Tears spilled down my cheeks, and I struggled to breathe. She had… Ivy had.

“Little one,” speak of the devil, she called in alarm. Her arms wrapped solidly around my waist, with one arm and the other holding my hair back. Nuzzling the side of my face and whispering reassurances into my ear, she held me. “What’s wrong? What hurts?” she asked me, not willing to wait for it to stop.

“You,” I gasped, “You hurt my head.” She left out a frankly offended noise at that. 

“See if I ever come rescue you again,” she scoffed, but she didn’t let go of me. Didn’t stop rubbing small circles on my side with her thumb. “Was it bad?” she asked finally, sadly, like this was a dealbreaker of some kind. About to deprive her of something she wanted. By this point, there is nothing-nothing in my stomach, and I was only giving out the odd dry heave. Ivy waved her hand carelessly, and the puddle disappears. Smell vanishing along with it.

“Yes, and then you exploded them all over me,” I said roughly and trying to regain some semblance of control over my own body, “And it got worse.” She hissed, and rocked us backwards,, so I went from leaning awkwardly forwards to being tilted, so my back rested against her chest. 

“I have a perfectly valid explanation for that,” she tells me heatedly, “It wasn’t supposed to get you.” It wasn’t supposed to? Are you kidding me?

“You. Exploded. Them,” I raged at her, “What did you think was going to happen?” She drew a breath like she was preparing to throw out a fully formed report of exactly what she’d thought would happen. “No,” I cut her off, “Don’t answer that. Why am I fine? I thought I was dying, felt like I was dying… Now I’m fine.” 

“You’re lucky it’s spring. Underground and almost dead or not, it’s easy to work with the seasons. I carried you into the sun, and you returned. Stronger or weaker than before is on your own merits, but here anew anyway,” she explained to me and pressing a kiss to my temple, “Later we’re going to talk about you getting yourself into situations when someone is trying to take you away from me, but for now, it’s time to go to sleep.” Well, wasn’t that just a big steamy pile of bullshit.

“No, we’re not going to talk about it,” I refuted blandly, “We’re going to fight, but you’re right. I’m still tired, and we should sleep.” A peek outside through the barest of gaps said it was night out there, an inky blackness that I wasn’t willing to attempt to cross to get home. Not in the dark, not after all that. Ivy didn’t respond, just manhandled us back under the covers to make herself comfortable. Maybe it was being sick, or maybe it was leftovers from magic healing, but I was exhausted.