strangetrip | [Locked to Kash] Healing

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[Locked to Kash] Healing

It didn't matter how much he stretched the muscle or how much he ignored the pain, Alex's wound was slower to heal than he'd like. That was normal for him. What he missed was Ginny making fun of his lack of patience. God, he missed her so much, but he also heard her voice to stop punishing himself and move forward. He rubbed his hand over his face as he left the gym. His leg more tired since his workout with Buffy.

For a brief moment he thought about heading to the spa for a massage but declined. He was more of a suck it up, buttercup kind of guy which was why he was ignoring his limp as he headed toward the pool. He was debating between a swim or a beer at the pool bar, maybe both. Unfortunately for Alex, before he reached the pool area, he did a misstep on the sidewalk and his leg gave out. Instead of going down with an embarrassed thud, he spotted a small bench close enough to collapse onto. "Son of a bitch." He muttered as his ass hit the wooden planks. He really hated not being at full speed.

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In Whitestone, Kash had developed a habit, almost a routine, of picking out at least one of the laborers or common folk each day to heal without cost. It wasn't kindness on his part, so much as an act of devotion to Life itself and a way of sticking a finger in Vesh's eye without actually provoking her.

Around the Inn, with no monsters to hunt, no dragon conspiracy, nothing to rebuild, there wasn't much call for healing. He didn't miss it, of course. Random kindness wasn't really in his bag of tricks, but routine and boredom were the mother of invention. So when he happened to be in the same place as a guy with an angry scar on a leg that wasn't healing right, Kashinvented like a mother.

He walked quickly over to the guy and said, "Helluva mess you made of that leg. I'm a healer. Mind if I take a look?"

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell him no, that all was good, except Ginny's voice again poked at him to let him look.

"Sure, take a look." Alex leaned his head back and stared at the sky. "Stitches weren't very professional but hey it worked in a jungle." At least he hadn't had to stitch himself up, which he'd done before. Who knew Jane had known field medicine? He had a feeling she hadn't known that she could do it either, but he kept that to himself.

"Stitches aren't bad," came Kash's head down response. He probed lightly with his fingertips to see how it was healing and found the gap in the muscle he'd been expecting. When he looked up, he was sober-faced. "It's not going to heal without intervention. The muscle's compromised."

People tended to assume that because clerics healed with magic, they didn't know crap about healing. Kash had been training to be a healer since the day he was born. He knew a lot of crap.

"I can heal it."

Alex knew his body well and how it adjusted to strain and hurt. He'd known that it wasn't healing properly but he also knew there wasn't much point in dwelling on it as there wasn't any doctor or supplies in the hotel beyond the basics.

He turned his gaze on the other man, then thought what the hell. It wasn't like he could make it worse.

"Not much at the hotel to heal it with."

Kash's gaze narrowed and his mismatched blue and gold eyes turned considering after a moment. "You're from one of those non-magical worlds," he decided. If he'd been from a world with magic, even if it wasn't like his power and required extensive spell-crafting, it would've been a question about what he needed, not a statement.

"It's going to take a little work, but I can cleanse the infection, regenerate the muscle, and reduce the scarring." Wounds this bad rarely healed without a scar if not healed immediately. Battle-healing repaired you so you could fight and was fast, but where possible, Kash preferred process healing to give the brain time to deal with the trauma and body time to adjust to the absence of pain.

Alex was just beginning to understand there was real magic in the world. He still didn't trust it and he wasn't sure if he wanted it working on his wounds. But then he thought of other cultures and their use of religion which wasn't too far from magic to heal and he thought what the hell. It wasn't like it could get that much worse and if he could get some of the strength and flexibility that Buffy had then it wouldn't be too bad.

"You can regenerate muscle with magic?" He didn't ask about the infection, because clearing that was normal in his world. What wasn't, was the muscle beyond physical therapy and time. "It's not that I doubt you, I'm just surprised that it can be done."

Since he didn't actually need to be at eye-level with the man's knee to heal him and it didn't look like he'd be casting immediately, Kash moved to join him on the bench. He'd heal better if he was less psychically resistant anyway.

"There's not much you can't do with magic." Once seated, he shifted to look the man in the eyes. "Who and how are the real questions. I'm Kash." Since he hadn't bothered to introduce himself yet.

"Alex." He offered with an uptilt of his chin. Alex liked how the other man looked him in the eyes. It didn't mean he wasn't lying, Alex had certainly lied and looked like he wasn't. However, he had a really good bullshit detector and it wasn't going off.

"Magic wasn't anything I thought about before I came here. Hell it was just a stage show for the tourists where I'm from. It wasn't until this place that I found out it can be real." He still was more of a see it with my eyes kind of guy but at least his mind was expanding, albeit slowly.

Can be. Not is. Alex needed to buy-in before this could work. "Most of my spells aren't the stage show kind," Kash said, trying to get him focused back on this moment. His leg.

"Pick something within my range of touch. Something in one of your pockets or something of yours is probably best. You'll get it back safe and sound."

There was a slight twist to Alex's lips as he envisioned a children's birthday magician pulling a quarter from an ear. He moved the rucksack that he had with him to the side of the bench and pulled out a triple strand leather band with a couple of beads that he'd gotten in Songrun. "This work?"

He wasn't sure what it was that Kash was going with it.

"As long as you're satisfied I couldn't have tampered with it before now," Kash replied as he took the leather band from Alex.

Assuming the answer to be yes, he murmured the incantation for Light, and within a few heartbeats the leather band glowed with a bright light strong enough to illuminate a pitch-dark room. He handed it back to the other man.

"It's a simple spell called a cantrip." It had been his first. As a boy instinctively afraid of the dark. "If I don't dismiss it, it will last for 8 hours."

"Damn that would have been useful back home." Alex meant during his mercenary days and hell even what he was doing with the House. He slipped the leather band back on his wrist, leaving it glow.

He peered at it, not sure how it worked or even if he could figure it out. Like Buffy's strength and speed. It just was.

"I can see how magic can be an asset."

"Asset makes it sound like something you can just 'pick up'," Kash demurred, not wanting him to get the wrong idea. "There are magic artifacts that people without magic can use, but most magic has to be learned. And the price for learning can be steep."

Every other human in existence who knew the goddess's existence, forced marriage and rape, one hundred cuts, sweat, blood and a goddess's memories steep, in his case.

"I've trained to be a healer since I could hold myself upright." He didn't sound offended, at all. Just firm and a little gruff in the way he always did.

"In my world, asset is a finely honed skill." Or a person that could be used like a finely honed weapon.

"The only other person I know that can do extraordinary things was born with her ability." It hadn't kicked in until later in her life, but it seemed like it was a part of Buffy, at least how she explained it.

"I've trained to be a soldier most of my life." Alex knew that most of his body language screamed warrior even when he was relaxing. "but it wasn't something innate in me. Mine was definitely a learned skill. "Does the ability run in your family?"

"No," Kash replied flatly, grief and bitterness leeching anything like emotion from his tone.

"I was born to be the balance to a goddess so evil the universe couldn't tolerate her existence without me. She's also my wife." He rolled up his sleeve to show the one-inch scars all the way up his arm. "The first fifty of these were her wedding gift to me, when I was fifteen. The second fifty, I cut myself to complete the ritual. When I found out what she was, I tried to kill her and she wiped out my entire village."

It could have been, but wasn't, self-pitying. "Most clerics are only married to their gods in a more figurative sense. I'm just lucky."

Alex was speechless and that was something that rarely happened. His life had been a cluster for a long time but it was nothing compared to what this man had gone through.

But despite (or probably because of) his cluster of a life, Alex was very good at one thing... well more than one, but he excelled at killing. He didn't say I'm sorry because it wouldn't change the fact, nor would it have helped in anyway. He knew that intimately.

"I'm impressed you didn't shut down." Alex meant it. He would have gone dark. Hell, he had the temptation now and then since Jenny's disappearance but her Jiminy Cricket voice keeps him going.

"I would have closed myself off and shut down emotionally." Not that he was open emotionally now, but much better than he was. "You still heal."

"Don't be." Impressed, that was. "It's pure cussed stubbornness. She took everything I had from me. And I'd be damned if I'd let her have my soul, too."

Kash shrugged, awkward with what felt like undue praise. "I did shut down, for a long time. I was just lucky enough to meet a woman more stubborn--" And more dangerous. "--than I am to remind me that healing people's bodies when I don't care who they are was giving the goddess exactly what she wanted. A weak me, living dead, who didn't balance her at all."

Alex wasn't one to share, especially to a stranger, but he felt that the other man should know he understood, albeit in a different way.

"Before I arrived here, I was part of an organization of the wealthiest of the world. I was their puppet and toy, literally I was called the Player and they played with people's lives. I turned them down at first but they took my wife. The only way I could find clues was to tap into the resources they had. Don't get me wrong. I'm very good at what I do. I don't always just stop the opponents, sometimes I kill them and I don't regret it one bit. It takes me closer to Jen and the people that screwed with our lives. I shut down and put on blinders after her disappearance. There was a goal and come hell or high water, I'm going to reach it. Jen saved me from the darkness that threatened to turn off my humanity when I was just a hired killer for the highest paid countries."

That hadn't been all Alex had been. If it was, even Jen couldn't have saved him. There was and still is a spark that exists deep within. Sometimes it's deeper and harder to find.

Kash considered what Alex was telling him. At home, there was every chance he would've been the sort of person that Vox Machina hunted down only to learn they'd misunderstood everything. Again.

From Kash's perspective, it was largely nonsensical, treating people like a game, but he understood why Alex would do it. If they'd taken Zahra, Kash would do anything to get her back. Whatever he had to.

He nodded, although their circumstances couldn't have been more different. "I get that," he said with a sobriety that made it a weighty enough pronouncement to meet the others words. Kash rarely spoke at length, and he'd already talked more than he wanted to, today.

So he let time pass into quiet understanding and after a time asked, "Did you want me to get started on the knee then?"

Alex appreciated the silence, each in their own thoughts as well as the understanding that passed between the two men. At the question, he turned to look at him with a small lopsided smile, "yeah, I would."

He realized that the doubts were still there but more subtle in the back of his mind than before. He'd opened his mind enough to give it truly give it a try and expect results.

"First I need to cleanse the infection." It could get infected again, but this would cleanse it for the time being. "It's a restoration spell. You'll feel like you just had a bath in a cold mountain spring and a pool of sunlight all at once. There shouldn't be any pain, and as the feeling fades, you should notice that the knee is less inflamed and less sore to the touch."

There wasn't any pomp or show about how Kash performed his spells. He grasped the symbol, spoke the magical incantation and the warm sunlight gold of Life pure and symbol rose around the symbol, somehow warring with a fizzing tension against a black light that was Vesh's. The gold burst through after a brief second and swept through Alex cool and sunlight warm at once.

Without even realizing it, Alex's muscles tightened, even though he knew there wasn't reason for it. As soon as he felt the first sensation, his muscles relaxed. That's when he knew that they had been tight. It was reminiscent of the first time he'd gone on a solo mission. The dichotomy of sensations were melded to make an even stronger version of himself.

He reached down to poke and prod at his knee but Alex knew that he really didn't need to. It had begun to feel better as soon as the other sensation faded. "It does feel easier to move. There isn't the pang and twinge that was there before." That was an understatement. Alex always underplayed the strength of the his pains. What was a twinge for him would be a level five pain to anyone else.

"Don't take that as an excuse to push it. If you want it repaired, you need to give it time to stabilize." Kash checked the mobility by bending it and gently rotating the leg at the knee. He didn't have the missing tissues to apply back to the body for a regenerate spell and "curing" the wound would seal it, leaving nothing left to fix.

Instead, he directed a Healing Word at the site of the injury. It would facilitate the process without impeding future interventions.

"If it starts feeling hot or swollen again, find me. Otherwise, take it easy for a few days and I'll start the longer-term process next week."

It sounded so much like something Ginny would say that a smile tugged at his lips despite himself. "I'd promise, but I try not to make promises I probably won't keep. I can promise that I won't overexert and that sounds good about continuing it next week."

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[Locked to Kash] Healing

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