Dark Knight's Heir - Chapter Ten
Dec. 3rd, 2009 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mangacat201Dark Knight's Heir
Author: Mangacat
Pairing: Jared/Jensen, others
Rating: R - NC-17
Parts: 10/20+
Word Count: 2143/60k+
Disclaimer: I totally wanna own them... cough sadly that's not possible, nor is getting paid for this. I'll have fun and they're not going to get hurt … much. Promise.
Warnings: Erm, m/m sex, violence, language, gore (i.e. epic battle of the good against the bad), het sex (OMG), character death (minor).
Masterpost
Castlist
Chapter six
“For Sulis' sake, don't you dare touch him again before I make sure he's completely through with it. What WERE you thinking, pray tell?”
“It wasn't... it was an accident, that...”
“Right, you slipped, and your fist fell into his face!”
“I didn't
“You might just as well have, he's out like a light.”
“It was my fault. Well, if Jensen had told...”
“You, yeah I'm not through with you either! You should know better than to let a fight get out of hand like this. How could you drag the boy into it?”
“I would have stopp...”
“Damn right you would have and given him the fright of his life in the process! Men! All brute force and no brain.”
“Hey!”
Jared became gradually aware of the bickering going on over his head while he tried to catalogue the rest of his consciousness into neat little chunks, sorted by the labels of 'Agony', 'Dizziness', 'Confusion' and 'Panic'. Fortunately, the first and the last came in manageably small amounts. As for confusion, there was an enormous stack of it. He decided the best way to clear it would be to actually wake up, so he opened his eyes and blinked against the bright flare of the torchlight. The vaulted ceiling, and the feel of rough stone under his back told him that he was probably still in the dungeon, but there was another strange voice that didn't match the low pitch he expected. It took only a few seconds until a vaguely familiar face loomed over him to match the high-pitched female voice with a noticeable accent.
“Oh, look at that, sleeping beauty's found the way back to the living. How's that head of yours feeling now?”
“Like I had a good pounding with a baseball bat, maybe?”
“Hilarious, you're a right drama queen, are you? I bet if you really knew how it feels when your head does a few rounds with a bat you'd be whining quite a bit less – alright, lets see.”
The young woman with the honey brown hair slipped her fingers behind his skull to apply a bit of pressure, while her other hand trailed over his chin, leaving a sliver of rich red afterglow in its wake. He blinked owlishly at her for a moment and then started as he noticed that the lingering ache that had settled into his head had instantly disappeared. Jared lifted his hand to rub over his brow, amazed that he had been relieved so thoroughly.
“You're welcome, now if you’ll just stop hooking up the spirit phone with lover boy here some time soon, you're going to be perfectly all right.”
That remark got Jensen, who'd been standing aside for a bit, riled up to the point of yelling.
“I told you it was a fucking ACCIDENT, Lauren, can't you listen? I’ve had it up to here with you lot and all that... you know, if you want to take care of him so bad, by all means, do it... I'm going to... I need...”
Jensen turned on the spot and stomped out of the room, leaving Jared stumped, Lauren smug and Chris resigned: “Now you've gone and done it... again.”
A devious smile played around Lauren's lips.
“Of course, it's too easy. Come on, big guy, up from the floor, might as well come with me, so I can get a proper look at you.”
Jared eyed her warily for a moment. Without Jensen, the one person he knew and trusted around here, he felt strangely bereft, as if the weight of the situation was suddenly wearing double on him. Still, going with Lauren was, all in all, preferable over staying alone with Chris, to whom he shot a cursory glance, before getting up and following the young woman out of the room.
He felt a little bit uneasy, going around here the first time without Jensen anywhere in sight, but he figured the man couldn’t very well be around him 24/7, and he trusted Lauren, since she was apparently adept at curing headaches, and probably more. She led him through some arches, and suddenly he felt his jaw drop in serious wonder. They stopped in the middle of a round room; it had a big gap in the ceiling that had to be operating the same way the window in Jensen’s room was, only… larger, very much so. Because the room’s considerable space was lined top to bottom and floor with a unbelievable variety of plants, flowers, bushes, small trees, herbs. A fragrance hung in the air that almost seemed to be visible, filtering through the sunlight. There were narrow pathways of white washed stone, and several ponds and fountains trickling away, filling the room with the sound of flowing water. He followed Lauren to the far wall where a broad beam of wood was mounted, some of it was bare – certainly a working area – another part was cushioned to give a person room to lie down. The wall was lined from top to bottom with shelves of dry herbs and parts of plants in jars, bags or glasses, each one etched with a meticulous scrawl. As Lauren brushed by, the leaves of a palm tree rustled in an unseen breeze, and the flowers at the base of it unfurled in a sudden bloom under the tips of her fingers. She threw a cursory glance over her shoulder to take in his baffled appearance, and he could feel her smirking.
“Welcome to the Apothecary. Here you can find cure and cause for everything.”
“That… how did you…?”
“I’m a Healer, Jared, we’ve got to be good with plants too. Though I have to admit I’m probably a bit too good with them. It’s not as difficult or mysterious as it looks like, trust me, you’ll see soon enough. Now hop up!”
Jared lifted himself onto the padded side of the bench and sat there with his legs slightly splayed, and his hands clasped in front of him. Lauren’s gaze flicked over him for a few seconds, and she narrowed her eyes a fraction before nodding to herself.
“Now lose the shirt.”
Jared gaped at her incredulously for a moment, but he shut up and started undoing his buttons at the pinched glare that conveyed ‘do-as-the-doctor-says’ quite effectively. He shrugged out of his shirt and laid it down neatly beside himself. He noticed that the spread of ink hadn’t really covered more of his body yet, but the parts that were looked to be considerably more detailed. Since he’d been out for the count this time, he didn’t know if it had happened the same way as it had the first time, but he assumed so. The young woman nudged at his hands to make him spread his arms, and she proceeded to look studiously at the marks etched into his skin. Jared took note that she was careful not to touch him and even gathered her hair up with a string procured from somewhere, (the way all women seemed to be so adept at.) before it could spill over and hit his skin.
“Have you had any problems since the first connection was made – Jensen tells me it was yesterday, before you came here?”
“What do you mean, problems? We had to run out of my apartment like bats out of hell, after it happened, and then there was the fight with the hell bitches and… uhm, we walked down here through all those tunnels, and Jensen told me a bit about what was supposed to be going on here.”
Lauren’s eyebrows crept continuously higher up her forehead at his account of the previous day. He didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one, since with these people you always either seemed to get half a tale or nothing at all. He sighed and wished someone would just sit down already and explain, because he was damn tired of coping with half-baked truths.
“No dizzy spells, black outs, dry heaving or aches?”
“What? No, well, I’ve been having these killer headaches lately, and my wrists began to hurt quite a bit before… but then it hurt like a vice around my arms, and the blood… and when Jensen touched me, there were sparks flying. Something’s wrong with my vision too, I think… it – tilts, for the lack of a better word, and then the colours are all wrong…”
Lauren had narrowed her eyes at first, but now they widened incredulously.
“What do you… you mean, it started before he touched you?”
“Uhm, yeah? I mean, it’s not like really depending on him! Just now, when I intercepted his fist – which is way cool by the way – everything was normal for a second or two, I mean, I was totally stunned since… no fighter, you know? But then something clicked in my head, and it all started up again. I guess it was the same, what with the blood running the designs right, and that was ass creepy I tell you!”
Jared noticed that he was seriously babbling again, but Lauren didn’t seem to mind, she just continued to look at him baffled.
“You mean, you just… uhm… huh..hmmm.”
She turned away with a disbelieving chuckle and muttered something under her breath, before she stalked over to the working area and started to put various items from the shelf together in a bowl.
“What? Is there… is there something…wrong? Am I…”
Lauren threw a look sideways over her shoulder, but didn’t stop working.
“Oh, no, not at all, you’re just… amazing, but that’s a family trademark, all right? Still I wonder… well, never mind now.”
“What, a fa… what would you know about my family?”
“Not the one you grew up with, silly, the one were you came from.”
“I… what is it with all the talking? I’m Jared Padalecki, and my parents are Gerry and Sharon. They live in
Lauren picked up the bowl that held a kind of fragrant, greenish salve now and stopped for a moment in front of him, to gaze at him earnestly.
“Jensen is to take you to the Archive, isn’t he?” At his hesitant nod, she continued, “well, then you’ll see soon enough about the kind of knowledge to which others are privy, that you don’t yet know yourself.”
She nudged his knees apart a bit further, stood between them in apparent disregard of personal space and dipped her fingers into the bowl. Then she went to work, rubbing the salve into his hot and irritated skin, taking care to keep her fingers copiously covered to avoid touching him too directly. A cool tingle spread out in the wake of her ministrations, and Jared found himself swallowing further protests, opting to sink into the comfortable sensation. Her movements were gentle, but efficient, the touch not erotic by any means, but very sensuous. He marvelled at the way these people seemed to get him calmed down, getting him to trust and open up to them with no effort at all. Every one of them seemed to move inside their profession with a kind of grace that felt... strange, foreign somehow. Lauren wielded her skills with the same nonchalant ease that Jensen had displayed in a fight, but it had a different quality. She was calm and determined, while Jensen thrummed with discipline, a kind of tamed power channelling into his moves. Jensen, who was standing in the doorway on the opposite side of the room, looking quite murderous for a second there, before his face shut down into a carefully blank expression. He strode into the room with an air of graceful confidence, fully dressed again, and his coat ruffled some of the plants along the way. Lauren turned around without missing a beat and grinned at him, unimpressed.
“Hi there, Jensen, right on time, we’re just about done.”
She stepped away to set the bowl down on the workbench and fixed Jared with a stern look.
“Now, no touching for an hour or so, and no fooling around either, I mean it. You’re on bookwork for a couple of days, understood?”
Jared saw Jensen’s blush at her offhanded words and felt his own cheeks flaming. He opened his mouth at the same time as Jensen to say something, but she just waved at them dismissively and turned to the nearest shelf. He nodded mutely and shrugged on his shirt, trading quick glances with Jensen, before he followed the other man out.
“Oh, and I expect you to come by for your lessons soon enough, you hear me, cowboy?”
Jared turned startled and caught her mischievous grin.
“Alright, see you then… uhm, yeah.”
Chapter eleven
