Grit your teeth, keep your eyes open

You shake your head, you focus on things around you, trying not to focus on the tremendous pain, you look at Whiterun, he's just standing there with that blank expression horses tend to have. You look at the dead Dunmer, blood quickly soaking into the dirt around his head, you look down at your clothes, the blood from your shoulder has run down your shirt, stopping just above your travel pants. You feel Nacius stop wrapping and you look at him.

"We... we can't take the arrow out, the bleeding will get worse." He tells you.

You look at your shoulder, the arrow managed to pierce through it, the tip of the arrow is protruding downwards, then you look towards Nacius, he looks pale, he stopped clutching his wound so that he could bandage you up.

"N-Nacius." You utter.

He looks to you, bags under his eyes.

"Your wound... cover your wound." You tell him.

"But I need to-" He says before you cut him off.

"Sanna will be fine... fix yourself up before you pass out." You tell him.

He nods and slowly stands up, grunting in pain as he does. You watch him as he slowly removes his armor, he lets his helmet fall to the ground and he slides his gauntlets off, he slowly unfastens his pauldrons, letting them fall to the ground as well.

You crack a small smile, despite the current situation.

"Do you need privacy Nacius? Sanna... sanna won't look." You say with a weak laugh.

He looks to you for a moment and a small grin forms on his face.

"Now you're starting to get it..." He says with a similarly weak chuckle.

You had no clue what overcame you there, you suspect that his attitude has started to rub off on you. You look at the arrow in your shoulder, out of curiosity you reach up and touch the tip of the arrow, upon doing so, you feel a searing pain, and gasp.

"Don't bother it, we don't want the bleeding to worsen." Nacius says as sternly as he can.

You look back up at Nacius who just slid the chestplate and backplate off of his torso, you look at his wound, the shirt he wore under his armor had turned almost completely black, at least around the wound.

You attempt to sit up straight, the pain in your shoulder was still very present, but your attempts to ignore it are seemingly paying off.

Nacius begins bandaging his stomach, every time he goes over the wound he winces in pain, you begin to feel another grin creep onto your face.

"This is a nice view, if Sanna wasn't in immense pain, and you weren't bleeding to ****, she would be enjoying herself right now." You say, your voice hoarse.

Nacius freezes for a moment and looks at you, you swear you can barely make out a slight tinge of pink in his pale cheeks.

"You Imperials turn red as a tomato, even as you are loosing blood, Sanna does not understand you people."

He looks away from you and goes back to bandaging himself, slightly faster, you notice.

"Consider this as payback for your earlier jokes." You say with a laugh.

Nacius shakes his head and finishes up, you weren't going to lie to yourself, the tight bandages left you with a good view of his figure, for a moment you feel strange for thinking of this as you have an arrow sticking out of your shoulder, but at least you aren't focusing on the excruciating pain emanating from your shoulder.

Nacius turns and begins digging through his saddlebag once again, he retrieves two small vials of a bright red liquid, he opens one and swallows the liquid inside before walking over to you and giving you the other.

"These are all they give me, they won't completely heal you, but it should get you back on your feet and restore some of your blood." He says.

You look at the liquid in the vial before opening it, you swallow it, ignoring the sour taste, almost immediately you feel slightly better, the pain was still there, but you felt like you could at least stand up, which you do.

"There she is." Nacius says with a grin.

You look at him and notice that color has come back to his face, his cheeks were now obviously blushing.

"I need to finish your bandages now miss, we have to get this on as tight as we can." He says before moving to your side and grabbing the loose end of the bandage.

He begins wrapping it again, he does it in a way that goes around the arrow as well, keeping it stuck in place as well as putting pressure on the wound itself, you grit your teeth again, hissing every time he goes over the wound.

"Ah, so you do hiss, cute." He says grinning.

You whip your head and meet his eyes, it's official, that was the declaration of war.

"So, this is a battle of compliments, yes? You say.

"You're the one who turned it into that miss." He says, finishing up with the bandaging.

"Just say Sanna, Nacius, saying miss makes this one feel old." You say with a smile.

He chuckles and the two of you walk over to Whiterun, you see his grin quickly turn sour as he looks at the horse.

"Oh gods." He says.

"What, is Whiterun hurt?" You ask.

"Getting back up on him is going to hurt, a lot." He replies.

You look at the saddle, you had one useable arm, you could attempt to get on there and try to pull Nacius up, but you feel either way, the both of you are going to be in a lot of pain."

"It's not like we have a lot of choice here, how close are we to Skingrad?" You ask

Nacius looks out at the road, following it in both directions.

"Well we're about halfway from fort Vlastarus and Skingrad in either direction, if we go on foot, it will be well into the night before we arrive at either location, on horseback, we still have a chance to make it before sunset."

You look out at the sky, you'd have to guess it was the mid-afternoon right now, it would begin getting dark in just a few hours from how it looked.

Nacius looks at your wound, then down at his.

"I don't think we could survive a night in our current states, we've got to get onto Whiterun." He says.

"Let Sanna go first, she can use one of her arms still and she doesn't have a wound on her side." You say nodding at him.

Nacius sighs, then looks up to you.

"A-alright."

You turn towards Whiterun and grab onto the saddle with your left hand and planting your foot on the stirrup, then you begin pulling yourself up...