Of Wonders and Wounds

’Her lips are very soft,’ John mused, his brain halfway between total focus and falling to pieces, ’and very warm.’

Dozens of thoughts threatened to impede the bliss in his mind. His leg was starting to fall asleep. They’d stretched themselves pretty awkwardly on the couch to kiss from the tangled cuddly position they were in. Honestly, it was starting to get a little too hot under the covers, too. None of that really mattered - it hardly registered at all.

He couldn’t process much beyond the wonderful feeling of her lips on his.

His body was flush with happy chemicals, his stomach churning with so many emotions. Seconds stretched to eternity. John could have stayed in that moment forever and died a happy man.

Unfortunately, heaven was fleeting, and the pair separated, though their faces stayed a mere few inches apart as they continued to bask in that connection.

“See,” Ela whispered, “I told you it would be fine.”

He cracked a goofy grin. “That was waaaay better than fine.”

The Bookworm Knight giggled softly, brushing some of her golden locks out of her face. She leaned back against the couch, resting at John’s side again, rather than in his face. Squeezing his hand gently, she looked up at the ceiling, and the only sounds were the end credits beginning to roll.

After a few seconds, she turned her head ever so slightly back towards him. “Was that… really your first kiss?”

“Um, well, yeah,” John said, blushing a deep crimson red. “Believe it or not, I’m not exactly a very social person…”

“...Neither am I,” she said, softly, “but it is nice to find someone to connect with, every now and then.”

He chuckled at that. “Honestly, if you’d said something like that to me a week ago, I’m not sure I’d have agreed. It’s, uh, been a long time since I’ve had a positive connection like this. You’re right though.”

The Gamer squeezed her hand reassuringly, doing his best to echo his emotions with action. She smiled as she turned back to look at him, and he knew she understood.

“You know,” she mused, bringing her free hand up to put a finger on her chin. “Do you think that you received an achievement for that?”

John blinked twice, considering that, then willed his UI into focus. He hadn’t considered the possibility that he’d get some mechanical reward for this, though it did make some sense. Looking up to the corner of his vision, he noted that the little red number on his notifications had grown from a two to a three. The Gamer wasn’t entirely sure when that had happened, since he hadn’t been paying attention, but it seemed likely related to the kiss.

“Seems like I probably did,” he said, letting his menus fade away once more. “I’ve been ignoring all my popups since, uh, since we were by the river. I didn’t want to interrupt anything.”

Ela smiled. “I appreciate that.”

They sat in silence for a moment then, simply enjoying each other’s embrace as the movie’s ending theme sounded its final chords. John exhaled, closing his eyes to rest as he relaxed his head back against the couch. Next to him, Ela reached over to seize the last of the remaining doughnuts, gazing hungrily at the chocolate frosting.

John grinned, holding in a chuckle as the blonde enthusiastically sank her teeth into the pastry. “Haha. Are you remembering to breathe between bites?”

Ela flushed slightly, her mouth full of sugar. She took a second to finish the bite she’d taken, wiping a bit of icing from her lips. Pouting, she stuck her tongue out at him. “Oxygen is less important than doughnuts.”

“You can have both,” he jested, wrapping his arm back around her. “I’m not gonna steal it from you.”

“Hmph,” she scoffed, though she was still smiling as she curled up closer to finish her treat.

John chuckled only briefly before allowing the blonde to finish the pastry in peace. In the back of his head, he knew that the end of their time together was fast approaching - at least for now. The movie had eaten up most of the spare hours they’d had, and they both needed time to actually take showers and get ready to return to the Order. He didn’t think it would be appropriate for the two of them to show up in their current state.

’That might give them the wrong impression of what we’ve been up to…’ he thought, the perverse parts of his mind beginning to creep into the pleasantness of the morning. “So, how much longer do you think we’ve got before you need to get going to get ready?”

The Bookworm Knight paused for a moment, having just finished the doughnut. She held a single finger up, asking for a second’s wait while she pulled her phone out and checked the time. With a frown, the blonde scrolled through a few things on her screen before locking it again.

“I probably need to go in around fifteen or twenty minutes or so. I need to prepare a few things before we return to the Order,” Ela finally answered. “I did not realize how quickly time had slipped away from us.”

“Yeah, well, time and fun and all that,” John said, shrugging as best he could with one arm still entangled with his companion. “What do you need to get together for the Order - anything I can help with?”

“No, not really,” she said, a wistful tone tinting the sing-song of her voice. “I just need to find some of my medical records to hand over to their healers. I wish to request that they re-evaluate my old wounds. I think that the situation yesterday may have affected them.”

The Gamer frowned. “Are you still hurt? I thought you said it was just some scarring?”

“I may still have hidden injuries or it may be just the opposite,” Ela said, holding her free hand up in front of her, the glowing green of her mana beginning to flicker along her pale fingers. “It is somewhat complicated.”

She sighed, clenching her hand into a fist. “Though they have left scars and pain behind, almost all of my injuries from the attack have vanished. The issue has to do with my arm… I have told you about the attack on Scapa Flow, about how my shield arm was shattered by a monster during the battle, yes?”

John nodded, rolling slightly on his side so that he could be closer to Ela as she spoke. He laced his fingers into hers, offering what support he could as she recalled her most harrowing fight as a member of the Order. The blonde knight smiled at him, squeezing his hand as she continued.

“I have… never fully recovered from those injuries. My left arm suffered permanent nerve damage.”

“Was that not something the Order’s mages could fix?” The Gamer asked, torn between sadness and anger. “Surely there is some healing magic that could undo the damage?”

Ela exhaled softly. “It is not that simple. The most fundamental building block of healing magic is the acceleration of the body’s natural healing. My wounds that day were so severe that my arm could not be repaired that way - to fix it without any permanent damage, I would have needed one created entirely again, whole cloth.

“Some exceptionally powerful Abyssals could do such a thing for themselves, but to be able to do it for another… There are maybe a dozen mages in the world capable of such a feat.” She shook her head. “Regardless, to stay alive, I had been sloppily healing myself for hours at that point, further complicating the situation.”

’Only a few in the world…’ John thought to himself, remembering all that [Gamer’s Body] had already done for him. If that was really the case, then he might have lost most of his hand in the first dungeon he’d ever been in. With how dangerous magic seemed to be, that was an exceptionally brutal reality to come to terms with.

“Does that mean, er, do you think that the fighting yesterday made things worse?” he asked, tilting his head with curiosity.

“At first, that was my assumption,” Ela answered, resting her hand on her blanket-covered stomach. “My arm has been quite irritable and sore since we made it to Brighton Manor yesterday, but, as we did our exercise earlier, I had another thought.

“Though my arm hurts, it feels stronger as I use it. There were no sharp pains at all while I was swinging it on our run, nothing while pulling you around, nothing at all. Perhaps things are not worse, but better.”

“What changed?” The Gamer wondered aloud. “How could getting hurt lessen your old injuries.”

“I think that it may be because of how my wounds were healed yesterday. It was not the Order’s doctors that treated me.”

It only took John a moment to realize what she meant. He thought back to the previous day, as the Firebard and his phoenix had finally fallen. “My powers… you and Moira both leveled up.”

“Exactly…” She smiled, flexing her arm once more. “I- I think that your powers may not have simply undone the wounds of the day - they may have begun to completely repair my old scars. My arm may hurt more because I can feel more of it again than I have in years.”

“That… I mean-” The Gamer stammered, unsure how to parse that. “Is that possible?”

“As I said, it would normally take exceptional skill with healing magic to accomplish such a feat,” she replied, “but your powers come from Lady Gaia herself. Nothing is truly out of the question.

“The Warden was shot twice yesterday - wounded so badly that she could not even stand - yet, by the end of the battle, she was in perfect health again. She told me that she felt even stronger than she had been before we’d been ambushed.” The Bookworm Knight turned, locking eyes with him. “Though it is locked behind your leveling ability, you may truly have the regenerative potential of the strongest healers in the Abyss already.”

“Leveling is a pretty specific condition…” he muttered, taken aback by her statement. “Still…”

“It is just a theory, until I can confirm my condition with the Order’s experts,“ she said, shrugging. “It seems to me the only explanation, though.”

John wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he simply nodded along, lost in a swirl of thoughts and emotions. Yet another thing to add to the list of abilities he’d been given and others hadn’t. He still wondered why, yet, thinking back to his brief conversation with Moira the previous day, he reconsidered that perspective.

’Maybe the question shouldn’t be “why did I get these powers?” I already have them. Maybe I just need to do the best I can with them.’ He sighed, still filled with uncertainty.

The anxious nerd was brought back to reality by a hand on his chest. Ela had rested her free hand over his heart to get his attention as she spoke. “I do need to leave soon, which means that you have to let go.”

“Oooooooooor,” he said dramatically, cuddling the blonde even more tightly. “Maybe I don’t ever let go and we can stay like this forever.”

“I wish we could,” she sang, walking her hand around on two fingers, “but we both know that we have things that we need to do today. Maybe after our meeting with the Warden and Lord-Protector.”

John exaggerated his disappointment as much as he could, but relented. “Alright, fine.”

Ela leaned up and kissed his cheek, melting away any genuine disappointment that remained. “Thank you.”

With that, they finally stopped to untangle themselves. John pulled the blanket off to the side, folding it up and laying it over the back of the seat. Meanwhile, Ela closed back up the now empty box of doughnuts, making sure that the pair hadn’t made any kind of mess on the Newman family couch.

The Gamer shut down the television, taking the box from his companion so that he could go throw it away, along with the rest of the breakfast trash. The Bookworm Knight followed behind, bringing their milk glasses to the sink and rinsing them out.

“Thanks,” John said, taking the glasses from her and putting them in the dishwasher. He sighed, following Ela back out into the living room. “I suppose you do really need to get going, huh?”

“Unfortunately, I do. I have not looked through my own records in some time, so I need a chance to make sure I can find all of them.”

“One more before you go?” he asked, hopefully.

She giggled, knowing exactly what he meant. “Okay.”

They leaned in together, sharing one more magical kiss as their lips met for just a moment. Their faces stayed just a few inches apart again, the warmth of each other's breath on their faces. John grabbed her hands again, holding them gently for just a moment before finally letting go.

“Alright, I suppose you’re free to go.” He chuckled for a second, his voice trailing off. “Thank you for everything this morning. It was wonderful.”

“Of course,” Ela sang, offering him the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen. “I had a great time as well.”

John stood up straight, biting his lip as he carefully measured his next words. “So, um, does this mean, uh, are we… together?”

“I think that it does,” she said, locking her green eyes with his. “That is what I would like.”

“Absolutely.” John laughed - a deep exclamation of joy from within his soul - and stepped forward again, pulling Ela into the biggest bear hug he could muster. She giggled against his chest, returning the hug. For another precious few seconds, they held each other tight, but time refused to stop moving.

“Alright,” The Gamer relented, forcing himself to step away again. “I keep finding ways to stall. If you need to go, I really should let you go. Here, I’ll at least walk you out.”

“Hehe. Thank you.” Ela smiled, and, together, the newly-minted couple moved towards the front door. “You know, John, another thing that I have been thinking of.”

“Hmm..?”

“You have no doubt heard me discuss with the Warden potentially returning to service with the Order, correct?”

“Oh, um, yeah, I think so,” he said. “Er, at least I’m pretty sure Lord Brighton mentioned something like that yesterday when we were talking to him. Are you considering taking him up on the offer?”

“…The Order of the Golden Rose has been with me all my life. They have been good to me - and it seems as though escaping the dangers of the Abyss is nearly impossible anyway.” She hummed softly as they reached the door, resting a hand on the handle. “Sooner or later, I believe that I will take up their banner again.”

She turned to him, an apprehensive, but determined look on her face. “That is not all that I was thinking about, though. Whether or not I do, you should consider joining them properly as well.”

“Wha- me?” John exclaimed, confused.

“I have seen what your abilities are capable of, John, and we both know where they come from. You are likely one of the highest potential new Abyssals in centuries. The world is a far more dangerous place for you than I. The Order’s resources, their training - they may keep you alive.” The Bookworm Knight sighed. “Also… while I am not so naive as to believe the Order to be perfect, I do believe that they are doing their best to make the Abyss a safer place. That is a worthy cause.”

The Gamer paused to scratch the back of his neck. “I mean… John Newman, Knight of the Order… It sounds kinda cool, but I dunno if I’m exactly knight material, or if I want to sign a commitment like that.”

“There is more to being a knight than swinging a weapon and holding a shield,” she said, her smile slowly returning. “Still, you would not need to be a knight if you did not want to. The Order has many non-combatants as well. I knew children from the orphanage who became scribes, and went on to be archivists or researchers.

“I-” she paused, exhaling heavily. “I do not mean to sound pushy. Perhaps I am being too paranoid about the danger after what we got caught up in yesterday. Just think about it, alright?”

John put a hand on her shoulder, offering what reassurance he could. “Of course. Who knows, maybe rose red is my color?”

They shared one final, happy smile at that, and then went their separate ways, for now. Ela made her way out the door, shaking her head at the heat that had crept up with the rising sun. John waved to her one last time as she hit the foot of his driveway, and then closed the door, alone once more.

“Maybe…” he muttered. “Maybe.”

a/n: Hello wonderful readers. I hope you have enjoyed this fluffy stretch of date chapters! Just as a heads up, there will not be a chapter next week due to some irl work commitments on my part. Should only be the single week off though. Hopefully this sweetness has been enough to tide you over in the meantime!

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