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Yuri coughs as the dust from the cave-in settles. He can hear someone yelling, muffled, through the rocks, but his head is spinning and they’ll hear him anyway. He looks up at the ceiling of the Weasand of Cados, taking stock. Something hit his head, probably, but not too hard. He landed on his hip weird. His foot hurts. He tries to pull it towards him-
Oh it hurt hurts.
Shit.
“Yuri! Are you okay?” Karol says, or maybe yells, from beyond the piles of rock that are probably pinning his foot.
Yuri groans loudly.
“Well, he’s alive,” he hears Rita mutter.
“That could be anyone,” Raven says. “Yuri, talk to us, man! Don’t leave us hanging.”
“Oh, please.”
“You never know, it could be a straggling member of Leviathan's Claw.”
“And what do you think the odds are for that?!”
“Low,” Judith says. “But, it would be better to know for sure if he’s conscious.”
Repede whines.
“I’m alright,” Yuri says, loud enough to hopefully be heard over everyone. He sits up, looking at the rocks between him and the rest of the guild. “I’m alright, but my foots stuck under the rubble.”
“Can you move it?” Karol asks.
Yuri tries again. The rocks shifts, a little, but the movement hurts, and he gasps. Grits his teeth.
There’s a pause. Karol asks again, “Yuri?”
“I… I don’t think I have enough leverage to get it off me from the ground.”
Rita hums. “We’re gonna have to dig you out.”
“But if the rocks shift too much, more could fall on him,” Karol says. “And he can’t move out of the way.”
Yuri lets their brainstorming fade to the background, and he really takes stock of the situation. He’s pinned. The rock could be shifted to get him out, probably, but it’s gonna hurt like hell while it’s happening. It would be really hard to do alone. His sword is free, but he’s stuck mostly on his back and isn’t going to be terribly coordinated if he can’t face anything he has to defend himself from. The Weasand of Cados is still barely lit, and he’d have a hard time seeing anything coming.
That said, the monsters have been incredibly chill with the group so far, especially compared to when they came through when the Aer Krene was active. Technically they haven’t reached it yet, and Rita would have a better idea of how it works, but the odds are that, like Keiv Moc, it’s dormant. In the new world, stabilized with the lack of blastia, a lot of monsters in a lot of places are trending towards calm. And it’d be nothing compared to how frenzied they were when the Aer Krene was overflowing.
So he’s easy pickings stuck to the floor, sure, but the odds of a monster coming around that actually cares? Fairly low.
He can wait a bit, if he has to.
He tunes back into the conversation.
“If only we could use an Earth arte,” Raven sighs.
“We can’t, though,” says Rita.
“Yes,” Judith says, “I’m not sure we could move the rocks out of the way without causing further damage."
“You guys should go around,” Yuri says.
Karol stutters, “But, Yuri!”
“I’ll keep.” Yuri smiles, though no one can see it. “Maybe I’ll even manage to free myself and meet you halfway.”
“Didn’t you already say you can’t?” Rita asks.
But ultimately it’s decided: the rest of Brave Vesperia will go around. It’ll take them over an hour just to get back to Ba’ul, but they can only help him get unstuck without risking the rocks pinning more of him from this side. He’s got gels and his sword. He’ll be fine.
The group heads off.
When he can’t hear them anymore, Yuri gives one more tug on his foot. He swears when the same pain shoots down his leg.
He lays down, eyes open to the dim cavern, and waits for his friends to show up.
#
Yuri is diligent for the first few hours, eyes open in the dim light. He mostly sees bats. He’s not moving, and they ignore him, like he’s part of the ground. He hears them more than he sees them.
He wishes he’d been holding the holy bottles, but nothing happens, so maybe it’s good he can’t waste them. He’s tempted to eat an apple gel or two, but until he can see the shape his leg is in, he can’t. If it’s broken, he can’t risk it healing wrong because he was a little impatient.
He thinks the odds are in his favor, considering that the pain seems to be centered around his ankle more than his shin, but he’s not certain, and so it continues to hurt at every little twitch he makes.
Yuri closes his eyes and sighs.
He hears the crunch of a step through grit.
His eyes shoot open.
He spins on the ground, hand going to his sword. It doesn’t sound like a monster, too loud of a crunch to be a paw. It sounds like a boot, and when he hears more, it sounds like footsteps. Only one set, too. His friends wouldn’t be coming through quietly anyway.
Yuri squints through the dark, and in the faint glow of the bioluminescent plants, he can make out a human figure. Dark clothes, maybe Laviathan’s Claw is actually still here, though at head height there’s something lighter…
Not lighter, white.
“Duke?”
And it is Duke, still dressed the in the clothes Yuri last saw him in. He’s got a new sword, and maybe his hair is a little longer, but he looks mostly the same, down to his expression.
Duke looks at Yuri, and then at the rubble, and Yuri realizes he at minimum looks pretty silly, pinned down and covered in cave dirt from laying on the ground for the last few hours. He forces himself to relax, taking his hand off his sword.
Duke finishes his assessment and squints at Yuri in the dark.
“Didn’t I tell you...”
“...Not to come back here?”
Duke nods.
Yuri shrugs. “Rita was going to check on the Aer Krene and make sure they were stable. Since the way the whole world interacted with them has changed.”
Yuri can barely make out Duke frowning.
“She picked out a handful. Something about a good sample size.”
Duke’s frown stays, but then there’s a faint sigh.
He’s accepted the answer, at least.
Yuri rolls and lays back on the ground, grunting. It’s harder to make sense of the area when he’s upside down, but with Duke here the odds are low that anything would actively try to take him out. And Duke would need to defend himself anyway, so Yuri considers himself safer than he was five minutes ago.
Duke probably wouldn’t like being called his knight in shining armor, but he does seem to be making a habit of getting Yuri out of trouble. He even almost looks the part, with his white hair catching the little light the plants give off.
Yuri lays there, and watches Duke, upside down this time. Duke’s eyes scan the rubble again, starting at the top where Yuri definitely can’t see right now, down to base of the pile, and then to his leg.
Yuri thinks he sees the faintest wince from Duke, though he hears nothing. Dukes meets Yuri’s eyes, and Duke is always pretty serious, but there is a tiny arch to his eyebrow.
Whatever question he’s alluding to, Yuri isn’t getting it. Maybe it’s more a silent judgment. The silence sits between them for a minute, and Yuri is pround that he doesn’t squirm under Duke’s scrutiny.
“Are you alright?”
Oh, that’s the question he missed.
“I will be, when the guild gets down here,” Yuri smiles. “When I try to pull it out, it’s awful. But just sitting here is okay. I don’t think I’m really bleeding, either. Just stuck.”
“Hm.”
Duke looks at the rocks specifically at his feet. He crouches down, and tests the rocks there one at a time, seeing which move, which don’t. Yuri lets him work. Reaching most of the rocks Duke is trying would be awkward if not painful for him, and if Duke wants to dig him out then he’s definitely not gonna complain.
A couple rocks near his knee are hefted up and lifted out of the way entirely. Duke reaches to the ones that are directly on Yuri’s leg, and Yuri feels the ghost of his hands faintly through his boot. His foot twinges a bit at the slight added pressure, but Yuri can tell that duke is being as gentle as he can.
When Duke has fully surveyed the pile, he asks, “Can you tell where your leg is caught?”
Yuri considers his previous escape attempts. “My ankle’s stuck where it is.”
“Anything else?”
“No. Everything else has some breathing room.”
Duke double checks a few of the rocks. After another moment, Duke firmly grasps a large, semi flat rock that hadn’t budged when Duke had tried it earlier.
“Are you ready?”
Yuri nods and braces himself. If Duke thinks that rock is the magic one, then he trusts him. Free leg bent and ready to kick backwards, He grabs the top of his boot, securing it so he doesn’t leave it behind.
Duke lifts.
He doesn’t lift it very far; the rock is heavy, and Duke doesn’t have any sort of tool helping him out. But Yuri tries to slide his foot out, and instead of pain he feels the rock just barely shift over his boot. He grits his teeth, and slowly starts to pull his foot out.
It doesn’t hurt as bad as he thought it would; Duke must have given him more space then he realized. Yuri’s ankle slips out of the lock, and as soon as he’s past the choke point he pushes with his other leg and slips clear of the entire pile.
“Thanks,” Yuri says. He rolls so he’s facing down and pushes himself to his knees. He looks up at Duke, who has set the rock back down. The piles shifts and takes the space his foot was occupying. “You really saved me.”
“Your friends are coming, are they not?”
“Well, yeah. But they’re still gonna be a while,” Yuri says, getting his left leg under him. “You really-”
He puts his right foot down.
“Augh!”
Yuri pulls his right foot back off the ground, but it’s on instinct, and he already had been shifting his weight onto it.
He falls.
Duke grabs his arm, holding Yuri up as he catches his balance. He tries to hop his good leg under him, but the jump shocks his bad leg, too, and Duke lets him down slowly when it becomes apparent that Yuri is not getting his legs under him.
For a second, the world is just Yuri, eyes closed, breathing in, out, as his leg trembles with no weight, and Duke’s grip on his arm tightens.
The pain ebbs. Yuri shifts, carefully, so he’s sitting on the floor of the cave.
Duke releases his arm.
“You can’t walk on that.”
Yuri grits his teeth. “No, yeah, walking’s probably a bad idea.” He looks up at Duke. “I can move now, though, so still, thanks.”
Duke blinks slowly, then turns, surveying the cave around them, still just as dark and monster filled as it was before.
“Where?”
“Away from the rocks, at least.”
“And then?”
Duke looks back to Yuri, question in his eyes, and this one Yuri gets. And then where would he go? Brave Vesperia was heading for the Aer Krene. Would he try to get there on his own?
Could he?
“Depends on how much I can actually move.” Yuri staggers back to his feet, foot, bad leg balanced behind him.
He gets what could generously be called half a hop in, and Duke catches him, one arm wrapping under one of Yuri’s shoulders to share his weight. Yuri blushes, and when he takes a second tiny hop, Duke takes a step, too.
They walk-hobble a good distance from the cave-in, and when Yuri’s pretty sure that if he looked behind him, the rubble would be lost in the dark, he starts to shrug out of Duke’s arms.
Duke doesn’t let him.
Yuri looks over, and Duke is looking ahead, on the path towards the Aer Krene.
“Thanks,” Yuri says. He doesn’t try to shrug Duke off.
“Yuri.”
Duke looks at him.
“We can wait,” and Duke tilts his head towards the way out, eyes staying locked with Yuri’s. “Or we can go.”
Yuri swallows. He could wait. He’s free, and even if he had still been trapped, he had been planning on waiting for his friends to come. It had been long enough that Brave Vesperia was definitely working their way in from the other side towards him. They’d come get him, taking a pit stop on the way back so Rita could make sure the Aer Krene wasn’t doing anything weird.
But it would take extra time, which would be time that his leg wouldn’t be working. It would be extra time venerable in a cave that, even with monster whisperer Duke here, isn’t exactly safe. It makes sense that he would work his way towards his friends, at least towards their planned stopping point.
And that’s the reason he says, “If we could get to the Aer Krene, that would be best,” and lets Duke support him as they move forward. That’s the reason, not that Duke might leave if Yuri doesn’t have him as a support, or that feels Duke’s arm around him and doesn’t want it to leave, after hours of being alone in the dark.
They go, one step at a time.
#
Brave Vesperia had made it most of the way to the Aer Krene, which is good because by the time Duke helps Yuri sit down at the edge of the water, Yuri’s foot feels like it’s on fire. He starts to gingerly try to take off his boot.
Duke does not sit down.
“Is that wise?”
Yuri grimaces, breathing through his teeth. He stops trying to remove his foot so he can answer without the pressure distracting him. “If my foot isn’t broken, then I can take an apple gel or two and put my shoe back on. If there’s a break, then if I can set and splint it, then I can also take an apple gel.”
“And if it can’t be splinted?”
“Then I can dunk my foot in this lovely pool of cool water you’ve dropped me next to,” Yuri says. He looks up at Duke. “Unless you have healing artes?”
There’s a bit more light, by the water. More plants to give it off. There’s enough that Yuri can see the way Duke’s eyes narrow, and turn away before his whole body turns, taking a survey of the area around them.
Yeah, he didn’t think so. But he also didn’t expect Duke to feel bad about it.
Call back to the knight in shining armor with his hair shining in the light from the plants, and Yuri correcting himself to say that he’s glowing like a spirit would. Like he belongs in the presence of the more unusual aspects of nature.
Duke’s hand is on his sword, and since Yuri knows that at a minimum they’re cool, that if Duke wasn’t cool with him then he could have left him at the cave in, could leave right now. He knows they’re fine, so Duke’s ready to use the sword in their defense. As Duke looks around, his hair catches the light, turning the white into a glowing palest yellow-green. Like a spirit. Or an arte. When Yuri catches the profile of Duke’s face, his eyes catch the light too, setting his eyes into shadow.
Duke looks otherworldly. He looks dangerous.
He looks fucking hot.
Yuri blushes, turns to his foot again, and yanks his boot off.
“Fuck.”
He breathes deeply, once, twice, and then decides that he can assess the damage later and dunks his leg in the underground stream. The cold water burns in a different way, but after a moment it feels, overall, a little better.
He looks back to Duke, and when their eyes meet, he smiles.
“Like ripping off a band-aid,” he wheezes.
Duke raises one eyebrow.
The silence stretches in the minutes that follow. It’s not awkward. Duke has been a man of few words for the entire time Yuri has known him, and as he manages to relax again he hears the slow dripping of water from other corners of the caves and the distant bats.
When the cold of the cave water starts to outweigh his foot again, he draws it out of the water and pulls it in close so he can check the damage. It looks like his boot had protected him from any cuts from the rocks, but in addition to the swelling, there is a kaleidoscope of bruises nearly up to his knee.
Yuri feels more than sees Duke crouch down next to him, and when he turns to Duke his face is really close. The light shines through his hair, adding a second light to his eyes which are inspecting Yuri’s foot.
“Not too swollen.”
Yuri looks back down, trying not the blush this time. He feels the edge of Duke’s coat catching at his sleeve. Duke is having to hunch around him to see, and Yuri shifts in place, turning so Duke doesn’t need to get so into his personal space.
Duke immediately gets closer, sitting on one bent knee, his other foot still squarely on the ground, and one arm on the gritty cave floor as he reaches with his other hand and presses one of the few bruise-free spots on his calf.
Yuri inhales, not because it hurt, though it did. He just didn’t expect it.
Duke pulls away almost immediately. Yuri breaths out. Duke reaches for a spot on his ankle, and when his fingers make contact Yuri flinches.
“Ow.”
“Apologies,” Duke says. He leans back, drawing his hands back to himself.
Yuri hums.
“What do you think?”
“How long were you there?”
Yuri thinks. “About 2 hours?”
“If there were a break, there would be more swelling by now.”
“Just a sprain and bruises, huh?” Yuri wrestles a gel out of his bag. He holds it up. “Think it’s worth risking?”
And that question didn’t necessarily need an answer, but Duke furrowed his brows together and pursed his lips, and Yuri waited.
“I do have a healing arte.”
Yuri blinked, “Oh?”
“Yes.” Duke says, still frowning. “But I have had little practice with it.”
Yuri hums. “Well,” He says. “Artes do work better than gels for this. If you’re up to try it, by all means.”
Duke stills. There’s hesitation there, and Yuri thinks for a second that maybe Duke doesn’t think it’s worth the risk of a bad job. Or is desiding against it for any other reason. But then bends closer again, and gently moves Yuri’s leg closer to him.
Duke casts, and he is so close, again. It could be considered uncomfortably close, but this is Duke, and if he’s not worrying about it then Yuri isn’t going to either. Duke’s hands light up, and so does his foot, and the water shimmers with the light from the arte catching on the ripples of the water. The light refracts everywhere and Duke glows. He looks ethereal.
The light fades. Yuri tests his foot.
Yuri smiles. He looks at Duke.
“Thank you. It still hurts, but it’s way better than before.”
Duke hums. “You still shouldn’t walk on it.”
“Don’t worry,” Yuri says, popping the gel into his mouth. “I’ll just make Raven carry me out.”
Duke doesn’t laugh, but Yuri is stupidly proud of the little huff he makes, and the small smile he turns to hide.
The sound of slow water and occasional drips dropping into the stream take over as they both stop talking. After a while, Duke sits down next to Yuri. When Yuri’s foot dries he coaxes his boot back on.
And they sit, and they wait. And it’s nice.
And it’s almost over too fast.
Faintly, Yuri hears a “Woof,” and then,“Come on, come on!” Karol’s voice rings through the cavern, still pretty faint but bouncing along cave walls in way that triples the amount of times he’s probably saying it.
Yuri laughs. “Party’s almost here.”
Duke grunts, and he turns towards the inactive Aer Krene, brows furrowed.
“You know,” Yuri says, as the rest of Brave Vesperia closes in. “If you want to make sure we don’t mess with the Aer Krene anyway that’ll mess things up, you could just come with us.”
Duke blinks, head whipping back to look at Yuri.“...What?”
Yuri grins. “Come with us.”
There are practical considerations, of course. The rest of the guild would need to agree, but he doesn’t think anyone would protest too strongly. Duke knows the most about the Aer Krene, and could probably help a lot in whatever analysis Rita is doing.
But that’s not why he offers.
“I’d like to see more of you,” Yuri says.
“Hm."
Yuri doesn’t press for an answer, but he looks as Duke tilts his head, and smiles.