S4 E10, the Writening (Patreon)

I give you this thing, because it cheered me greatly when I wrote it, and so I hope it cheers you too. Or makes you squee. Or both. Both is good. We come in right after the events of S4 E9, where Leo has just asked Rosamund if she'd like some help with her unfortunate knife wound. Which...she would, please.

***

Rosamund had insisted on walking (very slowly) past the members of the Queen’s Guard who were patrolling the halls of her home, but as soon as they got to the kitchen she slumped onto a chair, whimpering.

Leo frowned, concerned, and went in search of bandages. Without luck. He turned to Rosamund, who shook herself, seemed to take in her surroundings again, and mumbled directions.

He draped the pouch of cloths over her shoulder, picked up the bowl and vinegar in one hand, and attempted to support his wife (his wife) with the other.

At the Bridge and Rabbit, he’d had two free hands and she’d only been pretending to sleep, so getting her on the horse hadn’t been too difficult, but right now he had one hand to spare, she was shivering, and progress was glacial.

‘Are you sure that you aren’t hurt?’ Rosamund asked him dreamily for probably the fourth time. ‘I think I should have asked that first before ordering you to run around. I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t order, you asked. And I am fine.’

Well, one of his hands was bleeding and his back was scratched to pieces, but given the alternative if Rosamund hadn’t been there, he considered himself very fortunate indeed.

Rosamund reached the door first, and practically fell through it. Even though the fire still burned in the grate, she was now shaking in earnest, which was hardly an encouraging sign.

Leo checked the room, but no unwanted guests lurked under the bed or behind the curtains. He locked the door behind them and took up a light to put by the bed as Rosamund started to clumsily pull off her overdress.

‘I really liked this surcoat,’ she muttered hazily, ‘and now it’s all torn and…’ she blinked, searching for the word, ‘bloodstained…’

‘We’ll get you a new one, my Lady,’ Leo said soothingly as he helped her onto the bed, ‘now please, try and stay still.’

Rosamund whined again, but complied, and he tried to peel the sticky, torn green fabric of her undershirt away from her stomach. She was wearing long hose underneath, and he tried to remember to breathe as he untied one side and gently pulled it down from her hip.

The wound seemed reasonably superficial, and Leo sighed in relief. The cut was long, starting on her hip and crossing most of her stomach, and the bruises would be impressive, but she should be all right.

Leo wondered if the assassin was dead. Given the whimpering woman lying beneath him (don’t think about that, he told his treacherous brain) he wasn’t sure if he hoped so or not.

Shaking the thought away, he picked up a cloth. The bleeding, while impressive, had already slowed, but as soon as he put pressure on it, Rosamund gasped.

‘Ah...right on the hipbone!’ she managed. ‘Am I going to need stitches?’

Leo cleaned a little further, wondering the same thing. But the cut wasn’t too deep.

‘If you can rest for the next few days, my Lady, I hope not.’

She relaxed a little, and tried to smile at him. ‘No more foiling assassins for me.’

He smiled back, in spite of himself. ‘Best avoided, my Lady.’

She frowned in his general direction. ‘My name is Rosamund, you know,’ she said, with the careful over-enunciation of someone who was not entirely in control of all their faculties. ‘You can call me Rosamund. I think we’re friends,’ Leo’s hands stuttered, ‘and you did marry me.’ She considered him sleepily. ‘You can probably call me Rosy, I won’t mind.’

Part of Leo thought that was probably the shock talking. But the greater part of him was unaccountably warmed by the fact that his own wife thought that they were friends. How this had become his life, he wasn’t quite sure, but there they were.

‘I’m...not in the habit, my Lady,’ he admitted, folding another torn piece of green velvet up towards her ribs. Rosamund looked unimpressed.

‘Well, Leopold,’ she retorted, and he felt a jolt in his stomach at the use of his full first name, ‘you never will be if you don’t start.’

Leo, with absolutely no fanfare, gave up. ‘An excellent point. Rosamund.’

She smiled at him. ‘Better.’ He took advantage of her distraction to sweep the vinegar straight across her stomach.

‘OW!’

‘Sorry.’

She made a face at him. ‘No you’re not. You’re just pleased it’s not me doing this to you.’

‘It does hurt the patient more than the physician,’ he admitted.

Rosamund fell silent as Leo finished bandaging her torso, but at least she wasn’t shaking any more. Leo considered the relative merits of offering to help her change her clothes compared to those of just letting her fall asleep.

He had just decided that probably simplicity was the order of the day when she said, ‘Would you get me a nightdress please? They’re in the second drawer over there.’

Ah.

Her nightclothes were, as it turned out, precisely where she’d said. That was a relief, because when he went to retrieve his own, his nightshirt was...not where he’d left it that morning.

Robin.

‘Huh.’

Rosamund hauled herself into a sitting position. ‘Something wrong?’

Leo shook his head. ‘I just need to go and...fetch something, excuse me.’ He unlocked the door. ‘I’ll only be a moment.’

Rosamund shrugged, winced, and then proceeded to haul off the remainder of her torn, bloodstained clothes and hurl them to the far side of the room with more force than was really necessary or advisable.

By the time Leo returned from the garderobe, where the rest of his belongings resided unmolested by his so-called friend, she was back in bed, pulling the ribbon out of her hair and letting her plaits fall around her shoulders.

‘I don’t know if you have a usual side,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘but I’m taking the one that puts all of this,’ she gestured at the location of her bandages, ‘as far from you as possible.’ And then, quite unexpectedly, she grinned at him. ‘I promise not to hog the blankets.’

And there was that warmth again.

‘Goodnight, Rosamund.’ Maybe if he said it a few more times it wouldn’t seem so uncomfortably intimate.

‘Goodnight, Leo. Sleep well.’

Famous last words.