(Man, do not ask me where the guards are. : \ Cities can be weird. ... Also, the plot. Do not ask me where the plot is, either.)

- - - - - -

It had just been a deep breath to dawn when they’d staggered in from the mountains, smeared black and crimson, and taken their first weaving steps towards the heart of the city. Either the guard posts had been deserted - for one reason or several others -, or there hadn’t been posts at all; the blue-eyed woman hadn’t bothered to look, already deep-shadowed irises nearly bottomless with fatigue. Either way, they had entered the city without challenge, not that they would have presented much of one had it come to that.

Now, just a few long, laborious breaths later, she was seated where they had collapsed, squinting at the lightening sky and wearily slouched forward, trying to keep them both from toppling onto the road a second time, the steel-haired man’s head resting on her shoulder, features red-streaked through no doing of his own. Left arm around his shoulders, she surveyed her mangled fingers, then his lidded, barely conscious gaze. Warmth was seeping across her undershirt from where his ribs had settled against hers, the makeshift bandage of his only shirt already soaked through with his blood. Her jaw worked, and she turned her head to the side to carefully, awkwardly, spit a mouthful of her own onto the worn stone beside them. Her bare toes shifted against the road briefly, then stilled; she wouldn’t be able to walk far, if at all, in this condition. Instead, she leaned her head against her companion’s, and waited for the city to rouse.