The sun was rising distantly by the time the ordeal was over. Sedona had wasted no time in shuffling to her workstation, a lush bed of foliage near the oasis itself where she preferred to tend to her patients. She rubbed the sleep gracelessly from her eyes and hovered over her stores, rummaging quickly through fragrant herbs in search of what she needed. All the while, her stomach simmered with desperate unease as she willed the task already done.

"Come here," she summoned once more, unsure if Scorpius would have followed after her the first time. No matter what he said, Sedona knew the sight of poison blistering when she saw it. It had just never been intentional before. She grit her teeth as she gathered what she needed, bending to tear at the leaves and then mash them together with a grinding stone. He would need an antidote if he was going to heal properly, or else risk horrid, patchy scarring across his pelt. The Ogre of the Oasis, cubs might come to call him. Sedona, a creature of vain comforts as much as soul-stuff, was not about to let that happen to her husband.

---

|| january y10 | two years | AO sovereign | at andal oasis | after challenge | @Scorpius ||

+10 - Heal a character’s sickness or injury
+5 - Make an antidote to a poison_CODE

In all honesty, Scorpius has never been in a fiercer fight - he had been determined to rip the lioness to pieces to keep the Oasis, and she had seemed set on doing the same. Blood leaks, half dry, from his face and shoulders and neck. But it's the poison he can feel where her claws had dragged down his side, his cheek, that burns.

It burns.

Scorpius has never felt pain like this, unending discomfort. His skin is starting to blister as if he'd been in a fire, but there's no relief because there's no fire to get out of - it's in his veins, pumping the poison through his body.

Would he die from this?

When everything was relatively under control again, he had left the others to detain the prisoners. He trusted Leonie to keep everyone in line. Sedona had beckoned him, and the young king had hesitated for a moment. In the aftermath, he hadn't been able look at her. He'd been surprised to see her still here at all, but then, he didn't have a chance to ask why.

She calls him again, and Scorpius realises he'd been following, lost in his thoughts. His heavy pace picks up as much as he can bear, trailing her into the den.

Once inside, the pain seems to leak in past all his sheer stubborn will not to appear weak. With a shuddering gasp, the king lowers himself to the plush bedding. He could pretend that it's for Sedona's benefit so she can reach her face, but they both know better. Scorpius's body trembles intermittently.

"I thought you left."

He's never been a tactful beast._CODE

She set to making her antidote as she waited for the king to show, as she knew he would; she would drag him if she had to. Herbaceous fragrance filled the frond shelter as Sedona worked, blinking away that unending tiredness. She was just craning her neck in search of him when that goliath lumbered forth with gasping breaths. Sedona creased her brows in withheld horror and watched as he lowered himself to a lay, saving her from barking the order. Immediately she flocked to his side, perhaps trying to leave no room for the claim he made, anyway:

"I thought you left."

"For a walk," she clarified lowly, not looking up from her work. Her nostrils flared subconsciously at the sight of the blistering and the little queen swallowed down her unease as she blotted some of the stuff into them with a paw. "She poisoned you," Sedona noted breathlessly.

---

@Scorpius
+10 - Heal a character’s sickness or injury
+5 - Make an antidote to a poison_CODE

Maybe the kinder thing is to not bring up their fight while Sedona works, but Scorpius doesn’t have the energy to pretend or ignore the way the air between them is thick and tense. He watches the lioness skitter around and meddle with herbs he can’t name. She draws up close to him once again, and Scorpius stops breathing.

"Yes," he says simply, as if the matter of the welts and blisters and burning under his skin is of little consequence, as if he doesn’t want to scream from the pain. He is uncomfortable, mentally and physically in pain, and he doesn’t understand why Sedona cares that he’s been poisoned. "She didn’t get my eyes, though." There’s an attempt at a smirk, an attempt at sounding pleased and proud because in the end, despite her poison, he won.

The king’s body trembles.

"Do you still - want to be here?" A quieter, careful question. Yes, he is going to force this conversation now. Between Septima’s words haunting him and then the challenge, he cannot stop himself.

"If you wake up tomorrow and find out she's dead, will you regret not trying to repair things?"

What if he’s the one that dies? What if the lioness’s poison is killing him, eyes hit or not? Will he die with Sedona hating him?

Scorpius forces the question out properly.

"Do you want to be with me?"_CODE

"She didn’t get my eyes, though."

Perhaps she should have seen their fortune in that moment. Sedona pursed her lips as she pressed the substance into his blisters, her stomach rolling with sympathy at what she was sure could not feel good. Somehow, it was preferable to the questions that followed. Sedona kept avoiding his gaze in favor of the task at her paws, her mind spinning steadily as she struggled to find an answer to a question that had previously seemed so simple.

"Do you want to be with me?"

"I've always wanted to be with you," she reminded him quietly. Perhaps not at their first meeting as cubs, but in every one thereafter. Her decision had been constant. It had seemed easy, even when outside forces demanded it would not be. Why, then, was she not sure that she would stay? She lowered her paw in a moment of pause.

"But, I want say in what happens in my life, too." She was calm when the last twenty-four hours had been anything but. "Can't you see, Scorpius? Your decisions affect me. You need to ask what I think if we are going to be a team," Sedona urged as she steadily picked back up with her work. Still, she did not look at him. She did not want to see fire there. She did not want to be burned.

'I want to be a team."

---

@Scorpius
+10 - Heal a character’s sickness or injury_CODE

Sedona works quietly. She always has. Dutiful, responsible, calm @Sedona. But the man laying before her knows she isn’t as settled as she seems, not as calm as she wants to be. He has seen her anger. It is her sense of duty that keeps her here, tending to him while he is hurt.

Scorpius can only bite back the growls and grunts that come with her tender touch. No matter how gentle she is, this hurts. It burns. His jaw clenches at the smallest touch.

She does not meet his gaze.

He doesn’t look away from hers.

"Then -" Scorpius breathes out slowly, biting back a hiss of pain, "we are a team."

After a moment, he adds.

"You need to tell me if breaking the betrothal with the Savante is what you want."_CODE

"Then – we are a team." He hissed the words, his pain evident even from his voice itself. Sedona's frown stayed itself despite the flutter her stomach gave at the confirmation. We are a team. Had she ever wanted for anything else, really? Even as foolish youths planning pride infiltration, she had only wanted to be on Scorpius's side – to be the one helping to bring his dreams to fruition. There they crouched, married, with a crown twice earned, and a wall of melancholy between them she wished would evaporate into the air so things could become simple once more.

"You need to tell me if breaking the betrothal with the Savante is what you want."

It felt like a punch. Reality kept wiggling its way back to the forefront when the queen so longed to forget. Her frown deepened as she pressed another salve into his skin, her chest burning with renewed fury rearing its head. How could you ask that, she might have questioned. What has all of this been about? She might have raged. Still, even in her acute hurt, Sedona thought she knew better than to kick a lion already downed. Her eyes flashed with something unknown before she uttered her answer without uncertainty and without hesitation.

"Yes," she responded flatly. She was not that astute lioness who might see how he could resent her for it in times to come. She was not the politician, placing abstract strategy above present needs to secure a future. She was only Sedona: scorned wife, desperate to feel grounded with the one she loved more than anything – desperate to condemn the matter entirely for what it had nearly done to them.

---

@Scorpius_CODE

While Scorpius might already know the answer to his own question, he needs to hear it. He needs to hear @Sedona say what she wants. The order needs to come from her mouth, not his assumptions - assuming is what had brought them to this point. And she says it, without hesitation. Yes. Scorpius knows what he should do - he should insist he - they cannot break this betrothal. He should tell her that they must put the safety of the Oasis and their family first, above their own happiness. He should tell her they are king and queen, but that does not mean they get their own way all the time - if ever.

"Then I’ll do it." Not the alliance - if the Savante forgive this take-back - but the betrothal itself. Perhaps something else can be arranged in his place. He has nieces and nephews. One day, he’ll have his own cubs. Leonie and Septima are out of the question for obvious reasons.

Scorpius’s chest heaves with the breath he takes, steadying himself, because this conversation is far from over - and while she’s here, tending to his face, it’s hard for either of them to lose their temper.

And if this is the end… he’d rather it be now.

"Will I be allowed to marry again?" Scorpius had always seen himself with wives, plural, even if they were always faceless beyond Sedona. His duty to secure his throne, his family, had always come down to the need to make more Miroslavs. Beside his nephews, he is the only male in the family left. Perhaps the burden would not feel so heavy if his uncle returned, or his father, or his brothers - but Scorpius knows that will never happen. They are gone. "Or is that something you don’t want at all?"_CODE

"Then I’ll do it."

She paused for a moment. Her mind seemed to stall in its buffering as her chest noticeably loosened its tight hold around her heart. Was it really that easy, she had to wonder? Sedona considered the statement for what it was: the first time either of them had truly bent to the opposing wills of the other. Something about it made the threat of tears prick and sting at her eyes, though she could not place the feeling as sadness. No, it was a taste of humility – to know that he, grand king, would place the interests of his wife above that of a monarch (however new).

"Te amo," I love you, she whispered against the threat of her voice cracking, raw with the chaotic soup of emotion they had been stirring in those forty-eight hours. He posed a question, then, that she perhaps should have expected. Reality dragged itself to the forefront once more.

Will there be others?

Despite the way her stomach tumbled at the thought of them looming so nearly, she knew the answer to this question just as easily – just as certainly as the last.

"Yes," she responded, sitting up from her work once she was satisfied with the patch job. "Here – eat this," Sedona instructed, lifting a bundle of pain-killing herbs and seeds with her paw to try and tip them into his mouth. "They'll put you to sleep soon," she warned.

The tiny lioness shifted there among the fronds, allowing her mind to poke and prod at the puzzle of their situation. Yes, he may marry again, but how. Her forehead creased with thought as she tried to choose her words carefully, her spine shivering with a sudden sense of vulnerability.

"Yes, but not just anyone. I... " She trailed off in a moment of hesitation. "También quiero amarlas." I want to love them, too. Why did her face feel so hot? Sedona pursed her lips and twitched the bob of her tail as she scrambled for a way to explain herself. "If we're going to be a family together, really, they should love me, also." Otherwise, what was she, but a member of the audience in her own home? "No quiero ser un obstáculo para que tengan un rey para ellos solos." I don't want to just be in the way of them having a king to themselves.

"I know you don't want it to be like it was for your father. I don't want that life, either." Sedona explained, purposeful in keeping her words slow and sincere as she checked periodically to make sure he had not drifted off into sleep too quickly. "I want to be a real family. If we all love each other, they won't lie. They won't leave." She urged him, now meeting that scarlet gaze in earnest, blissful optimism. With that point made, it left one matter entirely untouched in their lives thus far – one matter that weighed on her heart and sat on her mind without relenting. Sedona swallowed.

"And," she started, still hesitating, "I want to be a mother, first." Lest wanting eat her into spiteful insanity.

---

@Scorpius
Healing Roll:

Rolling 1d10: 1

_CODE

Will it be enough?

The king watches her, careful, too wary to be hopeful. Finally, a few soft words leave her lips, and it feels as if they unlock a tight, uncomfortable chain from around his chest. Scorpius lets out the breath he’d been holding. "Yo también te amo." I love you too. Words he says so rarely, if ever, have never meant as much as they do now.

Scorpius does not want to sleep, but the berries are already down his throat before her warning comes. He glares, but there is no heat in his eyes. No real anger. He worries, but he knows between @Sedona and Leonie, the pride will be safe while he slowly recovers. And truly, he needs the rest. His body aches, but the poison in his face and shoulder are already beginning to fade with Sedona’s soothing potions.

The little queen explains her… conditions, and Scorpius listens. As much as he can, with his young mind wandering directly into the path of Sedona and another wife together. But more than that, he understands her concern. "Si. Then… we will find someone to tolerate us both." The king smiles at his own joke, but he means it. He had not imagined finding love other than with Sedona, but perhaps it could happen? Who would not love Sedona? And if they love her, perhaps they can love him for sharing her. His father’s wives were always competing, it seemed. Until someone left. He doesn’t want that - he can’t live like that. He wants exactly what Sedona does; a family, a true one…

"Mm -" Scorpius’s head jerks up where it had been beginning to drift down to his paws. "We will have a family," he mumbles around a yawn, unaware of fighting sleep as it begins to creep into his mind, only half understanding her words. "You’ll - be a good mother…"

Exit via sleep._CODE