My Random Skyrim Stories

A Simple Dragon Fight (Vilkas) 4

Vilkas's feeling of dread only grew as he got the fire in the cave stoked back up. He was down to their last healing potion, and there was still blood seeping through Kirstrid's armor. Vilkas resolved that her best bet was to have the potion poured directly into the wound... and if that didn't close it, he'd have to stitch it or something. He was fairly sure he did have an emergency needle and sinew for such things, but it had been so long since he'd had to resort to such measures he couldn't be sure. It would be deep in the bottom of his enchanted pack if it was there.

He'd have to get her out of her armor for that though...

He'd seen her without her armor countless times, even more than once helped her unbuckle the metal plates when a battle had made her too sore or stiff to manage it easily on her own, but he'd never really seen her actually undressed... he'd especially never actually undressed her— not apart from his most private dreams at night at least. If the circumstances had been less dire he would have been embarrassed and his fingers would have trembled, but now all he could think of was treating the wound so Kirstrid might live to slap him for tanking her top off like this.

He tried to hold her gently while he unbuckled her steel plates... his heart dropped more as he removed the plates... her whole padded under-tunic was soaked in blood. He pulled the tunic up to find deep puncture wound just under her left breast.

There was so much blood...

With a silent prayer to whatever divine he thought would listen, he carefully propped her against him so he could pour the potion into the hole in her side. He didn't care that the blood was getting as much on his own armor as it had hers, he'd already gotten fairly covered in it just carrying her back to the cave.

To his relief, the flesh over her ribs seemed to respond to the potion and the bleeding slowed to an almost complete stop. It was still an open wound though. Vilkas thought he might be sick at the realization that this would have been a fatal wound if she'd been alone.

He decided the tunic she was wearing was ruined with the puncture hole and would make for decent bandaging if he could cut it off of her, so he carefully set about doing so. It only occurred to him after the fact that that left her in only her pants and bra... he'd never seen her in such a state of undress, but even that wasn't impeding his efforts to keep her from bleeding out on him. He could stare all he wanted once he was confident she wasn't dying, he told himself... and with any luck, she'd soon be awake enough to slap for his troubles.