Notes: Fic for Kyusil's prompt on LJ: improvisation/"winging it". Medicinal facts may or may not be nonsense, but I figure they can be misconceptions on the character's part.

Layers Deep

The chill of the winter air cut deep into Lilina, through her thin leggings and blouse and into the wet spots at the toes of her boots. Of course, she'd known Ilia was cold, but nothing could have prepared her for the endless gray expanses, the sharp wind on her face, the shaking in her joints that never seemed to go away - not the rabbit fur cloak she'd draped around her shoulders, or the lingering burn of fire magic at her fingers. It was near impossible to stay alert, and even harder to see where the enemies were through the veil of falling snow and ice.

From behind her, she heard a cry - one she'd recognize anywhere. She whipped around and tried to catch sight of something familiar, a shock of red hair, a blue cloak, a flash of thin steel. Anything.

As Lilina squinted against the glare of sun-on-white, she finally saw him, low to the ground, head down, arms close to his body. Despite the ache in her half-frozen toes and the layer of soft snow that gave way with each step, she ran for his side, tome in one hand, satchel in the other.

She saw as she drew closer that the red she'd first seen so low wasn't his hair - it was dribbling through his fingers onto the pure white beneath him, down from the long, deep gash at the top of his thigh. She felt sick at the sight. Not a wound that would kill straight away, no, but surely one that couldn't be left to linger.

"I'm all right," Roy gasped through a shiver. By the set of his jaw and the clenching of his fingers, he was as ashamed of crying out as she was of letting him be hurt. She ignored him and focused her efforts on trying to find the supplies she knew she had in her satchel. Unless she'd used the last of them. . .no. She remembered, suddenly, tying the last clean bandage around Oujay's arm, dabbing the dregs of a vulnerary at Thany's torn up ankle. All she found in the satchel was the empty vial left over.

Roy winced beneath her grip, and she tried not to stare at the gash between her fingers. "Stay still," she murmured, as she quickly weighed her options.

There was his cape, his shirt, but by the blue at his lips, he needed every ounce of warmth he could get. Her leggings or strips torn from her blouse might do, but they were flimsy and unlikely to hold well at all. He needed something thick, something sturdy, something to hold him until a healer arrived. Something like. . . .

"Lilina, don't-" Before Roy could stop her, Lilina freed her slim arms from the folds of the thick cloak and wrapped it tight around his thigh.

"Lie down," she answered through the quaking of her own teeth, "and keep the leg up. Please. We'll wait here 'til help comes, all right? Together."

And despite the flimsiness of her leggings and the soaked-through lining of her boots, she fell down in the snow next to him to ready a signal. She was only halfway through a fire spell to shine for the others when he lifted his arm and let his cape fall over her shoulders.