Every battle was different, Aella thought, until it was the same. Whether they won or lost, there would always be injured men she needed to attend to, and their pain was often difficult for her to handle. She was not always successful in healing them, and those times were the worst. All she could do at that point was try to ease their pain and comfort them in their final moments as they wept for their mothers and breathed their last, but the only thing that made it all even slightly bearable was that she did not know any of the men personally.

That was, of course, until Aella saw Sihtric being carried into a tent, seemingly unresponsive.

Her heart dropped at the same time the things in her hands did, and she rushed into the tent after him. To her relief, he was still awake, but his face was contorted in pain. She hurried to his side and removed his armour and tunic as fast as her trembling fingers would allow her to, revealing a deep gash in his side. There was blood everywhere. The sight frightened Aella for a moment, before she took a deep breath, allowing her healing instincts to override her fear, and she quickly reached for bandages, needles and thread, the lot.

"Will he be all right?" Osferth asked nervously. His face had gone pale, and Finan had an arm around him, both looking incredibly worried.

"Yes, I-I think he will be," Aella said shakily, more to comfort herself as she worked. "Could you both leave us for a little? I'll come and see you once I'm done-"

"'Course," said Finan immediately, and patted Osferth's back. "Come on." The pair of them left, though Aella hardly noticed, her attention now focused solely on Sihtric's wound. She was finding it difficult to stem the bleeding, having to control her breathing at the same time as she tried not to let her fear hinder her actions. He'll be fine, she repeated in her mind, he'll recover.

"How bad is it?" Sihtric asked suddenly, causing Aella to flinch. Her heart was pounding in her chest once again, as it was prone to do whenever he spoke to her. He had lifted his head only for a second to speak, but it proved to be too much for him, for he immediately sank his head back down and let out a ragged breath.

"Not too bad," Aella responded, training her eyes on his wound as she finally managed to stem the flow of blood, and smiled a little, before cleaning it. Next she threaded a needle. "You'll be fine eventually, but it will ache for a while after I've stitched you up."

"Well, I'll take that over this any day," Sihtric said, wincing as the needle pricked his skin. Aella chuckled. She admired how brave he was in the face of such pain, because that gash certainly was deep, and wondered how he was able to restrain himself from crying out or indeed from making any noise at all. If it had been her in Sihtric's position, she knew she wouldn't have lasted this long. As soon as she was convinced that he was not in any immediate danger from his wound, she allowed herself to relax a little as she continued stitching it up.

Sihtric's pain seemed to have subsided a little, as his breathing steadied, and he became aware of Aella's free hand resting on his chest, only moving very slightly every minute or so. The corners of his lips turned up as he watched her work. Her brow was furrowed in complete concentration and she hardly moved, apart from her skilled hands. A stray curl of hair fell into her eyes, and it amused him to see her irritatedly blow at it out of the corner of her mouth, only for it to fall back into her eyes. Almost without thinking, he lifted his hand and brushed it away from her face.

Aella felt her cheeks redden as she realised what Sihtric was doing, even more so when her gaze fell upon his face, his smile sending butterflies fluttering in her stomach. He was always capable of doing that to her, even now, as she tended to his injury. "Thank you," she said, her voice little more than a whisper. Her hands stilled for a moment when he met her eye, and her heart was thundering so loud she was half-worried he'd be able to hear it. The sensation she felt when she was around Sihtric was nothing new to her, but only more intense - she had never been alone with him for so long, let alone in such close proximity, and Aella cursed how hot her face was growing.

"It's all right," Sihtric said, lowering his hand as slowly as he dared. His fingers momentarily brushed Aella's cheek - which was no accident - before they fell to rest at his uninjured side once more. He had felt just how warm her cheek was, and smirked slightly. It certainly was not that hot inside the tent, and they both knew it. Privately, he thought she was incredibly pretty when she was embarrassed - her cheeks had grown pink and she had a shy smile on her face, unable to keep looking into his eyes for more than a few seconds at a time, and her gaze had dropped back to his wound. "Are you almost finished?" he asked her as she tied off the stitch.

Aella wiped her forehead and let out a breath. "I only need to bandage you up and then you're done," she told him, feeling suddenly disappointed. Sihtric sighed a little, though his disappointment was not as clear. "Can you sit up for me?" Aella asked him. He was able to lift himself up about an inch before falling back down, grimacing. Immediately, she put an arm under his back and put his arm around her shoulder, lifting him up slowly, careful not to tear the stitches. Sihtric's breathing quickened as he felt a shoot of pain in his side, and sighed with relief as soon as Aella steadied him.

With the roll tightly clasped in one hand, she began to bandage his abdomen. It took a long time for Aella to completely cover the wound, as large as it was, but she found it even harder to focus on the task at hand rather than his bare chest. He was certainly muscular, she had always assumed that, but without a shirt on, it was so much more obvious. That, coupled with the feeling of his breath on her neck as she worked, made it incredibly difficult to concentrate, and she fought to steady her own breathing at the same time. None of this went unnoticed by Sihtric, unbeknownst to Aella.

After a while, Aella finally straightened up, now done checking that the bandages were staying in place. When she met Sihtric's eye again, the persistent smile on his face sent her stomach into backflips, and she didn't hide the smile spreading across her own face. "You need to rest," Aella told him quietly, and he allowed her to lower him down onto his back.

She got up, and he wondered for a moment if she was leaving him - he smiled broadly when she returned seconds later with a damp cloth and sat down, pushing his hair away from his forehead to wipe away the beads of sweat that had formed on his face. The sudden coolness was welcome to him, but more so was the warmth of Aella's smile.

She reached across him to put the cloth down once she was finished. As she withdrew, Sihtric caught her hand, his own heart beating furiously. Aella paused what she was doing and met his eye, finding herself unable to look away. They gazed at each other for what felt like an eternity, before Sihtric's free hand reached up to cup her face, as he drew her in and finally kissed her. The first kiss was short and sweet, and long overdue. Aella leaned down and kissed him again, the kiss growing more fiery and passionate. It was Sihtric who had to pull away first, his breathing shallow as his hand travelled down from her face to her neck-

"Aella, is he all ri- oh," they heard Finan call from the tent's entrance. The concern on his face was quickly replaced by a grin. "So he's all right, then?"

That damned Irishman, Aella thought as she turned away in embarrassment. Sihtric rolled his eyes as Finan laughed and walked out, presumably to tell everyone and their mother what he had just seen.

"Well, if this is what it takes, maybe getting injured isn't so bad," Sihtric smiled. "Minus Finan's little interruption, of course." Aella pressed a kiss to his cheek and chuckled.

"Don't you go thinking like that next time," she warned him, "you might not be so lucky either way." But when he pulled her down for another kiss, she didn't object.