Reidun had been out riding, looking at the herbs and spices that grow in the wilds of Bree. She figured the river below looked lovely, and sought a safe path down, leading her horse carefully. As she makes her way forward, she stops suddenly at the form of a man on the ground. "Uh...hello?" Is her shaky inquiry, muffled through her mask.
The figure before her is soggy, and wet. It is the body of a lean but athletic young man, stripped of gloved, any form of head wear, shoulder wear, or weapon. This form, down by the river near the border of the North Downs, is Stitches. Stitches doesn't respond to her at first, lying still on the grass and stone, his straw hair spread out and wet, an arrow in his left shoulder and a large gash on his right arm dripping a slow leak of blood, not to mention a black eye and a few facial scratches. He's in no good condition, to say the least. Blood decorates his straw like hair and pale skin, his heart rate and pulse is slow, and his breath is faint. He has been seemingly floating for two days in a nearly still river, somehow his arm healed enough to not cause him to bleed out, but the blunt force to his head and the coolness of the river had kept him in a sleeping state, but nothing had healed properly.
Reidun frowns deeply and walks over to him hesitantly. "Oh my..." She exclaims, and pulls her mask back to look at him better, "This is...not good...!" She pulls her horse over by the reins and gets her to kneel down. "We ought to get him somewhere else..." She pauses, remembering to check if he has a pulse or breathes still. Stitches's breathe is raspy but his pulse is faint, he seems to be fading by the moment, or perhaps just in deep unadulterated slumber. Reidun hums and rocks back on her heels. "Let's do this, then." She places her hands on his wrists and prepares to drag him onto her horse as she calls back to her, "Steady girl...I know this won't feel great."
At this moment Stitches wakes up suddenly when he is touched and shoots into a sit rapidly, reaching for a sword that isn't there, and hurting both his arms in the process. He flops back onto his back and lets out a scream of pain as he does, writhing around on the ground in slight panic, which in reality only makes it worse. His thoughts are filled with rage, pain, and sorrow. He feels a lump in his throat that he can't be bothered to address as he thrashes about on the cold river rocks and grass below him like a fish out of water on hot coals. Reidun responds by jumping back with a yelp. However she quickly adjusts and kneels to gently lays her hands on his shoulders. "Shhhh! It's alright! You are safe now!" She looks around as if to make sure she spoke the truth before she continues regardless of his flopping state, "What happened to you?"
Stitches calms down in terms of flipping around on his back, but he looks around frantically as he calls out, "Dru? Dru! Where are you?" As he asks this, realization and memory set in to bring a hollow feeling in his chest where she had instructed him specifically his heart was located. His skin grew lumps and his feet went numb. He could feel his fingers begin to shake and his cracked lips begin to quiver as an unease nestled itself in quiet content at the bottom of his stomach, it's emotional weight dropping said stomach further down Stitches's body. For the first time he could ever remember his vision blurs from wetness. His voice is but a croak next to the slowly flowing water, barely audible to even him at first, much less the heavens above any might think to pray to in such desperation, "No...no, no, no, we were...we..." He looks down at his hands and for a moment is silent.
Reidun raises an eyebrow as he calls out a name. "Who is Dru? Did he shoot you?" She gestures to his shoulder but continues her questionnaire, "You were what?" She asks gently, as one might to a frightened lamb.
Yet Stitches moves a bit towards the water as he chokes softly on his own stuttering words, at this moment he doesn't seem to care to whom he speaks or why, "Sh-She's my friend...she was...in trouble and I- I-..I fai..." He can't seem to keep a thought.
Eventually Stitches finds himself looking up at the night sky and as he does he questions her back, "What day is it?" He asks her in a hurry, seeming to completely disregard his wounds at the moment.
To this Reidun thinks for a moment, glancing around for this 'Dru' he spoke of. "It is...um...the third day of the week."
Stitches sniffles a bit as his cheeks become a canvas for the paint strokes of his tears, "Two days..."
He murmurs as he reaches up to feel the strange sensation on his face, "What..." he seems confused and concerned by it, but his mind is in many of places right now, and the hardest thing perhaps that he can focus on is this newest, freshest sting of a feeling. He grunts, pushing through the agony in his body and the anguish in his mind to stand up, "I have to find out what happened to her...she was around here...if this is where they threw me she must be!" He claims, darting his head about to see if this holds any weight, truth or evidence.
Reidun gasps when she sees his face more clearly, set aback by the stitch tattoo from cheek to cheek and the gnarly scar of missing flesh on the right end of said inked marking. She didn't want to be rude and ask, especially in such a frenzied time like this in this person's life, but she couldn't help it. It was startling to see at first. "I...uh...what happened? Do you remember?" She asks, averting her gaze to not give away her discomfort with it.
Stitches doesn't seem to even notice her response to his face, his mind running miles per minute elsewhere. Normally this would be his first concern, who thinks what how his face and how it looks, but now, he was focused on the words he could hear Dru speak to him in his mind. To an extent he could let Bree down, it was a whole city. But his friend? Someone he know and cared for deeply? This couldn't be happening to him, for him, because of him. On top of that, if he couldn't protect his one friend how can he protect anyone? It begins to weigh on him in every second. He speaks quietly as he tries not to think on all of this, "I was shot...they...they threw me in the river...they chased her somewhere--and I have to find where..I have to find her!"
Reidun shakes her head as she observes the area, just a small river bank and a steep slope up to the cliffs above, "Wait, this all happened here? Who shot you? Who is 'they'?" She looks around the area again, confirming no other presences in the area again.
To all this Stitches only shakes his head to answer one part and follow up urgently with his own, "N-No it was...somewhere else...I don't know...North Bree area...where is here, where are we?" Stitches looks directly at her with a pale face, breathing heavily, and shaking panicked eyes.
Reidun carefully touches his uninjured shoulder gently, her own eyes are almost as wide as hers. She takes a deep breath, "Settle down. We will look for your friend but...if you do not settle down you will injure yourself worse."
To this however, Stitches shakes his head adamantly, "No...we can't waste any time." In his madness and his stream of never ending self deprecating and hurtful thoughts, he finds some resourcefulness.
He tears his cloak from his shoulders and wraps it haphazardly around his arm, turning towards the steep climb, "I have to find her before anything else...I...I have to." He whispers to himself, though it can in face be heard by her as well.
So upon hearing this, Reidun shakes her head back at him , but not to disagree, this time to try and break the possibly tragic plausibility to him,"I saw no one else on my way here from Bree, sir. If...if it has been two days...I am...well...It's not likely..."
Stitches looks at her, a great ferocity in his eyes as some of the anger from his encounter from the hunter carries over from the other day when he had screamed his promise in rage at his captor. Tonight he nearly growls at Reidun, "She's not dead! She won, I just have to find out where it happened!"
To this Reidun takes a step back, her eyes widen as she nods timidly, "W-well...then...then we need to know...where to...to look. Which way did she go?"
Stitches scratches his head as he tries to recall through the mess of his thoughts, his map knowledge of the Bree-Fields as a farmer, and how far they traveled. Finally he makes his estimate, telling her of their journey out of Bree, the exact location of the altercation between him and the hunter, and even includes the direction he witnessed Dru running in, away from the strange man from that night. After this recap, Stitches asks the girl where there are, yet again. Reidun tells him that they are, "A little bit of a walk from Hengstacer's farms. In the East part of the Bree Fields, I think?"
To this Stitches nods, "I work there, at Hengstacer...it would be further than that to outrun the man following her...He was fast, but she was too."
Reidun frowns with the grim tale and processes it through her thoughts, hugging her middle nervously. Stitches holds the cloak on his wounded arm and looks at her as she does so, "What is it? Do you know something?"
She responds with a shake of her head to this and her confession in all honesty, "No. I don't even know who you are...or...anything." While she speaks this she avoids looking at his face.
Stitches takes a long draw of breath and nods in quiet acceptance to try and keep his head straight. Though this does not work very well it was worth a try and he addresses Reidun, "Thank you then for waking me...have a good night." He says as he turns to rush up the hill without another word, but this is easier said than done.
He continues to make ti a good foot up the slope before grunting, stumbling, swaying off balance, or just plain old falling, sometimes all of the above. Reidun frowns, unsure of what exactly to do she resorts to watching him for a bit, before finally calling to him,"Hey, hold up there. I have a horse. And you are clearly not very strong just now..."
"I don't care," He says, "I have to find out..." Kakeraen keeps trying to scale the slope, with not much success.
Reidun says, "Well, then use my horse, ya dunce! You don't want to die before finding your lady friend, do you?"
Stitches faces her and pauses his ascent, "Where will I find you to return it?"
Reidun steps forth, "I will come with you. You can't fight off whoever might show up."
Stitches nods and pants gently as things start to sort themselves out in the physical term of the situation, grabbing his stuck shoulder with his wrapped arm and hand, "What...what is your name...?" He asks the girl.
Reidun frowns and pushes his hand away from the arrow stuck in his shoulder, "You will push it into a weird angle if you hold it at all, leave it be." She harrumphs then she sighs. "I am Reidun. Yours?"
Stitches looks at her directly, his insecurity the least of his worries at the moment, "Stitches." he introduces himself.
Reidun doesn't look at him directly, however. Until he says his name, in which her head swivels up to him in disbelief, "Wha...That is your name?"
Stitches nods casually as he always does but seems to be becoming impatient, "Yes...that's what I've been called. Come, I can't waste a single moment more here on this river bank."
Reidun dips her head in understanding and has her horse get on the ground in front of him. This aids Stitches as he lifts his leg and gets himself on the horse with a few pained grunts. Reidun has her horse stand with a quick, "C'mon Hildy. Good girl." She calls to her horse as they continue then up the slow. Stitches pants softly, the blood flow stopped from his makeshift bandage. He looks about and frowns as his mind processes the situation, the few feet becoming meters from where she found him on the riverbank. His thoughts drift back to the first time Dru had seen his face in its entirety, and the first time they had spoken alone, the first time he had felt her silken hair on his farmer hands in an embrace they shared. Even the scent she covered herself in wandering into his thoughts, and his tears begin to resurface. He misses his friend.
After a while, traveling east from the point Stitches was originally bested by the hunter, they stop at a cliff and a plateau, which some lumpy mass sprawled out in front of it. Reidun gasps when she sees this lump, the second form she came across this night, but this time it is a dead body. This corpse's neck has been mostly severed from his head. As Reidun examines it in slight disgust at the rotting flesh she wrinkles her nose and states, "It...appears to be about two days old...?"
Stitches moves closer to the cadaver and kneels before it to get a good look at it. He eyes the body up and down with mixed emotions. On one hand this man was under orders and hadn't done real wrongdoings, he had promised Stitches fairness before this death, on the other hand, his death might mean the life of his friend. The life of Dru. He informs Reidun of the connection,"This is the hunter...the man who shot me." He claims as he looks around for more evidence on what happened if there is any, but he's no tracker.
Reidun frowns slightly and looks at him, reluctant to insinuate anything, but knowing this could be good news, begins to ask him, "Oh. Does that mean...?"
Momentarily reassured, Stitches nods in positivity, "She's still alive...she has to be...she's..." He pauses, "Wait...But...there's no other corpse...no matter who won another dead should lay here." Stitches ponders to himself aloud.
Reidun nods in agreement to this assessment, "It looks like there was another person. And a scuffle."
Stitches then looks to her, his frantic nature returning as he does, listening to her intently as his fists clutch as he tries not to think about the possibilities. Reidun sighs though and shrugs, "Well...I unfortunately cannot tell you how it ended."
After this and a moment of quiet and supposed peace, Stitches looks around the area, and meanders off in another direction to begin what in his mind would be a long search. He just begins walking, his face blank, expressionless, but his mind whirring and spinning. Reidun catches up to him and grabs him by his uninjured shoulder softly, yet her words are stern towards him as she does,"You can do nothing. Not while you are injured thus!"
Stitches swallows hard as he begins to remember the conversations he had with Dru, and can only mutter out, "Leave me be." In which ends with him shrugging Reidun's hand off of him. He hobbles forth, not from an injury to a leg, but from body damage over all and exhaustion, smaller strides and slower steps. Reidun frowns deeply as she watches him begin his departure, "Your friend is not here and you will not find her if you are dead!"
Still not recovered and in a weakened state, Stitches pants softly, "I...thank you...for...your service..." He has to stop to take a wheezing breath, "Reidun...but...I must..." He trails off briefly before collapsing to his knees, letting the cloak fall from its wrapped cocoon on his arm and onto the ground, bloodstained. His eyes stare hollow at the ground, his parched lips quivering. "I couldn't...do anything..." He manages to sputter out.
"I couldn't do anything..."
Reidun watches him as he falls, but not close enough to help smooth out his tumble, so instead she suggests to him as she kneels beside him to attempt to help, "If you couldn't do anything...then do not beat yourself up about it. Here. Let's get you taken care of." She offers and shortly thereafter calls her horse over and has it get down again before him, "Perhaps your friend is still alive. I am sure she is a fighter. Look at what she did to the other man..."
Stitches reaches forward to grab ahold of a patch of grass, clutching it between his cold fingers in denial, "She is alive...but...I have to be the one...to find her...I have to make sure she's...I promised I..." At best he appears to be delusional, running the dirt and grass blades through his fingers as though he is grasping at something. Whether this is from his mental state caused by his inability to handle complex emotions and what he means to people, including what they mean to him, or just from blood loss and lack of rest is the most uncertain thing about his current state.
Reidun shakes her head as she watches him and tries to coerce him again to move onto her horse's back, "Then you have to heal. Come on." .
At this point Stitches is easily moved, as though under the impression she will help him search. Still, as soon as he is properly seated on the horse, his eyes close and his head falls limply on the horse with the rest of his limbs dangling, finally passing out yet again to free his mind of its self torment. Reidun tuts the inside of her lips with her tongue as she frowns at him and shakes her head with a lowered brow, "The poor man," she says quietly as she leads him to her home, knowing no better place.
(Special thanks ot the player of Reidun for RPing this scene with me!)
