He tends to her injuries – carefully, quietly, hardly speaking. The only sound she thinks he has made is the subtlest of murmurs from his lips, something like "Hold still, love."

Love. Why does he call her this? Of the first part she is uncertain, but she knows she hears the word "love." Perhaps for him it is just a reflex, a common term of endearment among his people. Among her own, such a word would never be used.

His accent is strange. She wishes he would speak again so she could try to decipher it. Or perhaps she wishes it just to hear him speak. His silence is unnerving. She has seen battles and heard the very cries of death, but this utter silence is worse.

When she brings her scrutinizing gaze away from his solid hands, the coarse line of his jaw, his tangle of dark hair, to his eyes, it is then that she loses hope.

They hold many emotions – kindness tainted with a mixture of fear and anger. (Anger at what?) But what scares her the most is the emptiness, the hollow glaze that coats them. If not for his eyes, his firm-set mouth and furrowed brows would seem mere concentration.

She knows he cannot feel her watching him, or he would have tried to hide what she saw in his eyes. She knows he is working because he could not bear to leave her in such a state, because he feels it is his duty, because the grim, painful end is near.

In his eyes, she knows that nothing can be done.