By the time they reached the infirmary, Ber had a flickering awareness of the world around him. Time passed in a vague blur of too-loud noises that didn’t make sense punctuated by starbursts of pain every time he was jostled the wrong way. He was unaware of the hands that came and went or the voices that rose and fell as the healers above him assessed the damage, asked the soldiers who had delivered their patient or his Dresmondi sentinel for the pertinent information, and determined the first course of action: a shoulder reduction while he was still unconscious and relaxed.

The soldier was positioned on his back, and one of the healers unbound the makeshift sling that supported the dislocated shoulder. Holding onto the soldier’s arm, the healer carefully rotated the joint until—

Consciousness fully returned with a scream and a blazing pain in his shoulder. Fighting the hands that tried to keep him flat, Ber lurched partially upright and away from the side of his wounded shoulder. Eyes flew open but barely had a chance to register anything before he was twisting to the side and emptying his stomach of its contents. Stars, he hurt - everywhere. His shoulder was aflame, and he dared not move it. His body ached. His head pounded with a ferocity that had him closing his eyes once more as he tried to breathe through the pain, but even breathing, partially propped up like this, resulted in sharp pains in his side that reduced him to taking shallow breaths that felt wholly inadequate despite their frequency. With a groan that escaped through gritted teeth, Ber gracelessly flopped back down.

He felt like he could sleep for a year, and if doing so meant that he could not hurt, he would gladly do so.

If he laid still, eyes closed against a too bright world, and regulated his breathing, everything faded into a dull, roaring pain. Ber resolved to do just that. Except someone kept nudging him to sit up again. With a noise of complaint, he tried to dissuade them from that particular course of action, and when that failed, he blearily squinted up at an unfamiliar face. Promoted by a hand on his back - possibly more, if Zevran heeded the healer’s request to help him get Ber into a sitting position - the soldier sat upright, wrapping his good arm around his side with a hiss. Slowly, dimly, he became aware that the noise he heard were voices, but it took another few moments before the meaningless sounds finally coalesced into words.

It was just as well that they weren’t directed at him. The healer had handed the Dresmondi a healing potion and told him to make himself useful instead of simply standing there if he was determined to stay. Zevran was to give Ber the potion while the healer busied himself with bandaging the claw wounds on his patient and fitting the wounded soldier with a sling.

A royal guard entered into the infirmary with a very specific task: find the Dresmondi and escort him back to his room. None of this was something a foreigner needed to be witnessing. It was an embarrassing display, and the only reason he was audience to it at all was because of his presence at a function he never should have been attending in the first place.

"Excuse me, Zevran." The guard would say upon finding him, more than willing to interrupt whatever conversation was being had, "I've been ordered to escort you to your room." The accommodations the Dresmondi had been given upon coming to Nevermere was more than generous. In fact, every aspect of his time here in Nevermere had been gracious, far more than anything a Dresmondi could have imagined or expected.

The guard wouldn't touch him, but he would expect the man to react promptly. Assuming all went well without any kind of push back, the guard would take Zevran to his room and inform the Dresmondi that he was to remain within it until further notice. A different guard would be posted outside to ensure just that.

Zevran pressed his lips into a thin line and looked away as the healer began to work on Ber, wincing at the sound of the shoulder popping back into place and Ber's following scream of pain. He almost had to step away when Ber vomited onto the floor, finding it difficult to keep his own stomach contents inside of him. Vomit had never been something he was particularly good at dealing with.

But then the healer was asking for help to sit Ber up and he obliged, though kept his eyes steadily averted from the puddle next to the bed. He tried to be gentle as he used his hands to slowly raise his friend. "I'm sorry," he mumbled when Ber winced, wishing more than anything that the wolf had simply attacked someone else in the ball. Someone who wasn't important to Zevran.

Taking the healing potion, Zevran shifted so that he could prop his knee onto the bed behind Ber, allowing the soldier to rest more against his body. "Okay, you gotta drink this so you can start healing up," he offered in encouragement as his hands came around the front of Ber, lifting the potion to the soldier's lips.

Not quite comprehending what he was seeing, Ber stared at the wounds on his arm as the healer tore away the tattered fabric of his suit and bandaged the injuries. That was— That was Thom’s suit they were ripping up. It was bloody now. And torn. All of a sudden, sadness welled up in him. Temperance had paid for the tailoring of that suit, and now it was ruined.

Belatedly the realization that he was in the infirmary struck him. That made sense, he supposed, because he was very clearly hurting, which meant he was injured, but— There was something there, eluding his grasp, so he latched on to the next question— But how did he get here? Feeling like his mind was wading through waist-deep mud, Ber was still trying to puzzle that one out when Zevran got his attention. That was who he was leaning against? That was nice. Unaware of the delay in his very dazed reactions, he turned his head to look at his friend, though the movement set off a fresh wave of pain. What was Zevran doing here? “Are you hurt too?” Trying to string words together was only marginally easier than trying to connect one thought to another.

The Dresmondi was saying something, and the words took longer than they should have to register. His gaze shifted from his friend to the flask in his hand. For a long moment, Ber blinked at the potion before reaching up a hand to hold onto the flask as well as it was guided to his lips. The healing potion went down easily, and he let his arm fall, wincing as the healer, who had started poking around his head, hit a tender spot. Everything hurt. Why did everything hurt? Wasn’t there— At a glacial pace, his mind started to piece together what he remembered. There was the ball tonight. That was why he was in Thom’s suit. But why— Stars, his head hurt. “What happened?”

Zevran tsked at Ber's movements, now calming down a bit that he had got the potion down the soldier's throat. The healer was also quite insistent that he would be fine, and he was not in any imminent danger of dying. "Stop moving, you'll make it worse," he chastised, setting the now empty potion bottle to the side.

He continued to support Ber as the healer worked on the gashes on his friend's arm. "No, I'm not hurt." How did he even begin to sum up what had occurred in that ballroom? The panic in his mind had allowed him to forget everything that led up to the wolf creature appearing, but now it all flooded back in. "Oh... oh no." He whispered, half to himself, as he recalled the words he had shouted in the room. Why had he done that? He had been so angry, hadn't even thought before he'd said those words against the King.

Swallowing hard, he shook his head, speaking in a bit of a daze, "Regan... She came to tell us the King didn't want me there and that she was going to escort me out. I... said things I shouldn't have, very loudly, and then another soldier got involved and he was shouting, but then... he turned into this... thing. This wolf creature. And he attacked you, threw you all the way across the room..."

The healer glanced between Zevran and where Rune sat off to the side, perhaps coming to the realization that an outsider had seen something he shouldn't have. But Zevran was too busy slowly sliding into despair over what he had done. Unless it was forgotten in the fray of dealing with the creature, those words, so brazenly against the ruler here... They could cost him everything.

As if in confirmation of his fears, another soldier appeared in the infirmary, speaking up immediately about how he had come to escort him to his rooms. Zevran stared at the guard with no small amount of horror, glancing briefly at Ber before looking back to the guard. He didn't want to leave Ber, but he also didn't want to cause anymore trouble than he already had.

Swallowing hard, he slowly eased out from behind Ber, waiting for the healer to either take over or find someone else to help him. "I.. I'm sorry. I want to stay, but..." he said to Ber, casting a glance at the guard again.

Relief flickered through him at the news that Zevran was uninjured, but it was soon overshadowed. Sparked by his friend’s words, bits and pieces of the events of the hour prior began to return to Ber. Though the details were hazy, he remembered Regan’s approach, remembered Zevran’s response, and then, with perhaps not as much regret as a good soldier ought to have felt, remembered his own impassioned defense of his friend. Even with his head pounding and shoulder throbbing and body aching, the righteous anger started to flicker back to life, a little blaze in his chest that valiantly tried to chase away the fog in his mind.

“That wasn’t fair,” He reiterated finally, when the words fell into place. “Letting you come and then kicking you out.” Zevran seemed to feel bad about yelling, but Ber couldn’t quite find it within himself to feel the same. Not— Not entirely. He regretted that it had been Regan that he’d shouted at. But he didn’t regret standing up for his friend, even to a superior.

It was the part that Ber couldn’t recall that he didn’t know how to respond to. The initial disbelief - that one of their own would unleash a werewolf in a crowded throne room - disappeared quickly because his injuries, the bandaged wounds on his arms, were proof enough of that. But attacked by a werewolf, thrown across the room - he thought maybe he ought to have been horrified but all he could think was that at least that explained why he hurt so much. Maybe the horror would register later, when he could properly wrap his mind around not only that it had happened but that it had happened to him.

“I don’t—” The words were quiet and clearly confused. “Why don’t I remember that.”

The healer said something about temporary amnesia not being uncommon when people struck their heads very hard. The memories would return as he healed. Ber thought that if he had been thrown across the room, he’d probably hit his head very hard indeed.

Silence fell. He was content to sit there, propped up against his friend, with his eyes closed and not have to think about anything. The exhaustion had returned with a vengeance, and a nap sounded very appealing. Though vaguely aware of the healer’s ministrations and an unfamiliar voice talking, only when his support carefully shifted away did Ber blink open his eyes again. As hands guided him to lay back on the bed, he followed Zevran’s gaze to see a guard standing there. Ber blinked. With the Dresmondi’s words, understanding dawned, and swallowing down his own disappointment, he slowly nodded, looking back over at his friend.

“It’s fine,” He said, attempting to reassure but uncertain as to how successful he was. Truthfully he didn’t want Zevran to leave any more now than he had in the throne room, but the tiny spark of righteous anger had burned itself out. “I’ll be fine. Just gonna sleep anyway.”

He could already see the warning in the guard's eyes that he expected Zevran to simply obey, and there would indeed be further consequences if he didn't. Zevran was simply torn, the despair over leaving his injured friend alone warring with the despair of possibly losing aid for Dresmond. But he couldn't put anyone above his kingdom, no matter how much they meant to him.

So he stepped to the guard, swallowing hard. "I'll send word to @temperance so she knows what has happened and so she can come stay with you." He glanced from Ber to the healer and back again before sulking off to his room.