Archive of Our Own ^beta

Barbara had cried for most of the afternoon as she walked back and forth along the waiting room in front of the troll market infirmary.
Blinky and Aaarghhh had tried to comfort her by continuing to tell her that it was not her fault and that changeling would be fine, but she did not believe it.

How could Walt have done such a stupid thing as launching himself to her rescue with open wings while a dozen Goblins were throwing knives and sharp objects at him?
He had been a fool. That was all he was.

Yet Barbara could not stop resenting herself.
If only she had not fallen into that ambush.

If only she had managed to fight better with Daylight and not sprain her ankle at the very riskiest moment.

She kept cursing herself for it.

Now Walt, the man (or rather the changeling) who had previously pretended to love her but was actually her enemy and finally now represented her ally, lay inert somewhere in the troll infirmary, along with Vendel who was treating him.

Barbara looked down at her hands with disdain. She was so good at healing humans, of course, but at that moment her medical skills were useless.

She could not cure trolls.

As far as she could tell, it needed molten rock and a dash of magic, and well, she could handle neither in the other.

At one point the old goat troll emerged from the infirmary, carefully peeling back the curtain of cloth strips that divided them. With his blind eyes he looked around, sniffing the air to see who was in front of him.

"How is he?" Barbara snapped instantly. There was no need to specify that she was asking about Walt; after all, they had arrived there together.

"Better," croaked Vendel, sighing deeply. "I never thought I would cure a changeling sooner or later. I can't say I'm satisfied with what I did, but I did what I could. His body is more fragile than a troll's, and the wounds are reflected in both his human and troll forms.... I could only operate on the latter."

Barbara's deep blue eyes filled with awareness and her gaze became more intense.

"I tried to advise him to get help from you Trollhunter.... From what Blinky explained to me I learned you are one of those humans dedicated to caring for their own kind." Vendel sighed again, this time more tired and annoyed. He massaged his stony meninges with his old hand and shook his head. "But that changeling is stubborn. More stubborn than I expected actually.”

Barbara did not let him add anything else. She nodded gratefully and made her way past the infirmary entrance, deftly dodging Vendel's massive body and running inside the stone structure.

It was inside the Heartstone, and the orange crystal walls glowed with a warm, pulsing light, as if it were something alive and not just a mineral.

When Barbara saw Walter sitting on a stone table her heart lost a beat.

There he was, legs dangling in his human form, his skin full of scars one of which, on his arm, was still fresh.

The man had a thread in his mouth and was stitching up the wound himself with the needle, as if that was the best option to close the cut as quickly as possible.

He did not even seem to notice her.

She stood there for a moment contemplating her former enemy, then took courage and bridged the distance between them with wide strides.

He heard the sound of her footsteps, and when he saw her coming strutting and furious he seemed almost startled.

In an instant he changed form, perhaps from stress or from not allowing her to see him so vulnerable in his human form. After all, they had never reached a level of intimacy that would allow him to see him without his shirt on.

"Walter Strickler." She hissed, frowning once she got in front of him.

He formed a silly, drawn-out smile on his face, full of nervousness and embarrassment.

"B-barbara!" He stammered before being hit on the arm by a not-so-gentle punch.

"Ouch!" He grunted, scowling in turn. "What was that!"

"THAT!" repeated Barbara before she had to pause briefly to try to gain a modicum of self-control. "That's for scaring me."

Walter rubbed his sore arm with a grimace of pain and resentment.

Barbara felt guilty for beating him. She pulled herself onto her toes and hurried over to him, kissing his cheek with a quick touch.
He widened his eyes, turning back to her as soon as Barbara pulled away.

"And this is for saving me." She concluded, blushing a little.

Walter touched his cheek in a trance as his jade-colored skin took on a much darker tinge on his cheeks.

Was he blushing? It seemed so to Barbara.

She looked at him for a long moment, and he returned her gaze with equal intensity. They would have remained like that for quite a while if only Barbara had not made up her mind to speak.

"You were really stupid. You shouldn't have done that."

"I'm aware of that, I acted on instinct, but that's not why I regret it. You could have died."

Barbara huffed and rolled her eyes. "Please, I definitely would not have died at the hands of the goblins!"

Walter raised an eyebrow in a totally sarcastic
manner. "Goblins armed with knives." He insisted, and at the now Barbara merely smiled at him defiantly.

"I could have done just fine on my own."

"Oh sure, you were just on the ground, unarmed, surrounded by angry goblins."

“Do you underestimate the trollhunter's abilities?"

Walter shrugged, a small grin beginning to form on his stone lips.

"I'm just a pretty realistic guy."

"You know Walt, you don't necessarily have to be made of stone and have gronknuts to be able to kick enemies' asses."

At this Walter was stunned. He opened his mouth wordlessly and stood looking at her as she smiled proudly.

"T-that's not what..." He stammered, trying to catch up.

"As I think you have learned by now, I am able to beat an adult troll, or rather a changeling, with just the use of an old broom so..."

"OKAY, okay I get the point. You are very strong, but please let's not talk about the broom episode anymore."

Barbara burst into a small laugh and continued to smile winningly at the troll in front of her. He, on the other hand, was completely red from losing that little battle of theirs.

"And by the way for the record, I never underestimated your strength," he whispered embarrassedly as he lowered his gaze to the floor.

Barbara felt a little sorry for him. He looked like a child who has just been scolded by the teacher, rather ironic.

She smiled softly at him and placed a hand on his, causing him to look up at her again.

"I know," he whispered. "And indeed I thank you for helping me. Most trolls would have simply run away but you.... Well, you took a couple of stabs for me."

Now it was Walt's turn to laugh. "I think I'm used to it by now, don't worry."

At this statement, however, Barbara's smile faded a bit. She remembered the cuts and scars on Walt's body that she had never seen and realized that this was the truth.

It was not the first time she had seen bruises poking out of his sweater, but between those and the flood of marks faded by time, but symbols of a life of abuse and danger, there was a lot of difference.

"About that..." She began in a cautious voice, but from the look in Walt's eyes he seemed to sense immediately where she was going with this.

"I need to see your injuries."

"I can take care of that myself." He grunted defensively. He did not mean to be rude, but in his troll form his voice was harsher than his human one.

Barbara scowled and crossed her arms. "No you can't."

"Yes I can."

"I say no. Go ahead, change for me. It's a doctor's order."

Walter raised his eyebrows. "Since when do you reserve the right to treat me like your dog on a leash?”

"You know very well that's not how I see you." She said, raising her voice a little.

She knew how sensitive Walt was on the subject of well... Being treated like a dog on a leash. He had been created with that purpose, but he found it incredibly humiliating and did not like to submit in any way.

Their gazes met, and for a moment Barbara feared she had hurt him. Her gaze softened and she tried to smooth things over with a joke, as they always did.

"You're more of a cat person, aren't you?"

Unexpectedly Walt smiled at the joke. There was no laughter, but it seemed that this had somehow succeeded in relieving the tension.

"Well, you have a point," he sighed, changing form into a small beam of light. "Though you know my kind find them delicious, don't they?"

Now, in his human form, that teasing smirk looked even sexier to Barbara than it did before.

Walt had a completely natural charm, which obviously had not escaped the doctor's notice at their first meeting, or second, or third...

She blushed a little and adjusted her glasses on the root of her nose before extending a hand toward Walt so that he instinctively placed his arm over her, without her forcing it or anything like it.

Once Walt obeyed the silent order, she began to examine the scars, trying to focus on them and not on how hard her heart was beating.

"That's a nice cut," she commented distractedly.

"Not the worst I've ever received," Walt replied, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly.

Barbara allowed herself for a moment to run her gaze over Walt's battered body.

"I can see that..."

He seemed to be embarrassed for a moment longer and then sighed, trying to relieve the tension he felt.

He looked away, uncomfortable with his vulnerability, as she studied his wounds and grabbed a bottle of disinfectant to run over the long cut.

"How did you get them?" She pronounced as she poured some on. She wanted to distract him as much as possible because she imagined how much it might hurt.

He hissed at the sizzle of the substance being poured over his arm, but did not hint at complaining.

"Well, you know. When you're a spy for a long time you get into fights a lot."

"And this is the price you have to pay?"

Walt smiled sadly. "The price sadly is much higher. These are just reminders left by my opponents."

"It's because you didn't take good care of them."

"Sorry, I have a degree in history, not medicine," he joked, and Barbara smiled at him.

"Don't worry, you are lucky that yours truly is one of the best doctors around.”

"Oh, how lucky I am!" Echoed Walt in a voice forcibly sweetened like honey.

They both laughed a little and then Barbara carefully dressed Walt's wound. He dared not complain about anything.

Barbara's hands were like phantom caresses: incredibly light and soft. Just the fact that she was now touching him made his heart beat like a drum, and his body quickly began to warm as he watched her act with such care.

No one had ever treated him with such care.

Once finished, she examined his body quickly.
"Of course there are quite a few, the scars I mean."

Walt blushed and lowered his gaze. "As I said, I have many enemies."

"Maybe too many judging by the nastiness of some of the cuts." Barbara rested her hand on Walter's chest, stroking the scars that rose dangerously close to where his heart lay, human and not at the same time.

"You never told me that..." She murmured finally with some bitterness.

"I didn't want you to worry and then well.... They were related to my changeling nature so they would be hard to explain."

"Is that why you wear long neck sweaters? To hide the marks?"

Hers was a sensible question, but Walt couldn't help but laugh a little at her.

"I dress that way because it's tremendously stylish; my scars have nothing to do with it." He replied, but soon after saying it out loud, his confidence began to waver.

In short that was the truth, but perhaps an unconscious part of his brain had reasoned as Barbara had when he chose to start wearing certain garments.

After all, he hated those scars. Some he actually didn't find bad and they were related to memories of a thousand adventures but most of them were reminders.

A reminder that no one could ever love an
impure man like him. That everyone would always seek him out to hunt him down and kill him.

Barbara seemed to notice Walt's somber look that had lost all accent of playfulness so she hurried to remedy it.

"I like them you know? They give you something lived-in," she whispered and Walter looked up at her.

His emerald green eyes stared at her with such intensity that it was now Barbara's turn to blush.

"Thank you..." He whispered in an even lower voice.

They stood looking at each other for long moments before she could pull her hand back and, embarrassed, seek any kind of distraction from those eyes that a few months earlier had made her fall madly in love with the man in front of her.

"Was that why you seemed to want to avoid sex?" She asked, trying to tease him as she retreated a few steps back and put her medical instruments away. “It's because you didn’t want to show me that side of you.”

"I never wanted to avoid sex. I mean the time would have come for that too I suppose, but I was unmasked too soon (sigh)."

She rolled her eyes as she heard his dramatic tone. "Yes, of course," she teased him. "It took you two weeks to give me a simple kiss, going at this speed we would have had sex after a year and a half."

"A woman like you deserve to be courted Barbara," he insisted. "Besides, if you wanted something more you could have taken it. I wouldn't have hesitated to give you what you needed."

And there they were. They had resumed their exchange of banter as they so liked to do.
"What makes you think I needed you or your cock?"

He grinned wickedly and his eyes flashed dangerously.

"The way you moaned into my mouth when I barely touched you was proof enough but-"

(Barbara was seriously afraid of what he would say.)

Walter touched his nose. "I'm a troll, I have an excellent sense of smell and the smell of the pheromones you released when we were together was practically suffocating."

His mocking smile was wiped away by a blow on the head given with a makeshift stick resting against the table.

"Ouch!" He groaned, massaging his nose as Barbara, red in the face and definitely frowning too much, looked at him as an invitation to shut up. Alternatively, it was obvious she was going to beat him up again.

"Is this how you thank me for just stitching up your arm? You're an asshole."

He resumed smiling, noticing only then how beautiful she was when she was angry. "No doubt about that, but anyway, yes, thank you Barbara..."

She put down her cane and continued to glare at him for a few seconds. Then she smiled and let her embarrassment slip away as she rolled her eyes.

"Whatever. Next time, though, remember that I can take care of myself."

"Fine, I'll only come to you if you beg my name."

"You know I won't."

"You already have," he murmured, staring at her mischievously.
"And you can never deny that.”