Nobody had bathed properly since the world ended, and it turned out that was the kind of thing that crept up on a person.
The copper tub sat steaming in the clearing with mountain herbs drifting off the surface, and the smell of it alone was enough to make Felicity's eyes sting in a way that had nothing to do with the smoke still sitting on the horizon, because clean had stopped meaning clean several days ago and started meaning rinsing blood off and calling it acceptable, and the tub was evidence that someone had decided acceptable wasn't good enough anymore and she was going to find out who and thank them sincerely.
Snow Team had noticed the tub. They had also noticed Felicity standing just outside the warmth of it with her hands clasped and her tail swaying with the uncertain energy of something that didn't know what to do with a situation this good, wearing clothes that were two sizes too large with the sleeves slipping over her knuckles, and the noticing had produced the specific collective stillness of a group of men applying a significant amount of effort to behaving themselves.
One cleared his throat and announced he needed to check his weapons. Another decision was suddenly urgent. A third developed a compelling interest in the far tree line. Nobody actually left.
Victor solved it by taking a position at one end of the clearing with his back turned and his arms crossed and his stance wide enough that the message was legible from any angle, and Voss mirrored him at the opposite end with the loose watchful posture of a man who could move in any direction without warning, and Finch planted himself along the perimeter and flicked his tail irritably at anyone who lingered, and the situation was, if not resolved, at least managed.
Rose stripped without hesitation or self-consciousness and stepped into the tub like it was hers by right, and Felicity followed with her cheeks burning, sliding into the water with an involuntary sound of relief that sent a visible tremor of suffering through the clearing and caused at least one man to close his eyes and think very hard about something else entirely.
The water came up to her shoulders, and the warmth sank into muscles she hadn't realised were locked tight, and her breath hitched once before coming out in a long, shaky exhale that Victor heard from across the clearing and absorbed without moving.
Rose sank beside her with a sigh of pure satisfaction. "Worth it," she muttered, and then let her eyes drift across the assembled men with the lazy amusement of someone conducting a survey. Several were staring at the dirt with tremendous focus. One was adjusting his weapon in a way that wasn't accomplishing anything. "Eyes front," Rose called pleasantly, "or I start naming names."
The resulting chaos was quietly gratifying. Boots became urgent, dirt became fascinating, and two men discovered simultaneously that they needed to be somewhere else, and Rose smiled the smile of a woman who had decided to enjoy every second of this and wasn't apologising for it.
Later, while Felicity dressed and the tub cooled, Rose drifted to Victor with her arms crossed and her eyes on the middle distance. "You're letting him get close," she said.
Victor didn't look at her. "I'm watching him."
"You always are," Rose said. "Doesn't mean you like it." His jaw tightened, and she tilted her head and studied him for a moment. "You don't have to like it," she added. "You just have to trust her." That earned her a glance, and Rose smirked. "Yeah," she said. "Thought so."
They gathered before dusk with weapons laid out and wounds fresh, one man bleeding steadily through a bandage, another holding his ribs with the careful stillness of someone who had learned that breathing shallowly hurt less, and Victor turned to Felicity with an expression that was quiet and certain and left no room for her to argue herself out of it.
"Show them," he said.
Snow Team braced collectively, the way people braced when they were about to witness something they didn't have a framework for yet.
Felicity stepped forward with her hands only slightly trembling and pressed them to the injured man's shoulder, and the warmth came the way it always came now, less like something she was producing and more like something she was allowing through, and the pain left his face in a single visible wave and the bleeding slowed and stopped and he rolled his shoulder and said "no pain" in a voice that sounded genuinely stunned, like he had expected to believe it less than he did.
The ripple that moved through Snow Team was not the ripple from the night before, not heat or instinct or the particular feral awareness of proximity, it was something quieter and more permanent, the specific shift of a group recalibrating what they understood a person to be capable of, and then another man stepped forward and then another, and her magic threaded deeper as it went, not just repairing but reinforcing, strength moving through tired muscles, reflexes sharpening, someone laughing with the breathless quality of a person whose body had just remembered what it felt like to be whole, someone else whispering something that sounded like genuine disbelief.
Victor's voice came through it all, steady and unhurried. "That's why she matters."
The eyes that had been tracking her with hunger an hour ago came down, and the adjustment was immediate and total, weapons held with more care, a few men touching the ground with their knuckles in a gesture that looked unconscious and old and like something the animal part of them had decided without consulting the rest, and someone said "protect the fox" quietly and nobody laughed because it hadn't been a joke.
Voss moved closer when the others stepped back, stopping just short of her space with his amber eyes on her face and something in them that wasn't assessment anymore. "Does it hurt?" he asked.
She shook her head.
He nodded once, slow and satisfied, like she had answered a question he'd been sitting with for longer than today. "Good," he said. "I was worried." And then he rested his hand on the top of her head, once, and again, a gesture so simple and so deliberate that Snow Team went completely still around them, and Felicity blinked up at him with an expression caught between surprise and something warmer than that, and Voss said "good fox" in a rumble that came from somewhere low in his chest, and withdrew his hand like a vow had been completed.
Victor watched every inch of it and did not move, because it didn't feel like a challenge and it didn't feel wrong and the part of him that understood structure understood what had just happened without needing it explained, and he stepped forward when it was done and rested his hand at the small of her back, solid and unhurried, and Snow Team felt it settle into place around them like something being written into the rules of the world they were building in the wreckage of the old one.
Felicity stood in the clearing with healing still warm in her hands and her husbands on either side and the weight of fourteen men who had just decided something about her pressing gently at her back, and she didn't know yet what any of it was going to cost her.
She would.