Daniel had been injured before, of course. Plenty of times. Severe physical trauma was an occupational hazard for the kind of people who saved the world. That didn’t make the fact that he was practically unable to stand any more palatable, or his frustration at how slowly he was recovering any less present. Back when he’d first been almost turned into paste during his first foray into hero-ing, he’d been patched up by magical healers and he’d been back on his feet in a day. Sure, everything had tasted like copper for a bit and his left eye had been colourblind ever since, but the ability to go back out into the world in almost no time at all had been more than welcome. 

Over the years, he’d picked up some more grievous injuries and magic hadn’t always been available. Healing then had taken forever. This, the hospital, the healing that was done here, was somehow better and worse. They had marvels of what he soon learned was technology, not magic, and their understanding of the human body far surpassed that of any medical professional he’d ever met back home. That wasn’t saying much, of course, when the average prescription for an injury was rubbing some leeches on it, but even by the standards of the most well-regarded healer, what this hospital had access to was almost inconceivable. What it didn’t have access to, however, was magic. 

And both their injuries had been extensive. Whatever high-speed collision he and the Demon Queen -- Eliza, apparently -- had been a part of had left them both with a skeleton that made soft crunching noises when they moved too much. Being able to move around using wheeled chairs was very welcome, and he was grateful to have that kind of mobility to move around once he’d started feeling a bit better, even if he did need help getting in and out of it. 

Apparently the insurance thing was important, though. They were going to have to leave the hospital soon, and he wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to move around when he was pretty sure that going down the stairs would be a matter of trying to bounce softly. He’d been going through the girl’s effects, all contained in a barely-useful little satchel, and had been doing his best to learn things, but it had been very slow going. Everything was obscure, with numbers on every piece of paper or… whatever the hard little rectangles were. He had asked one nurse about them and the look she had given him had reassured him that they were so ubiquitous, not knowing about them would be met with suspicion. 

And suspicion was something he’d slowly become accustomed to. He and Eliza never left the other out of their sight, which amused the hospital staff to no end and made keeping up the charade of their relationship a lot easier, if a bit more involved. Pretending to be her partner required a lot of lying through his teeth and giving nurses that smile people give their more politically contrary relatives around the holidays. For her part, Eliza was doing a better job, falling into her role as a doting ‘boyfriend’ with ease, grinning at him when no-one was watching. 

At least they could drop the pretense when nobody else was around. It was necessary. Both of them were having more difficulty dealing with the changes than either had anticipated. Daniel had on more than one occasion been on the receiving end of transforming magic, having spent a week and a half as a particularly grizzled dog, complete with a scar over his eye, as a result of a cursed sword he’d picked up. It had barely slowed him down, and when he turned back, he’d hit the ground running and continued with his quest. When he thought back on it, he mostly remembered the fleas. 

This was different. Instead of being turned into a strange creature, forced to try to walk on four legs without crashing face-first into the ground every other step, this was so close to right and yet completely wrong. It was worse than being cursed for a variety of reasons. For one, there was no expected way out. This world, after all, had no magic. He also didn’t want to bank on the little trick that had caused him to literally survive death to work a second time. The other thing was that the similarity to the shape he used to have (no tail, two legs, hands) made him occasionally forget that this wasn’t his old body, and that made the discrepancies all the more upsetting. 

The breasts were a major one. They got in the way, and when he sat down in the chair, they bounced ever so slightly, pointing out their own presence like an uninvited guest coughing politely to remind him they weren’t leaving any time soon. He tried not to look down too much, but that led to him accidentally punching himself in the chest every once in a while, and that led to point number two. 

This body was so damn sensitive. Over the years he’d built up a tremendous tolerance for pain. He had enjoyed soft touches and fabrics, of course, but you can only get thrown through walls so many times before you get a little desensitized, and he hated the fact that everything was felt so much more keenly now. A bump to the chest was somehow enough to interrupt his train of thought dramatically. His skin was so absurdly sensitive, the sheets were bothering him. He’d slept in full plate armour in freezing temperatures only days ago, but the fact that the sheets of the bed were not soft enough kept him awake at night. It bothered him more than his healing bones and aching joints, in fact. 

The girl, Sally, had also had much worse vision than him, which was frustrating. He had to squint to read things from a distance, and it made him feel even more like he was just cut off from things, a constant reminder that this body was a barrier between him and the world. When he gripped the sheets in frustration, he could even feel that she had been weaker than him. He simply wasn’t able to hold on to things as easily, and he’d relied more than once on his ability to hold on to the edge of a precipice, hanging over certain death and/or doom with one hand, only to pull himself up at the last second. 

Eliza wasn’t doing much better, although it wouldn’t give Daniel a lot of satisfaction to know that. He didn’t delight in the suffering of others, and the Demon Queen was suffering. She had, initially, been gratified to learn that she was healing faster than him, but that had brought with it the honour of being the first to go to the bathroom on her own. The Demon Queen, who had been raised by a cruel father in a cruel family, raised to take over a family of conquerors, who had fought for her life more than once growing up in the name of ‘training’, cried quietly as she sat in the bathroom. It was torture to her. 

Not helping was the fact that the facilities had seemingly been designed by an inhuman monster, placing the washbasin -- mirror and all -- directly opposite the toilet. In the midst of her discovering the wrongness of her new body, she had been forced to enjoy her reflection looking back at her. She had tried, through her inexplicable tears, to understand why it bothered her so much, to see an unfamiliar face in the mirror, a week-long beard on the square jaw, heavy eyebrows over eyes that always seemed to be glowering even when she didn’t mean to. It was the opposite of the person she’d once tried to be. There was none of the regal attitude in this person’s appearance, big square shoulders slumped that didn’t so much increase her stature as add to what already felt like a big, lumpy mass. 

Not that she showed Daniel any of this, of course. She had been killed by him once before, she wasn’t going to show him weakness now. That felt downright silly. So instead she groaned into her hands, too big and hairy but perfect for hiding her face in, took a deep breath and wiped her tears, before heading back to her bed, where a set of clothes -- provided graciously by the hospital staff -- was waiting for her. This was their last day here, the room needed clearing, all that jazz. 

Daniel could tell she’d been crying, because Daniel was not an idiot and someone who spent thirty minutes in the bathroom and comes out with red eyes and a congestion doesn’t leave much to the imagination for an observant second party. He didn’t say anything, and neither of them acknowledged what had happened, both of them instead trying to get dressed under the blankets with limbs that were still black and blue and, in several cases, wrapped in plaster. Like two people trying to play Twister while doing their best impression of a haunted bedsheet, it took a comically long time. Either of them might have laughed if it wasn’t for the physical agony or the existential dread. Finally, both of them sat in their wheelchairs for the last time, as they’d be taken back by the hospital staff upon leaving, although they’d be supplied crutches. Daniel knew how to use those, at least. Eliza didn’t, but she was a quick learner. 

“So,” Eliza said, finally, her voice a low whisper. She hated the sound of it, and this was the easiest way to try and avoid how much it grated her. Daniel glared and wheeled around a little bit, feeling idle and hating every second of it. 

“So,” he responded. He knew they would probably have to talk at some point, although there was a part of him that just wanted to continue their battle and see who could gently nudge the other down the stairs first. In their current state, that was probably all it would take, after all. On the other hand, he did want to hear what she had to say. How they were going to proceed from here.

“I’d like to…” Eliza said and then paused for a moment, chewing on her thoughts like a piece of food that had been stuck behind her teeth. “I’d like to discuss the rules of engagement,” she finally said. Daniel looked at her.

“Elaborate,” he finally demanded, turning his chair to look at her. He was happy that, now that there was no hospital staff around, they could at least speak frankly. He was tired of calling her ‘sweetheart’. 

“I think that, if we keep this up, we might end up doing this forever,” the Demon Queen mused. “There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to kill me, and vice versa.” Daniel wasn’t so sure about that -- he was the hero, after all -- but even without her magic, Eliza had been a formidable foe. And she once again had the physical upper hand. He just nodded. “If we kill each other at the same time, we might end up waking up in another world again,” Eliza assumed incorrectly. “Instead, I would like to… propose a truce, of sorts.” Daniel frowned. Over the years of his world-saving career, he had heard many speeches from villains, liches and monsters about how they should work together. His knee-jerk response was to slap it down, but he figured he had no reason not to hear her out this time.

“I’m listening,” he said. Worst case scenario, it would give him the time to heal, regain his strength, train this body enough to defeat her once and for all, and then get to finding a way home now that there was no chance of her trying to reclaim her old throne. 

“You’re lost here,” Eliza said, and despite the fact that she sat hunched over, he could hear the haughty tone in her voice, like she was pretending that she wasn’t in the exact same situation he was in. He was about to scoff, when she continued. “And so am I.” Well, that took him by surprise. “I propose that, since we’re from the same world, we stick together. We have the same understanding of things, and people here think we’re mad as soon as we say anything that contradicts what they know to be true.” 

She wasn’t wrong. Every time they’d gone off-script, the doctors and nurses had looked at them like they’d grown an extra head. “And then what? Find a way back, go back to killing each other? Why not do that here?” Daniel asked. 

Eliza shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “I have my reasons, but let’s just say I currently have no intention to head back.” 

“So you aim to subjugate this world, instead?” he asked, accusing her with a glare. Eliza made a face like she’d been told to clean a bathroom with a toothbrush. 

“What? No, this place is awful.” Daniel shrugged. She wasn’t wrong. “Right now, I want to get out of…” She looked down for a second, and a surge of sympathy shot through Daniel, one he quickly repressed. The Demon Queen looked so downcast and vulnerable, he’d almost forgotten who and what she was. It got even worse when she looked up at him. “I don’t want to die here, hero.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had the chance to figure it out.” 

“Hrm,” Daniel said. He needed to think about things. He didn’t have a lot to go back to, all things considered. He’d been given a small estate as a reward for a favour he’d done for a princess, and after spending a summer there trying to retire, the threat of a new Demon Lord (or Lady) had come as a relief more than anything. Sure, he had some people, but those would already be mourning him. Even if he believed Eliza’s little sob story, he wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was here. He didn’t know enough about this world, where he was and what had happened, and his unusually small frame did nothing but constantly distract him. “Very well,” he said. “We find a solution, or at least some answers, to where we are right now.” He glared at her again. “You make one wrong move and I’ll come for you. You know that.”

“I know, hero,” Eliza growled. “And that goes both ways. The moment I see you try anything, to invoke one of your gods, I will come down on you like hellfire.”

“You and I both know there’s not an ounce of magic in this world. We would’ve seen evidence of it by now.”

Eliza shot him a glance he wasn’t sure how to decipher, but there was a smile in her eyes he absolutely distrusted. “Of course,” she said as the nurses came in to escort them to the exit. “So you agree?”

“Yes, sweetheart,” he said, his voice sugary sweet in front of the nurses. “I agree.” 

“I look forward to it, darling,” Eliza said, clearly delighting in how uncomfortable Daniel seemed to be. 

He was about to say something in response when he blacked out in his chair, and he found himself standing in a sea of blackness.