So Sally Can Wait

[The Delaney Twins]

ooc: Guys, this post is kind of a belated resolution to the unfortunate situation that Kennedy was dumped in at the end of the last battle, and also about a hundred other less unfortunate situations that no one has probably noticed but which I wish to resolve anyway =]
And also, it's going to be very very long, so I'm posting it as separate replies. In different POVs, if it isn't confusing enough already. Instead of using the colour things I've just made a bunch of mini-sigs, 'cause it'd be like reading a post that a bag of Skittles threw up over, otherwise.
PSA over and out XD

Suddenly, the bubble of tension that had been welling up around Anna Stewart for the last fifteen minutes burst like a balloon.
(The event was as harmless as a balloon’s pop, but just as loud.)
“OK, Lou,” she said very calmly to the man who ended up restraining her a couple of seconds later, after she had tried to bolt out the door of the hospital. “OK. You can just let me go now, OK? I’m very calm. I won’t do it again, promise.”
“Yeah, right. You know what? I remember yesterday vividly, and, turns out, I wasn’t born in it,” he said sarcastically.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” she bit, and struggled to get out of his arms, but it was like trying to get out of a grip of steel. Which wasn’t surprising, seeing as Lou controlled metal.
He sighed. “Anna, stop it. Sit down.”
“I can’t sit down!” she spat back at him. “What the hell sort of help is sitting down? You know what would help? If I was out there, Lou, if I was actually with the goddàmn casualties, but oh no, we have to sit here doing sweet fùcking all while the Field Carers get to go out there and save the day. So no. No, I’m not going to sit down.”
Louis Fowles rolled his eyes, then fixed her with a blank stare. “And what are you going to do? You would have been made a Field Carer if you had a power which would stop you from getting killed or that’d be any use outside a hospital. And somehow I don’t think that the ability to heal the common cold is really going to get you very far out there.”
She glared at him. “I have other abilities.”
“Other useful abilities?”
“Shut up. I need to get out there.”
“No you don’t. You think you do, but you don’t. Just you wait half an hour. An hour, tops. As soon as they start coming back you’ll have more work than you can handle.”
“It’s not like it’s going to matter by the time they get them out here,” she muttered bitterly. “What difference does it make if we’re not there quickly? Seven minutes to brain death, Lou.”
“And the Field Carers will take care of that,” he said. “You need to calm down. What sort of use will you be if you’re getting on like this? They’ll start coming soon. Go wash your face, or something.”
“I don’t want to.”
“…Anna, if someone dies on your watch because you’re frustrated–”
Her face changed at that. She hesitated, eyes widening, struggling arms slackening, and then muttered, “Fine. Fine. Let me go.”
She pulled free of Lou’s imprisoning arms, and stalked off to the bathroom.

It was ironic that a couple of moments after having decided to calm down and not to wish that she were out in the battle, the battle came to Anna.
As she splashed her face with water from the sinks and took deep cracking breaths to drain the well of tension within her, the mirror in front of her appeared to shiver strangely. She spied the movement in the glass and turned to look behind her, wondering briefly if someone had come into the room, but no one had. She looked in the mirror again, and there was no movement.
She shuddered, dismissing what she saw as proof that Lou was right, that she was letting this affect her too much, and walked over to the paper towel dispenser. She grabbed a rough square of practically-card, and buried her dripping face in it. The material scratched over her skin, and the feeling woke her up, made her feel alert, focused again.
And just as well, because as she crumpled the material in her hands and moved to throw it in the bin, an almighty crash sounded from behind her and shuddered through the room.
Anna wheeled around, and saw the mirror shuddering as if it was water that had had a rock thrown through it; just as unstable, insubstantial. Then she became aware of shaking and shuddering breaths.
The moment that she looked down to see their source there came a piercing shriek that rent the air. A call for help.
Two people were on the floor; a girl and a boy. And immediately Anna’s well-trained eyes glanced over them and assessed the situation.
The girl was in a bad state. She was hysterical, she was covered in blood, and she had sustained some horrendous burns to her forearms: the skin was puckered and angry-red, and her fingers were on the verge of being charcoal. But she didn’t notice this; she just gestured wildly at the boy with her fried limbs, and, seeing Anna, said something that, although slightly quieter than her shriek of before, Anna couldn’t make out a word of; it was so horrified, so terrified.
Anna didn’t have to look far to see why. The boy lay rasping and unconscious, with his own blood pooling beneath him.
Jesus Christ.
Anna dashed over to the boy’s side, fell to her knees, and looked over at the girl.
“What’s his name?”
“Kennedy. It – Kennedy. He was shot; he was – oh God, oh God – they shot him – ”
“That’s not important. I want you to call his name and see if he can hear you, all right? Ask him to open his eyes.”
“What?”
“Just do it,” Anna said urgently, in her best Trust-the-carers-they-know-what-they’re-doing voice.
“OK – OK,” the girl said, and she dragged a mutilated hand across her face to dislodge the tears that were clouding her ears. “Kennedy?” she said, her voice cracking. “Kennedy, can you hear me? Kennedy, I need you to – to open your eyes. Please.”
While the girl spoke, Anna leant over the boy’s prone body and tapped his collarbones sharply, but nothing. He wasn’t responding.
The girl was growing more panicked by the minute, “Ken, please, open your eyes. Please – oh – oh, God, Kenny…” She dragged her hand across her eyes once more, angrily. A sob escaped from her lips. “Please, you have to help him!” she said to Anna, and her voice was growing dangerously loud again.
“Right. OK. Right. What I want you to do now is – what’s your name?” Anna asked.
“Lynn.”
“Right, Lynn. I want you to go out there and I want you to shout for the carers as loud as you can so that they can hear you down in the hospital, and I want you to stay calm, all right?”
Lynn took a long shuddering breath, and nodded sharply, further tears dashing from her eyes and trickling down her freckled cheeks. She didn’t say another word, but rose and ran from the room, her movements jagged and awkward.
Anna heard her cries in the distance as placed her fingers on her chin to tilt the boy’s head back. She checked his airway – fine – and his breathing –
Not fine, but at least it was there. His breathing was irregular, laboured, shallow. There wasn’t much of a mystery about it. Anna didn’t need to look any further than the bullethole in his chest to figure out what had happened.
She could hear voices from outside, the girl, panicked, telling the carers what had happened. And when on the verge of moving to look at the boy’s wound closer, Anna was very disturbed to find that he disappeared.
A moment later, he phased back into reality, but it wasn’t him any more. It wasn’t even a him anymore. It was a middle-aged woman, blonde, stout; the antithesis of the ginger child who had been lying there before.
At that moment other carers came into the room behind her, ran. One of them flickered to her side in a motion which could only have belonged to someone with super-speed, and the other dropped down at his feet.
“He disappeared,” Anna said woodenly, not understanding. “He just disappeared and now he’s a –”
“A she,” supplied one of the carers who had come to relieve her. He, at least, made up for his quip by saying it while using a penknife to cut through the casualty’s jumper. Anna pushed away the folds of the blood-soaked black coat that he/she was wearing.
“He’s a mimic,” supplied the super-speed carer. “He’s – His power’s all upside-down now. That’s probably been happening a lot. I’m going to go get a gurney.” He tossed two pairs of gloves to Anna and disappeared.
“You look at the chest wound,” said the other carer as Anna handed him a pair of gloves, and he placed them on. She then put on her own. “I’ll check if there’s anything else.”
“Good,” Anna said, and she leant forward to the now-exposed wound, and looked at it. Her first suspicions had been correct; bullethole. So now she just needed to check –
She placed her hand on the edges of the wound, and was greeted with the snapping noise of popping air bubbles. And at that moment, the casualty, though still unconscious, coughed, and a spray of bright red blood bubbled around his/her mouth.
And then he/she disappeared again from beneath Anna’s hands, and was replaced with a black, female teenager.
Anna hesitated. “Pneumothorax. It’s pneumothorax. We need – oh, God.” She stumbled to her feet, ran to the door.
“Nurse Gornray!” she yelled.

[The Delaney Twins]

“No,” said Lynn, trying to fob off the two Carers who were going after her arms. “No – no, look, it’s fine, it doesn’t even hurt, seriously – look, you can treat me later, OK? I just really need – I just really need to go in and see my brother now. He’s – He got shot, please…”
The guy clenched his teeth, and said, “Look, I’m going to make this very easy for you here. Either you let us treat your burns and see your brother in a minute – which would be better, ‘cause you’ll only get in the way – or you go see him now, get in the way, obstruct his treatment. And as an extra bonus, you don’t let anyone heal your burns, so you get an infection, and then you lose them.”
“Lose what?” asked Lynn.
“Your arms. This is serious, you know! Just look at them.”
Lynn looked down, and inhaled sharply. Bands of red extended around the circumference of each arm, peeling, angry red, and her hands were worse still; a shade darker, a shade… browner.
It was stupid, she knew, but her first thought was, What the hell is Russ going to think when he sees this?
But she still – she didn’t care about her bloody arms. How could she care? So she had a couple of burns, so what? Kennedy was in there – Kennedy was in there and he was dying, he was going to –
“No,” said Lynn. “No, I’m sorry, I need to be in there.” She tried to keep her words calm, but she could feel her tone throbbing with hysteria. “I need to be with him – you don’t understand, you don’t – he would do the same for me. Please, he’s my brother!”
“You think you’re the only one who’s got family who’s hurt?” asked the female Carer, glaring at her. “You think you’re the only one who’s scared? We’re just doing our duty here, lady.”
“Yeah, I know, and I get that, but – ” Lynn looked at the guy, pleading in her eyes. “If it’s a choice between losing my arms and risking the fact that he might d– the worst might happen in there and I wouldn’t even be there, you can – just cut them off right now. Seriously.”
The guy stared at her. “Um, no.”
Lynn looked at them for a minute, shook her head slightly in disbelief and frustration, and then bit, “Oh, for fùck’s sake!” and, quick as a snake, darted under their arms and started running towards the door to the bathroom.
A barrage of expletives came from them, and they started running after her, but they didn’t have to follow for long. When Lynn was halfway to the door, it opened, and the girl who had been treating Kennedy before stuck her head out, and yelled for Nurse Gornray at the top of her lungs.
Lynn stopped dead in her tracks. Her blood ran cold.
The girl caught sight of her, looked at her with a strange sort of sadness in her eyes, and then backed into the room and vanished as the door closed over her.
The dull thud of the hospital door seemed horrendously final. The sound had the effect of entirely dissipating all the adrenaline that had kept Lynn running until this point. All at once, she began to feel the slow stinging ache of her burns, the nausea in her stomach, the myriad scrapes and scratches all over her body, the cold of the hospital. She began to feel dizzy, too. She could practically feel the blood draining from her face.
And she began to feel the dread take over her, the horrible fear that she had managed to control until this point. If they were calling for Nurse Gornray…
The Carers were good. The Carers could deal with things, almost anything. They called for Nurse Gornray – well, Lynn didn’t know, but from what Cass and Cardo had told her, it was when they were one of two things: unsure, or convinced that they were dealing with a goner.
The second prospect loomed up in the horizon of her mind like a gathering storm, and she felt physically ill. But she didn’t move; she stood stock still, just staring at the door, just… petrified.
The two Carers came up beside her, speaking more gently now, and tried to drag her away, but she stood as still as stone. She didn’t want to be unhelpful, to be difficult, but she really just didn’t feel like she could move.
She stayed in that exact position for a good two minutes, until she heard a voice calling from down the corridor.
“Lynn?” Unsure. A moment passed, and then the sound of running footsteps, and then Jamie was standing beside her. “Oh, Christ, Lynn – I’m sorry, I got down here as fast as I could… Oh, God, what happened to your arms?”
Lynn turned her head to look at her. She couldn’t say anything. Jamie looked back for a moment, and then asked worriedly, “Lynn… are you all right? I mean, you’re –”
“I’m fine,” Lynn said in a numb whisper, automatically. But the words were contradicted by the prickling feeling in her eyes. She looked down at the ground, blinked quickly, tried to dispel the tears. She needed to be strong now. For Kennedy. For herself.
But clearly she was weaker than she’d given herself credit for, because a moment later the tears escaped from her eyes. And Lynn started to sob; great, racking, painful sobs that shook her whole body and tore at her heart.
“Oh, no,” Jamie said, and she moved forward quickly, hugged Lynn. Her hands moved in soothing circles on her back. “He’s all right, Lynn, OK? Shhh. He’s going to be all right.”
Lynn couldn’t stop crying. She leant her forehead on Jamie’s shoulder, and tried to calm herself, but nothing worked.
Then one of the Carers spoke. “Are you a friend of hers?”
She could feel Jamie’s head move sharply. “No, we’ve only just met,” she said sarcastically.
The guy ignored that, didn’t skip a beat. “Right, well, if you are her friend, you might want to tell her that she’s going to need treatment for her arms. She says she doesn’t mind having them amputated, but I gotta tell you, that sounds like something she’ll regret in the morning.”
Jamie nodded. “All right,” she said, and the sarcasm had left her voice. “Lynn? Listen, Lynn, you’re going to need to get your arms bandaged up, or something.”
“I c-” Lynn said, and then another sob broke her words. “I c- can’t –”
“Yes, you can,” said Jamie firmly. “You’re not doing any good here. I bet he wouldn’t even know if you were there or not. He’s unconscious, right?”
How do you know that? Lynn thought briefly, and then she thought briefly about saying it, but realised – as another sob convulsed her – that that was something she’d probably be best asking later.
“So we’ll go and get your arms treated,” Jamie continued, “and then we can come back and see him, and you won’t have to leave him again, OK?”
“Pro – Promise?” Lynn asked through her thick crying voice.
“’Course I promise. C’mon, we’ll go get this sorted now, and then we’ll be right back, I swear. All right?”
Lynn hesitated, then nodded, pulling herself back from Jamie’s arms. She couldn’t stop crying, but she would just have to deal with that, for now. The female Carer placed her hand on Lynn’s shoulder and began to guide her carefully away.

[The Delaney Twins]

And finally, when Lynn moved away, Cass van der Berg was able to move himself from the place around the corner where he had been hiding and run back into the bathroom.
But no motion occurred. He was able to do it, he knew, but an emotion pounded through him which kept his feet glued exactly where they were, which caused his pulse to quicken in his throat, his teeth to clamp down on his lower lip.
It wasn’t surprising, he guessed, that he would react like this. After all, it was the first time he’d seen her in nearly a year, and no one had ever said that photographs were as good as the real thing. Not that he’d even been looking at the few photographs he had that much, anyway; it was too depressing, and he’d had more important things to think about. Even a couple of days ago when the most important thing had officially left him, he still hadn’t taken them out. It was painful.
And even more painful now not to see her smiling, like she had been in every picture and nearly every single time he had ever seen her and unfailingly every single time he had thought of her. Instead, from his spying position around the corner, he saw her numb, and then he saw her self-control crack and shatter, he saw her clinging to the nearest person who would show her any warmth and sobbing great noisy tears onto Jamie’s shoulder. It was safe to say that Cass had never seen her like that before; not even when he had told her that he was leaving.
But, of course, that was obvious, he decided a second later. He had been happy with Lynn, sure, and she had been important to him, but he had no illusions that he was even halfway as important to her as Kennedy was. Cass didn’t think that was possible. Lynn’s brother was her life.
With that realisation, his feet unglued from the ground and, with barely any conscious direction from his brain, jolted him over to the door of the bathroom as quickly as possible (which, for him, was pretty dàmn quick.) Milliseconds later he was at the door, and then he was inside. And Nurse Gornray bustled in quickly behind him, pulling behind her the gurney that Cass had yelled for – in another room far away from Lynn, of course. He was under no illusion that she needed to know of his presence right now – before phoning Jamie to get her to come down.
Anna looked up at the entry, clambered to her feet, and said in a torrent, “He’s unresponsive, irregular, laboured breathing, tachycardic, slightly cyanosed at his lips and nails, losing the ability to control his powers.”
“And he’s been shot in the chest,” said the other younger Carer, who Cass vaguely remembered as being a Paul, or a Peter. Possibly a Philip. He was currently bending over Kennedy’s chest, taping a dressing over the wound.
Anna looked irritated, but said, “Yes, that too. Suspected pneumothorax.”
Nurse Gornray nodded. “Percy, I want you to lift him onto the gurney with your telekinesis, and for heaven’s sake, be gentle. Anna, go to ward 3 and tell them to prepare a bed, and make sure there’s a crash cart nearby. Then I need you to go to the blood bank and get three bags of A-positive as fast as you possibly can. Caspar,” she said, turning to Cass, “you’ll be staying here with me.”
He wasn’t really surprised that she didn’t show an iota of surprise at his return. Nurse Gornray was unflappable. Had to be, in situations like this.
“I would be faster to get the blood,” he pointed out as Anna left and Percy began to lift Kennedy, very slowly and steadily, up to lie on the bed.
“Yes, I’m aware. But you also have powers that could treat this boy without the necessity of intrusive surgery, and time is of the essence; I think you’d agree.”
Cass had no idea what she was talking about, but he nodded all the same. If he’d learnt anything from his time as an Orchid Carer, it was that Nurse Gornray knew what she was doing and, therefore, you did not question her. Period.
Of course, that being said, the situation was strange as hell. Cass’s range of powers – speed, air control, and diagnosis – was not really a range that was vaguely useful, even as a Carer. And, in a situation like this, surely it would be better to find someone who could do Actual Healing.
He didn’t like to question Nurse Gornray even internally, but there was a possibility – however slight – that she might have lost her touch. After all, it was a long time since he’d been here. Anything could have happened. And, although he was trying with all his might not to think of it, that was his friend lying there. If she did anything wrong, if the famous Gornray-instinct failed…
These thoughts rushed through Cass’s head in a millisecond-waterfall, and culminated only in his cautiously asking – “What do you want me to do?”
If her answer was a few buttons short of a cardigan, then at least he’d know what he was dealing with, and he could go from there.
“You are going to re-inflate his lung,” Nurse Gornray said, turning to the box of gloves, lifting a set out and placing them over her hands with a giant snap of rubber against skin. “It will be delicate work, yes; that is why I’m asking you. The other air controllers wouldn’t be able to see what they were doing, but if you take care and keep an eye on the conditions inside his body, then you will be best-equipped to do this without breaking ribs or asphyxiating the boy.” She looked down at Kennedy’s exposed chest. A moment later, it flickered out of existence, and flickered back in. When it did, Nurse Gornray said, “Although, that being said, it looks like we’ve already lost on the broken rib front.”
All his reasons for ever doubting her zipped out of his mind, and he nodded. “The bleeding…?”
“Teresa will take care of that,” Nurse Gornray said. “She’s on her way. Evidently you won’t start re-inflation until the lacerations have been dealt with. Percy,” she snapped, “that dressing is horrendous.”
The boy looked irritated, but had the sense, at least, to keep his words respectful. “I’m sorry, it’s just… He keeps disappearing. I couldn’t do it properly.”
“And yet properly is how it needs to be done,” said Nurse Gornray. “Go and get a BVM kit, and a couple of Carers to bring this gurney into the ward, if you would be so kind.” And as she spoke, she pushed the boy out of the way and walked to Kennedy’s gasping, convulsing, flickering side, and ripped off the dressing. She pressed her own gloved hands down over the wound, clearly deciding that dressings weren’t going to work, and hopefully having the sense not to press down on the broken rib that she’d mentioned.
“Caspar, he’s growing hypoxic. I need you to act as a ventilator until we get the BVM, and, if possible, to get the oxygen straight into his blood. Failing that, his undamaged lung. Can you do that?”
Cass nodded again, and a moment later he was at Kennedy’s side, his hand pressed on the skin over his undamaged lung. He was currently in the form of a twenty-something man who Cass was certain he’d seen on TV, but the internal organs that Cass saw when their skin touched were entirely Kennedy. No one else’s lungs were screwed up in the same distinctive way – Kennedy’s numerous conditions were as unique as a fingerprint.
He focused hard on the lungs, and while doing so, drew oxygen from the room around him through Kennedy’s mouth, down the trachea, and into the left lung. He watched the air diffuse through the alveoli for a moment to make sure that the uninjured lung could cope, then sank out of his diagnosis-vision and looked back at the room. Every few seconds, he brought another current of air into Kennedy’s lungs. He forced himself to ignore the sucking, gulping sound that came from the bullet-hole under Nurse Gornray’s hands every time Kennedy phased in and out of existence.
A few seconds later, Nurse Gornray spoke over the hideous noise.
“Caspar, has your mother passed on?” she asked, and she sounded almost gentle.
Cass froze briefly, but then he blinked hard, went back to doing what he was supposed to be doing. He had told himself that he wasn’t going to wallow in self-pity, and there was no way that he was going to let one simple question send him back to the state that he had been in when he was in Amsterdam. He nodded once, and said, “Two days ago.”
She shook her head. “You have my condolences,” she said, and she sounded like she meant it. “I presume you wish to return to Orchid, then? This isn’t just a visit?”
He hadn’t thought it would be so easy. “If that would be OK,” he said slowly, training his mind carefully on the current of air that he manipulated and not letting himself think about his reasons too much. “I… Amsterdam isn’t where I’m supposed to be. There’s nothing to keep me there. My friends are here, and with the war…”
“Of course, I understand,” said Nurse Gornray. “Consider it taken care of. I’ll have a word with Major when this has calmed down somewhat.”
Cass hesitated for a moment. He really hadn’t thought that this would be so easy. But then again, he’d developed a terrible habit of catastrophising while he was away in Amsterdam. Spending day and night with your slowly dying mother tended to have that sort of effect on you. He had to remember that life wasn’t actually as dark and difficult and doomed as it had seemed back in that ward.
“Thank you,” he said. He didn’t smile, because it wouldn’t have been appropriate, but his words throbbed with gratitude.
“My pleasure. Welcome back to Orchid, Mr van der Berg.”
A moment later, a group of Carers, led by Teresa Rossi, blood specialist, and followed by Anna Stewart with her bags of A-positive and Percy with his ventilator, clattered through the doorway, and Cass took a deep breath to prepare himself.
It was all starting now.

[The Delaney Twins]

“Hello?” said the woman on the other end of the line.
“Hello,” Jamie answered quickly, and, although unwanted, all her childhood lessons on phone etiquette rushed back into her head. “Could I speak to Mrs Delaney, please?”
“Speaking,” the woman said shortly. “Who is this?”
Jamie blinked, a little thrown off by the woman’s tone. “Um, hello. I’m sorry to bother you at teatime, but I’m a friend of your daughter’s, and I- ”
“You’re a friend of Lynn’s?” Hannah Delaney asked, her voice immediately thawing, and she began to speak at a hundred miles an hour. “Awk, hello, love, how are you? I’m sorry I was a little off just there, but I just made my dinner and I thought you were one of those call-centre types – you know, them ones that call you up every time you start to do something important. And, swear to God, I’ve been pestered by those people every time I’ve sat down to tea this week, and I really do try to be civil but it just started to grate on me and – Well. Anyway. It was just ‘cause of your wee accent, you know. I couldn’t really place it – but Australian, right? Is that what it is?”
Jamie blinked again. “…Yeah. Yes, I’m from Melbourne. But Mrs Delaney, I was just calling to say that –”
“Oh, don’t Mrs Delaney me, you can call me Hannah. So which one are you? She’s told me so much about all of you – um, May?”
“No, my name’s Jamie –”
“Jamie! Ahh, yes, Jamie… Mason, correct? I should have thought of you first; they both talk about you a lot. In different ways. I’m sorry about the Kennedy situation, by the way. I mean, from what I can tell you’re a lovely girl, and Lynn does tell me that it’s his fault –”
Jamie closed her eyes. She’d been expecting this. Or, at least, she’d been told to expect this. But it was slightly hard work. It was like speaking to a Northern Irish Lynn on a caffeine high. “Thank you. But, Mrs De – um, Hannah, I was just calling to say –”
“Awk, of course, you were calling me for something, and here I am just twittering around about nothing! What is it? Are my grandkids making you do their dirty work now, is that what it is? Christ, tell Lynn that she can call me herself! I won’t bite!” She laughed.
Jamie raised the hand that was not holding Lynn’s mobile and pinched the bridge of her nose. She would have sighed if it wouldn’t have sounded suspicious on the phone.
When she spoke, her voice was more collected – the way that it would have been from the start if she hadn’t been thrown off by Lynn’s grandmother’s cannonball method of conversation. “I’m not doing their dirty work. Lynn would have called you, but I insisted on doing it. She’s too upset, and she can’t hold the phone right now.”
The woman didn’t speak for a moment. When she did, the laugh of a moment before still resonated through her wary voice, making her sound thoroughly bemused. “What?”
This time Jamie did sigh. “Mrs Delaney, I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but there was an – There was a battle at Orchid today.”
The voice was still clearly in shock, and it just repeated itself. “What?”
“I thought it would have been on the news or something…” Jamie said, a little helplessness slipping through her composure. “But – no. Well, what happened – I won’t go into details – but Madeleine Baudelaire was kidnapped by Marius’s Forces. The Head of the Warriors. Lynn told me that you didn’t have powers, so I know you didn’t go to Orchid, but that’s… a big deal. A huge deal. So Trove – the second-in-command – he led the Warriors into battle to try and get her back.” Try being the operative word.
Silence. “…but Lynn is OK?” the voice said hesitantly. “You said that she was upset – she’s all right?”
Jamie’s fingers pinched even harder on the bridge of her nose. “Lynn is fine,” she said. “Physically, anyway. She’s got some burns on her arms, but they were more or less self-inflicted in self-defence, and they’re getting treated now, so she’ll be fine.”
Hannah took a deep shuddering breath, sounding relived. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “Thank God – thank you. Thank you for – for letting me know, if Lynn was too upset to tell me. I know these battles can’t be easy for her. I’m always telling her that she shouldn’t go in for all this blaze-of-glory nonsense considering what happened to – Well. I’m sure you know what I mean. Although, that being said, there’s really no reason why my grandson couldn’t have called me. I’ll have a word with him about that, I promise y-”
Oh, God.
“Mrs Delaney, I’m afraid that Kennedy’s actually the real reason I’m calling,” Jamie said, her voice coming more concise as her emotions became more confused. She didn’t like this – she hated this, having to tell this poor woman that her family could be destroyed within the next few hours, if things didn’t go well. “Lynn came out of the battle well, but Kennedy was shot in the chest. In the… In the lungs. He’s in the hospital now and they’re doing everything they can, but they don’t know if it’s going to be enough – he’s lost a lot of blood, and his breathing is…” She paused. “Mrs Delaney, I’m so sorry.”
The woman was silent. When she spoke again, she spoke very slowly, as if she were speaking to someone who didn’t understand English. “Kennedy’s a Spy.”
“- I know. I know, but the Spies were sent into battle this time, because Madeleine was gone and they didn’t know if they were going to be able to –”
“And they let Kennedy go with them?” Hannah exploded. “Why? Why the hell would they do that? He’s not had the bloody training, he’s not got any offensive powers, he’s not even bloody healthy! He can’t see properly, he can hardly even breathe!” And then the woman seemed to realise the cruel irony of what she just said considering Kennedy’s injuries, and Jamie heard a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the line. “…oh, God.”
“I’m sorry,” Jamie said again, not knowing what else she could possibly do.
“What are they doing to him now?” Hannah Delaney asked. Her voice had completely changed from what it had been five minutes ago. Now it sounded quiet; scared.
“The Carers are looking after him,” said Jamie. “They’re doing their best to re-inflate his lungs, from what I’ve been told. It’s really OR stuff. We can’t go in or anything, and they won’t tell us what his prognosis is yet. But… Lynn said that you needed to know about it anyway, even if we don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out yet, so I said that I’d call you for her. And she said… She also said that you’d tell her parents?”
An intake of breath, shuddering and snuffling. “The girl knows me well – Yes, yes, of course, I’ll tell my son. Thank you for calling.”
Jamie hesitated. “You’re welcome. It was – it’s no bother, really. I just – well. Feels good to be doing something instead of sitting around scared, you know?”
She felt mildly guilty for saying that she was scared, come to think of it. As it was, Jamie was obviously not happy that Delaney had been shot, but – well. It wasn’t like they had a stellar relationship, anyway. Jamie was nervous, yes; apprehensive, certainly; but saying that she was scared might have been pushing it.
But she didn’t feel very guilty or even feel slightly guilty for very long, because she knew full well that, were the situations reversed, Delaney wouldn’t be worrying about her. Jamie didn’t know what he would be doing, sure, but worrying about her would not be it.
“Of c-course,” said Hannah again, stumbling and snuffling through her words a little, although she was evidently managing to keep it together while she needed to. Like grandmother, like granddaughter. “Of course, I understand. And Lynn is – Lynn doesn’t want to speak to anyone right now?”
“No,” Jamie said, snapping out of her slight reverie. “I mean, not really. She’s not in the best of states right now.” Understatement.
“No, of course not. Oh, God… Could you give her a message from me, then?”
“Of course.”
“I… Well, just tell her that we’re all thinking of her, and… stay strong, I suppose. Though I’m sure she’ll be doing that. And tell her we’ll be on the next train up.”
That sentence surprised Jamie. “The next train?”
“Yes, me and Willie and Margaret. We need to be there if…” – her voice grew oddly monotonous, then – “…if the worst happens.”
“Yes, all right,” said Jamie, not really knowing how to respond. “All right, I’ll tell her that – is that, um, everything?”
“…Yes, it should be.” And the monotony stayed in her voice, and Jamie was getting uncomfortable, until it dissipated with the next sentence – “And if he wakes up or… or if he –”
“We’ll call you straight away,” said Jamie.
“OK. All right. Tha – Thank you for calling me, dear. Lynn’s lucky to have friends like you.”
Jamie breathed in a rush of air, but just said, “Thank you, Mrs Delaney.”
“You’re welcome. Um. Goodbye, then.”
“Goodbye.”
And Hannah Delaney hung up, and Jamie followed one second later.
Well. That was sufficiently awkward. And horrible.
But – and Jamie felt horribly disloyal even thinking this – it was still better than being in there, being in that room with Lynn, while she got her bandages applied. Jamie was not good with situations like this. She could do hugging all right, although she didn’t really like it, and she could do talking through situations, but she couldn’t deal with this sort of complete shutting down. How on earth were you supposed to coax someone out of that, when they just insisted on sitting stock-still and staring?
Lynn was Jamie’s best friend, had been for years, but Jamie had never seen her like this before, and she didn’t really know how to cope with it. She knew that this was supposed to be the sort of thing that was different for everyone: some needed to be left alone, while others needed – to put it politely – a kick up the arse. And what category did Lynn fit into?
Cardo would be able to figure it out in seconds, and Ari’d probably be able to give it a good enough shot. Cass’d have her sorted out no problem, but that was another can of worms entirely. As of yet, Jamie was the only person who knew that Cass was back, and she was still reeling from the news.
She snapped Lynn’s phone shut, and walked back to the room that Lynn was in, being treated by one of the older Carers. But it was obvious that the more experienced Carers were going to need to be called away from lower-risk cases like Lynn’s soon, because the Warriors were starting to come back now.
Some walking, some limping, some leaning on others, some being carried, and every single one with an expression in their eyes that made Jamie have to look away the moment she met any of their gazes. She always felt like this, when they came back. Survivor’s guilt. The Academics never lost anyone. The Carers had Field casualties, and the Warriors always lost, without fail. And this year the Spies had all gone out, except for just a few mad ones like last time, every single one, so the Academics were left being the only group who were safe.
And Jamie didn’t want to be bloody safe, but what could she do? It was her group; it was what she was stuck doing. There had been enough of a brouhaha the last time when some Spies had snuck out without asking; what the hell would happen if an Academic tried to save the day?
So she didn’t try. Jamie just averted her gaze, recognising the burden that lay on the Warriors’ shoulders right now. And she didn’t know if Orchid had won, and she didn’t ask. She’d find out sooner or later.
A moment later she arrived at Lynn’s room, and saw that the Carer had already gone, and Lynn’s arms were covered in neat rings of bandages from her fingertips to her elbow.
“Your arms gonna be OK?” Jamie asked, quietly, so as not to startle her.
“Um, yeah,” Lynn said. She was perched on the end of a gurney, staring down at her knees and hunched over so that, if she were tenser, she would look like she was braced for impact. “They said that on account of I’m not a musician or an artist I won’t notice any difference. There was a lot of nerve damage, but they managed to get most of it fixed.”
She was speaking very slowly. Quietly – for her, anyway. But she was doing better than a moment ago. Last time Jamie had been in here, she’d barely spoken at all. And silences didn’t bother Jamie, as a general rule, but they were so out of character for Lynn that she had been completely thrown.
“Well, yeah,” said Jamie. “They’re good.”
“Mm.”
Jamie sighed minutely, then walked across the room and sat on the bed beside her. “Your grandma says to stay strong, and that she’s coming up on the next train.”
“The next train?” Surprise. That was a breakthrough. All that had come through Lynn’s voice in the last few minutes had been terror and melancholy in turns.
“Yeah, and your mum and dad as well. They said that they wanted to be here in case the –” no, don’t say that “– I mean, for Kennedy.”
Lynn sighed. “Right.”
“You don’t sound enthusiastic.”
“My parents are eejits. Grandma Hannah I can deal with. I’d like her to be here. But if they come and… if they come after something... bad happens, I’ll be a complete bítch to them.”
“Well, I’m sure they’d understand.”
Lynn pressed her lips together, looked down, shook her head slightly.
Jamie wished Lynn would so something. Cry or something. Even start throwing things around. And Jamie knew that she would, sooner or later, when she found out what was going to happen or when something did happen, but she couldn’t now. They couldn’t grieve or celebrate prematurely. And the waiting was both the hardest part and the part that Jamie had absolutely no idea how to cope with.
“They’re coming back,” said Lynn. “The people in the battle. Aren’t they? I saw some of them outside.”
“Yeah,” said Jamie. “Yeah, there’s a few – a few of them back now.”
“Did we win?”
Jamie shook her head. “I didn’t ask. I don’t know.”
Lynn looked away. “You would know by now if we had.”
“…I guess.” But Jamie wouldn’t let herself think about that.
“Did you see Cardo or Ari?”
“Not yet.”
And Lynn stopped talking again, moved her arms as if she was going to wrap them around herself, but she couldn’t bend them with the bandages. Instead she moved her legs so that her feet rested on the edge of her bed and her knees pressed against her chest. She then laid her forehead on her knees, and said something that Jamie couldn’t make out.
“What?” Jamie asked.
A pause, then louder, “Did you see Russ?”
“No.”
The muscles in Lynn’s back tensed visibly. “Oh, Christ,” she said, and she laughed bitterly. Her voice was hopeless. “Christ, Jamie.”
Jamie placed her hand awkwardly on Lynn’s back, rubbed in gentle circles like she had before. It was the only bloody thing that she could do right now which seemed to even halfway work. “He’s fine, Lynn,” Jamie said. “I’m sure he’s fine. C’mon. Don’t do this to yourself. He’s the cousin of the Head of the Warriors; he knows how to take care of himself.”
“The Head of the bloody Warriors herself got kidnapped today, in case you didn’t notice,” Lynn said. “I don’t think we can go by ranking here.”
Jamie bit her lip. True. It was very true. And this was what was going to happen for the next few days with every Warrior she spoke to, she could tell. Their world had been completely overthrown; upside down. Madeleine was gone. It was like pulling the rug out from underneath the entire school, and the Warriors were first to fall.
“Look,” said Jamie. “Do you want… to call him, then?”
Lynn turned her head so that her cheek was resting on her knees instead of her forehead, and looked at Jamie.
“I mean, if you want to check on him,” said Jamie. “You can find out where he is, and let him know that you’re OK, and then you’ll have one less thing to worry about. I think it’d be a good idea.”
Lynn blinked, then moved her head back so that it was resting on her knees again. She spoke quietly. “Could you do it?”
That was surprising. “…Lynn, I don’t know Russ.”
“I know,” she said slowly. “But if he sees it’s my phone calling he’ll pick up, and he does know who you are. I mean, you were there that time in the gym and all. I just…” She closed her eyes. “I don’t want him to hear me like this. My voice, I mean... I don’t want him to think I’m not all right; he has enough to think about, with Madeleine gone. Just tell him that I’m alive and I’m safe. I just want him to know that.”
Jamie hesitated. “All right. All right, hand it over, then.”
Lynn handed Jamie the phone that she had been given a few minutes ago, and Jamie flipped it open, scrolled down the numbers until she found Russ’s name, and said, as her thumb hovered over the Call button, said to Lynn, “You sure you don’t want to do it yourself?”
She took a breath, and nodded. “It’s better this way.”
Jamie shook her head, pressed the call button, and listened to the ringing dials on the other line. With every passing second the atmosphere of tension emanating from Lynn seemed to grow thicker and thicker until, at the exact moment the answerphone message started, she got up and walked directly out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She must have been watching through the waves to be able to hear the noise.
And Jamie was pretty sure that that, just there – that was breaking point. That was snapping.
Then the dial tone beeped, and Jamie, absorbed in watching Lynn, jumped, and immediately started talking without thinking.
“Um, hi – Russ,” she said, a little awkwardly, but she regained her confidence quickly. “I know we haven’t met, but I think you know who I am – my name’s Jamie Mason, I’m a friend of Lynn’s. I’m just calling to let you know that… Well, first off, Lynn’s fine. I mean, she’s injured, but she’s alive. We’re all down in the hospital right now. But thing is, while Lynn’s fine, Kennedy is… well, Kennedy’s been shot in the chest. He was trying to protect Lynn in battle, and it didn’t go well. So he’s in… in critical condition, I guess, right now, and Lynn’s staying here with him. She’s been getting me to call people for her to let them know what happened because she can’t hold the phone – her hands were burnt – and because…”
Jamie looked at the door, trying to judge how far away Lynn had gone by now, but then decided it didn’t matter. She did lower her voice slightly, though, out of habit. “Because, to be honest, she is in a bloody state. Because they don’t really know which way the Kennedy thing’s going to go right now. So… Well, she wanted me to call you so that you could know where she was, and so that she could find out whether you were OK, so I guess I got one out of two, there. I… I don’t know. If you get this – well, I mean, she wouldn’t want me to be telling you to come to the hospital, because she says that you have other things to be thinking about right now, but if you could call and let her know that you’re all right, that’d be great. She’s worried about you.
“Anyway, she left the room when I started leaving this message, so I’m going to go and find her now, and… yeah. Bye,” she finished abruptly, and snapped the phone closed. Jamie immediately got up and strode across the room, pulled the door open, and saw Lynn standing beside a hand-sized hole in the corridor wall, bandages hanging in tatters around one metallic fist. When she looked at Jamie, her eyes were both defenceless and furious.
She didn’t say anything for a second; then she looked away, down at her hand. The metal pooled away leaving the bright red, puckered flesh painfully bare.
“I don’t understand how this is happening,” she said in an almost-whisper through gritted teeth. “We were all fine last night, this morning. I don’t know how this happens so fast. I… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
That makes two of us.
How was Jamie supposed to know what to say to that? She wasn’t a Carer. She wasn’t even good with people. She wasn’t Ms Fix-It, capable of rectifying any problem with a couple of effortlessly chosen magic words. She wasn’t capable full stop.
That was why, she guessed, instead of saying anything which would be actually helpful in the situation, she just looked at Lynn helplessly for a moment, and then said, also looking away, “You’re going to need to get those bandages re-done.”
Silence again, a heavy silence that rushed through the bustling corridor. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I’ll go find someone.”
And her voice had gone back to that emotionless fluid tone of a moment before, and Jamie wanted to kick herself.
“No, I will,” she mumbled. “You go sit down again. I’ll be back in a second.”
Lynn stayed still for a moment, then said, “All right,” and started to walk back into the room that she had been in. And Jamie wanted to say something, anything, that would be even vaguely useful, and so a moment before Lynn opened the door she turned and said in a rush of word-mush, “It’s going to be all right, you know?” Then, more slowly, “It’ll be OK. It’ll work out.”
Lynn looked at her, and then shook her head, her face morphing into an expression that Jamie had never seen on her face before; it was so bitter. “If you say so.”
And she walked back into the room and disappeared from view.

[Arihant]

ooc: Just so’s you all know, this is actually taking place in the boys’ dorms, but it’s really part of this post so… let’s just ignore the inconvenient location changing-ness, kay? Also, I’m aware that Ari has his own account, but I made him a mini-sig anyway ‘cause it made me happy =]

Arihant did not go to the hospital.
He probably would have, if he had been thinking. If any traces of coherent thought graced Arihant’s mind he would have been at the hospital in seconds, he would have run there to apologise to Lynn. Or possibly apologise wasn’t a strong enough word – he would have to beg for her forgiveness, wouldn’t he?
Because it was Arihant’s fault that this had happened. It was Arihant’s fault that Kennedy had been shot. He was the one who had told Lynn that she shouldn’t get Kennedy out of the battle for health reasons. He was the one who had said that Lynn could protect him. He was the one who had told her that he would help to protect him!
And where had he been when Kennedy was shot?
Lynn hadn’t been angry with him in the battle. She hadn’t seemed angry when Arihant and Kennedy and she had got separated, because it was hard to keep together in the best of circumstances, and even harder when the three people involved had different powers and different things that they were trying to achieve – Lynn was trying to protect Kennedy, Arihant was trying to protect everyone and… well, God only knew what Kennedy was trying to do. And she hadn’t seemed angry even after Kennedy had got shot, and Arihant was fairly certain that that was because, in that moment for Lynn, the only thing in her world was the fact that Kennedy had been shot. What Arihant did wouldn’t matter at that point. Nothing other than Kennedy would.
But as time passed she would figure it out. She would realise that Arihant had failed them. And if this ended badly…
Arihant would not be her friend anymore. Arihant would never be forgiven.
And he knew he deserved it.
So he should have been in the hospital. He should have. He should have run there as fast as humanly possible and got down to some serious grovelling, and would have – if he was thinking.
He wasn’t thinking, so his legs moved him back without any conscious direction at all. And they moved him back not to the hospital, where he’d only ever been once before, but to his dorm, where he spent every night and a good deal of his free time.
But having made it to the dorm, the problem was that the thoughts started to come back. And that was not good at all. He didn’t even feel like he was thinking the thoughts, it was like they were physically there, it was like they were crawling over the surface of his skin. So he numbly started rubbing at his own arms, pushing on them so hard that it was almost painful for himself, and he fell back against the wall behind him, because he wasn’t completely sure that his legs would continue to hold him up in the presence of thought.
Thoughts like this were dangerous for Arihant. Arihant would really be better off if he got some sort of lobotomy to remove these kinds of thoughts. Take away the part that hurts and let the rest remain. He would be better if he couldn’t think at all.
Especially at times like this.
Especially when the realisation was dawning on him that he had killed another four people.
As soon as that thought was registered, the rest started to pour down on him, and he felt physically sick, and he felt filthy. Ignoring the thoughts he focused on everything physical that he could, he focused on how he was still cold and on the scrapes and grazes that he had obtained from blows that should have killed him and on the crust of mud and blood that covered his clothes.
That crust started to irritate him more and more in this unstable condition. No wonder he felt so unclean, he thought, if he was covered in crud like that. No wonder he felt like that. He would go and wash the blood off and then he would feel better, and he’d be able to get back to normal, and he could go down and fix things with Lynn, and he could check on Kira, and everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be. Where Arihant was a killer but he was a reformed killer and he was not a cold-bloo –
Cold-blooded.
Oh, God.
Again without any conscious thought Arihant’s legs kicked into gear and started him towards the bathroom. It would be OK in a minute. It would be fine. He would just go and he would take a shower and get this blood off him, and then he would be fine. If he washed it off then he would be like he was this morning. He would be back to normal.
Numbly he walked to the mirror, and glanced at himself, seeing his hair pulled and tangled into a bird’s nest and smears of black dirt across his brown skin and dots of that horrendous scarlet liquid scattered across his face, and he looked away after mere moments, because he couldn’t take it. But it would be fine when he was clean again. He would be fine. He would be back to normal.
And numbly he walked to one of the shower cubicles, and he didn’t take his clothes off, but walked straight in and turned the water on at the hottest possible temperature, so that he could feel warm again. And the water trickled down slowly at first then gushed out of the shower head in a torrent, and he placed his face directly under the water with his eyes open, and he let the liquid run in rivulets down his face and over his body until the scalding heat of it made him have to remove himself from the stream.
And he didn’t feel any better.
He looked down at the floor and saw trickles of liquid escaping from his clothes, gushes of brown and streams of red that mixed together to the colour of mud before disappearing down the drain. No wonder that he had felt so bad, with that on him. And he didn’t feel any better yet, but that was all right, that was understandable. He was cleaner but he still had so much on him.
He started to peel off the sodden dirty clothes that were plastered against his skin, slowly, but a growing urgency was vibrating at the back of his mind with greater and greater amplitude until he was left tearing the material to get it off him, tossing the scraps of useless fabric on the ground of the shower.
He took the gloves off last, and those he did take off slowly. And he stopped moving completely, just looked at the gloves.
Then slowly, deliberately, he grabbed the fabric of the gloves between his fists and pulled as hard as he could, feeling the seams tearing from each other and the material splintering beneath his fingers. And he didn’t stop at the first tear. He tore them again and again until the pieces were too small for his fingers to get any purchase on and he was left with a ball of scraps of leather. He pushed the ball between his palms and squeezed, his nails digging into the skin near the ball and the tendons on the back of his hands raised like ropes.
He released his hands from each other and let the scraps of fabric fall to the floor. The entire process had not made him feel any better.
He realised that he was crying.
Arihant looked down at the mess beneath him, an assortment of torn material and watered-down mud and blood still trailing down the drain, and he felt sick. Without any conscious decisions, again, his body acted for him, and it started shivering despite the boiling water that streamed over it. And his hands moved to grip his arms, as if he was trying to hold himself together.
When his fingers closed on his upper arms he felt the muscles there, like intruders under his own skin. They had been there for months, but still he felt like they weren’t supposed to be there, like they were wrong. He didn’t need to be any more dangerous. God only knew that he didn’t need to be any more dangerous, and yet this place…
No. No, he couldn’t blame this on Orchid. Orchid hadn’t forced him into anything. Orchid hadn’t even forced him to stay. He hadn’t had to go to training, he hadn’t had to enjoy it, he hadn’t had to agree to Lynn’s ridiculous plan of extra sessions so that he would get ‘better’. But no, he had let himself get caught up in it, thinking that yes, maybe it was better, maybe this was what he was supposed to be – and because, if he told the truth, he enjoyed it.
It was like this was what he had been built for. The muscles on his arms had taken little encouragement to spring into existence. His agility and reactions had developed scarily fast, so fast that even Lynn had seemed slightly wary of the improvement. And he had enjoyed it.
And you were enjoying the battle.
The shaking got worse.
He couldn’t have been. That was too far. He couldn’t have enjoyed that. Even as he ran and hit and kicked and killed, even in the thick of everything, he hadn’t been enjoying it, he had been horrified – both at the situation and at himself. He couldn’t have been enjoying it.
What had he become?
All this time he’d thought that he had been getting better. All this time he thought that he was getting to be a better person; that he was getting to be normal. But this place wasn’t normal. If he’d been in a normal place this never would have happened.
Four people. Four. And the one that haunted him most was the last one, the one that he had tou–
Oh, God.
Arihant had been raised as a Hindu from childhood. He’d taken part in all the rites and rituals and he’d celebrated all the festivals and he’d learnt all the rules and he’d followed them. But now that he’d spent four years of his life in Europe, he had to admit, Christianity appealed to him a lot more.
Hinduism was too… morally grey for Arihant’s taste. If you did something bad you got repayment in your next life, yes, but was that enough? The fact that Arihant would be having a next life at all showed that he hadn’t got enough payback. But Christianity was simpler, more black-and-white. You were good, you got to heaven; otherwise, you were sent down below.
Arihant didn’t think that there were no second chances in the world, and he liked the idea of redemption. He liked the idea that repentance could lead to a new life and a new serenity and a new purpose, and that people would be forgiven their mistakes.
But he didn’t like the idea for himself. For himself, he had to admit, there was a masochistic part of him that liked the idea of hellfire. Of judgement. He thought that redemption was wonderful and that everyone deserved it… except for him.
And Arihant wouldn’t get redemption, because he would never ask for it. And so he would get what he deserved.
Something about this situation, about Arihant’s new life, scared him. He needed some sort of repayment. It was fundamentally wrong, his staying here with his friends and enjoying a life which was better than anything he could ever have dreamed of when his family was alive, and which was built entirely on his family’s ashes. He didn’t deserve it. He deserved the opposite, and he knew this, and the fact kept him awake some nights when his usual denial failed him; but would he ever have the courage to ruin the life that he didn’t deserve?
Arihant needed the hellfire. He needed the promise of justice in another life. He needed to know that he would be punished, because he was just too dàmn weak to do it himself.
He was being weak now. He had killed four more people and he needed to deal with the consequences. He needed to snap the hell out of this shaking and shuddering and clutching and crying, because…
He didn’t know why, he guessed. But if he didn’t snap out of this now he wouldn’t be snapping out of it for a very long time. And he had managed to weave himself into this school, although they didn’t deserve his presence, so there would be people who would be worrying about him right now. And his friend was lying in a hospital bed dead or dying and Arihant wasn’t even there. He needed to pull himself together and get downstairs and stop obsessing over himself. There were far more important things to be obsessing over right now.
After all, Arihant had already known that he was a monster. He had forgotten about it for a while, but… Well. Maybe something good had come out of this battle, then.
He wasn’t going to stop thinking about it again any time soon.

[The Delaney Twins]

ooc: Guys. Guys. You may ignore, more or less, the first page of this post, as it is predominantly in Italian as a result of my feeling upset that I’d given it up after the last GCSE paper, lol. There’s a translation at the bottom, but really, if you don’t want to look at it you don’t have to; it’s not particularly relevant XD I apologise, again, for my lack of self-control.

“Sei stato in una battaglia? Dio mio, perché? Sei un Carer!”
Cardo was able to move the phone back towards his head when his mother’s shrill exclamations had finished. He’d held it away before to protect his eardrums – his mother, while he loved her, was Italian, and therefore capable of extreme volume when emotions were running high, as they were now.
She never coped well when they spoke about the battles.
“Sì, allora ho fatto il pronto succorso. Sono un Field Carer, devo aiutare quando c’è una –”
“Ricardo, spero che stai scherzando,” she interrupted, her voice like stone. “Mi dica adesso; cos’è successo?”
“L’unità militare di Marius ha sequestrato Madeleine. Allora le nostre gruppe la abbiamo combattare per provare a la recuperare.”
There was a silence from the other end of the line for a moment, then slowly, “Avete vinto?”
He hesitated. “...no, ma nessuno ha vinto. Era uno stallo. E non abbiamo recuperato Madeleine, alla fine. Ma non sono ferito, mamma,” he said quickly. “So come mi badare. Non ti preoccupare, sto bene.”
“...Va bene,” she said reluctantly, some of the force leaving her voice. “Va bene, ma Ricardo, la prossima volta che c’è una battaglia, devi mi dire. Devi. Ho veduto le notizie, e... O, Ricardo, non sai quanto paura tuo padre ed io avevamo quando abbiamo le visto–”
Cardo couldn’t help it; he snorted at that. “Sì, sono sicuro che papà era pietrificato.”
“Rica, non essere crudele, per capisce era pietrificato!” his mother berated him. “Afatto, vuole ti parlare adesso.”
“Va bene, mi dispiace. Ma mamma, non ho il tempo per gli parlare, devo andare.”
“Perché?” She sounded affronted.
“Perché non sono ferito, ma ci sono tanti feriti!” Cardo said, his patience shattering a little bit. “La battaglia è finito per i Warriors ma non è così per i Carers. Devo aiutare.”
“Ma sei appena stato nella battaglia!”
“Come quasi tutti! Devo aiutare. Devo andare. Mi dispiace.”
She sighed. “...Va bene, Ricardo. Va bene.”
And Cardo sighed as well. She still sounded worried. “Vado stare bene, sai.”
“Sì, hai ragione, vai, se tu sai che è buono per te,” she muttered darkly, and Cardo couldn’t help but laugh.
“O, ho paura, mamma,” he said jokingly.
She laughed too, and when she had finished, her voice sounded more normal. Relieved. “Mi telefonerai più tardi?”
“Sì, sì, per capisce, a dopo!”
“Va bene. Ciao, Rica.”
“Ciao,” Cardo said, and hung up. *
Well, at least that was that out of the way.
Of course, that being said, if he was honest with himself, that phone conversation had been the least of his worries. He had only been calling his mother. His mother was soft.
…well, OK, that was a lie. His mother was as hard as nails, but he could deal with her, even if that did mean omitting slight aspects of the truth when speaking to her. He wasn’t really lying by saying that he wasn’t hurt. Yes, he’d broken his leg, but it was OK. He was holding it in place with his telekinesis until he could get it done up with plaster, and it was pretty blooming good going, really, when considered alongside the people who had been shot and burnt and stabbed –
Stabbed.
That was what Cardo was worrying about right now. His mother had been fine. He’d lied to her, yes, and he’d felt a little bad about that, but, overall, it had gone well. So long as he had a good six weeks or so before he saw her again she never needed to find out that he’d done it, anyway. That was pretty un-traumatic, as conversations went.
The next conversation that Cardo needed to have, in which he informed Arihant that the girl he loved had been stabbed thrice in the chest by a member of the Forces, was likely to be significantly less easy to handle.
Cardo sighed, slipped his phone into his pocket and walked over to the sink. There was no point staying here, hiding in the hospital bathrooms, but he just needed to pull himself together a little bit before he went out looking for Ari. He turned on the taps and let a little of the water run into his hands, then splashed it over his face.
When he opened his eyes, he looked at himself in the mirror, droplets of water dripping off his chin and his hair sodden around the edges.
Then he saw a face behind him, and felt his blood run cold.
“Your mum hasn’t changed a bit, has she?” Cass asked casually, walking up beside him and beginning to wash his hands in the sink beside Cardo.
Cardo stared at him.
Cass looked down at the tap, turned it on, then turned his head briefly to look at Cardo and grinned. “Hey, Cards. How’s life?”
Cardo kept staring, his eyes wide. Cass turned his head away again and looked down at his hands, scrubbing them in the overly intricate way that the Carers had been taught would prevent infection. Cass was the only person Cardo had ever seen who did it unfailingly by the book every single time.
After a moment, Cardo managed to speak. “Um. I’m sorry. What is this?”
Cass turned the tap off and laughed. “It’s an illussion!” he said in a spooky voice, holding up his wet fingers and wiggling them in the universal gesture for magic and mystery. As he did so, droplets of water shook free from his hands and hit Cardo in the face. Cass, noticing this, said, “Sorry. An illusion that soaks you, then.”
Cardo still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around this. “I – Wha – I mean –”
Cass waited patiently for Cardo to be able to come out with a coherent sentence. “Come on, Cards. We remember how to do the speech thing, yeah?”
And that did it.
The spluttering that Cardo had been coming out with ended, and was immediately replaced with a withering look, the kind that Cass would have been met with if he’d ever said something like that to Cardo before he’d left. “OK, fair enough, it is you, then.”
“In the flesh.”
Cardo took in a deep breath through his nose. “Right. Well. Well, then. Bugger my giddy aunt.”
Cass laughed, and walked over to get a paper towel. “Please tell me I didn’t really hear you just say that.”
“You didn’t really hear me just say that,” Cardo said automatically, and Cass laughed again, rubbing the paper towel over his hands and dumping it in the bin.
And Cardo still couldn’t quite believe what was happening, but decided to just go with it, for now. If he was going mad, well, he’d find out sooner or later, at any rate.
“So. Gay now, then?” Cass said, turning around.
Oh, for goodness’ –
“Um, yup,” Cardo said, and he couldn’t help it, a little heat rose to his face. Trust Cass to put it in such a direct way. He was so used to people being PC about it, to all their hmm-ing and haw-ing and euphemisms. Cass, on the other hand, asked the question in the exact same tone as one would ask the question, Did you remember to get the orange juice? “I’m here. I’m queer. Get used to it. As they say.”
Cass laughed. “Fair enough. Still play footie?”
Cardo rolled his eyes. “Um, yes. Why would I have stopped? All right, Cass, I’m gay, but I’m still a bloke.”
And Cass raised his eyebrows, laughed quietly. “OK. Right, we’re having a game, then, next time we’re not needed here.”
“Which will be about five years from now, from the looks of things,” Cardo pointed out.
“Well, yeah, I guess, but that’s all right. I can wait. Don’t really mind about the work, anyway, if I’m honest. I haven’t been doing this sort of stuff for a while. Feels good to get back to it.”
“Well, I can understand that,” Cardo said sarcastically. “The twelve-hour shifts, the caffeine shakes, the constant getting-the-mick-taken-out-of-you, and all without getting paid. It’s the life. I can see why you would miss it.”
“Oi, Mr Future Med School, you don’t get to moan about it. Clearly you love it.”
“Well, med school, shmed school, it still sucks.”
Why was this so easy? Maybe Cardo hadn’t fully realised that Cass was back yet. Maybe it was still to sink in. But it felt like it had sunk in. It felt like, yeah, OK, Cass was here. Cass had been here before, Cass would be here again. It felt like he’d never been gone.
That was weird, wasn’t it?
Well, whatever. It was weird but it was good, considering what could have happened. Cardo wasn’t going to question it now; he could think about it later.
But, still, recognition of the fact that the situation was weird was still in order.
“So, Cass,” he said, after a moment’s pause, and his voice was more serious now. “Your mum… Is she…?”
The smile fell from Cass’s face. “Yes. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Hey, you don’t need to assume that I’m just going to pry into it like –”
“Yeah, I do, Cardo; it’s you.”
“I’m not that bad!”
“Uh, yeah, you are. But it’s not bad; it’s a good thing, most of the time. I just don’t want to talk about it. I can’t talk about anything much now, anyway; I’ve only been let off for a couple of minutes.”
“You’re caring again already?” Cardo asked. “But you’re only back. Have you even been accepted in yet?”
“Um, well, yeah, unofficially. Gornray said it would be fine.”
Cardo sighed. “Lucky for those that the Stingray likes –”
“Have you seriously not got over calling her that by now?” Cass said, trying to sound disapproving but clearly also trying not to laugh.
“Well, she hasn’t given me any reason not to yet,” Cardo pointed out.
“If you’re still being a smartass around her and second-guessing her decisions, then that’s not that surprising.”
“What am I supposed to do? She’s not always right. But anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, you’re seriously caring already?”
“There’s a battle on, I don’t know if you realised…” he said in a vague, sarcastic tone.
Cardo shook his head. “Of all the days to come back, Cass.”
“I came back today because of the battle. Jamie told me about it when I was trying to call you guys to tell you about… well, about what happened.”
Cardo gave Cass a strange look. “You came back because there was a battle?”
“Yup.”
“…Cass, I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you’re mental.”
Cass laughed. “At least half of the Carers would have done the same thing.”
“At least half of the Carers are mental. But it’s probably just as well that you’re mad. We need all the help we can get from people who aren’t first-years. Who are you caring for, anyway?”
Cass hesitated, looked away. “Um, actually – Kennedy.”
Cardo was silent for a moment. “…what?”
“Kennedy’s been shot in the chest. Because apparently they let Spies into battle now; I must have missed something there. Anyway, so they’re getting me to –”
“Wait, hold up a second. Hold up. Kennedy’s… he’s been shot?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. And he’s got pneumothorax –”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah, so I’m using my diagnosis and my air to try and reflate his lungs, but…” Cass trailed off, and his expression left little doubt as to the fact that the next words would have been it’s not looking good.
“Oh, no,” Cardo repeated, looking away. “Oh – oh, but no, this can’t be happening. He – Why did he go into battle? I could have got him out of it. He could have… He has enough problems with his health for me to have got him out of it. And Lynn – bloody hell, Lynn must be going out of her mind…”
Cass raised an eyebrow. “And this is a problem for you because…?”
Cardo looked back at him, shifted uncomfortably. “Lynn and me are friends now. Of course I care if she’s upset.”
Cass shook his head, looking both incredulous and like he was trying not to laugh. “Jesus Christ, Cardo! You’d think you could have kept a couple of things the same when I was gone. But no, now you and Lynn are friends, and Lynn has a boyfriend, and you’re gay, and Spies are fighting, and they moved the bloody coffee machine! This is madness, I can tell you that much. I am Twilight Zoning here. What else have you changed?”
“Oh, well, that’s most of it. I mean, mostly. We walk on the ceilings and hamburgers eat people, now, though,” Cardo said sarcastically, but he was grinning.
“Well, I assumed that part.”
“Naturally.” Cardo laughed, but the laugh felt wrong. And it wasn’t because Cass was back, but it was everything else. The battle, Kennedy, Kira – it felt wrong to laugh now. And Cass seemed to think so too, as the smile on his face faded.
“What’s the problem with Kennedy’s lung?” Cardo asked, more seriously. “Why can’t they just heal it?”
“It’s too delicate,” said Cass. “Or Nurse Gornray says so, anyway. Because of all his conditions – I mean, they can’t heal those, so they can’t heal lungs that have them, not properly. So they’ve decided to do a magic version of the non-magic way – which is kind of re-inflating it. I’ve been trying for a couple of hours, but it’s slow, and if we go too fast it collapses again. And we don’t know if it’s… if it’s ever going to be strong enough so that he can breathe by himself again.”
“Oh my word…”
“I know. That’s why I’m out here now – they need to give him a chance to start breathing himself again, but the last couple of times they tried it it hasn’t –”
“There you bloody are!” a female voice exploded.
Cardo looked over to the door, where the voice had come from, and saw the tremendously irritated face of Jamie Mason. Her face was covered with a thin sheen of sweat, and her plaits fell against her cheeks, falling out of their usual order.
“Look, boys,” she said, walking into the room and closing the door behind her. “I get it. I appreciate that you two are busy, and that people’s lives are depending on you, and all that. But for Christ’s sake, you two are Carers. Will one of you please therefore get your arse in there and care for your friend?”
Cardo blinked. “…Jay, these are the boys’ bathrooms.”
“No, really?” Sarcasm.
“Is Lynn that bad?” Cass asked, and concern creased his face. “Is she freaking out?”
“No, of course not, think I’d leave her if she was? That’s the problem, Cass, she’s not doing anything. She’s just… She’s just stopped. She’s not saying anything. I don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to deal with this! Come on, please, you two are Carers, you must know how to cope with this. I have no idea. I’m only making things worse. I need one of you two to do something about this. Right bloody now.”
Cass’s face was pained. “I can’t.”
“Oh, don’t give me that, yes you can. She’ll be happy to see you again –”
“No, she won’t, Jay, she’ll be awkward. She doesn’t need that right now. It’ll be weird enough seeing her again, I’m not doing it when her brother’s out here dying. And anyway, even if I thought it would be a good idea, I can’t – I have to get back to treating Kennedy.”
Jamie gave him an appraising look. Then a moment later she said, “…Fine. I’m letting you off on those grounds right there, that you need to treat Kennedy. The awkward thing, on the other hand, is bollocks; I want you to know that. But. Right. Cardo. It’s up to you, then. Up and at them.”
Cardo said, “I can come and talk to her, Jay, but you know you’re better friends with her than I am –”
“And you know that you’re better at this than I am.”
“All right. That’s fair. But I can’t come straight away, I have… something else to do first.”
“What?” Jamie asked irritably.
“I need to speak to – Well, I need to find Ari. I have something to tell him.”
“You’re going to look for Ari? But Cardo, for God’s sake, could you not do that after you speak to Lynn? No one’s going to be able to find anyone for ages.”
“She’s right,” said Cass. “You’d be better helping Lynnie first.”
“I know, but I’m going to need to find him right now, guys, it’s not – it’s not something minor, it’s… I can’t tell you what it is. They don’t want everyone knowing about it right away, but –”
Jamie interrupted with a dread-filled statement, “Something happened to Kira.”
Cardo stopped midflow, mildly irritated that he had been being that obvious. “…Yeah.”
“Oh, Christ…” said Jamie. “Has she been hurt?”
“I can’t tell you,” Cardo said.
“Yeah, you probably can, really,” said Cass.
Jamie nodded. “Everyone’s going to know soon . She’s a Head. You can’t keep this quiet.”
He hesitated. “… all right. All right. She – She was attacked. Hurt. They… They stabbed her.”
“Who was stabbed?” a voice came from behind Cardo.
And walking from the door was Arihant, confusion on his face.
There was a momentary silence, awkward and heavy.
Arihant was most affected by the awkwardness. He grew uncomfortable quickly, and broke the silence by speaking to Jamie, “And why are you in the boys’ bathrooms? I saw you go in.”
Jamie had panic in her eyes when she glanced over at Cardo, but she spoke as normal, “I was just… Looking for these guys, you know? Thought that they could help Lynn out a bit. Cardo’s going to come and speak to her in a minute.”
“And I’m Cass, by the way,” Cass interjected, stepping forward and offering a hand to Arihant.
“Sorry, right, yeah,” said Jamie. “You guys haven’t met yet.”
Arihant nodded. “I’m Arihant – well, Ari, I guess. And sorry, I can’t – I can’t really shake your hand now, it’s – uh – complicated…”
“They told me about your power,” said Cass.
“Oh. Right. Well, I mean, usually I would, but just now I have… I’ve waylaid my gloves.”
“Fair enough,” Cass said, shrugging and retracting his hand. “Save the handshake for later, then.”
“If you don’t mind,” Arihant said, clearly embarrassed. And then after another brief awkward silence, he turned to Jamie and said, “Lynn… Is Lynn all right? And – God, Kennedy, I’m going to need to go and –”
“Lynn’s fine,” Cardo said quickly. “Right, Jamie? She’s not hurt.” And he was trying to prompt her not to bring up what she had been speaking about before, about Lynn being upset. Cardo knew Ari well. He knew that he would worry about the Delaneys, and with what Cardo was about to tell him…
Well, Arihant could only cope with so much.
“Yeah,” Jamie said, seeming to understand what Cardo was trying to do. “Lynn’s all right, Ari. She’s got her arms fixed.”
Arihant looked slightly less worried than he had before, but only slightly. “And Kennedy…?”
“I’m treating Kennedy,” said Cass. “We’re doing everything we can. He has the best chances that we can offer him.”
More relief. “He’s going to be all right?”
“We hope so,” said Cardo, but he said it with an optimistic tone. An overly optimistic tone. A tone so optimistic that it was basically a lie in itself, considering what Cardo knew, but he didn’t care. Arihant wouldn’t be able to be accused of lying later, and that was all that mattered.
“Oh, thank God,” Arihant said. “And you’re all right, and so’s Jamie, and Lynn, and Kennedy’s getting better… What about Carmen?”
“Carrie’s all right. We stuck together in the battle, mostly,” said Cardo. “Just a few cuts and bruises.”
“So everyone’s OK?” Arihant asked. The hope in his voice was barely disguised.
And then another silence, this more awkward before. This silence was sharp. None wanted to be the one to break it. Cass looked uncomfortable, which was understandable, as he’d never met Ari before, and so did Jamie. And Cardo was certain that the expression on his face was a sight to behold, if how horrible he felt was any indication.
Arihant’s face first grew confused, then apprehensive. “Is somebody not OK?”
“Oh, God…” Jamie muttered desperately, and looked away. Cass didn’t understand what was going on, but he folded his arms protectively, obviously sensing that something bad was happening.
And it was being left to Cardo.
“Ari –”
“You said someone was stabbed. Is that what it is?” Arihant asked, panic widening his big brown eyes. “Who was it? Was it Meredith? Greta?”
Cardo looked down, running a hand through his hair to gain himself a couple of seconds to think. He was just going to have to come right out and say it, wasn’t he? There was no way to cushion the blow, when he’d just been asked a question like that. He was just going to have to put it out there.
He looked up and met Ari’s eyes, and said, “It was Kira.”
For a moment Arihant’s face didn’t change. It stayed in the same panicked cast with earnest eyes and a terrified stare. His mouth moved numbly, and began to form the word What? but cut off too soon, so that just a small noise escaped from his lips. The same noise that escaped people when they had just been hit in the stomach.
Then the news seemed to sink in. The colour drained from his face, his usually dark skin bleaching to tan, and his lips pressed together. And his eyes changed. They had been open, vulnerable. When the news sank in, they hardened: they almost seemed to darken, and his eyes narrowed, and his eyebrows drew down.
He looked furious.
And his back straightened as if his spine had turned to stone, and his shoulders tensed. And he turned around in one swift motion and stormed out of the room, the door slamming closed behind him.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Jamie as soon as the door shut. “Fine, Cardo. I’ll deal with Lynn. I’ll cope. You just… Go after him.”
Cardo swallowed. “You sure?”
“Um, yeah. Lynn’s not reacting. Arihant looks like he’s going to kill someone. I think I know which one needs the Carer attention first.”
Cardo nodded. “Right. I’ll come speak to Lynn later, though. When I have time. I mean, I’ll… do whatever I need to.”
“I know,” Jamie said.
And Cass spoke, “Why – Why does he care so much? I mean, I know – I know she’s Head of the Spies, but he’s a Warrior, isn’t he? And she’s not even in our year –”
“Well, yeah,” Cardo started, “that’s true, but Ari and Kira – Well, I mean, they –”
“He’s in love with her,” Jamie said simply.
Cardo stopped, then shrugged. “What she said.”
“Christ,” Cass said, shocked. “Poor guy.”
Jamie shook her head. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“I’ll go after him now,” Cardo said.
“And I’ll go back to Lynn,” Jamie said. “But guys – just – try to come see her when you can, OK?”
“Jamie –”
“OK, fine, not you, then, Cass. But Cardo, please. I just need… a little help.”
“I’ll come when I can, Jay, I promise.”
“And I need to get back to Kennedy now,” said Cass, looking at his watch. “Right. Looks like we’re all headed off then.”
“Yup,” said Jamie. “I’ll… I’ll see you later, guys.” And she walked past Cardo, brushing some of her errant plaits behind her ear, and left the bathroom.
And Cass and Cardo were left, and Cass shrugged. “Break a leg, then, Cards.”
Cardo smiled weakly. “Already have,” he said, and pointed at his left leg.
“Wha – Jesus, Cardo! How are you walking?”
“Well, telekinesis. It’s brilliant. Frac-pack and crutches all in one.”
Cass looked at him incredulously. “And you say I’m the one who’s mental?”
“Uh, yeah, I do, actually.”
“Hypocrite,” Cass accused.
“Well, whatever. I’ll see you later. Good – well, this probably isn’t the right thing to say, but good luck with Ken.”
“Thanks. Good luck with Arihant.”
Cardo smiled. “I’ll need it.” And he went to walk out the door, but just before he pulled on the handle, he turned back and said finally, “Cass?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m – I’m glad you’re back, mate.”
And Cass paused for a minute, looking surprised, then grinned. “Me too.”

*Translation =]

“You were in a battle? My God, why? You’re a Carer!”
“Yeah, so I did first aid. I’m a Field Carer, I have to help when there’s – ”
“Ricardo, I hope you’re joking. Tell me now; what happened?”
“Marius’s Forces kidnapped Madeleine. So we fought them to try and get her back.”
“Did you win?”
“…no, but nobody did. There was a stalemate. And we didn’t get Madeleine back, in the end. But don’t worry, mum, I’m fine. I’m not hurt. I know how to look after myself.”
“…Fine. Fine, but Ricardo, the next time there’s a battle, you have to tell me. You have to. I saw the news, and… Oh, Rica, you don’t know how scared your father and I were –”
“Yeah, I’m sure dad was petrified.”
“Rica, don’t be cruel, of course he was petrified! In fact, here, he wants to speak to you now.”
“Fine, I’m sorry. But mum, I don’t have time to talk to him, I have to go.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not hurt, but loads of people are! The battle’s over for the Warriors, but not the Carers. I have to help.”
“But you were just in the battle!”
“Like nearly everyone else! I have to help. I have to go. I’m sorry.”
“…Fine, Ricardo. Fine.”
“I’m going to be all right, you know.”
“Yeah, you’re right, you are, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Oh, scary, mum.”
“Will you call me later?”
“Yes, yes, of course, later!”
“Good. Bye, Rica.”
“Bye.”

[The Delaney Twins]

Soon after Jamie was out of sight, Lynn left the room as well.
Jamie had been growing more and more frustrated for quite some time, Lynn could tell. She herself wasn’t sitting there like some sort of unresponsive block, as much as she could see that Jamie had been assuming that. She knew full well what was going on around her.
But ‘what was going on around her’ was hell. Lynn was being told nothing about Kennedy, and the couple of times that she had chanced to ask a Carer if she could just see him, the Carer in question had taken on a worried frown to rival those of Arihant, and had started some standard spiel about how That-isn’t-exactly-possible-just-now-what-with-the-treatment-that-he’s-receiving-and-the-nature-of-the-wounds-which-he-has-obtained-and-the-environment-necessary-for-proper-attention-and-blah-blah-fùcking-blah.
It had always been the same thing, and it had always meant the same thing. She couldn’t see him. And she knew why it really was – it was because none of the Carers trusted her to see whatever was in there. Whatever was in there was obviously so bad that Lynn couldn’t be trusted to see it without completely flipping out and obstructing Kennedy’s treatment.
In any other situation Lynn would have been offended by that assumption. After all, she was a Warrior; she was fully capable of being professional. But now that assumption weakened her, tore slices from her heart.
If it’s that bad…
So instead of letting herself react to the situation, she had cultivated a careful state of oblivion; a sort of limbo-emotion which was appropriate to the limbo-situation which she found herself in now. It’d spill over into grief or gladness when she found out what was going to happen, but now…
Right now, feeling was not a good idea. She could feel all she wanted when she knew the facts for certain. Now, any hope or fear that she allowed herself – and there was some, because she couldn’t stifle it all – was emotion wasted, and she didn’t like that.
Lynn was practical, after all.
But little bursts of feeling shot through her shell, which had led to a couple of occasions on which she had gasped, or one tear had escaped, or a small moan had squeezed its way from her lips. It was on those occasions that Jamie had come to help her, had come and tried to calm her. She had helped, although Jamie seemed to be frustrated by this fact, because by helping Lynn Jamie made her able to go back to the unresponsiveness that so irritated her.
Lynn would explain this to Jamie later. She would thank her and apologise to her later. But she couldn’t do anything until she knew what was going to happen.
Unfortunately, however, one of the little bursts of emotion occurred while Jamie was not in the room, and Lynn, on her own, was unable to stop the emotion from snowballing into something bigger. Something scary – something overpowering.
And it had her storming out of the room within minutes, unable to keep herself calm any longer, and determined to find her brother.
It was a miracle that she’d lasted so long, she thought as she powered her way down the corridor. Angry tears began to course their way down her cheeks as she looked in another ward room to see if Kennedy was there, and she decided that she couldn’t be blamed for doing this. She deserved a medal for lasting so bloody long. She just needed to see him. She had the right to see him.
So she continued to march down the corridors, glancing into every ward room she passed. There must have been an overflow of patients – stretchers were lining the halls, and Carers flurried around them. People stood with vacant expressions on their faces which Lynn recognised as having been her own a few minutes ago. The bright hospital lights glared down on the broken people beneath them, cruelly highlighting every curve and contour of their haunted and pained faces.
Lynn ignored them, tried to avoid recognising their faces. She couldn’t deal with anymore right now. If she saw Ari or Cardo or Carmen lying on those beds…
If she saw Russ…
She held her head high, not meeting the eyes of the injured. And while looking straight ahead, she saw a flicker of motion, a blur of limbs which opened the door of one of the hospital rooms and darted inside so quickly that she wasn’t able to see the face.
She didn’t know why that detail stood out to her. It felt… oddly familiar.
But those thoughts were banished from her head a moment later when she happened to glance to her left. Through a window shielded by half-drawn blinds, she saw her father lying unconscious on a hospital bed, and attended by Carers.
Kennedy.
A moment later she had barged into the room, and the two Carers started from where they were tending to an IV, and walked over to Lynn quickly, shielding Kennedy from her view.
Lynn’s mouth set into a hard line, and before they had a chance to say anything to her, she snapped, “You people can’t stop me from seeing him. I’m his sister. I have a right to see him.”
And the guy snorted. “Like hell you do.”
Lynn’s eyebrows shot up, and she folded her arms. “I’m bloody sorry?” she asked, and there was steel in her voice.
“You don’t have the right to come barging in here,” the boy said, looking completely exasperated. “We’re in the middle of his treatment. It’s tricky stuff, and we don’t have time to deal with family members as well. Jesus, just ‘cause it’s magic doesn’t mean that we can just click our fingers and fix it! This, what you’re doing here, it’s like walking into an operating theatre. You don’t do that.”
“He’s getting the best treatment we can give him,” the girl interrupted, her voice more gentle. “But if you come in here now you’ll only interrupt it.”
“No, for Chrissake, I won’t! What do you think I’m going to do, start trying to treat him myself, start switching machines off and tearing his IV down? I’m not a goddàmn eejit, I know you need space. I just – I just want to be here. And the best treatment you can give him? What does that even bloody mean? You guys have healing, why can’t you just… just fix him, for God’s sake!”
“Healing’s not that simple,” the boy said, as if he were talking to an idiot. “It’s not like fighting. You can’t just barge in and do whatever the hell you want, especially with something as delicate as this – especially in a situation like this. Chrissake, half the school is hurt, we can’t devote all our Carers to your br–”
“What he means to say is, we’re doing everything we can,” the girl said, glaring at her companion. “But we’re handicapped now. And with the conditions that your brother has – his lungs and everything – we can’t heal it properly, not with magic. We have to try and do it like the non-magic people do –”
“Which is why it’s very lucky that your mate came back,” the guys said. “In fact, you have problems with your brother’s treatment, why don’t you go to him? It’s his bloody responsibility.”
Lynn was confused. “My mate?”
“Your mate. The… Whatyoumacallhim. Big Danish guy, you know who I mean?”
“Tall Dutch guy, actually, you idiot. Blondie with the glasses. And ‘course she knows who you mean – you guys dated, didn’t you?” she asked Lynn.
The boy’s face lit up in wicked pleasure. “Oh, yeah! You guys – you were the male Carer and the female Warrior? Yeah, I remember now. Christ, you guys got the piss taken out of you for tha–”
He was interrupted by the girl’s elbow slamming him in the ribs. And the girl said, “The Dutch guy – Chris, was it? Something like that –”
“Cass,” Lynn said numbly.
Thomas snorted, rubbing the place where her elbow had hit his chest. “Congrats, Emily, you weren’t even slightly close.”
Emily ignored him. “Cass is treating him. With his air and diagnosis – it’s the perfect combination, for what we need to do. He should be back any minute now, actually. He just took a break.”
“As I’m about to do,” said Thomas. “’Fact, you know what, you want to stay here? You can talk to him; I wash my hands of this. I need a fùcking coffee.”
“Thomas, bedside bloody manner!” Emily snapped, clearly horrified.
“She’s not my patient, is she?” he said, pointing rudely at Lynn. And then he said to Lynn, “You ask him, sweetheart. S’not my problem anymore.”
And Jesus Christ, if Lynn hadn’t been so shocked, she would have hit him in the bloody face. As it was, though, she was left staring dumbly after Thomas as he walked out of the room.
So Cass was back.
There was no way they couldn’t mean him – after all, how many other tall, blonde, Dutch Carers were there who had glasses and the powers of air and diagnosis? But it didn’t make any sense that he was here, it didn’t…
Then Emily spoke, and Lynn turned to look at her again. “I’m so sorry about him,” she said, shaking her black hair out of her eyes. “I mean, seriously, I – Well, just because you have to work with someone doesn’t mean you have to like them, you know?”
Lynn shook her head, trying to arrange her thoughts. “Um… Don’t worry about it, it’s fine – Listen,” she said, more order coming to her voice. “Please – please let me stay. I know he said it’s like OR stuff, but it can’t really be – if Cass is using his air and his diagnosis, and I’m quiet, I know he won’t mind me being here –”
“I’d love to let you stay,” said Emily. “I really would, but see, the thing is, it’s not about what Cass wants, it’s about what Nurse Gornray wants.”
“But Nurse Gornray must be so busy by now,” said Lynn. “She’ll never notice, and as long as I’m not actually getting in the way… Please. Please, I’m begging you.”
Emily paused. “If I say yes,” she said after a moment, “you have to get out of the room if Cass tells you to.”
“Of course. Of course, absolutely.”
“…All right,” said Emily. “All right.” And then a shrill beeping came from the pager at her waist.
She looked down at it, and cursed violently, “Oh, shìt! I’m sorry, I’m going to have to go now.”
And she ran out of the room, and Lynn was left alone with Kennedy.
While she had been speaking with them, he had phased again, and he’d been left remarkably close to his own appearance: a boy of about his same age and skin tone, but shorter, sharper-featured and with blonde hair. But Lynn didn’t care about the face; it was still her brother lying there.
It was still her brother hooked up to those beeping monitors and with an IV stuck in his limp hand. The machine which creaked away in the corner, bellows moving up and down, was still breathing for her brother. The purple rings under those eyes were purple rings under her brother’s eyes, and the bullethole in that chest was the bullethole in her brother’s –
Oh, God.
Tears sprung to her eyes, and she looked down at the ground, folding her arms against her chest. She suddenly felt cold, in the blood-stained, torn jeans and T-shirt that she’d worn into the battle earlier.
Eight hours ago. It was eight hours, now. Kennedy had been like this for eight hours.
Her throat hurt like a fork had scraped down the back of it, so when she spoke, her words were choked. “Oh, God, Kenny…”
This wasn’t right. Kennedy wasn’t supposed to be there. The Spies weren’t even supposed to fùcking fight – how could this have happened? How was this even possible?
She couldn’t lose him now.
Lynn needed Kennedy. He’d been the only constant thing in her life, the only person who had stayed with her through everything that had happened to her. And he was the only person who could even come close to understanding how their childhood had affected her, because it had happened to him too. Even in the years when they’d been separated, she’d still known that Kennedy was there, and that was what kept her sane, that was what stopped her from giving in to those people – the knowledge that her brother was still there somewhere, waiting for her.
And her faith had been rightly placed in him, because he’d saved her – it was him who had ended that hell. It was for him that she’d put in all the effort to have a normal life, and it was him who kept her fighting. And it was for Kennedy that she had put a smile on her face every day after leaving that place.
No one else had seen that part of Kennedy, the part that was calm and quiet and brave. Lynn didn’t know why. He was never serious when they were with other people; he always had the clown act, the front. And to an extent Lynn understood that, because with a past like the one they’d shared it felt better to keep the world from seeing too much. If the world saw too much then they risked their past being broadcast for the world to see, and neither of them could cope with that.
But it meant that there was a part of Kennedy – the part of Kennedy that Lynn depended on – that no one else had ever seen.
And maybe now, no one else ever would.
A tear streaked down her cheek, and she wiped it away quickly. No. She wasn’t going to cry for him again, not yet. She wouldn’t cry, because that was giving up, and that was the last thing that she was going to do now.
If she didn’t give up, then Kennedy wouldn’t either.
Because, really, it was one and the same thing. What was Lynn, without Kennedy? If anything happened to Kennedy now, Lynn would be going down with him. Their lives were so intertwined that there was no other possibility.
Lynn walked down and sat in the armchair beside Kennedy’s bed, and drew her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She hadn’t sat like that since Christmas Eve.
God, she wished that she had heard about Russ. She couldn’t help but think that it would help, just knowing that he was out there. Knowing that he was safe.
She’d go mad if she didn’t find out soon. She was worried about him – and she wasn’t used to that, because in all the other battles, it had only been her going out. Her boyfriend hadn’t gone with her. She had never dated a Warrior before; she’d never felt this horrible sense of uncertainty.
But he’d be fine. He had to be; Russ was a fighter. And the fact was, if she had to think of Russ being hurt now, at a time like this, she wouldn’t be able to cope.
So she pushed those thoughts out of her head, and reached out to push Kennedy’s hair out of his face. Then she moved back, and hugged her knees to her chest again, trying to keep herself together; and she watched him.
She stayed like that for a while.
After some time, Lynn wasn’t sure how long, the door opened, and Cass walked into the room. And a moment after, he was followed by a very panicked and irritated-looking Jamie, who stopped sharply and sighed with what seemed to be relief when she saw Lynn.
When Cass saw Lynn, he looked both guilty and terrified.
A silence.
“You could have told me,” she said to Cass.
Cass didn’t say anything, but looked down at his feet, unable to keep eye contact with Lynn.
Jamie filled the silence. “You could have stayed in the room that I thought you were in. Jesus Christ, Lynn! You can’t just run off like that. We were looking everywhere for you!”
“You missed a very obvious place to look in, then,” Lynn pointed out quietly.
“Oh, for God’s –”
“Lynnie – Lynn,” Cass suddenly interrupted, sounding very flustered. “I was going to tell you. I was, but I didn’t think that now was –”
“I know,” said Lynn quietly, looking back down at Kennedy. “I know. It’s all right. I’m glad you’re back.”
A hesitation from Cass, and then a tentative, “…All right.”
“I’m not leaving him again,” said Lynn firmly. “Whatever you’re doing… You’re going to have to do it with me here. I can’t stand not knowing. I’m not leaving again.”
And there was another pause, and then Jamie came over and stood behind Lynn, placing her hands on Lynn’s shoulders. And Cass said slowly, pushing the hair back out of his eyes, “That’s fine, Lynnie. That’s fine. I’m not asking you to.”

[The Delaney Twins]

Two days later, Carmen Escamilla stood outside Kennedy’s hospital room, holding a polystyrene cup of coffee in her hand, and looking in through the window.
Two days could make a lot of difference. Two days ago she herself had been fighting in battle, where she’d never thought she would be. Two days ago they had still had hope of recovering Madeleine. Two days ago these corridors had bustled with hysteria and business and life and death, and now they were dull, with the least dangerous conditions taken care of and the Carers walking numbly to care for those who were failing.
But two days had made no difference whatsoever to Kennedy’s condition.
Carmen hadn’t been there to help when it had first happened. When the battle had been over she had not been able to make herself go the hospital. She hadn’t needed to, not being injured or a Carer, and she hadn’t known about Kennedy. For the first couple of hours after the battle she had not been able to move herself from her bed; had lain staring at the ceiling, unable to stop thinking about what she’d seen.
Then she’d heard about what had happened, and she’d come to visit, but many of the times that she’d come she’d ended up doing exactly this: standing outside looking in. What could Carmen do to help? She’d taken two of the Lynn-shifts which had been doled out among herself and Jamie and Cardo and Cass (Arihant being too occupied with Kira to spend too long here, although he had come for some short visits) and she’d sat with her, but she hadn’t known what to say. They’d sat in silence.
Carmen wanted to be able to help, but she didn’t know how.
She stayed outside mostly; nearby to help but far away so that she wouldn’t make this any harder for Lynn than it needed to be. And Lynn definitely didn’t need Carmen with her now, because Russ was in there with her.
Carmen looked away from the window, not wanting to look like she was spying on them. She’d just been checking. And it seemed like they were okay – they were talking, and Lynn seemed far calmer than she had been with Carmen in there earlier.
When Carmen turned around, she saw Jamie standing there, an identical coffee cup in her hand. Neither of them smiled, because both knew that the other didn’t expect them to. Carmen nodded at Jamie.
Jamie nodded back then, taking a sip of her coffee, gestured in at the window. When she had swallowed she said, “I thought that he was going to break her heart, you know.”
Carmen raised her eyebrows. It wasn’t like Jamie to be so optimistic. “There’s still time for that,” she pointed out.
Jamie shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. I know there’s still time. But this is more than I expected. I didn’t think that they’d last a week. I told her not to say yes to him.”
“Why?” Carmen asked.
“Isn’t it obvious? All those other girls…”
“Dating a lot of people doesn’t make you a bad person,” said Carmen.
“I know, but it makes you a hell of a lot more likely to hurt everyone who you do date. You can’t deny that. How was I supposed to know that he’d treat her differently from the others?”
“Why shouldn’t she be different?”
“Well, why should she be?” asked Jamie. “I mean, I obviously think she should be, but it wouldn’t have made sense for me to assume that she would be different for him. In terms of probability, it really wouldn’t have been a good idea for me to tell her that. I don’t want her to get hurt. I didn’t think that… That it would be like that,” she said, and gestured into the room. “I mean, that’s the opposite of her being hurt.”
“People are full of surprises,” observed Carmen dryly.
“That’s true,” said Jamie, and she took another sip of her coffee. “But… no. I think… I don’t know what to think. But it seems to me like… like he’s a good guy.”
“He’s definitely being good to Lynn.”
“And that’s all that should matter to me. I know, I know; I’ve been told this before.”
“But that being said,” Carmen pointed out, after a moment’s pause, “all the good guys in the world won’t be able to make a lick of difference if Kennedy dies.”
Jamie was silent for a moment, then she said, “You’re the only person so far that’s been able to say that, you know.”
“Say what?”
“Say that he might… You know. Hell, I can’t even do it, and you know how I’m not exactly in Delaney’s fan club.”
Carmen paused for a second, then shrugged. “There’s no point sugar-coating it. Not to you, anyway. I wouldn’t say that to Lynn, but… we need to be prepared, the rest of us.”
Jamie raised an eyebrow. “Prepared for what?”
“His death, Jay.”
“No, I mean, aside from that.”
“Well… the Lynn fallout?”
Jamie looked away, shook her head. “That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? There won’t be a Lynn fallout if he dies.”
“What do you mean?” asked Carmen.
Jamie looked as if she was going to answer, but then seemed to think better of it. “Never mind. You’ll see what I mean if it happens.”
Carmen swallowed. “How likely is it that it’s going to happen, do you think?”
“Cass won’t tell me. Says that what will happen will happen. And I’m sorry, I love the guy, but my God, I was pissed with him after that.”
“Well, fair enough. What about Rica?”
Jamie shrugged. “I didn’t try Cardo. His power won’t tell us as accurately, especially if this is a flesh problem and not a blood problem. Cass’d be the one to know best. And it’s kind of worrying. If it looked good he would have told Lynn by now.”
Carmen looked back into the room, then at Jamie again. “It’s going to be all right, though. It has to be.”
Jamie laughed once, a short, harsh laugh. “Who told you that?”

[The Delaney Twins]

Beeping.
Incessant beeping. It had been going on for years now.
Beep.
And underneath the beep a hum. Or – as became apparent– two hums; one constant, one alternating.
Talking, every so often. Sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, sometimes broken.
Beep.
Sobbing, once.
…Twice.
Touch, sometimes. Pain.
Beep.
Hands on, hands off. Heat on, heat off. Blankets up and down. Plastic and mask and pyjamas, pillow and gloves and tubes.
Beep.
Smell of disinfectant.
Taste of plastic.
No sight. Everything was black.
The sounds continued.
Beep.
After millennia a crack of light.
Beep beep beep, faster.
A hand twitching against blankets. Eyelashes on cheekbones. Eyelids flicker.
A moment.
Light again; a millisecond of light.
“Look! Oh my word, look, Lynn, do you see that?” A girl.
“See what?” …Sally.
“His eyes, look at his eyes!”
Beep beep beep.
“What about his – oh… God. Oh my God.”
“What should we –”
“Get a Carer, quickly!” Steps, hand on blankets. Hand on arm. “Kenny – Kenny – oh, God, can you hear me?”
Beep beep beep.
“Oh, God, Kenny – Kenny, please…”
Sobbing thrice.
Beep beep beep.
“Please…”
Beep beep beep.
Light.

ooc: I am aware that that made no sense, lol, but the next part should hopefully clarify it =]