Open Your Eyes

[Arihant]

“Ari!”
The halls were ridiculously difficult to get through.
Every few metres there was another stretcher, or another gurney, or another person limping down the hall on crutches, or another person in tears surrounded by a throng of concerned friends. Walking through these halls was like seeing the collective efforts of Marius’ Forces, seeing every single person who was broken, and it was overwhelming. And even more so, when Arihant considered the fact that the people who were in the halls weren’t the worst off – if they were well enough to be in the corridors, they were luckier than a lot of people.
They were luckier than Kira.
Arihant would have been overwhelmed by the situation in the corridors in any other situation. He would have been horrified. And he was now, but he couldn’t stop; he needed to get through. He needed to get to Kira.
So he dodged all the obstacles afforded him by the ill and grieving people in the corridors, keeping his bare hands in his pockets and using his powers to swiftly storm through the people without disturbing them, and without looking at them, either.
He couldn’t look at them. Every single injury he saw, he saw on her body. Arihant was already imagining the worst scenario possible; looking at these people just made it worse, because it gave him more fuel for his horrible mental images.
“Ari, for Pete’s sake, will you come back here? Ari!”
Cardo was following him, and was not keeping up well. Arihant had seen him limping heavily the one time he’d looked back, and he would not have been as good at dodging the obstacles as Ari was even in the best of circumstances. And again, in another situation, Arihant would stop and wait, but now he couldn’t.
So he ignored Cardo and just kept moving on.
This only worked for a few more seconds, before Arihant found himself frozen in the middle of the corridor. Paralysed. He stayed upright, but he couldn’t move another step – couldn’t move at all, until Cardo drew near him, and the hold relinquished.
Telekinesis. That wasn’t fair.
“For goodness’ sake, Arihant,” Cardo said, when he drew close. “You could wait for ten seconds.”
“Well, what do you want?” Arihant asked through gritted teeth, irritated at being stopped. “You tell me that Kira’s been – that that has happened to Kira; you really expect me to hang around for a chat?”
“No, I don’t,” Cardo said, giving Arihant a withering look. “But I expect you to realise that they’re not going to let just anyone go storming into the Head of Spies’ hospital room and that, if you want in, you’re going to need someone to significantly sweet talk whatever Carer’s guarding her room from the dozens of people who’ll want to see her. And I expect you to be at least semi-polite to your Carer friend who’s willing to do that for you.”
Arihant looked at Cardo for a second, then looked away, his cheeks burning. “Fine. Fine, I’m sorry. But I just… Cardo, I need to be there.”
Cardo nodded. “Fine. You’re forgiven, on the grounds that I’d do the exact same thing. Come on, you’re nearly there, she’s just down this corridor.”
And he started off again with his limping walk, and Arihant followed him, wishing that he would go faster. A rising panic was welling up in his chest, and the slower he walked the worse it became. But Cardo was right. He couldn’t get in on his own.
A few seconds later they reached a closed door which Cardo stopped in front of, and Arihant’s heart skipped a beat. Cardo knocked on the door, and a haggard-looking girl that Arihant recognised from fifth form opened the door slightly and looked out warily.
“Hey, Penny,” Cardo said quietly. “I have a visitor for her.”
She shook her head. “No visitors, Cardo, Nurse Gornray said. You know what it will be like if we let one person in. Every Spy in the school will want to see her. Family only. Have you seen Lee, by the way?”
“Not since before Madeleine was kidnapped, but I’ll try and find him to let him know, if you want.”
She sighed. “No, I wouldn’t bother. This’ll be round the whole school in no time, if it isn’t already. He’ll probably already know by the time you find him.”
“Fair point. But please –”
“No visitors, Cardo! You can come in, seeing as you’re the one who found her and you’re a Carer, but you can’t bring – is it him you want to bring in?” she asked, gesturing at Arihant.
Arihant was going mad with frustration. “Yes, it’s me,” he said, and his voice reflected the strain he felt. “Look, please –”
“He’s her friend,” interrupted Cardo, giving Arihant a shut-up-I’m-handling-this look. “I mean, like, they’re really good friends. They’re practically family. Come on, he won’t get in your way, Penny. And if you keep the door closed then none of the Spies will be able to see him, so they won’t think that they can get in, and you’ll be fine.”
“And if Nurse Gornray finds out…?” she said, sounding remarkably exasperated.
“Then you can blame it on me. The woman hates me anyway. I have nothing to lose. You can tell her that I said that he was her adopted brother, or something. Say whatever you want; I don’t care. Just let him in, please. He’ll go mad otherwise.”
Penny’s face was reluctant, but eventually it softened slightly. “…Fine. Fine. Is the coast clear?” she asked, looking up and down the corridor to see if anyone would witness Arihant being brought into the room.
Cardo looked too. “Looks it,” he said. “C’mon, Ari, quick now. Get in there.”
Penny moved out of the way, and Arihant thanked her, and then darted quickly into the room. Cardo followed him.
“Thanks, Penny,” he said. “I owe you one.”
“Dàmn straight you do,” she grumbled.
Cardo laughed. “Well, how about I take over things here for a bit? No offence, but you look kind of wrecked.”
“Well, no offence, so do you.”
“Ahh, yes, but I’m sixth-form, it’s my job to be wrecked. Here, I’ll take over this for a bit, and you go get some coffee, kay?”
Penny hesitated a moment. “…all right. All right. Just don’t screw anything up, you hear me? It’s my àss on the line if you do.”
“I won’t, promise.”
And Penny laughed disbelievingly, said, “Where have I heard that before?”
Then she left.
Arihant was still staring at the curtain drawn around Kira’s bed, frozen completely in place. He couldn’t move.
Terror pounded through his veins and a hundred morbid images flickered through his head, each worse than the last. He needed to see her, he knew he needed to see her, but what if –?
What if she –?
Oh, God, he couldn’t even think it.
Cardo just stood there, and watched him.
Then, when Arihant finally managed to move forward to draw the curtain back, Cardo quickly set a hand on his arm. Arihant, still not used to being touched and doubly cautious not wearing his gloves, froze again immediately, and Cardo took the opportunity to talk.
“Arihant, I think I… Before you pull the curtain back, I think I should – You need to be prepared.”
Arihant’s teeth clamped down together with the force of an explosion. “Why do I need to be prepared? How bloody bad is it?”
His voice was harsher than he had meant for it to be.
Cardo moved back from Arihant a little bit, so that he could see him. “I’m not going to lie to you.”
“Fine.”
“It is bad. If you’d let me explain back in the bathr – Well, never mind. It is bad.”
“Fine. Tell me how bad it is, then.” His voice was growing unfamiliar to his own ears.
Cardo sighed. “I was the one who found her. She was… OK. Right. Sit down.”
“I can stand.”
“Sit down, Ari,” Cardo said authoritatively.
Arihant looked at him, saw that he was not going to get any details unless he complied, and stiffly went to sit in an armchair beside the curtain-covered bed.
Cardo shook his head. “OK. So I was patrolling for casualties, and I heard people fighting. Or fight-talk, anyway. And it sounded bad, so I went up near – and we’re not telling any of the other Carers about this, please; I know we’re not supposed to involve ourselves in the fighting, but it was impulse – and the people left, and… Well. There was Kira.”
Arihant looked away from Cardo agitatedly, closing his eyes hard before opening them again and saying, “And…?”
“She was bleeding a lot. It’s lucky that I’m the one who found her, I guess, because she would have lost too much blood otherwise. Anyway, so I sorted out her wounds as best I would and got her back here. That part of the story’s not important. But I need to tell you more about –”
“About the injuries,” Arihant said. It was a request.
“Yeah. Right, so – OK.” Cardo took on a tone of clinical detachment. “Medically, it’s not looking great. She’s been stabbed three times. Twice in the chest, once in the back. Now, she is lucky, because blood loss didn’t happen, and two of the shots missed. The most direct one was aiming for the heart, but it was shy to the right, and got the sternum. The one in the back hit a rib, so yes, we do have a broken rib, but at least it didn’t puncture the lung. The third one, though, got the liver, so we have problems on that front – we’re not sure of the extent of that damage yet. And she has some pretty awful bruising, because they… Well. It looks like they, uh, may have kicked her a few – OK. OK. Ari, don’t freak out, please.”
Arihant had stood up. “What exactly are you trying to tell me here, Cardo? Are you saying she’s going to die? Is that what the preparation is?” he asked furiously.
Cardo replied, “I’m saying we can’t promise you that she won’t, Ari. We don’t know how bad it is yet. We don’t know – if she hit her head when she fell, or if she has complications with the liver thing, or if she – It’s bad, Ari. I’m not lying to you.”
“I’m not bloody asking you to!”
“I know. I know. But what I want to say, Ari, is that you need to keep calm here. Because there is nothing – absolutely nothing, might I clarify – that you can do about this. You’re a Warrior; you don’t have the training.”
“I’m hardly going to try and treat her if I don’t have training. I’m not an idiot.”
“Arihant, all I’m asking you to do is be rational. I know you. That's why I wanted to prepare you for the worst-case scenario. I don’t want you having some sort of angry fit, because if you do, someone will throw you out. And there’s nothing I’m going to be able to do to help you if that happens. All that you can do now is wait. And, in fact, that’s not just you, that’s all anyone can do. We’re going to have to wait and see –” And he suddenly stopped, seeming to bite back his words before they left his mouth.
“See what?” asked Arihant, quiet and controlled.
“We’re going to have to wait and see if she wakes up,” Cardo said.
Arihant was silent for a moment. Then he said, his voice very firm, “You mean when.”
“No, Ari, I mean if. We can’t be sure. There’s no way that we can tell – or we could, but we don’t have time now, with all the people coming in. We’re going to have to wait and see. We don’t have much of a choice.”
Arihant shook his head, and turned to look at the curtain again. He was going to have to open it soon, he knew. But the idea was terrifying. Three stab wounds, bruising, “It’s a when. It’s Kira. It has to be a when.”
“Ari –”
“Do you know her? Have you ever spoken to her?”
“I – No. I can’t say I have.”
“Then you don’t get to judge. It’s a when.”
Cardo looked at Arihant a moment longer, then sighed heavily, and ran a hand through his hair. “Whatever you say,” he muttered, evidently thinking that there wasn’t any point bothering to persuade Arihant otherwise. And he was right; there wasn’t. “Right. You going to open the curtain, then?”
Arihant hesitated, and his hands, shoved in his pockets and uncomfortably bare, bunched into tight fists. He was regretting tearing up his gloves, now. He hated his gloves for what they represented, but he didn’t like it when he wasn’t wearing them. He felt… He didn’t know. He felt exposed, he guessed. As if the danger that his not wearing his gloves posed to everyone else also applied to him.
And he didn’t want to draw the curtain back with his bare hands. He didn’t want his bare hands anywhere near Kira. That hadn’t happened since last Valentine’s Day, and Arihant was planning on keeping it that way.
Just as well for him that he found himself gloveless in a hospital.
“I need gloves first,” Arihant said, looking over at Cardo drawing his hands slowly out of his pockets. He wasn’t used to seeing them; not really. He wasn’t used to feeling the cool air against his skin. “Do you have any?”
Cardo’s eyebrows furrowed. “What on earth happened to your regular ones?”
“I tore them up,” Arihant said, heat rising to his cheeks.
Cardo gave him a strange look. “Can I ask why?”
“I was… frustrated.”
“Oh, right. Cathartic.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s good, though. Here,” he said, and walked over, grabbed a couple of filmy gloves from a box on a counter, and handed them to Arihant. And Arihant hesitated, and didn’t take them immediately, realising that if he did it would be too easy for him to touch Cardo’s skin.
“Uh, sorry, could you –?” he started, and then Cardo slapped a hand against his forehead.
“Oh, darn it, right,” he said. “Right, sorry. Being an idiot. Look, I’ll just set them here, all right?” And he placed the gloves on the table which sat beside Arihant. When Cardo had moved his hands back, Arihant lifted the gloves and pulled them on, careful not to rip the fragile plastic.
“Thanks,” he said. Then he moved to open the curtain –
And stopped.
Dàmn it.
Silence for a moment, then Cardo said, “Would it be easier for you to do it if I wasn’t here?”
Arihant hesitated. “It might be,” he said.
Cardo nodded. “OK. All right, fair enough. I have to go do a few things anyway – listen. I don’t want you sitting here brooding over this, all right? I know there’s not much else you can do, but please, try and keep positive. You know the worst-case scenario, but it’s not hopeless, OK? Just remember that. I’ll come back in a bit.”
“…All right,” Arihant said. “All right, Cardo. Thanks.”
And Cardo left.
And Arihant was left staring at the curtain.
After a couple of minutes, he decided to get it over with quickly, like ripping off a plaster. The not knowing would kill him if he didn’t do it soon. At least if he looked he would know.
In one swift movement he ripped back the curtain.
And he stumbled back as if he had been hit.
Oh, God, no…
Arihant’s worst nightmare lay on the bed in front of him.
Kira lay supine on the bed, her face directed right at the ceiling. There were purple rings under her eyes; her hair was matted, partly encrusted with dirt and a red substance which Arihant wouldn’t let himself identify. She was dressed in pyjamas too big for her. The top wasn’t entirely buttoned to the bottom, so the white bandages which encircled her midriff were on show. Her breathing came shallowly, so shallowly that her chest barely rose with each intake of air. She was pale. And not the usual Kira-pale; her skin wasn’t the usual pale shade that Arihant so loved, but it was grey.
She looked like she was dying.
No.
Arihant didn’t know what to do. He was utterly frozen. He felt like he should cry, or shout, or break something, but he couldn’t do anything. All he could do was look at her.
And after a moment, he realised that that was all he was supposed to do. That was all he was allowed to do.
He couldn’t do anything to help her. He couldn’t save her.
All he could do was wait.

One hour passed, and nothing had changed. Kira still lay in front of him, pale as death and bruised and battered. Arihant still felt unwell when he looked at her, terror thudded through his insides every time. The monitors kept beeping away.
After two hours and ten minutes, Cardo came back, closing the door softly behind him. And something had changed, there – his leg was encapsulated in a strange sort of capsule, plastic boards on three sides and Velcro straps over the fourth. He hobbled along on crutches.
“You got your leg sorted, then,” Arihant said. He wasn’t irritated to see Cardo. He was glad of the company.
His own thoughts were hell right now.
Cardo smiled. “Yup. I was attacked by a first year. They’re desperate for minor injuries. Much too enthusiastic for their own good. But it’ll get beaten out of them sooner or later, so no worries. Any changes here?”
Arihant’s face fell, and he looked down. “I don’t know. But… well, she’s not woken up.”
Cardo nodded. “Well. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It would probably be weird if she’d woken up already. It’d be a bit too fast.”
“Really?” Arihant couldn’t stop the hope from getting into his voice.
The hope seemed to throw Cardo off a little. “Well, I think it would. Probably. Anyway, I can’t stay for long, I’m afraid – broken leg or no broken leg, there’s still a lot for me to be doing out there – but I wanted to ask if I could get you anything.”
Arihant was surprised. “Like what?”
“Well, I was thinking caffeine, actually. Having seen your face, I can say that you look rather wrecked. I could get you a coffee, if you like…?”
Arihant’s eyebrows rose slightly. He hadn’t been expecting that. “Could you get me a tea, do you think?” he asked.
“Well, yeah, if you want. I should warn you, though, the tea here’s dreadful. And I mean very very dreadful. But if you’re OK with that…”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Arihant. “Tea would be great, thank you.”
“No probs, Ari,” he said. “Be back in five.”
Arihant tried to smile. “Thank you,” he said again.

Two hours down, and Cardo came again.
As soon as he got in the door, he frowned. “You’re brooding,” he accused. “I told you not to brood.”
Arihant looked up, surprised. “No I’m not,” he lied.
“You are,” said Cardo. “You’ve got your brooding face on.”
Arihant looked at him for a moment, then looked away. “Well, Cards, kind of hard not to, you know,” he said, and the words felt heavy against his throat.
Cardo shook his head, and silently handed him a second cup of tea.
“Be positive, Ari,” he said before leaving. “You’ll go mad if you don’t.”
And Arihant knew that that much was true.

At four hours, the sun had set, and night was in the hospital room.
Arihant was beginning, despite his tea, to droop a little bit. Cardo brought him coffee this time, instead.
“You know, you could get a bit of sleep,” he said. “You look like death warmed up.”
Arihant shook his head, taking the coffee from him. “I need to be here when she wakes up.”
He still couldn’t make himself say if.

At five hours, Arihant’s eyelids were rebelling, closing against his will.
The coffee that Cardo brought was stronger.
Kira still looked the same, but the expression that Cardo looked at her with was different. This time it was more apprehensive. More worrying.
Like he himself wasn’t keeping positive anymore.
He then saw Arihant looking at his face, and looked guilty, as if someone had seen his secret thoughts. He tried smiling, but Arihant wasn’t convinced at all.
Cardo left without saying a word to Arihant that time.

At seven hours, Cardo said to Arihant, “Are you sure you want a coffee next time?”
Arihant, completely collapsed against the chair that he was sitting in, said, “Well… Maybe. Here, you know those really tiny coffees? The strong ones?”
“You mean espresso?”
“Yeah, that. Well, I was thinking that what you could do is you could take a lot of the little ones, and put them in a cup like this one.” And he pointed at the large polystyrene cup that had held his last coffee.
Cardo raised an eyebrow. “You do, of course, realise, Ari, that it is physically possible to die of caffeine poisoning?”
Arihant hadn’t realised that. “Really?”
“Really. You know what? I’m saving you from yourself. No more caffeine. You need sleep.”
“I’ll sleep if she wakes up –” Arihant said, and then froze.
If.
Cardo froze, then looked over at Ari, then started speaking, not acknowledging what Arihant had said. “Well, mate, I’m sorry. But I’m going to have to go get some shut-eye, now. If I don’t… Well, treatment will not be happening tomorrow, and I think they need me for that. So… Well. I’ll bring you one more tea, OK? And it’s definitely tea, because you’ll start getting shakes if you have any more coffee. And then I’ll see you in the morning, OK? They’ll page me if there’re any developments.”
“All right,” Arihant said numbly, still frozen by what he had just said. Cardo left, and Arihant remained horrified.
Oh, God.
If.

After eight hours, Arihant was fairly certain that he was going mad with tiredness.
But that was OK. At least he was awake. At least he was still ready for when she woke up.
He had been finding it harder and harder to look at her, as time passed. With every second that ticked by this entire nightmare just became more real, and the more real the situation felt, the more Arihant felt like he couldn’t do this anymore. He couldn’t sit here and do nothing. He couldn’t just sit here and watch her d–
He looked out the window instead. The night was clear, with barely a cloud in the sky; strange, for springtime, especially here. The stars twinkled down from the sky, cold and hard as ice, and moonlight flooded the room. He had put the overhead lights off, deciding that, if Kira was going to sleep, she should get the best sleep that she could; and he had put on the small bedside lamp on the table beside them instead. Its feeble orange glow attempted to fill the room, but it was nothing against the onslaught of cool blue light that flooded the room from outside.
Arihant was going to fall asleep soon, he knew it. He had tried so hard to keep himself awake, but it wasn’t going to be successful for much longer. He was into the wee hours of the morning by now, and he’d been in a battle. It wasn’t possible to keep awake after all that.
But he had to. He had to be there when she woke up. (And, a little voice in Arihant’s head reminded him, if he wasn’t there, and the worst happened… It wouldn’t bear thinking about. He wouldn’t let it.)
So he decided that, while he had been avoiding looking at her to stop the pain, maybe the pain would be good now. Maybe the pain would keep him awake.
He stood up from where he had been sitting, and he walked closer to where she was, stood right beside her bed. He looked down at her.
It wasn’t any better than it had been earlier, even though there was less light. This time he couldn’t see the bandages so clearly, couldn’t see the dirt and blood, couldn’t see the rings under her eyes or the sheen of sweat across her forehead.
But he could still see her, and this wasn’t Kira. This wasn’t what Kira was supposed to be like; this wasn’t supposed to happen to her. She was – She was the Head of the Spies, she wasn’t supposed to be hurt like this…
Head of the bloody Spies. That was what Arihant had kept repeating to himself in the battle, wasn’t it? She’s Head of the Spies, she knows how to take care of herself. She won’t get hurt. And that was what had kept him sane, what had kept him able to stay with Kennedy and Lynn instead of running to Kira, to stop anyone from getting near her. He’d thought that she would be safe. Showed how much he knew, didn’t it?
Never again. He was never going to let this happen to her again if she –
There was that if again.
It didn’t hurt so much this time. It didn’t seem so impossible this time.
Looking at her now… She looked so small. She looked so horribly small, so… fragile. Breakable. Broken. She’d never looked so young to him before.
She was only seventeen. This wasn’t supposed to happen to her. She wasn’t supposed to –
Oh, God.
Arihant couldn’t take this.
He looked down at her again, looked at her face. Heavy lids were drawn down over her eyes, and it hit him that, if this didn’t go well, he would never see those blue eyes again. And that thought…
That thought brought the tears that he hadn’t been able to shed earlier springing to his eyelashes.
He blinked them away.
He couldn’t keep doing this. He was going to need to stop looking at her. He was going to need to sleep. He would go mad if he didn’t.
But… he wouldn’t leave her. He wasn’t going to be away from her. He couldn’t leave her now.
He sat down in the chair that he had been in before again, and he shifted it along the floor so that he would be closer to her bed. And then he decided that, if he couldn’t be awake for her, he could still be there. He reached out his hand, still sheathed in the medicinal glove that Cardo had given him, and he took hers, laced his dark fingers through her little hand. And he held on as tight as he could without hurting her. As tight as he would dare.
And then the drowsiness started to overtake him, and he couldn’t fight it any longer. Sleep washed over him with the force of a tidal wave, and he could do nothing to stop it.
His eyes closed over.
And with his last conscious thought, he prayed that – please, please – this wouldn’t be the last time he ever saw her living.
He prayed that she would live long enough for him to see her eyes one more time.

[Kira & Lee Norris]

ooc: I apologise for the lateness and general airy-fairyness of this reply.

This couldn’t be death.
Kira had always thought death was peaceful. A soft, slippery black slide into nothingness. A silent place, rippled only by the whispers of angels and the laughter that echoed back from life’s memories. No pain could touch you. No tears would touch upon your cheeks. It wasn’t life- but it was existence. It was rest.
Death was all about interpretation.
It was something, she thought, one could either choose to deal with, or not. Of course, being in the middle of a war and all, meant that choice was sort of taken away from the students at Orchid Hill.
Fear of death was instinctive. It bred from the instinct to survive.
But it was what came after death that was the hard part.
Lee was a Christian. Kira knew this because he prayed not just to God, but to Jesus. And Arihant was Hindu. And his friends- she was never brave enough to think of them as her friends, as she felt she still did not know them very well- the Delaneys were Jewish.
But truthfully, nobody was really so openly religious around here. Too much debate existed. There were too many interpretations. Not just religious interpretations. General ones, too.
Reincarnation.
An afterlife.
A meaning.
An answer.
A blanket of blackness.
Dust.
Kira sometimes liked to imagine that whatever your interpretation of death was came true for you. That way everyone could be happy- or at least satisfied- to some extent.
Kira’s interpretation ran along the lines of the classic idea of ‘death’ being like ‘sleep’.
Sleeping is peaceful. Sleeping comes steeped in darkness. In the deepest of sleeps, one remembers nothing. One simply exists. And sometimes, when the sleep is light, noises from the outside world break through. She liked this aspect of it, too because maybe, every so often, when the death was light on her shoulders she might hear the gentle footsteps of visitors about her grave, hear the earth move around her, the distant church bells or the cry of a bird overhead.
And then most importantly- when you sleep, you dream. Kira thought that would be lovely- to go on dreaming after death.
But all thoughts- all ideas and interpretations aside- one thing remained certain to Kira. Death hit your body and released it from all physical feeling.
This couldn’t be death… because it hurt too much.
Her body was heavy. She was uncomfortable and sore. Someone- and she wasn’t sure who, or how long ago- had wrapped her torso tight in bandages. Every so often she’d try to move, but couldn’t.
Where were the painkillers? If there had been any, they’d worn off. She could feel her wounds sharply- feel the imprints of the pathways that blade had made through her body and organs. She was certain she could feel stitches, too, mashing awkwardly against her too-tight bandages.
She’d been thinking clearly- well, if not clearly, at least slightly better- for a short while now. She supposed with all the blood she’d lost there hadn’t been enough to keep her consciousness fresh and working. In fact, there’d probably barely been enough to keep her heart pumping. And there certainly still wasn’t enough to let her dead muscles move.
But there was enough for her to feel pain. What rotten bloody luck.
At first the thoughts had come strangely. It was a shock to hear your own mind after a seemingly eternal blank. The thoughts had been wild; half-formed. They’d been glazed, translucent- meaningless words that floated across her mind like oil on water. And for a while, that was how she kept it. Forcing these things to take form required effort.
But eventually, form had come. Pictures of faces began to appear; Lee’s and Arihant’s prominent amongst them. Sometimes she’d seen Jude, waving from a distance. Sometimes, Madeleine- released from her prison and striding through the Battle Training Room. Once or twice, she even caught a glimpse of Macy, Will, Jack, or- bizarrely- Cardo, a Carer whom she knew was one of Arihant’s friends.
But it was probably something to do with the fact that his was the first voice other than her own mind’s that she’d heard.
“Help!”
“What?” she blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“Help!”
“Cardo?”
“Kira,” his breathing had been heavy. “Kira, can you hear me?” And his voice had been close.
“Yes, I can hear you. What’s-?”
“Open your eyes! Can you open your eyes?”
Can you open your eyes?
She kept asking herself it. Over and over. Long after his voice had stopped being regular, and only floated over every so often.
Can you open your eyes?
She was trying.
Ever since conscious thought had finally taken form, she’d been trying. But her whole body was a dead weight. She was little- yes- but suddenly, her light frame felt like it weighed 5 tonnes or more. It wasn’t just her limbs and torso that felt heavy. Even her hairs felt like they were straining, tugging hard on their roots. Her eyeballs felt like they were sinking down into their sockets to the back of her skull; pushed down upon by her heavy eyelids.
“It hurts, Cardo.”
But her lips wouldn’t open, either.
Was this how it would feel to be paralysed?
When Kira heard more voices- and sometimes she did, and sometimes she didn’t- they’d sounded panicked. They kept asking her to open her eyes. She wondered if all Carers- the medical jargon that the voices came out with betrayed them as belonging to that particular group- knew how heavy her body felt, and how heavy and slow her heart was beating.
She was burning with questions.
Did they win?
Did they lose?
Was Madeleine back?
Was Kennedy okay?
Was anyone… dead?
The Carers- excepting Cardo, who every so often would repeat the dreaded question- did not speak much to her; more about her.
“Think she’ll make it?”
“I hope so. We can’t lose another one.”
“She’s lost a lot of blood.”
“There’s still a chance.”
“Not a good one.”
“But there is a chance, right?”
Cardo: “Can you open your eyes?”
“Give it up, man. She can’t hear you.”
“Well, hey, no leave him alone- maybe she can.”
“Says who?”
“You don’t know if she can or not.”
“You don’t even know if she’s still there.”
“Stop it guys. Put pressure on that wound.”
“Where’s that noise coming from?”
“Next room. Someone new’s in.”
“Oh my god- look!”
“I’m so sick of seeing blood.”
Cardo, again: “Can you open your eyes?”
“I told you, she can’t hear you.”
“Wright wants us to attend to that new guy. Oh, god, he looks bad, doesn’t he?”
“Hurry up!”
“Move it!”
“Oh… oh my god-”
“Shut it-”
“Where’s the scalpel-?”
“That one’s crashing-”
“I need someone who can Heal-!”
“Wright says leave Norris. We’ve done all we can for her.”
“Up to fate-”
Cardo, one last time: “Kira, can you…?”
How she wished she could.
Words left.
Silence came.
Hours upon hours of silence. She probably slept, because that was the time in which the faces appeared. Once, she dreamed she had opened her eyes, and Lee and Arihant had been beside her bed. And Arihant hadn’t been wearing any gloves, and she’d been able to hold his hands, and Lee had said-
No. She forgot now what Lee said. That was the trouble with dreams. Holding on to the details was like trying to cup water in your hands.
It all always trickled away…
Like time.
Time until death.
Death was all about inter-
See, now she stuck in a loop.
Her imagination was failing. Was it possible to hallucinate while dreaming? That didn’t even make sense. Wasn’t a hallucination a dream? No- it was neurons, firing in your brain. Or was it electrical signals? She’d always been rubbish at Biology. And Chemistry. And Maths. And, well, really quite a few subjects. It was one of the reasons she sometimes used to question her right to remain in her position as Head. Yes, as Head of the Spies, she didn’t need to be a genius. But surely she needed to be a least a little book-smart?
She was more confident now. It was a shame, actually. She was getting better. She was nearly a good Head. She definitely wasn’t a bad Head. And her Spies had grown to like her. They’d all been keen to speak to her when she came back after the summer- and they liked Training. If she died, all of that wouldn’t matter.
If.
When.
If.
Dàmmit.
Another dream. Then another. Once, she thought she heard Arihant and Cardo talking. Then again. It was the same dream, over and over; but with different words. They were talking about someone.
They talked about tea.
And they talked for a long time. At infrequent gaps. Hours, she thought. These must be hours. She wished she could open her eyes. If Cardo really was out there, then she’d give him a surprise.
The dream Arihant and Cardo had another conversation. This was the 6th one she counted.
Cardo spoke first. He sounded distant; weary. “Are you sure you want a coffee next time?”
Arihant’s voice was lovely; soft. Her imagination had never captured its soft, rich quality so clearly before. She liked it when he spoke. It relaxed her. Even when he was talking about nothing at all. “Well… Maybe. Here, you know those really tiny coffees? The strong ones?”
He means espresso.
“You mean espresso?”
“Yeah, that. Well, I was thinking that what you could do is you could take a lot of the little ones, and put them in a cup like this one.”
How funny. Was he trying to stay awake? Why would she dream about staying awake? Was this supposed to be ironic? Her mind’s idea of a joke?
“You do, of course, realise, Ari, that it is physically possible to die of caffeine poisoning?”
“Really?”
Really. It was. And it was never pretty. She wanted to tell him-
“Really. You know what? I’m saving you from yourself. No more caffeine. You need sleep.”
“I’ll sleep if she wakes up–”
If Kira could’ve, she would’ve froze.
If. So he believed it, too. Maybe… Maybe she should give up.
“Well, mate, I’m sorry. But I’m going to have to go get some shut-eye, now. If I don’t… Well, treatment will not be happening tomorrow, and I think they need me for that. So… Well. I’ll bring you one more tea, OK? And it’s definitely tea, because you’ll start getting shakes if you have any more coffee. And then I’ll see you in the morning, OK? They’ll page me if there’re any developments.”
Yes, they would. Maybe they would soon.
“All right,” Arihant replied.
And that was it.
No goodbye.
No final message.
No contact.
All right.
All right.
Alright.
Okay.
It hurt. And hurt. And wouldn’t stop hurting. Sharp jolts of pain were starting; darting back and forth across her torso. Her heart was speeding up; thudding faster now. It felt weary. It was weary. But at least it was faster.
It felt so much faster. So much sorer.
But on the machines it was the subtlest of changes. The beeping outside barely quickened. Unless she was only imagining that beeping?
And suddenly, she could feel her chest heaving. It was an awkward, unsteady movement. And her muscles screamed in pain when they were stretched in the slightest.
Her arms felt suddenly shaky.
But at least she could shake them. Well… it was a feeble sort of shake. Only slightly tremulous. Nothing much worth taking note of.
But Kira noticed anyway.
She felt so weak.
So horribly weak. Ill. Sick.
She never got sick. She wasn’t a sick child. She was pale, and thin- but she was strong, too. Resilient. When she was a kid, she’d looked like you could knock her over with a good gust of wind, but the truth was, it would’ve taken a steamroller to get the job done.
Yet all of a sudden, she was zapped of strength.
All she could do was shake, and breathe.
Shake and breathe.
And she still couldn’t open her goddam eyes. And it just wasn’t getting any better. The more she shook, the more pain she felt. The harder her heart thudded. It beat with a dull urgency. Well, it seemed urgent to her. But that was only because-
The contact was sudden.
His fingers touched there first, then the heel of his palm pushed cautiously- she doubted Arihant could be rough to save his life- against the heel of her own. Her hand felt small; almost shrivelled in his. Kira knew the second she felt his hand holding hers that it was him. She’d only held his hand once in her life.
But she knew it was him.
More than that- she knew it wasn’t a dream.
She couldn’t make that feeling up; the feeling that was starting in her stomach, and spreading- and hurting- but she didn’t mind so much anymore. That feeling made up for the pain.
That wonderful feeling of his gloved fingers winding their way through her own. That wonderful, bitter-sweet smell of tea mixed with espresso.
It hadn’t been a dream.
They hadn’t…
So he’d been here.
For all those hours.
He’d been there the whole time.
Her father would’ve called her twitter-pated. Suddenly, she felt as light as a bloody feather.
Well, almost. One final push. That’s all. For him. Because he’d waited. And because it’d been so kind of him to wait.
One more.
Just one.
She pushed.
And her eyes opened-
Just in time to see his flutter and close. Kira watched through bleary eyes as his head of dark curls fell forward softly. She smiled weakly as she watched his shoulders begin to gently rise and fall.
He hadn’t let go.
Neither would she.
And she lay back. And she sighed.

[Arihant]

Arihant didn’t sleep well.
He hadn’t had problems sleeping for a while. After he’d come last year he’d had a string of nightmares, nearly every night. It was a by-product of his guilt, he supposed. He’d been so convinced, during that time, that it was only a matter of time before he slipped up, before he hurt someone. That was before he learnt how to have faith in his own carefulness. It was before he’d even met the Delaneys or half his friends.
It wasn’t before he’d met Kira, though. But that made sense, that he still had nightmares about carelessness even though he knew her. He had had least faith in his ability to keep Kira safe. He’d been most terrified that he would hurt her.
He was walking through the battlefield now, and it sounded like it had earlier: explosions and screams and thuds and scrapes and yells. It was as loud as it had been then, as hellishly oppressive. The sounds crashed into him from all sides.
But the sources of the sounds were not there. There were no people there – not even Arihant. He moved through the forest as a ghost, looking at the carnage springing up around him with no beginning and, seemingly, no end, completely unable to affect anything. To change anything. It was just hell repeating itself, and he was powerless to stop it.
He heard Lynn’s scream again, although he didn’t see her.
Then a figure in the distance, and Arihant began to move more quickly, hoping to catch up with it, but the faster Arihant moved, the faster the stranger moved. Arihant kept accelerating until he was running, and then until he was practically flying, moving over the ground at the greatest speed that his physical enhancement would afford him. But still he could not catch up.
The forest kept running on in front of him, never-ending, and the sounds kept going. He didn’t feel the wind against his skin.
Then, suddenly, it stopped, it stopped. And Arihant didn’t judder to a halt, but he simply wasn’t moving anymore – and he hadn’t caught up with the stranger. He was the stranger, now.
He looked down and saw himself, his own clothes, his own body, his own hands, free of their gloves, and moving forward in a motion that exactly mirrored the motion that Arihant had carried out earlier, a motion aimed to kill.
In his ears he heard the snapping of a neck, and then further snapping: crackling, and it became hotter and hotter. The forest was on fire, he remembered. The forest was burning down.
And Arihant would burn with it if he didn’t get away, but he couldn’t run. He kept moving forward. He kept leaning forward to touch…
To touch…
He woke up suddenly, his eyes snapping open to stare at the wall opposite him, and his heart pumping violently in his throat.
He wasn’t hyperventilating, at least. He wasn’t shaking, and he wasn’t twitching, and he hadn’t woken up yelling formless words. It was all right, he told himself as he tried to calm his thudding pulse. He was just tired.
It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t.
He was just tired.
He glanced up at the clock on the wall. One hour and a half had passed, now; that was all. The dream had only felt like minutes, but he’d still expected to have been asleep for longer than that.
He looked around the room again, feeling a little bit calmer. The moonlight still streamed through the room, and on this floor, with the dim light, you could barely even see the skeleton of the forest outside. And the beeping of the monitor was calming, in a way, so much slower was it than his own pulse.
But the beeping of the monitor reminded him why he was here, and that made him feel very un-calm indeed.
He looked down at Kira again, saw her hand intertwined in his, and saw her chest rising and falling, and the relief that he felt was overpowering, like a tidal wave. She was still alive; she was still alive.
And his eyes moved from her rising and falling chest to her neck, to her lips, to her cheeks and her nose and her eyes…
Arihant froze.
Her eyes were wide open, and her blue irises looking straight at him.
She was awake.
The relief that had flowed over him before was pathetic, insignificant compared to what he felt now.
His breath caught in his throat, and the hand which was not holding Kira’s immediately clenched into a fist which he brought swiftly to his face and pressed hard against his lips in his shock.
She was awake.
“Oh, thank God,” he breathed in Hindi. “Oh, thank God.”
It wasn’t really God in Hindi; but the sentiment was more or less the same. Whether it was God or Yahweh or Allah or Brahma or Buddha, it didn’t matter. He thanked them all.
Arihant’s family had always worshipped Shiva, the destroyer, and Arihant thanked him too.
He slid his fist away from his face, and when it left his lips curved into a small smile as he blinked hard to disperse the thin veil of tears that had sprung up in his eyes. Happy tears. Thankful tears. But they didn’t need to be cried now, because tears – although not always – were usually for grief, and Arihant had nothing for which to grieve.
She was awake.
“You’re awake,” he said in English, and the emotion which pounded through him pounded through his voice as well.
He didn’t let go of her hand.

[Kira & Lee Norris]

ooc: Shorter. But sooner.

The ticking motion of the clock was soothing sound, so she concentrated on that. It was much more pleasant than the beeping, which grew ever clearer to her ear as she grew more and more awake. There was something unsettling about listening to one’s own heartbeat. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it that she could feel for her pulse, and she didn’t like it that if she kept still and lay for long enough, she could begin to feel her veins and arteries pumping and pushing the blood around her body.
Another comfort to her was the sound of Arihant’s breathing; much deeper and much more regular than her own. Sometimes he moved ever so slightly. She couldn’t see his expression, as his face was turned away from hers, and of course, she could not touch it to turn it towards her. She was forced to content herself with reading his messy curls, from which she could glean a few things.
One of them was that Arihant really needed to brush his hair.
Another was that his was a much deeper shade of dark brown than Lee’s.
A third was if she had dark hair, she’d look a bit like a walking dead girl. Was it Wednesday Adams she thought of? She didn’t like TV much. It came from growing up in a magical area. Hardly anyone had TVs were she was from. Books were better.
An hour and a half had passed. Kira hadn’t tried to speak- although she had tested her mouth slightly by opening and closing it a few times, just to check her muscles were still working. She’d probably looked a little gormless while she was doing it and maybe even a little like a suffocating fish so she was thankful Arihant hadn’t woken in time to see her doing it.
He was waking now.
She could hear it coming. Though she could not see his expression, she could hear the quickening of his breath and feel the tightening of his hand in hers. He woke with a start. She supposed in any other context it would’ve been funny to watch his bleary head turn from wall to clock to her and watch his black eyes widen in shock to see her gazing steadily back.
All of a sudden, a million different emotions exploded at the pit of her stomach; too quick, too deep and too painful for her to be able to contemplate all at once. These emotions only increased in volume when she realised his eyes were shining with droplets she was certain shouldn’t belong there.
Her shock at seeing them was quickly dispelled when he spoke in his familiar voice, but with unfamiliar words.
She blinked. She recognised the language. He’d spoken it before.
“You’re awake,” he finally said, once he had drawn his fist away from his mouth.
She wanted to smile. But it was difficult. Instead, she settled for a weak nod.
“Yeah… looks like I am.”
Although casual flippancy was what she had been aiming for, the words got stuck and faltered in her throat, resulting in a hoarse croak. It wasn’t half as reassuring as she’d intended it to be.

[Arihant]

And when she spoke all the relief that Arihant felt was shattered. He had never heard her voice sounding like that before. The words creaked out, so that her throat sounded dry, so that it sounded like she hadn’t spoken in weeks, so that Arihant was made horribly aware of the pain she must be feeling. That was just her throat. She hadn’t even had any injuries near her throat. They hadn’t had to intubate her, so far as Arihant was aware – at least, he’d not seen her attached to any ventilators.
So if the part of her that hadn’t been injured was paining her like that, then the parts that had…
A million questions that he could ask her cropped up in Arihant’s hypochondriac head:
Are you all right?
Does your throat hurt?
Does it hurt you to talk?
Do you need painkillers?
Do you want water?
Do you want me to get a Carer?
But he couldn’t say any of them for a moment. There were so many questions, too many questions, all clamouring for his attention; and so he couldn’t say only one of them. He couldn’t say any of them.
And behind the mass of questions there throbbed something else, a dull anger. A dull anger that Arihant wasn’t really thinking about right now, so gentle it was. It pulsed silently somewhere deep within him, quietly. And it was quietly growing larger with every passing minute – no more obvious, but more and more powerful with time. More and more dangerous.
Someone had done this to her. Arihant hadn’t really thought this through when Cardo was telling him about it and when he’d been waiting for Kira to wake up
Arihant didn’t think of other people badly, as a general rule. He believed the best in everyone, because the way he saw it, he didn’t have the right to judge anyone else. But now…
For the first time in five years, Arihant thought of someone else as a monster.
He didn’t show this anger outwardly. Outwardly his face became pained at the sound of her pained voice. His grip on her hand became even more careful, as if he was holding the hand of a china doll.
If this incident had proved anything it was that Kira was breakable.
If this battle had done anything it had left Kira broken.
And he still didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t even know if he should say anything – if her voice sounded like that, it must have hurt her to talk…
But after a moment he asked anyway, not able to hold himself back, “How are you feeling?”
A pathetic question, yes. But he needed to know.

[Kira & Lee Norris]

How was she feeling?
Initially, when she'd woken up, she'd just felt... tired. She'd been thankful for this fatigue; it'd suppressed most of the pain she was feeling now. Because, she'd discovered, as the seconds ticked by and she grew more and more awake, she also grew more and more aware of her wounds. As her vision had also grown sharper, she'd begun to notice the unmistakable stains of blood on her hands and bandages.
There was something disconcerting about the sight of your own blood.
Kira felt... pain.
She felt exhaustion.
She felt the heavy limbs of her body, and the deadness in her legs.
She felt her heart, fluttering weakly.
She felt the hardness of the mattress beneath her.
And she felt Arihant's hand, gently cradling hers.
How was she feeling?
It seemed pointless to talk about the physical pain with Arihant. Not when his own anguished expression was causing a much deeper, stronger pain to tug in Kira's chest. She didn't know how to explain to him- how to tell him that his being there meant she was okay.
His holding her hand made her okay.
That sounded stupid. But it was true. She was fine. Well- not fine- but she knew she would be. Because Arihant was here.
He'd waited for her to open her eyes.
Kira didn't think anybody had ever waited for her before.
"I'm o-okay." She coughed, attempting to clear her throat. "I'm okay," she repeated, this time in a slightly stronger voice. "Arihant... how long... have y-you been here..?"

[Arihant]

And he didn’t like hearing that cough, either.
He didn’t like hearing the words that lined either side of the cough. I’m okay. That wasn’t true; he knew that much. Anyone with eyes would be able to tell that she wasn’t okay just by looking at her, by looking at the bandages that encircled her waist, the pallor of her skin, the faint splashes of red on her hands.
She wasn’t lying to him, though, Arihant knew that. She was being brave, or she was trying to spare his feelings, and Arihant wasn’t surprised by that, because he was sure that the expression on his face was a sight to behold, if his feelings were any indication of how his face looked. But she didn’t need to do that; Arihant wanted to know.
Then again… Maybe she didn’t want to talk about it. And he couldn’t blame her for that. She’d just been sta – hurt, and it was understandable if that wasn’t the sort of thing she wanted to have a heart-to-heart about, yet.
“Arihant… how long… have y-you been here…?”
Arihant answered, “I… I came as soon as I found out. I don’t know how long it was after you were brought in.”
And he was sorry for that, so sorry he could hardly say. If anything had happened to her, and he hadn’t been there…
It didn’t bear thinking about.
He glanced up at the clock, and did some quick maths in his head, then looked back at her. “About nine hours and forty minutes now, I think.”
It had felt like longer, though. Nine hours and forty minutes seemed impossibly short. He felt like he’d waited for weeks.
He would have waited for weeks.

[Kira & Lee Norris]

Nine hours and forty minutes?!
She’d thought she’d been hearing Cardo and Arihant speak over a period of hours… but she’d no idea it’d been for so long. And he’d really been here? The whole time?
That was…
Now she was more than okay.
She was… she wasn’t sure if there was a word for this. Though she was pretty sure a portion of it could be defined as, ‘touched’. Another, smaller portion could definitely be labelled as, ‘ever so slightly smug’. Then there was the part that worried about him. He looked so tired- almost ill- it couldn’t have been easy for him to have stayed with her. Had he even tended to his own injuries-?
She paused at that.
Did Arihant have any injuries?
“Y-you really stayed that long?”
The idea of it seemed so alien to her. It felt like something… Lee would do for Madeleine. It was something Lee would do for Madeleine. It was that sort of romantic gesture. A Madelee moment.
Kira wasn’t used to getting moments like that to call her own. It was weird to think someone would’ve cared enough to have given her that.
She tried to smile- it was weak, but it was there- “Th- thank you. You didn’t have to… but thank you.”
Thank you so much.

[Arihant]

He hadn’t thought that she would be surprised.
By now it was just sort of… a given, was it not, that Arihant would stay with her? Why would he leave her, at a time like this? How could he?
It wasn’t anything to do with chivalry, or doing the right thing. Arihant couldn’t leave her right now. Physically he should have been able to get up and leave the room – but his mind wouldn’t let him. His mind kept him glued to the seat, kept him watching her, kept him firmly by her side until she woke up or until –
That hadn’t happened. He didn’t need to think about that.
But it still… it hurt, that she was surprised. After all these months – He’d known her for a year, now, maybe more. And sure there had been all those times, all those stupid months when Arihant had tried to protect her, had tried to stay away – But he’d explained that, hadn’t he? He’d apologised. They were friends again. He’d thought he’d fixed that.
Apparently not enough. She shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d stayed. She should have taken it for granted. Arihant didn’t…
He didn’t want her to think that he was going to leave again.
“Please don’t thank me,” he said quietly, trying – like her – to bring a smile to his face, but he couldn’t do it, looking at her now. It hurt to see her pain; and to see her pleasure at something which shouldn’t have surprised her.
“You don’t need to. I… Kira, I couldn’t leave you like this,” he said, and the pain which he had been trying to keep out of his tone managed to push into his words.

[Kira & Lee Norris]

He looked, if possible, more upset now than before. His weak attempt at a smile let her own equally pathetic attempt fall. She couldn’t quite understand why he still looked so sad. Yes, he was worried about her. She must really look a mess- no, she was a mess. Three stab wounds. Three. Right now, it was failing her slightly as to how she actually had managed to survive- but that wasn’t important.
What mattered was she was alive.
It hurt, now, but it would get better.
And Arihant was here.
But his voice and eyes were so sad.
Don’t be sad, Arihant. Look; I’m still alive.
Maybe an appropriate response would be, “It means a lot,” or, “I really appreciate it,” or something like, “It’s so good of you to have stayed”.
Maybe…
Kira wasn’t sure… why. She just got the feeling… maybe… maybe Arihant wouldn’t want her to know how upset he was. Even though she could see the pain etched into every line of his face-
That couldn’t all be for her.
Then a thought caught her breath.
What if it wasn’t?
“K-Kennedy?” she could only say his name. That would be enough.

[Arihant]

“K-Kennedy?”
And, right there, guilt.
Arihant hadn’t been to see Kennedy yet. He had been intending to, when he’d come down from his incident in the dorms, but… Well, other things had got in the way.
He’d felt guilty about it a couple of times before, when he’d been sitting here with Kira, but, again, he couldn’t have left. Cardo had given him a few updates – but after the first piece of news, it wasn’t really an update anymore, was it? Nothing was changing.
So Arihant didn’t really need to be there for Kennedy, if Kennedy was unconscious and oblivious to everything, but he felt bad about not being there for Lynn. He didn’t even want to think about the sort of state that Lynn must have been in right now.
But then, what help could he have been for her now? She probably didn’t want to see him. It was Arihant’s fault that this had happened to Kennedy; how could Lynn even stand to be near him?
Arihant didn’t know how Kira knew about Kennedy already, but then, she was Head of the Spies. It was her job to know what was happening to the people for whom she was responsible. In fact, as a Spy, it was her job to know things, full stop.
But Arihant still didn’t want her to worry. Kennedy needed to be worried about, but not by Kira. Not now.
“Kennedy’s… stable, the last I heard. My friend’s been giving me updates on what’s happening, and he has a punctured lung, which they’re trying to fix now. He hasn’t woken up yet.”
And that was all Kira needed to know. It was all true; everything was there, and Arihant hadn’t lied.
After all, this was all Arihant really knew, anyway. And it would be strange if he started describing the look that Cardo had worn the last time he’d talked to Arihant about it which made Arihant think that it was far more serious than he was being told.

[Kira & Lee Norris]

A punctured lung...
God. Kennedy...
No wonder Arihant was so worried-looking. His best friend and Kira had been badly wounded. And she didn't even know what had happened to Lynn. Or anyone else.
She didn't know anything.
Least of all, she didn't know what Arihant must be going through. He looked so scared. She'd never seen him look like that before.
With effort, she had to keep the conversation going. The more normally she was able to carry herself, the less badly she would come across. The more reassuring it would be to him. And he needed reassurance. He needed to know she was okay.
Kennedy would be okay, too. He had to be. He was alive, after all. He was stable, and there were Carers with him. So Kennedy had to be okay.
He had to be...
She wanted to explain to Arihant why she'd been asking about him. Kennedy- and Arihant- after all, had been her two last thoughts before the girl from the Forces had taken her unawares.
"My shadows... told me he'd been shot," Kira said slowly, trying again to clear her voice as she spoke. "When we were in b-battle. That's why I... stopped r-running. That's when..."
Limply, she attempted to move her free hand to gesture at her bandages. It didn't really work. Her hand barely twitched. But her head was able to loll forwards slightly- like a nod to indicate her injuries.
Perhaps that would be enough.

[Arihant]

Oh, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no…
Arihant’s mind began running at a hundred miles an hour when she told him that.
He hadn’t known. The shadows. Arihant hadn’t thought of the shadows – he didn’t know much about them, really. He didn’t know what they did; he hadn’t thought that they would be bringing her news in the battle. But why wouldn’t they? Kira was the Head of the Spies, she had to know what was going –
Kira was Head of the Spies, so she would be a target.
And the whole time before the battle, he hadn’t thought that once. He’d only thought one thing: Kira’s Head of the Spies; she’ll keep herself safe. And he didn’t have a chance to give it any more thought, because the battle was so hellish and Lynn was so scared and it had all happened so fast –
And he hadn’t tried to protect her.
But that wasn’t what was making him panic now. That was far from it – the fact was that this had happened because Arihant had not only failed to protect Kira, but failed to protect Kennedy as well, as he had promised Lynn he would.
This had happened because she’d stopped running.
She’d stopped running because she’d heard about Kennedy being shot.
Kennedy had been shot because Arihant hadn’t been there to keep the Delaneys safe.
Arihant hadn’t kept the Delaneys safe because…
The logic ran out there. He didn’t know why.
Because he was Arihant, he supposed.
He’d frozen when she’d said that to him, his eyes growing wide. And when he’d reached his conclusion, he couldn’t look her in the eye anymore.
He looked instead at their hands. That was calming, wasn’t it? Seeing her little hand in his, feeling the warmth which told him that she was safe, she was here, she was alive. But he still felt horrible. He felt despicable, defeated, diminished – only millimetres tall.
This was his fault.
He could feel his shoulders slump slightly and his face grow distraught as he said quietly, “I was… Before the battle, I spoke to Lynn… about Kennedy. You know how she is about him, she’s so protective, and she thought that he would – that he was going to get himself h-hurt. She wanted him pulled out.
“And I said,” he continued, his tone growing bitter, “that she didn’t need to do that. I said that we could watch out for him, keep him safe. I said I would help her to keep him safe, and then he was…”
And Arihant couldn’t say it, but it was obvious what he meant.
“And you stopped running.”
A silence, a brief one, and then Arihant’s teeth gritted together and he exhaled sharply through his nose, blinked furiously to dispel the sheen in his eyes. “I’m… I’m sorry,” he said very quietly, still looking at their hands.
He couldn’t say anything else.

[Kira & Lee Norris]

“I’m… I’m sorry.”
Oh… oh, no…
He couldn’t possibly-?
Of course he could. This was Arihant.
He was blaming himself, wasn’t he? He was blaming himself for not protecting Kennedy- and, if Kira was following his twisted logic correctly- somehow, this also meant he was blaming himself for Kira’s attack.
She was an idiot, she thought, not to have realised that he would’ve been with Kennedy when he was shot, and that he would have been blaming himself. After all, this was Arihant.
Arihant would blame himself for the rain falling on Christmas if he could.
She could see the logic working furiously across his brow; and see the pain it was inflicting as his eyes widened, as though to give the panic there more room to bounce around.
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
Oh, Arihant… you fool. You darling, darling fool.
“Don’t b-be silly,” she said, as sharply as she could. “Y-you didn’t p-pull the trigger… someone else did… didn’t stop me… from r-running. I did.”
It’s not your fault. These things happen.
And they did happen. As hard as it was to accept, they happened, and they hurt. Cruel tricks and twists of fate. One foolish decision on her part- one foolish lapse in concentration- and this had happened. But that wasn’t Arihant’s fault.
That was hers.
And hers alone.

[Arihant]

Maybe that was how it seemed to other people, Arihant didn’t know. But to him it wasn’t silly at all; it was true.
Sure, he hadn’t done that to her. Sure, he hadn’t stopped her from running. But didn’t she see? That didn’t matter. It was a butterfly effect. One thing led to another, and maybe there were other things that could have changed it.
Maybe if Madeleine had slept in on the day that she’d been kidnapped, she would have passed through the fields later and the enemy wouldn’t have seen her. Maybe if the shadows had been slower, than Kira would have stopped somewhere different, somewhere where she was safe. Maybe if the person who had stabbed her had been facing another way, Kira would have seen him or her, and would have been able to fight back or escape.
Lots of things had led to Kira being hurt, and Arihant knew that he couldn’t be blamed for all of them. But there was a very clear chain leading from him to her. His own little butterfly effect.
He couldn’t take all the responsibility, no. But he would take what he needed to.
But… well, maybe she didn’t need to know that. She’d spoken sharply; clearly she didn’t think that Arihant should be thinking like this. He looked back over at her, and decided, for once, to tell her exactly what he was feeling.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “But… Kira, seeing you like this…”
How could he say this?
“This – I hate that this has happened. I hate it. I want someone to blame, I want to know why... I know there isn’t a reason, but I can’t help… feeling like that. And hating this so much, it feels like… Like I should have stopped it from happening. I know I couldn’t have. But… I never wanted to see you like this, Kira.”
And he looked at her for another moment, trying to make her understand, but then realised that he couldn’t express it properly. And he shook his head, blushed and looked back at their hands again. “I’m sorry; that didn’t make any sense,” he mumbled.