Open Your Eyes

[Kira & Lee Norris]

Kira’s mouth opened, breathless all of a sudden as he began to speak; a soft warmth started in her heart and melted, like butter, spreading through her body. There was something so wonderful about his words- his quality of speech- the rhythm of his accent as it curved around his soft, passionate words. She couldn’t explain it. She didn’t know what it was about that voice of his that drew her in- she didn’t know whether it was the meaning of his words, or the simple sound of them.
“But… I never wanted to see you like this, Kira.”
The final notes of his speech hovered between them. Kira’s heart throbbed softly in the sudden quiet.
The only appropriate response to that would have been to kiss him.
The shock of that realisation drew the breath she’d been holding in from her lips. She wondered why it was a shock- but it was always a shock to think… of touching him. To think of holding his hand or to- to think of that night, that oh so beautifully surreal Hallowe’en night when they’d danced…
Or to imagine… what it would be like… could they touch. To imagine what it would be like could she reach up, now, and ever so softly bring her lips to his-
No.
That was a dangerous place to be. A dangerous place to hover. A place that hurt her far too much- far more deeply than she liked to think about. And it was stupidly inappropriate.
Look at him; look at Arihant.
His passion was achingly beautiful. She rarely saw anyone look like that. She rarely saw anyone look so sorry. So sad. And when he looked at her, his rich eyes were full of meaning. She locked herself into that gaze, and tried to convey some sort of message back.
How thankful she was- how much it meant that… that he would care so much about her. How she wanted him to be okay. She didn’t want him to feel that anger or that hurt. That’s what she wanted to say. She didn’t want him to be sorr-
“I’m sorry; that didn’t make any sense.”
He had stopped looking at her. He was looking at their hands, interlocked across the mattress. She looked at them, too.
Think of something to say, Kira. Something to help.
“Ari…” she started a little shakily, then stopped, unsure of how to pick her words. “I… don’t blame y-you for my at… attack. So you c-can’t either. If you need someone t-to… blame… You should bl-blame m-me. I t-told you I’m… who stopped.”
She wondered if that would sound alright. If that would help.
Knowing Arihant... probably not.

[Arihant]

He kept looking at their hands.
And, his eyes still fixed on their interlaced fingers, he shook his head, and said softly, “No.”
How could he blame her?
Looking at Kira now hurt Arihant for obvious reasons. It hurt him because she was hurt, and he hated that that had happened, hated it with every fibre of his being. It hurt him because he couldn’t make it any better. It hurt him because he should have stopped it. It hurt him because this was all he could do, now, this sitting with her and holding her hand – through the dàmned gloves. He couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t comfort her. He was useless.
And if it weren’t for what he was…
Not many people could comfort Kira right now. In the state that she was in, it would hurt for her to be moved by anyone, Arihant knew that. But were it not for what he was…
Physical enhancement worked both ways. He was capable of great force, yes, but he could also be gentle. If he had wanted to – He knew he could have done it without hurting her. If he had wanted to… to hold her…
No.
That wasn’t the point, anyway. That wasn’t what he was supposed to be thinking about right now.
Looking at her hurt him, and one of the main reasons for that was because she hadn’t deserved this. Kira was strong and she was brave, she was Head of the Spies. But looking at her now Arihant didn’t need to see the Head of the Spies. He didn’t even need to see Kira.
In the most basic terms, a seventeen-year-old girl was lying on the bed in front of him. A seventeen-year-old girl who had three stab wounds in the chest. A seventeen-year-old girl who had been attacked and left to –
And she wanted him to blame her for it.
That wasn’t right.
“I can’t blame you. I don’t want to.”
Back to her blue eyes again. There was an emotion there that he didn’t understand.
But it looked sad; he could see that much. He didn’t want that to be there. He didn’t want her to worry.
“It doesn’t matter, though. If I want to blame someone… Well, that’s my problem. Please, just ignore that, you don’t have to think about it. I’m not the one in the hospital bed here. You should only be worrying about yourself right now.”

[Kira & Lee Norris]

But he couldn’t blame himself. He just couldn’t. Kira wouldn’t allow for that. It was stupid; it was useless to them both. He had told her not to think about it. She couldn’t think of anything but that.
If Arihant was going to blame himself… well, then she was the reason he had even thought to blame himself. That was her fault, because she’d told him why she stopped running. But then if she were to say that Arihant would blame himself for her blaming herself for him blaming himself and then-
No. It was much too confusing. It was much too silly.
Neither Arihant nor Kira were to blame. No-one was to blame. It was just… a battle. These things happened. Kira, as Head of the Spies and an obvious target, had simply been lucky to avoid any major catastrophe such as this up until now.
But Arihant wanted to blame someone.
Why did he have to want to blame someone, anyway?
Then for him to look at her with eyes like that; eyes so full of pain and fear… eyes that were tired- he was so tired- and to then proceed to tell her not to worry about him, only herself…? How could he expect that of her? Him even saying that… it made her wonder whether or not Arihant knew her at all. And that thought scared her.
Alright. She’d give him someone to blame.
“If… you want to blame someone…” Kira said slowly, haltingly, “then… bl-blame the g-girl who stabbed… me. The man w-with her… called her, ‘Nessa’. Blame… Nessa… not yourself.”
She had dark hair. That’s what Kira remembered. Hair as long as Kira’s used to be; as dark as Kira’s was light. She had dark hair, and she was thin. And she had smiled at Kira. Her smile had been savage.

[Arihant]

He was making a complete mess of this situation.
That was what he got for being so tired, he supposed. He wasn’t thinking straight.
Kira didn’t like it when she heard about things like this. He shouldn’t have let her know that he felt responsible. Because, now, what had he done? She wasn’t leaving it alone. Clearly it upset her, or worried her, in some way – and she was sick. She was wounded. But Arihant had to go and bring up his own stupid neurotic thought process, and upset her. He hadn’t needed to say anything about it. He always thought like this; it was nothing new.
He’d had to go and say he needed to bloody blame someone, didn’t he? He didn’t think she’d understood what he meant by that. The feeling… wasn’t rational. It wasn’t logical; obviously Arihant had known that someone must have done this, but it wasn’t someone that he knew. The person had no identity, for him, and even knowing her name wasn’t enough to make Arihant feel like Nessa was real, not really.
He couldn’t assign blame on a faceless person, and he couldn’t blame Kira, or anyone else in Orchid. So, really, he supposed, what he had meant by ‘I want to blame someone’ had actually been ‘I want to blame myself.’
Oh, he was messed up.
He knew it didn’t make sense. He knew it was bloody stupid. But this was how Arihant had thought for years before he came to Orchid; he couldn’t just snap out of it now, and he didn’t do it all the time anymore, at least. But it was just now, seeing her like this, that he snapped right back into his comfort-blanket of self-loathing.
And now he’d upset Kira for the sake of his neurosis. Good show.
“Okay,” he said gently, but he tried to keep his tone firm. “Look, I won’t blame myself, okay? I’m sorry, I’m just being – In fact, never mind, it doesn’t matter what I’m being. The point is that I won’t blame myself anymore. I promise you that, so please stop thinking about it. I mean that, Kira. I shouldn’t have said anything; you need to rest. And there’s nothing to worry about, I’m fine. Really.”

[Kira & Lee Norris]

A pang of frustration.
Was that going to be what everyone said to her from now on?
“You should only be worrying about yourself right now.”
“… you need to rest…”
Great. Just great.
Kira had never been good at being told what to do. It’s probably why she and her mother had never quite seen eye to eye. Her mother liked control. Kira hated it. Not only that- she was unaccustomed to it, especially in her role here at the school as Head of the Spies. No-one here but Professors Hoodham and Thandie gave Kira orders.
Okay, that wasn’t fair.
Arihant wasn’t giving her orders. He wasn’t. He was just worried. But he had to accept that she was worried, too. That she cared about him and didn’t want him to look like that…
She didn’t want him to look so… tired… and scared.
“Okay,” Kira held onto her point stubbornly- and probably a little unfairly, too, on Ari’s part, as his last words clearly expressed his wish to move on from the topic of, ‘blame’. “I w-won’t… pretend I’m f-fine… if you don’t pr-pretend you’re fine. Deal?”

[Arihant]

Right, this was utterly ridiculous. They couldn’t really be doing this, could they? Of all the things that Arihant had thought would happen when Kira woke up, this was not it. He’d not thought that – For heaven’s sake, the girl was lying there with three holes in her chest. She nearly hadn’t made it, and yet here they were, talking about Arihant’s feelings. In what universe did that make sense?
He didn’t want to do this now. He just wanted to say yes and leave it. But part of him – she had to understand, though. She had to realise that he was sitting here without a scratch on him; he was safe; he hadn’t been hurt. He was worried about her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t fine. He was luckier than so many other people.
And Arihant was used to worrying, anyway. It was what he did.
He was fine.
She wasn’t.
And if he said yes, then she would think that he wasn’t fine. And that wouldn’t really stop her from worrying, now, would it?
But he didn’t want to do this now.
Oh, for God’s sake, just say yes.
Just say yes.
Just say –
“But I’m not pretending.”
…great.
“I’m not. I’m… I’m not hurt. I’m tired, but I’ve been tired before. I freaked out a bit there, but that’s not a first for me; you of all people must know that by now. And I’m worried, but I can deal with that. I am fine.”
But Kira, on the other hand…

[Kira & Lee Norris]

“Okay,” she gave up. “Okay, Arihant. Okay.”
Usually, she would’ve chased him up. Gotten them into a pointless, draining argument that would have inevitably ended up hurting them both, one way or another. Perhaps her weak physical state’s effect on her usual stubborn resolve wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
She really didn’t want to argue with anybody.
Especially not Arihant.
So she let him win.
For a while, they sat in silence.
Her mind kept moving, following the beeping motion of the monitor beside her. Already, she was beginning to itch to get up. But that was impossible. Experimentally, she tried, slowly, to furl her free hand into a fist. It twitched, the fingers curled inwards ever so slightly, but a sudden sharp spasm down her arm caused her a sharp intake of breath. Her fingers released themselves, and settled, relaxed, on the sheets of her bed.
“Arihant,” she said suddenly, “c-could you tell me… did we get… Madeleine back?”

[Arihant]

He wasn’t expecting that to happen.
All the times before, all the other times that there had been any sort of disagreement between Arihant and Kira, she’d won, without fail. He didn’t expect anything else, by now.
It wasn’t like he minded. He was used to it.
But now… she’d just yielded, just like that. And that fact worried him, and it made him feel guilty.
He should have left it. He should have just agreed. It was wrong of him to have said that; he should have left it.
Arihant just sat there in silence for a good few minutes, his heart pumping faster and faster as he worried more. She’d just given up; she’d just…
He knew she was unwell; he should have been expecting it. But – he didn’t know.
He didn’t know what to do. What to say. He was terrible at this.
A sudden sharp intake of breath, and Arihant started. He was about to ask her what had happened, but she spoke first – “Arihant, c-could you tell me… did we get… Madeleine back?”
He froze.
He could.
He didn’t want to.
Arihant took a deep breath in, and then he shook his head, and said quietly, “We didn’t.”

[Kira & Lee Norris]

For the first time since she’d re-woken, Kira allowed her heavy eyelids to sink and close.
Of course we didn’t.
She knew the battle hadn’t been going brilliantly. Her shadows had been able to tell her that much before… before the attack. But somehow, she’d always thought… she’d always thought they’d win. Jack was a good Warrior. And also he’d been under a lot of pressure, he was doing well as a leader. He was accustomed to leadership, after all, as captain of the rugby team.
Looking down at her bandages now, Kira realised she’d been a fool to think they had a chance at beating the Forces back at such short notice. The enemy had probably been preparing for weeks on end for that battle- a battle that had rested precariously on the pivotal moment of Madeleine’s capture.
Now the battle was over- she didn’t know how long over it was, but she was still alive, so that meant… that meant at least they hadn’t lost entirely.
Why hadn’t they lost, if they hadn’t won?
“C-could you tell… me wh-what happened?”
She supposed that question didn’t really come under the topic of, ‘only worrying about herself’. But she couldn’t do that. She knew all about herself, and she knew that though she was hurt now, she was going to be fine.
Her duty as Head of the Spies was beginning to stir in her mind.
It was her duty to know what was happening. A.S.A.P.
And Ari could help her do that.

[Arihant]

Again he could. Again he would, even though he didn’t want to.
Kira had been hurt, but she was the Head of the Spies, and her cousin was marrying the girl who they had been fighting for. She needed to know; Arihant wasn’t labouring under the illusion that it would be better if she wasn’t told.
But he didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news.
“Of course,” he said, a faint heat rising to his cheeks. He wasn’t really sure why that was happening, but he wouldn’t question it too much, he supposed. He wasn’t used to rational reactions around Kira, anyway. “The… Well, I didn’t see this for myself, but based on what my friend has told me, Jack Trove found the enemy Commander – Knight, I think he was – and they got into a fight. Trove got pretty badly beaten up by it” – and he decided not to go into details, here, because he was pretty sure that the guy was friends with Kira – “but so did the Commander, and… I’m not sure how it happened, but it ended up that Ailith Rayner killed the Commander. But that wasn’t enough for us to win the battle, because we’d lost so much by then, so we had to stop even though we hadn’t got Madeleine back. They burnt down the forest to push them back. So… no one won, really. It was a stalemate, more or less.”
He could have said more.
He could have told her how it terrified him that Madeleine was gone, how it felt completely alien being in the school knowing that she wasn’t here. He’d never spent much time with her, but it felt better just knowing that she was there. He didn’t know why that was. The entire school was better when she was there.
He could have told her what the Carers were saying about how Jack had looked when the Commander was shot, about the state in which he had been. They had been graphic, despite the use of medical language which clouded the description; so graphic that Arihant had winced even though he barely knew Jack Trove.
He could have told her how the forest looked now, the burnt sticks of charcoal sitting starkly on the steely ground that surrounded Orchid on every side and caused the smell of smoke to permeate the air.
But she knew what she needed to know, for now. The rest of it wasn’t anything that anybody should have to know any sooner than they had to. She’d find it all out, soon enough.

[Kira & Lee Norris]

A stalemate.
It sounded like something Lee would’ve said; the sort of comparison her cousin was exactly likely to draw. The sudden sound of the word reminded her vividly of her actions towards Lee just before the battle, and a feeling of utter relief cascaded over her.
From what Arihant was saying, the battle had been grim. Jack had been beaten up- and that was something Kira could hardly bear to think of. She’d seen other Warriors come out of Battle Training over the years; watched them limp out, sporting bruised legs and bloodied lips. Jack Trove had never walked out like that. He’d always walked out- just the faintest touch of smugness in his swagger- completely unscathed.
The name, ‘Knight’, rang no bells with Kira. She could only assume that if he was in a position of authority, he had to be in a recent one. Not that that actually mattered, now that he was dead.
Dead because of Ailith.
Well. She was the second-in-command Spy for a reason. It was nothing less than she would have expected of her, and her chest swelled with pride at the thought that it was not one of Madeleine’s Warriors, but one of Kira’s Spies that had taken down the enemy commander.
They burnt down the forest to push them back.
So they really must have been desperate. So it really must had been bad. And Kira could tell- though she felt it better to conceal this from Arihant, who really, was only doing it for her benefit- that Arihant was leaving a lot out. She’d just been given a watered-down version of the battle.
She didn’t mind that, though. It was all she needed.
“Okay.”
She nodded, and as best she could, gritting herself against the pain snaking itself between her ribs, she began to try to move again. But the iron weight that was her body held her mercilessly down. Eventually, she gave up again, and this time looked to Arihant, and concentrated on the texture of his gloves beneath her cold skin. He radiated warmth.
“Could…” her eyes rose, and found his; deep and dark. “Could you h-help… me u-up…?”
The words trailed off in her mouth, and she gulped painfully.
It was an unfair request. She knew how nervous Arihant was about touching people, even when he safely wore his gloves. But she wasn’t nervous. She knew Arihant could keep her safe because-
She just knew.

[Arihant]

Arihant had to bite back the words that sprang to his lips when he saw her trying to sit up. He was going to start saying it again, his That’s-not-good-you-shouldn’t-be-doing-that stuff, but obviously it wasn’t working, was it? He shouldn’t have been surprised. Just because someone was sick didn’t mean that they were going to rest – Bhadraksh had always been like that, always insisting on doing everything as normal even when he was running a fever that he should have been delirious with and couldn’t move without shaking.
The Carers would probably have had a fit if they’d seen Kira doing that, but Arihant just felt that same little stab of empathetic pain again when he saw the effort that it was taking her to get up, and that little swell of anger that this had happened to her at all.
And when she asked, “Could… Could you h-help… me u-up…?”, and he saw the pain and stubbornness in her eyes as she swallowed, his heart just about broke.
He suppressed the panic that fluttered in his chest at the thought of touching her – as much as they’d been spending time together since Hallowe’en, it was still his automatic reaction – and he suppressed the urge that he had to refuse on the grounds that she was supposed to be resting. That last urge was a stupid one, because if he didn’t help her then chances were that she would keep trying to do it herself, and that would hurt her more.
And he wanted to help.
He didn’t say anything, just nodded, then let go of her hand. He turned up the collar of his shirt automatically, as a precaution, even though she probably wouldn’t be anywhere near his neck, and then considered the best way to do it. The safest way in terms of touching would probably be to raise her from the front by her arms, but he didn’t want to do that. It wouldn’t be smooth; he might hurt her.
He decided to do it differently. He stood up from the chair that he was in, and moved so that he perched on the edge of the bed beside her. He then slipped his arm beneath her and around her shoulders, and made sure he had her securely, and that his clothes were staying in place so that Arihant’s skin wouldn’t come into contact with hers.
He lifted her easily, and he made sure to be gentle, so that her wounds wouldn’t be jostled. But he couldn’t let go when he’d got her sitting up straight – this was probably hurting her, after all, and even if it wasn’t, if she hadn’t been able to get up in the first place she probably wouldn’t be able to keep herself up now.
So he said, quietly, “I’m not sure if it would be a good idea for me to let go, Kira.”
His heart was beating very fast, all of a sudden.

[Kira & Lee Norris]

So don't let go.
The words were so strong and sudden inside her head, her whole body trembled; reeling back from the shock.
Why those thoughts still surprised her, she didn't know. She should really have been used to them by now; used to him being close to her, and used to the way his soft voice melted through the air like chocolate...
Another shiver.
"O-okay," she muttered, "just... prop up those pillows... maybe?"
Then when she lay back, she'd at least be sitting up a little bit. Then it would be easier, when her strength finally did begin to build itself, to lift herself off her bed and sit up, even for a few seconds-
Her heavy body felt waif-like with his support. Her wounds stretched slightly as her waist did, but it was bearable. Had she been moving herself, she would've done herself a lot more damage.
This felt safer. Much safer.

[Arihant]

He didn’t like how light she felt.
She seemed smaller than she had back when he’d held her on Hallowe’en, even though that probably wasn’t possible. It was possible that he exaggerated the lightness in his worried mind. But it still terrified him.
It was hard enough to see her broken like this, let alone to feel it too. It was dangerous enough for him to be this close to her at the best of times; he needed to be so careful, and to hold her right now when twice as many waves of emotion were tumbling through him as had been there when he hugged her on Hallowe’en. There was the fear and the pain that he felt at seeing her hurt like this – so much that she couldn’t even sit up by herself.
And then there was everything else that there had been on Hallowe’en; everything else that he’d felt then. That hadn’t gone away. It was just twisted into an unfamiliar guise by all the horrible emotions that he was also feeling.
“Okay, um, here…” he said slowly, his throat feeling very dry as his heart continued to pound against it. And he propped up the pillows behind her, wishing that they were larger to support her more comfortably and trying briefly and unsuccessfully to fluff them up, then laid her softly back on them so that she was placed, not upright, but so that she was able to sit up almost properly. His arm was still beneath her.
He didn’t move it straight away. He wanted to make sure that this wasn’t hurting her first.
“Is that – is that comfortable?” he asked, beginning to trip over his words as he started to blush.
He hated that that was happening right now; that he was getting embarrassed now, of all times. She didn’t need to deal with his bumbling again. “If you want I could get another pillow, or I could rearrange them, or… or something…”

[Kira & Lee Norris]

“Y-yeah,” she said softly, “I mean… no. No, this is fine.”
His arm was still warm around her, and behind its solid, reassuring touch she could feel the soft layers of pillows he’d built up. She didn’t know how he could do that- lift her body and hold it like there was nothing there. She weighed a ton. The iron in her blood was solidifying and weighing her down, or something. That sure was what it felt like. And it would make her all the less ashamed of not being able to lift her own limbs.
Arihant’s awkward words and fussing was as reassuring as his firm grip on her back. She felt taken care of, in a bumbly sort of way.
“This is… comfortable,” she added, to clarify.
It was still an effort to smile, but she did her best. It was a mediocre effort. She wondered again if Arihant knew- if he realised how much she appreciated this and appreciated him… really, a small voice inside her mind told her, she shouldn’t have asked him to move her. Really, that hadn’t been very fair of her. But he’d done it anyway. He hadn’t called for the Carers or for Gornray or anyone who might’ve stopped her.
That was nice of him.
“Thank you,” she repeated, trying her best to twist her neck to look at him properly. “Re-really. Thanks…”
Her gratitude sounded as weak as her body felt; yet she meant it with her whole heart and soul.