Open Your Eyes

[Arihant]

You don’t have to thank me.
The words were on the tip of his tongue yet again, but this time he refrained from saying them. Even though they were true. She didn’t seem to understand that this wasn’t something he needed to be thanked for – it wasn’t a chore. It didn’t cost him anything to stay with her. There was nothing that could have even come close to bringing him away, except –
Except Kennedy. Except the Delaneys.
But Arihant couldn’t think about them now. God, he was a coward; and he knew he couldn’t take it.
And even with that, even with the only partially-acknowledged haze of fear that still buzzed through his mind, there was still no doubt in his mind. He could not have left Kira. And as for the lifting her, that part was simple: he couldn’t say no to her. Not really, anyway. Feeble protestations he had down pat, but did he ever really end up disagreeing with her, in the end?
So his staying with her wasn’t a chore. It wasn’t even a choice. There was nothing admirable about it. There was nothing worth thanking, not really. Not the way that Arihant saw it.
But she thought there was, and he wouldn’t do it again; he wouldn’t see the gratitude (it was gratitude, wasn’t it?) in her pained face and tell her that it shouldn’t be there. He knew that it wasn’t fair of him.
“You’re welcome,” he said uncomfortably. His overactive sense of humility didn’t like accepting merit, so it brought down the tone of his voice, and made his words very quiet so that they almost sounded unsure of themselves. And he didn’t like knowing that he sounded uncomfortable, because the way they were now…
Kira and Arihant… Well, it wasn’t like either of them thought that this was normal. It wasn’t like he held her a lot; it wasn’t often that they were so close, so that he could almost feel her heart beating. And so if, in this unusual situation, she heard him speaking like that, with discomfort so clearly in his voice, why did he think she would assume it was there?
He was silent for a moment, wondering what to do. But he can’t have been focusing well, because as he did so he realised that a moment ago she’d tried to move, she’d tried to twist her head to… to look at him? It must have been. So he moved, angled himself so that he could see her properly while trying – God help him, he was trying – not to move her too much, not to jostle her. And he looked in her eyes.
And he said it again; louder this time, surer: “You’re welcome.”
And he didn’t even think to let go of her.

[Kira & Lee Norris]

"You're welcome."
She smiled, properly now, her lips parting into a grin. She relaxed once more in his grip to help him as he moved her slightly so that she was able to see him.
Seeing his eyes hovering so close over hers... felt strange. This whole thing was strange.
Kira... had been stabbed in battle.
Stabbed.
She'd barely made it out of there alive.
It would be a while before the logistics of it all would finally sink in to strike some chord within her heart. Perhaps it would never feel entirely real. She wondered how real it felt to those around her- Arihant, or Lee... did Lee know by now? Was he awake? Did he care that...?
Arihant cared.
She kept returning to this single truth. Kept going over it in her head. She'd already thanked him. Now she'd thanked him again. But she wanted to keep thanking him and keep thanking him until all the breath was gone from her body and she couldn't thank him anymore. It sounded silly, but that was how she felt just now... looking into those big dark eyes...
"Ari..."
The first time they'd ever met, on the steps, he hadn't even met her eyes initially, so overcome by the shyness she'd grown to love that he couldn't even look at her directly. And then when he finally had... wasn't it his rich colouring that she had first noticed about him? His dark skin, dark eyes, dark curls...
"Ari, I..."
Kira didn't know what she would have said if she'd been allowed to continue. Perhaps she would have said something she would have eternally regretted. Something that would have frightened Arihant; changed his perception of her and her perception of herself forever. When she thought about it afterwards, her heart felt swollen and hollow, but her head felt clear. It had told her it was probably for the best and that she had done the right thing by staying silent.
Because if she'd been allowed to say something... utter a quiet acknowledgement of the pull she was sure she felt towards him, and maybe... maybe that he felt towards her... and finally face up to things-
No.
It was far, far better that Kira's words were interrupted by a flapping Carer:
"What the heck do you think you're doing with her?!"

[Arihant]

How was it that mere eye contact felt like this?
Arihant hadn’t used to be good at holding people’s gazes because something about it had just felt so bare. He had felt exposed, when he met people’s eyes. It felt like they were seeing something deep within him, and Arihant knew that there was nothing deep within him that he could possibly want people to see. So he’d averted people’s gazes, in Vienna, and when he’d first come to Orchid; he stopped them from looking at him because he… didn’t want to be seen.
He’d been paranoid, he supposed. He was all right at looking at people now; it still didn’t come naturally to him, but he no longer had the underlying irrational fear that they would look in his eyes and immediately start clamouring for torches and pitchforks. The eyes were not the window to the soul that he’d presumed them to be; and most people weren’t that observant, anyway.
Kira was observant.
And eye contact with Kira still felt like it was more revealing than it should be, but not for those reasons. He knew, now, that no one couldn’t guess at facts by looking in his eyes, they couldn’t know what he had done by looking at him – but feelings? You could guess at feelings by looking at someone, if you looked hard enough. If you were observant. Like Kira.
A dull buzz of panic condensed at the back of his mind as he wondered just what on earth she was seeing, looking at him now.
And yet he didn’t stop looking at her, because he was still desperately trying to make sense of what he saw in her eyes. He was so absorbed in this that he almost started when she spoke.
“Ari…”
Kira didn’t call him Ari very often. Everyone else, the Delaneys and Jamie and Cardo and all the other people he’d somehow managed to befriend since he came here, they almost never addressed him by anything else, but he hadn’t heard it from Kira often, if he’d ever heard it before. And the way she said it now felt unbearably intimate, for some reason. It couldn’t have just been the name: the way she said it, the way she looked at him, pulled at his heart and throat and made him impatient to hear the words that would follow.
“Ari, I…”
And it seemed she was going to say something unimaginable; she was looking at him in a way he’d never seen before, and he didn’t know why that was but maybe she would explain it to him, maybe that was what she was about to say, and only moments were stopping him from hearing it, whatever it was, but then –
“What the heck do you think you’re doing with her?!”
And Arihant’s eyes immediately snapped away from Kira’s to look at the Carer standing in the door, rage across her face that multiplied Arihant’s immediate panic by ten, although she looked barely out of third year.
“I’m – I was just –”
“For goodness’ sake,” the girl snapped, walking quickly over to stand beside Arihant, glaring down at him. “I mean, for goodness’ – she has chest wounds, and you think it’s a good idea to twist her up like that? And did you not think to tell someone that she’d woken up? There are tests we need to run, you know, it’s not like waking up from a ruddy nap!”
Arihant could feel his eyes growing wider, his lips pressing together. The colour dropped from his face and he could feel it, like a sheet of water running down under his skin. And his words, when they came, were nonsensical – “I – I’m sorry, I didn’t – I didn’t think – I thought –”
“Oh, you thought, did you? Look – set her down, okay? Just set her down, right now, alright, and stand back. I’m getting in people who know what they’re doing. Who let you in here, anyway? I was told there were no visitors.” Her tone was growing suspicious, now. “Family only?”
“I –” Arihant started, with no idea of how he was going to continue – what was he supposed to do, condemn Cardo and the girl who had let him in as a favour? “I was let in – because – we’re friends, and I was told that –”
“Friends?” the girl asked, her eyes narrowing, and a disbelieving force placed behind the simple word that made Arihant feel almost ill.
He swallowed, his mouth suddenly feeling curiously dry. “Friends,” he repeated, the word dull against his tongue.
The girl looked at him for a second longer, then snorted, looking away. “Right, some friend. Set her down, would you? Now. I’m going to get someone to run these tests on her, and I want her to be alone by the time I get back, alright?”
Arihant’s jaw set, a little bit, at the word ‘alone’. “I wouldn’t get in the way,” he said quietly, but stubbornness pulsed through his voice.
A brief pause. “You can visit her later,” the girl said, her face softening slightly. “I mean, technically you shouldn’t be allowed to do that yet; no one’s exactly lifted the family only thing. But you can come back. We just… Just give us space to work, for goodness’ sake.”
Faced with logic, Arihant couldn’t really argue with her. It wasn’t like his bravery had been going to hold out much longer, anyway. Now that he was out of the battle, he’d quickly retreated to his old confrontation-hating self – and thank God he had. The alternative was almost too terrifying to consider.
But he also didn’t have much time to say that he agreed before the girl’s irritation flared up again, managing only to stammer out a fairly pathetic, “I –”
“So you’ll be gone by the time I get back. Or Gornray’s getting called, and by Christ, you don’t want to be messing with her right now. I’m going to be two minutes, Kira, I’ll be back with help soon.”
And she bent over to take a brief look at one of the clamouring machines that Kira was hooked up to, seeming to make some sort of mental note of the figures she saw there. Then she stood back – and Arihant hoped that the emotion that crossed her face on viewing the figures was relief; it looked like it, at least – straightened her scrubs, and pulled her hair out of her eyes. A moment later, she had turned on her heel, and was marching out of the door with the same efficient purpose that Arihant had seen in the strides of all the Carers.
The door thudded closed behind her, and the noise, although not really that loud, felt so to Arihant. He would have flinched at the sound if not for the fear that it would jolt Kira; as it was, he only winced.
Silence for a few moments. Then he pressed his lips together briefly, released them, and said, trying to make his voice sound brighter, “I guess – I suppose I should go, then.”
That didn’t sound very convincing at all.
But he couldn’t make himself say it again; it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had, anyway. He just swallowed. “Sorry. I’ll – I’ll just lay you back on the pillows before I go, okay, so you’ll still be propped up.”
And he began slowly to remove his arm from where it lay between Kira’s back and the pillows.