A Change of Air

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

7.25 a.m., five days after the battle.
Jake was wide awake and bouncing across the smooth marble floor, a huge sleek ball of black fur shooting across the room, tail wagging, nails clicking against the stone, but Russ couldn’t help fighting back a yawn as he made his way over to the huge oak doors of the entrance, and wonder where the hell that dog got his energy from.
No wonder Jake was excited, though. He hadn’t been out for a decent walk since the day before the battle, since Russ had been spending most of his time in either the hospital wing or Professor Hoodham’s office, trying to extract as much information out of him as he could. Then there was the near constant ploughing through concerned emails and voicemails from travelling friends trying to find out what was happening with Madeleine. Jace Sorley in particular was going nuts, and was leaving an average of about a message per hour on his phone, which resulted in nothing but Russ wanting to break his face so he’d stop bugging him. Especially since he kept repeating that goddámn maxim no news is good news. For Christ’s sake.
So there was still no news, and no news was good news but Christ knew it was going to drive him crazy.
But there was some good news, so thank God for small mercies. Kennedy had come round yesterday, and Lynn had been persuaded to leave the hospital wing and get some air, thankfully. Russ had to admit, he was kind of worried about her, and he couldn’t help feeling relieved that she was getting a change of scene. Especially now Kennedy was okay – she didn’t need to be spending all of her time in the hospital wing. The atmosphere was still so thick with tension that you could slice it straight through with one of the Carers shiny steel scalpels, and while Lynn’s friends all seemed to be scarily adjusted to it, Russ couldn’t adjust to it and he felt that the sooner Lynn got a break from all of it, the better, but obviously he wasn’t going to get her to leave when Kennedy was so ill. But now he was better, she should probably get out of there as soon as she could, to avoid being in a place where, for lots of other people, the air was exactly the same as it had been for her.
So, they were continuing with their morning dog-walks, starting today. It was going to be... well, a bit different, seeing how most of the surrounding Orchid area was still complete carnage, and half of the forest had been razed to the ground, but they couldn't exactly help that.
Jake was still flitting about the room crazily, giving the odd excited bark, which made Russ feel kind of guilty for not paying much attention to him in the past few days.
“C’mon Jake, sit; we've got to wait,” Russ said, sighing. Jake stalled at a sharp halt, skidding slightly on the slippery stone, before sitting, exhaling loudly in a way that he could have swore sounded kind of like an impatient sigh.
Like dog, like owner.
But she'd be here in a minute, anyway.

[The Delaney Twins]

Still fine, Sally. Just like I was five minutes ago. Seriously, you need to stop freaking out! I promise you, nothing’s going to change before you get back. And you know I’ll tell you if anything happens.
Lynn shook her head. Sorry, Ken. Just… Just checking.
A brief pause. …I know you were, but c’mon, you’re supposed to be having fun now. Stop worrying about me, please.
Lynn sighed. Easier said than done, Ken. Look, just… humour me, OK? I’ll check again in a bit.
Then her eyes faded back to brown. The darting waves were replaced by the early morning light of the corridor that she walked through, with Terry scampering excitedly alongside.
The poor thing was clearly thrilled to be getting out. But the excitement was slightly irritating – as Terry dashed to and fro, he jolted his leash, so that Lynn had had to phase her right hand into metal to stop her wounds being jostled painfully. The bandages had been taken off her arms last night, leaving the burnt flesh raw, pink and painful and peeling. It was kind of hideous, but there wasn’t much she could do about that.
She couldn’t really blame Terry for being excited; Lynn was glad to be out, too. She was happy that she could get out to see Russ, even if that was why Lynn couldn’t get her mind off things, as Kennedy had ordered her to earlier this morning.
Russ was still stuck in the hell of that battle. All the Warriors were devastated that Madeleine was gone, but Russ wasn’t missing a leader, but a cousin and friend.
And still he’d been amazing when Kennedy was ill. Lynn would have been happy just knowing that he had survived, but he’d done so much more for her. He’d sat and talked with her, and he had made it that much easier to cope. And through all that, what the hell had Lynn done to help him?
She’d been useless, and that fact made her feel horrible. But now Kennedy was better, she could try to make things easier for Russ. It was Lynn’s turn to be there for him, and she intended to do every single thing that she could. Better late than never, at least.
And she walked through the door to the entrance hall, and saw Russ standing there with Jake.
Christ, he looked so tired. She’d seen him tired before, what with the early time they’d set for their walks, but this was different. Seeing him tired now made her worry.
And that feeling had her, after a moment of eye contact, look down, and shake her head before looking up again. She dropped Terry’s leash, her hand phasing back to flesh, and walked swiftly across the room. When she reached Russ she hugged him, wrapping her damaged arms around him tightly and burying her face in his chest.
“Hey,” she said quietly.

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

Russ could hear Lynn coming before he could see her – namely by the frantic skittering of claws against the floor that echoed through the corridor as a presumably very excited Terry struggled against his leash to get the hell outside. It was the only sound in the surroundings, something that creeped Russ out slightly. Obviously, because it was quite early and teenagers are lazy, it would be quite this time of the morning, anyway, but not this quiet. There was literally no other sound in the echoing corridors. Any life had been sucked out of the place by the battle – but at least this silence was better than the one in the common room.
This silence was due to absent people. The silence upstairs was the silence of broken people, thinking of absent people.
And of course, when you knew other people were thinking of absent people, it left you to think of absent people too, which was another reason Russ needed out of here. It wasn’t only Lynn that needed to clear her head.
And of course, there was the added bonus that Russ could actually smoke legitimately there.
Jake’s tail started to thump loudly on the floor, as he looked up at Russ and whined softly. Apparently the dog couldn’t wait for three seconds to get outside.
The door to the entrance hall opened, and Terry scrabbled excitedly into the hall, dragging Lynn along behind him.
Russ couldn’t help but frown as he saw Lynn’s hands were metallic now, shiny silver. So much for the healing bandages there. Go Carers. He was certain those things should be on for a little longer, especially if her arms will still hurting so much that she was having trouble holding a dog’s leash. Then again, if the Carers said so, they knew best.
She met his eyes, and the worry in them was so clear to Russ that he started to panic slightly. Shít, nothing had happened to Kennedy, had it? No, he had to be alright, he'd been fine yester-
Her gaze dropped and she stared at the floor for a minute, before dropping Terry's lead and striding quickly over to Russ, where her painfully pink arms wrapped around him and she laid her face on his chest, murmuring, “Hey.”
Okay, now he was really worried. Had something happened?
“Hey,” he said, mirroring her gesture and pulling her closer to him, being careful not to touch the puckered flesh of her arms. “You okay?”

[The Delaney Twins]

Though it had been worry that had driven her to hug him, as he put his arms around her, she was glad that she had done it for other reasons.
There was something reassuring about holding Russ, and being held by him. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew that it was there. After all that had happened in the thunderstorm it was sort of impossible not to. And she didn’t need that reassuring, most of the time (not that that stopped her from hugging him anyway), but after this, it felt like maybe she did need it again, just a little bit.
Kennedy was better now, yes, but Lynn was still worried about him. He wasn’t completely better; only conscious. Anything could still happen. The Carers weren’t always right; even if Lynn did have so much faith in them now, they were still only human.
And Lynn was worried about Russ and Madeleine, too, which was why she didn’t like to hear the worry in his question: “You okay?”
She leant her head back a bit so that she could look into his eyes. She didn’t want him worrying about her anymore. The time for worrying about Lynn was over; she was going to be fine. She was; she was just… sort of caught in the aftermath. Reasonably, she knew that the Carers probably were right, and Kennedy probably would be fine. She was just being paranoid.
So she smiled. It wasn’t her usual grin – it was only a small smile, just to make him not worry. Christ knew he didn’t have to be worrying about her anymore.
“ ‘Course I am,” she said, in what she hoped was a You-don’t-need-to-worry-about-me tone. “As okay as any of us can be, anyway. And better than I was now that I’m out of the hospital; that place was going to drive me mad, sooner or later. I don’t know how the Carers are doing it.”
But the smile faltered a little, and a little more of the worry came into her tone when she asked him, “How are you doing, though?”

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

“How are you doing, though?”
How was he doing? He didn’t know, really. Russ was exhausted, nicotine-starved and a little fed up with doing nothing, because that was all he’d been able to do over the past five days. Sweet FA. Sitting, smoking, and simmering. That was it.
But he hadn’t really expected the worry in Lynn’s tone when she spoke to him. He should be the one worrying about her, not vice versa. Russ was fine. He wasn’t good, but Russ wasn’t the one who’d had to watch his brother circle the drain over the past few days.
So even if he wasn’t completely fine, he was more fine than she was.
“I’m doing fine,” he said, looking down at her, meeting her steady gaze. “A bit píssed about all this sitting about and not being able to do anything, but there’s nothing to be done about that.”
Exactly. It wasn’t like he could go and bust Madeleine out of there himself, so what else could he do? He couldn’t complain, not really. People were in worse states than he was.
It was just frustrating as fúck, though.
At least while Kennedy was sick, he’d been able to help Lynn in whatever small way he could, by staying with her and letting her know that he was there. Lynn was there, and he could help her – that was why he was glad she’d hugged him. It made him feel better just to know that she was there.
He couldn’t help Madeleine, because she wasn’t there.
But Lynn seemed better now. The Carers reckoned Kennedy’d be fine, but to Russ it looked like it’d take a while for him to be back to full strength again. For God’s sake, he had been shot in the bloody lung. Russ also knew that now, he’d probably be spending a hell of a lot less time in there, and he couldn’t help but feel slightly relieved at that.
“Glad to be out of there too, though, I need the air.” Fresh air, the cure for all ailments. “How’s the patient doing?”
Maybe that would explain some of the worry in her face.

[The Delaney Twins]

The sitting around and doing nothing was starting to get to Lynn, too, truth be told.
True, during Kennedy’s illness the state of the rest of the school hadn’t crossed her mind. Madeleine had, because, even at a time like that, Lynn cared greatly about what was happening to her Head, but never had Lynn once felt that she needed to be anywhere but right by Kennedy’s side. That time, however, was gone.
Lynn was slowly succumbing to the feeling of unrest which had settled over all the non-Carer members of the school, the feeling that they should be doing something. With most people, it was tempered by the fact that they had just gone through the battle, and no one wanted to lose as many people as they had lost in the last battle again. People had lost family members and friends, and others had come very close. The risks of taking further action were emblazoned firmly in everyone’s minds.
Lynn knew, however, that if no one did anything that chances were that Russ would lose someone, and she couldn’t stand the idea of letting that happen.
Also, she was willing to bet that that ‘A bit pissed’ claim was an understatement. But there wasn’t much she could do about that now, was there? He’d changed the subject. Probably didn’t want to talk about it, and Lynn couldn’t blame him.
“Kennedy’s… all right,” she said. “I mean, well, brilliant, compared with a few days ago, obviously. The Carers said that they might let him try breathing by himself tomorrow, though they might have to take that back if it doesn’t go the way… Well, if whatever they’re expecting to happen doesn’t happen; I don’t understand the medicine-talk. He’s still on the ventilator thingy now, so he can’t really speak, but we’ve got the waves, and all, so it’s all right. That’s how I knew he wanted me to come out here today. Says I need a break, even though he’s the one with the bloody hole in his chest.”
And then she remembered, and her tone became even more serious than it had been. “And… yeah – he also wanted me to give you a message. He wanted to… Well, he wanted to thank you, for doing everything you did for me while he was out. I mean, staying with me, and everything. Said that he’s glad that I had people there for me. And… well, I’m really glad you were there, too, because it made things a lot easier for me. So, thank you on his behalf, and thank you on mine as well.”

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

And once again, she was thanking him for something she shouldn’t be thanking him for. Christ, what did they think he was going to do, just leave her there alone while her brother was dying?
Well, hopefully not. He'd wanted to help her - Chrissake, she was his girlfriend, of course he wanted to help her. And in any case, though Russ wouldn’t admit to it – selfishly, helping Lynn had helped him to. It gave him something else to think about, a new focus that stopped him from going ballistic at pretty much everything and anything. By being able to help her, at least he was helping something. With Lynn, he didn’t have to just sit and do shít all; he could do something.
And in a way, he almost liked being in the hospital wing. Sure, the atmosphere was oppressive as hell, but at least it was a proactive place. People were actually doing things – they could do things there. The Carers were about the only people in the school who got to do something, so it was good to see a place where people weren’t just sitting in their favourite chairs, staring apathetically into the empty, coal-dusted fireplace, but doing something. Whether it was healing , comforting, praying – even just making cups of coffee for people, they were still being active.
So Russ got to try to be active there too. It was the least he could do, and like everyone else, he hated that he couldn’t do more, but he liked to think that he’d helped a bit – and looking at Lynn now, even though she looked worried, he thought that maybe he was able to help, if in a little way. Most people would have lost it at some point over the last five days, but she’d kept it together, and kept it together well.
So she shouldn’t be thanking him, but the perfectly seriously grateful look on her face made him smile. So he kissed her quickly, before saying, with a smile, “Stop thanking me, Sally, you don’t need to. And you can tell your brother the same.”

[The Delaney Twins]

She did need to thank him, though.
With everyone else it didn’t feel like she had to as much. Everyone else who had stayed with her had either been friends with Kennedy or had been part of the group of friends, and they were all there as much for themselves as they were for her. They all knew that it was harder for Lynn, but it was hard for them too, and they needed to be there too.
Russ, on the other hand, had not had to be there. Lynn really meant it; she would have understood if he hadn’t come. She had just wanted a phone call, just to know he was safe, because, for goodness’ sake, if anyone had a good excuse not to show up it was Russ.
That was why it meant a lot to her that he had. And when someone did something for Lynn that meant a lot to her, they got thanked. End of.
“Oh, shh,” she said, her smile growing wider to mirror his, “I’ll thank you if I want to. Can’t stop me.”
Well, that was entirely mature and un-childish, that. But she didn’t mind, she was just glad that he was smiling. And, honestly, she was glad that she was, too. She hadn’t been smiling so much over the past few days, and she didn’t like that. She hadn’t felt like herself because of it.
And at that moment, she was interrupted by a loud barking from behind her that made her jump. After starting, she looked behind her to see Terry staring at her in a way that, if he hadn’t been a dog, she would have described as very pointed.
Then she turned back to Russ. “Right, OK, I’m guessing that that was a very subtle hint, on Terry’s part. I can’t blame him, to be honest, he’s been going mad, all cooped up inside for the past few days. Like us,” she laughed. “We should probably get going.”

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

“I can’t blame him, to be honest, he’s been going mad, all cooped p inside for the past few days. Like us.”
You have no idea.
“We should probably get going,” she laughed.
“Yeah,” he grinned, letting go of her, and whistling to Jake, whose tail was still thumping frantically against the floor. At the whistle, he jumped up and bounded towards the door to the school, tail still wagging like it was going to fall off.
Russ rolled his eyes at the dog, before following him to the door and holding it open. At this time of day, the huge, heavy oak doors were left slightly ajar for those students with pets and those who took morning runs, which was something that had amazed Russ at first. For all intents and purposes, this place was like an army barracks… and they left the door to it wide open. Friggin’ nuts, was what it was. But he couldn’t complain: if it wasn’t for this door, he’d have to leave out back, ‘round through the kitchens.
Or out through the hospital wing door, but if Nurse Gornray caught him lighting up outside there one more time, the vein in her forehead would burst, and God knew, it was coming.
"I can't wait to get outside either. This is my first legitimate smoke of the week," he grinned. "No Carers to give me a bollocking for it."
Thank Christ. Life was stressful enough right now without having the constant cries of second-year Carers squealing about how awful smoking was for you. At least the older ones had the wit just to roll their eyes and let it be. He knew smoking was bad for him. Somewhere along the line he had gotten that gist, thanks very much.
Still, he shouldn't complain about the Carers. The fact that Lynn was smiling again was more than worth the doomsday comments.

[The Delaney Twins]

As Russ let go of her and whistled to Jake, Lynn turned to do the same to Terry – but then found that she had no need to do so, as a ball of black and white fur bounded up to her and began yapping excitedly. Normally she would have made him calm down before setting off, but this time she didn’t really feel like she could be bothered. This place was so dàmn quiet; it was better off for a bit of barking. And they were miles from the dorms, here, anyway.
So she just grabbed the handle of his lead, phased her hand back into metal, and then moved to walk through the door that Russ was holding open, smiling at his comment.
“Those Carers are braver than I am, getting between a man and his nicotine,” she said teasingly. “Although, have to say, I’ve heard them going on at you, and I wouldn’t call it a bollocking. More like a nattering, at best.”
It was true. While Lynn did have a new respect for the Carers, the smoking thing was, in her view, entirely unnecessary. She just didn’t see the point. For one, it wasn’t like they were going to be successful any time this century, and for another, there was really no point in any of the Warriors wrapping themselves up in cotton wool. And Lynn obviously didn’t want anything bad to happen to Russ, but Jesus Christ, the guy had to live, didn’t he?
So as far as Lynn was concerned, Russ could smoke as much as he wanted to. It didn’t bother her, anyway. In fact, if she was honest, she quite liked the smell of smoke, by now.
“I would just take it as a compliment, though. A slightly irritating compliment, but still. They do think they’re saving your life.”
And she walked through the door, loving the feeling of the light morning wind against her skin.
She couldn’t help wincing when she saw the remains of the forest, though.

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

“Well, that’s fair enough, but you think they’d have realised they’re fighting a losing battle by now,” he commented as they stepped out of the door. “Well, one day some nicotine-deprived person will take their heads off for it, so they’ll learn.”
Thank God they were out. Russ couldn’t help but release a deep breath of relief as he got outside, realising just how cooped up he had felt in there. The weather was good for March – not freezing cold, just a light breeze – something that Russ appreciated after being in the still, warm air of the school. Free air, free time, free space.
Well, to a certain extent. Russ carefully averted his eyes from the wrecked woodland, which looked too much like a burned out Australian waste to be set in the middle of all this. The land was usually green, and the school was known for being one of the most bloody picturesque places on God’s green earth. It didn’t make sense for it to be set in the middle of this shít.
Then again, after all that had just happened, it also wouldn’t have made sense for the landscape to bear no scars. The land had to be scarred, just like the pupils. The charred remains of the forest, left to be picked over and restored by zealous Carers and second-years (Jack Trove’s mini-me, Collin or whatever it was, had been seen excitedly trying to fix the place up. At least someone was having fun with it), were the physical marks on the school to match the emotional ones on the students. It was only fair.
Saying that, no one was happy about the wreckage. Madeleine would be píssed when she saw it.
If she saw it.
Well, whatever.
They started to walk across the paved courtyard that lay in front of them, Jake being unable to curb his excitement and dashing about the place like a dog possessed. Terry of course, was still on the lead, something which brought Russ’ attention back to the fact that Lynn’s hands were phased again, the scarred pink flesh hidden by the smooth metal. He still didn’t get why the Carers couldn’t just lay some mojo on them and get them sorted – yeah, he understood that they needed to save their energy in the midst of battle, but the flow of injuries had calmed a bit by now – but he knew that one wasn’t going to be explained to him anytime soon.
“They give you the okay to take the bandages off?” he asked, frowning.

[The Delaney Twins]

She looked down at her arms.
It was still weird. She had got vaguely used to seeing the white bandages encircling her arms when she looked down at her hands, but now she had to start all over again, getting used to looking at the puckered pink flesh.
It wasn’t as bad as it had been. Her hands had been downright chargrilled when she’d got out of the battle, and the Carers had said that she had been lucky to have avoided permanent nerve damage in her fingers. So Lynn really shouldn’t have been bothered by the burns, and in most ways, she wasn’t. The scars were going to be pretty minor, after all; and even if they weren’t, they would be battle scars, and that was nothing to be ashamed of.
But she still couldn’t hold things. That was what was driving her mad. She’d tried to write something down last night and the bloody pen had slipped right out of her fingers, she’d tried to open a cupboard door and her fingers had stung for hours afterwards. And now to solve that problem she’d been forced to phase her hand.
“Yeah, they did,” she said, stretching the fingers of her un-phased hand as they walked along the courtyard. The skin felt tight when she tried to move it, like it was a size too small for the flesh underneath. “They said something about the skin ‘needing to breathe’ or something like that, which sounds pretty un-medical, but they were probably dumbing it down for me. I’m not going to question them, anyway.
“I’m not really supposed to be going metal, though, ‘cause my hands can’t heal when they’re in that form,” she said, then looked away from her hands. She looked over at Russ, smiled and shrugged. “But never mind, I’m only doing it for a little bit, anyway. I can catch up on some healing time later. I mean, how on earth can I hold things, otherwise?”

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

Bloody good question.
Russ shrugged, shaking his dark head. “True, but don’t do it too much or they’ll never heal.”
Again, though, Russ was convinced it would be much simpler for someone to just heal them – for God’s sake, they had the ability to heal for a reason, right? He knew the Carers were exhausted, but there were other healers in different groups. Madeleine, for example, she could have-
He wished she wasn’t on his mind so much right now. He’d spent over a year without hearing from her after Shaun died, and it hadn’t bothered him in the slightest. He hadn’t missed her at all, but after being in a school with her every day for nearly a year, Russ was missing her now.
He didn’t want to miss her, though. That way it’d be easier when they got the news that they were all half-expecting. The problem was that they just didn’t know. No one had any idea where she was, or what was happening to her or even if she was still alive.
But he’d coached himself out of worrying about it pretty well by now. You deal with it. He was aware of what could happen, and he knew that it’d be naïve to assume that it wasn’t happening. He was okay with knowing it, and he didn’t worry as much now. It was just the random thoughts like that that broke through the barrier every so often. Russ hadn’t realised how often she came into his thought stream, and wondered when the hell that had happened. It wasn’t long ago that he’d never thought about her at all, but somewhere along the line, they’d learned to become friends when everything else was done, and she’d become a bigger part of his life than he’d ever realised.
And he realised that once she wasn’t there. Go figure.
But, as he’d kept reminding himself over the past five days, Madeleine’s problem wasn’t the one at hand here. Russ was powerless to do anything about it, so there was no point in brooding over it. You deal with it. He couldn’t do anything, so he was going to stop bítching about that fact and live life as it came, like he always did.
And right now, the problem at hand was Lynn’s hands.
“I don’t see why they can’t just get someone to heal them,” he complained. “I mean, there are about a million healers in the school, you’d think one of them would be able to fix up a burn.”
They were bad burns, though. Russ kept reminding himself of how much worse it could have been – she’d been lucky, after all – but it still made him wince to see the puckered skin of her arms, and still worse to see that she had to phase her hand metal to do something as simple as hold her dog’s lead.
“Here, let me take that, and you can carry on with the healing time,” Russ added, gesturing towards it.

[The Delaney Twins]

“Here, let me take that, and you can carry on with the healing time,” he said, gesturing for the lead.
OK, he didn’t need to do that. A couple of hours’ healing time couldn’t have been that much of a big deal, in the grand scheme of things. And she wanted to look after herself; she didn’t want to make a fuss about the burns, considering everything else that had been going on.
She probably would have said that at any other time, but now she decided to be compliant, after thinking for a moment. Even if Russ wasn’t thinking about Madeleine right now, she was pretty sure that the residual worry was, to put it lightly, driving him nuts. It was doing the same to Lynn, and she was just a regular Warrior, not a family member. And there was nothing he could do about Madeleine… so it must have helped him to have something to do, even if it was something small like this. If that made sense. Lynn had never been very good at the whole analysing thing.
And she had said to herself that she would help him, hadn’t she? So he could take the lead. She wouldn’t complain.
“All right,” she said, handing it over to him. “Thank you.”
And her hand phased back into flesh as she drew away, and she stretched her fingers again.
“But as for the healing thing… I don’t know,” she said, keeping her tone light, keeping the smile on her face. It wasn’t too hard to do, what with her relief at being out in the open again.
She just didn’t want him worrying about her anymore. He could help, if that made him feel better, but the burns were nothing to worry about. The burns were nothing full stop compared to everything else that was going on.
“I think they’re conserving their energy, y’know? Sort of triage, I guess. But they healed me as much as they needed to, anyway, and I’m fine with doing the rest of the healing myself. It doesn’t really hurt, or anything.”

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

Huh, he hadn’t expected her to give over the lead without some form of comment. That hand must really hurt. Russ also hadn’t expected to feel a sense of relief as she handed the leash over, but well, he didn’t want her hand to give her any more pain than necessary, he guessed.
“… but they healed me as much as they needed to, anyway, and I’m fine with doing the rest of the healing myself. It doesn’t really hurt, or anything.”
Russ shook his head at that. “I get triage in the heat of the battle, but things seem to have calmed down, right? It’d hardly take up a lot of energy.”
He’d ask Olivia, his go-to healer to do it for her, but Olivia was in a bit of a state recently. Not that you’d think it if you saw her running about healing, but when she had nothing to do, she just looked upset, and Russ was willing to bet that part of that was the reason why she’d jump behind a door every time Jack Trove made an appearance. What a bástard.
Terry started to tug on the lead after Jake, and Russ was starting to see just why that must have jostled her charred hand so much. He wasn’t used to holding dogs on a lead, though. Because of the way they lived, Jake had to be pretty obedient, otherwise he’d run off to God knows where and Russ wouldn’t have a dog. This way, it meant that he could run about and come back at a call or a whistle, which gave both of them more freedom.
And Jake was enjoying his freedom this morning. So was Russ. They were out of the school building, outside four stone walls, and in the open air, which had been starting to feel like an absent friend. And even though the familiar route was marred by the fact that what had been a huge expanse of forest was little more than a burnt, wasted expanse of blistered soil, there was something good about the gentle breeze, like it would blow all the cares away.
“But I’m not a Carer, thank Christ,” he said, after musing for a moment. “We’d all be fúcked, then.”