I cried like a baby.
Chapter Twenty-four
It was a testimony to what Niko had suffered that he was still asleep when I dragged my butt out of the shower. The hot water had long since run out and I emerged from the bathroom shivering, with parts of me wrinkled as a prune. With a towel slung around my hips, I returned to Catcher's room and borrowed some of his sweats. After I dressed, I moved on to the surgery, counting that as my best bet for finding my brother. Opening the door a crack, I saw him in one of the beds. Not my old one. I couldn't exactly blame him there. He lay on his side, face tranquil in repose against the pillow. The short hair managed to give his nose an even more Roman presence. I smiled despite myself. It might be a long time before I could tease Niko about that. It was difficult to even imagine giving him a hard time now… after all he'd done for me. But the day would come again; it was inevitable between brothers. Until then I tucked the image away for future ammunition.
I moved my gaze to his shoulder, the one I… the one Darkling had driven a knife through. A pinkish dimple was the only evidence it had ever happened.
Safe to say we'd given Rafferty a workout he wouldn't soon forget. For nearly a full minute, I watched Niko sleep on. He'd always slept the bare minimum, my brother. Too much sleep was bad for the body, he said, and made the soul lazy. I was definitely living proof of the second half of that statement. Niko, though, he was always up, always doing. Sharpening the mind, sharpening the body, and trying in vain to accomplish both with me. The contrast now was unsettling.
Closing the door silently between us, I leaned against the wall beside it. What else could I expect? Rafferty could knit the flesh, but there were things he could not do. He couldn't replace lost sleep, the same as he couldn't replace lost blood. He could speed up the production of red blood cells, yes, but not manufacture them out of thin air. Healing wasn't magic. Healing allowed your body to do what was natural, only at a much accelerated rate. Healing didn't erase all Niko had put himself through. Only time and Niko himself could do that. And if he proved stubborn about it, tying him to the bed for his own good wasn't out of the question. The four most terrifying words in the English language, aren't they? "For your own good."
Pushing away from the wall, I headed for the kitchen. I wasn't the slightest bit hungry, but my stomach had a different opinion on the subject. The kitchen was empty. Where Robin had gotten to was a mystery, but I could see Rafferty in the back working on the fence. I helped myself to whatever I could find in the refrigerator, which wasn't much, before hitting the cabinets. In the end I had to settle for canned soup and three peanut butter sandwiches. Luckily I'd never been especially picky about my food. Chasing it down with a carton of milk dangerously close to its expiration date, I wiped my upper lip with my sleeve as I watched Rafferty through the window.
Rafferty was an acquaintance at best. Maybe if we'd known him and Catcher longer, we might have counted them as friends. Although considering our levels of paranoia, it wasn't all that likely. Of course calling them merely friends now would be doing them a severe injustice. Move over, Gandhi; these guys had helped save our lives. Our lives and in my case maybe a whole lot more. Dumping the carton in the garbage, I walked to the back door and out into the yard.
He heard me coming. Glancing over his shoulder, he looked me up and down before nodding. "You're looking good. Did you eat?"
"Everything left in the house," I confirmed, settling down in the fall yellow grass and resting my arms on my knees. "Need any help?" The fence looked fine to me, sturdy as hell. Chain link, which sat oddly in the pastoral setting, and now he was stringing wire along the top. I didn't know much about that sort of thing, but he looked to be in the process of turning the fence into an electric one. A very large electric one, and I had a good idea who it was for. Catcher had… spells. An old-fashioned word, but an apt one. I'd seen only one of them and I had no desire for a repeat performance. It would be unpleasant, damn unpleasant, if he ran off in the midst of one of them.
"No. I'm almost done." The reply was a curt and clear "Keep away" sign.
I respected the unspoken request. In his position it wasn't something I would've cared to chat about either. "No problem," I said easily. "Manual labor's never been a hobby of mine anyway. Just ask Nik."
That stopped him in his tracks. Setting aside his tools, he turned, head tilted down toward me. "He's fine, you know. Healthy as a horse. I patched him up, but he probably could've done without me. Forget flesh and blood. Your brother's made of piano wire and pure grit."
"Yeah, he is." Tough and gruff Rafferty trying to reassure me, it was one for the record books. Darkling hadn't been far off on that one. The man didn't waste much time on bedside manner; he was more concerned with keeping patients alive. In the dire straits he was often called into, there wasn't always time for both. Running a piece of grass through my fingers, I ducked my head, then sucked it up and met his eyes. "Sorry for all the shit we brought to your door." Even through the haze he'd used to soften the edges of my memories, I still recalled the expression on his face as I'd watched him with silver eyes. Sheer revulsion, the kind saved for something wholly unnatural. "Not to mention what I brought inside me."
He snorted. "Don't get stuck on yourself, Cal. I've seen worse than that piece of shit. Hell, I've wiped my ass with worse."
Utter bullshit, every word of it, but I still appreciated the effort. "Gee, I had no idea you were such a badass," I remarked blandly. His choice in bathroom hygiene I thought better left undiscussed.
"But I always knew you were a smart one," he growled, getting back to his work with a snort. "Go wake your brother up. It's time he ate something too. After that, send him back to bed. And if he has a problem with that"—I caught only a glimpse of the smile, but it was enough to make me glad I wasn't Nik—"you come tell me."
I could handle Niko myself, but that didn't mean I wouldn't enjoy watching him at the mercy of someone else for a change. "Will do." Standing, I hesitated before saying softly, "Thanks, Raff. For saving my life, keeping me sane. I don't know how to—"
He didn't let me go on, waving a hand at me impatiently. "Get out of here, would ya? I'll never finish if you keep drooling all over me."
Thanks offered and received.
I went ahead and fixed Nik's lunch. I was willing to bet that there wasn't anything remotely acceptable to his palate in a twenty-mile radius. Once again peanut butter sandwiches were the name of the game. I made four and piled them on a plate. I'd finished off the milk and ended up carrying in a bottle of orange juice that hadn't even entered the fermentation state quite yet. A real find. In the surgery I passed through the door and made a wide circle around the area of the floor where Darkling had died. Or if I wanted to be more honest with myself… the area of the floor where I had turned him into a macerated mound of bleeding flesh. Honesty… who the hell needed it?
Putting the food on the small table beside the bed, I leaned over and laid a hand on Nik's shoulder. I could count the times on one hand I'd woken up my brother instead of vice versa. Giving him a light shake, I cajoled, "Up and at 'em, Cyrano." Dark blond lashes parted instantly to show a gleam of irritable gray. Following that, they just as promptly lowered, uninterested. "Okay, be that way," I drawled. "I can always call Robin in. He was saying something about sleeping beauties and princes. I didn't catch it all, but I'm sure he'd be willing to explain it. Maybe even demonstrate it." So much for my resolution to lay off the teasing for a while. But desperate situations called for desperate measures.