by Tam MacNeil
“Going to kill me?” He’s not smiling any more.
She steps aside and Alex and Rak carry him toward the gusting air, to the humming engines, to the Arrow, waiting for them. He can’t see either of them any more, but he hears Mad say, “Ever piloted a mech before?”
Silence.
“I hope you’re a quick study.”
“Maddy, sweetie. We were saving the world.”
“Even you don’t believe that,” she answers.
Footfalls. They lower Sean onto the bed in the little med bay, Alex cradling him as he sits. Simone, sad-eyed and gentle. “Let’s see,” she whispers, reaching for his face. He recoils, can’t help himself. His head hurts so much, everything is making the world spin. He wants to throw up but he thinks he might have done that already.
“Let her see, baby,” Alex whispers.
He can lean on Alex, soft and strong and warm. Let Simone shine her lights in his eyes and watch him track her finger back and forth. Let her close her eyes and place her cool, dry hands upon his head. Let her trace the damage and mend what she can in him. He’s done for the day.
Simone can soothe the bleeding and the swelling in Sean’s head, but she’s only one person, and for all her gifts she’s still human, and the damage is breathtaking. She looks after the most dangerous stuff, then she gets to her feet, shivering with shock at the brutality of the injuries, and with the giddy sort of exhaustion that accompanies such intensive healing. Rak is at her side and she’s grateful for it. She leans on him and he takes her by the arms and keeps her on her feet. “Thanks,” she whispers. “All this…" she means Sean, the injuries yesterday, the injuries today. "It’s a bit too much.”
“Come on,” he says.
She lets him lead her over to one of the chairs. Her legs are so weak that she almost falls when she goes to sit. Rak keeps her steady.
“Simone?” he squats down so that he can look her in the face. She can see he’s worried. He gets a dimple from tightening his mouth when he’s worried. “Simone what do you need me to do?”
“Some water would be nice,” she says, and tries to make her voice steady.
He nods, gets up, and she puts her hand over her eyes because the lights in the cabin are bright and after so much healing everything, everything is razor-edged. She hears the top of the bottle crack as Rak unscrews the cap, and feels the cool plastic as he presses it into her free hand.
“Thanks,” she says and drinks. When she’s had enough, she uncovers her eyes and squints at Mad. “He needs to see a doctor,” Simone tells her. “His head should be all right, but someone needs to make sure, and that arm’s still broken. VGH has a helipad.”
Rak’s shaking out a blanket, covering her with it. She sighs and settles back.
“Here,” he whispers, holding the bottle up for her as if she might not be able to manage that herself.
“It’s not that bad,” she chides.
“You’re a mess,” he answers. “Come on. Drink a bit more.”
She does. It gives her a chance to look at him, really look, and it breaks her heart because the fact is that she loves him, and he’s looking at her like there’s nothing else in the world.
“I’m not dying, Rak,” she says softly. He smiles and touches her hand.
“You kinda look like you might be.” He leans down. She can hear his breathing coming soft and shallow and shaking. “You really going to be ok?”
“Yeah. Just over did it. Too many overnights in the lab, now this. I need some rest.”
He doesn’t move. She thinks for a moment that he’s going to kiss her. Wants him to but wants to stop him too. She’s let this go on too long. She promised herself she wouldn’t hide but it was never the right time. Because she was so happy, and she was afraid of sorrow.
“Rak,” she whispers. He leans close. “You know I’m different, you know I can change things. Physical things.”
He smiles. “Yeah. You save people.” He sits on the chair opposite her, leans close. “You’re amazing.”
“I want you to know that I wasn’t always like this.”
A tiny frown, mostly in the eyebrows and not on the lips. “What do you mean?”
“I've changed myself. After med school, when my powers came in.” She’s so tired, and this is nothing like how she planned to tell him. She wanted things to be private and maybe to be a little drunk when she did, in case whatever happened after hurt. “I didn’t used to have a woman’s body, I was born a boy but it was never right. I changed myself.” He nods. “I want you to know. Before.”
“Before what?” he asks. His hand is on her face now, cool from the bottle of water, and gentle. She can’t stop looking at him, those brown eyes.
“Before I tell you I’m in love with you.”
His smile is slow and sweet and as good as the sun coming up. He exhales a sound that might be her name, and leans close “Does that mean I can kiss you now?” he asks very softly.
Her heart is a bird in her chest. “Yes,” she says. “I'd like that.”
He does, and it is perfect.
Thirty
They end up in VGH, Rak and Art on either side of Alex while they wait. Alex doesn’t know where Mad’s gone. Probably hiding again. He gets it now, understands why she’s so camera shy, so careful. Can’t blame her. It must take something to have a father like that, to hold a gun to your father’s head. It must take something to be standing there holding it and not pull the trigger.
At some point Art gets up, vanishes, and returns with coffees for all of them. “Bumped into the nurse. He says it’s not going to be too much longer. Leg’s not broken, just bruised.”
Nobody asks about the arm. They could all tell just by looking at it, the bones making the flesh tent and twist. And Simone looked after the bleeding in his head.
Art parcels out the coffee. They all drink in silence for a while and Art taps rapidly on her phone.
“He should go back to his place, his real place,” Art says, looking up from some kind of rapid-fire text communication. “He’ll be laid up for a while. He should be somewhere comfortable and familiar.”
Alex nods. It’s what’s best. She’s watching him. “I’ll drop you off. Call when you’re ready to come back to the Annex. My number's in Sean's phone.”
He nods again. She looks at Alex as if she wants to say something, maybe explain why this is better than having him stay with Sean. She doesn’t say anything, though, just goes back to her coffee and her texting and they’re quiet again, until the doctor and the nurse come back, Sean limping between them.
His arm’s in a cast, supported by a sling. He’s pale still, but his eyes are hazy and Alex figures he’s not feeling any pain. He hears Art talking with the doctor, feels Rak tap him on the arm. “Here, I’ll hold it,” he says and takes the coffee out of Alex’s hands. Alex flashes him a smile, gets on Sean’s good side. Sean leans on him.
“Hey,” Alex says, “how you feeling?”
“I’m really tired,” he whispers.
“Yeah, we’re gonna get you home and then you can get some sleep.”
He nods, docile and drugged. "You okay?"
"Yeah. We're all ok."
He nods.
Nobody talks as they go out to the parkade and nobody talks in the SUV. When Art pulls up to the curb in front of a place that looks like a hotel, she takes a keycard out of her wallet. “Don’t lose it, it’s my spare,” she says. “He’s on the second floor. There’s an elevator just past the reception desk.” She nods in that direction. “Johan will help you out.”
He gets Sean out of the SUV and up, into the hotel lobby. Johan must know Sean. He takes one look at him and nods. “He ok?”
“He’s gonna be fine,” Alex says and Johan opens the door that reads Staff Only and leads the way to an elevator. The second floor is quiet, carpeted, painted dark colours, spacious. Elegant, in a sort of weird way.
“That one,” Sean whispers, gesturing with his chin. Alex unlocks the door
and pushes it open. Tall windows, covered with Roman blinds so the place is warm and stuffy and dim. There’s a couch, a TV, a couple doors leading off to other rooms. Sean sighs. “Oh thank god,” he whispers. “I gotta sit down.”
“Where do you wanna go?”
“The couch?”
It’s a small, oatmeal-coloured thing that faces the big TV. They go over together and he eases Sean down on the cushions and then Sean lies down. He’s too tall for it, he has to curl up. It’s probably not good for his leg, but it doesn’t seem to bother him so Alex doesn’t say anything. He goes back, closes the door.
“Alex?” Sean’s voice is sharp, alarmed.
“Yeah?”
“God, I thought you left.” His voice gets soft again. “Don’t go, ok?”
Alex turns all the locks and then goes back to the couch. “How’re you feeling?” he asks, getting a good look at Sean now that he’s settled and sighing with exhaustion.
“I just don’t want to be alone.”
He smiles. “I’ll hang out while you sleep,” he says. “Not like I got anything else I gotta do. Not like we gotta save the world or anything.”
Sean laughs softly, then winces.
“Hurts, huh?”
“Everything.”
“You, uh.” He wants to know what happened in there. He wants to know what Cameron did, what he said, he wants to know that Sean’s going to be all right. But Sean’s glassy eyes are already closing. “You want the TV on?”
“No.” His voice is soft, hardly a whisper. “Sfine.”
Alex waits till he’s sure that Sean’s asleep. Then he takes the blanket from the back of the couch and drapes it over him, and pads into the kitchen. He checks through the cupboards till he finds the glasses and pours some water, then takes it back to the couch.
There's a coffee table, but it's cluttered with the controller for the game console and the remote controls, and a couple magazines, so he has to make a space to put the glass down close enough that Sean won’t have to reach much for it. Someone knocks at the door and he hesitates for a minute, rearranging things, debating maybe not going to answer.
“Guys, it’s me.”
Mad’s voice, muffled by the door.
He goes over and undoes all the locks and opens up the door. She’s standing in the hall, Sean’s too-big ball cap pulled down over her eyes and his bag over her shoulder. She looks up at him like she’s angry with him, but he knows that’s not it. She’s waiting for him to say something about Cameron, something about what happened. About the secret she was keeping. He’s not going to.
“Hey, uh,” Alex looks over his shoulder at the couch. “He’s sleeping but you can come in if you want.”
Some of the hard edges of her face soften a little.
“You’re not going to talk about it?” she asks.
He shrugs. “You wanna come in?” he asks. “Or are you supposed to take me back to the Annex?”
She slides the bag off her shoulder and hands it to him. “Your stuff,” she says.
“Art said it’s ok?”
She grins at him. She almost looks like herself again. “Who cares?” she says. “I’m gonna go get a shower and then I’m going to nap for a thousand years. But if you need anything, come knock on my door. I live one floor up.”
“Thanks,” he says.
She sobers again and looks him in the eye. “You’re ok with everything? Nothing you wanna say to me? Cause I’d rather hear it now.”
He shakes his head. “Like you said. We make our own families. Annex is home.”
She smiles. “Yeah. It is, isn’t it?”
Epilogue
Sean wakes up in a bed that's big and soft. It’s daytime and it’s raining, he can hear the water rattling in the downspouts and splashing into rooftop puddles and the traffic as it hisses through the streets. There's no light, except what's coming through the blinds, and it's not enough to illuminate anything. He doesn’t know where the hell he is.
Everything hurts, hurts like he's been in a car accident, or fallen from a height. Then he remembers the cage, the mech, Cameron. He remembers Simone and the hospital, sleeping on a couch and being woken up and staggering to a bed. But he remembers in fragments, like grasping at a dream.
He tries to move, has to know where he is and what happened. When he twists to try to get up, someone in the bed moves with him and whispers hey.
"Alex?"
"Yeah." Soft voice, drowsy with sleep, close. Sean sags against him. Still alive, both of them, somehow. Still alive and breathing. "Hurting?" Alex asks.
Yes, but it's because bones are broken, because muscles are torn, because his head was smashed against iron bars, because his teeth carved caverns in his lips and his cheeks and his tongue. Not because he is dying. Not anymore. "It's ok," he says.
A noise, a little hmm of acknowledgement.
He wants to know where they are. He wants to know what happened to Cameron and what Mad said, because he doesn't believe it. He wants to know that they are safe. "Where are we?"
"Your place, on Seymour," Alex whispers. "It's too early to get up."
Alex slides an arm over his belly, tips his head against Sean's shoulder. He wants to pull Alex closer but his muscles ache and nothing wants to move. Instead he turns his head to rest it against Alex's. He wants to know what happened, but a part of him is too afraid to ask.
"Go back to sleep," Alex says softly in the dark. "They let you sleep in the day after you save the world."
In the dark, Sean smiles.
"Okay," he whispers.
"Okay," Alex says back.
They sleep till after noon.
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the assistance of some incredibly kind and generous people. First, thanks to Jason Deatherage for all the gun information. If the gun stuff sounds about right, it's all because of him. Next, let me thank Jay Fisher, Sandra Skalski, Casey Blair, Lauren Roy, Ian Brown, for their encouragement and support, Karl Dandenell and @jessicameats who eagle-eyed this manuscript.
Last, many thanks to the lovely and kind readers of Tamblings, who slogged through quite a raw manuscript and sent along their corrections. Thanks is a pretty inadequate word for what you did for this book, but it's all I've got. So, thanks. Times, like, a million.