Granted, it was still very early as we made our way home, but it still spoke volumes about Acomia’s Marketplace that three people half dragging, half leading a Sch’silian woman with a freely bleeding head wound didn’t even arouse very many second glances.
The
It was no easy task getting Kiasis in the door quietly. I held the door, while Tallana and Victor mostly carried her inside, her boots making a scraping sound across the tile that sounded like thunder to my ears. I let the door slowly swing shut and froze, half expecting the overhead lighting to flicker on like a spotlight announcing our arrival, but nothing happened. I think we were all a little uncertain of what to do now that we’d actually made it back without getting caught, because we all three stopped moving, turning to stare at each others’ shadowy forms in the weak dawn’s sunlight.
The sharp voice cut through our moment of relief like an electric shock, and one of us let out a little squeak of shock. It might have been me. “Well? Are you all just going to stand there while Kiasis bleeds on the damned floor, or are you going to tell
All three of us turned to stare at Puck mutely. I don’t know about the others, but the towering gryphon frowning at us from behind him didn’t do much to set my mind at ease.
Finally, it was Kiasis who answered, her voice quiet and faintly slurred, but otherwise perfectly deadpan, and I wondered suddenly if Sch’silians were as humorless as everyone said. “If my bleeding on the floor displeases you, there is a bucket on the other side of the bar.”
His attention suddenly focused on her, he stalked across the bar in a few quick steps, and I was suddenly reminded as I rarely had been that I was watching something wholly inhuman by the grace and speed with which he moved. Puck was more than irritated, more than angry; he was livid, and I had to wonder just how smart it was of Kiasis to draw his attention. I know in her place, I sure as hell wouldn’t have. “You,” he hissed, wide eyes narrowing to amber slits. “I know this was your idea. Tallana would never have thought of it, and Holly would have gotten lost before she made it halfway there.” I felt blood creeping into my cheeks. Did he really think I was that inept that I couldn’t find my way to somewhere I’d just come from a few hours before? “Well? What the hell do you have to say for yourself? That was stupid, even for you. Bad enough you risked your own life, without risking the life of a child in the process.”
Kiasis just stared back at him levelly. I’m sure it was just a trick of the light and shadows, but she almost looked like she was wearing a faint smirk. She said something, then, in a harsh, rather stilted language that I supposed must be her own native tongue……then her eyes rolled back in her head.
For a second, Puck looked like he was seriously considering punching her. I knew, because I’d considered it more than once myself. Then he focused his anger, briefly, on Tallana, speaking through tightly gritted teeth. “Take her upstairs. And take your little friend with you, I don’t even want to think about what we’re going to do with him just yet.”
If
That left me alone to face the rest of Puck’s wrath. Great.
Surprisingly enough (at least, it surprised me ), I didn’t flinch when he turned his glare on me. His cheeks were flushed a brighter red than his hair, his nostrils were flaring with every breath, and I was pretty sure I could see a tiny vein bulging near his hairline.
I wondered, briefly, if fairytale creatures like him could suffer from mundane things like heart attacks or high blood pressure.
His voice, oddly, was quite measured and calm when he finally spoke again. “Would you like to explain just why you felt it necessary to do something so fucking stupid as sneak out in the middle of the night to meet up with the one person who could probably provide you with the most painful, lingering death you could possibly imagine…?”
I was pretty sure there was no correct answer to that, so I stayed quiet.
“I have jumped through hoops, risked my ass and other peoples’, and generally devoted my entire being for the last few days to making sure you stayed alive and whole. Do you really have such a death wish? Should I just face the fact that I’m wasting my time, and you really do want to end up an unidentifiable pile of goo in some alley somewhere? Because that’s what Titania will do to you, even if Tengu doesn’t finish you off. Hell, if you’re in that big a hurry to kick the bucket, maybe I should just help you out, and shoot you out the airlock the next time we go into space!”
Again I was silent. His voice was steadily rising into the yell I’d expected in the first place, and I could feel my cheeks starting to burn. Yeah, sure, I had known it was a stupid thing to do when I’d done it. But there’d been another person’s life at stake; I really found it hard to believe that he didn’t see another living being’s life as being worth risking mine over. Was that what it was like, where he came from? Screw the other guy, keep your own ass safe?
And that was when it hit me. I mean, I’d heard the words before, when he’d said as much. Twice, actually; once, back on the ship, even though he wasn’t yelling nearly as loud when he’d said it. He had risked his life for someone else’s, and repeatedly: mine. Whether it was because of my mother, or my grandfather, or whatever the reason, I really mattered enough to at least one other person in the universe that they were willing to risk dying for my sake, just to keep me safe and whole, and the sudden realization made my throat close up, despite the fact that he was still yelling at me angrily.
“—I mean, of all the idiotic things you could have done, that had to be one of the—Aw….shit.” He stopped yelling suddenly to lean over and peer closely at my face. “You’re not gonna cry, are you…?” He sounded both worried and just a little horrified.
I started to open my mouth to tell him that of course I wasn’t. No sound came out, though, and the next thing I knew I had my face pressed into the silk of his shirt.
“Awww…..! Hush, honey, it’s okay, really..!” Under other circumstances, I probably would have laughed at how fast he switched gears from telling me what a stupid thing I’d done and what a moron I was, to telling me that it was all okay. As it was, I just sniffled, dimly aware that I was grinding my teeth so hard in an effort not to sob that I couldn’t open my mouth to respond. “I wasn’t even really mad, so much.” I could feel him patting my hair a bit awkwardly. “I was just worried, you know? I just found you, I don’t want to lose you already…!”
That was when the tears broke loose. Maybe it was the sincerity in his voice, despite the fact that he was trying surreptitiously to work a few bar napkins between my snotty face and his fine silk shirt, or maybe I was just that desperate to believe that someone honestly, truly cared about me and whether I lived or died, but suddenly I believed every word he’d ever said to me. About my parents, about this whole other world that I’d had a really hard time believing even existed, about everything.
It was a good ten or fifteen minutes before I finally peeled my face away from his shirt. Real life tears are nothing like tears in the movies or on the vids. They’re snotty, sticky, leave you hiccupping and crusty-eyed, and also vaguely embarrassed when you realize that you’ve sunk down into a man’s lap at some point when he stepped backwards and sat down, and there’s currently a string of drool linking his silk clad shoulder to your lips.
But Puck just smiled as he took another handful of napkins and dabbed at my face. “All done…?”
I nodded, scrubbing my eyes on the back of my sleeve.
“Good. Go upstairs and get yourself cleaned up, and then stop by Biv’s room, because I wasn’t the only one worried sick.” I looked down, slightly ashamed of myself. Really, I’d never stopped to think about anything other than my own willingness to risk my life. I’d never given a thought to the people I left behind, and whether or not they would even care that I was gone. “And then you can go look in on the stray you brought home and make sure he’s getting settled in.”
I looked at him rather curiously. “Me….?” Not that I minded, but…well….I was hardly the caretaker type. Besides, I barely knew where anything was myself. Didn’t I get a break for being the new kid…?
“You brought ‘im home, he’s all yours.” Puck’s grin told me that no, no I did not get a break as he gently pushed me off his lap and stood up himself. “Besides, I’ve got to go change my shirt and take a nap. I was up all night, you know…?” If anything, my withering glare as he headed for the staircase just made him grin wider.
