Rating: T
Words: 11,900
Spoilers: Minor spoilers for everything.
Warnings: Language, non-graphic adult situations.
Summary: Niko needs to sort out his head.
Disclaimer: Everything is owned by someone else.
A/N: Set sometime between Downfall and Nevermore. Niko-centric, Niko and Cal POV.
IN YOUR HEAD
Niko
There was probably a reason I was hanging by my wrists from a meat hook with my shirt unfastened and bereft of all my blades.
But for the life of me I couldn't remember what it was.
That, however, was most likely why my shirt was unfastened, I reasoned: someone had clearly frisked me to disarm me, and considering I always had at least two blades strapped beneath my shirt, that was the only reasonable explanation for my current state of semi-undress.
It didn't explain the meat hook, though.
Where the hell had I been before this?
The fact I couldn't remember was nearly as alarming as the fact that I was hanging by my wrists from a meat hook with my shirt unfastened.
"Perhaps you were with Cal?" a female voice asked suddenly, and it was as if someone had read my mind.
Considering the voice belonged to Georgina, that was entirely possible.
She was standing across the room from me, shackled to a wall, her thin wrists restrained by the same chains as were my own; but, thankfully, she had both feet on the ground and wasn't hanging from a meat hook suspended from the ceiling.
I looked up momentarily, just to double check there actually was a ceiling, and saw that the chain I was hanging from was several meters long and, in fact, hanging from metal ductwork which was in turn suspended beneath dirty glass in what looked like some kind of food processing plant.
Which explained the meat hook.
But not why I was hanging from it.
I blinked, thinking about that for a second before registering that, while my toes were just about scraping the ground, my wrists were hurting like hell and my shoulders were experiencing something akin to agony.
Huh.
And Georgina had, of course, been dead for several years.
Although that had never been completely proven to my satisfaction.
Yet here she was, standing opposite me, chained to a wall, small and frail and impossibly young...wearing the same dress she had been wearing when we were captured by Hob and he decided he quite liked the idea of torturing me.
I glanced down at myself.
Black jeans. Black shirt.
Hmm. This could have been what I was wearing that day too, as it was pretty much what I wore most days.
The scar Hob had left on my chest was still there, however, which suggested I hadn't somehow magically gone back in time to the day he gave it to me. Which, quite frankly, was something of a relief.
Hob was dead, or at least, lost in Auphe Hell, which meant no more torture.
"Sleeping Beauty awakens!"
Ah. Me and my stupid internal monologue.
At first I tried to convince myself it was Robin who was swaggering towards me, a grin on his face so wide the Cheshire Cat would have been jealous.
He had the same face, the same hair, the same body.
But there was something in his eyes.
Something completely alien to Robin Goodfellow.
Something that made my flesh crawl.
And from the way he was looking at me, I realized I perhaps needed to reconsider my working theory that my shirt had been unfastened only because someone had been attempting to disarm me.
Goodfellow often looked at me like that.
But when Goodfellow did it, I knew it was completely—well mostly—good natured; that he'd never actually act on anything looking at me caused him to experience. At least not without my consent, which he knew I'd never give him.
Sex pollen was not a real thing, despite his many protestations to the contrary.
But Hob… If this was, indeed, Hob…
Hob, who, like Georgina, had been dead, or at least gone, for several years.
If this was Hob, then he was looking at me in a way that suggested my shirt hadn't been unfastened only to bereft me of my weapons.
I glanced up at the ceiling again, at the manacles around my wrists and the chains around the meat hook, and considered my options.
"I understand now what my little brother sees in you," Robin's duplicate said. He was looking me up and down in a way that was making me seriously uncomfortable, especially in my current restrained and semi-undressed predicament.
I swallowed, trying to summon the spirit of my own little brother. He was always so good at the wise-ass put downs, while I myself at the moment was completely at a loss for words, other than, "Cal killed you."
Hob continued to saunter toward me, ignoring Georgina as if she weren't even in the room.
Which I'm not entirely sure she was, because when I looked beyond the puck, she was no longer standing where she had been standing a moment earlier when she'd spoken to me.
"Yes," Hob replied. "Yes he did."
He didn't say anything else, just wandered even closer to me, completely unhurried, his eyes focused on a point slightly below my exposed navel.
This really was not a good situation to be in.
I tried to shift my weight, tried to grab hold of the chain between my manacles, or the chain above the meat hook, but achieved neither goal, and Hob was now standing right in front me, one hand gripping my hip to steady my swaying while the other traced the outline of the scar he'd left on my chest so long ago.
I thought about kicking him in the face, but had the feeling if I tried I might find myself with a broken tibia or fibula. Or both. And then I'd never make it out of here.
Wherever "here" was.
"Where's Georgina?" I managed to ask, trying to put my brain in the same space I always put it when Robin made ridiculously unsubtle advances toward me.
Hob smiled, inclining his neck downwards slightly so that his mouth was hovering a few centimeters from my stomach.
"I didn't figure you for the sort of person who would relish an audience," he said, the hand not currently trying to break my hipbone sliding down my chest and over my belly before coming to rest at the small of my back, at which point he wrapped his arm around my waist and yanked my hips towards him with a vicious tug that had my wrists and shoulders screaming in agony.
I winced and tried to focus on breathing, tried not to think about what he might be thinking about, realized he actually was thinking about what I was trying not to think he might be thinking about when his mouth found its way to my skin and his tongue was suddenly licking my navel.
This really isn't happening. All in your head. Hob's dead. Georgina's gone. You're really not here.
"Are you alright, Niko?" I heard Georgina ask.
She was back where she'd been before, chained to the wall opposite me, a look of the deepest concern in her brown eyes.
"I've been better," I told her honestly, glancing down at Hob. "Considering I'm hanging from a meat hook and our host seems intent on sexually assaulting me."
Hob laughed against my skin, one hand moving to my belt as he began fumbling to unfasten it.
"That doesn't sound very friendly," he pointed out, managing to get my belt undone a little too quickly for my liking, before one hand moved on to the fastenings on my jeans while the other slipped down the back of my waistband, obviously intent on further exploration.
I grit my teeth and redoubled my efforts to grab hold of the chains above me, but Hob just laughed at my obvious panic, one hand moving slowly back up to the small of my back while the other slid languidly across my belly.
"I will kill you," I told him in all seriousness, before adding, "Again," a little less certainly.
Hob laughed. "Don't be like that. I've seen the way Robin looks at you. We're all made of the same genetic stuff. If he wants you, don't you think I must want you too?"
I thought back to the Panic; to the bar full of pucks all trying to put their hands on me.
This was so not good in so many ways.
"Cal is coming for you, Niko," Georgina put in suddenly. "Don't worry. He won't let Hob hurt you."
Hob laughed again. "I don't want to hurt you," he said, the hand at my back suddenly moving upwards and fisting in my braid. "Not much anyway."
He tugged hard at my hair, my head yanked backwards, and his mouth was suddenly at my throat, licking and biting, before moving on to my mouth, where I managed to draw the line.
"Open up," he hissed, grabbing my jaw and trying to prize open my mouth.
I may not have been able to do much in the way of kicking his ass at that precise moment, but I still had control of my jaw muscles.
He laughed at me, pressing his mouth against mine regardless of my stubborn rigidity, before letting go of my hair and retreating a step.
"Niko, Niko," he said, shaking his head. "Make me happy and I might consider letting you go."
I thought about that for a second. "Let Georgina go and I'll consider it," I told him, pretty sure I was lying but hoping I wasn't about to be tested.
He glanced over his shoulder to where the girl stood glowering at him.
"She might not really be here," he pointed out.
"Neither might I," I countered.
He inclined his head thoughtfully, before nodding. "That's true," he allowed grudgingly. "But if you weren't really here, would you feel this?"
With no warning whatsoever, he shoved his hand down the front of my jeans, and that was the point at which I decided whatever was going on here, Hob was going to die yet another long and painful death very, very soon.
I also made the decision that risking a broken tibia was worth it under the circumstances.
It was only when my foot connected with Hob's head that I realized my feet were bare and that suffocation rather than unconsciousness might be the way to go.
Having taken Hob off guard, I managed to twist my leg around his throat, squeezing his airway in the crook of my knee until he began to turn an interesting shade of blue.
"Should have restrained my feet like last time," I told him as he choked, clawing at my leg to try and get me off of him, and it was only when he raised a 9mm Glock and pointed it in Georgina's direction that I relented.
She might not be real, but she was still the love of my little brother's life.
Winded, Hob took a second to regain his composure before grabbing hold of my waistband and pulling me back towards him, fisting his hand once again in my braid and yanking my head backwards so far I honestly expected to hear my spine snap.
"You," he spat, "are mine now. You do what I want when I want it."
"In your dreams," I spat right on back. "Or. You know. Maybe mine."
I didn't know what was going on, but I was pretty damn sure I'd never had any kind of rape fantasy dream. Especially not one featuring a puck. Especially this puck. Especially not with my arms on the verge of being pulled out of their sockets and my brother's almost-girlfriend watching from across the room.
If this was a dream, it was, to use one of my little brother's favorite phrases, pretty damn fucked up.
Hob still had a hold of my braid and the Glock was suddenly a little bit too close to my mouth for comfort.
"Open up," he repeated.
I tightened my jaw and glared at him, which was when the Glock went back to being pointed at Georgina.
"Open!" he repeated, and I did, much to his surprise.
I wasn't sure what he was planning on putting in there, but I was hoping it wasn't the Glock. I needed it to be something that would hurt like hell when I bit it.
It was at that point Hob's cell rang.
He checked the caller ID, almost purple with rage at the disturbance.
He scowled at me as he answered the call. "No," he said, turning his back toward me. "No, it's not happening. You're not talking to him. Not ever again."
He spared me one backward glance which actually made me shudder before he stormed out of the room.
I took a breath, trying to center myself.
If this was dream, why would I dream of Hob? And why would I dream of Hob trying to force himself on me?
"It's random neurons firing," Georgina told me, again seemingly reading my mind. "You don't have any control."
I frowned at her. "But what's happening to me?" I asked, not entirely sure I wanted to know the answer.
She shrugged.
If she was a figment of my imagination, then she wasn't going to know what was going on any more than I did.
Okay. Under normal circumstances, "normal" being the other times I'd found myself suspended from the ceiling by a meat hook, what would I do?
Escape.
Alright then.
I took another slow breath. My arms had been in this unnatural position for some time, and I wasn't entirely sure they would be willing to cooperate with my next move.
But I took the chance.
Swinging up my legs, I managed to wrap my ankles around the meat hook, taking the weight of my body from off of my arms so that I could unhook the manacles, grab the chain, drop my legs and slowly lower myself to the ground.
Easy.
Now I just had to get out of the manacles.
"Cal's coming," Georgina repeated. "Don't be scared."
"I'm not scared," I told her, and that was true. At least, it was true now that Hob wasn't in my immediate vicinity.
All I had to do was get out of these manacles and figure a way out of this building, and then I'd be home free and on my way back to Cal.
And something told me I really needed to get back to Cal.
Cal
"Don't be scared," I told my big brother. The big brother who wasn't scared of anything. "I'm gonna get you out of this."
And I meant it.
But he wasn't moving and his skin was so pale he made me look suntanned.
His brows drew together into a small frown, the most movement I'd seen from him all morning, but it made him look pained; disturbed. Frightened.
"Don't be scared," I repeated, bending so that my mouth was next to his ear. "I'm coming for you."
I pushed a lock of his long hair off his forehead and tried not to think about how icy his skin felt.
He'd been like this for too long.
"He's going to wake up soon."
Robin was standing in the doorway, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. He wrinkled his nose in distaste when he took a sip, but carried on drinking nonetheless.
For Robin, he looked dishevelled.
He'd had about as much sleep as I had, that being none.
Ever since the rooftop and the gargoyles and Nik falling eight stories into a dirty alleyway.
I'd blown the one that did it to smithereens.
The one that had picked him up in its giant, stony claws, carried him off the rooftop and sneered at me before letting him go.
"You took something from me, little Auphe," it had said. "Now I'll take something from you."
It hadn't survived long enough to relish in its petty victory.
And I still don't know which of the bastards we'd destroyed the night before had been its mate.
They all pretty much looked the same to me.
But it had known enough about us to know there was only one way to hurt me the way I'd hurt him.
It had all happened in slow motion after that.
Somewhere in the back of my brain I'd remembered Darkling and falling from our apartment window and the way it had felt like flying. And if it hadn't been for Goodfellow grabbing me by my collar and yanking me back, I would have followed Nik straight down to the cracked asphalt beneath us.
As it was, it took Robin all of his strength and silver-tongued cajoling to get me to follow him down the stairs rather than taking a header off the rooftop.
When we'd gotten to the bottom and I'd careened out into the alleyway, sending at least three bums and a shopping cart full of tin cans flying, Nik was lying on his back where he'd landed, as still as I'd ever seen him.
I wasn't entirely clear on what had happened next, but gathered from Robin that the puck had done a quick triage and determined that, impossibly, the most serious damage my brother had sustained was a couple of broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder.
Apart from his head.
His blond hair was stained a horrible red from all the blood.
I knew head wounds bled like sons of bitches, but there was just so much blood.
Too much.
As much as I hated hospitals, I'd known that getting Nik to one as quickly as possible was his best hope for survival.
And Robin hadn't even argued with me.
The doctors and nurses had all looked at us with that stern yet professionally sympathetic look as we'd carried him into the ER.
We hadn't waited for an ambulance. We didn't think Nik had the time to waste.
They said it was a miracle he was still alive.
A miracle.
Yeah, right.
A miracle and a hard head.
But if anyone deserved a miracle, it was my brother.
"I need him to wake up now," I told Robin, and even to my ears, I sounded like a whiny brat.
The puck continued to hover in the doorway, as if getting any closer to Niko would somehow make his situation more real.
"He'll come back to us when he's ready," he told me, and he almost sounded like he believed it.
I glared at him. "Why isn't he ready now, dammit?" I demanded, grabbing hold of my brother's hand and shaking it rather ineffectually. "Wake up, dammit, Niko!" I snapped at him.
And stopped dead.
Sophia.
Dammit if I didn't sound exactly like Sophia.
Nik had had three jobs by the time he was fourteen, all of which he worked around school, and he sometimes used to fall asleep in the weirdest places. Like the shower. Or while he was supposed to be making Sophia and her boyfriend-of-that-week breakfast.
I cleared my throat, shook my head and tried to put that happy little memory back where it belonged: in the garbage chute inside my brain.
"Nik?" I said, a little more calmly. "You need to wake up now. Or I might let Robin give you a sponge bath."
Robin snorted, and actually put one Italian leather loafer over the threshold of the room. "Caliban, you let me do that and I suspect Niko might wake up just to kill us both." He smiled minutely. "Not that my untimely death wouldn't have been completely worth it."
"You hear that, Nik?" I said, bending down toward his ear again. "Goodfellow is willing to risk death all for the sake of your hygiene. That's gotta be worth waking up for, right? Nik? C'mon, man. You gotta give me something here! Nik? Nik!"
He didn't wake up. But his frown deepened.
Niko
"Niko? Wake up, dammit! Useless, worthless, stupid boy!"
I opened my eyes, not for a second remembering where I was when I closed them.
I was staring up at gray concrete, my back pressed against something hard and cold.
It smelled like the floor of the Ninth Circle after the Kin had had a particularly territorial party.
Urine and alcohol.
Delightful.
I blinked and tried to get my bearings.
I'd been...hanging by my wrists from a meat hook being groped by Hob.
And Georgina had been there.
Where was Georgina?
I sat up suddenly, seeking out soulful brown eyes and finding only cold gray.
As gray the ceiling and the floor I was sitting on.
As gray as Cal's eyes.
As gray as my own.
"Why are you sitting on the floor? Stupid, pointless boy. Why I didn't sell you to the circus as a baby I'll never know."
If it was possible for my blood to freeze in my veins, it did.
I'd not heard that voice in a long time.
A very long time.
Not nearly long enough.
I'd hoped never to hear it again.
"Well get up then!"
And, dammit, if I didn't do exactly that.
And mentally cursed myself for my weakness.
One word from Sophia and I was up on my feet in a half second flat.
She stood looking at me for the longest moment.
She seemed smaller.
I remembered her towering over me, screaming at me, screaming at Cal. I'd felt the back of her hand across my face more times than I could remember and I suspected she'd broken more of my bones than most of the Paien Cal and I had fought over the years combined.
She'd beaten me, burned me, locked me out, locked me in, belittled me and burdened me.
But she'd never broken me.
She may have treated me like a slave rather than a son, but in the end, she was the one who'd burned like the witch she was, and I was the one who'd survived.
I wouldn't let her break me now. Not in a dream. Or whatever the hell this was.
"You're not real," I told her shortly, "Mother," I added, just to annoy her.
She hated it when we called her that.
Cal used to call her "Mom" all the time, just to piss her off.
She narrowed her eyes and glared at me.
"Or maybe I'm real and you're a figment of your little monster's imagination."
And she, in turn, always called Cal my "little monster." Just to piss me off.
"Little monster's imaginary big brother," she continued, in that singsong voice she used with her marks when she was pretending she was psychic and had a message for them from their long-dead cat or whatever. "How are you so sure you're the one who's real, Nik?" she asked, deliberately using Cal's nickname for me.
She'd always been jealous of our relationship. Hated that we had each other while all she had was a bottle of bourbon and an STD to keep her company.
"I'm not," I admitted. "And to be honest, I hope this is all your fantasy because I sure as hell never wanted to be in the same room with you again."
She snorted. "My, my, Niko, have you been taking lessons in sass from your little brother?" she said. "At least he has a backbone. It's about time you developed one too."
I didn't rise to the bait.
It's all I ever heard when I was a kid. How I was useless because I never did what she told me to do and I was equally as useless when I did because I ought to have stood up to her.
She called me stupid and worthless about as often as she called Cal a monster.
"Where are we?" I asked instead. "Why have you brought me here?"
Sophia shrugged. "I didn't bring you anywhere," she said, sauntering away from me until she had her back to me, staring through the bars in front of her and down the dark, dingy corridor beyond.
She was wearing the same dress she'd been wearing the night of Cal's conception.
Why were there bars in front of her?
For the first time in many years I realized I'd not been paying attention to my surroundings.
I was so shocked to see Sophia that it hadn't quite sunk in that we were in a holding cell.
It kind of looked like the ones I'd been bailing her out of since I was twelve.
That explained the aroma, anyway.
That, and the two drunks asleep on the benches chained to the bare plaster walls.
There was another guy on a third bench, but he had his jacket pulled over his head, so I couldn't tell what his deal was.
"What are you in for this time?" I asked. I didn't really care, but the chance to study my own subconscious having created this whole narrative was a little bit too much of an opportunity for the student in me to pass up.
She turned and looked at me. "What do you care?" she asked, and just as with Georgina, it was as if she'd read my mind.
Which would make sense if she was merely a manifestation of my subconscious.
I shrugged. "Idle curiosity."
When she turned away from me once again, a voice from behind me helpfully informed me, "She's a whore. That's why she's here."
I glanced over my shoulder to the guy laying on the bench with his jacket over his head.
He turned onto his side, his back toward me.
While my mother turned back to face me.
"Is that what you think?" she asked.
I almost laughed. "How many times did I bail you out of one of these places? If it wasn't prostitution it was shoplifting."
She stood up a little straighter. "Had to feed you brats somehow."
I actually did laugh at that. "I fed us. Remember? Those two or three jobs I always had? You just fed your habit and your ego."
She was right in front of me before I even had time to blink, and my younger self would have flinched in anticipation of the back of her hand across my face.
The older me, however, merely stood there impassively, almost daring her to try and hit me.
She didn't try and hit me. Beating me had become less attractive to her once I was bigger than she was and I'd broken her arm.
"You don't know anything about me," she spat. "I was sixteen when you came along. My family disowned me because of you!"
That would have stung me when I was younger. But not now. I didn't give a damn what the Vayash or any of the Rom thought of me or Cal. Or my mother.
"They disowned you because you dishonored them," I pointed out. "I didn't even exist at the point when you whored yourself to my..." I stopped short of using the word, "father," and instead substituted, "sperm donor."
"I'm not a whore!" she yelled at me. "He took advantage of me. I was a child..."
"And I paid you good money, if I recall," the guy on the bench put in.
I glanced back in his direction and decided there and then that waking up would be the most desirable option here.
I'd never been one for soap operas.
Emilian Kalakos was sitting up now, looking exactly as he had before Cal fed him to the Janus automaton to save my life.
Someone else I'd hoped never to see again.
I'd never called him "Father" in my life, and never would. Not even to annoy him. He had disowned me just as thoroughly as the Vayash.
At least the Vayash had disowned me because of Cal, because my mother had whored herself out to monsters.
Emilian Kalakos had disowned me because he was a good-for-nothing coward who took no responsibility for his own actions or his own kin. He was a murderer. He was a thief. He was a rapist.
And admitting that to myself made me suddenly more willing to listen to Sophia's side of the story.
"Did he force himself on you?" I asked her.
I'd never asked that question before. Never even considered it.
She'd lied to me so many times about my father, his identity, whether he'd ever known me, whether she'd ever known him, that I couldn't keep all her lies straight in my head and had no idea if any of them were true.
She didn't reply for the longest time.
"No," she admitted at length.
She wasn't looking at me, she was looking at him.
"Did he pay you?"
"Yes."
"How old were you the first time someone paid?"
She was still looking at him. "I was fifteen."
"Why? Were your family destitute?"
Sophia finally slid her eyes in my direction. "No," she admitted. "The boy I wanted wouldn't have me. So I let his best friend have me instead."
"For money?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"To hurt the boy I wanted."
"Did it work?"
"No."
"And then what?"
"I had money. I had men flocking to be with me. I had the strongest of the Vayash desiring to spend a night in my bed. And then I had you. And then I had nothing."
I swallowed.
I didn't feel sorry for her.
She had made her own bed, literally and figuratively.
But to hear I meant nothing to her?
It wasn't like I hadn't always known that.
But to have it pointed out to you in black and white? By your own mother?
I knew she hated Cal.
But sometimes it was hard to admit she hated me just as thoroughly.
My father may have only been a human monster, but she obviously thought as little of him as she did the Auphe who sired my brother.
"Why have you brought me here?" Kalakos asked suddenly.
I'd been ignoring him. He wasn't worthy of my attention.
"I didn't," I told him without looking at him.
"It's your fantasy, son."
"I'm not your son."
"Any more than she's a whore?"
"Genetically," I said slowly, "I may share DNA with you. But that doesn't make you my father. Any more than it makes her my mother."
"Then who raised you?"
"I did."
"Saint Niko." My mother had called me that before. "So eager to get up on that cross."
"Between you," I told them, "you deprived me of my life. The one I could have had. Just as surely as if you'd drowned me at birth."
"Don't blame me, blame your brother," Sophia said.
I could break her other arm. Or her neck. It would be easy. I knew exactly how to do it now.
"It's not Cal's fault he was born," I pointed out calmly. "It's not his fault he was conceived. Any more than it's mine. You never took responsibility for your actions. Either of you. You left that to me."
"My brother's keeper?" Kalakos said, a sneer in his voice. "You didn't have to give up your life for him. You could have walked away."
"Like you did? I would never do that to Cal. He's my family. He's my only family."
"He's a monster," Kalakos pronounced.
"He's a hero. He's a hero born of monsters. If you can't see that, then you're more blinded than I thought you were."
"I'm not a monster—" Sophia began to protest.
"Like you're not a whore? Like you're a victim of circumstance? You had no choice? You had every choice. You chose to whore yourself out to every man in town. To him." I inclined my head in Kalakos' direction. "To Cal's father. You chose to take no responsibility for your children. At least Cal's father wanted him."
"He wanted him to end the world," Kalakos pointed out.
"But at least he claimed him as his," I countered. "That's more than you ever did for me."
"Why would I claim you?" Kalakos asked. "I paid your mother for sex when I could have taken it for free. And it wasn't even good sex. She meant as little to me as you obviously do to her. Men do not generally claim bastard children born to their harlots."
"Is that why we're here?" Sophia asked suddenly.
I turned back to her, and for a second her eyes were brown and her hair golden auburn, and Georgina was looking at me.
And then she was my mother again.
"Is what why we're here?" I tried to clarify, but I knew Georgina was gone as quickly as she'd arrived.
"We're all in this holding cell, Niko," Sophia said. "In case you hadn't noticed. If I'm in here for whoring, and he's in here for being a lousy father, then what are you in here for?"
I blinked at her.
I hadn't done anything wrong. Had I?
"I—I don't know," I said, cursing the stammer in my voice. "I didn't do anything—"
"Saint Niko," Sophia repeated. "Always so perfect."
"Sanctimonious," Kalakos agreed, taking a step toward me.
"Judgmental," Sophia added, also moving toward me.
"Holier than thou."
"Condescending."
"People in glass houses..." Kalakos began.
"...Shouldn't throw stones," Sophia finished.
They were both standing too close to me, crowding me.
"I didn't do anything," I repeated. "I didn't do anything to deserve this."
"And it's all Caliban's fault," Kalakos agreed. "If it wasn't for him..."
"...You could have been normal."
"College."
"Career."
"Family."
"Future."
"No. No!" I pushed them both away from me and put as much distance between them and myself as I could.
I was squeezed into the corner of the cell and had nowhere else to go.
"Cal didn't do this to me," I insisted. "You two did."
"You'll never be good enough to save him," Kalakos said.
"You'll never be perfect," Sophia added.
"It's your fault."
"You could have said no."
"You could have left."
"You can't save him."
"You should have saved yourself."
"No one's going to save you now."
"You can't even save yourself."
"You can't even save yourself."
I couldn't even save myself.
And I was falling...
Cal
It was almost as if my brother was falling all over again.
The machines were screeching and there were nurses and doctors crowding around him and Robin's arm was across my chest, holding me back.
If anything happened to him, I'd tear it all down.
All of it.
I'd Unmake the World.
"What's happening?" I demanded for the hundredth time.
But I knew. I knew.
Death has a particular smell.
"He's stopped breathing, Cal," Robin told me quietly. "And his heart is giving up."
"He can't give up," I told the puck. "He can't! He's my brother. He's Niko Leandros. Niko Leandros doesn't give up! Not ever!"
It was true. I knew it was true.
All the times I'd been lost, he'd still believed in me. Still believed he could save me.
I could save him too.
"Nik!"
Robin was strong, but nothing came between me and my brother.
Nothing.
I was at Niko's side, despite the protests of the nurses, of the doctors. I had a hold of his hand and was squeezing and I think I was yelling at him.
"Goddammit, Nik, wake the hell up!" I demanded of him. "You don't get to give up! You don't get to leave!"
"Sir—"
One of the doctors tried to push me away, but thought better of it after I gave him The Look.
I may not have the white hair and red eyes anymore, but I could still look as mind-numbingly terrifying as an Auphe when I needed to.
"Cal?" Robin was behind me, a gentle hand between my shoulder blades. "The medical staff need room to work."
But I wouldn't let go of Nik's hand. Couldn't. Couldn't let him go.
I'd burn down the sky first.
Niko
The sky was burning.
I wasn't sure what I was looking at.
It was like a scene from a documentary on the formation of the Earth's crust. Or maybe some science-fiction movie set on an alien volcanic planet where the hero's spaceship is in imminent danger of being consumed by lava. Or a combination of the two.
It took me a second to realize I was looking at New York.
From somewhere high.
Somewhere really high.
I could see the naked shell of what was once the Empire State Building in the distance, and beyond that, one remaining arch of Brooklyn Bridge crumbled into rubble where the river beneath had boiled away to nothing.
Upon glancing to my left I noticed a giant stone gargoyle perhaps six feet away from me, and it somehow looked vaguely familiar.
Beating wings and claws and falling...
Chrysler Building.
I was standing on the top of the Chrysler Building.
Not standing.
Sitting. I was sitting.
Tied to a chair.
Why was I tied to a chair at the top of the Chrysler Building?
The chair was large and ornately carved, and my wrists and ankles were securely attached to it by means of black plastic cable ties, the ones Cal and I always kept around for just such emergencies.
You never knew when you'd have to restrain an enemy.
Or a friend.
Or a brother.
He came striding toward me, a gigantic smile plastered across his face, and to my shame I didn't immediately realize what was wrong with him.
"Cal?" I said slowly. "Is...is that you?"
My brother pushed long, spiky white hair out of blood red eyes and blinked at me, just once.
"Of course it's me, Nik," he replied, a minute frown crinkling the porcelain white skin of his forehead. "Who were you expecting?"
I shrugged like his appearance didn't matter to me, the way I'd overlooked it before when he had become almost completely Auphe and I'd thought he would end the world rather than save it.
But save it he had.
Again.
"Why am I here?" I asked him, because by now I would have been a fool had I not realized not everything around me was entirely real.
He took a breath, the self-satisfied smile never leaving his face. "I wanted to show you," he said, indicating the vista behind him with an inclination of his head.
The spikes of his hair shook with a metallic tinkle.
Elves...
"Show me what?" I asked, and he grinned even wider at me, and I was reminded of that time when he was six and he'd drawn a picture of the two of us in wax crayon on purple construction paper and his teacher had given him an A.
"Look what I did, Niko, look what I did!"
"I did it for you, Nik," he said, apparently extremely proud of himself. "I needed to show you."
"Show me...?"
"How much I love you."
I blinked at him.
We both knew that one day our somewhat intense co-dependency could end us.
Or the world.
Whichever came first.
But it wasn't something we generally spoke about.
Ever.
We were far too manly for that.
Profess our fraternal love for one another? This was usually done by one of us throwing the other over our head and slamming them down onto the sparring mat.
Or by comparing blades and guns.
We never actually said the "L"word.
"That's—" I sought out the correct description but came up completely empty. "—Nice?" I tried.
Cal laughed. "Nice?" he echoed. "I destroy the world for you and it's 'nice'?"
"Why would you think I'd want you to destroy the world for me?" I asked. "How would that show me you loved me?"
It was at this point things started to get a little weird.
Cal suddenly decided straddling me before settling himself in my lap might be something I'd like him to do in the same way he believed I'd apparently enjoy him destroying the world.
"Cal..." I began to protest slowly.
"Shh," he instructed me, placing one long finger over my lips.
A single metal talon extended from his fingertip where his blunt nail should have been. He grazed it across my cheek languidly until it was barely touching the skin beneath my left eye.
Then he bent his head toward me until his lips were so close to my ear I could feel his breath on my neck.
"If there's no one left in the world but you and me," he said, "there's no one left who can hurt us. Kill us. Separate us."
I had to admit, there was a weird psychopathic logic to his thinking.
But Cal wasn't a psychopath.
"But what about our friends?" I asked him. "What about Robin? Ishiah? Promise?"
"You're not hers," he growled. "You're mine."
He silenced me this time by grabbing hold of my face in clawed fingers and pressing his lips against my own.
Considering any sudden movement on my part might mean Cal tearing off half my face, it took every ounce of self control I had not to instinctively jerk my head away from him.
When I didn't respond to what he was doing, he stopped, pulling his mouth away from mine, but keeping his face only inches from me and his claws still barely grazing the surface of my skin.
"Don't you love me, Nik?" he asked, and it was the first time the grin slipped slightly from his face.
I swallowed, trying to phrase what I wanted to say next in a way that wouldn't have him slitting my throat.
"I love you more than anyone else in the world," I told him honestly. Always had. Always would. Even if the world ended because of it. "You know that."
He seemed pleased, and his claws withdrew slightly to the point where they were no longer on the verge of drawing blood.
"But ending the world isn't the way to go about showing me how much you love me. And neither is...this." I tried to indicate what I meant by a small movement of my head, which caused one of his claws to scratch my right cheekbone.
He gazed intently at the line of blood welling on my skin for a second before sticking out his tongue and licking it off.
I was pretty sure I didn't manage to hide my revulsion quite as well as I had when he'd kissed me.
"Cal, this isn't us!" I told him. "I love you but not like this!" I tugged at my restrained wrists to emphasize the point.
Cal stared at me impassively for a second, before suddenly grabbing my braid in one taloned hand, yanking back my head and pushing his tongue into my mouth.
The kiss itself would have been bad enough, but Cal's tongue now had little barbs all over it like his hair, and as if being kissed by your brother while you were tied to a chair wasn't indignity enough, having that kiss hurt made it all the more nightmarish.
When Cal finally stopped to draw breath, he pulled away from me slightly, apparently surprised by the blood on my lips caused by his barbed tongue, and on my face where his claws had sunk in when he grabbed me.
He blinked his furnace-red eyes at me, and I could see my own gray eyes reflected there.
"Did I hurt you?" he asked quietly.
I nodded slightly, a little afraid to move. "In more ways than just the physical," I told him.
He blinked at me again, before a low growl started to vibrate in his throat and a voice unlike his, a voice like broken glass, ground out, "But I need you to love me."
That's when hundreds of metal needles descended in front of his teeth, and he was kissing me again, violently, desperately, metal spikes pressed against my lips, the barbs on his tongue catching on my own.
I could taste my own blood mingled with the taste of my brother, and the talons on the hand not pulling desperately at my hair began to claw at the skin around my face.
When he finally pulled away from me again, it was only by millimeters, only enough to allow me to breathe.
"I need you to love me," he repeated. "And you only love me when I hurt you."
I didn't know what that meant.
"You don't need to hurt me for me to love you," I told him. "What would make you think that?"
He shifted slightly, loosening his grip on both my braid and my face.
"Because when it's normal, when it's ordinary, you're with her."
I considered that for a second. "Promise?"
He didn't confirm or deny. "It's only when we're dying, you, me, the world...it's only when it's ending that you love me."
I thought about the time Promise's daughter Cherish had made me believe Cal was dead. The blind rage within me. I would have killed anything—did kill anything—in my path to get revenge.
I thought about when the Auphe took him when he was fourteen. When Darkling took him to use him to end the world. When he'd lost his memory and I couldn't find him. Junior Hammersmith dragging him off to his attic.
They took him from me, they took me from him, and it was the end of everything.
And he was right.
It was at those times, the times when we were most in danger, separated, lost. It was at those times we both realized how strong our bond—our love for one another—really was.
It could save the world or it could destroy it.
And sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference.
He was still gazing at me, eyes on fire, but I was looking only at myself.
"We don't have to be hurting to love each other," I told him, and even I wasn't entirely sure I believed it. "I still love you when the world isn't ending. You're my brother. I'll always love you. Even if you have claws and metal teeth."
He smiled at me then, gripping my face and bending his own towards mine. "And I'll still love you if you're not perfect," he told me, before finally letting go of me and climbing off my lap.
He turned away from me then, looking out towards the horizon, at the devastation that was once New York City.
"I'm the Unmaker of the World," he said. "I could remake it too."
And then I was standing next to him, my restraints and my injuries gone, and he was Cal again: poker straight black hair, pale skin, gray eyes, ridiculous t-shirt. And when he waved his hand across the horizon the city seemed to reset itself, like one of those old Etch-A-Sketch toys, wiping everything out and starting again.
"You don't have to hurt yourself to love me, either," Cal said. "You don't have to be perfect to save me anymore."
When I was fifteen, when Junior almost killed him, that was how I'd framed the rest of my life: Perfection. Only being perfect would help me save my brother.
And I think I still believed that.
"I'll still love you if you're not perfect," he said again.
And I believed him.
Cal
The room was quiet now.
The doctors and nurses had all left and there was just myself and my brother.
Robin was talking to someone somewhere. Trying to make things better. Trying to understand what we could do.
It was up to Niko now, they'd said.
They'd got his heart beating again, got him breathing.
But it was up to him whether he came out of this.
My brother never gave up.
Never.
He'd fight this.
He'd fight this for me.
"Are you in there, big brother?" I asked, resting my forehead against his. "Where's that enormous brain of yours when I need it? Huh?"
The tube in his mouth inflated his chest for him, and in my head I heard him sigh.
"Don't think I'm pushing your lazy ass around in a wheelchair when we get out of here," I told him. "You know how I feel about hospitals, too. Can't believe you've made me hang around this place for so long. Not very considerate of you, big brother."
There was movement behind his eyelids, and I hoped that was a good sign.
I'd never noticed how long his eyelashes were.
I pulled back a little, still hanging on to his hand.
"You do realize the longer you're asleep the more likely it is Goodfellow will find a way to feel you up, right? He's already tried to sneak a look up your hospital gown."
My brother didn't rise to the bait.
Maybe I should actually get Robin in here to try and feel my brother up. That would sure as hell wake him.
"This is getting a little bit old now, Nik," I told him. "When did you ever let an eight story fall and a little bump on the head put you out of the game? I really think it's about time you woke up. For me. For your pain in the ass little brother."
Niko
"Your little brother is a pain in the ass. You know that, don't you?"
Robin was standing behind me, and that was never a good position to be in.
"And yes, I am looking at your ass," he added, just to confirm my suspicions.
"Where are we?" I asked him, because I wasn't sure.
It was dark now, and I had no frame of reference.
"Chrysler Building," Robin replied, and when I blinked and opened my eyes again, there was New York City laid out beneath us, the Empire State Building lit up red, white and blue in the twilight. "Although I suspect this is really just some mental construct of yours and I'm merely a figment of your imagination," Robin continued. "Which means if you're fantasizing about me ogling your ass, then you must actually want me to ogle your ass."
I tried not to consider that hypothesis too deeply.
"You need to wake up now," he added softly.
"Am I asleep?" I asked him.
"Yes," he confirmed. "Cal needs you to wake up."
I sighed. "How do I do that?" I asked.
He moved to stand beside me and shrugged. "Figment of your imagination, remember?" he said. "You need to figure that out for yourself."
I smiled slightly at him. "Isn't that what you're here to help me with?"
His own smile brightened considerably. "Why, you could be right about that," he agreed. "Perhaps I'm Prince Charming in this scenario," he added. "Maybe I could try waking you with a kiss?" He closed his eyes and puckered his lips, and despite myself I found myself laughing at him.
"In your dreams," I told him.
"And yours, apparently," he agreed.
Another hypothesis I tried not to consider too deeply.
"Although you're not exactly a damsel in distress are you?" Robin added.
I glanced at him quizzically.
"You don't generally need rescuing," Robin clarified.
I shrugged. I had no answer to that.
"Although you do seem to have a lot of dreams about being restrained or imprisoned; being helpless or defenseless," the puck continued thoughtfully. "With all that hair, you could be Rapunzel." My scowl obviously convinced him perhaps casting me as a Disney Princess wasn't the best idea he'd ever had. His grin faded into something more analytical. "Is that how your life has made you feel?" he asked me at length. "Restrained? Imprisoned? By circumstances. By Cal's circumstances."
I glanced sideways at him. "I don't blame Cal," I told him. And that was the truth. "Not for anything."
"But you gave up your life for him. The life you could have had. College, career, family, future."
Those were the same words my parents—the dream of my parents—had used.
"Cal is my family and has always been my future," I said. "The rest doesn't matter."
"Are you sure?" Robin continued. "You don't feel like a prisoner in your own life?"
I glanced at him again. "Cal is my life."
Robin nodded. "So that being the case, does this mean you're maybe just secretly into bondage?" He raised a flirtatious eyebrow. "Because I could definitely help you out with that."
"Your generosity knows no bounds."
Robin grinned lasciviously at me before his expression sobered. "You also seem to have a lot of dreams about losing your free will in addition to your freedom," he observed. "Being forced to do things you don't want to do. Is that how you feel? That you were forced into assuming the role of Cal's protector?"
I returned his quizzical gaze thoughtfully.
"Yes," I admitted at length. "But not by Cal. By Sophia. By circumstances. Someone had to protect my brother and it wasn't going to be our mother."
"But you're not sure he still needs you to protect him, are you? He's pretty good at protecting himself these days."
I swallowed. "I don't know how to do anything else," I admitted.
"Is that why you've not woken up?" Robin asked. "Because you're not sure he needs you anymore?"
I didn't answer that straight away.
"Because if he doesn't need you, you don't have a purpose? You don't have a reason to be?"
I smiled a little bitterly. "I believe it's called empty nest syndrome," I told him.
Robin's mouth quirked up on one side. "Maybe you could take up knitting?"
I snorted at the image.
Robin's smile faded, and he turned his gaze to the horizon. "He'll always need you," he said. "No matter how old or how powerful he gets. You keep him human. You always have."
"Not always," I admitted. "I failed him. He was almost completely Auphe for a while there."
"Almost," Robin echoed. "Because of you, only almost."
"He could have ended the world."
"But he didn't. He saved it. Because you saved him."
I thought about that for a while, suddenly realizing my feet felt cold.
I glanced down. They were still bare. And we were standing on damp concrete.
"He'll always need you, Niko," Robin continued. "And I'm not sure whether that's what makes you feel as if you're constantly restrained."
I turned to look at him then. "Is that what you think?" I asked. "That I feel restrained by a brother I'm afraid won't need me forever because he'll need me forever?"
Even to me that sentence didn't make sense.
Robin shrugged. "I'm your subconscious, darling," he said. "What do you think?"
I turned back to gaze at the horizon, at New York City, our home.
The only real home we'd ever had.
I took a breath. "I think I need to wake up. Cal needs me. And my feet are cold."
"Hospital gown," Robin told me. "You look very fetching in it."
I squinted at him. "If you're a figment of my imagination," I asked, "how do you know what I'm wearing in the waking world?"
Robin's million watt smile never faltered. "Lucky guess," he said.
My frown deepened and I turned to examine him a little more closely. "You're not really a figment of my imagination, are you?"
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," he deadpanned.
"Uh-huh," I said flatly. "Because that wasn't me imagining you ogling my ass, was it? It was you actually ogling my ass."
Robin's smile softened fondly. "You always were the smart one of the package deal," he observed.
"How are you here?" I asked.
"I tried calling first," Robin explained. "But Hob wouldn't let me speak to you."
I frowned at him before remembering Hob's cell ringing while he was busy trying to pleasure himself with me. "That was you?"
"My boy, if there ever comes a time when you decide to give in to having your mind blown by a puck, it's going to be me who does the blowing. So to speak."
"You wouldn't let Hob harm me, even in a dream?"
"Someone had to save your lovely ass," Goodfellow observed. "In fact, perhaps I should rethink that whole 'damsel in distress' theory." His expression sobered as he considered me for a good few seconds. "I may be a lot of things," he continued, "but I have always believed the most important part of the phrase, 'consenting adults' is that whole 'consenting' part. Although the 'adult' part is pretty much a deal breaker too."
"Even in a dream?"
"Even in a dream. Hob had no right to do what he did to you in the waking world, and I've no doubt it's that traumatic memory which caused you to dream about him trying to force himself on you so long after his most—um—unfortunate demise. Past trauma magnified."
"And Georgina?"
Robin raised an eyebrow. "You dreamed of Georgina?"
I nodded.
"I didn't see that," the puck continued cryptically. "Guilt, perhaps? At her loss? You do so like to protect everyone around you to a ridiculous degree."
I wasn't sure that was it but I let it pass.
"But for now," the puck continued, "you need to get back to your brother. Before he breaks something. Like the world, or something insignificant like that."
I sighed. "What happened to me?"
"You fell," Robin replied, his focus straying involuntarily beyond my shoulder.
I glanced in the direction of his gaze, my eyes once again lighting on the gargoyle I'd noticed earlier, when I'd been here with Cal.
When I dreamed I was here with Cal.
Beating wings and claws and falling...
"Is this where we were?" I asked. "Is this where it happened?"
Robin shook his head. "My boy, even you wouldn't have survived a fall from this height. We were over on 8th. You only fell eight stories."
I raised an eyebrow at him. "Only eight?"
"Pish. Just a little bump on your head, that's all."
I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that. "So...when you said I was asleep...you meant I was in a coma?"
"Semantics." Robin shrugged.
"So how do I go about waking from a coma?"
Robin shrugged again. "Beats me, sweetie."
I squinted at him. "If you're supposed to be some kind of spirit guide," I told him, "you're doing a pretty lousy job."
"These things are usually symbolic," he said. "Maybe you need to fall again."
I blinked at him. "Maybe I what?"
"Need to fall," the puck repeated. "Jump. From here."
I took a slow, incredulous breath. Robin had said some pretty ridiculous things in the years I'd known him, but this was probably the craziest idea he'd ever had.
"You want me to jump off the roof of the Chrysler Building?" I clarified.
Robin shrugged again.
"You do realize how tall this building is?"
"No, but I have a feeling you're going to tell me."
"Three hundred nineteen meters."
"How do you even know that?"
It was my turn to shrug. "Cal likes porn, I like Wikipedia," I told him.
Robin snorted. "You read Wikipedia?" he bellowed. "You?"
"Bodyguard duty can get boring sometimes. Cell phones weren't just invented for Scrabble and crushing candy you know."
Robin grinned. "No, they were invented for Tinder," he said, before clapping me on the shoulder. "You're a unique individual, my friend," he told me. "Don't ever change."
"I shall take that as a compliment," I told him. "Although I'm not entirely sure it was meant as such. Now back to my jumping from a seventy-seven story building..."
Robin pursed his lips. "Hmm. That is a little bit higher than eight."
"Yes it is," I agreed. "And while heights don't particularly worry me, falling from them does. Even in a dream."
"That whole 'if you die in a dream you die in reality' thing?" Robin said. "Total BS."
"And what makes you think falling three hundred meters will wake me up?"
"Well," Robin reasoned. "Put it this way. If it doesn't work, it's not like you're actually going to go splat, is it?"
I squinted at him. "I don't know," I returned. "It's not something I've ever tried before, oddly."
Robin flashed me his brightest smile. "C'mon, Niko! What's the worst that could happen?"
I grunted. "I could die."
"Yes, but you always come back. You're very predictable that way."
"I'm not finished being Niko Leandros yet," I admitted. "I could come back as a used car salesman or something."
Robin's smile morphed into a scowl. "That hurts my feelings, you know," he told me. "I'll have you know I've made a lot of people happy selling used cars."
"Not everything that makes people happy is necessarily good for them," I returned. "Look at Cal and his love affair with hot dogs."
"That's true," Robin agreed. "But sometimes the things that make people happy are the best things in the world for them. Like older brothers who would throw themselves off a building rather than let their younger brother suffer."
I sighed, glancing sideways at the puck. "You really think this will work?"
He nodded. "I am one hundred percent positive," he confirmed. "Well maybe ninety-nine point nine percent. Ninety-eight. Ninety-five percent positive."
I raised an eyebrow at him.
"Ninety, definitely."
"That doesn't exactly inspire me with confidence," I told him, moving tentatively toward the stone parapet.
I was telling Goodfellow the truth when I said heights didn't bother me, but glancing down at Lexington Avenue below me—a very long way below me—had me feeling almost as nauseous as that time Cal made me take him on the Tilt-A-Whirl eight times running when he was seven.
"Don't think of it as falling," Robin advised, suddenly at my shoulder. "Think of it as waking."
I glanced down again and shook my head. "That's a long way down to wake," I told him.
"But worth every meter," he said. "Although I believe you only use metric measurements to confuse people."
"Metric measurements are far more accurate," I informed him offhandedly, as I climbed up onto the ledge. "And three hundred nineteen meters doesn't sound as far as one thousand forty-six feet."
"Agreed," Robin said. "Long live the metric system. Now hurry up and jump. I have a particularly nice pino noir and a set of triplets waiting for me in my future. A girl and two boys. It doesn't get much better than that."
I shuddered. And not just because my feet were cold. "You mentioned BS earlier?" I said.
Robin put on his most affronted scowl. "I am never one to lie about a good bottle of wine," he told me.
"And those triplets would be Ishiah, Salome and Spartacus?" Robin would never admit his idea of a good time these days actually involved a bottle of wine, his boyfriend and their two mummified cats.
He smiled lopsidedly. "Sometimes you're as much of a pain in the ass as your brother," he said, suddenly reaching out and shoving me hard in the back. "Now fall already."
I had to admit, this wasn't how I'd imagined it at all.
I didn't remember falling from the building on 8th Avenue, but I'd fallen shorter distances many times, and this was nothing like that.
They say your life flashes in front of your eyes at times like this, but all I saw were windows and people sitting behind desks in offices.
Maybe one didn't fall as fast in a dream as in reality? Dream physics could be completely different to real life physics, I rationalized.
Still, whatever the difference, dream physics didn't alter the fact that the sidewalk was coming up to meet me pretty damn fast and I wasn't sure I was ready to have my body parts splattered all over Lexington.
"Nik? Hey! Nik!"
Cal was leaning out of one of the windows a couple stories beneath me.
"I think maybe that's far enough."
He held out his hand to me and my descent slowed to a gentle stop approximately six meters up from the sidewalk.
"If I look down," I asked slowly, "am I going to fall like Wile E. Coyote?"
"I don't know," Cal said shortly. "Maybe you shouldn't look down."
"That sounds like good advice," I agreed, clasping the hand he was holding out to me.
"Are you ready to get your ass back in here?" he asked, and I was fairly sure he wasn't talking about the building he was half hanging out of. "Security are all over me. I don't guess I look respectable enough for this building."
I glanced upwards, and thought I could just see Robin looking down over the parapet he'd pushed me from.
"Yes," I said. "I think I'm ready."
"Good," Cal said, grasping both of my arms and pulling me in through the window. "I freakin' hate hospitals."
Cal
"I freakin' hate hospitals," I told my brother for the hundredth time since he'd been here. "If you don't wake the hell up soon, big brother, I'm gonna start with the Greatest Hits of Death Metal at full volume on endless repeat right in your goddamn ear..."
"At least I wouldn't have to listen to you whining about hating hospitals anymore."
I looked up suddenly.
I'd been sitting on the world's least comfortable plastic chair for what felt like centuries, and I guess my head might have fallen to rest on the bed at the side of Niko's hand.
Which I totally hadn't been holding at all during the last forty-something hours.
"Nik?"
He was blinking up at the ceiling.
"I can't see Robin anymore," he muttered.
"Why would you want to?" I asked, sitting up so fast my neck cracked.
"He was checking if I went splat."
"Uh. Okay. I guess they've got you on the good drugs, huh?"
They'd removed the tube from his mouth a couple of hours ago. Said he was breathing on his own. But he still had a needle going into his arm dosing him with some serious pain relief.
"Cal?"
Nik tried to raise his head, winced, thought better of it, and I helpfully moved myself into his field of vision.
"You awake, Sleeping Beauty?" I asked.
He scowled ever so slightly. "Anyone else compares me to a Disney Princess today I'm going to hang them upside down from their ankles."
I frowned at him. "You've pretty much been unconscious for two days," I told him. "Who the hell have you been talking to?"
Nik blinked, and actually seemed to see me for the first time.
"Cal?" he said again. "That you?"
"No it's Taylor Swift," I told him. "Who were you expecting?"
He seemed to relax a little bit. "Okay," he said. "Didn't go splat. Good. Won't have to kick Goodfellow's ass." Then he seemed to tense up again, and his eyes were on me once more, rather than a hundred miles away where they seemed to have been for the last few seconds. "You're not going to kiss me again are you?"
I blinked at him. "Nik. It's Cal. Not Robin."
He blinked right on back. "Show me your tongue," he ordered.
"Uh," I said again. "Okay."
I stuck my tongue out at him like I used to when I was five, and he smiled slightly, before seeming to relax again.
"Okay."
"Okay," I agreed. "You fell off a building," I told him, just in case he was interested.
"I know," he said. "Robin told me." Then he was looking at me again. "Are you okay?"
"You fell eight stories, idiot, not me!" I reminded him.
"I know," he said. "But are you okay?"
"Always the big brother," I grinned at him fondly. "Yes I'm fine. Now that you're back in the land of the living."
"Robin made me jump off the Chrysler Building."
"The really good drugs," I observed.
"He said it would wake me up."
"Well I guess he got that part right."
Nik was looking at me again. "I'm not," he said.
I frowned at him. "Not what?"
"Perfect."
"That's not what I've heard."
"You said you'd still love me if I wasn't perfect."
I blinked at him again. "Okay…"
"And I'm not. So that's okay, right?"
"Yes. Absolutely." Reeeeeeally good drugs...
"Good. Because I don't want you to destroy New York for me."
"No," I agreed. "Because that would be bad. Not to mention awkward. All our friends would be really pissed."
"Cal?"
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to see Robin standing behind me, peering at Niko nervously.
"He's awake," I told him. "And possibly high."
His copyrighted grin immediately lit up his face. "I knew it! I told you you had to jump!" he said, directing his last comment at Niko, who just looked at him.
"If I'd died I would have come back just to kill you," my brother told him.
And I got the feeling I was missing something.
"Robin?" I said slowly. "What did you do?"
Robin shrugged. "Just a little bit of dream walking. Used to do it all the time. Guess I got rusty. Kind of gave up after Cleopatra. Her dreams were wild. Everyone after her was just boring." He was looking at Niko again. "Although you could give her a run for her money, my boy."
I looked from Nik to Robin and back again. "What did you dream about?" I asked. "And how much did he see?"
"Weird stuff, and too much," Niko replied.
I squinted at him, running back the last few minutes of conversation in my head. "Wait. You dreamt I kissed you?" I demanded.
Nik blanched while Robin grinned lasciviously.
"Shame I missed that part," he mused.
"Pervert," Nik and I managed to comment at the exact same second.
"It wasn't you you," Nik tried to explain. "It was..." He trailed off, and I instantly knew exactly what he'd been dreaming about.
"Auphe me," I finished for him.
"He also fantasized about my ogling his ass," Robin put in.
"You were actually ogling my ass," Niko corrected him.
"Shocker," I put in. I placed what I hoped was a comforting hand on my brother's wrist. "If it makes you feel any better, I haven't let him look up your hospital gown once."
"Ah, that's why you've never left his side," Robin smiled softly at me, and I scowled in return.
"You never left my side?" Nik sounded surprised, and that kind of disturbed me more than I'd care to admit.
"Well you don't have to get all mushy about it," I told him, not meeting his gaze. "You would have done the same for me."
Robin nodded knowingly, putting a hand on Nik's other wrist. "Always," he said softly. "I told you."
Niko nodded slightly. "I know," he said. "And thank you, Robin."
"Always happy to drop in on a hot blond's dreams," he said with a grin.
"Robin."
Robin's grin sobered. "You're welcome," he added. "And now that you owe me, what about that sponge bath?"
"In your dreams," Nik told the puck.
"In somebody's dreams," Robin returned.
"If that's your hand on my thigh you better move it or it's getting cut off when I find my katana."
"So much for gratitude."
"I'm not that grateful."
But I was.
For both of them.
The End