This is all Steph's fault, blame her. Charlie probably will.
Un-beta'ed, so quibble away.
- o – o -
First Blood
Charlie wakes up, frowning. It isn't a nightmare or anything else, like Danny's breathing starting to hitch like it does when he's going to have an asthma attack. He's not snuffling like he's about to start crying either. She's used to taking care of him (even though she's not the only one who's supposed to or can, now that they're living with Unca Mi and Unca Fishy and the Militia), so it's natural to wake up if something's wrong with him.
It's not something wrong with Danny.
The front of her nightgown—her favorite one, the white one with pink flowers embroidered around the neck and cuffs—is soaking wet. It feels sticky, like when she'd cut her hand open on a knife she was sharpening back in Sylvania Estates and blood soaked her pants when she'd tried to stop the blood. Her legs feel sticky too, and she whimpers instinctively because that's when she realizes everything is starting to hurt too.
No one should have hurt her. No one can get in. Unca Mi and Unca Fishy promised. They did.
Charlie starts sobbing, which is what wakes Danny up. He comes in contact with the blood too, which has him screaming his head off. There's a thump, and Charlie manages a small giggle through her tears at the muffled scream of annoyance from Danny, because he's fallen off the bed when he backpedalled too hard away from her.
Danny's screaming brings Unca Mi thundering into the room, dressed in a loose-fitting pair of pajama pants and holding a sword in one hand. It looks like he thought someone was attacking them, because he stares wildly around the room to look for attackers, before his gaze falls on Charlie and Danny, both of whom are terrified because Charlie's bleeding and neither of them knows what to do.
Charlie stays in her spot on the giant bed she shares with her brother, knees drawn up to her chest. Hiccupping sobs echo around the dark room, and she can hear Danny pad across the floor to talk with Unca Mi and Charlie feels worse than ever, which brings on a renewed round of sobbing. Unca Mi has a quiet word with one of the guards who followed him, and Charlie hears Danny leave with the guard. Unca Mi comes over to sit on his reading chair next to her side of the bed. Charlie sniffs and rubs at her eyes with the back of her hand, tears still pouring down her face. Unca Mi takes her other hand, which is nice because her hands are freezing and everything feels awful and sticky and there's a strong smell of blood in the air.
"Danny's going to get cleaned up, and Bass went to get Doctor Maggie," Unca Mi tells her gently. Charlie nods, sniffing back a few more tears that are threatening to fall. "Do you want to try and clean up or put on some clean clothes before she gets here?"
Charlie, mortified at the thought of moving in case she accidentally gets blood on the floor, shakes her head wildly, blonde hair whipping around her face. Unca Mi just holds her hand instead of asking her again, which Charlie appreciates because he always knows what the right thing to do is.
Doctor Maggie arrives nearly twenty minutes later, hair pulled back in an especially messy ponytail and still in her nightclothes with a coat thrown on over it. She's barefoot. Charlie's cried herself out by then, and she doesn't even have the energy to giggle at how…normal Doctor Maggie looks, compared to how tidy and neatly put-together she is when it's morning and she's working. Charlie rests the side of her face on her knees as Unca Mi leaves, at a decidedly fast pace. He shuts the doors to the bedroom behind him, which makes Charlie grateful that no one can watch or listen in (although Danny's going to have his ear pressed to the keyhole, Charlie knows—because both of them have done it at one point or another, even though they really shouldn't have).
Charlie wipes her eyes again and looks up at Doctor Maggie, who's looking at her with a rather critical look in her eyes. The sixteen-year-old tries not to flinch at the look, because Doctor Maggie won't hurt her or yell, but it's hard to remember that when she's scared and unhappy.
After a few seconds, Doctor Maggie speaks.
"First time with the Red Tide, huh?"
Charlie's blushing crimson by the time the lady doctor is finished explaining why she's bleeding, and what she needs to do to take care of things. Her only consolation is that Danny, Unca Mi and Unca Fishy aren't here to listen to it as well. Doctor Maggie helps her into the bathroom and gets her a fresh nightgown from the closet while she cleans up, and strips the sheets off the bed as Charlie pulls the new nightgown—a dark brown one with a wheat design around the collar, this time—on over her head.
Doctor Maggie lets the men—and Danny—back into the room. After she finished talking with Unca Mi, she leaves, probably to go back to bed because it is almost four in the morning.
Unca Mi has two new cots brought into the room and puts pillows and a mountain of blankets on each. He looks at Charlie and Danny, and sighs, rubbing his forehead.
"Alright. Alright, she's right," he mutters. "We'll discuss different arrangements for sleeping in the morning." He leaves, but neither Charlie nor Danny really wants to know what he means by different arrangements.
Charlie crawls into bed and curls up, both hands pressed to her stomach.
Being a girl sucks.
- o – o -
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