Still a pretty bad person...still love reviews! And to the guest who asked who I ship Josh with, you shall see...
Sophie's fever finally broke a few days later, but she still slipped in and out of consciousness for the next two. Billy was exhausted, his aura was pulsing weakly as he tried once again to finish healing the long claw marks on her side. The wounds would definitely scar, but the infection seemed to have died down. Sophie's eyelids fluttered and he paused, she murmured something that sounded like "wash" and fell back into the swirling darkness of her dreams.
Billy settled the covers back over her, even with her fever gone she still shivered slightly when he removed them. He stumbled to his living room and collapsed unceremoniously onto his couch, his head finally met the pillow he'd haphazardly tossed there and he slipped into the deepest sleep he'd had in what seemed like centuries.
A sleep which was ended abruptly when his door smashed open and a very large, very angry Josh stomped into his tiny apartment shouting about wanting to see his sister. Billy tumbled off the couch, bashing his head hard enough against the coffee table to knock over a three-day-old glass of what he thought might be iced tea and several books. He groaned and rubbed the now tender spot near his left eye as the giant ex-football player grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him to his feet.
"What did you do to Sophie?" Josh snapped, his left hand wrapped in Billy's wrinkled button down shirt and his right poised to hit him.
Billy gaped at him like a fish, too surprised to answer coherently, and started spouting random thoughts about large dogs and Sprite.
"Josh?" a strangled voice called from the doorway to Billy's bedroom. Sophie leaned against the door frame with the thick bedspread wrapped around her, her blond hair was a wild mess and she kept blinking her eyes as if trying to clear them. "Put him down, he's done nothing wrong."
Josh glared at him for a split second, but let him drop back onto his own two feet.
"Sophie!" Josh rushed over and wrapped her in a tight embrace, and jumped back when she cried out in pain. Billy took a step forward, his arms out as if to comfort her before the look on her brother's face sent him stumbling back.
Sophie smiled apologetically, "It's nothing really, just a scratch."
"Just a scratch? What did he do?"
She rolled her eyes at him, "Billy didn't do anything, Josh. It's my own fault. We were visiting one of the Shadowrealms partially destroyed when the Yggdrasil was killed-"
And once again Billy was facing down an angry brother several inches taller (and wider) than he was. "You brought my sister into something like that?" he growled.
"It wasn't my idea!" he snapped back, finally finding the courage to fight back against someone that even the Elders feared unconditionally.
Sophie intervened before Josh could respond, "It was mine. One of the animals was injured, we sent it into one of your early Shadowrealms. He nicked my side on the way out." She let the comforter drop and rolled up her t-shirt to show him the slowly healing scars torn into her side.
"I wouldn't call that a scratch," Josh muttered. But he did finally step away from Billy, who breathed a silent sigh of relief.
Sophie settled carefully on the couch, her cheeks were still flushed from fever but her eyes finally seemed clear. "Tell me about the others, I haven't heard from them in ages."
Josh sat down beside her and chattered on about Scathach's newest cause (hunting down the best of fighters from the ancient Africa, a continent that had been largely ignored in early times), Aoife and Niten returning from their honeymoon (slightly bruised and beaten, but they had visited Sparta in the second century BC after all), and finally, after much blushing and muttered responses, about Virginia's return from her own Shadowrealm.
"I thought she'd be there for ages, trying to build a society with no classes." Sophie said, not ignorant to her brother's sudden awkwardness.
"Me too," he admitted, "apparently she...she wants help in building the realm itself."
"So I take it she wants your...special knowledge?" Billy ventured. Josh shot him an annoyed look but nodded, albeit reluctantly.
"I'll be gone for a few months, maybe longer. Civilized Shadowrealms aren't easy to construct, and she insists that it has to be a brand new Shadowrealm."
"Then I won't keep you," Sophie said, standing unsteadily. "Come on, you have work to do."
Josh shot Billy one last warning glance before hugging his sister goodbye. She winced slightly, but didn't cry out this time.
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