AN: In case anyone is confused (aka didn't read the AN in the first chapter ;P), this story is a sequel to a couple of one-shots in my birthday fic collection, "Twenty-Three Chromosomes." Those two stories (Chapters 10 and 11 in the collection) have to do with Wick's accident (the one I keep mentioning in this one) and Grace finding out how she was adopted. Sorry for the confusion!
Further note: I don't do dream sequences as a rule, but this story seemed to call for one. And the formatting in the first section...it's an experiment, and I'm not sure how it's going to turn out. It works on my screen, but if you're reading on a smaller/bigger screen, I'm not sure how it looks. If it looks too weird, let me know, and I'll line it all up to the left, like always.
Chapter 8
Fever dreams have a particular quality, a distinctive quality, which differentiates them from other dreams.
Grace. Always Grace; everything is Grace.
She's calling to him, scared, so scared – Why is she scared?
She's being pulled back, back, away from him – No, Grace! Grace!
He shouts her name, but she doesn't hear. She can't hear him. Why can't she hear him?
She's screaming for him, and for Wick.
Wick.
Where's Wick? Wick is safe. She should be with Wick.
He looks around for his brother. And he sees.
He wishes he hadn't.
His brother, lying flayed open, still, too still, too much blood. Too dead.
Dead, dead eyes looking into his, blaming him.
Brought danger here. Brought danger into my home, to my family.
Dead.
Anger. He feels anger. Grief. Fear. Guilt. And pain, fire running through his gut.
Fire, burning. Cold. Ice-cold, fiery pain. Burning.
Nausea.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Eliot makes a wet, choking sound from the bed, making them all turn towards him anxiously.
His fever had gradually gone up during the day, and now, in the early hours of Sunday morning, he lies tossing and moaning against the stark-white hospital pillow, fingers twitching, and temperature dangerously high.
One hand to his bandaged torso, throat working, he struggles to sit up, only to be rolled over onto his side by a strong arm, and his head forcefully bent over…
…over a plastic basin, just in time.
"Easy, easy, Eliot," says Wick's voice soothingly over him as he vomits. A cool, dry hand rests on his neck, rubbing a little, comforting. The fire in his gut reminds him that he'd gotten shot there, twice.
After he's done, he's eased back onto his pillows, not flat on his back, but on his side. Then he's lifted up again, and a plastic cup is put to his lips.
"Rinse your mouth out, but don't swallow."
The water feels nice, and he wants to drink it, but his mind-reading brother repeats, "Don't swallow. It's too soon after surgery," so he doesn't.
He hears a babble of confused, anxious voices around him, but they don't make any sense at all. The only thing that makes sense is his brother. Wick's good at taking care of people. That's why he does what he does. Wick saves people. He's saved more of them than Eliot has killed, which makes him love him and hate him at the same time. But he's proud of him, mostly, proud of being his brother.
After he's done washing the bitterness out of his mouth, Wick lays him back down and starts wiping his face and neck with a wet washcloth. Eliot wants to stop him – it's completely humiliating, letting him do this – but the cool cloth feels too good on his hot skin to tell him that.
As his fever-addled mind clears for a moment, he remembers…he remembers that he has to warn his brother against…against something.
He reaches out and snags a handful of fabric. Soft cotton. T-shirt. "Wick. Wick?"
"Yeah, I'm right here," Wick says and rewets the cloth with more cool water. "This infection is doing a real number on you, man."
Eliot groans. "Grace, safe?"
There's a pause before Wick answers, sounding surprised. "Yeah, El. She's always safe with me. You know that. She's right here."
"Elly?"
There's something else…something else…but the darkness overcomes him and drags him down, and he sleeps.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Once Eliot drifts off again, Wick gives his brother's face one last gentle swipe with the cloth and drops down into his chair with a sigh, his back aching, head heavy with fatigue.
"Daddy? Is he gonna be okay?" Grace asks from the fold-out sofa with a small voice.
"Yeah, hun, he'll be fine," he reassures her, but doesn't know if it's a lie or not. He rubs his tired eyes and wishes for more coffee to magically reappear in his empty paper cup.
He can feel Grace watching him, just watching, until she says, "Dad? You need to go home. You didn't sleep last night and you have a night shift coming up. You had a fire rescue today, too. Fires are exhausting."
He just barely bites back the sharp, bitter anger that rises, and that's enough to convince him that she's right, because he never ever lashes out at his daughter.
"That another calendar word?" he asks wearily instead. He is exhausted.
"No. I already knew it," comes her smart-alecky reply. She comes over and stands next to him, leaning on him a little. His arm goes around her automatically.
He looks at his feverish brother in the hospital bed, and sighs again. He can feel the ache in his body, the need to lie down in a real bed, not the fold-out in the corner of the room that Grace has been sleeping in the last couple of nights (he'll be too stiff to function if he sleeps there), but…it's Eliot, and he's in the hospital. He's actually ill enough to be in the hospital, and Wick can't quite bring himself to leave. Eliot's his brother.
"We'll call if his condition changes," Nate says, and Wick's pretty sure that he's not imagining the possessiveness his brother's friends all seem to have over Eliot, which is good, but…
"Dad. You said he'll be okay," Grace says, turning his words around on him. She tugs on his arm. "Let's go home. Unless you were lying when you said that."
Manipulative. It's a talent, and Wick knows exactly where she got it from. And for Grace to say that now,Wick figures that he has to be looking pretty damn awful.
But he just can't stop looking at his brother. Eliot doesn't do hospitals. He doesn't. He's the kind of guy who patches himself up – Wick should know, since he'd taught Eliot most of his first aid knowledge. Eliot doesn't get sick, either, not really, not in years. And-
"Daddy. I wanna go home. It's past my bedtime. Yours, too."
He looks up into his daughter's worried face (she only wants to leave because of him - she's smart enough to weigh her choices and make the difficult decision: staying with Uncle Eliot in the hospital and Daddy possibly collapsing from exhaustion, or leaving Uncle Eliot in the hospital - with professional medical help - for one night so Daddy can sleep it all off) and attempts to lighten the mood.
"Are you my daughter or my mother? Jeesh. Alright, alright, boss lady. We're going home."
He casts one last look of concern at his brother and stands.
Standing up is kind of a problem because his back decides to cramp up just then. He manages to (sort of) hide it until he's out of the room (using the back of the chair, and then Grace as a crutch for the first few staggering steps of it), but he has a feeling that he doesn't hide the weariness saturating his entire body quite so well. A good night's sleep will cure that, if he can sleep. Eliot's down and that's not good.
Grace heaves an immense sigh, shakes her head, and mutters under her breath about stubborn people who don't take care of themselves and how is it her job to do everything?
Wick just smiles and ruffles her hair, knowing how much she hates that.
"Dad!"
"What?"
She gives him a seething glare. "Ugh, never mind."
It's funny and endearing and adorable, so he does it again.
This time, she swats his hand and moves away, scowling. "Dad! Stop it!"
"Okay, okay," he says, "You wanna hold my hand so it has something to do besides play with your hair?"
Grace gives him yet another "oh-so-lame" look, but puts her small hand in his. "Happy?"
"Ecstatic." He gives it a squeeze. "He'll be fine."
"Yeah, everyone keeps saying," Grace grumbles. "But he didn't look so good," she says, and looks up at him, his little girl again.
"Well," he says, and decides to go for the truth because Grace is old enough for that now. "Well, a gunshot wound isn't something you just shrug off, and he's got two of them, and they're infected, so that is worrying. But he started out healthy, very healthy and strong. He's got a good chance of fighting it off, especially since he's here, and not in some war zone with no medical assistance. And that has happened to him before, more than once, and he's still alive. So you know, he's a fighter. His chances are good. He'll be fine."
Grace is silent for a while, which makes Wick wonder if maybe he shouldn't have said the "not good" parts, but once they're in the car and on the way home, she says, "You're worried, too, Dad."
Wick sighs. He can't deny that; he is. "He's my brother. I'm always worried about him, even when he doesn't have extra holes in his body. Just like I worry about you all the time," he adds with a smile at his daughter.
Grace crosses her arms and sighs. "I worry about you, too." She cocks her head and looks at him sideways. "Is that what family does? Worry about each other all the time?"
Wick chuckles, a part of him lamenting the fact that she doesn't see Daddy as invulnerable to harm anymore, that that part of her childhood is gone. "Sure. That's only a part of it, though. Family worries, family loves, they hate, and they forgive. Family's important, Gracie. Always remember that."
Grace snorts derisively. "I already know that. I'm the kid with two dads, remember?"
Wick grimaces. "I really wish you'd stop telling people that."
Grace grins. "Why not?" she giggles, although she does understand why, since they've had the "why some kids have two mommies or two daddies" talk before (but not the sex talk - Wick's still holding off on that for like, a decade or two) because her best friend has two moms.
Wick takes his eyes off of the road long enough to send her a loving glare. "Come here, you," he says and goes back to watching the road, reaching blindly for her head to mess with her hair again, and tickling her side when she ducks away. "You little troublemaker, you."
As Grace laughs, Wick's mind goes back to his brother, more ill than he has been in a long while, and worries. Because that's what family does.
