Blue Lights chapter eleven, a riverdale fanfic

A/N: We are back for our usual spell of general drama and angst before the happier times - I find it easier to write the dramatic stuff anyway. I have added a new character (usually anybody you don't recognise from the show). I also combine some episodes or speed them up a little because the Serpents are not in every single one (sadly). Once again, I debated having Mila or Sweet Pea sleep in the same house/place - but like I previously said, no guardians or parents seem too fussed about that stuff in this show. In the next chapter or so, the Southsiders will be moving to Northside High and I'm excited for that. Also, Mila vs. Penny.

I am really grateful for the support shown in the last chapter and I hope this one is well-received too. Please, if you have the time, I'd appreciate a review or any kind of feedback. :)

chapter eleven: are you okay?

Moonlight slips between the folds of his curtains and drapes itself around my skin in a bluish smoulder, brightens the bruises which litter my arms and smudges the dark, reddish stains beneath my sockets. He has sealed himself into the hum of the bathroom, its creaky faucets which sputter out cold trickles, its dense clouds of condensation, the rattle of the shower-curtain against a rusted rail. I curl against the blankets, smooth its creases with anxious hands. Sweet Pea has been nothing but distant; the warmth in him had dimmed once we had left the police-station, his touch had been automatic and disconnected, as if he had to fumble with his limbs and force them into movement.

Slowly, the door of the bathroom scuffs open, a brief and pale puff of heat flushed outward into the trailer before his silhouette emerges in a cool, stenciled outline, like the sketch of an unaware muse. Shoulders dipped downward, chin tilted against his chest, he settles upon the mattress with such heaviness that I feel as if I sink alongside him, into some darkened space – scooped into the mouth of Penny Peabody, whose name still induces a flush of nausea within me and makes an odd itch flourish around my throat, like a rash.

Earlier, Sweet Pea had said that he was tired.

I look at him now and wonder if he had really meant that he was tired of me.

Penny holds heavy, cold chains around him and I compose each loop which tightens around his limbs, lifts him upward like the strings of a puppet. I feel a lump in my throat blossom, so much so that it becomes a thickened ball that makes it hard to swallow. I am afraid that he has been quiet all this time because he has been planning the rights words to finish with me, finally; and who would ever take a kid like me, anyway?

I squeeze my lips together in a struggle against the sudden prickle of tears, but it stings too much, so the tears bloom in hot trickles and lick at the cuts which scatter my cheeks, trace the bruises, drip onto my chest, soaked into my skin. I lift a hand to brush off each tear but he catches my wrist and tugs me toward him. I clamber from the blankets and settle alongside him, oddly craving his touch, borne from hours of blank detachment from him. He pulls me into the crook of his arm, nestles me there.

"Mila," he whispers. "I think we need to talk about – about tonight."

"Okay," I tell him; it comes out feeble and coated in resignation. I flinch from the sound of it. "Okay, Sweet Pea."

"I never told you who she was," he says, "because I never wanted you to be ashamed of me."

Blinking through the smudge of tears, I pull myself from him and lift his limp arm, drape it between both of mine so that I can hold it tight, like Rosie clutches a teddy. Only his eyes are drawn toward another dent in his wall, and my fingertips ghost the knuckles which had put that dent there. "Sweet Pea, I don't understand."

He lets out a slow sigh. He seems to deflate in this exhale. His body leans against mine, now. I hold the heaviness of him, bear the brunt of the sheer fatigue held in the marrow of his bones from this awful night. Hoarseness floods his tired words.

"After we had been separated, the Sheriff told me that Helena wanted to take you from Riverdale within the next few hours. I couldn't let it happen – not like it happened with my little sister and not like it would happen with you, where I would only ever get handwritten letters from you every couple of months, coated in stamps from some other town in some other state, letters that I would only ever be able to keep in a shoe-box. So, I thought about all the Serpents that I knew and figured out that there was only one who could really help me."

"Penny."

He nods, his expression solemn and worn. "Penny. Toni knew what I had planned before I even said the words – she tried so hard outside of that police-station to convince me that we had other options, but she knows how the world treats people like us, Mila. She knew like I did that if I left you in there, that it would be the last night we ever saw you in this town. I called Birdie, had him bring me out to Penny's place. I made some promises – anything that she wanted, if she could just get you out of there. The things she could make me do – that is why I don't want you to be ashamed of me, if I have to do them."

"Sweet Pea…" I whisper.

He stares ahead, blankly, his thoughts elsewhere. "She never said when it would end."

"What?"

Darkened orbs, his stare glistens in the dim light, like coal. I watch that sheen swell until it seems as if he might cry, too, but he swallows hard and sniffles slightly. He fixes his eyes on the fairy-lights draped around his bedroom, which he had placed there only a little while ago for our film night – it seems so distant, now, that night, like another lifetime. Another existence.

"The whole time that I was sitting there, in her office," he says, "…She never said when it would end. She never said how many things I had to do for her, how long this little deal would go on for. Then I sat in the car with Birdie and it occurred to me that maybe it won't ever end. Maybe she'll hang this over my head for the rest of my life. Or at least until I get caught and thrown in a cell, and who knows how long might that take, you know?"

I watch him, horrified, my hands lost in a tremble. "No, no – she can't –…"

"She has us in a trap, Mila," he interrupts, his eyes still focused on something that I cannot quite find, something beyond the fairy-lights and beyond the trailer and beyond this town. "I knew it from the moment I stepped into that office, she had us."

"And you still agreed," I mumble.

"Yeah," he says, "I still agreed."

"I wish you hadn't."

He blinks, torn from his dazed state, his eyes darting toward me in accusation. "If I never made this deal, you would be sitting in a State Home right now, lost in the rows and rows of other kids that are left in that place to rot. I might not be in the system, but I heard enough about it – how could I ever let them put you in a place like that?"

Like pinpricks from a needle, the sting of tears hurts my eyes once more. "How could I ever let Penny do these things to you, Sweet Pea? How could I ever let you be put in this position?"

"I made this choice," he replies wearily. "Not you. Not Toni, not Birdie. I made this choice, Mila. I will do what she asks of me and she will make sure that you stay here."

"Do you regret-…" I trail off, ashamed.

"The deal?"

"Me."

His clenched jaw loosens, his eyes snapped toward me in an instant, clouded in a rich blend of surprise and hurt. He rasps, "How could you even ask me that? I made that deal because I want you here – don't you get that, Mila?"

"I know, I just thought – you were so quiet tonight and I was so sure that you realised that you had made a mistake, that you could just call off this deal with Peabody and be finished with me once and for all. I brought you all of these problems-…"

"Not to diminish your importance, Mila," he smiles, "…but the Serpents had problems a long time before you ever came around. Hell, if anything, at least you make it worth it. Before, I was just doing things on the off-chance that Tall Boy or F.P might buy us a round of drinks at the Whyte Wyrm. Plus, I kinda like the jacket."

I blush even more and snort at him, knowing that he just wants to make me smile even in this low, heavy mood which hangs over us. "You still owe me two drinks, if I'm not mistaken."

He grins; the sight of it makes me flush with affection for him, makes me realise just how much I adore that smile, especially after tonight. "I sell my soul to the devil for a girl and she still wants even more from me, huh? You're that girl all those guys are singing about in those old blues songs, you know that?"

Slowly, he untangles himself from me and stands, skirting around the bed to fix its blankets and he playfully tugs one out from underneath me. I almost tumble from the bed but quickly catch myself and lightly slap at his arm while he rearranges the pillows, settles them against the headboard and then collapses against it, on the outside so that I can sleep between him and the wall.

I clamber over him, only minutely shy about it because I know that if Ruth had seen it, she would scalp both of us. I like that Ruth had trusted us enough to sleep in his trailer. I think that she is more than aware that I want a slow, slow pace with Sweet Pea – especially after all that Mags had said a couple of days beforehand. I also think she knows that tonight has been too rough for us to spend it apart.

He pulls his pillows from beneath himself and props them against the headboard so that he can sit straight. I trace the pale outline of his shoulders, the curved bend of his spine once he places his head in his hands and rubs his skin, like he wants to pull it off and start anew. I look away from him again, toward that photograph of Bug.

"Mila, can I ask you something?"

I nod, drinking in her little smile in those old photographs, and wonder if she still smiles like that. I wonder if she is happier in Brooksfield.

"Why don't you ever talk about your Grandmother?"

I turn toward him, eyebrows drawn together. "I do talk about her."

"You told me that you loved her. You never said much else."

"Do I need to talk about her all the time, Sweet Pea?" I mutter bitterly. I catch his eyes flicker downward toward his lap and my chest fills with remorse. "I'm sorry. I just – I like to keep her – in here" – I tap against my temple and shrug "…because it seems better like that."

"You always doubt yourself, you know," he says. "Do you ever think that maybe the things your Grandmother told you make you think like that?"

I feel myself fill with anger, all of that anger which has been stuffed somewhere inside of myself for a long time, and it bubbles now, froths and boils and pours into that cool void where I had hidden it, fills it to the brim so it slops over into my tone. "Drop it, Sweet Pea."

"Okay."

"I mean it, you never even knew her, and I don't want to-…"

"Okay, Mila," he says softly. "Okay."

Childishly, I turn myself from him, face the wall and curl the blanket around myself so that I can only feel the warmth of his frame behind me, but he has been shrouded in darkness once he flicks off the lamp. I feel hurt and embarrassed that he even asked. I never talk about her, but I never need to talk about her. Beneath all of that anger which swells like a riptide against my ribcage, thunders around my heart and crashes into my throat so hard that it seems to seal it shut, there is another feeling which foams in the aftermath – it feels like shame.

Quietly, into the blackness of the night, he whispers, "And I could never regret you, Mila. You're just about the only thing that has ever been right in my life."

I hold in a deep, wounded breath, blinking against fresh tears. I am never ashamed of him, but I am ashamed of myself because I know what he would think if I really did tell him about her, and so I hold her inside of myself, hold her where he cannot see her. It is better like that, I tell myself. I look at the dent in his wall, cast in silver from the moonlight. It is better, I tell myself, over and over.

Only the birds hear me, in the morning; they sing their tired old tunes and drown me out.

Sometime after his breakfast, the screen of his phone blooms; our spoons lay limp against our bowls, a mouthful of sugary cereal moulded into a cold slither of slime along the bumps of my throat once I swallow. He sits alongside me, his eyes latched onto that screen – its vibrations seem to seep into us and makes our organs tremble, our hands melt into puddles and our limbs become immobile, much too dense for us to lift. Somehow, he finds the strength and sweeps the phone from the table, presses it against his ear. He has become pale, the skin around his eyes is flecked in purple, the first bloom of a sleepless night. It seems that his mouth cannot form words, the sounds had been churned in those vibrations, chopped and diced so much that mere hums and coughs come out, instead.

Eventually, he strings those sounds together and says, "I'll do it."

I am washed away in his words, there is nothing left of me apart from the shreds of guilt, snippets of remorse. He does not regret me, but I am not so sure that I can believe him, anymore, because he looks at me and I find his eyelids have become curtains, his stare has become shrouded and cold behind their folds.

"I'll find you after tonight," he tells me.

"What did she ask you to do, Sweet Pea?"

"I'll come and find you," he says.

"I want to come with you."

"I think it should only take a couple of hours, so I can call Birdie to bring you home," he continues airily. He stands, collects our bowls even though we are not finished. He stumbles for the basin. "Or Max. Birdie has been teaching him how to drive, it might be good practice."

He slips into the bathroom. There is nothing left of me. I hear the creaky faucets of the shower, the rust of the rail. I do not hear him, after that.

III

Cocooned in the warmth of his car, Birdie pulls out a box of cigarettes and tilts them toward me. I shake my head. He plops a cigarette between his lips and rolls the window down. I am still engulfed in the thick puffs of smoke which curl from his pursed lips. Slowly, we pull from Sunnyside and drift through the streets, which seem much too empty, much too full, all at once.

"Birdie," I call out faintly, "will he be all right?"

He blows another ring of smoke from his puckered mouth. "You know, a lot of people think Pea is all brawn and no brains – must be that temper of his that makes them think that."

I look at him, eyebrows furrowed.

Birdie glances at me and then looks out at the road, which crawls upward upon us like some sentient creature. "I sat with Pea in that office, Mila. I listened to what Penny put out there on that table for him to take. Pea listened, too, and he knew what was coming for him if he lay in bed with a Snake Charmer – not literally, I mean. But he knew what was coming and he still agreed – but he made no illusions about it."

"I'm scared for him, Bird."

"He can handle himself," he replies, his stare flicking toward the mirror between us. "He has more strength in him than most people realise – people like Penny, for example. Penny looks for weakness. She thinks she found it in him. I can tell you that she is wrong on that one; more than she realises."

I smile weakly at him. I appreciate his words, especially because Birdie is never normally so mature and earnest.

He looks at me again. "For what it's worth, Mila, I'm gonna drop you off and turn right back around, find him before he heads off. He won't go into this thing alone, you know."

"Thank you, Birdie," I tell him sincerely. "Thank you. He won't even tell me what she wants him to do."

"Maybe it's better that way," he replies vaguely; this time, his eyes cannot seem to meet mine. It is better, over and over.

I am not so sure, anymore.

I hear the thump of small, light shoes once I slip into the hall of our house and sling my backpack onto the floor. Rosie darts from her bedroom and launches herself down the staircase. She leaps for me, latching her arms around my waist and snuggling against me. Her hold is so tight that it is almost painful, but I bend and grip her by the armpits, haul her upward and balance her on my hip – even if she really has grown so much that I imagine I might not be able to lift in her a couple of months, I know. She buries herself into the crook of my neck and I find myself unable to care much about the strain on my spine.

I drop onto the couch and let her babble and babble about her morning, my eyelids still drooping from sleepiness. I watch her pluck a DVD from the pile and grin tiredly once I spot the cover: The Princess and the Frog – the film we had meant to watch before the raid and the night in the station. She hops onto the couch and leans against me again, smiling contently.

I feel my eyelids flicker shut occasionally, so overcome by a largely sleepless night that I can barely function. Rosie must notice, because she stretches upward and pecks my cheek lightly, so lightly that I hardly feel it at all. Like a secret that she thinks I cannot hear, she whispers, "I'm really glad the lady didn't take you away yesterday, Mila. I'm glad you're here. We're like real sisters now, I think."

I hug her close and surprise her, because she giggles and wraps her arms around me. I think of the police and Helena, the State Home and Penny, and then I remember what Sweet Pea had said: at least you make it worth it.

Crackling sound and colour spills from the television and stirs me from a foggy sleep. I had dreamt of Sweet Pea in a forest, his frame lost between the flicker of the branches. Rosie sits on the wooden floorboards, rumbling to her dolls in a low, masculine voice once her Ken-Doll potters into her dollhouse and knocks over a chair in his clumsiness. Hastily, she scoops Barbie from the pile and makes her chase after him, shrieking incoherently, a high-heel thrown from her foot accidentally. Rosie scrambles to catch it and scolds Barbie for her carelessness.

Slowly, I climb the staircase. Between the rungs, I glimpse Ruth in the kitchen. She stirs melted chocolate around a bowl. She has decided to make brownies to soothe our souls after last night. She looks out the window, her eyes frosted and dazed. While I plod into my bedroom and pull off my clothes, tug pyjamas from my drawers and dress myself, I wonder if she thinks of him, out there. I fall into bed and wonder if she thinks of somebody else from her life before us – it is hard to imagine, but she must have had another life before us, in which she had always been with the Serpents, never quite fully initiated to membership but eternally accepted.

A little bit like me, I suppose.

Somewhere along the line, the sun had been lost in the navy shroud of night and my curtains had been drawn shut. I find the blankets tucked around me, the door left ajar. I remain limp against my blankets and listen to the gentle hum of the house. I shuffle from my bed and reach for my jacket, fishing out my phone. I am disappointed to find it blank, not a single message. I flop against my pillows and let out a slow, withered sigh. I want to text him. I type it out, a quick and simple: are you okay?

VII

There is a thump in the hall. I hold still. There comes another dull, hard thump and a worried flurry of voices which drift into the hall, drift into the bedroom. Stumbling, I hop from tangled blankets and dart into the hall. Harsh, orange light smoulders from behind the living-room door, an island of colour which pricks the otherwise blackness of the hall. The frosted windowpanes of the front door are blurred in blobs of distant orange from the streetlights. I glance downward, distracted by a sudden wetness which soaks through my socks. I notice a trail of blackened liquid which stains the floorboards, its ash-colour dotted in little droplets. I bend and flick a fingertip into those beads and find my skin smeared in a much brighter strip of blood.

Thrown backward in fright, I jump at another low, miserable bleat of torment from the sitting-room. I trail toward it, intensely aware that I am unarmed, that there might be somebody unfamiliar stood between those flowerpots of fractured terracotta, those cracks in the drywall - but laughter blooms, along with the low mumble of unfamiliar voices. Carefully, I peek into the sitting-room, confused by the stoop of Ruth, her hands dipped into a bowl of lukewarm, pinkish water. She lifts a dampened cloth and brushes off crusted blood from the bruised skin of a boy whose long limbs stretch outward upon the couch.

He is so tall that his chunky boots dip over the arm of the couch. Ruth lifts his shirt, reveals a slash which cuts across the flesh of his stomach; it is a thin, raw cut which weeps in reddened wavelets, rippled from him through small laughs. Until, through the bloodshot squint of his left eyelid, narrowed into a pale shred of pupil, his stare latches onto mine, and his smile pales into a weakened frown, his laughter fades.

Sweet Pea.

Spat from torn lips, he mumbles through hoarseness and says, "Mila – Mila -…"

I feel faint, as if my legs are liquid and spill from my bones, splashed against the floorboards.

Distracted, I had not noticed the hunched silhouette of another stranger slumped against the wall with shoulders held tight, drawn toward him only by the rustle of his leather jacket. He turns from me, toward the kitchen. Stitched into the patch of his leather jacket, there is the coiled body of a serpent.

Blown out in a weak, flaccid wheeze, Sweet Pea repeats, "Mila!"

It strains him to say my name – strains him so much that Ruth places a hand against his chest to steady him once he coughs. I bump against the door, there is nothing left of me, what remains is lost in that liquid puddle made of all my limbs. A hand latches onto my arm and I flinch from it. It is the older Serpent, whose mouth forms words that my brain cannot seem to comprehend, smothered beneath a constant buzz of static. It had been like this once I saw Jughead beaten, too, I could hardly move at all, until Sweet Pea-…

Sweet Pea. He looks at me now and there is shame in his eyes, the shame he had been so worried about.

I hear him, the older Serpent. He has another towel in his hand, taken from the kitchen, I presume. It already has spots of blood soaked into its beige colour. He says, "Hey, Mila, maybe you oughta sit down, all right? Kid, are you even hearing me?"

I pull myself away from him and drop onto the floorboards, so hard that my kneecaps crack and I crawl toward him. Ruth drops the cloth into the basin and stands so that I can scoot closer to him. He drags his bloodshot eyeballs toward me in a slow roll, the left eyelid still half-clamped in a bruised squint. Then he spurts out a mouthful of spittle and blood blended together, but settles, his lips turning upward into a shaky smile. "Told you I would come and find you."

"What happened, Sweet Pea?" I ask shakily.

"She wanted me to attend this meeting with some guys. T-Thought I looked intimidating enough to keep them at bay. It worked, for a little while. Then the – the delivery went wrong – and it was a free-for-all kinda fight. She ran out before the other guys could do anything to her. That just l-left me, Birdie, and a few other Serpents to deal with her mess. Birdie made it out okay, more or less. Me and two others took the real brunt of it. He wanted to drive us to the hospital but-…Well, you know how I feel about hospitals, Mila." His eyes trail downward toward my chest and I almost scold him until I catch his muffled laughter. "Well, how about that, Honeybunch?"

I realise that I am stood in a bright, garish yellow t-shirt with bold red print which does read: HONEYBUNCH, ridden upward at the stomach so just a small slip of skin peeks out, torn from the pile which Rosie had collected when they had prepared for my arrival and which I use for pyjamas. I roll my eyes at him. "You must be delirious from blood-loss to be joking about this, Pea."

"Pea," he repeats, grinning, his gums stained in blood. "No more Sweet, huh? Been around the Serpents too much, you're picking up on all their habits."

"Yeah, like taking in strays," I murmur, brushing strands of hair from his forehead.

He smiles again. Still, I catch the tremble of his lips against the onslaught of pain.

"I can bring you some blankets, Sweet Pea," I tell him quietly. "I'll stay with you, down here. I'll sleep beside you, okay? You won't be alone."

Stirred by the sound of his name, he blinks through dulled haziness and nods. He mumbles a small, hoarse thank you.

VIII

In my bedroom, I open the closet and pull out folded blankets from neat stacks. I inhale that flowery scent from the detergent. Ruth had prepared herself for many children, whether children brought from the system or Serpents in need of a place to stay for a couple of nights, she had bought clothes in all sizes, all shapes. She has other cupboards filled with fresh toothbrushes and blankets, more bed-sheets and even hairbrushes. Just in case, she says.

I hear the door creak and turn to find that older Serpent stood there, seeming awkward and uncertain. His eyes trail toward the drawings pinned against my wall, from the other homes, and his mouth softens into a smile. He seems a lot warmer now, in the yellow light of my bedroom, his brown eyes are like pools of chocolate and the lines of his skin seem more familiar. He says, "Ruth told me that you moved around a lot before you got here."

"Yeah," I mumble, unsure of myself.

"I am so proud of her, you know," he adds, almost absently, as if he had drifted off in his thoughts. "She always wanted to be a foster-parent."

Confused, I furrow my eyebrows and shift uncomfortably. "I never saw you at the Whyte Wyrm before."

He laughs and shakes his head. "I bet that place still hasn't changed – still got that one leaky toilet, still got the same old drunks hanging around until dawn. I bet it hasn't changed. But everything else has, right?"

I drink in his handsome face, dotted in freckles along the bridge of his nose. He might be in his late-thirties, but he seems more youthful than that because of his dark hair and dark eyes. He is tall, like Sweet Pea, he looms in every room, but his brawn is contained in that leather jacket. He shrinks himself, as if he does not want to be seen. All of his words swirl together, along with his appearance, and it occurs to me that he could be-…

"Ruth's older brother," he nods. "Michael."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh," he repeats, grinning. "Guess it was kind of unexpected. I doubt she really told you much about me. It was my choice to stay away, anyway – wanted to give her the best chance at this whole foster-parent-gig and I was trying to clean up my rap-sheet and – well, trying to give it my best shot out here, you know?"

I nod and pile a couple of more blankets into my arms, cradle them close against me. I worry that Sweet Pea will be cold, or maybe too hot, and the indecision clouds my mind more than I would like. "Yeah," I respond. "I understand. I want to keep my own files clean, too. How did you come to find Sweet Pea, then?"

"I know Penny Peabody, Mila. I know her very well. She landed me in that cell in the first place – let me hang for crimes that weren't entirely mine. I heard about Sweet Pea and this deal with Peabody. It seems she has managed to catch more than enough of the younger Serpents, roped them into doing her dirty work while she sits in her office and laughs. I contacted Birdie, tried to find out more about what she wanted from Sweet Pea. Turns out I had pretty good timing and Birdie was already trying to get Sweet Pea out of there before things really went south. I just made sure that it didn't."

There is an implication behind his words that suggests that, for all his efforts to straighten out his record, Michael had resorted to certain tactics that would be frowned upon by most probation-officers. There is shame in his voice. I am more than tired of shame in us when Peabody seems not to suffer from it at all.

"Thank you, Michael."

He watches me for a moment longer. "Mila, I made the choice to let Peabody know that I am back in Riverdale – and I made it equally clear that I want her out of it. She won't like that. She'll show me how much she doesn't like it. But I just couldn't stand by and watch her ruin the lives of the next generation of Serpents. If I did, there wouldn't be any Serpents left in Riverdale. So, I'm gonna fight her on this. I'm gonna make sure these Serpents get a better chance than me and my friends ever did because of Penny Peabody. Most of them are still in that prison. Most of them won't ever get out of it. Now, if I go against her, she might retaliate. You know that, don't you?"

I look down at the blankets in my arms, but my thoughts are drawn to Sweet Pea, his bloodied mouth and wheezing breaths. I stare into Michael's dark eyes, determined. "Oh, I know – and I'm gonna fight her too. Whatever it takes, I want her to know that she will never hurt him again."

Michael smiles. "Ruth was right to say you were a smart kid. Strong, too."

"Peabody will learn that too."

The blankets are piled into a makeshift bed, the pillows tossed together to soften the harshness of the floorboards. Sweet Pea drapes a hand from the edge of couch for me to hold; he drifts between sleep and dazed awareness, but Ruth has stitched his wounds and cleaned his cuts. I had been worried about infections and pain, but she had merely glanced at Michael while she worked and muttered, 'I had enough practice with this one to handle a couple of stitches, Mila'. Sweet Pea is quiet, now, he allows me to bring him glasses of water and hold them against his lips and sip slowly, so that nothing hurts him.

Sometime after midnight, he stirs from his sleep and mutters, "I should do this more often."

"Do what?" I mumble sleepily, shifting around and squeezing his hand very, very lightly.

"Get my ass beaten so I can be taken care of by a very, very cute nurse," he slurs.

I laugh despite myself, although I am careful not to disturb Michael and Ruth – and especially not Rosie. I am not sure that Sweet Pea could handle her in his state. Michael has taken my bed for the night, and seemed a little amused to swap a concrete cell for lilac wallpaper and floral patterns. "Have the meds kicked in, then?"

"Meds, what meds? If I am high on anything, it is you, Mila-…"

"Somebody definitely knocked you around, Pea, they've made you way too soft."

"I was kinda worried there for a while," he tells me, his eyes unfocused. "I thought I was gonna be killed in there. I thought I was never gonna see you again."

I feel my hazy, warm smile drip from me like wet-paint trickling along a canvas. It had been too soon, his pain, his suffering. Stupidly, I had expected that Penny would not summon him for a couple of days, but she had called upon him almost immediately. Pulled those puppet-strings, made him hop around for her, her little play-thing. I think of our morning in his trailer and the tears return, but there comes no sound with them, not even a sniffle. The tears leak from the corner of my eyes and slide down my temples, cold and slimy, traced around my ears and lost in the tangles of my hair.

"Mila?" he whispers.

"I'm here."

"Okay," he says softly. "Okay, Mila."

"I never told you about her because I think of it like a betrayal," I murmur into the darkness, once I am sure he has drifted into slumber. "If I tell you about those things she said – all the times she told me that I was stupid, and it was my fault that I was in the system – it makes her sound like she was a bad person, you know? She used to tell me that my Dad never wanted me around because I was such a bad kid. I screamed too much, I fought all the time."

I hear the hum of the refrigerator, the soft ticking of the clock in the kitchen.

"I only did it," I continue, "because I wanted them to listen to me. I swear I never really wanted to hurt anyone. And she was never a bad person – nobody listened to her, either, so maybe she was just full of anger, like me, and she never knew what to do with it. But she was never bad. We used to dance together, sing and jump around her living-room when I could never do that in the other homes. We used to eat ice-cream together and she told me all these funny stories. I believed them, when I was a kid."

His body is still. I match his even breaths.

"She was meant to show them that she could take care of me, and then I could stay with her permanently. But she messed up sometimes. I think they knew that she used to say mean stuff to me. I never told them, but they knew about it anyway. She got into arguments with my social-workers, she used to turn up late for our appointments to discuss our progress and all this other stuff. And she'd say mean things to them like she did to me. So, I guess that's how they knew. I never asked her why she did that. I guess I was afraid to ask her. She had a bedroom ready for me, we painted it together. I feel like if I say these things aloud, it means I'm betraying her. But I loved her anyway, Pea. I still do. I really do. You understand that, don't you?"

Seconds pass in the soft tick of that clock, over and over. Then, I feel it; he squeezes my hand tight and says, "I'm here, Mila."