The Marked - Chapter Fourteen

Someone was shaking her. Vigorously. And she was sore, so sore. Her arms hurt. Her back hurt. Her legs were numb. She couldn't feel her hands. Her neck felt as stiff as if she'd slept on it at a ninety-degree angle. There was too much blood rushing to her head and she felt it flush with uncomfortable warmth and swim in dizziness. Her tongue felt like sandpaper. She was cold. She was disoriented. She saw in white and gray. Someone was saying something she couldn't hear what it was.

"Let…let go…breathe…all right…safe…"

The air suddenly tasted sweet. Too cold, too dry, but sweet as ambrosia to her famished lungs. So much of it…so easy to take in…so hard to expel…

"In…out…in…that's the way…"

"…hospital…?"

"No need….doing well…coming around, it seems…"

"…hear me…?"

"…stop shaking…hurting her…"

"…say something, Lavina!"

"…don't push her…come on…just keep breathing…in…out…in…out…atta girl…"

"…you Turks…"

"…know what I'm doing…"

"…suuuure…why she's…this mess…"

With time came increasing clarity. Soon after she could breathe (or at least remember doing so) she was beginning to comprehend words in longer strings before her senses were overwhelmed again. The shady figures above her were people, she was quite sure. A woman, (a nurse? she wondered) and a man. A very, very familiar man.

"Has the baby come around yet…?"

"He's fine."

"…Fine?!…drugged…"

"…Used to it by now. Hojo…"

The noises were hurting her head; trying to follow the conversation was making her dizzy again. She shook her head with monumental effort and managed something of a groan.

"Rise and shine, beautiful," the man said, touching her hand kindly. "You're coming to very nicely. Breathe, Lavina. Deeper. In…out…in…"

She tried to shake her head away from the respirator, but it only lolled limply to one side, and she had not escaped.

"I know it's no fun, but the oxygen will help get that nasty gas out of your lungs. Come on. Just a little more, I promise. Breathe all that poison out—that's the way!"

It did feel good to expel the dense stuff sitting like lead in her lungs. She could feel the contaminant leaving her body and opening room for fresh, clean, sweet air. She gulped in the oxygen hungrily, and felt herself revive at a rapid pace.

"That's it! Atta girl, Lavina." Damian (she could recognize him now) smiled brilliantly down at her.

"Mr. Nicholai, the paramedics are here." The voice, as she had predicted, belonged to a nurse, who was looking very flustered and angry.

Damian frowned. "They're not needed."

"Hojo insists that they examine his specimen for possible damage."

The specimen…? she wondered. Damage…? And then the memories flooded.

The footsteps. The gunshots. Damian running to meet the intruder unarmed.

She remembered a metal cylinder rolling into the dark room where she laid crouched helplessly. She remembered a green smoke that smelled funny. More gunshots…a scream…a man's scream of pain, before all faded to black.

Damian's arm was hastily and poorly bandaged, and she could see the blood seeping through.

He was hit!

Damian sensed where her gaze was aimed and hurriedly spoke. "I'm fine!" he insisted before she could cry out in alarm.

Even though she was quite sure he wasn't, there was little she could say or do. He was conscious, moving without pain, and acting like his old self. She couldn't protest his wellness when he acted unhurt so terribly flawlessly.

"How did you…"

"Take it easy, I'll tell you another time." He soothed her like she was child. He spoke plainly and gently, carefully not to aggravate her currently disoriented and fragile state of mind.

But there was something else urgently nagging at the back of her mind…

Sephiroth!

"Where is he?" she cried, trying to swallow her growing hysterics. "Where is he?!" she shrieked when neither Damian nor the nurse offered any reply.

Damian blinked, not knowing what to say. His jaw dropped a few times in the beginnings of an answer, but it always closed. "Eh…"

"Where is Sephiroth?" she demanded through hot tears. She was screaming, she was crying, and she didn't care. If she had been knocked unconscious, if Damian had been hurt, then who had been protecting her baby boy?

"Erm…" Damian tried again, without success.

"He's…he can't be…is he?...he can't be! NO!"

"Lavina, listen…"

"What did they do to him?!"

"I take it by the insufferable shrieking that Larina has come to her senses?"

There was a smile twitching at the corners of Damian's lips, one that he could only barely restrain. "Yes, Professor. She is quite conscious."

Hojo came into her view, and Lavina shrunk under his withering gaze.

"I take it that she has not, as of yet, regained the use of her arms?"

Damian's voice shook with suppressed laughter. "N-No s-sir. I should th-think not."

My arms…?

Hojo's scowl deepened. "Do you have any intension of releasing my specimen, girl?" he sneered at her.

Releasing…?

Something hummed softly against her chest. "Vee…Vee…Vee-uh. Ooooo….'Mian!"

"You can let him go now, Lavina," Damian said. "The danger is past."

Oh!

She flushed scarlet with embarrassment as she slid her arms from where they encircled the happy infant and held him to her chest. Damian took Sephiroth from her and handed him to a highly disgruntled Hojo.

"The whole time he was…?"

"You had a death grip on the kid," Damian smiled. "Even after you were knocked unconscious, we couldn't take him from you without snapping your arms off! I've never seen anything so remarkable!"

"…I what?"

"We'll talk later, all right? The nurse here is going to take you to your bed and you're going to get a little sleep."

"Will Sephiroth be all right?" she asked worriedly.

"He's as right as rain. A little bruised at most--man that was some grip you had on him--but he wasn't bothered at all. He went right on talking like nothing had happened."

"I'm not going to sleep," Lavina said. "Not until you explain what happened."

Damian rubbed the back of his neck in thought. "Is Hojo gone, Joy?"

"Yes," the nurse simply replied.

"Will you guard the door and alert me of any eavesdroppers?"

"I will, sir."

That aside, he turned to her. Before he began explaining, he brushed some stray debris off her body and propped her up against the wall so she was no longer lying on the floor. He didn't seem to be bothered by using his bandaged arm.

She expected him to get to talking once she was properly seated, but instead, he swept her into a warm hug and laughed. "Oh, Lavina, that was spectacular! I couldn't have staged it any more perfectly!"

"Wha--?"

"Hojo won't dare to get rid of you now!"

"What did I do?"

He unclamped himself from her and sat back, grinning widely. "Even unconscious, you weren't about to let that kid go anywhere. When we found you, you were curled around him in a tight human shield—it took three paramedics to unfold you from around him. And your grip Lavina…Leviathan himself probably couldn't have made you let go!"

"I fail to see how this means anything."

"It means you're the best guard Seph's got!" Damian exploded. "You protected him with everything you had—even knocked senseless! That kind of subconscious loyalty in the face of death is not something Hojo can afford to sacrifice, unhappy as he may be about it. There's not another woman on the planet who would do as much for Sephiroth!"

Lavina thought about it for a while. "So…he's mine?"

"I can promise you Hojo will keep you with the kid until he's a full grown man. You've proved yourself! There's no more danger of him tearing Seph from you!"

He won't take my baby from me…

The thought washed Lavina in warmth.

"But you!" she cried. "You're hurt!"

"Oh, this?" he asked, gesturing to the bandage on his arm. Smiling coyly, he grabbed the free end of the bandage and uncoiled it from his arm in a matter of seconds, revealing an unmarred limb. "Ta da!" he said triumphantly, taking a little bow.

"…So you weren't hurt?"

"Nope. The blood is fake. Dramatics, you see. Had to make it look convincing."

"Make what convincing?"

"The cover-up," he said simply.

"…What?!"

"Turks take care of their own," he began. "One of my friends happened to see the chemical mess I made in the lab and saw an opportunity to help. He was the attacker."

"And you didn't tell me this was a set-up?" Lavina seethed, her ears turning red.

"I didn't know at the time. He surprised me too. Calm down and let me finish. He dressed as one of Hollander's men and created quite a stir in there. Hojo thinks the mess is Hollander's doing."

"I heard you scream," Lavina protested. "I heard gunshots."

"His gun was loaded with blanks, and I was simply playing the part. Come on, Lavina, don't be bitter!"

"You about gave me a heart attack to cover up a chemical spill!"

"It was more than that, Lavina," Damian insisted. "Now that Hojo thinks Hollander's attacking, he'll be even more paranoid about protecting Sephiroth. That means he'll need you, as you've proved yourself a better guard than I was. He won't dare to get rid of you in the face of a potential war. Think of the leverage this gives you, Lavina! You have something on Hojo!"

"I think you're overestimating this."

"At the very least, Hojo won't take you from Sephiroth. Wasn't that worth one night of terror?"

Lavina couldn't dispute that. It had been a small price to pay for what she hoped to be long years with the boy she thought of as her own son.

"Now, you can sleep in peace. Hojo's got Seph for the night, and when he brings him back, I'll take care of him. Take it easy for a while. Catch your breath."

Lavina stood on shaky legs, using the wall for support. "No more cover-ups, though," she groaned. "You have to swear."

Damian smiled coyly. "I'll see what I can do about minimizing these kinds of situations."

She took no consolation from his half-promise.

A/N: I hate this chapter. It's way too anti-climactic, but it is important to the plot. Sorry about that.

Next chapter: Seph's first birthday.