(730 words. Post-Death of the Outsider, but written before its release.)

Billie woke suddenly with another sharp pain at her right temple, and she quickly bit her tongue to keep from crying out. When it dulled down to an ache, consistent but manageable, she carefully sat up, moving slowly and quietly, and pressed the heel of her hand hard against her forehead.

She needn't have bothered trying to be silent. Beside her, Daud's tired voice said, "What is it?"

Neither of them were very heavy sleepers, given the lives they had led. It was a wonder they could even manage to spend a night in the same bed.

Billie shook her head, wincing. "Nothing," she mumbled. "Damn thing is aching again, that's all."

The shards of the Void that had attached themselves to the stump of her arm had gone away easily enough when the job was done and the artifact destroyed, but the Eye of the Dead God was something else entirely and not so easily removed. The headaches plagued her every few days, with sudden, searing pain and a red haze over her vision.

Daud sat up, rubbing a hand over his face. "Bad?" he asked.

She considered lying, but there was as little point in that as in trying not to wake him in the first place. "Pretty bad."

With a wordless sound of acknowledgment, Daud shifted to the edge of the bed and stood up.

"You don't need to do that," Billie said. "I can get it myself."

He waved a hand at her dismissively. "No, stay."

"I'm not going to pass out and fall again."

"I didn't say you would."

She frowned but gave up the argument, watching as he made his way to the stove in the corner that was heating the room. He walked with a limp now, some days worse than others, and there was a cane against the wall near the bed that he was too stubborn to use on all but his worst days. She supposed that was a trait they both shared.

The Eye throbbed again, and Billie pressed harder with her hand and closed her own eye. She could still see faint, red outlines of Daud's movement in the dark, remnants of the borrowed power that came back with the pain and that she did her best to block out. She focused instead on the sounds: slow footsteps, running water, and the scrape of the kettle against the stove.

Before long, the room was filled with the scents of spices, a much more pleasant distraction. She opened her eye again to see Daud emptying a small packet of powder into a steaming mug. The medicine Dr. Hypatia had given Billie for the pain was horribly bitter stuff, but it thankfully went down much easier with the flavorful food and drink Serkonos was so well known for.

He walked back over to hand her the mug and sat down and watched while she drank the medicine down. "I can go to Hypatia's office and tell her you needed to stay home," he said as she finished.

Billie shook her head. "No, this stuff works fast. I'll be fine in a little while." She smirked. "Anyway, I think she's still a little afraid of you. Wouldn't be nice of me to spring you on her without a warning."

He snorted. "She knows what we are. If she's afraid of me, she should be afraid of you."

"Your face was on more wanted posters than mine," she said with a shrug. "And I let her hide out on my ship for a while. All you've ever done is stand in the corner of her office and scowl."

"I don't like that building."

"You don't always need to come with me."

He said nothing to that, just held out his hand for the empty mug. Then he stood up again. "Go back to sleep if you're set on working today," he said. "The sun's not even up yet."

Billie smiled, a bit sadly, at his back as walked away again. The Addermire Institute certainly had a strangeness to it, but she doubted if that was really what bothered him. Dr. Hypatia was the best around, and even she couldn't do more than manage the pain caused by the Eye.

So many brushes with death over the years, and this was going to be the thing that killed her. Daud would outlive his apprentice.