Three weeks passed, and Gren found himself the uncommon center of an unorthodox universe. For the first week, he could count on Vicious to be sitting by his bedside whenever he awoke. Strange. The cold-hearted snake had never shown an interest in his welfare before…not since he'd damned the musician to hell.
Fallen angel, indeed. Truth lay in the statement that the most beautiful faces often concealed the most vile of dispositions.
And yet, here he was. Looming over the side of the hospital bed like a feral, crouching shadow. A reminder of the death that never came. Never rescued him.
Surgery repaired what damage the missile blast had left to Gren's delicate organs, though the doctors stiffly assured him that if he persisted in squirming, he'd ruin their handiwork. Wisely, he did not repeat his earlier error-but while the sutures stopped his body, they didn't stop his mouth.
Sometimes he talked, and sometimes Vicious ordered him not to talk. Either way, the conversation remained one-sided-and he never knew whether the other man thought he was overextending his fragile resources or…he just wanted Gren to be silent.
After the second week-and the doctors let their patient sit up-Vicious began disappearing at long intervals. Gren couldn't count on him to be there when his eyes opened in the morning, and despite fierce protests to the contrary, the Titan veteran found that he missed the company. However steely and silent.
The third week-he showed up once. Briefly, words clipped even shorter than usual, expression harried-if indeed Vicious' vocabulary of expressions exceeded 'coldly impassive,' 'smug satisfaction,' and 'pissed.' Gren used his admirable mental restraint to clamp down on a rising frustrated scream. He waited for the retreating smack of heavy black canvas cape against the doorframe, and fell back against his pillows in exhaustion.
"Why didn't you just let me die? I was getting to it…but you broke off my solo. Grounds enough to bash your head in."
His eyelids lowered sleepily. Depression made a person sleep a lot, the nurse informed him. As if he didn't know. Whenever he'd been imprisoned in solitary, Gren had slept.
And slept.
And slept, captured in a dream of his own weaving, desperate to remember…and forget.
Julia was right. Endless dreams were sometimes as much comfort as outright torture. Blessing and curse, tightly braided into the subconscious, impossible to separate. Gren drifted into familiar slumber, then, with the voice of Julia ringing in his ears.
Vicious…Julia…why can't I just hate you?