Chapter 7

March 30th, 1999

He was gone. Gone!

"I'm so alone… alone forever…!" I cried hopelessly, draping my arm over my eyes. My life was over. There would be no salvation. "How could this happen to me?!"

Everything that was once right was now wrong. Everything that was once bright, now dim.

"I can't believe this. Why would he leave me?" I didn't understand this at all. My world was caving in around me. I had no one to hold on to, no one to confide in, no one to visit. It was all over. He had left, without even giving me a proper goodbye. How could he let this happen? "How could I have let this happen?"

"Dude, what are you talking about?"

Emmy poked me in the cheek.

"He's gone!" I yelled, flailing wildly on the couch. "My best friend in the whole world is gone! Forever!"

"Bitch, I'm right here!" she said, sounding upset with me.

"Yeah, but Jaune's gone! He left me alone with you!" I flopped over, rolling off her futon and onto the thick shag rug in the den. "And he's never coming back!"

I grabbed a pillow and shoved it into my face, yelling nothing into it. Emmy couldn't possibly understand. She didn't have a best friend right at the end of her street to go visit on a daily basis. She had to always wait for me to bike over, which took a whole twenty-five minutes!

"He left like, fifteen minutes ago. What are you so worked up about?"

"He's left me for some other woman in Paris!" I cried, trying to force tears to make my hopeless point. Emmy didn't understand my loneliness. "He's probably already found himself a new best friend, and now I'm all a-lone!"

"Dude, calm down! Why are you being so dramatic?"

I flipped over and glared up at Emmy, a mix of hatred and sadness in my eyes.

"Because, Emerald, my best friend in the whole world is leaving and won't be back for a million years. What am I supposed to do without him?!"

She scoffed, scrubbing her nails against a file. "Okay, first off, two weeks, and second off, me."

"What?"

"You have me to hang out with. Why am I not good enough for you or something?" She returned the glare. "Because how dare you."

I sighed, rolling onto my back. She wouldn't understand.

"You wouldn't understand."

"I feel like I would. He's my friend too."

She wouldn't. I flopped along the carpet like a fish. "Ughhhhhh!"

Jaune was gone, gone far away.

"But he's my best friend! And he left me forever!" I cried. There was no way around my situation.

"He's gone for nine days." she smacked me with a pillow. "Grow up, you child. He'll be back eventually, don't freak out so much. Did you freak out this much when I went back to Tabriz?"

"No..." I lied. I fully did. It had happened when we were only seven years old. Now, I may have had only limited knowledge of Middle Eastern geopolitics at this age, but I did watch the news on occasion and knew what the words 'active' and 'warzone' meant. At that time, Iran had been in a moment of peace with its allies, mind you, but I freaked out much the same.

I sniffed to try and distract myself. "But Jaune is going to France! He's much more likely to stay there because that's his home 'n stuff and everyone there is French and I'm not and he's gone forever and I'm gonna be alone!"

"Ugh, you are so annoying," she said, watching me scoot around on my face. "He's there for a funeral and to visit his sisters. Wait no, a wedding sorry, the point is did you not even listen when he was explaining this?"

"He didn't tell me anything!"

"He told us this two months ago!" Emmy almost yelled.

"Waaaaaaaah."

I finally scooted into a leg of the couch, bringing my tirade to a physical halt. I winced. I could hear her sigh loudly down at me, followed swiftly by the sound of her lying down on the carpet as well. The throw rug shifted as she settled into it, rolling over next to me. I lay my face on my cheek, seeing her olive-coloured eyes within inches of mine. I pouted.

"But I want my bestie back."

She gave a curt laugh. "He's probably not even at the airport yet. Montreal is two hours away."

"Yeah, but..."

"No buts." she hit me in the arm. "Unless Ines' van is actually a jet plane, Jauney's not at the airport yet. Calm do-hown. Ya crazy lady."

I huffed. I rolled over. I rolled back. I gave a flail of my extremities to make my point. Emmy laughed, and slung her arm over me.

"How 'bout we make cookies." she asked, trying to hold my body in place. "Would that make you feel better?"

I shrugged, rolling onto my back. "I 'unno." I slurred.

"Brownies?" she suggested. I stuck my tongue out and blew a raspberry.

"No. I had too many this morning." I explained, recalling the thick fudge I'd proliferated from the fridge. No one had been there to stop me, so it was mine for the taking.

"Okay… weirdo… how about some muffins?" Emmy was clearly desperate at this point. I could feel it in the way her arm tensed across my chest.

I shrugged. "I guess so." My sigh escaped like a deflating weather balloon.

"How about banana muffins? We have a bunch of too-old-to-eat-slightly-brown bananas on the counter, we could use them?"

"I guess so," more sighing. "Why didn't you eat them before?"

It was Emmy's turn to shrug. "Never got around to it. Mama was gonna make banana loaf for me and Papa, but if we make muffins instead it shouldn't be a problem."

Banana loaf sounded pretty good, actually. Now I wanted them. "Do you have a recipe?"

Emmy showed no signs of either letting go or getting up in any hurry, but she opened her eyes and cocked an eyebrow. "I think so. If not, we can always ask my girl Betty."

I chuckled. "White or Crocker?"

"Ha ha, very funny." I coughed as she used my stomach as a prop to sit up. "C'mon, they aren't gonna make themselves."

She stood up, leaving me on the floor. I went to get up, grabbing her outstretched hand.

"Yallah, come on." she said, pulling me onto my feet with more force than I had been expecting.

"Eh, wait, let me stand up first!" I followed along into the hallway, careful not to fall down her precariously steep staircase. The narrow townhouse had many places someone even as short as we were to bump their head, the most glaring of which was the lip above the stairs. I'm surprised neither of us had a ridge permanently indented into our foreheads from the number of times we had run down them.

Today, we were careful, giving each other a knowing look after safely traversing the dangerous staircase.

"In here," she said, gesturing into the kitchen more for demonstrative purposes than anything. I knew her house inside and out. "Okay, I think it's safe to say because all recipes say this, can you set the oven to three-fifty?"

I chuckled. "Yeah, sure thing."

The little white oven sat recessed into the plaster, flush against the side wall of the room. I slid over, my socks having zero traction on the linoleum floor, obviously. The dial on the front was easy enough to figure out, and I spun it to the little 350oF label near the end of the sticker. The red PRE light came on.

"And it's on!" I cheered, spitting out a loose hair from my mouth. Gross.

"Okay," she said, sliding the clay bowl of bananas over to the middle of the counter. "Above you in the cupboard is the book."

I had to get up on my tiptoes to even reach the door. But I managed, running my fingers along the back of the line of books.

"This one?" I asked, trying to grab a neatly spiral bound book.

"No no, the shitty one." she said with her usual disregard for cursing. "On the end."

Oh, that one. I could see it, barely held together with the elastics, the few hundred pages of yellowing paper clearly stained in years of oil. I stretched as hard as I could, grabbing the elastic and pulling it free of the shelf, letting the old book fall into my hands.

"This one?" I tried to read the title. It was in Arabic.

Emmy smiled her million-dollar smile. "Yeah, that's the one!"

The only word, or words I should say that I could understand were the two that circled the old woman's face on the top right corner.

"Is this an Arabic Betty Crocker book?"

"What, do you think people in the Middle East don't occasionally want to make pastries and cake?"

"That's not what I mean..." I paused, pulling open a cupboard and rooting around for a muffin tray. "I just didn't realize it was released in any other language."

Emmy shrugged, tossing me an apron from the drawer on the other end of her kitchen. "Didn't you have a German one?"

I shook my head, flipping a pan out onto the counter. "Nah, we just had a box with little cards in it that my grandmother made."

"In German, though?"

"Uh… yes." I paused, the little paper muffin cups in my fingers.

Emmy chuckled, grabbing the cookbook and pulling the old, stiff elastics off and placing them gently on the table. Funny, I figured she'd have flung them at me, but she didn't. I relaxed. I spent a moment placing the little ruffled paper cups in each of the pan's spots.

"Right!" she cheered, slapping the book down on the counter and pointing down at the recipe almost three quarters through the old pages. "One recipe for banana-chocolate chip muffins."

I looked down at the page, seeing the wrong-way going scribbles crossing the page from right to left. The only things I could understand were the measurement numbers and fractions, as they were in regular Western Arabic text. Or as most of us know it, regular numbers.

"Can… I get a translation?" I asked, not even pretending to know what I was reading.

Her smile became malicious. She held up a meat tenderizer and one of the bananas.

"Step one; destroy banana."

/…/

"How much longer?"

"Fifteen minutes."

I twitched. That was much to long to wait for me. Especially with the sweet and overpowering smell of banana that had filled the house. Emmy's cat, Stripes, had even gotten up off his usually lazy fat butt to come and investigate. If you knew this cat, you'd know this was a big deal.

"What do we do until then?"

Emmy shrugged, scratching Stripes behind the ears.

"Dunno."

I scooted my chair closer to the oven, peering through the glass.

"Hmm."

"Wanna play Mario Kart?"

I glanced over. Emmy seemed to be just as interested in watching the oven as I was. Maybe a distraction would be best. Someone once told me that a watched pot never boils, and this was maybe the case with watched muffins, too.

"Alright." I said, getting up off my chair and dragging it back over to the table. "But I get to play as Peach."

"Ugh, fine. I'll be Toad."

We settled into the couch in the living room, which was conveniently right next to the kitchen and left the microwave timer in full view. Em leaned over and clicked the TV and her 64 on, plugging in the second controller and leaning back. The start up screen came up, prompting us to 'Press Start'. We complied.

"One-fifty?"

"You know it."

She chuckled

"Alright, what Cup are we doing?"

"Flower Cup, it has Choco Mountain."

She clicked over and selected it. The character selection screen popped up, and before she even had time to react I had selected Peach from the list so she wouldn't choose her first. The twitch in Emmy's eye showed that this was probably her intended course of action.

"Ready to lose?" I asked, leaning backwards.

"I never lose."

The game started up, loading the flavour shot of the first course in the Cup. Emmy impatiently mashed the A button, and the race grid popped up. The split screen had her on top and me on the bottom, as I had been resigned to player two. The lights came down. I jammed the A button, revving the tires up. As the light went green, I shot ahead.

"Yeah, boost start!"

I had rocketed into third, way ahead of Emmy.

"Oy, wait up."

"No, that's the point of racing. Catch up."

"Bitch."

I gasped. "How dare you."

"We should have invited Russ." she suggested, sniffing and shaking some hair out of her face.

"I thought he had a thing after school." I drifted around second place. "Something soccer I thought."

"Oh yeah, practice. Should I save him a muffin?"

"He doesn't like bananas."

Emmy scoffed. "Who the hell doesn't like bananas?"

"Russel. I just said that." To make my point, I threw a banana peel behind my kart. Emmy's cat wandered over and sat down at the foot of the couch. I cursed as a red shell hit me. Stupid Bowser.

"Well, I like them. I Russ doesn't he can shove it." I watched her drift past me. "No muffins for him."

I flippantly waved her off.

"Eh, whatever. Just you wait."

"What for?" she asked, unawares.

"This!" I said, releasing a blue shell.

She seemed confused. "What was 'this'? Nothing happ-"

She was hit by the shell, flinging her and her kart into the air in a haze of blue explosion. "Ha!"

I slid past, claiming first place for myself. Emmy yelled an expletive, trying to break her controller in anger. I laughed as I crossed over the finish line in first.

"You sly bitch." she said, thumping me with her shoulder. "How dare you use that on me!"

"You were in first, the blue shell only goes for whoever's in first." I said, watching the finishing screen play. It had claimed I had won fifteen points, leaving Emmy with a paltry twelve. "You should know that."

"Ugh."

The next course began.

"Okay, press the A button right before it says go." I offered. "Then you can get a boost start."

"You're not giving me bad advice to make me screw up?"

The countdown started. "Just do it."

And so she did, and we both rocketed off the line well ahead of everyone else. We jockeyed for position for a little bit of the course, me being in the lead for most of it. Emmy seemed briefly pleased that I hadn't lied to her, but reverted to her usual pissy mood when she found that she was unable to pass me.

"How is it that you get the blue shells when you're losing and all I get is freakin' bananas!" she exclaimed. The plastic controller creaked under her grip.

"Very simple, my dear Emerald." I explained, smirking at her. "Get go-"

The buzzer on the microwave rang.

/…/

I'd like to take a moment to talk about physics, if I may. In nature there is a small collection of immutable laws. Things that, no matter how hard we try, cannot be broken. Millions of dollars in research, over hundreds of years and we cannot bring ourselves to overcome them, as our entire life cycle is governed by them.

My favourite of which is the speed of light. No particle, with or without mass, may travel faster than it. The photon is a massless particle of infinite momentum that travels at ninety-nine point nine-nine repeating percent of the speed of light, and has the ability to pass through matter and energy as if it wasn't there. Large, oil-filled detectors have to be placed deep under ground to accurately collect them.

Not even the inescapable pull of gravity can cause light to exceed it's own set limit. A force so great it literally stops light from existing using sheer brute force cannot hinder the overwhelming gravity, pun fully intended, of the law of the speed of light. A black hole, for instance, creates a well of force that can equalize and cancel out particles that have infinite momentum, which is a fantastic spectacle to observe if I'm honest. But alas, even our friend the black hole cannot break the law.

However.

On December twenty-sixth, twenty-fourteen, a team of scientists at George Mason University conducted a study to prove that a neutrino could break this fundamental law of the universe and exceed the speed of light by converting its mass so it more resembled a particle called a tachyon. They observed a particle that seemed to arrive at the receiver plate a fraction of a millionth of a nanosecond before it had even been fired, which indicated that it had exceeded the fundamental speed.

This whole experiment, mind you, was a false outcome, caused by none other than a loose wire in their apparatus. It is still not currently possible to exceed the speed of light, since much like the speed limit on the highway, It's the law. And when you break this law, you don't go to jail, no, much worse things can happen.

When you break the fundamental energy barrier that keeps the universe in order, it could be catastrophic. When you break any form of energy, it's bad. Take for instance an electrical wire. You cut that with a set of side cutters for instance, and the electrical flow stops. That's fine, except for the fact that the side cutters are now the thing that is electrified. And you get electrocuted. This is bad.

Now think about tearing apart the energy that holds the very fabric of the universe together…

Yeah.

The buzzer on the microwave rang.

I'm not sure that an observed timed difference even existed between when I let go of my controller and when the delicious taste of banana and chocolate entered my being. In fact, I'm fairly certain banana muffin happened before I even got up off the couch.

That's right, fifteen years before the botched experiment, I proved the existence of faster than light travel. Maybe it's because the scientists didn't have the same kind of motivation that I did. Scientific advancement, pshaw. I was in it for the chocolatey-banana-y goodness that I myself had manufactured.

And I have to say. It was incredible.

/.../

"Feel better about Jaune leaving?"

I nodded, rubbing my arm. "Yeah, I guess."

"He's probably still in the airport right now." she suggested, walking me to the door. She had neatly packaged four muffins for me to bring home in a box for me. "I would bet he's not even on the plane yet. You know about the wait times at most airports."

"Yeah..." I tried not to seem as deflated as I was. Yes, the muffins were making me feel better, but Jaune was still missing.

"So you gonna remember to bring me my Tupperware back?"

I rolled my eyes at her. "Duh, don't be ridiculous."

"Yeah, but the last three times-"

"You'll get them back, Em. Don't worry."

"I worry." she said, handing over the clear plastic box full of muffins. "Exclusively about my Tupperware. Which you never return."

"Yeah, but…." I was at a loss for explanation. "Alright fine."

"Kay, see you tomorrow."

I gave Em a quick hug, before spinning on the spot and leaving her house. She shouted after me about the Tupperware again, and I flipped her off as I grabbed my bike off her front porch. The box of muffins fit neatly in the yellow wicker basket on the front of my equally yellow bike. It bounced down the steps as I slung my leg over the seat and pedaled out onto the street. The sun had gone down to a level where it glared directly into my eyes as rode up the street, weaving around cars parked at the side of the road.

I should mention that Emmy used to get really bent out of shape about hugs and the getting of them. Amy time that I would go to hug Jaune, Emmy would usually push him out of the way and take it for herself. I'd maybe even call it selfish of her, but she seemed to just want to interrupt Jaune from getting one. And any time I'd succeed in getting one to him first, she'd just cross her arms and pout and then not accept any affection. Even Russ didn't freak out this much. He'd just take his me-hug and not complain, and Em never seemed to be bothered if Russ did or didn't get the hugs.

It was always just whenever Jaune was next in line for one. I frowned as I thought about it, riding down the hill. Hell, I even remember a time when she took both her own hug and then stole his hug, thereby getting two for herself. How greedy.

I pushed the thoughts out of my head as I descended the long hill, keeping close to the edge of the street. The sun was badly burning my eyes, which made it quite hard to see anything. But I managed, holding one hand up to block the glare from my vision. Generally speaking I had a hat at all times, but this particular day I had forgotten it in the back seat of Winter's car along with my sunglasses. I could see, however, that the traffic light at the bottom of the hill was green in my direction.

This was certainly good, since I was going at quite a clip. I shifted the bike up into top gear as the wind blasted through my hair and into the holes in my jeans. It was kinda nice, actually, blasting down the hill on a sunny afternoon, the sweet smell of bananas and chocolate wafting up into my nose from the basket in front of me. So serene.

Which was interrupted.

Suddenly there was the sound of screeching tires from my right side.

Then there was a sharp pain in my right thigh.

Then sky. Then ground. Then sky. Then ground again.

Then the sudden, horrible feeling of asphalt scraping against my whole body. I cried out.

I had fallen off my bike.

It hurt quite badly, but something seemed off. It hurt more than it should have, though. Through the ringing of my quite likely large skin abrasions, I heard the sound of the tires screeching again, from behind me this time. The haze of water in my eyes clouded my vision, but I still was able to identify the dark green blob of car that sped around me and quickly around the first corner. The sound of the engine got quieter as it sped away.

Why would someone run away after witnessing a small child fall off their bicycle? Especially with such haste?

This thought filled my head as I tried to roll over onto my back. This didn't quite work out as planned, as the sharp pain rose through my leg again. Probably a badly pulled muscle from being swiftly ejected from my bicycle. With a very unladylike grunt, I managed to roll over and look up at the sky again. The edges of the blue expanse were greyed out, and pulsing slowly with my heart. I brought my hands up to my face. They were scraped quite badly, but all of my fingers were still in place so I didn't have reason to panic. I could see a small seepage of blood from my right arm where some of the skin had been scraped away. I wasn't sure if it hurt yet.

I do remember having difficulty breathing for a few moments. This feeling of breathlessness went away after a few moments, however, which was nice. The pained of what I assumed was a bruised leg came back as my breathing did. It was more than a sore hurt, though, as it pulsed with occasional sharp pinches, right in the muscle of my thigh. I tried to sit up, getting only halfway there before the pain in my leg dragged me back down.

"Jaune..." I murmured. "...where's… Jaune..."

Not that Jaune would have been much help here. He was too far away to be helpful today. It didn't matter. I could do this myself.

"Ow..." I finally decided on, after much delegation. I wiped the tears from my face, wiping more dirt onto it.

I managed to get onto my left side, then finally back onto my front. I pushed myself up, keeping all my weight off my right leg, which still hurt. Maybe it was actually my ankle, I figured. I had plenty of sprained ankles from doing gymnastics recently, so I knew I needed to get my injury on ice. But first, I needed to get out of the middle of the street.

"How'd I..." I tried to ask myself. It didn't come out right, as I found that talking hurt my chest. Gosh, what wasn't wrong with me? "...ow"

I managed to get to my feet, with a yelp of pain. I did a quick visual check, trying to keep balanced on my left leg. My right just seemed far too sprained to put weight on right at that moment. But otherwise I was fine, just scraped up. A bit of my hair fell into my face as I glanced over to my bike.

Which was a good twenty feet away.

Crumpled.

I let out a gasp.

"What the hell?!" I yelled. Tears reached my eyes again, from both the pain in my leg and the sight of my bike, lying haplessly on the ground with a crumpled front wheel and a broken handlebar. The muffins, however "...Oh, thank heavens. You're all right."

They had survived the fall, protected by Emmy's expensive Tupperware. I sighed with relief, taking a tentative step forward to collect my fallen and battered bike.

"AAAHHK"

My right leg gave out the instant I put weight on it. I wavered, managing to catch myself with my arms. The ground wouldn't collect me again if I could help it. It took a few minutes of one-legged hopping to get over to my bike, which still was making the quiet clicking as the rear tire came to a slow stop on its axle. Good bearings, I thought.

The pain in my leg was horrible. It felt worse than a sprain at this point, and it was still pulsing with a vengeance, now. I bit back the wailing I so desperately wanted to let out. I grit my teeth, hard enough for it to hurt.

"Stupid...sprained...leg..." I managed to wheeze out. I hadn't actually grasped the gravity of the situation yet, as I stood over my bent and damaged bicycle. It seemed in good enough shape to use as a crutch to get home, mind you. I let some injured-sounding pains out. "Rrrrrgh."

As I bent down to pick it up, the gravity of the situation grasped me, and pulled me down onto the yellow frame with a crunch. I resisted the urge to curse, now tangled in the metal cage. I coughed down at it, hoping this would be enough of an act to get the bike to fall in line like a good inanimate object.

"Please… not now..." I struggled to get up again, balancing precariously on my left leg as I brought the bike up level. It seemed to be able to still roll forward, even with the mess of broken forks in the front wheel and the broken handlebar. "Okay… I can… see my house… we can do this..."

It was just up ahead on the left, no more than two hundred yards away. It did required crossing a major intersection to get to, but there was a crossing light and it was usually long enough to cross even at a slow pace. I decided to mount my bike to get some weight off the injury.

I regretted this decision immediately, as the instant I went to sling my leg over the seat, searing white-hot pain shot up my body, piercing through my chest and up my neck even. Even as naive as I was, I sort of knew it was bad when I could feel the pain in my ear. I couldn't get on the seat. I couldn't put my weight down to walk on it. And I certainly couldn't bring myself to even look. I turned, sitting myself side-saddle on the seat and tried my luck at this angle. It seemed to hold, and the despite the bend in the frame the bike stayed upright.

"Okay… now home…" I pushed off with my good leg, and rolled forward. The front spokes tink'd off the forks like a xylophone, only sucky and out of tune as I pushed myself towards the main street. By some stroke of pure luck, the light went green just as I got to the intersection and I was able to roll right through. I had to focus harder than I had for anything else in my life so as to not fall backwards off the bike and land in the middle of a busy intersection. Perhaps If I did, someone would be more helpful than the jerk in the green car. Like seriously, who speeds away after watching a kid fall?

I made it across. Thankfully. Not much further now. The smell of muffins had gone away, even though the box was still sealed with its contents delicately protected. I though at the time it was because the wind was blowing it a different direction. I found out later that it was because my nose had become plugged. With blood. From a bunch of burst blood vessels.

I reached my house, and coasted slowly up the driveway. The garage was thankfully open, and there was Winter's wagon, parked up against the side. My heart skipped. Now, whether this was medically-induced or simply metaphorical, I don't know.

"Winter!" I coughed out. "Winter!"

I cried as I fell over again, this time onto my own lawn. At least the grass was comfortable to land on. Well, more comfortable than the road.

"Wint-er-her-her!" I cried, rolling over. The sound of our front door opening was a welcome one.

"Weiss?" I could hear her say. "Oh my god, Weiss!?"

She sprinted over and slid to a stop on the grass next to me on her knees.

"Holy shit, what happened?!" she almost demanded, dropping the whatever that was in her hand into the garden, and seemed to be panicking quite a lot.

"Fell off… bike..." I wheezed. I could feel her start to take off my left shoe.

"It looks like you were hit by a bus, your bike is destroyed." my shoe came off with a pop. She went for the other one, undoing the laces. "This kinda damage wasn't caused by a fall. Where does it hurt?"

I coughed. "Leg..."

"Which leg?"

"Right." It was hard to talk. The edges of my vision had clouded up with grey again.

She ran her hands up my leg. "Where?"

I tried to pinpoint the source of the throbbing pain. It felt like it was coming from the spot a few inches above my knee. I pointed to it.

"...here… leg..." I tried, trying to lift my leg to her. I gasped as the pain raced back up my body.

"Christ, how much does it hurt?" she slid her hands up my leg, giving soft squeezes ever little bit to gauge my reactions. To be perfectly honest, I couldn't feel anything beyond the pain. "Here?"

She squeezed down on the spot I had indicated. I screamed.

"NO!" came out like a bark. I flailed out to stop her from touching any further. She looked down at me.

"Oh..." she said, and that was all she said for a moment as she cupped one hand under my knee and one hand under my heel. I watched her move slowly. It was agonizing to watch as she carefully moved the aching appendage.

Not as agonizing as what happened next.

She bent the leg upward. And it bent easily from that very spot where the pain emanated from. UPWARDS.

"Ho-holy fuck..." she said as I wailed out in pain. "How did this happen?! Weiss?!"

"Fell off...my bike..." I pushed out through the tears.

"Weiss, no one breaks their leg falling off a bicycle." she raged. Not at me, though. Just in general. "Tell me what happened?!"

"It's not... broken..." I tried.

"Weiss, you were hit by a car." she said, standing up and running into the garage, only to return seconds later with a handful of ratchet straps and piece of timbre wood. "I'm gonna find the motherfucker that did this to you and rip his fucking lungs out through his asshole!"

I coughed out a dry laugh, which brought more pain to my chest. I was starting to think that maybe more than just my leg was broken.

"How the hell did you get home?" she asked, wrapping my leg onto the piece of wood as gently as she could. "Not on your bike, right?"

"It was… not hard..." I was on the verge of passing out. My body had caught up to the pain in itself. And by god was it a lot. "Just… coasted."

"Holy fuck, you're tough." she chuckled, her mind clearly focused on intricate ways of removing a person's skin from their body with various blunt instruments. "Okay, I'm gonna pick you up now. We're going to the hospital. You ready?"

I nodded weakly. Her arms went around me, and like I was a feather made of glass, she lifted me off the ground. With my leg splinted in a straight position, it didn't hurt so bad as she supported me over to the car. With a creak of old steel, she pulled the door open with one finger and gently lowered me into the passenger seat of the old Pontiac. Great thing about that car was the front bench seat with its miles of leg room, which meant I wasn't even uncomfortable with my leg tied straight. And with my weight now fully on my butt, some of the searing pain receded.

"Okay, I'm gonna go grab your health card, I'll be right back, I promise." She used such reassuring words to try and calm me down, which was sweet. I don't think I needed calming, though. I needed to not have a broken leg. And I needed Jaune. But that was different.

She was back in a flash, climbing into the driver's seat and cranking the old car into life. Even through the pulsing in my ears I could hear that she had since fixed the rough idle and misfire, and the car didn't seem to smoke anymore. Which meant the cabin no longer smelled and tasted like death by suffocation. This was good, as I currently couldn't fully breathe anyways. She slammed the car into reverse and backed quickly down the driveway with an angry look on her face, loping the huge machine out onto the road.

"You didn't… close the… garage..." I wheezed. Tell you what, a broken rib does wonders for the ability to talk.

"I don't even care," she said, surging the vehicle forward. "If father gets upset at me, he can go fuck himself. I can't help but notice it's not him driving you to the hospital. Fuckin' asshole."

Clearly, my sister was upset. I felt like I needed to apologize. I kept quiet for the twenty-minute drive out to Ottawa General, with only minor interjections of quiet groans as my lungs ached and my leg seared. It was actually a miracle that we arrived at the hospital so quickly, with it being the tail end of traffic hour in the city. Winter's car was also slightly to thank for this, as even though it was showing it's age, the big Catalina had no problems brute-forcing its way through traffic.

I tried to steady my breathing as Winter expedited me to the hospital. But it had started coming out in short bursts, and becoming increasingly painful. I remember coughing and it coming up with more than just air. So this was about the point I started panicking. I started freaking out. And when you start hyperventilating with a broken rib jabbing you in the side of the lung…

I passed out.

/…/

I don't remember much after this. I remember the feeling of the car sliding to a stop, presumably outside the hospital. I don't remember being carried in, I don't remember Winter yelling at the attending for being slow and lethargic, and I don't even remember having my jeans scissored off.

"Stand her up straight." I remember someone saying, and the awkward feeling of someone holding me up on a weigh scale by the armpits. I don't even remember what the scale said. I'm sure after this there was painkillers and anesthetic, but it all came through as a haze.

"The two lower most… on the right side…"

A panicked breathing.

"...Fractured...femur..."

The thickest bone in the human body is the one that occupies the upper part of the leg. It holds the majority of the weight of our bodies and has the most density and overall strength. Breaking it requires upwards of four thousand newtons of impulse, right in the centre. At a guess, with my body weight taken as an average, and guessing that the car I'd been hit by had been moving at an average speed on residential streets, I had been hit by around twelve and a half thousand newtons. Much of this had been absorbed by my bike's frame, but clearly enough had got me in the leg.

"...backwards from ten..."

I saw the x-rays later on. That bone had been fractured in a very awkward place. It had to be opened up and screwed back together. I was told I'd be on crutches and in a cast for at least nine or ten months, and I'd have to quit gymnastics and running track for the school team. The ribs, on the other hand, couldn't be put in a cast or anything like that, since the two that had been broken were floating ribs, they really didn't matter. But they were still broken. After a while they'd fix themselves.

I felt alone. Even with Winter sitting with me for what seemed like forty or fifty continuous hours, I felt like I had no one. You know who never came to see me during my two days there? My parents. Even Russel brought his freaking baby sister to see me, and Whitley was dragged out by Emmy, but my own parents didn't come. Winter said when she'd gone in to get my health card, she'd alerted them to my condition, and he simply looked up at her and asked 'what do you want me to do about it?' What a shame.

And worst of all, by the time I came to from the knockout drugs, Jaune had landed in Paris and was too far away from me to be with me. I know, I know, it was a sappy notion, but in the first few moments I woke up, all I could think about was where was Jaune. The loneliness of waking up at three in the morning coated in plaster and unable to move with the knowledge that I couldn't walk was horrible. I wanted my best friend back. I knew he would be able to keep me from crying just by being there for me. Winter's angry, nervous pacing was not making me feel very good. She had a lot of angry things to say about our father. Most of which included the f-word.

"W...Win...ter..." I remember asking for while coming off the drugs. She came at my calling, climbing into the uncomfortable bed with me and laying there. I think I asked her to read to me, and I sort of remember hearing a few lines of Charlotte's Web, specifically the part about the spider making the 'some pig' sign in her web, but the loneliness prevailed.

I can't explain it.

I felt broken.

Not having Jaune around for this made me feel more broken than having my leg snapped in half.

I just…

It wasn't a good day for me.

I remember crying.